Seraphita

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Seraphita


"Monsieur," continued the pastor, with an emphatic gesture, "I have
read the whole of Swedenborg's works; and I say it with pride, because
I have done it and yet retained my reason. In reading him men either
miss his meaning or become Seers like him. Though I have evaded both
extremes, I have often experienced unheard-of delights, deep emotions,
inward joys, which alone can reveal to us the plenitude of truth,--the
evidence of celestial Light. All things here below seem small indeed
when the soul is lost in the perusal of these Treatises. It is
impossible not to be amazed when we think that in the short space of
thirty years this man wrote and published, on the truths of the
Spiritual World, twenty-five quarto volumes, composed in Latin, of
which the shortest has five hundred pages, all of them printed in
small type. He left, they say, twenty others in London, bequeathed to
his nephew, Monsieur Silverichm, formerly almoner to the King of
Sweden. Certainly a man who, between the ages of twenty and sixty, had
already exhausted himself in publishing a series of encyclopaedical
works, must have received supernatural assistance in composing these
later stupendous treatises, at an age, too, when human vigor is on the
wane. You will find in these writings thousands of propositions, all
numbered, none of which have been refuted. Throughout we see method
and precision; the presence of the spirit issuing and flowing down
from a single fact,--the existence of angels. His 'True Christian
Religion,' which sums up his whole doctrine and is vigorous with
light, was conceived and written at the age of eighty-three. In fact,
his amazing vigor and omniscience are not denied by any of his
critics, not even by his enemies.

"Nevertheless," said Monsieur Becker, slowly, "though I have drunk
deep in this torrent of divine light, God has not opened the eyes of
my inner being, and I judge these writings by the reason of an
unregenerated man. I have often felt that the _inspired_ Swedenborg
must have misunderstood the Angels. I have laughed over certain visions
which, according to his disciples, I ought to have believed with
veneration. I have failed to imagine the spiral writing of the Angels
or their golden belts, on which the gold is of great or lesser
thickness. If, for example, this statement, 'Some angels are
solitary,' affected me powerfully for a time, I was, on reflection,
unable to reconcile this solitude with their marriages. I have not
understood why the Virgin Mary should continue to wear blue satin
garments in heaven. I have even dared to ask myself why those gigantic
demons, Enakim and Hephilim, came so frequently to fight the cherubim
on the apocalyptic plains of Armageddon; and I cannot explain to my
own mind how Satans can argue with Angels. Monsieur le Baron
Seraphitus assured me that those details concerned only the angels who
live on earth in human form. The visions of the prophet are often
blurred with grotesque figures. One of his spiritual tales, or
'Memorable relations,' as he called them, begins thus: 'I see the
spirits assembling, they have hats upon their heads.' In another of
these Memorabilia he receives from heaven a bit of paper, on which he
saw, he says, the hieroglyphics of the primitive peoples, which were
composed of curved lines traced from the finger-rings that are worn in
heaven. However, perhaps I am wrong; possibly the material absurdities
with which his works are strewn have spiritual significations.
Otherwise, how shall we account for the growing influence of his
religion? His church numbers to-day more than seven hundred thousand
believers,--as many in the United States of America as in England,
where there are seven thousand Swedenborgians in the city of
Manchester alone. Many men of high rank in knowledge and in social
position in Germany, in Prussia, and in the Northern kingdoms have
publicly adopted the beliefs of Swedenborg; which, I may remark, are
more comforting than those of all other Christian communions. I wish I
had the power to explain to you clearly in succinct language the
leading points of the doctrine on which Swedenborg founded his church;
but I fear such a summary, made from recollection, would be
necessarily defective. I shall, therefore, allow myself to speak only
of those 'Arcana' which concern the birth of Seraphita."

