CONTRIBUTORS 1912

ACTON, A.,
ACTON, W. H.
BOWERS, J. E.,
CALDWELL, W. B.,
COOPER, F. R.,
CRONLUND, E. R.,
CZERNY, A.,
DAVID, L. W. T.,
FITZPATRICK, MRS M. C.,
GLADISH, W. L.,
HOWARD, W.,
IUNGERICH, E. E.,
KING, J. B. S.,
ODHNER, H. L.,
PENDLETON, N. D.,
PENDLETON, W. F.,
SELLNER, A.,
STROH, A. H.,
SYNNESTVEDT, H.,
WHITEHEAD, W.

CORRESPONDENTS.

BLAIR, E., (B. P. O. E.)
COOPER, J.,
EDMONDS, MRS. DONALD, (D. E. L.),
ELPHICK, F. W.,
GYLLENHAAL, F. E.,
HARRIS, T. S.,
HEADSTEN, J.,
HICKS, C. K.,
LEACH, MISS G. M.,
ODHNER, MISS C. L.,
ODHNER, M. A.,
PENDLETON, MISS ORA, (B. P. O. E.),
ROSE, D. F.,
SOMERVILE, MISS B.,
SYNNESTVEDT, H. (H.), (Alumnus),
WALLENBERG, MISS E. V.,
WAELCHLI, F. E., (W.),
WHITEHEAD, W.
Title Unspecified 1912

Title Unspecified Editor 1912

     THE LORD'S PRAYER

     A STUDY

     "And it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He had ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray." (Luke 11:1.)

     "When ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

     "Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.

     "After this manner, therefore, pray ye:

     "Our Father who art in the heavens, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as in heaven upon the earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Forever Amen" (Matth. 6:7-13; Luke 11:2-4.)

     SOME TEACHINGS CONCERNING PRAYER.

     "Prayer is speaking with God." (A. C. 2535.)

     "Sincere prayer is an acknowledgment that all good is from the Lord, and that the Lord alone knows what we need, and that we desire to have this done in and for us." (D. P. 119.)

     "When a man is in the life of charity he continually prays, not with the lips but with the heart." (A. E. 325)

     "The worship of the lips without the worship of the life, avails nothing" (A. C. 7884)

     "In prayer, it is the affection itself that speaks, and such as is the affection, such is the prayer." (A. E. 325)

     "As long as we live we ought not to omit the practice of external worship, since by external worship internal things are awakened, and by external worship external things are kept in a state of holiness, so that internal things can flow in." (A. C. 1618.)

     "The Lord can impart good to us only as we desire it, or are willing to receive it: and our asking indicates this state of willing reception in us." (D. P. 92.)

     "The Lord answers every sincere Prayer according to His own perfect wisdom, and not according to our own imperfect knowledge and foresight" (D. P. 482.)

     "Whatsoever we ask from the Lord and not from ourselves; that is, whatsoever we ask from the faith of charity or genuine love of use to the neighbor, that we receive." (A. E. 411)

     "If from love and faith we pray for celestial and spiritual things, there is given us a kind of revelation, which is felt as hope, consolation, or internal joy." (A C. 2535)

     GENERAL TEACHINGS CONCERNING THE LORD'S PRAYER

     "The little children in heaven read the Lord's Prayer, and learn prayers from their nurses, by influx from heaven." (S. D. 5668.)

     "The angels said, 'We in heaven read that Prayer daily, like men on earth; but we do not then think of God the Father, because He is invisible; but we think of Him in His Divine Human, because in this He is visible." (A. R. 839.)

     "The whole of the Lord's Prayer, from beginning to end, regards this that God the Father is to be worshipped in the Human form." (Inv. 37)

     "When read the Lord's Prayer, which includes in it all celestial and spiritual things, there can be infused into each thing of it so many things, that heaven is not capable of comprehending them; and this, also, according to the capacity and use of each one" (S. D. 1790)

     "There are more things in the contents of the Lord's Prayer than the universal heaven is capable of comprehending.

And with man there are more things in it, in the proportion that his thought is more open towards heaven; but, on the other hand, there are fewer things, in the proportion that his thought is more closed; for with those with whom the thought is closed, nothing more appears therein than the sense of the letter, or the proximate sense of the words." (A. C. 6619.)

     "In the Lord's Prayer all things follow in such a series that they constitute as it were a column, increasing from its top to its bottom, in the interiors of which are the things which precede in the series." (A. C. 8864.)

     "At this day a New Church is being instituted by the Lord, which is meant by the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse, in which there will be worship of the Lord alone, as it is in heaven; and thus everything which is contained in the Lord's Prayer, from beginning to end, will be fulfilled." (A. R. 839.)

     A SUMMARY OF THE INTERNAL SENSE

     I.

     "Our Father who art in the Heavens."

     "Our Father in the heavens signifies the Divine in heaven, thus the good from which heaven is Regarded in itself the Divine is above the heavens, but the Divine which is in the heavens is the good which is in the truth that proceeds from the Divine." (A. C. 8328)

     "Our Father in the heavens means the Lord as to the Divine Human, and also in one complex all things whereby We is worshiped." (A. C. 6887.)

     "In heaven, by 'God the Father' is meant none other than the Lord; and in the new heaven the Lord is also called the Father." (A. R. 613)

     II.

     "Hallowed be thy Name."

     "By the name of God is signified His quality, which, in the first sense, is the Word, Doctrine from the Word, and the worship of mouth and life from the Doctrine. In the second sense, it is the Lord's kingdom on the earth and the Lord's kingdom in the heavens; and, in the third sense, it is the Divine Human of the Lord, for this is the quality of the Divine itself. (A. E. 1025.)

     "'Hallowed be thy name' signifies that the Divine Human of the Lord is to be held holy and is to be worshipped." (A. E. 102.)

     III.

     "Thy Kingdom come."

     "By 'kingdom' here is meant the reception of the Divine Good and the Divine Truth which proceed from the Lord, and in which the Lord is with the angels of heaven and with the men of the Church." (A. E. 683.)

     "His Divine Human is the Father's name, and the Father's kingdom is come when the Lord is approached immediately, and by no means when God the Father is approached immediately." (A. R. 839)

     IV.

     "Thy Will be done as in Heaven so upon the Earth."

     "The will of God is done when the Divine Good and the Divine Truth are received in heart and soul, that is, in love and faith." (A. E. 683.)

     "By name is not meant name, but all things of love and faith, for these are the Lord's and are from Him; and as these are holy, the Lord's kingdom comes and His will is done on earth as in the heavens, when they are held to be so." (A. C. 2009.)

     V.

     "Give us this day our daily Bread."

     "'Give us bread,' signifies supplication for the support of spiritual life. In a specific sense 'bread' signifies the good of love and charity, but in general it signifies spiritual life, for in this case by 'bread' is meant all food." (A. C. 6118.)

     "'This day' signifies what is perpetual. Heavenly food is nothing else than love and charity together with the goods and truths of faith. This food is given by the Lord to the angels in heaven every moment, and thus perpetually and to eternity." (A. C. 2838.)

     "'Give us this day our daily bread' signifies that the Lord daily provides our necessaries, and that therefore we ought not to be anxious about acquiring them from ourselves." (A. C. 8478.)

     VI.

     "And forgive us our Debts, as we also forgive our Debtors."

     "God cannot according to His laws remit sins to any man, except in Proportion as the man desists from them." (T. C. R. 73.)

"The Lord forgives sins to every one but they are not on that account remitted unless the man performs serious repentance, and desists from evils, and then lives a life of faith and charity, and this up to the end of his life. When he does this, he receives spiritual life from the Lord, and when from this life he regards the evils of his former life, and feels aversion and horror for them, then, first, are evils remitted; for the man is then kept in truths and goods by the Lord, and is withheld from evils." (A. C. 9014.)

     VII.

     "And lead us not into Temptation."

     "It was granted me to have a perception of angelic ideas about these words in the Lord's Prayer: 'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' Temptation and evil were rejected by the nearest good spirits, by a certain idea perceptible within me, and this even until what is purely angelic, namely, Good, remained, without any idea of temptation and evil, the literal sense thus perishing altogether. In the first rejection innumerable ideas were being formed respecting this Good,-how good may come from man's affliction, while the affliction still is from the man and his evil in which there is punishment, and this together with a kind of indignation joined with it, that it should be thought that temptation and its evil come from any other source, and that any one should have any thought of evil in thinking of the Lord. These ideas were purified in the degree of their ascent. The ascents were represented by rejections, which were made with a swiftness and in a manner that were inexpressible, until they passed into the shade of my thought. They were then in heaven, where there are only ineffable angelic ideas concerning the Lord's good." (A. C. 1875.)

     VIII.

     "But deliver us from Evil."

     "The deliverance from damnation, or, what is the same, deliverance from sins, is the removal of evil, which is effected through repentance of life." (A. C. 9077.)

     "The sins which a man does, are inrooted in his very life, and make it; wherefore no one is delivered from them unless he receives new life from the Lord by means of regeneration." (A. C. 9444.)

     "That the Lord redeemed mankind means that He liberated and delivered them from hell and from the evils and falsities which constantly rise up thence, and that He continually liberates and delivers them by this that He subjugated the hells and glorified His Human." (A. E. 328.)

     IX.

     "For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory."

     "'For Thine is the kingdom' signifies that the Divine Truth is from the Lord alone: it is also said 'power' and 'glory,' because to the Divine Truth belong all power and glory." (A. E. 48.)

     "In the sense of the letter of the Word the Divine Truth is in its fullness, in its holiness, and in its power." (S. S. 37.)

     "By 'glory' is signified the internal sense of the Word, which inmostly treats of the Lord alone." (A. C. 49.)

     "To 'give glory' to the Lord is to acknowledge, confess, and worship the Lord, and to live according to His Divine Truth." (A. E. 874, 1218.)

     "Forever. Amen."

     "For ever' [lit. 'unto the ages'], signifies what is eternal, because by an 'age' is meant duration even to the end; the same word, also, which in the original tongue expresses an 'age' signifies eternity." (A. C. 10248.)

     "Faith and truth are one, wherefore the ancients instead of 'faith' said 'truth.' Hence also it is that in the Hebrew language truth and faith are one word, which is amuna, or 'amen.' " (D. F. 6.)

     "'Amen,' at the end of a prayer, signifies confirmation, and the consent of all that it is the truth." (A. R. 375.)

     "'Amen' signifies the truth; and since the Lord is the Divine Truth itself, by 'amen' in the highest sense is signified the Lord as to the Divine Truth." (A. E. 464.)

     "When any one speaks Divine truth from the heart, the Lord confirms it; confirmation can come from no other source. This is signified by 'amen' at the end of prayer." (A. E. 469.)

     RESUME

     "Our Father who art in the heavens" = acknowledgment of the Lord, which is the first of the Church with man.

"Hallowed be Thy name = worship of the Lord according to His Doctrine.

"Thy kingdom come = increasing reception of the Truth in the understanding.

     "Thy will be done, as in heaven so upon the earth" = obedience to the Lord's will in life as well as in faith.

     "Give us this day our daily Bread,' conjunction of good and truth in our daily life, also forgive our debtors"

     "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors" = repentance by the shunning of evil.

     "Lead us not into temptation" = progress through combats against evil.

     "But deliver us from evil" = redemption and the life of regeneration.

     "For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory" = the triumphant establishment of the Church in man, through the Word and the Heavenly Doctrine.

     "For ever. Amen" = at last, eternal salvation, by means of the Divine Truth.

MARRIAGE 1912

MARRIAGE Rev. HOMER SYNNESTVEDT 1912

     "Jesus said, have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning, made them male and female, and he said, for this reason shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh: wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath coupled, let not man separate. Moses on account of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to dismiss your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. Not all will receive this word, but they to whom it is given." (Matth. 19:3-12.)

     Those who are natural derive the origin of marriage from nature. They conceive of marriage as nothing more than an exalted animal necessity for the perpetuation of the species, exalted indeed by tradition, but in itself no more sacred than any other bodily appetite or instinct.

     It is because of the prevalence of this view among thinking people of our day that divorce is growing to such an alarming extent. The old Christian institution with its halo of sanctity lingers, indeed, especially among the simple and as a matter of common perception among all while they are in the sphere of its delight. Science, fortunately, is unable to kill out entirely the poetry and romance that cling around this institution, for the Lord loans to all in the primitive states of this love a foretaste of its supereminent delight. If this were not done, marriages would cease and the race would perish. It is well known, however, that these early delights commonly die out in the course of time, although there are some couples who seem to remain loving and devoted throughout their life in this world, and this in some cases even with those who think that death ends marriage, if indeed it does not end all. How to reconcile these apparent exceptions with the definite teaching of the Writings that love truly conjugial cannot subsist apart from the worship of the Lord in His Divine Human, is a difficulty that may be partly owing to our own states of very imperfect reception.

Indeed, there is at the present day less of a visible distinction between the marriages in the Church and the apparently happy ones outside of it, than one would expect from the emphatic statement of the Doctrine. But that a most important difference exists, no one can doubt. It is evident especially in the exceedingly small proportion of matrimonial failures,-divorce being almost unknown in our Church. The following teaching throws light upon the apparent success of marriages that have no such spiritual basis as the Writings demand:

     "There is a certain likeness of conjugial love with some, but still it is not [conjugial], if they are not in the love of good and truth. It is a love appearing as if conjugial, but it is because of love of the world or of self, namely, that they may be served at home, that they may be in security, that
they may be in ease, that they may be ministered to when they are not well, and when they grow old; on account of the care of the children whom they love. With some there is compulsion, from fear of the spouse, of fame, of evils. With some it is love of lasciviousness which leads them into it. This appears in the first time, as if conjugial, for then they emulate something of innocence; they sport like infants, they Perceive joy like something from heaven, but as time goes on, they are not united, like those who are in conjugial love, more and more closely, but they are separated.

     "Conjugial love also differs with the consorts. With one it may be more or less, with the other little or nothing. And because it differs, one may have heaven and the other hell. Affection and reception determine this." (A. C. 2742.)

     But that marriage is not natural in its origin, but descends from heaven, yea, even from the Lord Himself there, is readily seen by those who believe that the words of our text, 'What God hath joined together," are no mere figure of speech; and also from this, that it was the Lord who in the beginning made them male and female, and yet one flesh.

     In the Revelation now given, however, the true cause and origin of marriage and of the Divine law in regard to it, is fully laid open; and we are able to see that love that is truly and permanently conjunctive, (conjugial), must first be formed in the minds of those who are in marriage, and that it is from this source that it descends into the body, and is there felt as love.

How this love is formed in the mind of each one, whence it may descend and keep alive the force and potency of that love in the body, is what is involved in the spiritual sense of these verses. In this sense is described not only the heavenly marriage in which the angels are, (an astounding revelation to the former Christian world), but also that man should not separate good from truth, for it is the linking of these two in the mind of each that alone enables them to be spiritually linked with each other. The human mind consists of two parts or faculties,-a will and an understanding. The marriage of these two provides in each individual a complete human form of reception and reciprocation of the Divine purposes in creation, and all real delights are derived from the sensed fulfilling of love itself, which is life.

     These two, and hence their marriage, are in every human being, but in a full and complete image only in man and woman, a married pair. Man being predominantly a form of thought, and woman of affection, it is said in the small work ON MARRIAGE,

     "that two consorts in heaven make one angel. There is between the pairs of consorts in heaven a similar conjunction as there is in every man between the will and the understanding or between the good which is of the will and the truth which is of the understanding; because the female by nature is affection which is of the will, and the male is by nature thought, which is of the understanding." (p. 5.)

     or, as it is expressed in ADVERSARIA I, 1161-1163:

     "Consent is the essential of all conjunction but in the man, consent is first given by the understanding, and thence by the will, while in the woman, it is the will which first consents, and sways the understanding."

     Before the Fall, men were commanded to leave father and mother and cleave unto their wives. But after the Fall, because the proprium (like that which the natural man possesses at this day) was nothing but cupidity, the relation was reversed, and woman was made subject to the prudence of the male. That this law is still in force upon the natural plane, see A. C. 266.

     This apparent reversal of the relation of the two sexes, viz., as ordained before the Fall, and as imposed with the curse afterward, also applies today, as between the celestial state, which is the ultimate goal of this love, and the state in externals.

But the apparently contradictory statements describing these two states are easily understood, by reflecting that when the celestial degree is opened, each (the man and the woman) rises into the interior of his or her peculiar gift. Thus the intelligence of the male is seen to be inwardly the love of growing wise, and the inmost of the woman's love of adopting the wisdom that comes to her through the masculine sphere, is, that wisdom itself which becomes in her a celestial proprium.

     In this plane it is no longer true that the male rises into a superior discrete degree of light, for they both live openly in the very sunshine of wisdom itself, received immediately into the bosom, and perfectly conjunctive, (conjugial), since He from whom it is given, is the Infinite love of making others happy from Himself. Here at least, the wife is full partaker of all the light there is, and the husband of all the love there is in heaven. The splendor of such a pair is impossible to look upon unless they turn their faces aside from each other.

     This is our ideal, the goal toward which we should strive in all our thought concerning the relative gifts of the two sexes. Concerning this ideal we have the following teaching:

     "The wife wishes to think and will as the husband, and the husband as the wife, and because each wishes this, each is led by the Lord as one, and the two are one angel; for when the will and the understanding is not one's own, but the other's, and this mutually and reciprocally, it cannot be otherwise than that they be led by the Lord as one.

     "That conjugial love depends on the love of the wife and that such is the love of the husband in reciprocation, and that the love of the wife does not depend on the love of the husband; the reason is, because like as the will governs the understanding, good governs truth, hence it is that it is said that the husband ought to cleave to the wife; on the contrary with those who are not in conjugial love." (DE CONT. nos. 19-20.)

     "In conjugial love the men of the Most Ancient Church had heaven, but later after the knowledge of the Lord, and thence love toward Him had perished, conjugial love perished, love toward children remaining. But children can be loved by the evil, but a spouse cannot be loved except by the good." (DE CONJ. p. 30.)

Marriage, although it involves the conjunction of both the will and the understanding of the one with that of the other, so that each loves to think and will as the other, yet the essence of the matter is in the will. With those whose hearts have been turned from bone to flesh by the sweet alchemy of this love of loves, it is the will which desires to see itself reproduced in the will of the other,-to see its own love imaged in the heart of the other. And since whatever is of the love or will cannot be coerced, it is evident that the prime essential for the growth of this love and its delight, is a state of the most perfect freedom. You can compel another to do, but not to love to do. Omnipotence itself cannot compel the human will, for compulsion is against Divine order itself. All the Lord's Providence, and all His labor for man, even to the Passion of the Cross, was in order to reach and touch His will, without entering into it and thus destroying it. So must it be in all exercises of spiritual charity toward the neighbor, but most especially in regard to conjugial love, which descends from and is the most complete form and image of the Divine Love. It must be absolutely free, and to attain its end, which is to touch the will of the other for the sake of a spontaneous response, it must do as the Lord Himself does with His bride and wife; it must stand at the door and knock.

How different is this, our ideal, from the ordinary red-blood love-affair! To the outer sensories and even to the aesthetic inner sensory or imagination of the natural man, any love-affair is as delightful as any other, whether connected with religion or not. But if your senses fail to apprize you of any difference while you are under their seductive spell, let reason come to the rescue, and the experience of those who are wiser, or in the last resort, the memory of what the Word so plainly teaches,-for nothing is more certain than this, that youthful passion soon passes, and only a love that draws life from heaven and its order is able to renew its youth from year to year, and withstand the heat and labor of the long, long years of famine, of sacrifice and of suffering.

     What makes spiritual marriage, and what breaks it, can all be summed up under two heads. Monotheism alone can produce monogamy of spirit; and self-love, especially the love of dominion from the love of self, is the chief enemy. Truly Christian monogamy involves that man must be loyal to one in heart and thought, as well as in outward semblance, for cohabitation is primarily of the will and thence of the understanding, and it is here, if at all, that the Church is to cultivate this its love of loves, and good of goods. Not every one, however, is able to receive this doctrine. Only those who worship God as man, or among Christians, who draw near to the Lord alone in His Human, are capable of love truly conjugial. Why? Because there is no other idea which is true and thus capable of bringing His real presence in the mind, and especially because he who does not inwardly acknowledge that all that is truly human in himself, and thus worthy of respect and love, is of the Lord alone with him,-cannot be sifted either with true humility, or true innocence, or be prevented from regarding himself as worthy of worship.

     It is chiefly the absence of this acknowledgment which makes the "good" of the Old Church so self-righteous, and its marriages so increasingly unsuccessful. The appearance before the senses is that all man's good and truth spring forth from himself, and this appearance is confirmed by those whose blasphemous pretension is to become "Christ-like," not in the sense of receiving this Spirit from Him as the only God, but actually becoming Christs themselves of some sort.

     Inwardly within this state there is nothing but the love of self, for he who does not attribute all that Is truly human in himself to the Lord, inevitably thinks himself a God! What can result but a desire to be esteemed and worshiped accordingly, and thus to impose self upon the other, which is the very essence of all that is disjunctive. And yet we are taught:

     "It is a general law of heaven, that as far as the love of commanding enters into man, so far love of the neighbor goes out; (so of love to the Lord, so of saving faith), and so especially of conjugial love, for this is the fundamental of all spiritual and celestial loves." (S. D. 3427.)

     "The love of ruling in marriages removes all love truly conjugial, since conjugial love is such that the one wills to think and will as the other, and thus mutually and reciprocally; so neither one rules, but the Lord. Thence is the delight of conjugial love." (DE CONJ. P. 15.)

     Indeed we are taught that infernal marriage is,

     "where one wills to command, and the other wills not to obey; thence is deadly hatred interiorly. This was represented by the direst things, which for dreadfulness cannot be described. They breathe nothing else than slaughter and also torment each other; wherefore they are separated and live separate in hell and adultery." (Ibid. p. 16.)

     For a human being, whether man or woman, to be in the sphere and gyre of conjugial love, whether privileged to be in external marriage or not, it is necessary for him or her to enter into the regenerate life. This life of uniting good and truth is the heavenly conjugial, and its offspring are uses. When one is in this, one is essentially in marriage, the love which is truly conjugial, the jewel of the Church; and the actuality can be added at any time that the Lord sees fit. When this state exists, moreover, there is something of heaven and its peace within the mind, and as it grows, the natural yearning for external things will cease to be a repining. Content with one's lot, whatever that lot may be, is the Lord's gift to those who, through shunning their evils, enter into this sphere of the heavenly marriage, for their hearts are not set upon the fleeting things of this world, but upon that treasure which is laid up securely within them, where neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. All anxiety in regard to worldly things,-and this is especially true in regard to matrimony,-originates from looking at the matter from the natural side instead of the spiritual side. Anxieties, therefore, are born of lusts, not of the heavenly love, which, like the kingdom of heaven, is not here nor there, but within you. Where the real conjugial, the daily wedding of truth with its good and of good with its truth, is progressing, there is heaven and the peace of heaven within, even though it may be subjected to temporary assaults and infestations from without.

Even these do not last forever, but after each temptation comes a sweeter peace and a fuller sense of those myriad delights of the heavenly conjugial, which are for all His creatures. Actual marriage increases the responsibilities and the temptations as well as the delights, and perhaps all could not bear them. "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and its justice and all these things shall be added to you," is the universal law, which in its application to this matter, (both with the married and the unmarried), means just this: Seek conjugial love first in your own spirit, by shunning the unworthy lusts of dominion or of lasciviousness, which prevent the state of conjugial love itself from existing in your own minds, and which close your interiors toward heaven by hardening your hearts, and then all the rest-the blessed union with the one who is from creation bone of your bones, and flesh of your flesh, will follow as of itself, in the Lord's own good time and measure. To seek the latter as the end, or for its own sake, is to invert order, and plunge the mind into all manner of anxieties and colds.

There is nothing so unhappy in this world as a loveless marriage. It is like a beautiful vessel emptied of its contents and broken, yet ever sadly recalling joys that are gone, and emphasizing the contrast with what might have been. But in the New Church even this state is provided with remedies, and love truly conjugial is promised to even the most unhappy, if they but endure to the end and make the best of their lot. "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." Amen.

DISEASE AND CURE 1912

DISEASE AND CURE Rev. W. L. GLADISH 1912

     In the LIFE for August and September, in a very interesting study of the "Philosophy of Disease and Cure," Mr. Iungerich attacked the law of Homoeopathy and deprecated the use of medicines, saying, "the best methods of cure are the positive ones that introduce nothing of an injurious element." (p. 587.)

     The law of Homeopathy, similia similibus curantur, needs no defense. It is well established as a scientific fact. Nor would I wish to establish the correctness of any school of medicine on the authority of the Doctrines so as to make it a matter of conscience. Every man in the Church must be free to form his own conclusions on such questions according to his own knowledge and reason. Yet I should like to offer a few reasons why I believe in the law of similia similibus as the universal law of the cure of disease.

     But first as to the use of medicines let it be noted that in T. C. R. it is said:

     "The sins retained in an impenitent man may be compared to various diseases in him: unless medicines are brought to bear on them and malignities removed thereby the man dies." (524.)

     And in the DIARY it is said that in the third heaven "they have medicaments which correspond and with which also they are healed." (6035.) And again in A. E. it is said:

     "Those who are skilled in the sciences of botany, chemistry, medicine and pharmacy come after death into a knowledge of spiritual uses from the plants in the spiritual world and cultivate that knowledge and find the greatest delight in it." (1214.)

     If medicines are used in the highest heaven and ii those skilled in medicine and kindred sciences use the plants in heaven as a means of curing spiritual disorders we shall probably always use medicines in this world.

     That medicines are negative means of cure and correspond to pernicious things, is readily granted. The fact that many of them are poisons and that others are products of disease, would establish this as true; and those medicines which in themselves are not poisons, are introduced into the system in such a way as to make their action like that of poison.

But it should be remembered that the laws of permission since the fall of man apply to almost every thing we do and think. Our whole life so far as it is evil is a continual permission

     The study referred to does not make any distinction between the cure of disease and the preservation of health in a body not diseased.

     Exercise, fresh air, proper food, electricity and tremulation, even combined with thinking and loving the truth, will hardly remove organic disease. Curing disease by "positive" means seems very similar to the cure of evil by doing good. The goods that a man does before he has shunned evils as sins are not good but evil. (D. P. 23.) So "positive" means, before disease has been cured by medicines, can hardly do more than effect an external and apparent cures. What a sick man needs is not food but a poison which will set up a fermentation in his blood and tissues and induce a combat there, draw together effete and excrementitious matters which clog the vessels, (A. E. 512), and so leave the blood and 'tissues clean; just as a man who is regenerating must be subjected to influx from hell as the sole means of purifying him from his evils. The two cases are parallel because they correspond. Medicines do for the body what the infernal influx does for a soul diseased by sin.

     In the article on "Disease and Cure" emphasis was laid upon Swedenborg's saying that "the principal and most common cause of diseases of the body is the food itself." What appears to be a more internal cause is pointed out in ARCANA COELESTIA:

     "Evil closes the smallest and altogether invisible vessels of which the next greater vessels which are also invisible are composed;... hence comes first and inmost obstruction and hence the first and inmost vitiation of the blood: this vitiation, when it increases, causes disease and at length death." (5726.)

     But even if the food is itself the Principal and most common cause of disease it does not follow that a change of food will cure disease once established.

     The need of medicines in the cure of disease, and the law of their action, may be learned from a study of temptations as a means of man's deliverance from evil.

     Without instruction from Revelation it could not be known that temptations, (in which infernal spirits are permitted to inflow into man's evils and awaken them into activity), are necessary to regeneration. For it would be thought that since goods and truths are the means of the injection of evils and falsities, therefore, the regenerating man can put off his evils when in a heavenly state,-a state of the presence and power of heaven. But the fact is that he must be let into his evils and so as it were into hell, in order to be vastated of them. To this end the Lord permits a strong influx from hell into his evils and falses. It is as though the Great Physician, seeing man to be sick and having prepared his internal man for combat, Permits the hells with their poison to make him sick even to desperation as a means of his perfect cure.
Without infernal influx and consequent temptations, regeneration is impossible. (A. 4317.)

     "Temptations are the veriest means of regeneration" (A. 4317.)

     "Principles of falsity and derivative delight are not cast out except by temptations" (A. 5037)

     "The good of innocence cannot be applied to any one except through temptations." (A. 7854.)

     "The internal man is opened and given to man through temptations." (A. 10685.)

     A hundred similar statements could be given but let this one more suffice:

     "Evils are removed from man either by punishment or by temptations . . . or by affections of good and truth. In those who are not reformed, evils are removed by punishments; in those about to be performed they are removed by temptations and consequent turning away; and in the regenerate by affections of truth and good." (E. 11642)

     The state of a diseased body, so long as there is hope of restoring it to health, corresponds to that of a man about to be reformed. His evils can be removed only by temptations, never by positive means alone, that is, by the thinking and doing of truth without temptations.

Evil is kept away from the regenerate man. The hells dare not approach. Their spiritual diseases are kept away by positive means, by the affections of truth and good. But the diseased body does not correspond to this state of the regenerate.

     It is well known in the Church how temptations are induced and what they effect, but permit one or two quotations:

     "As to temptations they take place when man is in the act of regeneration; for no one can be regenerated unless he undergoes temptations and they then arise through the evil spirits who are around him. For the man is then let into the state of the evil in which he is, that is, into that very thing which is his proprium, and when he comes into this state evil or infernal spirits encompass him: and when they perceive that he is internally protected by angels they excite the false things which he has thought and the evil things which he has done; but the angels defend him from within. It is this combat which is perceived in man as temptation." (A 5036.)

     "For temptations are like floods and inundations of waters: there are evil spirits who inflow with their persuasions and principles of falsity . . . and excite the like things with man." (A. 705.)

     This influx of the infernals for man's healing is according to the law of similia similibzts, for those inflow which are of the very nature of the evil at that time active in the man.

     The process of purification by temptation is clearly shown in the following numbers:

     "Spiritual fermentations take place in many ways both in the heavens and on earth: for there are evils and falsities which, being let into societies, act in similar way to ferments which are put into meal and mush by which heterogeneous things are separated and homogeneous things are conjoined and pureness and clearness are the result." (D. P. 25.)

     "The Lord compares the kingdom of God to leaven, to a man gathering tares, and also to a net. All of these are presented and seen in the other life. As respects the leaven, an evil spirit is sent into societies that are upon the mountains, rocks and hills and inspires lusts: as a consequence of this that whole multitude ferments as it were.

Some of them act in concert with him, some do not so act, some dissent. Those who act in concert with him turn their faces toward him: those who do not act in concert turn their faces away. Then all those who turned their faces toward him are gathered into one company and cast out of the mountain or rock into hell. This is the gathering of the tares into bundles. Those who are cast down thither from those places appear, as it were, to be drawn in a net and they are thus brought down to the place where they are to be." (S. D. 5222.)

The influx of evil spirits in temptation is like the action of leaven. It draws to itself man's evils and falsities and gathers them into bundles. It causes a turning away, a combat, on the part of all that is good and true in him. So heterogeneous things are separated and finally, as it were, carried off into hell even as the swine were carried down into the sea by the Legion of Devils. (Matth. 8.)

Now since diseases of the soul and those of the body mutually correspond in general and in all particulars and their cures correspond; since disease of the soul is never cured except by means of temptations in which an influx of evil spirits is permitted to act as leaven or ferment does in meal or mush; since the influx is from a hell similar to the evil to be removed; since medicines must be used to remove malignities, (T. 524); it would therefore, seem to be indicated with all the force of logic that medicines act in healing the body as infernal influx does in healing the soul, and that similia similibus curantur is the law of cure.

RATIONALE OF HOMOEPATHY 1912

RATIONALE OF HOMOEPATHY Rev. WILLIAM HYDE ALDEN 1912

     In the August and September issues of the LIFE Mr. Iungerich has presented a very full discussion of the causes of diseases, and sets forth briefly his own notion of the best plan of campaign as regards cure.

     With much that he has written all common sense, instructed, must agree, and we are indebted to him for what is, perhaps, the fullest body of passages bearing on the subject from the theological and also from the philosophical works of Swedenborg which has ever been brought together.

     Evil is, indeed, the cause of disease, for evil is deviation from true order, which exists, as Mr. Iungerich well points out in the words of the RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: "When [We] are ruled by the will and the will by the desire, and the desire by the loves,-not as a means, but as ends, there [by such deviation from order] we then rush into causes of destruction, from which is the death of the body."

