Three Autograph Letters Signed to Mrs [?] Kent.

American diplomat and author (1817-1911), editor of Benjamin Franklin's works. All three items are very good on paper discoloured with age, though all with small punch holes for binding in upper corners, resulting to loss to six words of text. All three signed 'John Bigelow'. The second letter represents an important exposition of Bigelow's religious position at the very end of his life. LETTER ONE (14 March 1911, 21 Gramercy Park, two pages, octavo): In response to his correspondent's 'Syrenic appeal' he is sending a cheque for $25, 'at the rate of $5 for the next five years'. 'I never put mortgages upon the future and I think Churches would be more useful if they did not.' LETTER TWO (27 April 1911, printed letterhead 'A Bord de la LORRAINE', eight pages, octavo): Written in a shaky hand (postscript: 'The steamer rolls so that I am not sure you will be able to decypher this screed but if not, bring it to me and I will try to do it for you.') Since embarking he has carefully read 'the book of Mr. Blackwood' (presumably John Blackwood's 'The old and the new theology', 1911), 'something I should hardly have been likely to do, had it not reached me under your auspices'.Suggests that in endeavouring 'to illustrate the actual relations which subsist between the Phenomenal and the Spiritual world', Blackwood has been influenced by Swedenborg: 'to those who are acquainted with [the Swedenborg hagiography]', his exposition is 'as superfluous as Murrays grammar to a well born Englishman'. Praises Swedenborg's depiction of 'the Spirituality which constitutes Life, whether in this world or that which sds it'. Discusses his recent reading of works on Swedenborg. 'I have very deliberately reached the Conclion that, I at least, would try in vain to express to any neophite, the Spirituality of real life more clearly than in the English of Potts, and [Smithson] or even as clearly as it is often expressed by Swedenborg in his own pellucid latin.' He has not learnt 'anything new about life' from Blackwood, but is pleased to see that 'he shares many of my views about Sleep and of what goes on in our periods of abstraction from the Phenomenal life'. Assumes that Blackwood has not seen his 'little book', 'The mystery of sleep' (1897). 'I think I have demonstrated in that book that one only dreams when he is becoming conscious of the Phenomenal world by gradually awaking to consciousness'. 'You probably had no idea that lending me a book to read would ubject you to such a Screed as this'. LETTER THREE (undated, 21 Gramercy Park, one page, octavo): It will not be convenient for him to attend Mrs Kent's 'Thanksgiving Offering Party', but he encloses 'a document which will be worth much more for your purpose than my Company'.