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5- SWEDENBORC S RELIGtOtJS SYSTEM. 347
Robert Hindmarsh, a Clerkenwell printer, in 1782. It
was joined by the sculptor Flaxman, and had some in
fluence on William Blake. Its formation as a community
was discouraged by Clowes, and it is very doubtful
whether Swedenborg himself would have desired it. It
exists chiefly as an English and American sect, and is
more common in Lancashire and Yorkshire than in any
other part of England.
Swedenborg s credentials, besides the general effect of
his writings, are certain cases of telepathy and thought-
reading. We cannot explain how he came to know of the
fire which took place at Stockholm while he was at
Goteborg in July, 1759, or how he discovered Marte-
ville s fire insurance receipt, or the secret about which the
Prince of Prussia had written to his sister, Queen Louisa
Ulrica of Sweden, just before his death.33
But we are
more accustomed to such strange phenomena now than
people were in the last half of the eighteenth century, and
we have no reason to think that any persons who seem to
possess such powers are necessarily more acquainted with
the really important secrets of the universe than others.
Indeed, it is not unfair to say that the apparently success
ful "spiritualist" is almost the last person to whom an
inquirer after truth would look for aid in attaining the
knowledge of God.
Swedenborg is interesting as a man rather than as a
seer. There are beauties in his writings and there are
grave defects, especially their occasional coarseness, their
frequent triviality and their abundant tediousness. His
theology is only explicable and in a measure defensible as
a reaction against the sterile orthodoxy of his day. It may
help the Church historian to understand the better
Gnostics of the primitive Church, and so to obtain a juster
view of a long past period by the aid of a recent and
familiar experience. But it has clearly no future inside
Christendom itself. Swedenborg has no poetry, no
33
See White :
I.e., pp. 343 foil.
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