Here Monsieur Becker paused, as though composing his mind to gather up
his ideas. Presently he continued, as follows:--

"After establishing mathematically that man lives eternally in spheres
of either a lower or a higher grade, Swedenborg applies the term
'Spiritual Angels' to beings who in this world are prepared for
heaven, where they become angels. According to him, God has not
created angels; none exist who have not been men upon the earth. The
earth is the nursery-ground of heaven. The Angels are therefore not
Angels as such ('Angelic Wisdom,' 57), they are transformed through
their close conjunction with God; which conjunction God never refuses,
because the essence of God is not negative, but essentially active.
The spiritual angels pass through three natures of love, because man
is only regenerated through successive stages ('True Religion').
First, the _love of self_: the supreme expression of this love is human
genius, whose works are worshipped. Next, _love of life_: this love
produces prophets,--great men whom the world accepts as guides and
proclaims to be divine. Lastly, _love of heaven_, and this creates the
Spiritual Angel. These angels are, so to speak, the flowers of
humanity, which culminates in them and works for that culmination.
They must possess either the love of heaven or the wisdom of heaven,
but always Love before Wisdom.

"Thus the transformation of the natural man is into Love. To reach
this first degree, his previous existences must have passed through
Hope and Charity, which prepare him for Faith and Prayer. The ideas
acquired by the exercise of these virtues are transmitted to each of
the human envelopes within which are hidden the metamorphoses of the
_inner being_; for nothing is separate, each existence is necessary to
the other existences. Hope cannot advance without Charity, nor Faith
without Prayer; they are the four fronts of a solid square. 'One
virtue missing,' he said, 'and the Spiritual Angel is like a broken
pearl.' Each of these existences is therefore a circle in which
revolves the celestial riches of the inner being. The perfection of
the Spiritual Angels comes from this mysterious progression in which
nothing is lost of the high qualities that are successfully acquired
to attain each glorious incarnation; for at each transformation they
cast away unconsciously the flesh and its errors. When the man lives
in Love he has shed all evil passions: Hope, Charity, Faith, and
Prayer have, in the words of Isaiah, purged the dross of his inner
being, which can never more be polluted by earthly affections. Hence
the grand saying of Christ quoted by Saint Matthew, 'Lay up for
yourselves treasures in Heaven where neither moth nor rust doth
corrupt,' and those still grander words: 'If ye were of this world the
world would love you, but I have chosen you out of the world; be ye
therefore perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.'

"The second transformation of man is to Wisdom. Wisdom is the
understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by
Love. The Spirit of Love has acquired strength, the result of all
vanquished terrestrial passions; it loves God blindly. But the Spirit
of Wisdom has risen to understanding and knows why it loves. The wings
of the one are spread and bear the spirit to God; the wings of the
other are held down by the awe that comes of understanding: the spirit
knows God. The one longs incessantly to see God and to fly to Him; the
other attains to Him and trembles. The union effected between the
Spirit of Love and the Spirit of Wisdom carries the human being into a
Divine state during which time his soul is _woman_ and his body _man_,
the last human manifestation in which the Spirit conquers Form, or Form
still struggles against the Spirit,--for Form, that is, the flesh, is
ignorant, rebels, and desires to continue gross. This supreme trial
creates untold sufferings seen by Heaven alone,--the agony of Christ
in the Garden of Olives.

