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The inspirations of the great Swede appealed to many an intellectual who did not join the New Church; Emerson saw him as "a colossal soul [who] lies vast abroad on his times, uncomprehended by them, and requires a long focal distance to be seen." Henry James called him "the sanest and most far-reaching intellect." Last week the Church of the New Jerusalem met in Manhattan for its 131st General Convention. On hand were 250 delegates, including the Rev. Yonezo Doi, whose flock in Japan and Korea numbers 3,400 Swedenborgians. Meeting in their trim, light-filled church off Park Avenue on 35th Street and in their church in Brooklyn Heights, the prosperous-looking, efficient men and women of New Jerusalem heard reports of mild but encouraging growth in the U.S. and the rest of the world (total membership: 25,000). Said Convention President Franklin H. Blackmer, keying his words to the main theme of the forthcoming World Council of Churches Assembly at Evanston, 111.: "The Second Coming of the Lord is a process already going on, changing the very environment ... of all mankind. It is not to be a bodily Coming . . . That Second Coming is as the very spirit of truth . . . We feel Swedenborg has been a chosen instrument ... to make the truth concerning the Second Coming better known."
* Bronze model by Swedish-American Sculptor Carl Milles, now at the Cranbrook Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.