If the reader be told that there exists in this enlightened age a sect who believe that the day of judgment is passed, that it took place nearly a hundred years ago, that the Christian dispensation is at an end, that Emmanuel Swedenborg daily visited the spiritual world, and made acquaintance with its inhabitants, that he was directly appointed by God to describe to men the scenery of heaven and hell, and the world of spirits, and the lives of their inhabitants, and that through him the Lord Jesus Christ makes his second advent for the institution of a new Church described in the Apocalypse under the figure of the New Jerusalem, at once you exclaim, this is “one of the things no fellah can understand.” Nevertheless, such actually is the fact—nay more, it may be observed, that the number of Swedenborgians is on the increase; that they have a hundred chapels in England, and a larger number in America, and that this sect, while it has excited the rude laugh of ignorant folly, has attracted to itself some of the greatest intellects of the day. Emerson claims for Swedenborg that he was a “colossal soul;” and Mr. Kingsley speaks of him, though not very correctly, as a “sound and severe and scientific labourer, to whom our modern physical science is most deeply indebted.” The Swedenborgians, says Theodore Parker, have a calm and religious beauty in their lives, which is much to be admired. I should fancy the artist Blake was a Swedenborgian. Amongst the active Swedenborgians of the past I find such names as John Flaxman, sculptor; William Sharpe, engraver; the Rev. Joseph Gilpin, curate to Fletcher of Madely; and James Hindmarsh, one of Wesley’s preachers; Charles Augustus Tulk, a friend of Joseph Hume, and M.P. for Sudbury in 1821; Samuel Crompton, the inventor of the spinning-mule, of whom it was truly remarked by his biographer, “Few men, perhaps, have ever conferred so great a benefit on their country and reaped so little profit for themselves.” In our time Swedenborgianism was represented in Parliament by Mr. Richard Malins, now Sir Richard, and a Vice-Chancellor. Mr. Hiram Power, the American sculptor, is a zealous missionary of the Swedenborgian faith. The chief of the living Swedenborgian literati in this country are Dr. Garth Wilkinson, and the Rev. Augustus Clissold, formerly of Exeter College, Oxford. Other well-known names in connexion with the sect are Mr. Isaac Pitman and Mr. George Hartly Grindon.