of the European languages as well as into Arabic, Hindi and Japanese.
Swedenborg's theosophic system is most briefly and comprehensively presented in his Divine Love and Wisdom. The point of view from which God must be regarded is that of His being the Divine Man. His esse is infinite love; His manifestation, form or body is infinite wisdom. Divine love is the self-subsisting life of the universe. From God emanates a divine sphere, which appears in the spiritual world as a sun, and from this spiritual sun again proceeds the sun of the natural world. The spiritual sun is the source of love and intelligence, or life, and the natural sun the source of nature or the receptacles of life; the first is alive, the second dead. The two worlds of nature and spirit are perfectly distinct, but they are intimately related by analogous substances, laws and forces. Each has its atmospheres, waters and earths, but in the one they are natural and in the other spiritual. In God there are three infinite and uncreated “degrees” of being, and in man and all things corresponding three degrees, finite and created. They are love, wisdom, use; or end, cause and effect. The final ends of all things are in the Divine Mind, the causes of all things in the spiritual world, and their effects in the natural world. By a love of each degree man comes into conjunction with them and the worlds of nature, spirit and God. The end of creation is that man may have this conjunction and become the image of his Creator and creation. In man are two receptacles for God — the will for divine love and the understanding for divine wisdom — that love and wisdom flowing into both so that they become human. Before the fall this influx was free and unhindered, and the conjunction of man with God and the creation complete, but from that time the connexion was interrupted and God had to interpose by successive dispensations. At last the power and influence of the spirits of darkness, with whom man associates himself by his sin, became so great that the existence of the human race was threatened, and Jehovah was necessitated to descend into nature to restore the connexion between Himself and man. He could not come in His unveiled divinity, for the “hells” would have then perished, whom he did not seek to destroy but only to subjugate. Another purpose of Jehovah's incarnation was the manifestation of His divine love more fully than ever before. Swedenborg wholly rejects the orthodox doctrine of atonement; and the unity of God, as opposed to his idea of the trinity of the church, is an essential feature of his teaching. Another distinctive feature is that Jehovah did not go back to heaven without leaving behind him a visible representative of Himself in the word of the Scripture. This word is an eternal incarnation, with its threefold sense — natural, spiritual, celestial. And Swedenborg is the divinely commissioned expounder of this threefold sense, of the word, and so the founder of the New Church, the paraclete of the last dispensation. That he might perceive and understand the spiritual and the celestial senses of the word he enjoyed immediate revelation from the Lord, was admitted into the angelic world, and had committed to him the key of “correspondences ” with which to unlock the divine treasures of wisdom. Swedenborg claimed also to have learnt by his admission into the spiritual world the true states of men in the next life, the scenery and occupations of heaven and hell, the true doctrine of Providence, the origin of evil, the sanctity and perpetuity of marriage and to have been a witness of the “last judgment,” or the second coming of the Lord, which is a contemporary event. “All religion,” he said, “has relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good.” “The kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom of uses.” He exercised a great influence over S. T. Coleridge, Robert and Elizabeth Browning, Coventry Patmore, Henry Ward Beecher and Thomas Carlyle. And the attention of modern psychologists is now being drawn to his doctrine of the relation of the elements of the universe to the membranes of the body.
Swedenborgianism, as professed by Swedenborg's followers, is based on the belief of Swedenborg's claims to have witnessed the last judgment, or the second advent of the Lord, with the inauguration of the New Church, through the new system of doctrine promulgated by him and derived from the Scriptures, into the true sense of which he was the first to be introduced. The “doctrines” of the New Church as given in the Liturgy (which also contains the “Creed” and “Articles of Faith”) are as follows:
1. That there is one God, in whom there is a Divine Trinity; and that He is the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. That a saving faith is to believe on Him.
3. That evils are to be shunned, because they are of the devil and from the devil.
4. That good actions are to be done, because they are of God and from God.
5. That these are to be done by a man as from himself; but that it ought to be believed that they are done from the Lord with him and by him.
Swedenborgians now constitute a widely spread and considerable society, with a regularly constituted ecclesiastical organization and a zealous missionary activity (see New Jerusalem Church).
