Smith001 (1)
I have Gregory Jackson the archivist at Bryn Athyn College & Glencairn Museum to thank for this fascinating stuff. The first letter is from one of Smith's teachers at the college. The next letter is from Smith himself. The subject is the interpretation of symbols. It was written when Smith was only 21 years old and two years before he accepted baptism and full membership in the Swedenborgian community. My favorite line in the letter is near the end where Smith confesses "You know of old my dislike of mystery and my coexisting interest in all occult and out of the way knowledge. The combination, I am afraid, will make a strange one in literary criticism, but I am glad, at least, that you enjoyed my essay enough to examine it so closelv." Prophetic words indeed ...
Alexa Update this morning - this blog is now 119,575 in the US and 581,939 in the world which would put me in 28th place on the Biblioblog Ranking if it were held today.
Stephan Huller has had a life long interest in religion and spirituality 
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."