     This deviation from true order is sin, which in the ARCANA is said to "close the smallest invisible vessels and so to cause disease and at last death." When through such deviation from true order, disease appears, then evil spirits flow into that disease and foment it.

     This deviation from true order has continued with men from the time of the fall, downward through countless generations. As a result hereditary evil has so accumulated that with every man born is a tendency to all manner of diseases, which tendency may come forth into actual disease by reason of errors of life, and it may come forth into actual disease where there is no apparent cause in any error of life of the individual.

     That wisdom and care in the selection and use of foods, and in all matters of hygiene, is of the first importance in the prevention of disease, and in the treatment of the individual suffering from disease when it comes, we heartily affirm with Mr. Iungerich.

This external attention to matters of nourishment and hygiene we understand to be referred to by him when he speaks of positive means of prevention and of cure. That he adds to familiar means of external ministration physical methods of manipulation of muscles or nerves of the body by which the flow of blood to a particular part or organ may be increased, or the activity of a certain organ stimulated or depressed, does not alter this general definition.

     So far, in general, we may go with Mr. Iungerich; but when he makes the broad assertion that these positive means are in every case to be preferred to the use of medicines, especially to the use of drugs which in themselves are poisons, we must venture to demur.

     To use his own words: "The employment of drugs . . . as remedies . . . [is] a negative use . . . only occasionally to be resorted to, and then only in case of necessity, when positive means fail or are unavailable." (Sept. LIFE, pp. 582-3). He does not tell us at what stage of threatened or actual disease we shall adjudge positive means a failure, and we are left to infer that Mr. Iungerich himself regards drugs to be more potent for cure, since he would make use of them "when positive means fail," or that he regards drugs in any case as simply palliative and to be used only to relieve when cure is impossible.

     Positive means are, of course, not to be neglected. If a burr finds its way beneath my shirt, I remove the burr. When a bone is broken or dislocated it should, of course, be set or brought back into its proper place. Cleanliness, suitable food, rest of body and of mind, all these are invaluable whether to promote health and conserve it or as auxiliary means for its recovery. But when these externals of surgery, of nourishment and of nursing are exalted to the rank of a system of cure for disease, I am compelled to enter protest.

     For a state of disease of the body is not so simple a matter as the over-activity or under-activity or mal-activity of any one organ or part. The cure of disease is not so simple a matter as to be accomplished by the removal of an irritating substance; not so simple as to be effected by the changing of the flow of blood to any particular part by mechanical manipulation; not so simple that it may be carried out by the stimulating or depressing of some one of the organs of the body or by the increasing or decreasing of the tremulations of any nerve or nerves by any external mechanicalmeans.

One and all,-these methods at best are but superficial, and can only be effective for the moment. Let the external stimulus cease, and if the same internal cause which produced the original disorder continue to act, the same disorder will again appear. More than this, if the results of disease be removed by such assistance from without, when they should have been dealt with by the vital powers of the body from within,-these vital powers, not being called upon, will be weakened in their proper authority in their animal kingdom and the last state of that man will be worse than the first.

For let it be remembered as an all-important principle, without the recognition of which there can be no rational endeavor to the healing of disease:-There is no treatment, nor drug either, for that matter, which ever effects the cure. Mr. Iungerich is right when he says that evil does not cast out evil; but he is not right when he asserts that the truth casts out evil. This would be the same as saying that food cures disease. Evil is cast out by a spiritual power within the man: and by direct parallel and correspondence, the cure of disease is effected, if at all, by the same vital powers of the body which in a state of health administer on its several planes its various activities. Furthermore, to secure genuine cure, all these vital powers must act together in due subordination. It is thus that the Lord acts,-in the physical as in the spiritual realms of His kingdom,-from inmosts, by ultimates, upon all the planes between; and moreover, as it is directly taught in the DIVINE PROVIDENCE: 'The Lord in no wise acts upon any particular thing in man singly, without acting simultaneously upon all things of man, for the reason that all things of man are in such a connection, and through this connection, in such a form, that they do not act as many, but as a one. . . It follows that one part cannot be moved out of its place and changed in state except by the consent of the rest; for if one were removed from its place, and changed in state, the form which acts as one would suffer.

This makes clear that the Lord in no wise acts upon any particular thing without acting simultaneously upon all." (n. 124.)

     As the vital powers of the body act as one in due subordination in the healthy body, so, when there is disorder, or disease, the whole animal economy is affected, even though the disease itself appear to affect only a part.

     From this teaching it seems clear that the rational method of treatment of disease is that which has in view, not merely the removal of suffering from a particular organ or part of the body, but the bringing into order of the whole body. That this may be accomplished, two things stand essential: First, that the fullest possible information be gained as to the state of the whole body, and, Second, that the curative activity which is set in motion,-which, let me repeat, is not the treatment but the vitality of the animal economy itself,-be that which acts from the centers of life into every part. The first of these conditions is that which in Homoeopathy is described as the totality of symptoms; the second is met by the use of the potentized drug.*
     * See D. L. W., n. 204; D. P., 6, 25; C. L.. 329.

     And right at this point I desire to disown for myself, and I believe I may also do so for all who have with some intelligence adopted Homoeopathy, the notion that Homoeopathy has been defended because of any "inrooted persuasion" (Sept. LIFE, p. 587), the word carrying with it the suggestion that the system will not bear rational examination. To meet this insinuation, which I am inclined to believe, has been somewhat hastily made by Mr. Iungerich, it may be useful to set forth briefly the rationale of Homeopathy, which Mr. Iungerich appears only imperfectly to recognize. The passage which he quotes from the ADVERSARIA is apt, but it tells by no means the whole story.

     A simple explanation of "Similia similibus curantur," "similars by similars are healed," is this: There is in the animal economy, in the kingdom of the body, disorder which we call disease. The vital forces only vaguely recognize it and act uncertainly in their endeavor to overcome it. To use a rough illustration from the civil state: The officers entrusted with the administration of government are aware of revolutionary unrest, but cannot lay their hand upon the conspirators.

Now the means which the government must use to quell the insurrection are evidently: First, to find out who is leading it, in whom the conspiracy is, as it were, emphasized and concentrated; and, Secondly, to arrest these leaders and bring them to justice. This done the subordinate rebels will readily be reduced into order.

     The same principle is illustrated in connection with the purification of societies in the Judgment, of which we read in the SPIRITUAL DIARY:

     "An evil spirit is let into societies which are upon mountains, rocks or hills, and Inspires lusts. From this that whole multitude, as it were, ferments. Some act at one with the evil spirit, some do not so much act as one with him, some dissent. Those who make one with him turn their face toward him; those who do not act at one with him turn their face away from him. Then all who turn their face toward him are gathered into one band and are cast out from the mountain or rock into hell." (n. 5222; see also nos. 5338-9.)

     In the animal economy, in the kingdom of the body, the rebellion is the disease, which under ordinary conditions is only generally or vaguely defined to the higher vital powers at the centers of life. Now, if the totality of the disorder, diffused throughout the system and recognized only by a number of scattered signs of distress, can be emphasized, and attention at the centers of life concentrated upon it, then the vital forces will be roused to clearly directed activity and will restore order throughout the whole realm of the animal kingdom. The means of this emphasis and concentration is the potentized drug, which, bearing within its own form the power of producing symptoms which are the total similitude of those which the disease presents, is, by the fact of its finely divided state, enabled with multiplied emphasis of its own inherent qualities to penetrate the tissues, to pass through outer and inner courts to the inmost sources of life's energy in the body and rouse it into intelligent activity, in the first instance against the drug's attack, and, secondly, against the disease in all its ramifications throughout the animal economy.

Homoeopathy may fail because there is lacking sufficient vital force to respond effectively against the attack of the potentized drug; it may not be available in a given case because the drug has not been discovered which presents the totality of the symptoms; unskilled appeal to Homoeopathy may fail because the wrong remedy is selected: but the principle of Homoeopathy must stand.

I would not make Homeopathy a tenet of faith of the New Church. One may be a Newchurchman and not believe in Homoeopathy; every one must be free to adopt that method of cure which seems to him wise and good; but in the light of the principles which have been set forth, which seem to me crystal-clear, I can only think that opposition to Homoeopathy on the part of a Newchurchman must proceed either from ignorance or misunderstanding of what Homoeopathy really is or of the philosophy of the Writings which confirms it.
SWEDENBORG'S DOCTRINE OF FORMS 1912

SWEDENBORG'S DOCTRINE OF FORMS 1912

     CHAPTER VI.

     THE CIRCULAR FORM.

     (Continued,)

     From "Worship and Love of God."

     "From this form [the angular] we are enabled to contemplate the next superior form, or the form perpetually angular, which is the same as the Circular or Spherical Form; for this latter is more perfect than the other in this respect, that its circumference is, as it were, a perpetual plane, or infinite angle, because totally void of planes and angles; on which account also it is the measure of all angular forms, for we measure angles and planes by the sections and sines of the circle. From these considerations we see that into this latter form something infinite or perpetual has insinuated itself, which does not exist in the angular form,-viz., the circular orb, whose end and beginning cannot be marked." (W. L. G. 6.)

     "The spherical or circular form is more perfect than the angular in this that its surface resembles an infinite angle, and respects only one fixed point, opposite to all the points of the surface, which is called the centre, and therefore accommodated to motion and variations of form." (W. L. G., 93)

     From "Arcana Coelestia."

     "Good is presented as round, which is continuous in its form." (A. C. 8458, 9717.)

     "Wherever the Lord is, there is the centre." (A. C. 1582, 4321.)

     "The Lord is the common centre of Heaven." (H. H. 86.)

     CHAPTER VII.

     THE SPIRAL FORM.

     From the work "On the Fibre."

     "The form next superior, prior, and more perfect than the circular, is the perpetually circular, which is properly to be called the Spiral form. For its determinations are not directed into continuous concentric circles, nor are they adjusted by means of radii or straight lines to any common centre, but by continual spires towards a middle circle occupying the place of a centre, the periphery or surface of which they strive to make to flow; and they strive to continue their fluxions through this circular surface, and from it look to the centre of their own sphere by means of radii, as in a perfect circle. So again there is something perpetual and infinite in this form relatively to the circular form, as there was in the circular form relatively to the angular; for the spire is a perpetual circular fluxion, as it were, i. e., from each point of the surface, which is the limit of its fluxions, through a perpetually spiral winding toward a spherule occupying the place of a centre; thus each spire represents at the same time the circle as well as the semi-diameter, or the determinations of each, and thus the semi-diameter is everywhere, and the circle is everywhere; this is the perpetually circular. This fluxion, as was said, terminates in a spherical superficies, in the center; the determinations never meet each other, but flow unanimously with a true obliquity into all points of that surface, and so continue the gyre.

For when all the spires terminate in such a circular superficies, it follows that that central spherule, if it consists of angular forms, is able to move around its axis, or if it consists of spherical forms, these latter flow around in a circular manner. This central sphere is not dissimilar to our earthly globe swimming about in its own atmosphere, which resolves about its axis, and into whose surface the continual spires of the etherial atmosphere are determined, as it were. If we wish to explore more deeply the nature of prior and superior substances, it becomes manifest above all else, that those substances which describe this form by their fluxion, are endowed with such a nature that they are not able to flow otherwise, as has been abundantly shown in my Philosophical PRINCIPIA, Where I have also taken pains to delineate the verimost form of the fluxion.

"Thus the spiral form enters into the circular, and by means of the circular looks to the angular, not as actually existing, but with the potency of existing, according to the proposition adduced above, viz., that the angular form is produced from the circular, and therefore this latter is the measure and form of the angular, but not immediately from the spiral, for this would be contrary to the nature of its derivation, for the singulars cannot but be unfolded successively. For whatever is the cause of the cause, is also the cause of the thing caused, and therefore the spiral form is the measure of the circular forms and is thus the form of all forms which follow. 'The ancients,' says Aristotle, 'called the forms of the supreme world exemplars, in which Plato said that the substance of the inferior things was hidden.' (DE SAPIENTIA DIVINA SECUNDUM EGYPT, Book xiv, chapter xiv.)

This spiral form is a higher form of motion, more excellent and still more perfect than the circular one; it is the form of active forces, for here there is no concentration of determinations, but where the spires end they are continued by circles, wherefore here something spontaneous and natural takes place. For when the fluxion has once begun, it is of so facile a potency in that form that it is continued almost spontaneously. That nature has bestowed this capability, power, and force upon the spiral flux, is clearly evident from the helix and screw in mechanics.

And Aristotle avers that this form is a still more excellent form of motion, when he says: 'There is a certain other distinct body, beside those bodies which are here and around us, possessing a nature which is as much more perfect as it is far from those bodies.' (DE. CELO, Book i, chapter ii.)

"For the circular form can move and rotate around its axes or diameters only, while the truly spiral form can do so around a centre; and this central fluxion or gyration is the same as the perpetually axillar, or properly spiral one. That the circular forms cannot gyrate around a centre, or that in them there is no central gyration, but only an axillar one, has been indicated above. Therefore, in order that the central gyration may exist, a more perfect or spiral form is required. Meanwhile, how the central gyrations are effected, cannot be easily expressed by words, nor represented by a figure, although I have attempted to represent it in my PRINCIPIA OF PHILOSOPHY. For when we ascend above the circular form, the ideas of our understanding enter, as it were, into a kind of shade; meanwhile, if the fluxions are continued around some middle or central globe, it follows that a spiral gyration is possible, while it is not possible if they end in a centre.

"Thence it follows also that this form is still more constant in remaining in its own essence, than the circular one. We treated above of that constancy in the circular form, for the more perfect the forms are, the more constant are they, for they approach nearer to the perfection of nature in its prime. And therefore they submit with difficulty to essential changes, but very readily undergo accidental changes, for the ability of undergoing accidental changes is the perfection of their nature, (see above, no. 242). Nevertheless, that even these forms can undergo essential changes, is evident from the fact that there are genera and species of these forms; but when they undergo such change, they cannot easily be restored to their former nature and perfection, for the more difficult it is for them to change their state, the more difficult also it is for them to come back to it, so that they can by no means be restored or come back to the forms still higher. Of this more will be said below.

     "Meanwhile, there are genera and species of this form, and the genera are more or less perfect, as also the species; but terms and words are wanting by which to distinguish them according to their differences, for this form rises above the common understanding, because it is above the ordinary geometry and its lines and circles, at the summit of which it is situated. That there are various genera and various species of spiral figures, geometers are not unaware; but this is not the place to mention by their names the various kinds according to generic and specific differences, or to enumerate the differences between them; for spires may be circular, elliptic, parabolic, hyperbolic, geometric, arithmetical, etc., for according to the nature of the spire there is formed within a central globule or nucleus of one of the above mentioned forms, and to this nucleus the exterior form corresponds.

     "Meanwhile, this form is everywhere present and conspicuous in nature and its kingdoms, for whatever the circular form possesses, it owes to this superior form. For the parts and volumes of the ether flow into such a spiral form, and represent their modifications by means of it; similarly the parts and volumes of the purer blood, as well as the medullary and nervous fibers in the animated body, (see above, n. 258). They are also to be met with occasionally in the vegetable and animal kingdoms." (THE FIBRE, 264.)

     The Rational Psychology.

     "The form of the modifications of the ether is spiral or perpetually circular, and the form of the modifications of the air is simply circular, for such are the external forms of the parts, as may be demonstrated by numberless proofs." (R. P. 16.)

     "Still more delightful do they become as they approach the perpetually circular or the spiral form, for such is the form of the modifications of the ether, or of vision. But in the degree that they depart from these harmonies or approach the angular forms, so that they become sharp, prickly, in a word, not rounded, just so far do they become disagreeable." (R. P. 34)

     "The passage of rays or modifications of the ether is made in a spiral form, as those of sound in a circular form; and the fluxion of the medullary and nervous fibers is also spiral.

Therefore the visual rays flowing in from the surrounding ether, through the eye and its retina, upon the fibers of the optic nerve, in a fluxion of similar form, flow by an easy and spontaneous force even to the cortical glands. But in the cortical gland they are elevated into a certain superior or vortical form, while, indeed, folding themselves around its surface and texture, and this form is the vortical." (R. P. 88.)

     The Animal Kingdom.

     'The form above this is the spiral, which is the parent and measure of circular forms, as the circular form is the parent and the measure of angular forms. Its very radii or diameters are not rectilinear, nor do they converge to a fixed centre, like those of the circle, but they are variously-circular, and have a spherical surface for a centre; wherefore the spiral is also called the perpetual-circular. Our science of geometry rises almost to this form, but does not dare to enter it or peruse its spires; for at the first glance it strikes us as inextricable, and seems to sport with our ideas. This form never exists or subsists without poles, an axis, foci, a greatest circle, and lesser circles which are its diameters; and as it again assumes, a perpetuity which is wanting in the circular form, namely, in respect of diameters and centers, therefore it emulates and breathes a natural spontaneousness in its motion." (This is further illustrated by the stomach and its segments after death. A. K., 1., p. 126.)

     "Moreover, the spiral form has the following properties: its radii or semi-diameters, which are directed to the central circle, are all of them circumferences, and vice versa: its circumferences are all of them diameters; and with sinuous flexure they are perpetually rolling into and again revolving from that moveable centre. And in its volutions this form is always describing some everlasting curve related to the circle: either an elliptical, parabolic, hyperbolic, or some other geometrical curve, but ever evolved after the manner of the cycloid." (A. K., I. 130.)

     "Hence the spiral form derives the power of infinite variation; consequently of accommodating itself not only to every possible space, under every volume, but also to every possible use and end.

Thus it is not surprising that the idea of the intestinal circumgyration, with its almost infinite varieties, at first sight appears inextricable, and seems to elude analyses founded on the measures, methods, and figures of geometry, for even in its lowest form it utterly transcends them." (A. K., I:130.)

     "We must regard the gyration of the intestines as analogous to the folds of the stomach and to the convolutions of the brain, in which there is nothing angular and rectilinear,-nothing but what is perpetual-circular or spiral. This spiral convolution, or organic form, unlike the circle or sphere, does not respect a fixed, immovable, single centre, with convergent radii; but instead thereof, a circle or orb, with spires for radii: consequently, the centre of this sphere is a circular gyre, whereby, and as it were, afar off, it regards a fixed centre, which is that of its central circle." (A. K., I:130.)

     "Thus the intestinal gyre respects the fimbriated border of the mesentery, (which is of a circular form), and mediately thereby the receptaculum chyli which constitutes the innermost centre of the sphere, and is fixed and immovable, because it is the centre of a circle." (A. K. 130.)

     "The circle in all its points, which are infinite, by infinite radii respects only a single centre, which is absolutely fixed by the perpetual and, as it were, infinite concentration and meeting of the radii, being thus rendered immovable and most inert. But let us suppose that the circle itself occupies the place of the centre; and that its semi-diameters,-so many spirals,-are similarly directed to it; in this case there will necessarily be no fixity or concentration of any of the radii, but a perpetual circumvolution, emulating a kind of infinity in its fluxion." (A. K. 130, note b.)

     "The spiral, in its developments, is perpetually departing from the straight line, and even from the circle. It never returns from the point it started from, as the circle does; consequently, it describes none of the curves of the conic section, but a different kind of curve which it evolves; thus a curve similar to what is called a cycloid. There are, however, as many species of cycloids as there are species of curves which are capable of evolution." (A. K. 130, d.)

     "We may easily conclude what an immense number of variations and consequent changes of state the spiral form can assume, if we consider that all possible curves may serve it as centres, and that it may evolve its spires into all possible species of cycloids. Its perfection principally consists in its power of varying itself infinitely, and yet, in every change, of still remaining constantly in its own essence; for thereby it is capable of accommodating itself to all circumstances and to all kinds of use." (A. K. 130, note e, I.)

     "Thus the spiral differs in every genus and species of living creatures, and in the minutest animalcula, according to the nature of the food, the mode of digestion, and the condition of life in each. It is also capable of adapting itself to every space, as exemplified in the same instances; and in cases of obesity and hernial protrusions of the intestines. Inasmuch as this form, like a Proteus, is capable of transformation into infinite forms, (all, however, of the same family), it therefore appears so intricate to the superficial observer." (A. K. 130, note e, 2.)

     "But in order to obtain a clear idea of the spiral form, we must not attempt to study all its gyres at once, for such a course would be more apt to stupefy than to enlighten us; but we must first consider it as perfectly regular and without variety, with a simply-circular circumference for a centre, and evolved circles for spirals, (as it is exactly in the fiuxion of the intestines in snails); afterwards we may expatiate on its variations. Precisely so also in other forms." (A. K. 130, note e, 3.)

     "That the air has a tendency to gyrate spirally, is abundantly proved by the phenomena of pneumatics, that is to say, by the phenomena both of aerial modification and of sound, and by the spiral cochlea and semi-circular cylinders in the organ of hearing: the same thing is also proved by the very nature of the air." (A. K. 344)

     The Senses.

     "Aerial modification is Perpetually circular or spiral, that is, the form is in the iorce of the fluxion or motion, wherefore also the conatus; 1. as above shown in the chapter on hearing. 2. There are three forces or potencies, which impel the aerial volume into this form:

3. The first is the determination itself of the parts in the direction of the diameter, for there is always a further progression of the part. 4. The second, when one part is about to press the other anterior one, then it touches several parts resisting obliquely, for the most part four, sometimes five or six, which are immediately borne off according to the impulse, thus each one of these parts in turn so many others. 5. The third is the trend of the part itself left to itself into a continual circle or one that is agreeable to its form. 6. See our PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPIA; 7. for the part is a unit, the units of which consists of the parts of the superior atmosphere, in which there is a still more perfect nature and form of flowing, 8. and so forth. 9. These things conspire to a spiral form of the fluxion of the air." (SENSES 271.)

"Every spiral fluxion produces particular fluxions, which are as it were such continuous parts. 1. This is perceived from aforesaid considerations; 2. for progression according to a right line makes a general fluxion, or a solid spiral (spiram cubicum) which progresses from the centre to the peripheries. 3. This is begun from the impulse alone of one particle obliquely against those in front of it, and at the same time a moving forward towards those things in front. 4. This general spiral fluxion always becomes more sharp the greater is the periphery; 5. for the local motion is diminished in this ratio; 6. especially is this the case in the air, where there is a certain gravity and resistance; 7. thus there is a small forward motion towards distant points; 8. thus this last spiral ends in a circle; thus it extinguishes itself spontaneously; 9. i. e., where there is no more local motion; 10. this is the reason of the extinction of this greater sphere, and it is the boundary of hearing; 11. these are the parts of the greater sphere." (SENSES 272.)

"On this account this spiral form has reference to the circular form into which it terminates. 1. In the sphere of the general modification it goes off finally into the circular. 2. In particular forms likewise; for every part of the air is spherical; 3. or, every part has reference to the form of general modification. 4. For which reason the spiral form is the measure of the circular; it ends in it, and has reference to it finally.

5. This is the cause of the spherical form of the parts of the air." (SENSES 278)

     "The modification of the ether likewise at a distance ends in the spiral form, 1. like as the air ends in a circular form; 2. this is its greatest surface; 3. it is a general form." (SENSES 285.)

     "While the ether is being modified likewise, the air also takes upon itself particular forms, which end in units and in parts, 1. which are thus the centers of the modification, 2. and which centers are always held in their own form by the modification; 3. for all things conspire to this end.

     "This form has a peculiarity, namely, that it is eccentric, wherefore it flows forth into new forms, or that whole sphere flows forth into another new one; which is the sphere of the spiral form. 1. Its determination is double on account of its eccentricity. 2. Thus the sphere itself forms a new sphere, 3. which is a sphere of an inferior form.

     "This determination is again concentrated into every particle of the air; 1. thence is the beginning of its composition, 2. its conservative in its own state, 3. its correspondence; 4. the whole ether concurs to keep this correspondence open (ad hanc patulandam). 5. Thus it holds it in continual connection.

     "Nor does it hinder but that all modification may pass through a right line, for thither its full force tends; but the flow is in its own form, 1. just as has been said of air. 2. But you will see these things profusely explained separately in the doctrine of forms." (SENSES 286-289.)

     "The purer blood, in the smallest arteries and certain of the fibers, concurs with the spiral form, or with the form of the aerial atmosphere." (SENSES 316.)

     (To be continued.)

NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

     Our readers will be profoundly interested in the address by the Rev. Julian K. Smyth, which we reprint in full from the MESSENGER of November 22d. It is in our opinion the most noteworthy and catholic message that has ever been delivered by any President of the General Convention.

     We are happy to announce that the Rev. Walter E. Brickman, who a few years ago found it necessary to resign from the General Church, (in order to continue his ministry to a society of the General Convention), has now, on application, been restored to the membership and priesthood of the General Church of the New Jerusalem.

     The learned German magazine, ARCHN FUR GESCHICHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE, for October 7th, contains a lengthy paper by Hans Hoppe on "Emanuel Swedenborg's Cosmogony and the theory of Kant and Laplace," in which the writer maintains that Swedenborg's theory of creation anticipated both Kant and Laplace. We have some doubts, however, as to the identity, or even remote similarity, of the two theories.

     The Rev. C. J. N. Manby, in NYA KYRANS TIDNING for November, calls in question our "fair play" because in the LIFE for October we gave an account of the recent discussion on "Rebaptism" in Sweden, without giving full consideration to those quotations from the Writings upon which he bases his opposition to New Church Baptism for adult converts. If our friend wishes to discuss Further this important question, the pages of the LIFE-within reasonable limits-are at his disposal.

Title Unspecified 1912

Title Unspecified Alfred H. Stroh 1912

     Mr. Alfred H. Stroh reports as follows as to his work in Sweden:

     "The concluding portion of ADVERSARIA I. and II. being now in press, the phototyping of Vol. III., comprising the remainder of ADVERSARIA, has been begun.

     The volume MISCELLANEA THEOLOGICA was begun in 1903, when Swedenborg's MSS., DE CONJUGIO, ANNOTATA DE CALVINO and ADVERSARIA IN VERAM CHRISTIANAM RELIGIONEM Were phototyped. The other short MSS. and fragments recommended for reproduction by the meeting of representatives in London, July 11th, 1910, are in press, and the volume might suitably contain a number of additional MSS., as, for instance, the CANONES and CORONIS. Swedenborg's theological correspondence and other miscellaneous documents will be phototyped in SWEDENRORGIANA, Part II.

     The meeting of representatives which recommended the phototyping of ADVERSARIA and MISCELLANEA THEOLOGICA also recommended the phototyping of other MSS. in the following order:

     ARCANA COELESTIA, first draft, including INDEX.
     APOCALYPSIS EXPLICATA, first draft.
     INDEX OF APOCALYPSIS REVELATA.

     At the present rapid rate of reproduction the ADVERSARIA and MISCELLANEA TREOLOGICA will soon be completed, and the phototyping of ARCANA COELESTIA, a very extended series of MS. volumes, will be begun."
Title Unspecified 1912

Title Unspecified Rev. Thomas A. King 1912

The Rev. Thomas A. King, in his report to the Ohio Association, makes the statement that "the New Church is both apostolic and evangelical; and when it learns to speak to the people in the terms of their life; when it learns that its mission is not to make theologians, but to lead men to Faith in the Lord and genuine repentance, it will begin to grow, and its gates will be thronged with earnest souls seeking the right way of life."

If Mr. King, by his disparaging reference to "theologians," means mere intellectualists, we quite agree with his statement, but it is unfortunately quite common in the Church to discredit not only "theologians" but also Theology, which in itself means nothing but the Science of things Divine.

The Academy Schools, for instance, have been condemned because they "make juvenile theologians" of their pupils. In the New Church there can be no "leading to the Lord and genuine repentance" except by means of its Divine Theology, and the deeper that men enter into this Theology, the nearer can they be led to the Lord and to repentance, and the more will the Church then grow in the only growth that will lead to eternal salvation. But "a moral life, without a theological life, effects no use; it does not purify from evils, and alone does not conduce to eternal life." (S. D. 6073.)
Title Unspecified 1912

Title Unspecified Editor 1912

     Our British contemporary, the NEW CHURCH MAGAZINE, with its issue for December, 1911, completes its unbroken course of one hundred years, the first number having been published in January, 1812. It was then issued under the name of THE INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY, which in 1830 was changed to THE INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY AND NEW JERUSALEM MAGAZINE, but this cumbersome title in 1882 was altered to the NEW CHURCH MAGAZINE.

     The mind may well pause to reflect upon the uses performed by our venerable contemporary during the eventful course of a century which has been coincident with almost the entire history of the Lord's New Church. In its pages this history has been recorded from month to month and from year to year, and with it the pulsing rise and fall of New Church thought and life. Though for many decades the MAGAZINE has been somewhat colorless, time was when THE INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY represented the most scholarly, sound and interior thought of the New Church. This was in the days when the Rev. Samuel Noble, as chief editor, guided its policy and conduct, from 1812 to 1839. He was succeeded by the Rev. John Henry Smithson, (1840-1861), the Rev. William Bruce, (1862-1881), the Rev. Richard Storry, (1881-1885), the Rev. John Presland, (1886-1897), the Rev. R. R. Rodgers, (1897-1899), and the Rev. J. R. Rendell, from 1899 to the present day.

     The December issue publishes an interesting portrait of Charles Augustus Tulk, who was one of the contributors to the first number of THE INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY, and subsequently became famous as the founder of a "school" of Idealistic Gnosticism in the New Church.

     Mr. F. A. Gardiner, of London, in the MORNING LIGHT for November 18th, contributes a brief but valuable paper on the "Distinctive Technical Terms in Swedenborg's Writings," which we earnestly recommend to the attention of the translators and publishers of those Writings. We quote the following:

     "The positivism of Comte, the monism of Haeckel, the pessimism of Schopenhauer, the inductive logic of Mill, the sociology of Spencer, and the protoplasmic theory of Huxley, among many other distinct schools of thought, all depend upon technical terminology to preserve their distinctive teaching. If, in all these departments of thought, life and activity, each one claims the right to the use of technical terms, it is fitting that some one should plead for the same right-not a concession or a privilege-but the right to use technical terms to convey to the minds of his readers new ideas, new thoughts and new conceptions of truth, On behalf of one who occupied the absolutely unique position of Swedenborg. No matter on what ground a term is said to be technical the answer to the objector is the same. If the word used is distinctive, that is to say if it conveys a new conception of some truth or enshrines some specific thought which cannot be so well expressed by any other word, the fact that it is technical should be no bar to its use.

     "It is not necessary to adduce proof that Swedenborg had some new truths to convey to his readers, but it may be well to recall some of their distinctive features, so that it may be clearly seen that they were much more distinctly new than those of other authors who are permitted without demur to introduce technical terms into our language."

     Mr. Gardiner then adduces a number of the most important terms of the distinctive terminology of the New Church with very appropriate illustrative definitions from the writings, and concludes: "As the beauty of earthly jewels is affected by their setting, let us see to it that these gems of higher truths are not dimmed in their lustre nor marred in their beauty by the setting of inadequate terminology which we, in a mistaken idea of adaptation, seek to employ."

     COL. WILLIAMS AND OTHERS

     The latest broadside from Col. Williams is a pamphlet, entitled EVASION OF TRUTH, directed chiefly against "the absurd doctrine that is known as the 'Double Standard of Morality' that has been steadily preached by the leaders of the Convention in their long crusade against the Academy,-that is, one standard of morality "for those of the Church," and another for the "natural non-religionist," who "without knowing any more about spirituality than Kamtchatka Indian," yet is supposed to "protect the conjugial state."

     Col. Williams by abundant quotations shows that this "pestiferous double standard" has been raised in the various pamphlets of the Rev. S. S. Seward, as well as in a book by Mr. Wm. McGeorge which "was distributed to ministers and laymen" during the meeting of the last Convention. He also tries to prove that the Academy Doctrine itself has been taught in the Convention by no less an authority than the Rev. John Worcester, and that the MESSENGER is the "foremost disseminator" of the "insidious spirituality of the Academy" within the borders of the Convention,-a charge which certainly cannot be sustained.

     Among his quotations from Mr. Worcester we find the following remarkable statement: "If you find them in a worse evil, you cannot avoid your duty to recommend to them the milder evil." If Mr. Williams thinks that this is "Academy Doctrine," we must assure him to the contrary, for the Academy from the beginning has made it one of its leading principles never to "recommend" any particular line of conduct, but simply to present the Doctrine as taught in the Writings, and leave the application thereof to the judgment of every one "in freedom according to reason." We wish to call attention, also, to Mr. Worcester's use of the term "duty" in this connection.

     The work by Mr. McGeorge to which Mr. Williams refers, but which has not hitherto been noticed in our pages or in any other journal, is entitled "To THE LAW AND TO THE TESTIMONY. An analytical study in the light of both of the teaching of the second part of Swedenborg's work on Conjugial Love. From the Latin." (Phila. 1911, pp. 166.)

