Ohio History Journal

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THE NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH IN OHIO

THE NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH IN OHIO

FROM 1848 TO 1870*

 

by OPHIA D. SMITH

In his Teachers of the Nineteenth Century (1845), Parke Godwin

said that the chief characteristic of the then present epoch was its

tendency to unity in universality, and that the men in whom this

tendency was most fully expressed were Swedenborg, Fourier, and

Goethe. In these three persons was summed up the great move-

ment toward unity in universality in religion, science, and art, which

comprised "the whole domain of human activity."1

There was in England at this time a plan for a college for the

education of the children of Swedenborgian parents. It was to bear

the name Emanuel College, and it was to offer the usual courses in

literature and science, plus the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg,

who so completely represented the trend toward unity in a universal

religion.2

This plan stirred the minds of a few New Church leaders in the

West, in America. The Rev. James P. Stuart, a New Church mis-

sionary, discussed it with Newchurchmen as he went about the

country selling New Church books and distributing tracts. Undis-

mayed by his "arduous and perplexing" work, he sold books by the

hundreds and distributed tracts by the thousands. He preached in

towns and in wild and sequestered neighborhoods. In 1849 he

preached in Dayton, Springfield, Woodburn, Lebanon, and Yellow

Springs many times. "Some of the leading citizens" of Yellow

Springs were beginning openly to avow their belief in the new

doctrines and to proclaim them to others. Stuart's sermons and

lectures were reviewed, directly or indirectly, in every pulpit in and

around the town of Lebanon. In Urbana the Rev. Mr. Stuart found

a few new readers, and his lectures were well attended. The clergy-

men of the village made some demonstrations against the Doctrines,

 

* This is the third and last in a series of articles on the Swedenborgians in Ohio.

The first two were published in the preceding issues.

1 The Harbinger, November 29, 1845.

2 Mirror of Truth, July 5, 1845; New Jerusalem Magazine, XIX (1846), 399-400.

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