Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/269

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LATER PERIOD OF LIFE: CONCLUSION

existence, and to replenish their minds with more accurate and copious views respecting heaven, the final home of the good, and hell, the final abode of the wicked? . . . From seeing, as explained by Swedenborg, that the Lord's kingdom is a kingdom of uses, Oberlin resolved all the exertions and operations of his life into one element—use. He taught his people that to be useful, and to shun all evil as sin against the Lord in being useful, is the truly heavenly life."

Carl Robsahm, who was intimate with Swedenborg in his later years, left memoirs of him, from which we take the following details:—

"Swedenborg's property [in Stockholm] was about a stone's cast in length and in breadth. The rooms of his dwelling-house were small and plain; but were comfortable for him, though scarcely for any one else. Although he was a learned man, no books were ever seen in his room except his Hebrew and Greek Bible, and his manuscript indexes to his own works, by which, in making quotations, he was saved the trouble of examining all that he had previously written or printed.

"Swedenborg worked without much regard to

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