     The author of this work claims that "the root of all the false doctrine derived or taught from this part of Swedenborg's work, (the treatise on scortatory love), springs from an imperfect translation of the important definition found in no. 423," and then proceeds to set the matter straight by his own extraordinary Latinity. Mr. Williams, in the innocence of his heart, remarks on this claim: "We are not competent to pass on this part of Mr. McGeorge's work, but hoping the above is true, are willing, with humble thankfulness and heartfelt gratitude, to credit to the author the greatest use that has been performed for the New Church by man, save Swedenborg."

     "Where ignorance is bliss" it may seem cruel to disturb so sublime a confidence. But as a contribution to good humor in the Church we quote the following specimens of linguistic and historical learning from the many that adorn the pages of the work to which Col. Williams refers:

     Dr. Im. Tafel in his Latin edition of CONJUGIAL LOVE stated in an editorial note on a certain paragraph in n. 530 that "this paragraph was enclosed in quotation marks by the author," (ab auctore hic paragraphus signis citationis inclusus est), which Mr. McGeorge renders: "This paragraph shows signs of haste by the author"!

     Equally original is the following historical allusion: "When the Sclavonians were the richest, proudest, and most powerful people in Europe, the expression 'Ich bin ein Sclave' was as proud a boast as that 'Ego sum Romanus' when Rome governed the world." Imagine the astonishment of an ancient "Sclavonian" at this compliment to his historic greatness and to his knowledge of the German tongue!
PAUL AND THE SPIRITUAL DIARY 1912

PAUL AND THE SPIRITUAL DIARY Editor 1912

The Rev. W. R. Horner in almost every issue of MORNING LIGHT reports on the progress of the "New Church Van" which is at present making a tour in the south of England. In the issue for November 18th the missionary describes an incident occurring at Bournemouth:

     "Great indignation has been shown by the local evangelists. Near to here there is a Mission Hall and the Missioner comes most nights to tackle me, supporting with great determination the doctrine of Salvation by Faith Alone. He has, I think, been reading an encyclopedic article on Swedenborg. One night he came and made a great noise, bitterly saying that Swedenborg says he: saw Paul in Hell. I at once denied it categorically. I said that if he could bring me a book which was published by Swedenborg containing that statement I would give him 10s. 6d. worth of Bibles. My own opinion about the remark of Swedenborg's about Paul is that of Dr. Bayley's, viz., that Swedenborg may have been imposed upon. But it does not do to go into these details at open meetings. The SPIRITUAL DIARY was not published by Swedenborg, nor did he mean to publish it, and therefore the Church should take no responsibility for it. Certainly I do not intend to."

     There is but small hope for the success of the "Van movement" when the missionary not only takes it upon himself to deny categorically" the things seen and heard by the revelator of the New Church, but also repudiates an integral part of the Revelation itself. The "responsibility" for the DIARY does not, indeed, rest upon Mr. Horner or upon "the Church," but upon the Lord Himself in His Second Coming. If the Church refuses to follow Him whithersoever He goeth, it will leave Him, and its mission will come to an end.

     It is curious that members of the New Church should be so ready to give the lie to Swedenborg's consistent and unmistakable statements concerning the character and ultimate fate of Paul, when Paul's own writings bear such clear testimony to his essentially selfish nature. If it is from any "fear of the Jews" that they repudiate Swedenborg, they should muster courage at this day when Paul's egotism is beginning to be recognized even outside the New Church. In the higher theological circles of modern Germany, for instance, it is being realized that Paulinity is by no means identical with original Christianity, and in literature Paul's character and baneful influence upon Christian thought and life are being more and more clearly recognized.

     By "categorically denying" Swedenborg's revelations concerning Paul, the New Church evangelist not only throws doubt upon the Lord's messenger and upon the message itself in the presence of the audience which he is trying to convert, but he also misses an excellent opportunity for effective missionary work.

We may be pardoned for relating here a bit of personal experience. We were once introduced to a great physician, (still living), who was also a prominent leader in the Baptist Church. He had been reading Swedenborg for some time, but was unable to see any essential difference between the New Church and the Baptist Church, which latter professes to have no creed other than "the Bible alone." One day he was praising Paul to the sky, but we frankly told him what had become of Paul. For a while he sat pale and dumb with amazement and indignation, but we advised him to read the Acts and the Epistles again and to see for himself how this relentless and cruel persecutor of the Christians was suddenly converted by a compelling miracle; how he continually puts himself forward as "not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles;" how he wishes that everybody was like himself; how slightingly he speaks of woman and marriage and introduces that exaltation of celibacy which destroyed every idea of love truly conjugial in the Christian Church. Our friend groaned and protested but promised to look into the subject, and not long afterwards he was baptized in the faith of the New Church. A shock may be unpleasant to administer, but it sometimes has an awakening effect.

     As to the authority of the SPIRITUAL DIARY this work itself repeatedly asseverates its own trustworthiness and Divine origin, as in the following statement, which is headed:

     "That these things which I have learned in representations, visions, and from conversations with spirits and angels, are from the Lord alone.

     "Whensoever there was any representation, vision, and speech, I was held interiorly and inmostly in reflection upon these things, as to what thence was useful and good; thus what I should learn; which reflection was not thus attended to by those who presented the representations and visions and who spoke; indeed, they were sometimes indignant when they perceived that I reflected. Thus was I instructed, and therefore, by no spirit, nor yet by any angel, but by the Lord alone, from whom is every truth and good." (S. D. 1647.)

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A NEWCHURCHMAN TODAY 1912

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A NEWCHURCHMAN TODAY JULIAN K. SMYTH 1912

      (An address by the President of the General Convention delivered before several of the Associations and Societies of the church during his recent visit among them. (Reprinted from the NEW CHURCH MESSENGER of November 22d, 1911.))

     The subject on which I am to address you I shall put in the form of a question: "What does it mean to be a Newchurchman today?" My aim is a simple one: it is to try to say some helpful word on our relations to the Church at this present time. New conditions have arisen within the Church. I wish neither to exaggerate nor to ignore their importance, but simply to face them and consider how they bear upon our churchmanship. For that reason I emphasize the last word in the question proposed: "What does it mean to be a Newchurchman today?"

     Some of the conditions which confront us would probably have seemed incredible to the first believers. Let any one study the rise of the New Church as an outward organization, and he cannot fail to be impressed by the sturdy character of the faith which then prevailed. I know the temptation to undervalue this because in its outward expression, at least, that faith seemed so intensely doctrinal. It busied itself with abstruse points of theology in which few today would find any interest. It was a time of theological reconstruction and adjustment. A new theological world had been discovered, and these first Pilgrim Fathers, who had the spiritual hardihood to turn way from the religious bondage of the "old," were obliged to struggle valiantly to possess themselves of the virgin land that awaited their coming. They had everything to learn; there were new and knotty problems for them to solve; they had to struggle to maintain their religious independence. The world about them was hostile. The new doctrines were looked upon as dangerous inventions. To hold these doctrines sometimes meant expulsion from church membership; sometimes it meant social ostracism, and sometimes it offered a barrier to holding public positions. The times were dogmatic, and although there was no physical violence this little remnant of the Lord found itself regarded with a suspicion and dislike almost as great as pressed in upon the body of believers during the days of the upspringing of the Primitive Christian Church.

I remember hearing Dr. Thomas Worcester say to his class in the Theological School, of which I was a member: "You will never know what it is to stand up and feel as if you were preaching the doctrines of the New Church against a stone wall."

The times were hard. There seemed to be little or no responsiveness. We know from the records that there were sharp controversies among the members, and that divisions occurred, for the right of individual judgment was stoutly maintained and truth was dear. And still, as we look back, these first men of the New Church seem to move in a kind of golden spiritual splendor. The devotion was so great! The joy in the new revelation was so manifest! The Church and its interests seemed of such paramount importance! The vision which always met these believers' eyes was the vision of "that Great City" descending from God out of heaven. They thought of it without faltering as the Divine symbol of that wonderful system of spiritual truth which they had been privileged to see and to foster in every way within their power. No shadow of suspicion seems ever to have fallen upon "the heavenly doctrines," and in their eyes they were as stainless in their purity as "a bride adorned for her husband." The vision was one which held them with a feeling of constant wonder and joy, and they seem not to have had any fear that they might have a restrictive influence over them; for were not the length, the breadth and the height of the Holy City on a scale large enough to satisfy the affections or the intelligence or the spirituality of any man or angel?

The times in which we live are not spiritually hard and dogmatic. They are suspiciously soft. The religious world has lost confidence in its doctrines and holds them but loosely. Speaking in a general way-for there are always individual exceptions-the sharp, clear statements of spiritual truth made by the doctrines of the New Church create no surprise. They call forth little or no contradiction. The religious amiability is so great that little or no reaction seems possible. The "stone wall" against which our old worthies felt they spoke and because of which they and their fellows braced themselves seems to have melted away; and instead it is more as if we spoke into vacuity.

     Had this change in the general temper of the times had an influence upon us? Has it tended to diminish the glory of the new in our eyes? Without any intention of being unappreciative, has something of that first joyous wonder with which those early believers received the Divine gift which the Lord has laid before us in these priceless truths, passed from our Church body? The doctrines of the New Church are in fulfilment of the Lord's promise to come again as the spirit of truth, resulting in a deeper disclosure of Himself in His Holy Word, or they are nothing; for they present themselves to us with that claim. The Newchurchman is face to face with that issue anew. He finds the religious world about him lazily tolerant. But within the Church, the case is different. In some way the vision has become dimmed. It would be unprofitable in a meeting such as this to specify the agencies which have brought about such a result; at the same time it would be cowardly to gloss over the fact that the credibility of Swedenborg and the moral purity of some of the teachings given through him have been made to loom up before us as issues. Strange issues to raise among those who "call themselves of the Holy City." But here they are; and their effect is disquieting.

     To be a Newchurchman today one does not have to brave the hostility of the religious world about him, as was once the case. On the other hand, does the Church to which he feels drawn seem as sure of the spiritual integrity and purity of its doctrines as it did when it was struggling for its existence?

     I do not think I would help matters if I were to dwell on these conditions. Any one attempting to account for them has only his own fallible reason for guidance. Any one thinking to dispose of them by a sweeping condemnation may very possibly overlook some hurtful tendency against which they may be a sincere, even if mistaken, protest. But there they are: these strictures, these aspersions, not from without, but from within! The old ideals apparently blurred, the old feeling of happy security and just pride disturbed, and in some instances shaken.

     I have no wish to magnify these conditions. I fondly believe that with the great majority of New Church people today there is essentially the same confidence in the integrity of the Heavenly Doctrines, the same faith in their final success, the same willingness to devote thought, time, money for their advancement in the world, that characterized the first believers.

In fact, there is danger that this very love and loyalty shall cause us to look not simply with anxiety but positive alarm upon present conditions. They shock our ideas of what the Lord through His Word and the Heavenly Doctrines themselves has led us to form of what the church of the Holy City should be. We say instinctively: "How can it be that the church of Divine promise can find serious divisions among its citizenship? How can it be that the spiritual integrity of its doctrines should be questioned and made an issue? How can it be, how can it be that some of them should be brought under the suspicion of laying down a code of morals, which, in chastity would not satisfy the conscience of the purest woman or man, or in its analysis of evil would fail by so much as a hair's breadth to come up to the highest standard of a righteous order?

     The Newchurchman today be he a newcomer or one of our own young people, or one who for years has cherished the faith, has to face the anomalous situation here described. And it exposes him to two temptations: First, the temptation to harsh judgment. It is very difficult to avoid a feeling of resentment against any one, who, as we think, is doing injury to a cause which we think of as sacred. The extreme of charity does not require us to meekly acquiesce in utterances or acts which appear to us as flagrantly false and wrong. But there are two things which should deter us from hasty personal condemnation:

     One is the strange fact that we shall find ourselves condemning some who are as sincere as we in their regard for the Church, and who feel that they are acting for its true interests.

     The other deterrent cause against hasty and personal condemnation is our own fallible judgment. When one feels that an obvious wrong has been or is being done, it is a most difficult thing to put oneself in the alleged wrongdoer's place, or to see any truth or good in his intentions or acts. The man who wears the blue and the man who wears the grey feel that by necessity of conditions they are ordained to fight, and the pity of it is that it is not until long after the loss of blood and treasure and the awful bitterness engendered in fratricidal war that the survivors can see and bring themselves to acknowledge in each other not alone an equal sincerity of purpose and firmness of conviction, but some common ground of truth not recognized before which enables them to clasp hands in restored confidence and respect and leads them to wonder whether the tragedy of their strife might not have been averted through a better understanding.

     The issues which have been raised are not simple, although in our intellectual self-confidence we may think that they are. They involve questions of authority, of church polity, together with interpretations of doctrines great and deep enough to make a diversity of views natural if not inevitable. And this is what I would urge: Being a Newchurchman today calls for, as perhaps never before, poise, breadth and a willingness oftentimes to suspend personal judgment, or at least personal condemnation.

     The moment is come for the exercise of this larger spirit of charity. The heart of the Church is weary with dissensions and suspicions. Everywhere, I meet with this sentiment: "We are heartily sick of the mere mention of questions that have been dragged into the Church and before the public, and we refuse to discuss or to listen to them any longer." Unless all signs fail the Church is ready for a forward movement. The young people are impatient for it. The old people are not too old to fall into line and keep step with them, and the rank and file will hail it with joy and give to such a movement an impetus that will carry us on to new and better states of life. A little thing would change the whole situation; a determination on the part of every man and woman of the Church to exercise charity of judgment, to discourage the continuation of controversies, which, if dragged on, will kill out the spirit of brotherhood among us, and to devote our thought and our strength to the common good. "Let the dead bury their dead."

     The other temptation to which the Newchurchman today is exposed is to lose faith in the ideals of the Church which the Lord has enabled him to cherish. The ideals of unity of belief and of a veritable brotherhood of the new life upon the earth, the vision of the City Beautiful reflecting the glory of God, as carefully and harmoniously arrayed, as peaceful and gracious in every sweep of her garments as though she were a veritable bride advancing to the altar to meet her lord-we cannot, we must not, give up these ideals.

The vision of the city is not so much the vision of a church organization as it is of a body of heavenly truths which the Lord has made it possible for a small body of believers to recognize and hail with holy joy. That little company shall be a true "Church of the New Jerusalem" just in the degree that it embodies these heavenly doctrines in its faith, its worship, and in life. The Church as an organization is young and inexperienced. The composition of its membership is far from perfect. It is not infallible in its judgments or its works. It is called upon for its own good to meet trying situations. It is exposed to the temptations of discouragement and of unfaithfulness. All this, however, does not invalidate the Divine authenticity of the ideal which the Lord has set before it; or of the possibility through faith and obedience of being formed and moulded into a church worthy to bear the name "New Jerusalem." And being a Newchurchman today requires, as perhaps never before, a determination to preserve within our Church body a faith in that ideal; to glory in it, and, be the inward and outward vicissitudes of our body what they may, to reach out for it-which is only another way of saying to bring the ideal into this familiar realm of the actual. And just as I urged that the Newchurchman today should exercise self-control in the use of personal judgment and condemnation, so I would urge that for the good of the Church we should put a restraint upon any tendency we may have to cut down the impression of completeness which this system of truth makes upon most believers, by criticisms, which, for most part, grow out of an exaggerated estimate of the keenness of our perceptions. When the angel would reveal to John the quality of the New Jerusalem he took a golden reed. And by this standard, applied in loving appreciation of what he was measuring, he found everything not only vast but complete. In length 12,000 furlongs, in breadth 12,000 furlongs, in height 12,000 furlongs! Room enough for the fullest exercise of the affectional life, the intellectual life, and the spiritual life of any man or angel. If we, any of us, find the Heavenly Doctrines to measure up to less than this it may be because we are substituting for the golden reed of the angel the little foot-rule of our own intelligence.

Therefore, O men and women of the Church, when difficult questions of interpretation arise, let us be modest in our estimate of our ability instantly to solve them, and let us hesitate a long time before casting any suspicion upon the correctness of the measurement made on high. The Lord has not given us a defective model. Outside of the holy truths in the Word itself there is nothing like this revelation in all the world; nothing that should call forth greater spiritual wonder and gratitude; nothing that should so surely call forth our intellectual confidence and homage.

Being a Newchurchman today, therefore, involves, as it seems to me, being aware of the many trying conditions which have come upon us, yet nevertheless preserving a faith in the Heavenly Doctrines so firm, and a patience with one another's infirmities and mistakes so sure, and a hope in the mission and ultimate success of the Church that accepts and will try to be true to these blessed teachings so strong that this Church, struggling now and sore beset, will yet become worthy to enter upon her supreme privilege of being "the Bride, the Lamb's Wife." JULIAN K. SMYTH.
CORRECTION 1912

CORRECTION HENRY WUNSCH 1912

Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:
Under "Church News from our Contemporaries" in the NEW CHURCH LIFE for December, 1911, you refer to the Michigan Association meeting at Detroit on October 7th to 8th and say "As there is no longer any active New Church minister in the State a layman occupied the chair, though three visiting ministers were present." The constitution of the Michigan Association provides for a presiding minister as a president, and also for a vice-president and other officers. The president being absent it became the duty of the vice-president, Mr. Geo. W. Thayer, to preside at the meeting irrespective of the number of visiting ministers present. There were only two visiting ministers present, the Rev. Messrs. King and Mack, the Rev. J. M. Shepherd being a member of the association. Kindly make corrections in your next issue. HENRY WUNSCH.
Detroit, Mich., Dec. 14, 1911.

BODIES OF ANGELS AND THE ATMOSPHERES 1912

BODIES OF ANGELS AND THE ATMOSPHERES E. E. IUNGERICH 1912

Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:-
     The articles by Mr. Gill and yourself on the bodies of angels call attention to two hypotheses which I will state as questions, and then proceed to consider.

     I. Is there not a species of incarnation by virtue of substances furnished from the atmospheres, whenever angels appear to one another, and a relinquishing of the same when they vanish?

     II. Are we to regard the passages from the DIARY in which the soul is said not to need various members and organs, to refer solely, as you have it, to its independence of the corporeal body left on earth? May they not refer also to a body assumed from atmospheric elements in the spiritual world?

     In support of the first hypothesis, we cite the following passages from the RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY and the ADVERSARIA as testimony from the scientific works, and a passage from the ATHANASIAN CREED as confirmatory testimony from the Writings:

     [The soul is able to take on or put off any form it pleases, whether human, animal, or inanimate.] "The reason is because the entire form is the soul's [but] the elements themselves are instantly taken from the circumfluent atmospheres, and [put] into its own [Parts]." (R. P. 523, italics my own in this and following citations.)

     "The Angel of Messiah, or His Spirit, can put on the human form whenever it pleases Messiah, for they are almost men, but without flesh and bones. The very ultimate texture, which is called flesh, with muscles and the like, is then made in an instant when it pleases Messiah, for in the air and ether are streams of such particles as at once serve for composing the things which relate to the more ultimate texture." (I. Adv. 1457.)

     "The putting on of form, which is everywhere in the atmospheres, is an arcanum which as yet nobody knows, and it is the essential of the atmospheres, both spiritual as well as natural. . . . These things have been adduced that some idea of the Divine Human from the Father might be acquired; that namely the Divine clothed Itself with a Human according to Divine order from primes to ultimates; wherefore in Him was Divine order; consequently that thus He fills all things or is omnipresent everywhere." (ATH. CR., 26, 27.)

     The materials furnished by spiritual atmospheres for the bodies of angels might possibly be effluvial particles emanating from the spheres of companies of angels. We are told that these spheres appear watery, aerial or ethereal. A spirit's disappearance from view when in a sphere hostile to his ruling love might be accounted for in this way. Perhaps we may also find in this an explanation of the Lord's appearance in a human shape among the angels.

     Let us now take up the second question. If angels take on and put off atmospheric particles, it is pertinent to ask whether their possession of the human shape refers to them only when clothed with atmospheric particles. Or do they have said shape intrinsically, when divested of atmospheric particles?

     That they have an intrinsic human shape appears to be supported from the following considerations:

     (1) The soul has lived in a body on earth, has entered into every least part of it, and is said to retain impressed upon it after death the perfect effigy of the body.

     "There remains in it the effigy of its body and its motions and effects, impressed most purely on its simplest, modifiable substances as causes, no otherwise than the figure of a tree, with all its verdure, in the seed." (FRAGMENT ON THE SOUL, P. 120.)

     [Flowers can be raised from ashes, their parts] "coalescing into the pristine form. Why not then human souls after the exordium of the body?" (R. P. 517)

     (2) The form of the soul is said to be the simple fibre, (see R. P. 1-9), which is of celestial substance, cannot be injured, and is the very man who lives after death.

     But that angels have an intrinsic human shape in the sense of possessing an exact double or replica of the body they have here, composed of particles and corpuscles duplicate in every way except that we call the stuff composing them spiritual substance in lieu of matter, seems objectionable for the following reasons:

     (1) This is the world of effects. The spiritual world is the world of causes. Though causes there manifest themselves through representatives which look like those on earth, the causes are the sole reality. To suppose that the form of the cause is the shape of the representative effect is to make no discrete difference between the two. To regard the body as just "girding" and "investing" the spirit, which is, in my opinion, but another way of expressing the idea that the soul's form is identically that of the body we see it in, is what is denounced in A. C. 4659.

     (2) More interior forms are to be dissociated in thought from images based on stationary types. Interior forms are motions. Light and heat are interior forms or receptacles; good and truth still more so.

     (3) If an angel were already in an effectual human shape, how could he in an instant draw over it a body from the atmospheres? That body is not to be regarded as just "investing" or "girding" him, but must be annexed to his spirit everywhere. The form of the soul is to be regarded as a conatus into the human shape.

     (4) In the passage cited from the FRAGMENT ON THE SOUL, it is said to be upon the soul's "simplest modifiable substances as causes" that the effigy of the body is impressed, and a comparison is made with a seed for illustration. By virtue of this impression it is that the soul-form or cause can invest itself with atmospheric particles in an instant, and present an effectual shape of normal stature.

     The body about the soul-form is the shape it invests itself with from the atmospheres. The soul-form itself is the understanding, the form of the will. Will, understanding, and effectual shape form a trinity of human essentials which need to be thought of together, and not separately. In the Lord they are one absolutely. But a spirit not having flesh and blood as He has, gets his third essential from the atmospheres, it being furnished him gratis whenever God Messiah permits.     E. E. IUNGERICH.

Church News 1912

Church News Editor 1912

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. Mention has not been made yet of the children's service which is held in the afternoon of one Sunday in each month. It is of a devotional character. In place of a sermon, Mr. De Charms gives an extemporaneous address from the chancel steps. The historical details and setting which Mr. De Charms drapes about the text he is expounding give it a degree of vividness that is impressive.

     Echoes of the recent British Assembly still reverberate here even at this late date. Whenever one sees two men in animated discussion on the avenue, it is almost certain they are either debating whether spiritual form is like a whirlwind which only becomes visible through the dust particles it sweeps up from the avenue, or else are consulting upon the best way to enlighten those who question whether high potency homoeopathy has anything in it.

     Two successful social events have occurred this past month. One evening all were invited to witness a series of plays directed by Mr. Heath. An adaptation of the "Comedy of Errors" was ably presented by Mr. Heath's three little daughters, Viola, Hazel and Flora, assisted by Gwynneth Wells and Lenore Smith. Another play presented that evening had been culled, we are told, from Mark Twain's "Tramp Abroad." The hit of the evening, however, was made by the play of "Chatterton," in which Mrs. Heath as the starving and dying poet gave us a stirring and dramatic presentation. The other social event was the Fair. The prevailing costumes were Japanese and Swedish. There were the usual booths for the selling of cake, candy and millinery, the usual hawking of peanuts and ice cream. There were thrilling side shows presenting a camp-fire before a battle, a son of Jacob selling a cheap overcoat for the price of a professor's monthly stipend, a trick bicycle rider, and an exhibition of the game of base ball by a prospective ball player. A notable event was a Dalecarlian fancy dance executed by all the girls of the Seminary.

The evening closed with a travesty on Macbeth by Mr. Donald Rose, who starred as the heroine, though his laurels were shared by Mr. Loyal Odhner as Macbeth and Mr. Karl Alden as Duncan, Banquo and a witch. In the witches' scene a most incredible brew was prepared, every pet hobby or foible in Bryn Athyn going into the caldron. It looks as if the Fair has become a regular annual event in Bryn Athyn.

     Some publicity has been given to the teachings of Swedenborg by an address given by a lady lecturer before an assembly of Quakers in the neighborhood. The lecturer gave, as advertised, a fairly accurate account of the New Church, pointing out especially the supposed similarity between our doctrines and those of the Quakers. In the ensuing discussion the Rev. W. H. Alden gave an address which was commented on at some length in the county newspaper.

     The various committees appointed by the Bishop to consider details about the projected church building are busily at work, and provisional reports were heard at the Friday supper, December 8th.

     Mr. Charles F. Browne, of Chicago, gave a much appreciated "talk" on architecture in the New Church. He advised against choosing any special known type evolved elsewhere from special conditions there obtaining, and made a plea for a distinctive New Church type, even if this were only to be found in the ground plan. The Bishop then showed on the screen his projected plan for the chancel. It is in three levels, the lowest being for Baptism and preaching, the middle one for the Holy Supper, and the highest for the adytum containing the Word, before which a veil is drawn. A new feature is that of having two reading desks instead of one, so that a distinction may be made between the reading from the letter of the Word and the reading from the internal sense of the Word.     E. E. I.

     THE SEVENTH PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ASSEMBLY.

     Owing to the lateness of Thanksgiving the Assembly was held on the second and third of December. The supper which had been announced for Friday evening was transferred to Sunday evening, giving place to the annual Fair, which is usually held earlier in the year.

     Two elements especially contributed to the marked success of the sessions. The first was the strong sphere of thought concerning the Lord, and of worship directed to Him. This note was introduced by the Bishop's address on Saturday evening upon the history, the significance and the proper observance of the Lord's day. At the worship on Sunday the many visitors were treated to a sermon by the Rev. N. D. Pendleton, of Pittsburgh, upon the nature of spiritual reality, in which he pointed out the supreme and universal government of the Lord Himself, no matter through what instrumentalities He is pleased to operate.

     The Holy Supper in the afternoon brought this line of thought to a fitting climax. In the evening the banquet, attended by some 265 members and friends, was the occasion for emphasizing the complementary side of our church life and doctrine, namely, that of the place and importance of the as of itself reaction and reception of the Lord and His Heavenly Doctrine among the people. The idea was that the evening should be devoted to calling out in the shape of reports whatever of distinctive interest was going on in the various lesser centers within our district. The result was most gratifying, and it is to be hoped that this feature will always receive its due proportion of attention, for it is that element which does most to bring to our consciousness the distinctive character and use of these meetings. The hospitable doors of Bryn Athyn had been thrown wide open, and a gratifyingly large number of visitors came. The warmth of the Bishop's opening speech of welcome gave us a good start. The songs were inspiring, and Mr. Synnestvedt's paper on how the Lord builds the Church on earth was imbued with the spirit of the occasion.

     Then followed the "Reports" or accounts of the activities of the various centers. Mr. Harris's account of his Sunday School at Abington, Mass., and the development of their ritual proved especially interesting. The New York circle was well represented, and the Rev. R. H. Keep reported their progress. Baltimore had to depend upon Mr. Iungerich's account, the expected visitors from that important center being unfortunately prevented from attending.

Mr. Acton spoke for the group or circle at Washington, D. C., noting especially the fact that a minister gets more stimulus and more satisfaction from a few who read and are actively interested in questions connected with the Writings than he would from greater numbers whose interests were only in political or civil or social affairs. Mr. Price, in the absence of any member from Allentown, told us what they are still doing there. The Advent church of Philadelphia was particularly well represented, and two of her members spoke of their satisfaction with the conditions there. After a few appropriate songs the Bishop brought the session to a close, but although the hour was late no one seemed ready to leave, but almost all remained to see the deliciously humorous (if somewhat personal) cartoons thrown upon the screen and the tableaux that followed referring to the various societies. These had been prepared for Friday evening, but the altered program brought them on Sunday. However, it was Monday by the time we got through! Next year we hope to have a session on Friday to give ample room for all these varied and rich materials. H. S.

     ABINGTON, MASS. We had a Thanksgiving service on Wednesday evening, November 29th, at which three persons were baptized into the faith of the New Church. The service consisted of chants and a processional sung in Hebrew, and the baptismal service.

     The Sunday School has finished the course on "Insects, Birds and Beasts," and begun the course on "Charity," and we are also working on the "Te Dominum," arranged in Hebrew. Certain Hebrew selections are being set to the various parts of the music so that soon we will have a Hebrew "Te Dominum."

     Our pastor was away on December 3d attending the Assembly at Bryn Athyn. C. M. L.

     WASHINGTON, D. C. The Washington circle continues to receive visits from the Rev. Alfred Acton about every eight weeks. Our members are so few that the departure of Mr. Hubert Hicks to Bryn Athyn is felt as a great loss. However, we are glad to say that Mr. Miltiades Glenn is recovering after a long, severe illness, and as long as he remains in Washington we hope to have him at our meetings.

     At the doctrinal class Friday evening, November 24th, we had a most interesting time in the discussion of questions incident to Mr. Rey Gill's article in the LIFE On the "Bodies of Spirits and Angels." On Sunday, November 26th, Mr. Acton preached his second sermon on the fifth chapter of Matthew concerning conjugial love.

     We are looking forward to celebrating the founding of the Academy on January 14th. D. E. L.

     PITTSBURGH, PA, During the early winter season we have been occupied with our usual activities. The ladies in their two organizations, the Ladies' Society and the Theta Alpha, have busied themselves with the temporal welfare of the society as results have tended to show. The Philosophy Club is-as ever-active.

     The Doctrinal Classes this fall have been of great interest to us. The subjects have been varied, including the consideration of several papers which have appeared lately in the LIFE. The discussions concerning them have been generally entered into by many of those present.

     For the first time a service was held on Thanksgiving Day. It was beautiful in its simplicity and filled a long felt want.

     The Rev. J. E. Bowers preached the sermon on the following Sunday. We hope that the time of his next visit will not be too far away.     B. P. O. E.

     CINCINNATI, O. In some respects the meetings in Cincinnati seemed better this month (November) than heretofore. It was not that the attendance was any larger or that there were any new prospects of external growth, but there seemed to linger from the Bishop's visit last month a feeling of stability and quiet confidence; a realization that our work is fully justified if the Church is being truly established in ourselves and our children.

     Besides our two services for adults we had four classes with children in three different families, it being impossible to get the children together. There were also several interesting talks with members of Convention about our distinctive doctrines and our work to save the children of the Church.

     SANDOVAL, ILL. At Sandoval we have held three services for adults and two classes for children, and the Holy Supper has been administered to six communicants. My yearly visits to Sandoval are always a great pleasure. Nowhere do I find a warmer love for the Church and her doctrine than with Mrs. Sherman and her two daughters, Miss Ellen and Miss Alice. There were thirteen children and adults at the Sunday services, all Shermans.

     OLNEY, ILL. A parlor service was conducted here,-the sermon presenting the First Essential of Charity, namely, shunning evils as sins. Nine were present and the meeting was a thoroughly enjoyable one. Hardly half a dozen active members of the New Church are left in Olney, but these read and love the Writings. meeting for this purpose every Sunday morning. W. L. GLADISH.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. On November 1st the monthly institution of the community, known as the "Steinfest," took place and was fully occupied with interesting accounts of early days in the church so far as individual experiences went.

     On the seventh was inaugurated a dancing class for old and young under the auspices of the social committee. Miss Grace Benson, of the University of Chicago, was the teacher.

     On November 13th the class in Philosophy began with a lesson on the Suprarenal Capsules, and is to be continued upon various subjects through the winter. A military euchre party was given and this, with the Thanksgiving services and the children's celebration of the same holiday in the afternoon, filled up a busy and profitable month.

     On December 9th a Christmas bazaar was held, booths were erected with beautiful and appropriate decorations and a choice lot of home-made productions were offered for sale. The sum realized was large.

     The Friday suppers have been well attended and the instruction in the classes highly appreciated. One of these was a conversational evening instead of the usual class; the subject of "Work" was chosen and agreeably discussed by a number of the gentlemen present. J. B. S. K.

     DENVER, COL. During July and August the regular work of our local church was suspended, but we had three picnics, and a day school for the younger children. The work in the day school sessions was entirely of a religious character, combined with recess periods of supervised play.

