A Portland patient wrote to her sister in 1860, “I delight to have him talk Bible wh[ich] he interprets after a medical Swedenborg as I tell him.”45 It may be significant that Swedenborgianism was closely connected with both spiritualism and mesmerism, particularly through the person of Davis, the connection having been spelled out in detail in 1847 by a New York professor, George Bush, in his book Mesmer and Swedenborg.46
Quimby had been accustomed to speak of his developing theory of healing by mental suggestion as his “wisdom,” which combatted the patient’s “opinions” as to the material basis of his disease. In Swedenborg he found God designated as Wisdom, as well as Love, and gradually he began to give the word the meaning of God. Thus, semantically speaking, he deified his own theory. His “wisdom” became his God.
A related development occurred in his use of the word “Christ.”
Like many of the animal magnetizers he had become accustomed to speaking of his method of cure as that which was used by Jesus in healing the sick. “It is clear,” Davis had written in The Great Harmonia, “that Christ cast out diseases, satans, or devils, by the exercise of that spiritual power, which, in our century has unfortunately been termed ‘Animal Magnetism.’ ”47 Davis himself preferred to speak of an “infinite, Divine Principle” by which all material elements could be brought into harmony, and he sometimes referred to this as “the Christ-principle,” which was by no means confined to the historical Jesus.48
Davis was not the first to have made this distinction, which has recurred in one form or another throughout the history of Christianity, ● ● ●
45 Emily Pierce to Nelly, 6 March 1860, Subject File, P. P. Quimby - Affidavits, Etc. - Paine To Williams, MBEL [bracketed text Peel’s].
46 George Bush, Mesmer and Swedenborg; Or, The Relation of the Developments of Mesmerism to the Doctrines and Disclosures of Swedenborg (New York: John Allen, 1847).
47 Davis, The Great Harmonia, vol. 1, p. 291.
48 See, e.g., vol. 2, The Teacher (1851), of The Great Harmonia, pp. 380, 389, 391. The idea is developed further in The Penetralia:
“Jesus” is the Greek for the Hebrew word “Joshua;” and the term “Savior” is the English rendering. The word “Christ” was annexed to distinguish him from many others bearing the first name. “Messiah” is the Hebrew for the Greek word “Christ;” and the term “Anointed” is the English translation. . . . Jesus was a local man; the “Christ?” that means a principle. . . . The Christ-principle, then, is universal. It shone through several natures before Jesus, shone through him when he existed, and still shines through every good word and work.
Andrew Jackson Davis, The Penetralia; Being Harmonial Answers to Important Questions (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1856), pp. 106, 118.