=Through Faith to Knowledge.=--The pupil asked: "How shall I know that I believe rightly?" "I will tell you. Doubt the regular denials of your everyday intelligence. Go out of yourself if you can, and place yourself at the believer's standpoint. Act as though you believed, and then test the belief, and see whether it agrees with your experiences. If it does, then you have gained in wisdom, and no one can shake your belief. When I for the first time obtained Swedenborg's _Arcana Cœlestia_, and looked through the ten thousand pages, it appeared to me all nonsense. And yet I could not help wondering, since the man was so extraordinarily learned in all the natural sciences, as well as in mathematics, philosophy, and political economy. Amid the apparent foolishness of the book were some details which remained riveted in my memory. "Some time later, in my ordinary life, there happened something inexplicable. Subsequently light was thrown upon this by an experience which Swedenborg refers to his so-called heaven and his so-called angels. Then I began to search and to compare, to make experiments and to find explanations. I come to the conclusion that Swedenborg has had experiences which resemble those of earthly life, but are not the same. This he brings out in his theory of correspondences and agreements. The theosophists have expressed it thus: parallel with the earth-life we live another life on the astral plane, but unconsciously to ourselves." =The Enchanted Room.=--The pupil became curious and asked: "What opened your eyes as regards Swedenborg?" "It is difficult to say, but I will try to do so. In my lonely dwelling there was a room which I considered the most beautiful in the world. It had not been so beautiful at first, but great and important events had taken place there. A child had been born in it, and in it a man had died. Finally I fitted it up as a temple of memory, and never showed it to anyone. "One day, however, the demon of pride and ostentation took possession of me, and I took a guest into it. He happened to be a 'black man,' a hopeless despairer, who only believed in physical force and in wickedness, and called himself 'a load of earth.' As I admitted him I said, 'Now you will see the most beautiful room in the country.' I turned on the electric light, which generally poured down from the ceiling such a blaze that not a dark corner was left in the room. The man stood in the middle of the room, looked round, grumbled to himself, and said 'I can't see that.' "As he spoke, the room darkened, the walls contracted, the floor shrank in size. My splendid temple was metamorphosed before my eyes. It seemed to me like a room in a hospital, with coarse wall-papers; the beautiful flowered curtains looked dirty; the white surface of the little writing-table showed spots; the gilding was blackened; the brass fittings of the tiled oven were tarnished. The whole room was altered, and I was ashamed. It had been enchanted.