     The Hallowe'en social, given at the chapel, was very successful, old and young participating in the frivolities. It was altogether a lively, jolly affair, including shooting matches, guessing contests, pie eating contests, and various other trials of skill or appetite, fourteen prizes being awarded at the end of the evening.

     On Thanksgiving Day eighteen adults and thirteen children assembled at the chapel, and at 3 o'clock all sat down to a very plentiful dinner. On this occasion there were papers and speeches, and poems (not original), and afterwards general conversation and a game of progressive whist for the adults, while the children were entertained with stories. About ten of our folks were unable to be present on this joyous occasion.

     On November 9th our oldest member departed for the spiritual world, after many months of sickness. Mrs. Tyler was beloved by all and we miss her. A memorial service was held on November 12th at the chapel.

     In September we sent our first boy, Harry Tyler, to the Academy Schools, and we now feel a closer bond to the center of the church.

     And, lastly, we have purchased a fine organ, which is giving great satisfaction in our services of worship. F. E. G.

     THE MISSIONARY FIELD. Since my last notes were written for the LIFE, visits were made in November as follows:

     Near Captina, W. Va., with Mr. Quincy Cresap and family on the 7th and 8th. Mr. Cresap decided to be a regular reader of the LIFE, and subscribed for our vigorous New Church journal.

     At Welcome, W. Va., with Mr. Geo. T. Peters and family, the 8th and 9th. These friends are not yet members of the Church, but they always manifest an interest in talks on the Doctrines.

     At Clarington, O., the day was spent with our aged brother, Mr. Frederick Waelchli, on the 9th. The visit with him was evidently appreciated, and he is warmly interested in the Church.

     In Bellaire, O., at the home of Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Yost and Mrs. O. C. Pollock, services were held on Sunday, the 12th, and the Holy Supper was administered. One member of our Wheeling circle was away on a visit in Chicago at the time.

     In Columbiana, O., with Mrs. B. Renkenberger and Mr. T. A. Renkenberger, on the 13th and 14th. In our conversation the evening seemed to pass very quickly.

     At Eureka, O., with Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Wunderlin, 14th till the 16th. Their son, Mr. Archie C. Wunderlin and family, live in an adjoining house. In the evenings they came and took Part in our talks.

     In the city of Youngstown, O., with Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Renkenberger, 16th till 20noth. The first visit with them since they came from the farm, where their home was for more than half a century, to live in town. A service was held at the house, Sunday 19th Three daughters and two sons-in-law, who also live in the city, were present at the meeting.

     At Greenford, O., with Mrs. Mary and Miss Lydia Rhodes, 20th to 23d They are the only surviving members of our Church now in that village; but they are earnestly interested in the Doctrines the same as ever.

     In Warren, O., with Mr. and Mrs. E. P. Goodrich, 23d till 24th. A neighbor lady caller, in the evening, for the first time heard explanations of somepoints of New Church doctrine, and expressed herself as interested.

     Again at Eureka, O., with Mr. Jacob Renkenberger and family, 24th to 28th. Sunday 26th service was held in the home, ten persons being present, who, with only one exception, are members of the General Church.

     In Leechburg, Pa., with Dr. U. O. Heilman and family, 28th till December 1st. Four members of the family are now away from home, two of them at Bryn Athyn. Bessie, the youngest of the three daughters, is the fourth member of the family as a student in the Academy.

And this fact is evidence that our School at the head center of the General Church is well appreciated by the Heilmans, as it is by many others who have had similar experiences. J. E. BOWERS.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES. The Rev. J. K. Smyth was present as a visitor at the meeting of the Ohio New Church Woman's Alliance in Lakewood, October 14th, and told of his experience in visiting the Woman's Alliance in London. He advised the ladies not to discuss suffrage nor the "Academy question" in the meetings.

     The Rev. Percy Billings is temporarily filling the pulpit of the Kenwood Parish, Chicago.

     The receivers of the New Church in Kansas City, Mo., have recently completed the formal organization of a society, consisting of 35 members, who are led by Mr. W. B. Murray, who is taking the correspondence course of the Convention Theological School. The society will probably affiliate with the Illinois or Kansas Association and thereby become connected with the General Convention.

     The society in Louisville, Ky., has discontinued services, as three of the most active members, together with their families, have moved from the city, and the remaining members feel that they are too few to make any efforts to continue the work of the Church.

     The Indianapolis society, which recently lost the services of the Rev. H. C. Small, labors under the additional disadvantage of having the title of the church property under question in the Supreme Court of Indiana.

     The society in Brookline, Mass., which for some time has been without a regular pastor, has made arrangements with the Newtonville society, whereby the Brookline pulpit will be alternately filled by the Rev. John Goddard and the Rev. E. M. L. Gould, the pastor and assistant pastor of the Newtonville society.

     SWITZERLAND. Prof. Charles Byse, of Lausanne, who for a number of years has been at work proclaiming certain of the Doctrines of the New Church in the French-speaking cantons of Switzerland, is at present engaged in delivering a course of lectures on Swedenborg on Wednesday evenings.

The first lecture, November 8th, had for its topics: "Swedenborg admired by eminent minds in the 18th century-Chief disciples during his life-Influence after his death-Spontaneous rise and development of the 'New Church'-Its actual importance; distinctive characteristics-What hinders it from revolutionizing the world-Premonitory signs of a great future." The lectures are free, with a collection to defray expenses.
LORD'S DAY 1912

LORD'S DAY Rev. W. F. PENDLETON 1912

Announcements.

     In order to understand the full significance and use of the Lord's Day or Christian Sabbath, it is necessary to have a knowledge of the Sabbath in the Israelitish Church, and the reason for the change from the one to the other, a change which was inaugurated by the Lord Himself when in the world, and which began on the day He rose from the dead.

     It is believed by many that the Sabbath began with the Jewish dispensation, but we are told that it was in existence in the ancient churches, (A. E. 54), and, therefore, it was not anything new, but was among the representatives already existing adopted by the Lord in order that the ancient church might be restored in outward form with the children of Israel. For it is in the order of Providence that every new state of life should connect with that which precedes it; so it is the law in the establishment of churches, that every new beginning should be from the truths left in the old; and even the external worship of a church begins with certain forms selected from among those of the preceding church.

     It is easy to see that in the very inauguration of external worship with the ancient peoples, the seventh day of the week would be given a most prominent place among representatives; for was it not said that "on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he rested from all His works which God created and made." (Gen. ii. 2, 3.) After reading these words we need not be surprised at the teaching that the solemn observance of the seventh day of the week was among the holiest representatives of the ancient church, and that it was made equally holy in the restoration of the external ritual of the ancient church with the Israelites We find the holy observances of the seventh day commanded immediately on their departure from Egypt in the institution of the Passover.

There was to be an entire week of holy festival observance beginning with the first day and closing with the seventh. (Exod. xii. 15.) "Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast unto the Lord." (Exod. xiii. 6.) And in the wilderness they were expressly commanded not to gather manna on the seventh day, because that day was "the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." They were told to gather on the sixth day the bread of two days, and on the seventh day every man was to abide in his place, and no man was to be allowed to go out of his place on that day. (Exod. xvi. 22-30.)

In the passages quoted the holy observance of the seventh day, or the Sabbath, is spoken of as a thing already in existence, and this is notable in the bound and solemn institution of the Sabbath in the Israelitish Church, as their great day of worship which took place upon Mount Sinai itself in the giving of the Ten Commandments; and we note also that so important was the day that the observance of it takes its place as the third commandment, following the first and the second, which enjoined the worship of one God. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy; six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." Then the reason is given for the solemn celebration of the day, "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath Day and hallowed it." (Exod. xx. 8-11.) The Sabbath, therefore, was to be a holy feast day to be celebrated in memory of the creation of the world, or in the spiritual sense of the glorification of the Human of the Lord; but in the inaugural institution of the Sabbath at the time of the first passover in Egypt the day is to be celebrated in commemoration of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, or in the spiritual sense of the deliverance or redemption of the human race from the power and dominion of hell.

     As a great festival day the Sabbath had, therefore, been in use for a long period before the Israelitish Church began, and when it was instituted after the departure from Egypt and at Mount Sinai, it was spoken of as something already in existence and perfectly well known. And in its institution in the Israelitish Church it was to represent the same things it had represented in the Ancient Church, the glorification of the Lord when He was to come into the world and the Redemption then to be effected by Him. The Sabbath, therefore, was a divine institution or divinely instituted at the creation itself and at Mount Sinai in order to represent the entire divine work accomplished by the Lord when He should come into the world.

     All the things done on the day were to be representatively in accord with the divine purpose in its institution. It was to be a day of rest from labors, an entire cessation from worldly occupation, as we see from the third Commandment and elsewhere. No work at all was to be done. They were not to do any cooking on that day; for all the food used on the Sabbath was to be prepared on the sixth day. (Exod. xvi. 23.) They were not permitted even to kindle a fire upon the Sabbath Day. (Exod. xxxv. 3.) Everything done on that day was to be of a religions character. It was to be a day of priestly ministration and worship by the people. The priests were to rearrange the table of shew bread. The twelve leaves, set in two rows, were to be removed, and fresh leaves put in their place; the old leaves were then appropriated to the use of the priests. (Lev. xxiv. 5-9) There were also to be sacrificial offerings, every Sabbath, as we read, "On the Sabbath Day two lambs of the first year without spot, and two tenth deals of flour for a meat offering, mingled with oil, and the drink offering thereof. This is the burnt offering of every Sabbath, beside the continual burnt offering, and his drink offering." (Numb. xxviii. 9, 10.)

     The people were also to meet on the Sabbath, especially at the time of the passover, in a religious assembly, in the court of the tabernacle.

"In the first day [of the Passover] there shall be an holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation unto you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you." (Exod. xii. 14.)

So important was the day that its observance was enforced by severe punishments, even with the penalty of death, as we read in Exodus, "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the Lord; whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death." (xxxv. 2.)

We read also in Exodus that "the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also to the children of Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the Sabbath, therefore; for it is holy unto you; every one that profaneth it shall surely be put to death; for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord; whosoever doeth any work on the Sabbath Day, he shall surely be put to death. Wherefore, the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant." (xxxi. 12-16.) And we read in the Book of Numbers that "while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath Day." The man was brought to Moses, who decreed that he should be put to death. "And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded Moses." (xv. 32-26.) The representation of the Lord, and the divine work He was to accomplish when He came into the world, must be preserved in its purity, for by it heaven was present, communication of heaven with the world continued, and the very existence of the human race on the earth preserved. This holy representation must, therefore, be kept intact and pure until the coming of the Lord, and the Jews must be held to it by severe punishments when they violated or disobeyed the law of worship; for it was better that a few men should die than the whole human race should perish.

It is necessary to know somewhat of these particulars concerning the Jewish Sabbath, in order to fully understand the Sabbath of the Christian church, and the distinction between the two. That there is such a distinction, that the Christian Sabbath is not the same as the Jewish, and was not intended to be the same, is evident from the fact that the day itself was changed, namely, from the seventh to the first day of the week, which latter was the day on which the Lord rose from the dead, and which on that account was called the Lord's day. There was not only a change in the day of the week, but also in the significance and use of the day. For as we have shown the Sabbath in the Jewish church was a wholly representative day, and as such was the most holy thing in their externals of worship. The word itself signifies rest or cessation from labor, and it represents the spiritual rest which follows the labors of temptation, and in the supreme sense the glorification of the Lord, His victory over the hells and His conjunction with the human race.

We wish now to consider the Christian Sabbath and its use, but let us first inquire into the meaning given to the day. It is usually called Sunday or the Sabbath, also the first day of the week; but the name of greatest significance is the Lord's Day, especially because of its use by John in the opening chapter of the Apocalypse. He says, "I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day, and heard behind be a great voice, as of trumpet," and turning he saw the Lord as the Son of Man, and then followed the wonderful series of representations which he saw in the spiritual world as recorded in the Apocalypse. We note here that the day is primarily called the Lord's Day for a spiritual reason, namely, because it represents the state in which the Lord is seen as a Divine Man and the spiritual world opened to the rational sight of man, this being the one end and purpose of the day. But this day, the first day of the week, is called the Lord's Day in the natural historical sense, because the Lord rose from the dead on that day, and on that day was first seen as a glorified or Divine Man. On that first day of the Divine revealing after the sepulcher, He caused Himself to appear to Mary Magdalene and the other woman, to Peter, to the two disciples in the evening on their way to Emmaus, and finally to the apostles in the upper room.

All these happenings on the first day of His resurrection, in addition to the fact of the resurrection itself do certainly give to the day a significance marked and distinguished; and, as we have already indicated, the Lord's Day is spiritually the state in which the Lord is seen as the Son of Man, or as the Word and in the Divine things of His Word.

That there was a significance to be attached to the day on which the Lord arose from the sepulchre must have at once impressed the minds of the disciples; for we find them gathered together on the very first recurrence of the day, one week afterward, as we read in the Gospel of John, "And after eight days again His disciples were within," and the glorified Lord again appeared to them, "then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace be unto you." (John xx. 26); and then He instructed them concerning Himself, His divine character and mission, causing Thomas to exclaim, who had been in doubt, "My Lord and my God!" (xx. 28.) We see here and from what occurred on the day of the resurrection, that the Lord's Day was inaugurated by Him as a day of instruction in the things concerning Himself and His kingdom, and it seems altogether probable that the day continued to be observed from that time as day for gathering together and for instruction in the things of the Word.

In the Acts of the Apostles we read that on the day of Pentecost the apostles "were all with one accord in one place." The day of Pentecost "in that year fell on the first day of the week." (SMITH.) This was the great day of their enlightenment and preparation to proclaim the spiritual kingdom of God; and the day of Pentecost thus became one of the feast days of the Christian Church. The evidence seems to be complete that after the day of Pentecost, the first day of the week, the Lord's Day became a day of assembling for the sake of eating together and for the sake of instruction. Hence we read again in the Book of Acts that "On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued his speech until midnight." (xx 7.) And Paul writing to the Christians at Corinth said, "Now concerning the collections for the saints, as I have given order to the churches in Galatea, even so do ye.

Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him." (I. Cor. xvi. 12.) It is also well known that the agape, or feast of charity with the early Christians, was on the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, sometimes preceding and sometimes following the administration of the Holy Supper. The day also began to be called Solis Dies, or the Sun's Day, from which we have Sunday. This designation of the day was adopted by the early Christians from the Roman Calendar. It had been a day sacred to Apollo, the god of the sun. We are not surprised, therefore, that John in the Apocalypse should speak of the Lord's Day as a day well known by its observance. "I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day."

In order to understand fully the distinction between the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian, it is necessary to see clearly that it is the appearance and presence of the Lord, and the manner of it, that determines the quality of worship, and hence that the worship will vary according to that divine appearance and presence. This was not the same in the Jewish Church as in the Christian, or not the same before the coming of the Lord as it was after His coming, and hence the character of the observances on the great religious day of the two churches could not be the same. Before the advent the presence of the Lord was veiled by representatives of Him. He was not actually present in the natural with men. Their state was such that He could not approach them except through a representative veil. He had not yet accommodated His Divine to the natural thought and life of men. But when He came into the world, it was no longer necessary to represent His presence, since by His glorification He became actually present in the natural world. The representatives of Him, therefore, ceased, and the Sabbath was not to be any more a day for the representative worship of the Lord but for the actual worship of Him by the spiritual truths of His Word.

When it is said that the representative worship of the Lord ceased with His coming, it is not meant that representatives were abolished to the extent of a complete wiping out of all representation, but that representatives were no longer to be the chief thing of worship, or the chief mode of approaching the Lord.

Rational or spiritual truths were now to be the means of approach, and representatives so far as they remained were to be instrumental to them and lead to them. Representatives did in fact remain for this subordinate and instrumental use, and hence the day of the Sabbath was still to be representative in an important sense; for the two great representatives of Baptism, and the Holy Supper remained, and in them were summarized the entire worship of the Ancient Church, and out of them were to grow forms of worship for the Christian Church, adapted to its needs and uses. There were still to be some who needed to be led by representatives to the worship of the Lord, such as children and adults in states similar to that of children; and even those who are intelligent and progressing to interior wisdom continually return into states in which there is need of the representative worship of the Lord. It is important to understand, therefore, that the use of representatives in worship could not be wholly set aside in the sense of being blotted out, but that they were still to fill an essential though subordinate place in divine worship. The teaching of doctrine from the Word was now to occupy the first: place, and hence the Sabbath was to become a day of instruction, and not merely a day of representation; and representatives, so far as they were used, were to lead and prepare the mind for instruction, and by instruction for the spiritual uses and needs of the daily life, that is, for internal worship. The sermon, or the spiritual exposition of the Word, began now to occupy the central place in worship, and all other things of worship were preparatory to it. The Lord's presence was to be set forth, not as before chiefly by representatives, but by truth of doctrine from the Word, rationally presented and rationally seen and understood.

In order to bring about this essential change in the great day of worship, not only was another day in the week selected, but a remarkable thing occurred; the Lord Himself broke the Sabbath and taught His disciples to do the same. But let us note, however, that the Sabbath which the Lord broke and abolished was not now the holy Sabbath of the ancient church, for the ancient Sabbath was no more; that Sabbath had been profaned by the Jews, and from it the real worship of the Lord had departed.

The Lord did indeed abrogate the ancient Sabbath as a merely representative day, but He especially abolished the Sabbath of the Jews which had now become a profane thing and must come to an end. Because He did this, and because, as the Jews said, He made Himself equal with God, that is, declared that He Himself was Lord also of the Sabbath Day, thus the one
only object of worship on that day, the Jews wanted to kill Him. (John v. 18.) We read that He openly taught on the Sabbath Day in the temple and in the synagogues, and in this manner He Himself inaugurated the use of the new Christian Sabbath. (Mark vi. 2; Luke iv. 16, 31, 32; xiii. 10.) On the Sabbath Day He said to the man who had an infirmity thirty and eight years, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. (John v. 8.) On the Sabbath Day He healed the man with the withered hand. (Matth. xii. 10.) On the Sabbath Day He healed the woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years. (Luke xiii. 11-13.) On the Sabbath Day He healed a certain man who had the dropsy. (Luke xiv. 2-4.) On the Sabbath Day he healed a man who was born blind. (John ix. 14.) And we read further that once "He went through the corn fields on the Sabbath Day; and His disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. And the Pharisees said unto Him, Behold, why do they on the Sabbath Day that which is not lawful? And He said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when He had need, and was an hungered, he and they that were with him? How he went into the house of God, in the days of Abrathor the high priest, and did eat the shew bread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them that were with him? And He said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; therefore, the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath." (Mark ii. 23-28.) It will be seen, therefore, that the Lord in doing these things was acting contrary to the letter of the Mosaic law in respect to the Sabbath, which was a sign that the Jewish Sabbath was now to be abolished; and what the Lord did in abolishing it was a sign of what was to be done on the Christian Sabbath; namely, that it was still to be a day of worship, but also and especially a day of instruction. For as we have seen He healed the sick on the Sabbath Day, by which was parted. The Lord did indeed abrogate the ancient Sabbath as a merely representative day, but He especially abolished the Sabbath of the Jews which had now become a profane thing and must come to an end. Because He did this, and because, as the Jews said, He made Himself equal with God, that is, declared that He Himself was Lord also of the Sabbath Day, thus the one only object of worship on that day, the Jews wanted to kill Him. (John v. 18.) We read that He openly taught on the Sabbath Day in the temple and in the synagogues, and in this manner He Himself inaugurated the use of the new Christian Sabbath. (Mark vi. 2. Luke iv. 16, 31, 32; xiii. 10.) On the Sabbath Day He said to the man who had an infirmity thirty and eight year, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. (John v. 8.) On the Sabbath Day He healed the man with the withered hand. (Matth. xii. 10.) On the Sabbath Day He healed the woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years. (Luke xiii. 11-13.) On the Sabbath Day He healed a certain man who had the dropsy. (Luke xiv. 2-4.) On the Sabbath Day he healed a man who was born blind. (John ix. 14.) And we read further that once "He went through the corn fields on the Sabbath Day; and His disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. And the Pharisees said unto Him, Behold, why do they on the Sabbath Day that which is not lawful? And He said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when He had need, and was an hungered, he and they that were with him? How he went into the house of God, in the days of Abrathor the high priest, and did eat the shew bread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests and gave also to them that were with him? And He said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; therefore, the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath." (Mark ii. 23-28.) It will be seen, therefore, that the Lord in doing these things was acting contrary to the letter of the Mosaic law in respect to the Sabbath, which was a sign that the Jewish Sabbath was now to be abolished; and what the Lord did in abolishing it was a sign of what was to be done on the Christian Sabbath; namely, that it was still to be a day of worship, but also and especially a day of instruction. For as we have seen He healed the sick on the Sabbath Day, by which was represented the spiritual healing which is effected by instruction in the spiritual things of His kingdom; and He did also actually teach them these same things on the Sabbath Day.

That the Lord's Day was to become in the Christian Church primarily a day of instruction, the teaching of the Writings is clear and explicit. In explaining the meaning of the words of John, "I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day," we are told that by them is signified "influx from the Lord, for on that day is the presence of the Lord, because the day is holy," (A. R. 36); the words also "signify a spiritual state in which there is revelation," and it is explained that by a spiritual state is meant "a state in which spirits and angels are," (A. E 53); again, that "by the Lord's Day is signified Divine influx or a state in which the Lord instructs man, thus when He inflows." (A. E. 54.) It is then added in the same number that "the Lord's Day is the day of the Sabbath; and the Sabbath in the ancient churches which were representative churches, was the most holy thing of worship, because it signified the union of the Divine and Human in the Lord, and thence also the conjunction of His Divine Human with heaven. But after the Lord united His Divine with His Human, then that holy representative ceased, and the day was made a day of instruction. Hence it is that revelation was made to John on the Lord's Day. Revelation then is instruction concerning the state of the church;" and we learn further that "the Lord, when He was in the world, and united His Human to His Divine, abrogated the Sabbath as to representative worship, or as to the worship of Him such as it was with the Israelitish people, and made the Sabbath Day a day of instruction in the doctrine of faith and love." (A. C. 10360.) Again we are taught that "the day of the Sabbath is not at this day representative, bet is a day of instruction." (A. E. 965)

Finally, in the explanation of the third commandment in the True Christian Religion, we have the teaching that "when the Lord called into the world, and thence the representations of Him ceased, that day became a day of instruction in Divine things, and thus also a day of rest from labors, and of meditation on such things as are of salvation and eternal life; as also a day of love toward the neighbor." (n. 301.)

     Thus we learn that the spiritual signification of the Lord's Day, is used in the Apocalypse, is the same thing as the use that is to be performed on that day when the church is in order. This signification, or the use to be performed on that day, is in a summary of the teaching as follows:

     On that day the Lord is present; the day is holy; on that day there is influx from the Lord; the day was made a day of instruction, and that revelation is instruction concerning the state of the church; on that day the Lord instructs man and thus He inflows; on that day there is a spiritual state in which revelation is made, and by a spiritual state ii meant a state in which spirits and angels are present, who being present, man the doctrines of faith and love; hence the Sabbath is not now a representative day but a day of instruction in divine things, and on this account it is necessarily day of rest from labors; it is also a day of meditation on the things of salvation and eternal life as also a day of love to the neighbor.

     We see, then, that instruction in divine things is the one central thing of the Christian Sabbath, the end for which all other things are the means and preparation But there is internal preparation as well as external. Internal preparation has respect to the daily life or the life of charity, the life of repentance and temptation, the life of use, all of which is called in the Writings internal worship, and which prepares man to be instructed by the Lord. But external preparation has respect to the things of external worship. There must be rest from labors, a condition of rest both of mind and of body. The day is a holy day, as we are told, and hence there must be a holy sphere of worship in order to prepare the mind to be taught of the Lord. To this end certain forms of worship are necessary, which are in their nature representative, and which beget a sphere of holiness. When there is such a sphere entering and inspiring affection, the mind is opened to the Lord, and the truths, given by instruction from Him, penetrate interiorly. For the instruction which is then given is indeed by the instrumentality of man, but is really by the Lord; for the Lord from within gives a perception of the truths that are taught. No man is really taught unless there can be given him a perception of the things presented to his mind by instruction.

This perception the Lord can give him if he has been suitably prepared; without preparation of the mind by a holy sphere of worship, a sermon is nothing more than an ordinary lecture, like that given by a professor to his class, and the exposition of the Word of God is placed on the same level with instruction from any other source. It is a fact, however, that when the mind has been affected by a holy sphere, generated by the forms of worship from the Word, there is a more interior opening of the understanding; for a holy sphere is a sphere of delight, and delight is what opens the interiors of the mind and causes it to be perceptive of truth. For the same reason the day was made a day for mediation, which accompanies and follows instruction.

     Finally, we read that the Christian Sabbath was made also a day of love to the neighbor. It is first made a day of love to the Lord, and then a day of love to the neighbor. It is made a day of love to the Lord by worship and instruction; for in all the forms of ritual and worship, and in all instruction from the Word, the mind is kept looking to the Lord rather than to the neighbor. But the one love is not complete without the other, and so we are told that the Sabbath is also to be a day of love to the neighbor.

     We have already noted the fact that the early Christians held their love feasts or feasts of charity, on the Sabbath, and that these feasts were either preceded or followed by the administration of the Holy Supper. The love feast so held was a kind of banquet or supper, "in which they encouraged one another to continue in the worship of the Lord from a sincere heart," (T. C. R. 727); and "the spiritual sphere reigning in those feasts was a sphere of love to the Lord and of love towards the neighbor, which exhilarated the mind of every one, softened the sound of every speech, and brought festivity from the heart into all the senses." (T. C. R. 433.)

     From the fact that love to the Lord was conjoined with love to the neighbor in the feast, two things are evident: first, that the sphere of love to the Lord was carried over into it from the worship of the day; and, second, that the spiritual love of the neighbor is what is meant. For it is the idea of God and love to Him that makes all things spiritual that makes love to the neighbor a spiritual love when associated with it.

When, therefore, it is said that the Christian Sabbath is also to be a day of love to the neighbor, we are to understand a spiritual love of the neighbor; for the days of the week are for the natural love of the neighbor; and because the mind then descends into the sphere of the natural world, the week day life is also a period when the combats of temptation take place; but on the Sabbath there is to be rest, both natural and spiritual, and elevation into a sphere of spiritual thought and affection. When such a sphere of worship is reached, the Church will be in the full fruition of the purpose involved in the institution of the Christian Sabbath, for it will be both a day of love to the Lord and of love to the neighbor,-a day of love to the Lord in its worship and instruction, and a day of love to the neighbor in its feasts of charity.

JOHN BIGELOW AS A NEW CHURCHMAN 1912

JOHN BIGELOW AS A NEW CHURCHMAN Rev. WILLIAM HYDE ALDEN 1912

     On the 19th of December last there passed into the spiritual world John Bigelow, journalist, diplomat, author, philosopher, at the age of ninety-four years.

     It is the present purpose to deal with him primarily, not in any of these capacities, but simply in his relation to the New Church; not to the New Church as an organization, for, so far as I am aware, he was not a member of the organized New Church, and with its external work he was associated only in a slight degree; but his relation to the New Church as a matter of faith and life.

     His belief in the New Church was not a matter of heredity or environment. His parents were of sturdy Presbyterian stock, and his own biographical references to fears of Sabbath breaking, accentuated by "the sight of an enormous copperhead snake, all coiled up with his head erected and perfectly ready for business" in an old stump where he was about to pick certain tempting clusters of strawberries one Sunday morning, indicate that his early training was of a Puritan sort.

     His first contact with Swedenborg's Writings occurred apparently by accident, when he was about thirty-seven years of age. He had been detained by a cholera quarantine in the Island of St. Thomas, of the Danish West Indies. The story may best be told in his own words in his RETROSPECTIONS OF AN ACTIVE LIFE:

     Owing to my preoccupation with the preparations for our departure from St. Thomas, I failed to make any record in my diary of quite the most important event which occurred to me in the course of my visit to the Antilles in the winter of 1853-4. During the second week of my sojourn on the island of St. Thomas, Mr. Kierolf* and I chanced both to be seated in the spacious, but then otherwise deserted dining-hall of Bonelli's Hotel, he at one end and I at the other, both with books in our hands.

I was reading the Bible. I had read everything readable that I had brought with me from home, and had bought and read everything readable in the solitary book-store at St. Thomas. I had done the island thoroughly, and my Bible was all that was left upon which to expend my superfluity of leisure. It so happened that I was reading the twelfth chapter of Genesis, which gives the account of Abram, who had been driven by a famine into Egypt. When I had finished the chapter I said to Mr. Kierolf, "Is it not extraordinary that this book should be accepted by the most highly civilized nations of the earth as the Word of God? Just listen," I then read the verse in which the patriarch passed off Sarah, his wife, for his sister.
     * The Writings of Swedenborg were introduced into the Danish West Indies by a Swedish jurist, Mr. H. G. Linberg, who had taken a prominent part in the early New Church movements in Stockholm and Philadelphia, He resided for some time in Harrisburg, Pa., but in 1830 became Judge of the High Court of St. Croix; his first converts were two brothers, Carl A. Kierulff and U. Kierulff, attorneys-at-law in the neighboring island of St. Thomas. A small New Church Society was organized in 1841, and maintained itself for many years, but is now extinct.-C. TH.

     "This Abram," said I, "is the man whom it is pretended the Lord selected from all the people of the earth as most deserving of His favor, and promised to make of him a great nation; to bless them that bless him; to curse them that curse him, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed. And yet almost the first thing we hear of him is his commanding his wife to tell a falsehood, which inevitably exposed her to insult and degradation, apparently for the sole purpose of saving himself from apprehended, but as the event proved, imaginary dangers. Does not the Egyptian, whom the Bible represents as the oppressor of God's people, appear, according to our standards at least, to have been the better man of the two?"

     "Well, yes," replied Mr. Kierolf, "it does appear so at first."

     "But," said I, "does it not appear so all the time?"

     Mr. Kierolf seemed to rather avoid a direct answer to my question, and, in turn, asked me if I had ever read any of the writings of Swedenborg. I said that I could not say that I had. "Well," said Mr. Kierolf, "in his ARCANA COELESTIA Swedenborg has given an exposition of the chapter you have been reading, which, perhaps, would satisfy you that there is more in it than you seem to suspect." I intimated mildly that there was no obscurity about the meaning, and that I did not see how any one could get any impression of those verses different from mine. Mr. Kierolf then went on to explain something about an interior meaning and spiritual correspondence, etc. Failing entirely to understand what he was talking about, I asked him if he had the work to which he referred. He said he had it somewhere, but he was not sure that he had it with him in his luggage at the hotel; he would see. He left the room and after a little returned with the first volume of the ARCANA COELESTIA, which contained, as I found on examination, Swedenborg's exposition of the verses of which we had been speaking.

After running my eyes over the title-page and preface and some introductory paragraphs to the twelfth chapter, I read what he proceeded to give as the internal sense of the chapter which arrested my attention. I then read Swedenborg's exposition of that he terms the interior or spiritual meaning of each verse, I might say of almost every word of each, verse of the chapter, occupying forty-five broad octave pages. I could not make much out of his exegesis, but I was a little disappointed in one respect.

     Nothing was further from my thoughts than to suppose that in this book, written over a hundred years ago, of which I had never before seen a copy, and to which, in my not inconsiderable and varied reading of the English classics, I had rarely seen an allusion, I should find anything that could change or in the least modify my opinion of Abram or of the Bible. I read from curiosity merely, expecting to drop the book as soon as I came to something-and I did not in the least doubt soon should-that would be so absurd, or improbable or illogical, as would justify me, without rudeness, in returning the book to my Danish friend with thanks.

     Though I understood but imperfectly, what I read, I did not find what I was looking for; I found nothing that 1 could point to with confidence and say, "There you see your man Swedenborg must have been either a fool or an impostor, or both." On, the other hand, I did find several curious and striking things which piqued my curiosity for example, his opening comments on the first verse of the chapter showed me that, at least, I was following a thoughtful guide. I had neither heard nor read anything like it before. [The account then goes on to quote in full n. 1408 of the ARCANA, and continues:]

     This idea, that the Word had degrees of significance which varied and expanded in exact proportion to the spirituality of a man's life was one which had never crossed my mind before, in a way to distinguish the Bible from Dante or Plate, and it seemed to me as though there might perhaps be something in it-but what. And how does he know, and what are the proofs? Still I could not say this is nonsense; this is unscriptural," though the distinction made between the chapters preceding the twelfth and those following, by which it was claimed that the narratives of the first eleven chapters of the Old Testament, embracing the careers of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel, the deluge, the building of the tower of Babel, etc., "were not matters of true history," had somewhat of a heretical, not to say profane ring. I was, however, so pleased to find that anyone had found a way of retaining his faith in the divine origin of the Bible, without being obliged to accept the account of the creation as history, that I did not feel like having Swedenborg burned as a heretic for that. In spite of these redeeming features in his writings, however, I did not, in the least, despair of bringing him to the stake before I had done with him. I persuaded myself that he had built up a theosophy from, his imagination, and I know enough to know that no human imagination was capable of producing anything of that kind that would not bristle with weak points, which could not all escape the penetration of even so poor a theologian as I was.

