New Church Life November/December 2017 | Page 55

        arrangements. More than 20 days elapsed between the time of our departure from St. Thomas and my arrival at New York. I do not recollect but one day in all that interval that I did not pore from 10 to 12 hours over those writings. It would not be possible to convey to anyone who had not had a similar experience the effect they produced upon me, the almost insane appetite with which I devoured them, the complete revolution they wrought in all my opinions about spiritual matters, and especially about the teachings of the Bible. Though, like the blind man in the Gospel, I as yet saw only men as trees walking, before I reached home I had acquired a thorough conviction that what I had been reading were not the words of him that hath a devil, and that Swedenborg was “a scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven.” It seemed to me that every line I read removed some difficulty, cleared up some doubt, illuminated some mystery, revealed some new spiritual wealth in the Word of which before I had no conception. I felt that my eyes had been opened to a world of which till then I had seen only the reflection or shadow. Before reaching New Orleans I found myself on my knees, exclaiming, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!” Nearly 50 years have elapsed since that voyage, and every year had given me a new sense of my obligations to Swedenborg for the Bible, which was lost and is found, and of the special Providence that in such a mysterious way introduced me to the acquaintance of Mr. Kierolf. During my lifetime I think I am warranted in saying that the changes brought in the theology of the Christian world directly attributable, under Providence, to the teachings of Swedenborg are more important than those wrought in all the 10 centuries immediately preceding his birth. The reading thus begun was never discontinued. For 20 years after the time of his becoming acquainted with them, he stated in an address as presiding officer of the meeting held in celebration of the 50 th anniversary of the New York Society that he spent several hours a day reading Swedenborgian books. The Rev. J. K. Smyth, whose services he regularly attended for years, records that “for years it has been his custom every morning before breakfast to read a chapter from the Bible, and then a few pages from some of Swedenborg’s works in the Latin.” Mr. Bigelow told Mr. Smyth that “in this way he had gone through the Arcana Coelestia several times.” Mr. Bigelow wrote to Rev. J. F. Potts, on July 10, 1910, a letter showing his exalted appreciation and use of the Arcana. He says in this letter: I have been for the last six months devoting more or less than an hour on an average every day to reading your version of the Arcana Coelestia, in course; and I am now approaching the end of the ninth volume. The perusal thus far impels me to express my admiration for the manner in which you have discharged your duty as translator. My acquaintance with the Arcana Coelestia had before been limited to occasional studies in the old edition, which I acquired many years ago and which, for reasons that perhaps no one was more to blame for than myself, I found usually very tedious. But reading it in course, as I have done in your translation, the Arcana 521