"After death the first heaven opens to this dual and purified human
nature. Therefore it is that man dies in despair while the Spirit dies
in ecstasy. Thus, the _natural_, the state of beings not yet
regenerated; the _spiritual_, the state of those who have become Angelic
Spirits, and the _divine_, the state in which the Angel exists before he
breaks from his covering of flesh, are the three degrees of existence
through which man enters heaven. One of Swedenborg's thoughts
expressed in his own words will explain to you with wonderful
clearness the difference between the _natural_ and the _spiritual_. 'To
the minds of men,' he says, 'the Natural passes into the Spiritual;
they regard the world under its visible aspects, they perceive it only
as it can be realized by their senses. But to the apprehension of
Angelic Spirits, the Spiritual passes into the Natural; they regard
the world in its inward essence and not in its form.' Thus human
sciences are but analyses of form. The man of science as the world
goes is purely external like his knowledge; his inner being is only
used to preserve his aptitude for the perception of external truths.
The Angelic Spirit goes far beyond that; his knowledge is the thought
of which human science is but the utterance; he derives that knowledge
from the Logos, and learns the law of _correspondences_ by which the
world is placed in unison with heaven. The _word of God_ was wholly
written by pure Correspondences, and covers an esoteric or spiritual
meaning, which according to the science of Correspondences, cannot be
understood. 'There exist,' says Swedenborg ('Celestial Doctrine' 26),
'innumerable Arcana within the hidden meaning of the Correspondences.
Thus the men who scoff at the books of the Prophets where the Word is
enshrined are as densely ignorant as those other men who know nothing
of a science and yet ridicule its truths. To know the Correspondences
which exist between the things visible and ponderable in the
terrestrial world and the things invisible and imponderable in the
spiritual world, is to hold heaven within our comprehension. All the
objects of the manifold creations having emanated from God necessarily
enfold a hidden meaning; according, indeed, to the grand thought of
Isaiah, 'The earth is a garment.'

"This mysterious link between Heaven and the smallest atoms of created
matter constitutes what Swedenborg calls a Celestial Arcanum, and his
treatise on the 'Celestial Arcana' in which he explains the
correspondences or significances of the Natural with, and to, the
Spiritual, giving, to use the words of Jacob Boehm, the sign and seal
of all things, occupies not less than sixteen volumes containing
thirty thousand propositions. 'This marvellous knowledge of
Correspondences which the goodness of God granted to Swedenborg,' says
one of his disciples, 'is the secret of the interest which draws men
to his works. According to him, all things are derived from heaven,
all things lead back to heaven. His writings are sublime and clear; he
speaks in heaven, and earth hears him. Take one of his sentences by
itself and a volume could be made of it'; and the disciple quotes the
following passages taken from a thousand others that would answer the
same purpose.

"'The kingdom of heaven,' says Swedenborg ('Celestial Arcana'), 'is
the kingdom of motives. _Action_ is born in heaven, thence into the
world, and, by degrees, to the infinitely remote parts of earth.
Terrestrial effects being thus linked to celestial causes, all things
are _correspondent_ and _significant_. Man is the means of union
between the Natural and the Spiritual.'

"The Angelic Spirits therefore know the very nature of the
Correspondences which link to heaven all earthly things; they know,
too, the inner meaning of the prophetic words which foretell their
evolutions. Thus to these Spirits everything here below has its
significance; the tiniest flower is a thought,--a life which
corresponds to certain lineaments of the Great Whole, of which they
have a constant intuition. To them Adultery and the excesses spoken of
in Scripture and by the Prophets, often garbled by self-styled
scholars, mean the state of those souls which in this world persist in
tainting themselves with earthly affections, thus compelling their
divorce from Heaven. Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.
Torches, shew-bread, horses and horsemen, harlots, precious stones, in
short, everything named in Scripture, has to them a clear-cut meaning,
and reveals the future of terrestrial facts in their relation to
Heaven. They penetrate the truths contained in the Revelation of Saint
John the divine, which human science has subsequently demonstrated and
proved materially; such, for instance, as the following ('big,' said
Swedenborg, 'with many human sciences'): 'I saw a new heaven and a new
earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away'
(Revelation xxi. 1). These Spirits know the supper at which the flesh
of kings and the flesh of all men, free and bond, is eaten, to which
an Angel standing in the sun has bidden them. They see the winged
woman, clothed with the sun, and the mailed man. 'The horse of the
Apocalypse,' says Swedenborg, 'is the visible image of human intellect
ridden by Death, for it bears within itself the elements of its own
destruction.' Moreover, they can distinguish beings concealed under
forms which to ignorant eyes would seem fantastic. When a man is
disposed to receive the prophetic afflation of Correspondences, it
rouses within him a perception of the Word; he comprehends that the
creations are transformations only; his intellect is sharpened, a
burning thirst takes possession of him which only Heaven can quench.
He conceives, according to the greater or lesser perfection of his
inner being, the power of the Angelic Spirits; and he advances, led by
Desire (the least imperfect state of unregenerated man) towards Hope,
the gateway to the world of Spirits, whence he reaches Prayer, which
gives him the Key of Heaven.