So I turned, to other places to see what he said, for example, of Abram's subsequent misrepresentation to Abimelech, what of Isaac's repetition of the same fraud in Gerar; of the tower of Babel; of Hagar; of Jacob and his mother's scheme to deprive Esau of his birthright. In this way I spent the entire day and looked through the whole volume. Much of it was too mystical to be intelligible to me then, but, to my mortification, it began to dawn upon me that it was unintelligible to me much for the same reason as the "Mechauique Celeste" would have been. While I ran upon many things that were quite new to me and seemed wise, I did not find anything upon which I could move to put the author out of court. On the contrary, the desire to read grew by what it fed on and begat a longing to know something of the author's personality.

I met Mr. Kierolf again at dinner in the evening and said to him that I had spent the day with his friend, Swedenborg, but that the value of what T had read depended so largely upon the tenor of his life and the character he had borne in the flesh that I felt as though, before spending any more time upon his works, I would like to be enlightened upon these points. Mr. Kierolf, therefore, ran over the prominent events of Swedenborg's, life in a rather enthusiastic strain, and wound up by assuring me that no other man in history could be named who had succeeded more completely in delivering himself from the sway of the world, the flesh and the devil; and he was, fortunately, able to supply me from his luggage a collection of documents relating to Swedenborg, compiled by Professor Bush, formerly a professor of Oriental literature at the University of New York, with whom I was not only personally acquainted, but for whom both as a scholar and a man, I had the profoundest respect. The book was entitled DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG,* and consisted chiefly of letters and publications of Swedenborg's contemporaries showing the estimate, and reasons for the estimate, in which he was held by them. I read the book at a sitting, and laid it down with mingled surprise and mortification that I had lived till then in such dense ignorance of the career and work of so remarkable a man, at once so great and so good as Swedenborg was there shown to be, while I had spent so much of my life in trying to make myself familiar with the lives of men unworthy to unloose the latchets of his shoes. Whatever doubts I had entertained of Swedenborg's Good faith and sincerity this book effectually dispelled. He might have been subject to illusions, but I had no longer any suspicions of his being an impostor. These convictions naturally increased my curiosity to know more of his writings and especially of his theology, though still my curiosity was all of a purely intellectual origin and character.
* It was Dr. Im. Tafel's "Documents," Published by Prof. Bush, at New York, 1847.-C. TH. O.

     I asked Mr. Kierolf, who joined with me in employing a schooner to convey us to New Orleans, to take with him whatever books he had about Swedenborg, that I might acquaint myself with them on our voyage, for which we had made final arrangements. More than twenty days elapsed between the time of our departure from St. Thomas and my arrival at New York. I do not recollect but one day in all that interval that I did not pore from ten to twelve hours over those writings. It would not he possible to convey to any one who had not had a similar experience the effect they produced upon me, the almost insane appetite with which I devoured them, the complete revolution they wrought in all my opinions about spiritual matters, and especially about the teachings of the Bible. Though, like the blind man in the Gospel, I as yet saw only men as trees walking, before I reached home I had acquired a thorough conviction that what I had been, reading were not the words of him that hath a devil, and that Swedenborg was "a scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven." It seemed to me that every line I read removed some difficulty, cleared up some doubt, illuminated some mystery, revealed some new spiritual wealth in the Word of which before I had no conception. I felt that my eyes had been opened to a world of which till then I had seen only the reflection or shadow. Before reaching New Orleans I found myself on my knees, exclaiming, "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!"

     Nearly fifty years have elapsed since that voyage, and every year had given me a new sense of my obligations to Swedenborg for the Bible, which was lost and is found, and of the, special Providence that in such a mysterious way introduced me to the acquaintance of Mr. Kierolf.

     During my lifetime I think I am warranted in saying that the changes brought in the theology of the Christian world directly attributable, under Providence, to the teachings of Swedenborg are more important than those wrought in all the ten centuries immediately preceding his birth.

     The reading thus begun was never discontinued. For twenty years after the time of his becoming acquainted with them, he stated in an address as presiding officer of the meeting held in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Society that he spent several hours a day reading Swedenborgian books. The Rev. J. K. Smyth, whose services he regularly attended for years, records that "for years it has been his custom every morning before breakfast to read a chapter from the Bible, and then a few pages from some of Swedenborg's works in the Latin." Mr. Bigelow told Mr. Smyth that "in this way he had gone through the ARCANA COELESTIA several times."

     Mr. Bigelow wrote to Rev. J. F. Potts, under date of July 10, 1910, a letter showing his exalted appreciation and user of the ARCANA. He says in this letter:

     I have been for the last six months devoting more or less than an hour on an average every day to reading your version of the ARCANA COELESTIA, in course; and I am now approaching the end of the 9th volume. The perusal thus far impels me to express my admiration for the manner in which you have discharged your duty as translator. My acquaintance with the ARCANA COELESTIA had before been limited to occasional studies in the old edition, which I acquired many years ago and which, for reasons that perhaps no one was more to blame for than myself, I found usually very tedious. But reading it in course, as I have done in your translation, the ARCANA becomes to my mind, one of the very most important books in print,-I will say perhaps the most important book in print, after the Word. . . . I think it my duty to let you know that I, for one, at least, and I hope there are multitudes who feel as I do, think that the Church is under very great obligations to you personally for the version of the ARCANA which you have given it. No one, however, but a scholar and somewhat familiar with the original text of that book, can understand and appreciate the difficulty of transferring the spiritual revelations of Swedenborg into a tongue so essentially materialistic as ours and preserving any considerable portion of its spirituality.

     The familiarity that you have acquired with the Latin leads me to inquire whether the New Church is not guilty of neglect in not republishing a revised edition of the ARCANA COELESTIA in the original, incorporating in the proper places the note of J. F. Imanuel Tafel so that they may be met with in their proper places or in a note at the foot of their proper pages. The edition of Dr. Jo. Fr. Im. Tafel, published at Tübingen, 1833, is now out of print and very scarce, while the number of people who read Latin in our country is annually increasing, . . . and among these more intelligent classes there ought to be many now and more in due time who would like to read it in the original, and perhaps everyone who could might find an advantage in reading the original text. It is possible you may have considered the subject of such a publication, and like many others have been discouraged by its cost and the limited market of which it could be assured. I think the market would be greater now than is generally supposed by our clergy, who think the Church is not over-liberal in providing for their own expenses, and are therefore inclined to discourage extraordinary expenses. Have you any means of estimating the probable cost?

     In September he wrote again and even more urgently on the same subject:

     I still think, more strongly even than when I wrote you before, that the New Church ought not to give sleep to its eyes nor slumber to its eyelids till it had provided itself with as perfect a copy as possible of the original text of the ARCANA COELESTIA. . . . A perfect text of Swedenborg's version is only of less importance than a perfect original text of the different parts of the Bible.

The longer the fulfilment of such a duty is neglected, not only will the difficulty of executing it be the greater, but the less will be the desire for it, and in due time the original will disappear altogether. . . . Of course, it requires a man thoroughly imbued and in sympathy with New Church literature and in addition it requires a person familiar with the mediaeval Latin of Swedenborg. . . . If the right man could be found I think it would not be impossible to interest enough persons in the enterprise to day for the editorial work and also for printing the ARCANA, as it never has been put as it should be, to endure and to invite the Christian student's attention. . . . Leaving the ARCANA without a perfect and accessible form is like leaving the Ark of the Covenant with the Philistines.

     How far Mr. Bigelow followed up this proposition I do not know, but the suggestion may well have been the inspiration for the recent appeal of the president of the Convention for the preparation of a revised text of the Latin ARCANA, in which the editor should make use of the original first draft preserved by the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm.

     Having missed attendance at service one Sunday, Mr. Bigelow made apology to Mr. Smyth that he had not been well and that his physician had forbidden his leaving home. "And so," he said, "when I could not go out to your pasture, I thought I would hunt about and browse for myself." Mr. Smyth asked him, "What did you find to browse on?" "I read through Clowes' little book on Miracles," he said. "All of it?" asked Mr. Smyth. "Certainly," he replied, "a sheep has more than one stomach, you know." He had even made marginal notes as he went, Mr. Smyth reports, "and he told me that he had about made up his mind to republish the book in an enlarged form as he thought it was just the sort of book for people who are troubled about that subject." (N. C. Mess., Jan. 3, 1912, P. II.)

     He did not take much of an interest in the organization of the Church, its ecclesiasticisms and the questions arising out of its external form and activities. On the same authority that we have already quoted, we know that "he deplored the subjects of controversy that have disquieted the Church. To him Jerusalem was a place of walls and bulwarks and not a place for throwing stones." (Ibid.)

     Further light is thrown upon the attitude of Mr. Bigelow's mind toward the Church by an incident personal to the writer, which may properly be recorded here.

     When in the latter part of the year 1905 I had been compelled to resign the work in the Philadelphia Book Room, a letter setting forth the reasons for this action was printed in the MESSENGER. Upon reading this letter, Mr. Bigelow wrote the following:

     New York Public Library, President's Office, 21 Gramercy Park, December 30, 1905.

     Rev. Wm. H. Alden

     Dear Sir: I read with pain your letter resigning from official connexion with the Philadelphia Bookroom. I think, I am sufficiently familiar with your work there to warrant a fear that you will be greatly missed and very difficult for many years to replace. I was surprised to learn that there are any in the New Church dispersed to rebuke you for your charitable advances towards the colony at Bryn Athyn. I do not know where can be found more intelligent and zealous workers on the broad lines of New Church philosophy, nor do I see any propriety in living aloof from any who accept the Bible as their guide and Swedenborg as its most enlightened interpreter, however we may differ about the chemical properties of Mint and Cummin.

     While I deplore the occasion of your retirement from the Bookroom in Philadelphia, I congratulate you upon the larger sphere of activity and usefulness which it opens to you.
     Yours very Respectfully,
          (Signed.) JOHN BIGELOW.

     To an interviewer who asked him as to his being a Swedenborgian, he answered:

     "I am a great admirer of Swedenborg and believe that he understood the Bible better than anyone except those who wrote it. But I do not like the idea of sect in religious beliefs. I want the Christian Church to open its eyes to the necessity of unity and not waste its energies on sectarianism In this matter Protestants-I dislike that word-could take a lesson from the Roman Catholics." (N. Y. Herald, Oct. 8, 1911.)

     John Bigelow was never worldly wise. Some little anecdotes which there is not space to relate here, which he himself tells, intimate his heedlessness in matters of mere money, and that his first love was for doing uses. Beginning life as a lawyer, a profession not altogether to his taste, it was deserted after a dozen years for journalism, when he became joint editor and proprietor with William Cullen Bryant of the NEW YORK EVENING POST.

In its first year this new engagement gave him an income of $1,500 a year. In twelve years this had increased to $25,000 a year. In the year 1860 he sold out his interest with the intention of retiring to his library and literary work with a modest competence. But with the opening of the Civil War he was sent by President Lincoln as representative of the United States to France, first as Consul at Paris, and later as Minister to France. After his return in 1867 his life was passed in what might be called active retirement. He records of himself that there has not been a time since he left the editorial chair that he was not collecting materials for some projected literary work. He was a trustee under the will of Samuel J. Tilden, and at the time of his death president of the trustees of the New York Public Library. But of these external interests of his life this is not the place to speak. They belong to public record, which is amply made elsewhere.

Although he was in his ninety-fifth year at the date of his death, he was never an old man. A youthful spirit, intense intellectual vigor, and active work continued almost up to the last day of his life in this world.

SWEDENBORG'S DOCTRINE OF FORMS 1912

SWEDENBORG'S DOCTRINE OF FORMS Editor 1912

     CHAPTER VII.

     THE SPIRAL FORM.

     (Continued.)

     The Worship and Love of God.

     "In the circular or spherical form, again, we are enabled to contemplate a certain superior form, which may be called the perpetually circular, or simply the Spiral Form; for to this form is added, still further, something perpetual or infinite, which is not in the former, viz., that its diameters are not bounded or terminate in a certain center, neither are they simple lines, but they terminate in a certain circumference of a circle or superficies of a sphere, which serves it instead of a centre, and that its diameters are bent into a species of a certain curve, by which means this form is the measure of a circular form or forms, as the circular is the measure of the angular." (W. L. G. 6.)

     "The third or spiral form from its determination derives still superior perfection, for it again puts on a kind of perpetuity or infinity, for its radii, inasmuch as they are spires, press circularly, not immediately to any fixed center, but to the superficies of a certain sphere holding the place of its center; thus it is still more accommodated than the former to motion and to variations of form." (W. L. G. 93.)

     "The outermost form, or the common form of thy face, is as it were a tablet on which are inscribed proofs of the rest of the forms, and it corresponds to that form which is called spherical. But the other, or the superior natural form, called spiral, from the wonderful orb of the fluxion of the moving or muscular fibers about the lips of thy mouth and the eyelids of each eye, by the variation of connexions and situations, delineates conspicuously every progression of thy gladness, as it unfolds itself into pleasure in that plane, and at the same time unfolds it into laughter." (W. L. G. 99.)

     "But the fourth form, or the celestial, which is that of our mind, and of its loves, insinuates interiorly into these colorings the rays of a kind of flame, and elevates and kindles the picture with a kind of celestial and spiritual fire, insomuch that the gladness, from the abundance of desire, is so livingly brilliant that everyone seizes it at first view, without the aid of teaching and science." (W. L. G. 99.)

     CHAPTER VIII.

     THE VORTICAL FORM.

     From the work "On the Fibre."

     "The form next higher, prior, and more perfect than the spiral form, is the form perpetually spiral, which is properly to be called vortical. The reason for this denomination is that such forms belong properly to the higher ether which constitutes the great vortex around our earth, inside of which also the moon makes its orbit and periods. I am not unaware what our modern authors think of the existence of this vortex, but their opinion does not matter, when the phenomena themselves convince me that they can never be explained otherwise.

     "For the determinations of this form do not tend by spires, such as in the spiral form to the surface of some circle or sphere, but by means of a perpetual spire, which we call a vortical spire, they endeavor to wind themselves towards some globule or gyre holding the place of the centre of the spiral form, and, indeed, towards its surface. What is the quality of the vortical spire or of the vortical fluxion of spires, can hardly be understood except by the idea of a line composed of the circular and spiral form; for as the spiral line or fluxion is the middle between the circular and the rectilinear fluxion, so the vortical line and fluxion is in the middle between the spiral and circular fluxion; I do not know if this call be expressed otherwise. By this spiral surface they continue or endeavor to continue their fluxions: for whether they continue or endeavor to continue amounts to the same thing; for all the essentials of motion are in the endeavor, and the endeavor is the first and the last in every motion, and on this account it is the very existence and continuation of motion. From this spiral surface they look to the circumference of a circle or to the surface of a sphere by means of spiral radii, precisely as in the perfect spiral form, and from this circle to the verimost center of the sphere.

There is the same ratio between this form and the spiral one as between the spiral form and the circular one; wherefore I use the same terms, applied to the vortical form only by transmutation; (compare the preceding).

"Thus the vortical form determines and enters into the spiral one, and by the spiral one as an intermediary, the circular one, and again by the circular one as an intermediary the angular one which is in the vortical form not actually but potentially. Thus it appears how far the angular form is from the vortical one; so that the latter looks from afar, as it were, to the former which exists in the vortical form not actually but only potentially; nor does the vortical form ever pass into the ultimate (angular) one except by successive derivations. From this it appears how immune the higher, prior and more perfect forms are from injury by the inferior, posterior forms, or by those which in themselves and by their nature are more imperfect. Compared to this (vertical form) even the circular form begins to appear imperfect; because it contains in itself and in its centre the beginning of rest or inertia as well as of gravity; but it is not so with the vortical one and still less with the still higher forms of which we shall speak below. Hence the vortical form is the measure of the spiral form, and thus the form of all the forms which follow. In everyone of them there is some representation or some exemplar, as the ancients said, or some mirror or idea, as our modern philosophers would say, of all the forms that follow, for something call in no wise pass from a prior thing to a posterior one, if there is not some image of it in the prior things; you cannot give to a person what you have not yourself, for it is contrary to nature to produce something from nothing; but that which is given is to be found in the parent,-more remotely according to the distance-whence it is unfolded by successive derivation.

"This vortical form is a form of motion still higher and more perfect than the spiral one, and should preferably be called the superior form of active forces, or of the conatus itself which is in the active forces: for in this form there is no trace of opposition, but something naturally spontaneous.

The reason is that its radii or determinations tend to the surface of the most active or spiral form, and from this to the circle; thus its force of acting increases in a threefold ratio. For the spiral form is able to gyrate around its centre, but the vortical one can gyrate around as many centers as there are points in the circumference of the circle to which it has respect; wherefore the gyration of this form should be called the perpetually central, or, still better, simply vortical. From this also it follows that this form remains still more constantly in its essence than the spiral one. See above on this subject the remarks on the spiral form; the application follows of itself, as it is a chain (series) of consequences. Nevertheless, even these forms can undergo some essential change, like the inferior form, but with difficulty; the greater the difficulty with which they undergo the change, the greater the difficulty, after the change, of restoration to their former perfection. This is indeed a (natural) consequence, for if we suppose that such a substance remains very constantly in its own form, there will certainly be such causes of change that every state may be essentially changed or perverted;-that is to say, not only the spiral form, towards which the vortical one is directed as towards its center, will be reduced to a genus or species of another form, but also the circular form to which the spiral form looks as to its center, according to the proposition;-thus the very center itself must be removed and transferred from its place. Therefore before all this disposition is changed, or before one form takes the place of another, no essential change can take place; but if this essential change occurs, it is necessary that it should be as permanent as was the form before it occurred.

"Meanwhile there are genera and species of this form, and the genera, like the species, are more or less perfect. But here terms and words entirely fail by which to differentiate them; for the idea of this form almost transcends the human understanding, because it transcends geometry and its lines and circles. Compare with what has been brought forward above and make a simple application. And because the idea of this form almost transcends the understanding, it follows that when we are to unfold and comprehend it, we are as in the shadow of ignorance.

Therefore, since we do not penetrate it and do not admit it as among the things of nature, nor what is said about it, we are groping among paradoxes and conjectures. Yet nothing stands in our way; there are innumerable phenomena which confirm the reality of this form and of its fluxion; there is in nature an infinite number of things which cannot possibly be reduced in an intelligible manner to some geometric or analytical calculus, and nevertheless we are persuaded that they exist; thus we must confess that a great many things exist, although we do not know what they are. However the quality of this form cannot be understood in any other manner than that in which we understand the other forms which fall under the infinitesimal calculus carried to superior powers and which we can resolve neither by lines nor by spheres.

"Meanwhile this form is to be met with everywhere in nature and is perceived from phenomena; for the spiral form brings to this form all that it possesses, and consequently all that the circular one possesses, and, finally, all that the angular one possesses. For into such a form flow the parts and volumes of the higher ether, which constitute the great vortex around our earth; and likewise the parts and volumes of the purest blood or of the most fluid animal essence which runs through the simplest fibers; into such form flow also the simple fibrils in the animated body, (No. 259). To these forms is due the wonderful faculty of the magnetic forces in attracting iron, besides many other phenomena occurring around the magnet. For it is an established truth that such a form can in no wise exist by the fluxion of substances of this quality, unless poles are produced and smaller and greater circles just as in a great sphere, so that in any vortical form, in the smallest as in the largest one, there exists of necessity an arctic pole and an anarctic pole together with the idea of an axis, as well as an ecliptic, a meridian, the colures, and other things which have been observed not only in astronomy but also in magnetism; thus it appears that such forms really exist in the universe of nature, or the world. That the magnetic force and its so-called attraction of iron, as well as the declination and inclination [of the needle] has its origin in some ether, whose parts and larger or smaller volumes flow according to the disposition (descriptionem) of this form, has been shown with sufficient detail in my PRINCIPIA; and I have no doubt, but am fully convinced, that the cause cannot be derived from elsewhere. But let us proceed to a form still higher." (THE FIRRE, 265.)

     The Rational Psychology.

     "It has been proved in the treatise on the Fibers that the form of the fluxions of each compound fibre is spiral, and that the form of many [such] fibers taken together is circular; thus the one form exactly corresponds to the modification of the ether, and the other to the modifications of the air. But the form of the higher ether is vortical, and this corresponds to the substantial form of the spiral glandule." (R. P. 16.)

     "Likewise with the sight: in so far as its forms or those of its images in and among themselves are more perfectly spiral, and in this way mingled as to light and shade, in so far they are the more grateful; and, indeed, most so as they approach the forms of the higher or interior sense, viz., that which is perpetually spiral, the vortical." (R.P34)

     "The cortical gland is an eye or a brain in miniature, but still it is an organ of a higher degree, for its form is vortical, hence it is of a purer, more perfect and simpler nature than the form of the organ of sight, whose rays and modifications are directed into a spiral form, which is next below the vortical in degree." (R. P. 95)

     The Animal Kingdom.

     "There are other forms still higher, such as the perpetual-spiral, properly called the vortical; the perpetual-vortical, Properly the celestial; and a highest, the perpetual-celestial, which is spiritual, and which has in it nothing but what is eternal and infinite." (A. K., I:98, note f.)

     The Senses.

     "The ether is likewise modified according to the form of its own parts, which is superior and more perfect, and is called a perpetually spiral or vortical form. 1) This is the cause or magnetism; 2) and cannot be described except by the poles and great circles in the universe; 3) for every single part refers to the universe. 4) Hence is the determination of the universe and of our solar system. 5) Astronomy alone detects its nature. 6) Its parts are more elastic [than those of the air]." (SENSES 282.)

     "The ether is modified in like manner by a certain mobile center, and flows in like manner, and the motion ends in a conatus. 1) But since it is more elastic, the sphere proceeds further; 2) and is more perfectly spread abroad; 3) in fact, almost indefinitely, respectively to the other spheres." (SENSES, 283)

     "The animal spirit itself in the fibers concurs with the form of the fluxion of the ether, or with the vortical form." (SENSES. 317.)

     The Worship and Love of God.

     "In this spiral form we are enabled to view a still superior kind of form, which may be called the perpetually spiral, or Vortical Form, in which again something perpetual or infinite is found which was not in the former; for the former had reference to a circle as to a kind of infinite center, and from this, by its diameters, to a fixed center as to its limit or boundary; but the latter has reference to a spiral form as a center, by lines perpetually circular; this form manifests itself especially in magnetics, and is the measure of the spiral form for the reason above-mentioned concerning inferior forms."

     "The fourth or infra-celestial [vortical] form, derives still superior perfection from a kind of new perpetuity or infinity; for its spire, like a vortex, flows into such gyrations that by them are marked greater and lesser circles with poles, as in the great sphere of the world; and the flexure and inflexure of its spires have respect to the spires of the preceding form, as the points of its perpetual center; hence its power of varying itself, or of changing states, increases immensely above the other." (W. L. G. 93.)

     "But the third form, called the highest natural or infra-celestial, proper to the animus and its genii, which immediately rules the fibers, and by these the vessels mediately, makes and declares itself evident [in your face] by the purple and white and the intermediate tinctures between each, with which it paints as with colors those variegated tissues; for it brings the blood into brighter textures, in agreement with its delight, and thus presents to view something spiritual mixed with what is natural." (W. L. G. 99.)

     The Spiritual Diary.

     The spirit through whom the influx came in succession, formed (agerent) a kind of circular spire, so that the influxes of the Lord's life inflow, as it were, through a form perpetually spiral,-a form which no one can know except the Lord." (S. D. 3495.)

     CHAPTER IX.

     THE CELESTIAL FORM.

     From the work On the Fibre.

     "A form higher, prior, and more perfect than the vortical form is the form perpetually vortical, which should properly be called the Celestial [or, in an astronomical sense, the Heavenly] Form. The reason for this name is that this form is the supreme of all natural forms, and constitutes that great expanse which is called heavenly, and, in the Sacred Scripture, 'Heaven,' (Gen. 1.). It is also called 'Heaven' by ancient philosophers such as Socrates, Plate and Aristotle. We also in common discourse call the starry universe 'Heaven,' though there are some who make a distinction between the 'heavens.'

     "The determinations of this form wind their way by celestial spires like so many radii to a certain vortical gyre which serves as a center, and they continue their fluxions around it, from which they look back to the spiral form, and from this again to the circular, and from this to the angular. Thus the celestial form enters and determines the vortical, and by means of this the spiral, and from this the circular, and so on. This celestial form is the natural beginning itself of active forces, endeavors [conatuum], and motions; and it is from this form that the other forces flow; for this form is the first and the supreme of all things of nature, so that it may almost be called nature itself in its own first infancy.

Aristotle discourses beautifully upon first nature and the order by which one thing depends upon another, when he says: 'Every natural form has some other form similar to and answering to it in the supreme world, but more noble; an inferior reason depends upon another [superior] reason, and the reasons of this kind are many and singular. But the singular depends upon the universal.' (DE SERPIENTIA DIVINA SECUND. EGYPT. Book XIV., chapter 15.) Elsewhere he tells in how many ways nature is defined, viz.: 'In one manner nature is called a generation of things that are born; in a second manner that which is begotten is generated from that which first existed within. Again, the first motion in each one of the things which constitute nature, is in it according to its essential quality. We do not say that it has nature, if it has no likeness or form; nature, therefore, is what consists of both these. Strictly speaking, nature is the substance of those things which in themselves,-so that they are themselves,-have the beginning of motion. But matter is called nature by reason of the fact that it is susceptible of this motion.' (METAPH. Book V., chapter 4.)

"This form is most constant in remaining in its own integral state, but if it is removed from it, it can never be restored to its pristine perfection. This follows from what has been said above, that is to say that the higher substances can with difficulty undergo an essential change, and the more difficult it is for them to undergo that change, the more difficult it is also for them to be restored to their former perfection. (n. 265.) Meanwhile, the qualities which may be predicated of the celestial form, can hardly be expressed by the terms and words applied to the inferior forms, unless it is done by analogy or by eminence; for they transcend the common ideas of our mind, and even rational analysis and philosophy. The quality of this form transcends the qualities of the other forms; we understand, as far as geometry goes, the nature (rationes) of angular forms, and also of circular ones, a little concerning the nature of spiral forms, but hardly anything, or nothing at all, concerning the nature of vortical forms. If we had understood them, we would surely never have been ignorant of the principles of astronomy and the causes of magnetic forces; if our reason, supported by mathematical and philosophical principles, stops here, what hope is left us to penetrate the qualities and the powers of a form still higher?

We cannot express by adequate words, nor even by figure, the things we do not penetrate. With the help of the calculus of infinities, extract in their order the roots four or five times from the roots of any given number or figure, or raise these as many times to higher powers; then unfold and solve the equation, or demonstrate it by figures or with numbers. This, assuredly, we should never attempt, for it is not perceived what that is which is thus extracted or raised, but only that it is.

"Therefore, if the dualities of this form are expressed, they appear as paradoxes; that is to say, this form or substance is simple, and, relatively to all united natural forms and substances, it is devoid of figure, extension, magnitude, gravity and levity; hence it is not material; and in it nothing can be said to be above or below, or to be carried towards a center or a surface or around a diameter, but the one and same flowing point is seen to be constituted into a center, radius and periphery, and into a thousand at the same time and in succession. If we consider the nature of ethereal modification, by which the sensation of sight exists, we detect an example or an image of such fluxions, or similar phenomena or paradoxes, for from every point of an object or of objects a ray springs forth, traveling by a stream, and myriads of rays flowing from other objects, diametrically, obliquely, or perpendicularly, in every direction; thus one and the same [ray] here represents a center, there a circumference, elsewhere a diameter; nay, many at the same time and in succession. 'It is necessary,' says Plato, 'that that which receives in itself all the genera should be free of all forms;' and he calls this 'an invisible form, without figure, and yet able to contain all of them, a [form] which it is difficult to perceive.' (TIMEUS, pp. 50, 51, in my copy.) That of which he speaks is what he calls the one, what Leibnitz calls a unit or monad, and Wolf, the simple substance; Plato calls also that one the first and the smallest, (PARMENIDES, p. 153), and by this he understands the nature of the simple substance, (p. 166). 'The one is in itself devoid of magnitude and smallness,' he says, 'and it neither exceeds itself, nor is it exceeded.' (p. 150.) 'The simple ens,' says Wolf, 'has no parts, is not extended, is indivisible, has no figure, no size, cannot fill any space; no internal motion call take place in it; in it there cannot be found the things which belong to a compound as such; i. e., the things which are ascribed to a compound by force of its definition. (ONTOLOGY, Sect. 673-679, 682.)

Meanwhile, that such an entity is devoid of gravity and levity, Aristotle thus explains: 'That is heavy which can be carried towards a center; that is light which can be carried from a center; that is most heavy which is situated beneath all the things which are carried downward; everything that is carried upward or downward, has either levity or gravity; a body carried in a circle cannot possibly have gravity or levity, for it cannot happen that this body, according to nature or beyond nature, should be moved towards a center or from a center; local motion in a straight line does not belong to nature itself, for the motion of every simple body was said to be a local motion." (DE CAELO, Book I., chapter iii.) He speaks here of the simple body, which he places between the infinite and the compound body; 'every body must be simple or compound, wherefore the Infinite itself must be either simple or compound' (DE CAELO, Book I., chapter v.) And so do we say also, for this form, or if you prefer, this substance, I call simple, because it is the first natural substance; above it is the infinite itself, as will be seen, and below it are the compound forms and substances; thus the divine essence itself, which is above, is not to be called a simple form, as the name of form is not suitable for it. This substance also has been called by the ancient philosophers, 'the first matter,' which is moved with that motion which consists in receiving the form, and they said that from this matter the form was obtained, just as perfection is obtained from what is imperfect; that it was said so by the sages the philosopher narrates in METAPH. Book I., Chap. I.

(To be continued)

NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

The editor of THE NEW AGE asks for proofs of our statement (in the September LIFE) that the career of Thomas Lake Harris ended "in disgrace and nameless scandal." It is too long and unpleasant a story to tell here, but if our Australian friend will apply to Mr. A. W. Manning, 250 Main St., Riverside, Cal., he will undoubtedly receive the desired information.

     The New Church Board of Publication has recently issued a new work by the Rev. Julian K. Smyth, entitled "RELIGION AND LIFE. A Year Book of Short Sermons on Some Phase of the Christian Life for every week in the year." The MESSENGER describes this book as a "kind and cheery greeting to the whole church and to those outside," but "except for the publishers' imprint there is little to mark the book to a stranger as a New Church production."

     "To the question, put to ministers and leaders by the president of the English Conference, 'Can you say whether your people read the Word of God, the Writings, and New Church literature in their homes? Also, whether many of them observe family worship?' the answer, 'There are a few readers of the Writings, more readers of the Word, have no knowledge as to family worship,' seemed to convey the general impression. These things are 'signs' of the new life. The absence of them is also a 'sign,' which, though it may be readily interpreted too censoriously, is calculated to arouse misgiving." (THE NEW AGE, NOV., 1911.)

     For a number of years we have heard much enthusiastic talk about the "Symbolism of Materlinck," and about the "indebtedness of Materlinck to Swedenborg," but have never been able to discover any tangible evidence for the claim.

The Rev. Adolph Roeder, of Orange, N. J., in a recent lecture on "The Blue Bird," quoted the Belgian's "tendency towards the dream life, his use of great masses, his thought on the 'soul of things,' his concept of the 'buried humanity,' which is one of his and Swedenborg's most valuable contributions to the real and rational psychology of our day," etc., etc. The mind is lost in the blue haze of esthetic indefiniteness. "His and Swedenborg's"! Is Swedenborg indebted to Maeterlinck, or is it the other way about, or what is it?

