France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; French fiction -- Translations into English
be intelligent, is not that to Know, to Wish, and to Will,--the three
attributes of the Angelic Spirit? ‘If the universe has a meaning,’
Monsieur Saint-Martin said to me when I met him during a journey which
he made in Sweden, ‘surely this is the one most worthy of God.’
“But, Monsieur,” continued the pastor after a thoughtful pause, “of what
avail to you are these shreds of thoughts taken here and there from
the vast extent of a work of which no true idea can be given except
by comparing it to a river of light, to billows of flame? When a man
plunges into it he is carried away as by an awful current. Dante’s poem
seems but a speck to the reader submerged in the almost Biblical
verses with which Swedenborg renders palpable the Celestial Worlds,
as Beethoven built his palaces of harmony with thousands of notes, as
architects have reared cathedrals with millions of stones. We roll in
soundless depths, where our minds will not always sustain us. Ah, surely
a great and powerful intellect is needed to bring us back, safe and
sound, to our own social beliefs.
“Swedenborg,” resumed the pastor, “was particularly attached to the
Baron de Seraphitz, whose name, according to an old Swedish custom, had
taken from time immemorial the Latin termination of ‘us.’ The baron was
an ardent disciple of the Swedish prophet, who had opened the eyes of
his Inner-Man and brought him to a life in conformity with the decrees
from On-High. He sought for an Angelic Spirit among women; Swedenborg
found her for him in a vision. His bride was the daughter of a London
shoemaker, in whom, said Swedenborg, the life of Heaven shone, she
having passed through all anterior trials. After the death, that is, the
transformation of the prophet, the baron came to Jarvis to accomplish
his celestial nuptials with the observances of Prayer. As for me, who
am not a Seer, I have only known the terrestrial works of this couple.
Their lives were those of saints whose virtues are the glory of the
Roman Church. They ameliorated the condition of our people; they
supplied them all with means in return for work,--little, perhaps,
but enough for all their wants. Those who lived with them in constant
intercourse never saw them show a sign of anger or impatience; they were
constantly beneficent and gentle, full of courtesy and loving-kindness;
their marriage was the harmony of two souls indissolubly united. Two
eiders winging the same flight, the sound in the echo, the thought in
the word,--these, perhaps, are true images of their union. Every one
here in Jarvis loved them with an affection which I can compare only
to the love of a plant for the sun. The wife was simple in her manners,
beautiful in form, lovely in face, with a dignity of bearing like that
of august personages. In 1783, being then twenty-six years old, she
conceived a child; her pregnancy was to the pair a solemn joy. They
prepared to bid the earth farewell; for they told me they should be
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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