"What being here below would not desire to render himself worthy of
entrance into the sphere of those who live in secret by Love and
Wisdom? Here on earth, during their lifetime, such spirits remain
pure; they neither see, nor think, nor speak like other men. There are
two ways by which perception comes,--one internal, the other external.
Man is wholly external, the Angelic Spirit wholly internal. The Spirit
goes to the depth of Numbers, possesses a full sense of them, knows
their significances. It controls Motion, and by reason of its ubiquity
it shares in all things. 'An Angel,' says Swedenborg, 'is ever present
to a man when desired' ('Angelic Wisdom'); for the Angel has the gift
of detaching himself from his body, and he sees into heaven as the
prophets and as Swedenborg himself saw into it. 'In this state,'
writes Swedenborg ('True Religion,' 136), 'the spirit of a man may
move from one place to another, his body remaining where it is,--a
condition in which I lived for over twenty-six years.' It is thus that
we should interpret all Biblical statements which begin, 'The Spirit
led me.' Angelic Wisdom is to human wisdom what the innumerable forces
of nature are to its action, which is one. All things live again, and
move and have their being in the Spirit, which is in God. Saint Paul
expresses this truth when he says, 'In Deo sumus, movemur, et
vivimus,'--we live, we act, we are in God.

"Earth offers no hindrance to the Angelic Spirit, just as the Word
offers him no obscurity. His approaching divinity enables him to see
the thought of God veiled in the Logos, just as, living by his inner
being, the Spirit is in communion with the hidden meaning of all
things on this earth. Science is the language of the Temporal world,
Love is that of the Spiritual world. Thus man takes note of more than
he is able to explain, while the Angelic Spirit sees and comprehends.
Science depresses man; Love exalts the Angel. Science is still
seeking, Love has found. Man judges Nature according to his own
relations to her; the Angelic Spirit judges it in its relation to
Heaven. In short, all things have a voice for the Spirit. Spirits are
in the secret of the harmony of all creations with each other; they
comprehend the spirit of sound, the spirit of color, the spirit of
vegetable life; they can question the mineral, and the mineral makes
answer to their thoughts. What to them are sciences and the treasures
of the earth when they grasp all things by the eye at all moments,
when the worlds which absorb the minds of so many men are to them but
the last step from which they spring to God? Love of heaven, or the
Wisdom of heaven, is made manifest to them by a circle of light which
surrounds them, and is visible to the Elect. Their innocence, of which
that of children is a symbol, possesses, nevertheless, a knowledge
which children have not; they are both innocent and learned. 'And,'
says Swedenborg, 'the innocence of Heaven makes such an impression
upon the soul that those whom it affects keep a rapturous memory of it
which lasts them all their lives, as I myself have experienced. It is
perhaps sufficient,' he goes on, 'to have only a minimum perception of
it to be forever changed, to long to enter Heaven and the sphere of
Hope.'