It is now one hundred and sixty-six years since Swedenborg forsook all scientific and philosophical pursuits in order to devote himself entirely to the study of the Word of God. The first result of this study was a little treatise, which he entitled THE HISTORY OF CREATION AS GIVEN BY MOSES, which constitutes the introductory part of that great collection of similar expository studies to which Dr. Imanuel Tafel gave the general name ADVERSARIA. This little treatise, translated by the Rev. Alfred Acton and previously printed in the NEW CHURCH LIFE, has now been published in separate form by the Academy of the New Church, and forms a handsome little book of fifty-six pages, which may be obtained from the Academy Book Room at the price of 35 cents. The historical Introduction by the scholarly translator, together with his running editorial footnotes, and appendix of theological notes and comments, form a very valuable as well as necessary feature of this publication. It is to be hoped that he will soon be able to proceed with the rest of the ADVERSARIA.

Exception has been taken to our interpretation of the passages in the SPIRITUAL DIARY which seem to teach that spirits do not possess a human body in the actual human shape, except in appearance, and one correspondent thinks that we have "rather slighted the authority of the passages in question." We have no desire to invalidate the authority of the SPIRITUAL DIARY, but it must be remembered that this work was not edited by Swedenborg himself in a final form for publication.

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The DIARY is a vast store-house of spiritual materials, from which Swedenborg constantly drew in composing the other Writings, and a great portion of the contents of the DIARY reappears in edited form in the other works, especially the ARCANA COELESTIA. It will be absolutely necessary for some one in the future to correlate every passage in the DIARY with the corresponding passages in the rest of the Writings; when this has been done, we shall have not only a more perfect translation of this invaluable work. But also a safe guide to its interpretation. In the meanwhile we would recommend all those who are interested in the important subject of the Bodies of Spirits and Angels to compare the passages in question, (from SPIRITUAL DIARY, nos. 21, 178, 355, 404, 818, 860, 885, 1056, 1145, 1374, 1343, 1480, 1668, 1717, 1720, 1796, 1797, 1986, 2288, 2306, 2330, 2447, 2449, 2887, 2985, 3172, 3470, 3472, 3529, 3567, 3664, 3998, 4207, 4360, 4527, 4618, 479, 4794, 5646), with the following numbers in the other works: A. C. 178, 320-323, 343-448, (esp. 447), 978, 1376, 1378, 1853,
2576, 3726, 3513, 3993, 4051, 4527, 4622, 5078, 6400: H. H. 313, 331, 363, 461, 475; L. J. 30, 32; C. L. J. 3; D. L. W. 14, 112, 257, 334, 391; A. R. 153, 866; Inf. 12; T. C. R. 79, 156, 583, 798; Adv. 934; A. E. 775 NO PERMEATION HERE 1912

NO PERMEATION HERE Editor 1912

     A correspondent sends us the following clipping from a Toronto paper:

     "Does religion make a man more acceptable to God?"

     A hush fell over the assembled 1,500 in Massey Hall yesterday afternoon when W. R. Newell directed this question at Mr. Dean, his colleague.

     "No!" was the striking answer. "The Bible teaches that religion does not do any good-it is Christ alone. It is in the acceptance of the atonement offered by the shedding of His blood for us."

     "Were you ever a religious man before you accepted Christ?" asked Mr. Newell.

     "I was."

     "Did it help you any?"

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"No, it hindered me, it blinded me to the necessity of accepting the Christ."

"There isn't a soul in hell today," Mr. Newell stated, "because he broke the commandments. If a soul today languishes in Hades it is because he has refused the atonement of Christ's blood. If a person's heart is not touched by that scene on Calvary he deserves to go below."
GLOSSARY OF SWEDENBORG'S TERMS 1912

GLOSSARY OF SWEDENBORG'S TERMS J. Stuart Bogg 1912

     Mr. J. Stuart Bogg, in a letter to the MORNING LIGHT for December 9th, in defense of the use of the "distinctive technical terms in Swedenborg's Writings," states that "Cursory readers, perhaps even deep students of the Writings, may be surprised to learn that the technical terms and phrases to be found in the Writings of Swedenborg and explained by him, number many
hundreds."

     And he furnishes the interesting information that "So long ago as the year 1864, I made a study of Swedenborg's special terminology, and prepared a glossary to aid students of the Writings. The MS. was offered to the (then) Committee of the Swedenborg Society, and was accepted for publication. But it was lost, while in the care of the committee. Since that time, the use of such a work to students of the Writings (and all who read them seriously are such students) has not been lost sight of. In the course of a few months there will be published a glossary, giving in Swedenborg's own words (translated from the Latin) the meanings to be attached to the special terms and phrases used by him. With the true idea in the mind, fully understood, it will be possible as never before, to convey abstruse ideas-changing these into forms adequate to the comprehension alike of the scholar and the countryman.

     "Yet, as the original tongue may lose some of its niceties of expression in passing into other languages, the technical terms, as Swedenborg has transmitted these to us should be carefully preserved, and not exchanged for others supposed to have a similar meaning."

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NEW DUTCH TRANSLATION 1912

NEW DUTCH TRANSLATION Editor 1912

Our indefatigable friend, Mr. Gerritt Barger, of the Hague, Holland, has just published a Dutch edition of the INTERCOURSE OF THE SOUL AND BODY. According to the preface, this is the second edition of the work, a first edition by an unknown translator having appeared as early as 1788. Of this first edition, the only copy known is at present In the library at Amsterdam. According to the title page of the earlier work, which Mr. Barger reproduces in his preface, it was a translation from the French edition of Peraut and the English edition of Thomas Hartley, and was published by the firm of Isaac du Mee & Son, of the Hague. This and a book of extracts from HEAVEN AND HELL by an unknown translator, published by L. Rijsdijk in 1850, were the only much New Church literature until Mr. Barger entered the field. He has produced the following works: THE NEW JERUSALEM AND ITS HEAVENLY DOCTRINES, 1888; HEAVEN AND HELL with a biography of Swedenborg, 1899; a brochure setting forth the great importance of Swedenborg's theology with reference to the conflicts between the discoveries at Babylon and the teachings of the Bible, 1904; THE SWEDENBORGIANS, an apologetic work published by an association interested in comparative theology, 1909; and the INTERCOURSE OF THE SOUL AND BODY, 1911.

Of the 170 pages of this last pamphlet, only 36 are taken up with the work itself. There are 12 pages of preface; 6 pages of index to contents; r page of corrections; 58 page; of appendix; 17 Pages devoted to reprinting the preface of the Dutch edition of 1788, which itself contains Hartley's preface to his English edition and letters by Hartley to Swedenborg, Swedenborg to Hartley, two letters of Swedenborg to the Duke of Hesse-Darmstradt, one of Swedenborg to Bishop Menander, a reprint of nos. 34-37 of the DOCTRINE OF FAITH, and a brief exposition of the correspondence of the "horse;" 19 Pages Presenting Sandels' EULOGIUM; 29 pages devoted to the recent Swedenborg Congress and the honors paid to Swedenborg's ashes; and, lastly, two pages under the title, "To fill up space," in which is translated Mr. Gill's article on the Atmospheres which appeared in the NEW CHURCH LIFE Of October, 1910.

103

     As to the merits of the translation of the INTERCOURSE OF THE SOUL AND THE BODY, it seems to have suffered a little on account of being influenced by English and French translations. Thus we find an occasional paraphrase, as on page 1, in place of a translation: and an occasional explanatory interpolatibn, as on page 13, where mens autern humana is rendered terwijl het menschelijk gemoed of de menschelijke geest (but the human mood of the human spirit). In note C of the appendix in which this latter translation is considered, Mr. Barger says that the Latin Mens is rendered Mind in English, Mental in French, Gemuth in German. He, therefore, chooses the Dutch variety of the latter, Gemoed, as the best word. This is unfortunate, as both Germuth and Gemoed suggest the disposition or temperament and therefore the Aniunus rather than the Mens. It would have been better had he introduced a foreign word, as the French Mental. We are inclined to think Mr. Barger may have had in thought the frequent and unfortunate English renderings of Mens and Aninnus by Mind and Lower Mind, and have been confirmed in his choice of Gemoed in this way. We cannot agree with him in his further conclusion that Gemoed and Geest (spirit) have the same meaning on the ground that the "human mind is the whole spirit," especially as Gemoed means rather the Animus.

     The remaining notes in the appendix are for the most part filled with extracts from C. L.; D. L. W.; and T. C. R.

     Note H is explanatory of No. 20 of the INTERCOURSE OF THE SOUL AND BODY, commenting on its apparent irrelevancy with the rest of the work. Mr. Barger says this number was probably addressed to J. C. Cuno, of Amsterdam, there being, according to the testimony of Mr. A. H. Stroh, a copy of the same in Cuno's handwriting in the library at Brussels. At any rate, it seems probable that this account of Swedenborg as a spiritual fisherman was first called for in reply to Oetinger's question in 1766 as to why he, a philosopher, had been chosen as revelator.

     Two unfortunate blemishes occur on pages 149, and 150, where Eschatology is defined as "the science of future things," and the ADVERSARIA is declared to be the "Spiritual Diary in 5 parts."

     On the whole, this pamphlet contains a mass of information which will serve as a gateway to the things of the Church for those who may in Providence read it. E. E. I.

104

WRITINGS ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION 1912

WRITINGS ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION Editor 1912

     The Rev. Louis G. Hoeck, in the MESSENGER for Jan. 3d, makes a plea for unity in the New Church on the basis of the principle that "all doctrines or interpretations of doctrine, or matters of faith, are accessories or aids to the essentials which are of religion or of the life,"-the only real essential being the life of charity.

     "From this it follows," he continues, "that the acknowledgment of the Writings as 'The Word of the Lord' is not an essential of the Church of God. It is a thing of the understanding alone, a doctrine, a matter of faith. It has, however, been made one of the essentials of an organization, a vital part of that organization, and is therefore essential to the integrity of that organization. The organization can retain its distinctiveness only so long as it holds certain doctrines or accessories as essential to promote the life of religion in its own way. Yet again, the more general acknowledgment of the writings of Swedenborg as a revelation from the Lord, is not an essential of the Church of God, or even of the Christian Church. But that accessory has been made an essential of another organization of the so-called New Church. And it is essential to the integrity of that organization as a part of the church of the Lord to preserve this acknowledgment intact against all denial of the revelation. Regarded in itself this principle or doctrine is an 'accessory,' and by many regarded as a most powerful accessory to the life of religion, the true Christian religion. Yet we do not make it an 'essential of the church' in the sense that we think a man's salvation depends on his acknowledgment of it."

     It would appear from this line of reasoning,-which is typical of the body with which the writer is connected,-that the acknowledgment of the Lord and of His Word is essential only to the organizations within the Church, but are mere accessories of the Church itself. It is incomprehensible how the writer can arrive at such a conclusion after having himself quoted the universal teaching that the essentials of the Church are "the acknowledgment of the Divine of the Lord, the acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word, and the life which is called charity" (D. P. 259).

105

If these things are held by the memory and understanding alone, neither of them is an essential of the Church, for with such a man there is no Church. But if these things are loved as well as believed, then all are essentials. With such a man of the Church "the acknowledgment of the Divine of the Lord" is the first essential, for the Lord is the neighbor who is to be loved in the first and highest degree; and the "acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word" is the second essential, for the Word is the Lord teaching us, and he who loves the Lord's commandment loves the Lord; and the "life which is called charity" is the third essential, for he who loves the good and the truth in his neighbor, loves the Lord in the ultimates of life. But if you cut out the first two essentials, what becomes of the third?

The integrity of the organizations of the New Church does indeed depend upon the acknowledgment of the Writings as a revelation from the Lord" and therefore upon the acknowledgment of them as "the Word of the Lord," for there never was a revelation from Him which was not His Word. But, more than this, the eternal salvation of every man who henceforth enters the spiritual world, depends ultimately upon this same acknowledgment.

"The primary thing is to know and believe that the Lord is the only God, from whom is all salvation. It is for this reason that this is now being taught; this is the reason for the present work. For without this faith no one comes into the New Church, or receives anything of its doctrine; consequently, without this no one can be saved from henceforth." (ATH. CREED, 213).

106

     "No one comes into the New Church, thus no one is hereafter received into heaven, except him who acknowledges God, one in person and in Essence, in whom is the Trinity, thus the Lord; and unless by some combat he removes and shuns evils as sins against the Divine laws" (J. POST. 352)

     "Unless a New Church shall arise, which shall abolish the faith of the Old Church, which is a faith in three gods, and introduce a new faith which is a faith in one God, the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ, not any flesh could be saved, according to the words of the Lord" (CANONS, Trin. x).

     "No one can hereafter come into heaven unless he be in the doctrine of the New Church as to faith and life. The reason is that the New Church, which is now being established by the Lord, is in faith and life according to that doctrine" (CANONS, Trin. x :7).

     "Their having been in the good of life according to their religion does indeed save; but it does not save so long as they are in falsities; and therefore after death the falsities with them are removed. The reason they cannot be saved before is that good derives its essence from truths" (A. E. 478)

     "All those who do what is good from religion, after death reject the doctrine of the present church concerning three Divine persons from eternity, and also its faith as applied to these three in order, and are converted to the Lord God the Savior, and with pleasure drink in those things which are of the New Church" (T. C. R. 536).

     "All who have led a life of charity, and still more those who have loved truth because it is truth, in the spiritual world allow themselves to be instructed, and they accept the doctrinals of the New Church" (T. C. R. 799)
READING THE WORD WITHOUT OMISSIONS 1912

READING THE WORD WITHOUT OMISSIONS Editor 1912

The question whether to read in private and family worship certain portions of the letter of the Word which on the surface appear indelicate, offensive, and even horrible, has often been discussed privately in the Church, but never, to our knowledge, in our public journals.

That there are things in the literal sense that, as the Writings say, "do violence to our ideas and hurt chaste ears," (A. C. 2466), cannot be denied, nor is there, as far as we are aware, any direct instruction in the Heavenly Doctrine as to our conduct in this respect.

107

It is, therefore, a matter of conclusion and judgment, and though most of our readers may hold quite definite convictions on the subject, it will be useful to re-examine the grounds of our faith and practice, lest the faith become persuasive and traditional, and the practice rigid and, for that very reason, brittle.

     This question, which is a very important and practical one, has been introduced by the Rev. E. J. E. Schreck in the NEW CHURCH MESSENGER for December 13th, under the heading: "How to bring about a concerted Daily Reading of the Word." On the subject in question he writes as follows:

     "I think we have been mistaken in imagining that the Word must be read through, time and again, from beginning to end, as a devotional course. We have not given sufficient heed to the fact that not all of the Word is devotional in outward form. The Psalms are, of course, and so are other books of the Sacred Scripture. But there are many portions of the Word which, in the letter, are so closely adapted to the horrible state of mind of the people among whom they were written, that many who are unable to glimpse their spiritual meaning, are depressed thereby instead of being uplifted, and actually experience a repugnance to reading them, and especially to having them read aloud in the family devotions. Would it not be advisable to have the Convention publish in its Calendar only such assignments from the Word as are devotional and uplifting even in their outward form and expression?"

     There is no use in denying the natural shrinking and repugnance which everyone has experienced at times when reading some of the "horrible" things to which Mr. Schreck refers. With some these natural feelings may be stronger than with others, and with each one also there are various states. No matter how conscientiously certain principles may be held, there must be freedom of judgment in their application under varying conditions. Nevertheless, great care is to be observed in the exercise of this freedom of judgment, for the Word is Divine throughout whereas our own judgment is fallible and our own natural feelings of delicacy and modesty are very often mixed with prudery and self-righteousness.

108

While we may omit the reading of certain portions, both of the letter of the Word and of the Writings at certain times, we need to examine the ends and loves which govern such action.

     For our own part,-and we believe we voice the sentiment that has prevailed generally in the Academy and the General Church,-we think that the only right course to pursue in reading the Word, in the family worship, as well as in the private devotion, is to go straight ahead without fear of anything that the Lord Provides in His Divine Revelation. It is His Word, and He knows better than we what is good for our souls in the bread of life which He sets before us. Like spoiled children, we would prefer to pick and choose,-to read only the sweet, "devotional" and "uplifting" thing-s, and at times we may be permitted to do so, but it is doubtful if such a diet, as a rule, is conducive to spiritual health.

     To construct a Calendar for Concerted Reading on such principles would be a dangerous a, well as difficult thing. Who would dare to determine for others what they may or may not read of the Word of God? Who is competent to judge what is devotional and uplifting in the Sacred Book, and what is not? Some may object to one story or expression, and others to other parts, and there is no telling what would be left at the end. Many prefer the Psalms, but even there we meet with things most shocking, if we dwell on the literal sense alone. What more horrible imagery can be presented than the idea of "dashing the Babylonian little ones against a stone," and yet what more powerful lesson in the internal sense-as to what must be done to the budding affections of the love of self? The only thing is to dash out their life against the stone of Divine Truth.

     Of this we feel sure that no human being was ever hurt as to his soul by reading anything in the Lord's Word in a devout spirit. The evil and horrible things which are described in places are never introduced in such a manner as to excite approval and delight in them, but always with the self-evident purpose of warning against them, of exciting horror and condemnation. The evils mentioned have existed in the world, and they still exist. The tendency towards all of them exists in our own hereditary nature, and they must be known in order to be shunned.

109

Far better to learn of their existence from the mouth of our Heavenly Father than from the world in the sphere of its unclean delights.

     We may, indeed, become "depressed" at times when reading or hearing these things, but perhaps it is good for us to be depressed occasionally, depressed by the very necessary knowledge that such things actually exist in human nature. We wish to feel "uplifted," but no real uplift can come except after self-examination and humiliation, the realization that there is no state so vile but that we ourselves are prone to it and would sooner or later fall into it actually, but for the Divine Mercy of the Lord. We may shudder at the "horrible state of mind of the people among whom these things were written," and it is well that we should do so and shudder at the same time at the horrible state of our own proprium.

     These things in the letter of the Word represent tendencies which were inherited by the human of the Lord Himself, tendencies which in Him caused the most profound states of depression, humiliation, and even despair. He who fulfilled all things of the Word, and thus became the Word itself in the flesh, conquered all these tendencies and replaced them with His own infinite love and wisdom. Nevertheless, the whole human form of this Word has remained, even with the appearance of imperfections, like the wounds in His side and in His hands and feet. The wounds do not really exist in the glorified Human, but the appearance of them is permitted for the sake of our own occasional Thomas-states. So with the appearances of evil in the letter of the Word. There really is nothing of evil there, only the appearance, and the Newchurchman as a rule does nor notice even the appearance because of the Divine glory which everywhere shines through the veil. But if the Lord, who is Innocence itself and Purity itself, deigned to clothe Himself in these appearances, are we too innocent and too pure to endure His own appearance in these forms?

     "Unto the pure all things are pure; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving there is nothing pure." (Titus 1:15.) "Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than His maker!" (Job 4:77)

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"In itself the Word is the Divine Truth itself, but the understanding of it is according to the state of the man who reads it; a man who is not in good perceives nothing of good therein, and a man who is not in truth sees nothing of truth therein: so that the cause is not in the Word, but in the one reading it." (A. E. 373)

     "Within the shadow of Thy wings Thy people dwell secure." The wings of the Lord are the Doctrines of the internal sense, and the shadow of His wings is the letter of His Word, where the power of His Divine protection is in its fulness (A. E 684). There is a sphere of holiness proceeding from every part of the Word in which we may trust as sufficient protection against any evil suggestions while we read the Word. This sphere is the Lord's own sphere and it is at the same time the sphere of heaven and of the angels who are so greatly delighted when the Word is read in innocence and reverence. They do not at all perceive anything of the "horrible" things described in the letter, but at once perceive the heavenly and Divine things concealed within, and it is the reflux of their delight which is communicated to the reader on the earth. The young and the simple receive this sphere according to the innocence of their ignorance, and are thereby protected from realizing the full natural import of the evils described, while the older and wiser, who do realize it, have their faces turned to the interior things. And every Newchurchman, young or old, even if "unable to glimpse the spiritual meaning," enjoys a wonderful protection in the mere knowledge that THERE IS a spiritual and higher meaning within.

     While thus no real harm can be done by reading the whole of the Word without any omissions, there is a real harm done by wilfully omitting certain parts, for the fact of the omission by itself calls special attention to these parts and associates them with the idea of something shameful. Young people are quick to notice any hesitation in our reading or any break in the connection of things, and then, when looking up these things for themselves, they read them with the remembrance of our own shame and lack of faith and courage.

     Another, and more serious and permanent injury done by such omissions is that we thereby deprive ourselves and others of the inestimable privilege of communication with all the societies of the Gorand Man of Heaven.

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For we are taught that in the letter of the Word "each verse communicates with some society of Heaven; so that the whole Word communicates with the universal Heaven" (S. S. 113). Each verse read is therefore a distinct plane of influx for some heavenly society, while each verse omitted is such a plane lost, and it is quite certain that all of us need all the angelic influence and help that are to be obtained. The angels, also, need to possess these planes in us, for the Divine things of the Word in the minds of men in the world are the very ultimates of angelic existence. The more the Word is loved and read on the earth, the more full is the delight and life of the angels. If certain portions of the Word should be generally avoided by the readers on the earth, the corresponding societies in Heaven would be deprived of so much delight and life; and if the whole of the Word were to be avoided by all men, the heaven of our earth would have to be transferred to some other earth, and-our whole race would perish! Let us be careful, therefore, lest we in any manner do injury to Heaven.

     But the greatest harm of all is that by these "sins of omission" we delve ourselves forever of the full power of eternal usefulness which we can gain for ourselves by going into the higher world enriched by the possession of the whole WORD impressed upon our inmost sensories. Let us ponder well upon the import of this teaching in the SPIRITUAL DIARY:

     "The quality of the interior memory may be evident from this fact that spirits are seen reading in books, and they see and read all and single things therein, just as in the life of the body, nor is the smallest thing absent. Thus, for instance, in respect to the Word, which is read there by those who have loved to read it in the life of the body; they read every single thing, as to all the words, so that nothing whatever has perished, even though they had read it only in a cursory way in the life of the body" (S. D. MINOR, 4738)

     Though the letter of the Word, as to every least jot and tittle, exists in heaven as well as on earth, and can be read there by little children and by gentiles who have never seen it on the earth, it nevertheless cannot exist in their minds in such fulness and power as with those who have read it and loved it in the ultimate sphere of existence, for fulness and power depend upon ultimates.

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The former class, in their reading of the Word, will be more or less dependent upon those who have carried with them the Word impressed upon the limbus-memory, and these again will be powerful in their service of the Lord in the degree that they possess the Word in their own ultimates. Who, then, would not wish to carry with him the whole of the Lord's Word?

The Word of the Lord, in the letter as well as in the internal sense, is written in a continuous series, which is represented by the ever-occurring "and," "and it was," "and it came to pass." "In the original language one series is not distinguished from another by punctuation marks, as in other languages, but the text appears to be as it were continuous from beginning to end. The things in the internal sense are also in like manner continuous, and flowing from one state of a thing into another" (A. C. 4987). "Each of the subjects represents in a continuous series the celestial and spiritual things of the Lord's kingdom, and in the supreme sense the Lord Himself; and, moreover, they are real correspondences, which are continuous through the three heavens from the Lord" (A. C. 4442). And, "the doctrinal things of the New Church are continuous truths, laid open by the Lord through the Word" (T. C. R. 508).

It is this continuity of the Word in the letter and in the spirit that crowns it with the stamp of the Infinite Divine. The Word is His own holy garment that is woven throughout with one infinite thread of Divine Truth, without human and finite interstices or knots. It may be rejected as a whole, but it cannot be divided. If we would have it as it is; if we would clothe our souls with the same garment for the eternal wedding feast, we must found our courage and put our trust in His Word, and be glad to read it through, time and again, from beginning to end.

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PHOTOTYPED MSS. NOT ABSOLUTELY RELIABLE 1912

PHOTOTYPED MSS. NOT ABSOLUTELY RELIABLE E. J. E. SCHRECK 1912

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     In a recent issue you expressed the conviction that the work of issuing a new Latin edition of the ARCANA COELESTIA could be performed just as well here from the phototyped manuscript, when this makes its appearance, as in Stockholm from the manuscript.

     My experience in editing the Latin edition of the SUMMARIES OF THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE PROPHETS AND PSALMS, leads me to a different conclusion, and one that substantiates the prudence of Mr. Smyth's proposition.

     As everyone knows, Swedenborg did not publish this little work; but two editions were published after his death; and then, in 1896, the Academy of the New Church published a phototyped edition. I based the third Latin edition upon this, but I also had the second (Dr. Immanuel Tafel's) before me, and I noticed that several characters, which were in the Tafel edition, were not in the phototyped edition. Upon my calling the attention of the proper officials of the Academy to this they examined the pages, and had new ones printed, upon receipt of which it became apparent that the phototyped edition, as first printed, was imperfect.

     It was this that I had in mind when I published the results of my examination of the ARCANA manuscript two summers ago, and suggested a new Latin edition with references to the original manuscript, and then stated that my experience had taught me that even a phototyped manuscript was not absolutely reliable, and that the editor of the Latin ought to have Swedenborg's very own manuscript in hand to reduce liability to err to a minimum.
     Sincerely yours,
          E. J. E. SCHRECK.

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MR. HEADSTEN'S WORK AMONG THE SWEDES 1912

MR. HEADSTEN'S WORK AMONG THE SWEDES JOHN HEADSTEN 1912

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     Having read the notice in the LIFE for December in regard to my being a student at the Theological School in Bryn Athyn, it seems to me that this bare statement would be apt to give a somewhat wrong impression, unless further explained.

     It is true that I have done missionary work among the Swedes in this country for a number of years; also that I have, as an authorized candidate for the ministry, preached and lectured; but saying that only, it appears as if the reason why I am attending the Theological School in Bryn Athyn is, that I have changed my sympathies from the Convention to the General Church. There has been no such change, for my sympathies have always been and will always be with all who love the Lord in His Second Coming, and who show their love by defending the Divine authority of His Revelation. For them I have always stood up since I came into the New Church, and then I shall always stand up for and love and that in the degree they love the Lord's last and crowning revelation.

     The case is this: About eleven years ago I began to sell New Church books, nearly all in Swedish. This I am still continuing to do. As compared with those who before me made such an attempt I have been fairly successful, and this, probably, because others knew neither the Swedes, nor their institutions or because they wanted to make money. During these years I have done business with the Book Association in Stockholm for nearly $1,000. Besides this I have sold hundreds of the Writings in English.

     As the book-selling work grew, the thought grew stronger and stronger with me that I ought to devote my life entirely to the spreading of the Doctrines. On my part I struggled against it, but I could not free myself from the thought and supported by something that had lingered in my mind several years before I became a Newchurchman I decided, though still with reluctance, to apply for an authorization to preach and teach the Doctrines of the New Church. This was granted me, but, for some reason unknown to me it was impossible to gain admission into the Theological School in Cambridge.

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But no matter how discouraging it looked, or was made to appear, my love to spread the Doctrines never wavered. I kept up my missionary efforts, repeatedly renting halls for series of lectures as far as the means at my disposal would allow; at the same time I nearly all the time did my duty to the North Side Parish in Chicago, of which my family and I were members. From year to year I applied for a renewal of my authorization, which was always promptly granted me by Rev. John S. Saul, for I wanted to remain in that connection with the Church until I could go regularly into the work.

     In September, 1910, I moved to Brockton, Mass. Here also I did some missionary work, mostly at my own expense. While here my authorization expired, and as I was not living within the jurisdiction of the Illinois Association I had to apply to the head of the Massachusetts Association for its renewal. Then the question was put to me how I stood toward the Brockton Declaration. I answered that I could not support such a declaration against those who loved the same Lord as I did, for they are my neighbor in the degree next to Him. Other questions were put to me, all of which I answered from the Writings, declaring positively that to me every part of the Writings was inviolable, and that from this position I could not retract. Hence my authorization was not renewed.

     This was the same as ruling me out of the Convention; for by that action I was deprived of my use in that Church.

     Last summer my wife and I visited Sweden, after an absence of thirty-two years. During the five months we were away I acted as correspondent to the leading Swedish weekly in America, SVENSKA AMERIKANAREN, of Chicago. My recompense for this work was that I became known to a very large number of the Swedish-American reading public. Besides this I am rewarded by being permitted to have a running advertisement in that weekly, which is continually calling attention to the works of Swedenborg.
     Yours very sincerely,
          JOHN HEADSTEN.

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TWO AVENUES FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT 1912

TWO AVENUES FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT E. E. IUNGERICH 1912

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     The body is in contact with the world through the sense nerves terminating in the skin and through the alimentary canal. We might for convenience term these, respectively, the sensual avenue and the corporeal avenue of approach to the body. Each of these avenues may be the pathway of travel for restoratives to perverted conditions in the body. The sensual avenue introduces to a system of continuity, (see A. C. 8603), through inter-weavings of fibers; the corporeal avenue introduces to a system of contiguity in which discrete degrees of bloods are closed off from each other by investing membranes. A tremulation started in the ultimate of the sensual avenue will be communicated inwards to the finer fibers because the system is continuous; but a solid introduced to the ultimate of the corporeal avenue will not travel inwards without a resolution into its finer parts; although it may start tremulations by pricking nerve endings in the alimentary tract. Equally interior results may be affected through either avenue of approach. Treatment by the sensual avenue is in the main a treatment directed to the tunics; whereas, treatment by the corporeal avenue is a treatment of the blood within a tunic. In the sense that each degree is composed of a blood with its investing tunic, I make the remark that treatment through one avenue will penetrate as interiorly as treatment through the other.

     A philosophy of disease and cure should not underrate or undervalue either of these avenues in the treatment of disease. Swedenborg gives us a fair and valuable estimate of both these avenues. In the small work on TREMULATION he has outlined the deep-seated effects produced on flesh and on muscle by tremulations. In THE FIBRE he lays stress on the proper regulations of food as the chief factor in treatment [through the alimentary canal]. The use of drugs is only involved in one of the two avenues of the approach to the body, and in this avenue it plays a part subordinate to that of food. To found a system of cure on the application of drugs as the leading universal, is to exalt a minor particular disproportionately.

     Against this contention of mine it has been urged that treatment through the sensual avenue, and treatment by the chief factor of the corporeal avenue, viz., food, are not of cure, but of hygiene, one ounce of which in prevention is better, to be sure, than a pound of the former, but that the correction of perverted conditions is quite another matter, and only to be accomplished by drugs.

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To this I demur for the following reasons: diseases, whatever may be the originating or contingent causes, are either perversions of function or perversions of structures in some part of the body. Acute diseases are those where the perversions of function are most marked; chronic diseases are those where the perversion of structure has already taken place. Where malnutrition has led to a perversion, a supplying of the proper food will contribute a correction, as in a case of incipient atrophy. In every perversion there is a nervous perversion, which needs to be corrected before a cure can be effected. Treatment through the nerves restores the proper tone or pitch, like tuning to a violin string. Local massage to an external part of the body, as along Hunter's canal, or along the muscles of the neck, will propel the sluggish lymph-stream, full of cell-excretions, along its channel, and permit fresh lymph, less obnoxious to the neighboring tissues, to take its place. All these instrumentalities are certainly useful in correcting perversions, and are not to be classified as a species of hygiene not worthy of the professional appellation of remedies or medicaments. To be sure, it is best to apply them before the perversion becomes marked. This would be their hygienic use. But they are efficacious when there is a marked perversion, as a means of correcting it.

I come now to the use of drugs. When I say they are not to be used except as a last resort, I do not mean that I regard them as more potent than the other remedial agencies, the positive ones; but only as I would not recommend surgery except as an extreme necessity. The drug which is not a food is an alien element in the body. It acts destructively, pricking, tearing, and lacerating the tissues it meets and starting nervous perversions in the nerve-endings it comes in contact with. If it does this when in appreciable quantities, I cannot see that it will cease to do this when administered in a more finely divided state, so long as there remains anything of the drug, for it is a general law that things in greatests and in leasts act the same.

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This destructive nature of the drugs may, however, be of use in certain extreme cases, to stimulate, depress or destroy, and it is then I take it that they correspond to evil spirits absorbing the malignities of spiritual evils. But that they need to be introduced to form a basic substratum for evil spirits, seems to me uncalled for; seeing there is already plenty of fuel and impure matter in the body which can serve this use ii required. Curiously enough, those who urge this malignity-correspondence of the drug as the ground for its frequent introduction into the system-are often foremost in urging that it must be introduced in quantities so infinitesimal as to rob it of this character, and enable it to operate in an interior sphere, not as a hostile disturber there, but as a beneficent prometer of the central life-stream.

     I would now consider briefly the rule of Hahnemann, similia similibus curantur. This is frequently spoken of as a great, indisputable, fundamental law of cure. Does it deserve such laudatory epithets?

