Religion: For Swedenborg

Poet Edgar Albert ("Eddie") Guest, Helen Keller, Mrs. Frank Arthur Vanderlip, Boston's onetime Mayor Malcolm Nichols, Glass Manufacturer Raymond Pitcairn, the family of Harvard's President James Bryant Conant, the shades of the elder Henry James, the late Financial Publisher Clarence W. Barren all hold one thing in common — a belief in the theological doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg. They find solace in the Swedenborgian service, which resembles the Anglican, in the Swedenborgian belief in immediate judgment after death, and they experience exhilaration in contact with one of the most versatile scientific minds the world ever knew. Last week, at some 80 public dinners throughout the U. S., Swedenborgians joined with non-Swedenborgian scientists, pedagogues and divines to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the great Swede's birth.

Swedenborg, inventor of a mercury air pump, a stove, an ear trumpet, believer in the feasibility of airplanes, submarines, machine guns, investigator of the brain, spinal cord and ductless glands, was ahead of his time in nearly every scientific field. He believed he talked with angels and spirits, made excursions through Heaven and Hell, received a revelation of the Second Coming of Christ. Though he spent nearly 30 years before his death (date of which he predicted accurately in a letter to Methodist John Wesley) in writing theological works in Latin, he had no intention of founding a church. The Church of the New Jerusalem grew up after his death. Today it has some 20,000 members throughout the world, of whom 8,000 belong to two U. S. branches.

Last week Mrs. Vanderlip, widow of the Manhattan banker and a pillar of the Manhattan Swedenborgian church, presided at the Manhattan Swedenborg banquet to which President Roosevelt sent a praiseful telegram. In Boston, Swedenborgians dined in their Church of the New7 Jerusalem on Beacon Hill. In Philadelphia, Episcopalian Joseph Fort Newton spoke at a Swedenborg gathering in the University Club, while in nearby suburban Bryn Athyn, Swedenborgians of the schismatic General Church of the New Jerusalem held a dinner in the assembly hall of their slowly-building cathedral. These Swedenborgians have a bishop—George de Charms—whereas the main body of U. S. believers, from which they split in 1890, maintains a congregational form of government. Most notable of the schismatics is Raymond Pitcairn, who has made their fane the closest thing to a family cathedral in the world today. He donated much of the $14,000,000 it has cost; he dismissed its architects some years ago, has since supervised the unhurried firing of its glass, forging of its metals, hewing of its timbers. Currently a load of teak logs for the cathedral are aging at the bottom of the Pitcairn swimming pool.