RELIGIOUS CONGRESS

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 864, 9 July 1910, Page 5

RELIGIOUS CONGRESS

. SWEDENBORGIANS MEET IN LONDON. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. London, July 7. An International Swedanborg ■ Congress has opened in London, in celebration of the centenary of the London Swedenborg Society. The papers contributed included one by Dr. Neuburger, of Vienna. Other Continental professors will also supply papers. There are upwards of fifty American delegates present.

The Swedenborgians are the disciples of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish pkilosophor who lived in London for many years, dying there in 1772, at tho age of 84. They wero first organised in London in 1778, under the name of tho

"Society of the New Church, siguified by the New Jerusalem," usually abbreviated to tho New Church. Professed Swedenborgians, though widely scattered, have never been numerous, but Swedenborg himself appears not to have contemplated the formation of a separate church, trusting to the permeation of his . doctrines through the existing churches. Swedenborg considered himself the dively-appointea herald and expounder of a new dispensation, being prepared for the office by open intercourse during many years with spirits and angels (all originally human beings), and with God himself, who revealed to him the spiritual or symbolic sense of the Divine Word, which the world had not previously been in a state to receive or apprehend.