     If I should place during a series of years a succession of glass tumblers on a hot plate, and observe with fidelity that each of them cracked, I might then propound the rule: "A glass tumbler put on a hot plate will crack." This would not be a law of nature, but what Jevons in his book on logic calls "an empiric law," i. e., a brief statement of a series of observations. Is Hahnemann's law more than this? It does nothing more than associate certain drugs with certain sets of symptoms, and until it can give a more close-contact explanation of why one should be connected with the other, (said explanation to describe the physical activity of the drug and the consequent functional and structural changes in the tissues), it remains as a sort of mystic hypothesis, not unlike the pre-established harmony of Leibnitz which Swedenborg criticizes on account of the obscure elements it contains. I would recommend to any who dislike this comparison to re-read Swedenborg's FRAGMENT ON THE SOUL.

      I consider the present day sanction of homoeopathy among Newchurchmen to rest upon the sensual experience that cures have been seen effected where homoeopathic treatment was used reinforced by an appeal to spiritual analogies. As nearly every system of treatment has its hosts of similar favorable testimonials, I am reminded here of the words of the author of the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM: "To see from effects only, is to see from fallacies, whence are errors, one after another, which by inductions can be so multiplied that at length enormous falsities are called truths." (D. L. W. 187.)

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     In the epoch when homoeopathy was first exploited by Newchurchmen and attached as a quasi accompaniment of their religion, the field of medical practice and experience was far more limited than today. The sensual avenue was undeveloped as a means of approach to the body, and the study of foods, the chief factor in the corporeal avenue, was in its infancy. Crude drugs and blood letting were the rage. The Newchurchman turned to homoeopathy as a more promising held. But today the complexion of the field of experience is far different. We may well ask are we to continue confirming the choice of our ancestors at a time when there was little to choose between? Are we not to canvass the field as it now exists and see which methods of treatment are now the most logical, the most common sense the least associated with obscure, mystical elements, which are urged as chief grounds for their acceptance.

     If there is a stoppage in a pumping engine I am operating, and two men apply to me for the job of correcting it, I would certainly prefer the one who talked to me in terms of rivets, valves, nuts, and plugs, and promised to set the engine going again through a mechanical, geometric regulation of its mechanism, to one who should say he would pour an acid into the engine, and then elaborated some spiritual analogy to back this procedure.

     It is noteworthy that the reasons recommending homoeopathy to Newchurchmen have been analogies between the pure theology of the Writings and the facts of sensual experience. It is only of late years that there has been a development of the intermediate field of philosophy. It is more in the light of the Scientific Work, I believe, that we should choose the system of cure we are looking for. And among these Scientific Works there is the work on TREMULATION, the theory of which so pleased Swedenborg that he communicated it to many physicians of his time.
     E. E. IUNGERICH.

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Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. The Christmas tableaux centered about the story of Abraham, who was presented in successive scenes, as leaving Ur of the Chaldees at the command of the Lord, as sacrificing on an altar on his arrival in the land of Canaan, as separating from Lot, as rescuing Lot from the hands of Kedorlaomer, and as receiving bread and wine from Melchizedek. There then followed a tableau of the shepherds. There was a slight development in these tableaux over those of former years, in that movement and gestures were added to the costumes. In time we may come to have vivid dramatizations of stories from the Word.

     On the Sunday before Christmas an impressive sermon was delivered by the Rev. G. H. Smith on the signification of the Lord being born at Bethlehem, a spiritual celestial man. No man comes to rationality in which he can combat with spiritual foes till adult age, but the Lord was born into that state. On Christmas morning the Holy Supper was solemnized.

     A social was held early on New Year's morning. Quite a number of speakers, among whom was our most recent student, Mr. Headsten, spoke on appropriate topics.

     Founders' day was celebrated at Cairnwood by a banquet attended by the ministers and the professors of the school. E. E. I.

     PHILADELPHIA, PA. Almost every member of the Advent Church was present at the District Assembly and we were made to feel that it was our meeting as well as the rest. We, therefore, report it among our regular events.

     A symposium of the men was held in December which was well attended. We had the audacity to take as our topic "The Woman Question." After reviewing the position of women in former civilizations, and in the world about us, we focused our thought upon the ideal for the New Church, as taught in the Writings.

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Our many friends will be glad to hear that this question is now settled.

     The Sunday School was transported bodily to Bryn Athyn upon the occasion of the Children's Christmas Festival. The wonderful scenes from the Word and the inspiring singing made an impression we could not hope to duplicate with our limited means. But one result of the District Assembly, and especially of Pastor Harris' account of his work with the children in Abington, has been to open our eyes to possibilities with our Sunday School, which we did not realize before. In addition to the regular classes in the letter of the Word, and one in the Doctrines, they are now having regular instruction in Hebrew by Mr. Will Cooper, and in the church songs, by Mr. Fred Cooper. We feel that the responsibility resting upon the Sunday School, where there is no New Church day school, is very great. Our Thursday evening supper has grown to unexpected proportions, nearly one-half of the membership being present each time. It is claimed to be the best supper for ten cents in the Church! The social hour for the younger ones is again in charge of Miss Price. Mrs. Elsa Hilldale carried it successfully through the fall. The attendance and response at the Doctrinal class shows no abatement, and the singing practice is steadily improving our worship. To do well the few things which the Lord makes it possible for us to do, is our means of cultivating content with our lot.

     On New Year's eve we held a watch meeting, or banquet, followed by brief devotional exercises at midnight. The subjects treated by the members will give a good idea of the nature of our problems: "Evangelization," "Patience," "The Support of the Church" (not primarily a matter of money, but of zeal), and "Distinctive Social Life." The last subject was discussed with much frankness and, as we felt, of profit. The four hours at the table seemed less than two, and we began the new year with the happiest anticipations. H. S.

     ABINGTON, MASS. The circle held its usual Christmas festivities on Sunday morning, December 25th.

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The music, offices and order of service were appropriate to the Advent season. The sermon was on "The Babe in the Manger." On Christmas evening the service of Sunday morning was repeated, at which the pastor read the Christmas story from the Word. At the close of the service the march began to the hall below, where a beautiful tree had been set up and loaded with gifts. We all formed a circle and sung "The Christmas Tree is an Evergreen," after which the distribution of gifts began. Everyone was made happy and the young people ended the evening by dancing. G. M. L.

     BALTIMORE, MD. A watch meeting was held on New Year's eve in the chapel, and in a short extemporaneous address on the meaning of Benjamin Mr. Iungerich brought out that new truth is the only truth of the Church; and that unless a church provides for the reception and acknowledgment of new universals, of new generalizations from the doctrines, of new ways of applying and carrying out the accepted policies, it has not that to which the Lord can be conjoined.

     On the first day of the year, the annual oyster roast was held. Two barrels of oysters and the amiable Herr Schmidt were the central features of the ceremonies. What if the milk of the stew was scorched, the cook certainly made atonement by wearing a goat's beard during the ensuing session of pinochle, and the toasted oysters were a great success. At this point, let me still an unfounded rumor. The oyster shell bed in Waelchli avenue did not come from our annual oyster roasts.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. Severe and prolonged cold weather has rendered social functions difficult, but the colonists, at this outlying-district, have persevered and had as good a time as if the weather had been balmy.

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At the last Friday supper Mr. Caldwell, in place of the usual doctrinal talk gave a lecture on the Temple of God; the remarks were illustrated by slides of the great cathedrals of France, England and Spain. The Mosque of Omar, built on the site of the Solomon's Temple on Mt. Moriah, was exhibited and excited a lively interest.

     On New Year's day an extremely enjoyable dance was given as the last function of the present Social Committee. It was a mixture of the usual dances and of the recently acquired folk dances. Punch was served and, notwithstanding wintry winds, everybody and his wife enjoyed themselves.

     Watch night service was held on the 31st of December. During the early part of the evening Caruso, a celebrated operatic star, who had kindly consented to be present (in a Victrola machine), sang a number of selections. In conjunction with Madame Schumann-Heink (also present), the evening was pleasantly passed until near the midnight hour.

     The new year was entered into with solemn service and prayer, after which congratulations and good wishes followed, then a few toasts and speeches.

     The Christmas festival was, owing to the altruistic efforts of the teachers and young people, a most delightful one. The assembly room was decorated with evergreens and illuminated with candles. On the right side of the chancel a scene in the fields around Bethlehem on the first Christmas night was presented. The hills, the shepherds and sheep were represented in relief with a painted background. A wonderful verisimilitude was effected by throwing a shaft of electric light upon an arranged cloud of gauze, in which beautiful little angelic figures were scattered. On the left side the three wise men hastening on the journey were represented in a similar manner.

     At the Friday supper preceding that on which the lecture on "Temples" was given the engagement of Mr. Louis B. King and Miss Dorothy Cole was announced. The audience burst forth spontaneously in a gratulatory song, and after supper the two young people were surrounded by a constant crowd of well wishers. At the same supper an informal discussion of the subject of Rest took place.

     The Philosophy Class was pleased and amused by a demonstration of the Sphygmomanometer The blood pressure of lawyers, clerks, superintendents, housewives, etc, was exhibited and explained by the suave demonstrator, Dr. King. J. B. S. K.

     BERLIN, ONT. Christmas time was observed in the usual manner in the Carmel Church. On Sunday, December 24th, services commemorative of the Lord's birth were held.

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The sphere of worship was strengthened by the excellent singing of the choir and by the beautiful decorations of the chapel. In the evening of Christmas Day the school festival was held. Offerings were brought to the altar by young and old. Afterwards gifts were given to the children, and the children, on their part, gave gifts to their teachers.

     The Ontario Assembly was not held this year, but instead Bishop Pendleton visited the Toronto and Berlin Societies, spending several days at each place. The visit to Berlin extended from December 30th to January 3d.

     On Sunday, December 31st, the Bishop preached and also administered the rite of confirmation for ten of our young people, namely, the Misses Evangeline Roschman, Evelyn Ferdinand, Beata Roschman and Grace Scott, and the Messrs. Alfred Steen, Eugene Roschman, Archibald Scott, Carl Ferdinand, Fred. Steen and Fred. Stroh. This is, we believe, the largest number that has ever been confirmed at one time in the General Church when all the young people were of one society. The service was most impressive and, no doubt, its influence entered into the succeeding events of the Bishop's visit, contributing to their usefulness.

     In the evening of the same day a meeting of the society was held. The Bishop presided and read a paper on The Sabbath Day. The paper was then discussed.

     In the afternoon of New Year's Day another meeting was held, at which Piety was the subject of consideration. In the course of the discussion the Bishop introduced the subject of the need of a church building devoted entirely to purposes of worship, and suggested the establishment of a building fund. The suggestion was affirmatively received, the need being recognized. We may add that a first contribution of a small sum establishing the fund has since been made.

     In the evening a banquet was held in the school room. The first toast was to the Church, and then followed a series of four toasts to the principal uses of the General Church: 1. Worship and Doctrinal Instruction, responded to by Mr. T. S. Kuhl; 2. The Education of the Young, responded to by Mr. Albert Doering; 3. Church Extension, responded to by Mr. Rudolph Roschman; 4. Social Life, responded to by Mr. Herbert Steen. After the banquet there was dancing.

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     On Tuesday evening, January 2d, a Men's Meeting was held. Unfortunately, the Bishop was not well enough to attend. He, however, sent a paper, entitled "Male and Female," and dealing principally with the need of shunning the evil of the love of domination in married life. The paper was read and much enjoyed, and the discussion was undoubtedly the most useful we have ever had at a men's meeting.

     The episcopal visit was much appreciated, as is evident from the large attendance, there being one hundred and twenty-six persons present at the Sunday morning services and one hundred and six at the banquet. Among these there were but few visitors. That the visit performed a great use is the opinion expressed by all,-a use distinct in its nature from that performed by a District Assembly. The Bishop came into the society's life, and into that alone; and the result was an uplifting, a revival, of that life. It would be useful, indeed, if such visits either by the Bishop or by someone representing him, could be made rather frequently to the various societies-such is the sentiment here, at least. W.

     TORONTO, ONT. On the third of January our beloved Bishop arrived in Toronto to pay us his annual visit.

     There were several meetings held. The first was a social on the evening of Thursday, January 4th. The hostess of the supper was Mrs. Becker, and in her capable hands the supper proved to be a veritable Christmas banquet of good things.

     When we had satisfied the inner man and had become quite peaceable and receptive on the external plane, our pastor, Mr. Cronlund, announced the subject of the evening,-a spiritual battle-cry,-"The Church Militant."

     There were six speakers-Mr. Cronlund on "The New Church;" Bishop Pendleton, on "The Priesthood a Warfare." The Bishop instructed us to be militant for the Truth as the angels are not aggressively, but always on the defensive when the Truth is attacked. We will surely experience these assaults as regeneration commences within us.

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     Then followed "The Warfare of the New Church against the Old"-Mr. Bowers; "The Warfare of the New Church against the enemies within,"-Mr. Caldwell; "The Warfare of each one against his proprium,"-Mr. Craigie, and "Peace,"-Mr. Charles Brown. Each speaker provided us with much food for reflection.

     After the regular speeches were over, the Bishop brought before us the necessity of having a church building to be used exclusively as a place of worship. The time seems ripe for this movement. As we left the table a small beginning was made towards a church building fund. On Sunday morning the Bishop preached from Jeremiah 4:23-25. In the evening he read a paper on "The Lord's Day."

     The Bishop's visit has been very helpful. His addresses are so comprehensive and timely that, true leader that he is, he seems always to anticipate our needs, both on the natural and spiritual planes.

     At all our meetings where doctrinal subjects are discussed a sphere of enthusiasm for the Church prevails. Especially was this the case at our Thanksgiving Social in October. Mr. Cronlund read a paper on "What we, as New Church people, should be thankful for." During the discussion and speeches which followed such an affection for the Church was displayed that one member said she was reminded of the "old time" Academy gatherings.

     When the time came for entertainment in the lighter vein, we adjourned to the Church room, which we found transformed with harvest decorations,-grain sheaves, leaves, fruits and vegetables. The entertainment was in keeping with the occasion.

     Under the guidance of our faithful pastor, the work in Parkdale progresses steadily. Mr. Cronlund is giving us instruction on the Doctrine of the Lord at the Wednesday evening classes. These, and the suppers which precede, are very well attended.

     The unmarried men of the society meet at Mr. Cronlund's home, on alternate Monday evenings, for the study of the work on CONJUGIAL LOVE. A social hour usually follows the class. Three men's meetings have been held in the church and from all accounts we have reason to believe they are not all purely "feasts of reason." In fact, one gentleman has acquitted himself so famously that he has been unanimously elected "official chef" of the society.

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     At the first of these meetings, on October I3th, the subject of Mr. Cronlund's paper was "The New Church and how we may enter into it." On December 7th the subject was "The first two Principles of the Academy. I. The Lord has made His Second Coming in the Writings of the New Church. II. The New Church must be distinct and separate from the Old because the Old Church is consummated and dead." On January 5th there was a paper read by Bishop Pendleton on "The Love of Dominion in Marriage."

     Our school this year is small, as the four oldest pupils have left, having passed their entrance examination for the High School last summer.

     On Sunday, December I7th, two young ladies, Miss Langlois and Miss Wilkes, entered the Church through the gate of baptism. We have recently welcomed among us Mr. Craigie, an active Newchurchman from England. As he anticipates bringing his family to America, we are looking forward with pleasure to having a new family added to our numbers.

     The Children's Christmas service was held on December 22d. At the close of the service the doors into the schoolroom were opened and revealed the pretty tree. The collection on that occasion was for the scholarship fund. The Christmas service for the society was held on Sunday, December 24th, and on Christmas morning the Sacrament of the Holy Supper was administered.

     It seemed fitting we should have a visit from our Bishop at the beginning of a new year. The words of wisdom and advice he has given us will be incentives for another year of work for the
Lord's New Church here.     B. S.

     THE MISSIONARY FIELD. Following are a few general notes of visits made in December:

     In Pittsburgh, Pa., from the 1st till 4th. Was kindly entertained at the hospitable home of Mr. Jacob Schoenberger and family, as usual.

     At Erie, Pa., 4th till 11th. Called on several families; and regret that there is not space to mention the names of the friends.

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Met and passed an evening with a young man, who, a few months before, had become interested in the Doctrines, and was earnestly reading them. He had been attending the meetings of the Circle for some time.

     On the 10th services were held at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Edward Cranch and family. The attendance was thirty persons, and there were twenty-four who took part in the Communion.

     In Buffalo, N. Y., 11th till 12th, with Mr. and Mrs. F. R. Rogers. In the course of several years, the six children in the family were baptized by me. The Convention Society in the city is now very small; it is a little flock without a shepherd to care for it.

     At Hamilton, Canada, 12th till 14th. The two members of the General Church, Mr. James Lennie and Mr. H. O. Day, and their families were visited. On the 13th the three youngest children of Mr. and Mrs. Day were baptized.

     At Stratford, Can., 14th till 15th, with Mr. and Mrs. John D. Ronald. My visits with them used to be frequent, back in the eighties. They are Convention people, but insist that I call on them whenever passing through their city, and it does seem that there is a use in doing so.

     In Huron county, 15th till 22d. On the 17th we had service at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Izzard, near Clinton, which was my stopping place, as it has been for many years, while in that vicinity. The members of the family and other friends present numbered fifteen. On the 18th and 19th, with Mr. and Mrs. James Cartwright, near Londesboro. Mr. John McGregor came and spent an afternoon with us. Calls were made on four families, besides the Izzards and the Cartwrights.

     At Waterloo, 22d till 26th, with Mr. J. G. Stroh and family. Had a visit with the pastor, F. E. Waelchli, who, on Sunday, 24th, delivered an excellent sermon on "The Divine Man." And the festival on Christmas evening was a most enjoyable occasion to the older people as well as to the young. There was a congregation of about one hundred and twenty-five.

     At Streetsville, 26th till 27th, with Mr. and Mrs. R. G. Brown and their son, Edgar. As usual, during our annual visits, we made good use of the time in conversation concerning the Doctrines of the Church. J. E. BOWERS.

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     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES. The Rev. Arthur Mercer, author of THE CONVENTION DOCTRINE EXAMINED AND CONDEMNED, on December 17th presented his resignation from the pastorate of the Brooklyn society. The resignation was accepted, to take effect on October 1, 1912.

     The Rev. E. K. Bray, who, on account of ill health has spent some time in Florida, has recovered so far as to be able to return to the work of the ministry. He will take up the work in INDIANAPOLIS, Where the circle is small, but with promises of increase.

     Union Thanksgiving services were held in the Reading Road Temple at Cincinnati, in which the congregations of the Universalists, Swedenborgians, Unitarians, and Jews participated. The Rev. Louis G. Hoeck delivered the sermon. Where the first two essentials of the New Church,-the acknowledgment of the Divine of the Lord, and the acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word,-are seriously grasped, there can be no such "Union Thanksgiving services" with those who are fundamentally opposed to these essentials.

     The Rev. Edward Craig Mitchell died on December 8th at ST. PAUL, Minn., in his 75th year. In 1860, at the age of 24, Mr. Mitchell received the doctrines of the New Church and was baptized by the Rev. W. H. Benade, by whom he was subsequently authorized and ordained. For several years he, in company with Dr. Leonard Tafel, taught in the Cherry Street school. In 1872 he moved to Minneapolis, and in 1876 he took up his residence in St. Paul, where he remained as pastor of the New Church society in that city until his death. He was married to Miss Annie Iungerich, who died in 1898; and he leaves a son, Dr. Walton I. Mitchell. The funeral service was conducted by the Rev. Percy Billings, of Chicago, assisted by the Rev. Maurice Edwards, of the Dayton Avenue Presbyterian church of St. Paul. A brother of Mr. Mitchell was Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court during the earlier part of the Kramph case.

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     GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND. Mr. Joseph Hollrigl, a young Austrian, is now attending the Cambridge Theological School with the intention of devoting himself to evangelistic work in German-speaking lands. He is reported by the MONATBLATTER, on the authority of Mr. Gunzl, of Vienna, as being delighted with his new surroundings, and with the opportunity to attend worship in the midst of a large congregation.

     Dresden is the home of a widow, Mrs. Thieme, and her daughter. She and her husband received the doctrines in St. Petersburg, Arrested by the titles of Swedenborg's works in a catalogue he was perusing, he made arrangement with a book seller to have them imported. This was a matter of great difficulty and personal danger owing to the active religious censorship in Russia. But by means of using loose sheets of the Writings as packing in cases of innocuous books that were being imported, he succeeded after a time in getting together quite a number of the Writings. The books thus obtained are the most precious objects in Mrs. Thieme's library in Dresden.

     Rev. A. L. Goerwitz recently delivered two public addresses in Berlin on the subjects, "Is there a personal God?" "Is there a Divine Revelation?" with an average attendance of two hundred. To avoid digression from these main issues, it was announced that no public discussion would follow, and that all who had questions should write them on slips of paper passed around for that purpose. Of this offer not a single one availed himself.

     Professor A. Voight, on the faculty of a civic and technical school in Frankfort-on-the-Main, is possessed with the theory that Kant's philosophy is based on Swedenborg's Writings. He is now working zealously to demonstrate this.

     From Stuttgart we learn that the New Church book room has sold in the past year twelve hundred marks' worth of books. The book room recommends as a missionary pamphlet the first volume of the ARCANA for the following quaint reasons: "Because experience has demonstrated that of all the volumes of the A. C. the first is bought the most, and in it the first chapter is read the most"!

     An old church minister here, Rev. Rohleder, recently gave an address on the Apocalypse.

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Although he had written a pamphlet, entitled "Emanuel Swedenborg," he was not aware that the revelator had written anything about the Apocalypse until informed by Mr. Goerwitz. The latter during his visit in Stuttgart spoke very impressively to the New Church circle there about the importance of having a resident pastor.

Mr. Eugen Artho is the author of a novel, entitled ET EXPECTO, which has created quite a sensation. It is the life history of a Roman Catholic priest who comes to the New Church. The author has published it with the hope it may be a "foundation stone in the reformation of the twentieth century." The Protestant press in Switzerland in their comment on it declare it to be a species of anticlimax that one leaving the Catholic church should turn to so insignificant a body as that of the Swedenborgians. The review of the novel in the MONATBLAETTER for November recommends it as a powerful portrayal of conditions and types in the Catholic church, combined with a sound and forceful presentation of the Heavenly Doctrines, unmixed with anything calculated to offend a Protestant reader. E. E. I.

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Correction 1912

Correction Editor 1912

Announcements.

On p. 36 of our last issue it is stated, concerning the Address of the Rev. Julian K. Smyth. "it is in our opinion the most noteworthy and catholic message that has even been delivered by any President of the General Convention." Instead of "even" read "ever." [This has been corrected in the electronic text.]
SWEDENBORG AND ERNESTI 1912

SWEDENBORG AND ERNESTI C. TH. ODHNER 1912

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[Frontpiece: Johann August Ernesti.]

Recently, while rummaging among the literary treasures in the Academy's library, we came across a full set of the NEUE THEOLOGISCHE BIBLIOTHEX, which was published at Leipzig, 1760-1769, by Swedenborg's celebrated enemy, Dr. Johann August Ernesti, and we were surprised to find in this learned magazine not only one but four attacks upon Swedenborg and his Writings. As these attacks constitute a very important series of Documents which have never before appeared in the English tongue, we prepared a careful translation of them, (with the kind assistance of (Mr. Valentin Karl, of Bryn Athyn), which is now presented to our readers, together with an account of the first enemy of the Heavenly Doctrine in this world.

     ERNESTI'S LIFE AND WORKS.

     As to Ernesti's history and personality we have, after diligent research, been able to gather only a few outlines. Born August 4th, 1707, at Tennstadt, Thuringia, where his father was pastor, he studied at Wittenberg and Leipzig, and became rector of the St. Thomas school, Leipzig, in the year 1734, at the same time lecturing on the Latin classics at the university with such success that in 1742 he was appointed professor of humane literature and in 1756 received the important chair of Professor Eloquentiae.

     In 1759 he was transferred to the theological faculty, was raised to first professor of Theology in 1770, and died September 11, 1781 As to his personal character we know nothing except what may be inferred from the nature of his attacks upon Swedenborg.

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A man of enormous learning, chiefly linguistic, and of such eloquence that he became famed as the "Cicero of the Germans," he was in addition a theologian of the deepest Lutheran dye, an indefatigable heresy-hunter, a keen but sneering controversialist, and a domineering leader of "orthodox" thought. He won his way to fame at first by a series of celebrated editions of the classics, such as Homer, Xenophon, Aristotle, Aristophanes, Cicero, Tacitus, and Suetonius; entered the field of Theology with a volume entitled INITIA DOCTRINAE SOLIDIORIS, (1736), and took his place as leader of a "new" school of extreme literalism in Biblical interpretation by his INSTITUTIO INTERPRETIS NOVI TESTAMENTI, (1761). In the year 1760 he issued the first part of the NEUE THEOLOGISCHE BIBLIOTHEK, which, with himself as the sole contributor, he continued in ten volumes until the year 1769. After an interval of two years this publication was resumed under the title NEUESTE THEOLOGISCHE BIBLIOTHEK, (1771-1775), which we have never seen, but which should be examined as to any references to Swedenborg. Beside his larger works, he published more than a hundred smaller treatises, orations, academic dissertations, etc.

     Though greatly admired (and feared) by his contemporaries, his fame has suffered considerably at the hands of modern church historians. Thus Hagenbach, in his HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN THE XVIII. AND XIX. CENTURIES, is one of the few who notice Ernesti at all. Speaking of his services in the development of Scripture interpretation, Hagenbach says:

     "Ernesti is regarded as the founder of a new exegetical school,* whose principle was simply that the Bible must be rigidly explained according to its own language, and, in this explanation, it must neither be bribed by any external authority of the Church,** nor by our own feelings, nor by any sportive and allegorizing fancy,-which had frequently been the case with the mystics,-nor, finally, by any philosophical system whatever." (Vol. I., p. 259.)
     * He did not originate this school, however, but adopted it from Wetstein, and gave it general currency.
     ** He certainly suggested external persecution in reproving Dr. Clemm for his chapter on Swedenborg.

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[Front page from NEUE THEOLOGISCHE BIBLIOTHEK.]

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     In other words, Ernesti Professed that Scripture should be viewed in the light of its own language alone, without the aid of doctrine from the Word,-an attempt which is as elevating as the efforts of a man to "lift himself by his own bootstraps." As a matter of fact, however, Ernesti read the Word exclusively in the light of the Symbolical Books.

     "Ernesti," continues Hagenbach, "was a philologian. He had occupied himself just as enthusiastically with the ancient classics of Pome and Greece as with the Bible, and claimed that the same exegetical laws should be observed in the one case as in the other. If Ernesti substituted a grammatical, dry and unimaginative exegesis for an arbitrary, fantastical and yet ingenious explanation of the mystics and allegorists, his work was a very good counteraction, but it did not go far enough. Besides, the suspicion could easily arise that by this means the Bible would be brought too much within the circle of merely grammatical learning, and the mere means for understanding it be converted into an end." (Ibid. p. 260.)

     And Kahnis, in his INNER HISTORY OF GERMAN PROTESTANTISM, speaks as follows: "Ernesti was already a mature philologist when he was called to be a teacher of theology. In this his theological character is expressed: he was a theological philologist, and hence Ernest's importance is expressed in the principle that Scripture must be explained purely philologically.', (p. 119). "Ernesti scolded in a contemptuous manner, and mocked with bitter humor at ignorance and at visionary tendencies, thus pouring upon his numerous hearers the spirit of discord and sectarian zeal." (Ibid.) "Ernesti spoke Ciceronian Latin, but wanted Cicero's eloquence. He had good Latin words, but not very bright thoughts. With poor faculties of mind, he was astonishingly learned; but he owed his glory more to his industry than to his genius, more to his memory than to his depth. He was a great philologist, but not a great philosopher." (p. 120.)

     All the encyclopedias, in their meager reference to this now shrunken giant, speak in the same somewhat contemptuous vein concerning Ernesti's dead literalism, dogmatic intolerance and lack of genius and thoroughness.

     Bearing in mind Ernesti's exclusive devotion to the literal sense alone, we may be pardoned for calling the reader's attention to the remarkable vignette which adorns the cover of the NEUE THEOLOGISCHE BIBLIOTHEK, as herewith reproduced.

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It is the figure of an hideously ugly and emaciated bear, sucking his paw after emerging from the cavern where he has been hibernating. Above him is the inscription Ipse alimenta sibi, "he himself is his own nourishment." Then consider the correspondence of a bear, as given in the Writings: "Bears signify the letter of the Word separated from its internal sense. They who thus separate them also appear as bears in the spiritual world." (A. R. 47.) "They who only read the Word, and drink in thence nothing of doctrine, appear from afar as bears. (C. L. 78) "That these things are signified by a bear, has been made evident to me from the bears in the spiritual world, for in such forms were represented the thoughts of those who have been natural, and who have studied the Word, all the while wanting to have greater power and influence through knowledge thence." (A. E. 781)

The vignette may have been the trade-mark of the publisher, Breitkopf, in Leipzig, but it is none the less remarkable that Ernesti should have permitted this ugly representation, with its motto of smug self-satisfaction to appear for ten years on every issue of his magazine. Whether deliberately chosen or not, the vignette is certainly an appropriate one, and is almost like a scene from the other world in illustration of one of the Memorable Relations. No doubt Swedenborg smiled when he saw it on the cover of that magazine in which the revelation of the internal sense was for the first time attacked in this world.

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     It appears that Swedenborg had presented to Ernesti the five treatises published in 1758,-HEAVEN AND HELL, THE NEW JERUSALEM, THE WHITE HORSE, THE LAST JUDGMENT, and THE EARTHS IN THE UNIVERSE, and finally sent to him a set of the ARCANA COELESTIA. It is evident, also, that Swedenborg was personally known to Ernesti, as author of these anonymous books, and it seems more than probable that he had met Swedenborg while the latter resided in Leipzig from October, 1733, to March, 1734, occupied in the task of seeing through the press the PRINCIPIA and the work ON THE INFINITE. Ernesti at that time resided in Leipzig and was becoming known in the learned world, and there is every reason to believe that he would seek an introduction to the distinguished Swedish scientist. When, some twenty years later, Ernesti had become a literary and theological star of the first magnitude in Germany, he received the Writings as a present from his quondam acquaintance, and the first-fruit of this presentation was the following review in Ernesti's "NEW THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY:"

     ERNESTI'S REVIEW OF THE "ARCANA COELESTIA."

     "Inasmuch as a number of little works have come to our notice, containing wonderful explanations of certain parts of the Revelation of John, (as now again has become the fashion), and as in these treatises we are on almost every page referred to a fundamental work called the ARCANA COELESTIA, We became anxious to come into possession of this latter work in order to find out what kind of arcana from heaven are therein reported, although, on the whole, we care as little for arcana as do the gentlemen of the medical profession. Since now this work has come into our hands, and as hardly any one hates his money to such an extent that he feels like throwing away some thirty Thalers for it, we believe it will be a pleasant relief to our readers if we give them here a brief account of the work.

     We had expected that in this work the author would present an orderly system of his Theology, but we were mistaken. It is an allegorical or mystical commentary on the first and second books of Moses, in which are expounded the heavenly mysteries which probably some time will be brought together into a system.

     We will first show how the author endeavors to explain the books of Moses, and how he thinks the Sacred Scriptures ought to be expounded.

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After this we will present some specimens or his explanations, and finally we will cite the doctrines of his theology, so that each one of our readers may judge for himself about the author and his heavenly mysteries.

     The Old Testament, so the author declares, contains the mysteries of heaven, and he goes on to say: But these arcana no one can learn from the letter, from which but the external state of the Jewish Church can be discerned. Everywhere one has to look for something internal, which cannot be found in the external letter, save a very few things, which the Lord reveals and has unfolded to his disciples, as that the sacrifices represent himself, and that Canaan and Jerusalem signify heaven. But that each and all things, even the least down to the smallest iota, involve spiritual and heavenly things, of this the Christian world is profoundly ignorant, and accordingly it pays little regard to the Old Testament, and yet, an internal sense there must be, for otherwise it could not be the Word of God, could have no life, and could not inspire life. But that this is so can be known to no mortal, except it be given him to know from God. This being the case, it is first of all necessary for me to announce, that for a number of years I have been constantly in company with spirits and angels, hearing them speak and speaking with them in return. In this way I have heard and seen wonderful things, such as have never before come to the knowledge of any man. Thus I have been instructed concerning the different kinds of angels, concerning the state of souls after death, concerning heaven and hell, and especially concerning the doctrine of faith, which is known in the whole of heaven. This is the contents of the introduction to the first book of Moses.*
     * Ernesti never uses quotation marks.

