vealed through a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Emanuel Swedenborg. Little serious attention should be paid to the claims of interpreters of the Christian religion simply because they claim to be God-directed and God-inspired. It is essential that what they claim appears to be in harmony with reason and with the Word of God. Even then their claims should be examined in a microscopic way; their beliefs compared with other beliefs; their claims thoroughly investigated as to reasonableness and probability; and compared with the basic teachings of the Sacred Scriptures. Are the teachings coming to the world through Swedenborg rational and scriptural? What is the testimony of thoughtful people as to the man and his work? It is desirable to know what position he holds in the world of thought, what students of his writings have to say about him. Any encyclopedia will give general information, but the opinions of reliable men are worthwhile.
The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1911, says:
"Swedenborg was in many respects the most remarkable man of his own or any age." Ralph Waldo Emerson, among many other astounding things, wrote: "The most remarkable step in the religious history of recent ages is that made by the genius of Swedenborg.
Thomas Carlyle wrote: "More truths are confessed in his writings than those of any other man." Edwin Markham said: "Swedenborg was one of the two or three greatest intellects that have appeared upon the planet." Balzac tells us: "Swedenborg undoubtedly epitomizes all the religions, or rather the one religion of humanity." Henry Ward Beecher said: "No man can know the theology of the nineteenth century who has not read Swedenborg." A distinguished Episcopalian divine, R. Heber Newton, wrote: "The first really new conception of the character of immortality given to the world for eighteen centuries came through . . . Swedenborg . . . Swedenborg's thought has been slowly leavening the great churches of Christianity In the Western world." Another distinguished Episcopalian clergyman, Joseph Fort Newton, says of Swedenborg's writings: "They helped me to interpret the doctrines of our Christian faith as nothing else has ever done." But similar testimonies could be applied