"His doctrine of Marriage can be reduced to the following words: 'The
Lord has taken the beauty and the grace of the life of man and
bestowed them upon woman. When man is not reunited to this beauty and
this grace of his life, he is harsh, sad, and sullen; when he is
reunited to them he is joyful and complete.' The Angels are ever at
the perfect point of beauty. Marriages are celebrated by wondrous
ceremonies. In these unions, which produce no children, man
contributes the _understanding_, woman the _will_; they become one
being, one Flesh here below, and pass to heaven clothed in the celestial
form. On this earth, the natural attraction of the sexes towards
enjoyment is an Effect which allures, fatigues and disgusts; but in
the form celestial the pair, now _one_ in Spirit find within theirself
a ceaseless source of joy. Swedenborg was led to see these nuptials of
the Spirits, which in the words of Saint Luke (xx. 35) are neither
marrying nor giving in marriage, and which inspire none but spiritual
pleasures. An Angel offered to make him witness of such a marriage and
bore him thither on his wings (the wings are a symbol and not a
reality). The Angel clothed him in a wedding garment and when
Swedenborg, finding himself thus robed in light, asked why, the answer
was: 'For these events, our garments are illuminated; they shine; they
are made nuptial.' ('Conjugial Love,' 19, 20, 21.) Then he saw the two
Angels, one coming from the South, the other from the East; the Angel
of the South was in a chariot drawn by two white horses, with reins of
the color and brilliance of the dawn; but lo, when they were near him
in the sky, chariot and horses vanished. The Angel of the East,
clothed in crimson, and the Angel of the South, in purple, drew
together, like breaths, and mingled: one was the Angel of Love, the
other the Angel of Wisdom. Swedenborg's guide told him that the two
Angels had been linked together on earth by an inward friendship and
ever united though separated in life by great distances. Consent, the
essence of all good marriage upon earth, is the habitual state of
Angels in Heaven. Love is the light of their world. The eternal
rapture of Angels comes from the faculty that God communicates to them
to render back to Him the joy they feel through Him. This reciprocity
of infinitude forms their life. They become infinite by participating
of the essence of God, who generates Himself by Himself.

"The immensity of the Heavens where the Angels dwell is such that if
man were endowed with sight as rapid as the darting of light from the
sun to the earth, and if he gazed throughout eternity, his eyes could
not reach the horizon, nor find an end. Light alone can give an idea
of the joys of heaven. 'It is,' says Swedenborg ('Angelic Wisdom,' 7,
25, 26, 27), 'a vapor of the virtue of God, a pure emanation of His
splendor, beside which our greatest brilliance is obscurity. It can
compass all; it can renew all, and is never absorbed: it environs the
Angel and unites him to God by infinite joys which multiply infinitely
of themselves. This Light destroys whosoever is not prepared to
receive it. No one here below, nor yet in Heaven can see God and live.
This is the meaning of the saying (Exodus xix. 12, 13, 21-23) "Take
heed to yourselves that ye go not up into the mount--lest ye break
through unto the Lord to gaze, and many perish." And again (Exodus
xxxiv. 29-35), "When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two
Tables of testimony in his hand, his face shone, so that he put a veil
upon it when he spake with the people, lest any of them die." The
Transfiguration of Jesus Christ likewise revealed the light
surrounding the Messengers from on high and the ineffable joys of the
Angels who are forever imbued with it. "His face," says Saint Matthew
(xvii. 1-5), "did shine as the sun and his raiment was white as the
light--and a bright cloud overshadowed them."'

"When a planet contains only those beings who reject the Lord, when
his word is ignored, then the Angelic Spirits are gathered together by
the four winds, and God sends forth an Exterminating Angel to change
the face of the refractory earth, which in the immensity of this
universe is to Him what an unfruitful seed is to Nature. Approaching
the globe, this Exterminating Angel, borne by a comet, causes the
planet to turn upon its axis, and the lands lately covered by the seas
reappear, adorned in freshness and obedient to the laws proclaimed in
Genesis; the Word of God is once more powerful on this new earth,
which everywhere exhibits the effects of terrestrial waters and
celestial flames. The light brought by the Angel from On High, causes
the sun to pale. 'Then,' says Isaiah, (xix. 20) 'men will hide in the
clefts of the rock and roll themselves in the dust of the earth.'
'They will cry to the mountains' (Revelation), 'Fall on us! and to the
seas, Swallow us up! Hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the
throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb!' The Lamb is the great figure
and hope of the Angels misjudged and persecuted here below. Christ
himself has said, 'Blessed are those who mourn! Blessed are the
simple-hearted! Blessed are they that love!'--All Swedenborg is there!
Suffer, Believe, Love. To love truly must we not suffer? must we not
believe? Love begets Strength, Strength bestows Wisdom, thence
Intelligence; for Strength and Wisdom demand Will. To 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 transformed when their child had
passed the state of infancy which needed their fostering care until
the strength to exist alone should be given to her.