Page:Society the Redeemed Form of Man.djvu/83

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ABOUT SWEDENBORG.
67

nakedness craves, all made to hand. And when they find, as every one among them is sure to do who has any faculty of spiritual discernment, that there are absolutely no garments made up, but only an immense sound of the shearing of sheep and the carding of wool and the whirling of wheels and the rattling of looms and the flying of spindles, and that every for lorn wight who would be spiritually clad must actually turn to and become his own wool-grower, weaver, and tailor, the great majority of course go away disgusted, and only those remain whose vocation for Truth is so genuine as to make any labor incurred in her service welcome if not pleasant. The case of course is far more hopeless when one goes in with absolutely no conscious nakedness to cover, but only to satisfy a vague outside curiosity about intellectual novelties, and make, perchance, a handsome addition to an already luxurious literary wardrobe. But Swedenborg is not now, and probably never will be, so much the mode as greatly to attract this style of customer.

In fact, the whole existing conception of the man and his aims is a mistake. He is not at all the intellectual craftsman or quack the world takes him for. He is no way remarkable as a man of original thought, or even as a reasoner, unless it be negatively so, while as a man of experience, or a seer, his worth