Library Collections: Document: Full Text

*Introduction to a volume of Selections from Swedenborg, published in Braille at the Perkins Institution.

Swedenborg's works are full of stimulating faith, of confidence in what the author declares he has seen, heard, and touched. We who are blind are often glad that another's eye finds a road for us in a wide, perplexing darkness. How much more should we rejoice when a man of vision discovers a way to the radiant outer lands of the spirit! To our conception of God, the Word, and the Hereafter which we have received on trust from ages of unproved faith, Swedenborg gives a new actuality which is as startling, as thrilling as the angel-sung tidings of the Lord's birth. He brings fresh testimony to support our hope that the veil shall be drawn from unseeing eyes, that the dull ear shall be quickened, and dumb lips gladdened with speech.

Here, and now, our misfortune is irreparable. Our service to others is limited. Our thirst for larger activity is unsatisfied. The greatest workers for the race -- poets, artists, men of science men with all their faculties, are at times shaken with a mighty cry of the soul, a longing more fully to body forth the energy, the fire, the richness of fancy and of humane impulse which overburden them. What wonder, then, that we with our more limited senses and more humble powers should with a passionate desire crave wider range and scope of usefulness? Swedenborg says that "the perfection of man is the love of use," or service to others. Our groping acts are mere stammering suggestions of the greatness of service that we intend. We will to do more than we ever can do, and it is what we will that is in very truth ourselves. The dearest of all the consolations which Swedenborg's message brings to me is that in the next world our narrow field of work shall grow limitlessly broad and luminous. There the higher self that we long to be shall find realization.

Swedenborg, the man, was as lofty and noble as his work. He was one of those intellectual giants who astonish the world not oftener than once in a century with the vastness of their learning and their multitudinous activity. He was philosopher and theologian, and he was versed in the science of his time. He was a practical servant of the Swedish government, an inspector of mines, a metallurgist and engineer. The great mystic, then, was not a recluse, but an active man of the world. His life was serene, strong, gracious, moving with great ease under an incredible burden of work that would have broken the mental power of any ordinary man. Emerson says of him: "A colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his times, uncomprehended by them, and requires a long focal distance to be seen."

His theological teachings are in many long volumes. Yet his central doctrine is simple. It consists of three main ideas: God as divine love, God as divine wisdom, and God as power for use. These ideas come as waves from an ocean which floods every bay and harbour of life with new potency of will, of faith, and of effort.

Love is the all-important doctrine. This love means not a vague, aimless emotion, but desire of good united with wisdom and fulfilled in right action. For a life in the dark this love is the surest guidance.

The difficulties which blindness throws across our path are grievous. We encounter a thousand restraints, and like all human beings we seem at times to be accidents and whims of fate. The thwarting of our deep-rooted instincts makes us feel with special poignancy the limitations that beset mankind. Swedenborg teaches us that love makes us free, and I can bear witness to its power of lifting us out of the isolation to which we seem to be condemned. When the idea of an active, all- controlling love lays hold of us, we become masters, creators of good, helpers of our kind. It is as if the dark had sent forth a star to draw us to Heaven. We discover in ourselves many undeveloped resources of will and thought. Checked, hampered, failing and failing again, we yet rise above the barriers that bound and confine us; our lives put on serenity and order. In love we find our release from the evils of physical and mental blindness. Our lack of sight forbids our hands to engage in many of the noblest human acts, but love is open to us, and as Swedenborg shows, love teaches us the highest of all arts -- the art of living. From his writings we learn how to foster, direct, and practise this restoring love, this constructive, fertile faith, which is the yearning of man toward God.