Henry James, an American philosophical theologian in the Swedenborgian tradition, is perhaps best known as the father of the novelist Henry James and the philosopher-psychologist William James. Although the elder James was physically handicapped from his early teens, an inheritance from his father, a dominant figure in upper New York State real estate provided him with a lifelong income. Henry James graduated from Union College in 1830 and studied for the Presbyterian ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1835 to 1837. Dissatisfied with the ritual formality and absence of spirituality in what he called "professional religion," he left the seminary and traveled to England, where he came under the influence of the idiosyncratic theology of Robert Sandeman, author of Letters on Theron and Aspasio, which James edited for American publication in 1838. Soon afterward, through J. J. Garth Wilkinson, James discovered Emanuel Swedenborg. During the remainder of his...