See R. L. Tafel, Documents concerning the Life and Character of Swedenborg, collected, translated and annotated (3 vols., Swedenborg Society, 1875-1877); J. Hyde, A Bibliography of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (743 pp., Swedenborg Society). Of English lives the principal are those by J. J. G. Wilkinson (London, 1849); E. Paxton Hood (London, 1854); William White (1856, rewritten in 1867 and in 1868); G. Trobridge (London, 1907); also Emanuel Swedenborg, the Spiritual Columbus, a Sketch, by U. S. E. (2nd ed., London, 1877). Some of his writings, e.g. The Divine Providence and Heaven and Hell have been published in popular editions. A useful handbook of Swedenborg's theology is the Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg by the Rev. Samuel Warren (London, 1885). Summaries of his system and writings are given in all the above biographies, also in Edmund Swift, Manual of the Doctrines of the New Church (London, 1885); and T. Parsons, Outlines of Swedenborg's Religion and Philosophy. Important critiques from independent points of view are “The Mystic,” in R. W. Emerson's Representative Men (1850); Kant's Träume eines Geistersehers (1766; the best edition by Kehrbach, Leipzig, 1880); J. G. Herder's “Emanuel Swedenborg,” in his Adrastea (Werke zur Phil. und Gesch., xii. 110-125); J. J. von Goerres's Emanuel Swedenborg, seine Visionen und sein Verhältniss zur Kirche (1827); A. Dorner's Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, pp. 662-667 (Munich, 1867). See also Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress (London, 1910), summarized in The New Church Magazine (August, 1910).
(A. J. G.)
SWEETBREAD, a popular term for certain glands of animals, particularly when used as articles of food; these are usually the pancreas, the “stomach-sweetbread” of butchers, and the
thymus, or “breast sweetbread.” The term is also sometimes used to include the salivary and lymphatic glands (see Ductless Glands,
Pancreas and Lymphatic System).
SWEET POTATO. This plant, known botanically as Ipomaea
batatas (formerly as Convolvulus batatas), and a member of
the natural order Convolvulaceae, is generally cultivated in
most tropical countries for the sake of its tuberous root, which is
an article of diet greatly in request. It is a climbing perennial
with entire or palmately-lobed leaves very variable in shape
borne on slender twining stems. The flowers are borne on long
stalks in loose clusters or cymes, and have a white or rosy
funnel-shaped corolla like that of the common bindweed of English
hedges. The edible portion is the root, which dilates into
large club-shaped masses filled with starch. It is ill suited
to the climate of the United Kingdom, but in tropical countries
it is as valuable as the potato is in higher latitudes. The plant
is not known in a truly wild state, nor has its origin been ascertained. A. de Candolle concludes that it is in all probability of
American origin, where it has been cultivated from
prehistoric times by the aborigines. It is mentioned by Gerard
as the “potato,” or “potatus” or “potades,” in contradistinction to the “potatoes” of Virginia (Solanum tuberosum). He grew it in his garden, but the climate was not warm enough to allow it to flower, and in winter it perished and rotted. But as the appellation “common” is applied to them the roots must have been introduced commonly. Gerard tells us he bought those that he planted at “the Exchange in London,” and he gives an interesting account of the uses to which they were put, the manner in which they were prepared as “sweetmeats,” and the invigorating properties assigned to them. The allusions in the Merry Wives of Windsor and other of Shakespeare's plays in all probability refer to this plant, and not to what we now call the “potato.” The plants require a warm sunny climate, long season, and a liberal supply of water during the growing season. For an account of the cultivation in North America, where large quantities are grown in the Southern
states, see L. H. Bailey, Cyclopaedia of American Horticulture
(1902). Sir George Watt, Dictionary of the Economic Products
of India (1890), gives an account of its cultivation in India, where some confusion has arisen by the use of the name batatas for
the yam (q.v.) ; the author suggests that the introduction of the sweet potato into India is comparatively recent.
SWEET-SOP, or Sugar Apple, botanical name Anona squamosa, a small tree or shrub with thin oblong-ovate leaves, solitary greenish flowers and a yellowish-green fruit, like a shortened pine cone in shape with a tubercle corresponding to each of the carpels from the aggregation of which it has been formed. The fruit is 3 to 4 in. in diameter and contains a sweet creamy-yellow custard-like pulp. It is a native of the West Indies and tropical America; it is much prized as a fruit, and has been widely introduced into the eastern hemisphere.
