Ministry and publishing
Ager lived from 1835 to 1913 and served the Church of the New Jerusalem in Brooklyn, part of the movement founded on Emanuel Swedenborg’s writings. His ministry included the painter George Inness and his wife, Elizabeth Hart Inness, whom he baptised in October 1868. He later presided over Inness’s funeral at the National Academy of Design.
A contemporary church directory names him as president of the New-Church Board of Publication. These records establish a career in ministry and religious publishing, but leave much of his childhood, education and private life unclear.
He also compiled selections from Swedenborg’s writings. The Path of Life, published in 1913, brought together passages for readers seeking a concentrated presentation of the teachings. It was a work of selection and arrangement rather than a new theology of Ager’s own.
Translating Swedenborg
Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell was first published in Latin in 1758. According to the Swedenborg Foundation’s editorial history, Ager’s translation appeared in 1900 in English and Latin–English editions. He also translated Divine Love and Wisdom and Divine Providence.
Ager’s concern with readable English is recorded by William F. Wunsch, a later translator of Divine Providence. Wunsch cites Ager’s criticism of earlier translations for following Latin word order and related-looking words too closely. He also identifies a choice on which they differed: Ager used affection “for” truth and good where Wunsch preferred to retain affection “of” them, believing the latter expressed a theological relationship that ordinary English obscured.