     The author, of course, anticipates that many will say, that no one in this life can see spirits or angels, nor speak with them; and that still more will say that all these things are vain phantasies, or that he only pretends these things in order to make his statements credible. But this does not worry him; he has seen, heard and discovered it. He has also spoken with many deceased persons whom he had known while they lived, and this not only for a short time but almost for entire years.

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These have confessed their astonishment at their own unbelief while they lived in the body, and that there are so many others who do not believe that they will live after the death of the body.

The arrangement of the work is as follows: At the beginning of each chapter there is either a short preface similar to that of the first chapter which we quoted, or else it is but the contents of the chapter, especially according to the internal sense. After this follows the whole chapter verse by verse, explained according to the internal sense, and finally at the end there is a portion of the leading doctrines treated of. In the first book these treat of all qualities of the spirits in heaven and also upon earth, and of the heavenly and earthly life itself. In the second book these descriptions between the chapters treat of that charity which has been entirely lost in the world, but which, through the teachings of the author, is again to be restored. As a sample we will relate how he explains the first chapter of the first book of Moses, first according to the preliminary contents of it, and then particularly according to the explanations of the words:

The six days of creation are the sixfold state of regeneration. The first state is that which precedes, not only from childhood on, but also immediately before regeneration, and this is called a void, emptiness and darkness. The second state is when man learns to distinguish between things divine and human. By things divine is meant the acknowledgment of religion which has been learned in childhood. These things of religion remain hidden in man until he comes into this state, which seldom is without temptation and sorrows, which cause what is merely earthly and human to gradually die. The third state is the state of repentance, in which man from his internal speaks piously and brings forth what is good, namely, the works of charity. But these things are as yet inanimate and are called grass, herbs, etc. The fourth state is the state of charity and faith, which are the two great lights. The fifth state is when man speaks from faith and confirms himself in genuine good; the things which he now brings forth are the birds and the fishes. The sixth state, finally, is the state of good works, proceeding from faith and love, through which now he is called a living animal. There is still a seventh state mentioned, but not numbered, which comes from the former states, in which man becomes a living spiritual soul, and an image of God.

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But not everyone who becomes regenerated attains the sixth state, but only a few, and indeed most people at this day reach only the first, second or third, etc., and scarcely anyone the seventh state.

     There is a special little reminder before the particular explanations, namely, that by the name Lord, (or God), is meant none other than the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ, who is worshiped as such in the whole of heaven, because he possesses all power in heaven and upon earth (quia ipsi omnis potestas in coelis et in terris. We suspect from this statement and from the whole system that the data est is deliberately omitted.)* And this is according to the command of the Lord when saying: Ye call me Lord, and ye say well, for I am. (John xiii. 13.) And after the resurrection the disciples also called him Lord. Throughout the whole heaven, the author says, they know no other Father than the Lord, because there is but one, (quia unus, says the author, quite alone), as the Lord himself declared.
     * Because, according to Ernesti, this would prove the existence of a first Divine person by whom the power was given to the second person.

     The BEGINNING* is the earliest time, when man begins to be regenerated. To CREATE, TO FORM, and To MAKE, almost everywhere in the Prophets signify regeneration, but with a difference (Isaiah 4:3-7).
     * We have endeavored, as far as possible, to reproduce the style of Ernesti's publication.

     HEAVEN is the internal man, THE EARTH the external before regeneration. EMPTINESS and DARKNESS signify ignorance of good and truth and the corruption thence resulting, (according to Jer. 4:22, 23, 25). The facies abyssi signify the lusts and falsities of man, (Jer. 51:9-10), yet soon afterwards they also signify the knowledge which first comes to light after the external has been laid waste. THE SPIRIT OF GOD, moving upon the water, is the mercy of God (Matt. 23:37). The first thing in regeneration is when man begins to know that there is a higher good and a higher truth, for the external man does not know what good and truth are, because he regards all the earthly things he loves as good and true. But as soon as he learns of the higher things, then he begins to come to the light, it begins to be light within him, (John 1:1, 3, 4, 9).

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This LIGHT IS GOOD, because it comes from God. This is according to the manner of speech in the Sacred Scripture, which calls that NIGHT and DARKNESS which is of man's own and not of God. Hence it may be seen what is meant by EVENING and MORNING. The former is the preceding state of error and ignorance, the latter is the succeeding state of knowing the truth. The EXPANSE is the internal, and the science of the external man is the waters above the expanse. Before a man is regenerated, he does not even know that there is an internal man, still less what the internal man is or wherein it differs from the external. This difference, however, man learns to know in regeneration, and, therefore, it is first said that God made the expanse, and afterwards that he made a division between the waters above the expanse and those beneath the expanse. (Here the author is at a loss what to make of the two waters.) But because the internal man strives more and more to go from the earth towards heaven, therefore it is also called HEAVEN: et vocavit Deus expansum coelum in explaining these words the author refers to Isaiah 44:24, 42:3, 4, 5. But We must have mercy on our time and paper and will not proceed further; these few notes will suffice to show how the author explains things and how he has made use of his Concordance. We will now relate something of that which he has seen and heard in heaven.

After the explanation of the second chapter there follows a treatise ON THE RESURRECTION OF MAN AFTER DEATH AND HIS ENTRANCE INTO HEAVEN, which treatise is continued in sections at the end of each chapter. All that he here tells he has learned in a state of trance. The narrative is so confused and obscure that it is evident that while writing it he had not quite recovered his senses. The main point is that the RESURRECTION takes place immediately when the soul awakes after death and again begins to think, to hear and see. If it is a pious soul it will by and by go to heaven, some sooner, some later, a few right away, of which he has known two instances. Ungodly souls, however, do not wish to remain in the company of good angels, but hunt up their own likes with whom they then live, and by and by come into hell. Such is the first news from heaven. (pp. 49, 51, 84)

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The rest describes the NATURE OF THE LIFE OF THE SOUL, (p. 84), or of the spirit AFTER DEATH, (P. 497) Souls possess all the faculties of sense, (except taste), just as in the life of the body, even in a much higher degree, so that at first they do not believe that they now are spirits; they also possess strong desires; their ideas are clearer and greater, and in one idea there is more than in thousands of ideas on earth; they also speak in an astonishingly clear manner, (p. 120). One may learn from them all the opinions which in their bodily life they have held concerning the soul and its state after death. In his trance the author has spoken with one soul who would not believe that a spirit possesses an extended substance, (an extensum), but he learned better from the author, confessed his error, and marveled at his having been so foolish in his earthly life. The defenders of the extended spirits may read for themselves the proofs which were so strong and also came from heaven. One soul who heard the author talking about spirits asked, What spirit, what spirit? I am a man,-and would not admit that he was a soul. But he was convinced by being reminded of the fact that he was standing above the head of the author and not upon the ground. By this demonstration the soul became so terrified that he ran away crying: I am a spirit! The soul of a Jew, however, could not be convinced at all. At one time the author even contradicted the angels and they admitted that he was right. (p. 149)

Heaven and its happiness consists in love, and hell in hatred. (p. 196). Several times in his trance he was let down into hell in order to learn the torments of it, (p. 198). But to be let down into hell does not mean to go from one place into another, but to be let into an infernal society where the man will always remain in the same place. There are also many hells, indeed as many as there are ruling evils, all of which he describes in a series, (p. 371). He next speaks of the souls of men whom he met in various regions of heaven, and first those who lived before the food, whom he classifies into different groups. From them he learned that the very first men did not speak (articulate) as we do; but were able to communicate their thoughts in some other way. One may see indeed that the author is here trying to present the Epicurean system; but he hides it under strange accounts of a kind of respiration different from that which man received afterwards, but similar to that which angels still have.

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     In the third age of the ancient church, before the good, men were instructed that a Salvator mundi was to be born, and on this account the people were zealous in propagating many children, in order that he might come all the sooner. In like manner the author treats of the different periods of the church after the flood and all this from heavenly communications, (p. 418) In another place, (p. 451), he treats of space and time in heaven and the sum-substance of all that he relates in his own peculiar way, is that time, space and motion are mere ideas and changes of the internal state of spirits and consequently are mere phenomena (p. 454). Further on he treats of the perceptions of spirits and of the communication of thought among them, of which subjects the first was so obscure to us that we were unable to find out what he really means by it. On their language he dwells at considerable length, (p. 535). Spirits speak all languages, (see the Acts of the Apostles, Chap. 2), for their speech is not a language of words, but of ideas, which is a universal language.

     On pages 585 and 624 there is a lengthy account of his heavenly experiences, in regard to the Word of God. In his heaven Coccejanism* reigns at a great rate. Yet even there some are found who are unbelieving in that respect, but the author gets out of that difficulty by his belief that, (p. 628), there are no angels and spirits who have not first been men and consequently all souls are departed men, while before he had always been speaking of angels: Quod in genere spiritus et Angelos attinet, et, qui omnes sunt animae hominuum viventes post mortem corporis, etc.
     * Ernesti supposed that Swedenborg was a follower of JOHN COCCEIUS, (1603-1669), a famous Dutch theologian, who strongly defended the doctrine of salvation by Faith alone, Predestination and other "mysteries." Swedenborg saw him and his followers in hell. (S. D. 6099-6100; T. C. R. 803)

     This is a general outline of the first part which contains the first 15 Chapters of the first book of Moses. The second Part is divided into six sections, each of which has a special title and a new paging, embracing one entire chapter. In these sections special subjects are again treated of. The first, concerning the 17th chapter treats of the LAST JUDGMENT.

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This, according to him, is the death of each individual. Beside this, however, many last judgments have already taken place, as at the end of the human race before the Flood.

     We have read a little work by the same author on the Revelation, where he grows quite angry at the Christians, because they would not believe in the resurrection of the dead and in the last judgment. But from this statement and from the things we have related above concerning his doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, it is clear what the fellow ["der Mensch"] means, viz., what he says in the first part, rather indiscreetly: non credunt homines mortuos resurrexisse,* (p. 628).
     * "Men do not believe that the dead have risen."

     The flood and the destruction of Jerusalem are according to him last judgments upon certain nations etc. The souls of children are instructed and educated in the other life, and the author explains the method of this instruction. Angels of the female sex are especially engaged in this work, because women love children. Thus they gradually grow up and become like those who died in adult age. Gentiles and other non-Christians likewise go to their own heaven if they have lived in charity and have not done anything against true religion. These also are instructed by the angels concerning the things they had not known, and this they very willingly receive. At this day more Gentiles go to heaven than Christians.

     We hesitate to trouble our readers by giving any further extracts from this work. It is not difficult to see that the author under this fantastic form endeavors to present naturalism and his own philosophical opinions. It is a romance of a new kind such as may perhaps be compared with Klimm's subterranean journeys. But while the latter is harmless fiction, the former,-because it abuses and perverts the Sacred Scriptures by the pretension of an inner sense,-is in the highest degree worthy of punishment. Yet on the whole we do not fear that many people will read the work or suffer themselves to be seduced by it; although alas, many persons begin to take pleasure in such dreams. From the above one may easily conclude as to the nature of the author's explanation of the Apocalypse-an explanation which this much tortured book could well dispense with, and we hesitate to trouble our readers with extracts from it." (NEUE THEOLOGISCHE EIBLIOTHEK, Vol. I, 1760, pp. 515-527.)

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     Such, then, was the very first notice, in the Old Christian Church, of the New Revelation in which the Lord made His Second Advent. One can but marvel that this first greeting was at once so intelligent and at the same time so contemptuous and unjust. If the reviewer really believed that the ARCANA contained mere irreverent nonsense, why did he devote to it so much precious space in his learned and serious magazine? If it was not likely that the work would be read by many, why call attention to it at such length? The reasons for this apparent inconsistency on the part of Ernesti may, perhaps, be explained by influences from those Imaginary Heavens where the appearance of the Writings had attracted instant attention, consternation, and finally a universal cataclysmic Judgment. Of these events Ernesti was not aware, but no doubt he smelled a great danger from afar. The same perception is evident in his next notice of the Writings.

     ERNESTI'S REVIEW OF THE "FOUR DOCTRINES"

     "At the first glance into this collection of four little works, we recognize the author of the ARCANA COELESTIA, from which we communicated some extracts in this magazine, Vol. I., pp. 515 f. He also refers to this work very frequently, as we found in going through this volume, the greater part of which is, in fact, only a repetition from the former work, sometimes adding to its obscurity, but sometimes adding further illustration of its contents. The personality and name of the author were known to us when we wrote the former review, but we must not mention it now any more than before. It is not the person that is of consequence, but the subject matter. We will therefore briefly indicate the contents of this Piece, especially as in the Introduction he says that the work has been written and published by the command of God.

     In the first place, DE DOMINO, who is the Messiah, he often speaks in such a manner as to convey a good impression, as quod universa scriptura sit in Domino et quod Dominus sit verbum, according to John I.; that this Dominus has fulfilled the Law, that he came into the world, etc.

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But all this he says in another meaning than the usual one. We have shown in our former review what he understands by THE LORD, (P. 519, 20). Here, however, he reveals himself still more plainly, and it is seen that his system, in respect to the Godhead, is the Sabellian. He ridicules the common Christians with their triplicata divinitate. According to him, (p. 54), Deus est unus persona et essentia, et ille Deus est Dominus. The Athanasian doctrine, he says, is correct if only we do not believe in a trinitatem personarum, but in a trinity of Personae, gum est in Domino. He admits that Christ did bear the sins in his passion, but this means only that the Humanum in Domino suffered great temptations, and was treated by the Jews in the same manner as they treated the Word which was in him, (p. 20). But the Word is his doctrine. It can also be said, says the author (p. 23), that Christ took away the sins, but this is effected thus: that those who believe in him, live according to his commandments, (Matth. 5.17, 19). But to believe in him is nothing else than to receive his commandments. The author says, (p. 24), that the imputation of the merit of Christ is an empty word if by it one does not mean the forgiveness of sins which follows upon actual repentance gum fit ex Domino, that is, from the change of the heart and the life according to the commandments of Christ, and it is not allowed to think of any Atonement and Satisfaction [of the wrath of God], for there is not in God any punishing Vengeance.

Christ is called the SON OF GOD, he says on p. 25, quoad divinum Humanum, and not because of any birth from eternity; and quoad Verbum, as teacher, he is the SON OF MAN. And thus also this name becomes the name of a function, and this for the very same reason that others have been called by the name of the Son of God with reference to an office, as for instance the prophets in the Old Testament.

On p. 37 he expresses himself very clearly on the Divinum in Christ; Divinum Domini, quod Pater vocatur, Jehova, Deus; et Divinum Humanum, quod Filius vocatur, Redemtor, etc.; and on p. 38 he says that Christ in his states of humiliation prayed to the Father, sicut alium a se, but in the states of exaltation he spoke with the Father as one speaking to himself, that he was with the Father, he in the Father, and the Father in him.

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And finally he put off the humanum ex matre, and put on the humanum ex Divine in ipso, quod Pater vocatur, and thus be become divinum.

     The Holy Ghost is (p. 47) the Divinum procedens a Domino, et id est ipse Dominus. Of this Procedente the author assures us that he knows a great deal, but he cannot adduce it here. And yet he cannot let it alone, but says at once, (on p. 47), that every pious man after his death learns from the angels (see this magazine,* vol. I., p. 525) that the Holy Spirit is none other than the Lord, and that to go forth and to proceed is nothing is else than to give light and to teach, by his presence, which is according to the reception of the Lord; hence many after death put away the idea of the Holy Spirit which they had conceived in the world, and receive the idea that it is the presence of the Lord with men by means of angels and spirits, from which and according to which man is enlightened and taught.
     * The rest of this Paragraph is a quotation from the Latin original.

     Of the SCRIPTURE, in the second piece, the author speaks most reverentially. It contains the Divine Truth; but as to the understanding thereof we have already quoted his opinions in our former review, and as to the manner in which it is to be interpreted. Beside the literal sense the Scripture has also a spiritual meaning, (p. 5),-not the one which others know or think they know, but one which until now has remained altogether unknown and which in the future will be imparted to no one nisi qui in genuinis veris a Domino est. By virtue of this same spiritual sense the Scripture is also for heaven and the angels. To one who observes, and reads the following as a sample, it becomes evident that this is natural theology and ethics. And yet it is this spiritual sense, (p. 13), that causes the Word to be inspired by God and holy in all the words. Before the flood men learned it from the angels, but afterwards it became obscured. The first Christians were too simple to be able to find it, and moreover it would have been of no use to them. Later on it was altogether lost in the Papacy, and even the Protestants have been unable to find it, because they have separated faith from love, and have believed in one God in three persons, and thus in three gods.

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The author in saying this means nothing else than that the Christians have not become Naturalists like the Socinians, for it is clear from his entire work that this is his whole purpose, but it is presented in so many obscure and barbarous expressions and uncertainties that many readers might become quite confused in regard to it.

     Moreover, he has still another sense, a sensum caelestem, which has reference to good, even as the spiritual sense has reference to truth; even the literal sense is a different one from the ordinary, for it has the spiritual and the celestial in it, (p. 38). But it can be found by no one but one who is in illustration from the Lord, (p. 27), that is, who loves the truth as truth, and brings it to a holy life. Who then are these? Those who seek for themselves a religion, a doctrine, in the Sacred Scripture, which afterwards kindles a light in them, but not the religion which they or others have already received and sought to confirm from the Scripture.

     On p. 48 the author asserts that before the Word of God which we now have there was a Word of God which has become lost. The first of these propositions is taught by all Theologi, and they understand thereby the unwritten Word before Moses, of which, however, it cannot be said that it has become lost. But the author means that there was also a written Word, and as evidence he points to the books which are referred to by Moses, and in the Book of Joshua, and in the First Book of Samuel, 1:17; and he has also heard from an angel that the first seven chapters of GENESIS Were taken word for word from this ancient written Word, for it still exists in heaven where are the souls of the people of those times. God has permitted it to become lost because the spiritual and heavenly things therein were presented in a more remote manner, and on this account had begun to be perverted by many heresies.

     The author says further, (p. 50), that those also who are outside the Church and do not have the Word, possess a light from the Word, and he seems to wish to say that everything of truth, especially in divine things, wherever it is and has been among men, has its origin in the Word of God.

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For he says, (p. 54, 55), that if there had been no Word of God in the world, nobody would know anything concerning God and the life after death, and still less concerning the Lord; whatever of truth concerning the Lord was known to the heathen philosophers, sprang originally from the Word of God. Nor do the writers of natural theology derive anything whatever from themselves, but they only confirm by rational arguments those things which they know from the Church where the Word is-which is not so badly put.*
     * This is probably intended for a sarcasm.

     The THIRD PIECE, concerning the Law,* has much that is good in it, but nothing that is new, and it is moreover founded on the erroneous principle that it is the virtuous life that is the cause of eternal blessedness. This appears still further from the FOURTH PIECE, concerning Faith, wherein the Protestants are very badly handled on account of their doctrine on the same subject. Faith, with the author, is the internal acknowledgment of the truth, and no one possesses this who is not in charity. This, indeed, would also be correct if it were not,-as may be seen from what we have said above concerning his teachings,-that by THE TRUTH he does not mean the genuine Christian truth, but only that kind of truth which even a heathen or a Jew can possess. Moreover, with the author the true order of those two things [faith and charity] is inverted. That acknowledgment of which he speaks comes from the love, and before the love is there, the acknowledgment of truth and good which one may have, is only that from which the fides charitatis, as he calls it, can come.
     * THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE.

     He accuses us of teaching a faith without love, blames us for teaching that good works do not bring salvation, and generally condemns the teaching that the understanding must be subjected to the obedience of faith, and that those things which are not understood are called matters of faith; and he tries to make this ridiculous by a story which is supposed to have taken place in heaven. He says that those persons who teach thus are represented by the Dragon in the Revelation of John, and by the he goats in Daniel, chapter 8, and Matthew 35,-which heretofore no one has ever realized.

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It is not necessary to answer this accusation, for it has been answered a hundred times by others. But it is easy to guess from what origin comes this zeal against the faith of the Protestant doctrine.

     As to the author's opinion respecting the LAST JUDGMENT we have already spoken in the former review. In the present volume there is only a brief summary and an appendix concerning the Last Judgment upon the Protestants. It is described in the style of the account of the Last Judgment in the Sacred Scripture, and, as far as we are able to see, he means to say that the Protestant Church, because of its doctrine of faith,-on account of which people live such an ungodly life,-is to be destroyed, and its members are to become Papists, Mohammedans and pagans. This, however, is only the general Judgment, but in addition there have been revealed to the author so many remarkable particulars, that it is not possible for him to describe them all.

     We hesitate to detain our readers with any further extracts. It is to be deplored that a person, who in other respects is a learned man, should have gone so far astray, and that he should plague himself and his readers with such fantastic ambiguities which also must be very expensive to himself, (for he, of course must print these books at his own expense, and they are all printed in a sumptuous manner). It would cost less to present his Sabellian and naturalistic system in a straightforward manner, and be through with it in a few sheets, since printed, of course, it must be." (N. T. B., Vol. IV., 1763, pp. 725-733)

     (To be continued.)

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LOVE OF DOMINATION IN MARRIAGE 1912

LOVE OF DOMINATION IN MARRIAGE Rev. W. F. PENDLETON 1912

     When it is said that God created man male and female, more arcana are involved than can ever be expressed in human language; but they all lead finally to the ultimate fact of man and woman, their love for each other, their inclination to be united into one, and in such a union the unfolding of a love which is to make them happy to eternity, a love called Love truly Conjugial.

     In the even division of the two sexes wherever men exist, we find exemplified the fact that love truly conjugial is a provision in creation itself, by the Creator Himself; illustrating the teaching of the Doctrine that conjugial pairs are born, and that the continual effort of Providence after birth is to bring them together; and that this will be accomplished, unless obstructions, arising from the human proprium, stand in the way to defeat the ends of Providence.

     We read that love truly conjugial, such as it is in itself, has been almost unknown in the world since the time of the Most Ancient Church; and especially is its origin unknown, that it is from the Lord Himself in heaven. And even when this, its Divine origin, is suggested, it is not acknowledged or believed. In fact, this most distinguished of all human loves is believed to originate in nature. But this is not a matter of wonder since it is believed that all things have their origin in the same source. In such a belief conjugial love is seen to be a love that is merely external, carnal, and corporeal, a love that man has in common with the beasts that perish.

     When it is once seen, however, that nature is not the cause of all things, but only an instrumental medium; that all things in nature have a spiritual origin, an origin in the spiritual world, an origin in the spiritual sun, an origin with the Lord Himself, who dwells in the sun of the spiritual world; it will then not be difficult to understand that love truly conjugial has the same origin, and that on account of this, its Divine origin, it is pure, holy, and eternal, the chief means by which man is united with God and God with man.

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     It is therefore necessary to believe, in order that the church, such as it is in heaven, may descend and be with men, that conjugial love has its origin in heaven; that it is therefore an eternal love, and brings man into the eternal presence of God, into eternal conjunction with Him, and, at the same time, imparts eternal happiness to all who are in it.

     Without this belief, and the love that it be so, conjugial love becomes a dead thing, marriage exists only in name, is merely an outward appearance, an external in which there is no internal, and human life is not dissimilar to the life of beasts,-except that it is even worse, introducing man to a misery unknown to the animal creation.

     If a man believes that marriage is from heaven, because it exists in heaven with the angels, and is inwardly affected by this knowledge; if his heart is moved at the thought of it; if he is inmostly delighted because it is so, loves it as the very truth of God; then the conjugial is living within him, because it has a soul of life from God; and if he maintains this state against all things which oppose, until the end of life in the world, he will, after death, be in the eternal conjugial of heaven, and be happy to eternity.

     For marriage then, by virtue of the end that is in it, will be no longer animal, no longer an external without an internal, no longer worldly, carnal, corporeal, but heavenly, because from heaven, and the conjugial pair become a form of heaven. And even if there be temptations, even if there be assault by evil spirits, even if the hells endeavor to destroy this heavenly form, the assault is permitted in order to establish more fully and more firmly that which already exists at the core, at the heart of things, in the inmost of the two who are husband and wife now and forever.

     For we are instructed that heaven itself appears in the world in ultimates among men, when it appears in marriage, or in the love of it,-and nowhere else. There is no heaven where this is not. That is to say, he who is not in marriage, or in the love of it; he who is not in love truly conjugial or in the love of it, has no heaven in him and no conjunction with heaven.

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He is a dead form, a form of hell, the opposite of the heavenly form, which is at the same time the form of marriage; for nothing lives in the universe that is not a form of marriage or a representative of that form. For the very form of heaven itself is the marriage form, and there is no heaven without this marriage form, the form of love truly conjugial, where two are in essence one, and who, at times, appear even as one in form. There is no heavenly society that is not constituted of married pairs. There is no angel that is not husband and wife together; and the thought of a love extra-conjugial cannot exist in the heavenly atmosphere, but when it enters it is at once execrated as an abominable thing.

     In the world, however, we are in intermediates, or in things and states that are in between heaven and hell. And so with us here it is necessary at times for the opposite to appear, that its quality may be made known, resisted, and cast out. For thus the truth and the good are illustrated and made strong, and gradual preparation is made for introduction into the heavenly atmosphere where no breath of the opposite can ever ripple or disturb the tenor of angelic life.

     Heaven may descend into the world, and hell may ascend; the love of marriage may descend from heaven, and the love of adultery may ascend from hell; and the one may dislodge the other,-and will do so, for the two things, which are opposite to each other, cannot exist together; there is naught but collision, conflict, and the one must soon succumb to the other.

     As the conjugial is the fundamental love of heaven, so is adultery the fundamental love of hell; and the love of adultery with men in the world, and at the same time the belief and persuasion that it is not a sin, the thought in the mind that it is allowable and right, the interior reasoning that justifies and defends it, introduces hell into the world; and when this becomes general, the fundamental of hell becomes the fundamental of human society, and such a society will soon cease to exist. Its members will gradually exterminate each other.

     The fundamental love is the foundation love. Conjugial love, which is the mutual inmost love of one man and one woman for each other, is that love upon which heaven is founded.

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It is the one foundation of heaven in the spiritual world, and it is the one foundation of heaven in the natural world, the one foundation that roots and establishes the church with men.

     There must be this foundation with the angels in their own natural, that they may be guarded against the hells. And there must be the same foundation in the natural with men, that the church may be protected from infernal assault; for the guard and protection of the church is the guard and protection of heaven itself. For upon this foundation in the church a wall is built that encircles heaven and preserves the integrity of the angelic life. Without such a foundation for the conjugial in the church on earth there could be no foundation for heaven nor could heaven exist. And so where conjugial love is founded in man, the angels dwell with him in it, and he has that in him, and they have that in them with him which contains all the love and all the life of heaven, and the foundation from which flow all good loves in both worlds.

     And as it is with conjugial love so it is with its opposite love: it is that opposite love with men upon which hell is founded with them; and thus it is that love by which hell makes itself present, the foundation love in which evil spirits make their abode, thus the love which contains in its foul bosom all infernal loves, and is the filthy fountain out of which flow all the evils of the human race, which destroy human society and damn the souls of men. The foundation love of heaven is thus all preservative, and the foundation love of hell is all destructive of life in both worlds.

     Now conjugial love is conjunction of minds; it is where two minds become one mind and two hearts one heart. For wherever there is love there is conjunction, hence it is said so frequently in the Heavenly Doctrine that love is conjunction. Of two minds that love each other it cannot be said that they will be conjoined; they are conjoined; and life eternal is the product of that conjunction, and the happiness of eternal life, with a perpetuation of life and happiness to eternity. But the opposite love produces the opposite effect, and it produces the opposite effect because it is opposite,-opposite in its very nature and essence, in its very activity and life, in its very form and in its very determination to form.

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And hence, since love is conjunction, hatred, the opposite of love, is disjunction; and therefore there can be no conjunction in hell where hatred reigns. It is so with all love and all the opposites of love. They mutually strive against each other.

     The opposite of the conjugial is the love of adultery. In this love, so-called, hatred ultimates itself more completely than in all other evil loves, and for this reason it is more deadly and destructive to the human race than all other loves. The love of adultery is, then, a plenary disjunction of minds, for it is hatred itself.

     Conjugial love is love, it is love itself, when considered in itself. For to consider it in itself is to consider it in its origin; and in its origin it is love to the Lord. But the opposite love is not love, although it at first appears like it, and it appears like it because it imitates its opposite; in itself it is the love of self, which is hatred in its essence.

     The love of marriage or love truly conjugial, being in heaven and being heaven itself, is a spiritual union of minds. Thus consorts who are in this union are not only together naturally, but they are together spiritually, are not only together in the natural world, but are together in the spiritual world. They are not only in the same natural consociation among men, but they are in the same spiritual consociation among spirits and angels. They are surrounded by the same class of spirits and angels. They dwell together in the same heavenly society, even while they are still in the world-and after death they enter and dwell in the same society, in the same house, intimately together in heaven forever.

     It cannot be said, therefore, that where consorts dwell among a different class of spirits, the husband in one society and his wife in another, that there is between them a spiritual union, or union of mind and soul. In this case they cannot possibly be together after death, even though they be together in the life of the body. It is therefore essential to the conjugial that consorts dwell together in the spiritual world. And it is from this ground that it is said in the Doctrine that in a true conjugial union each loves to think and will as the other. This cannot be done unless they dwell together in the spiritual world; and they cannot dwell together in the spiritual world unless they are in a similar spiritual religion, a similar spiritual faith, and in a similar spiritual life; and from this in a unity of will, a unity of purpose, a unity of thought, and a unity in the uses of life.

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Hence arises the doctrine which we know as the doctrine of marriage in the church, the importance of which is ever before us as a fundamental to the life, to the growth, and to the existence of the church.

     Marriage in the Church is, however, at first, only a general thing; and while it is a general that contains all, there are many things to follow unfolded from that general before love truly conjugial can actually exist as the fundamental condition of the life of the church. Essential among these things to be unfolded is liberty; for there may be the form of marriage in the church without its essential life. This is true because implanted deep in the unregenerate conjugial, if we may so speak, is the love of domination; and when the life of the one is subjugated by the other in marriage, the two may be in the church, but the church will not be in them, or, at least, not in the one who dominates the other.

     Where there is love there is life, and where there is life there is liberty. Love, liberty, and life are inseparable. With these must be another which is delight. Love, liberty, life, and delight are, essential to the life of every angel, to the life of every angelic couple. As is the love, so is the liberty, so is the life, and so is the delight. The activity of love gives the sense of life, the sense of liberty, and the sense of delight. Where one is the others are always present. Take away one and you take away all. Suppress liberty, and you suppress the delight and finally the life of love truly conjugial. You cannot have the life and the delight of love truly conjugial without its liberty also. Where one consort loves the other, loves to will and to think, to speak and to act as the other does, mutually and reciprocally,-where this is, there is the life of love, the delight of love, and the liberty of love, the liberty of love truly conjugial; and there is no other essential human liberty, because there is no other essential and distinctive, no other native and peculiar human delight and life of love, distinguishing man from the beasts of the field.

     Now the greater the mutual love between the two, the greater is the delight, and the greater is the sense of life and of liberty; and at the same time the closer is the spiritual union, the union of heart, mind, and soul.

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From this state the lust of personal domination is removed as far away as hell is from heaven. This lust cannot possibly be present where one loves to think and will as the other mutually, where there is the delight of love truly conjugial active in the mind of each. Where the liberty of conjugial love is, arising from this mutual state of love, the love of domination on the one part, and the sense of subjugation on the other, can no more be p resent than hell itself can be present; for the lust of domination reigns in hell, and outside of hell only with those who become its willing subjects.

     If the one loves to will and think as the other, then the one loves the liberty of the other. This, indeed, is essential to all love, the love of the liberty of another; and especially is it essential to conjugial love-the mutual love of each other's liberty. There is no better evidence of the presence of the conjugial from heaven than this, that the one loves the liberty of the other; for the one is in liberty when loving the liberty of the other-and only then. And there is no better evidence of the absence of the activity of conjugial love than this, that the one loves to dominate the mind and life of the other, and thus takes delight in the subjugation of the other. If this be persisted in without repentance and self-compulsion genuine conjugial love will be destroyed, together with the delight of love and the liberty of love, and a separation from heaven and all that constitutes the life of heaven takes place.

     There is, however, a legitimate field of domination, and that is in our self, in the work of self-compulsion-in compelling oneself and not another-in reducing the loves and delights of our own natural life to obedience. For just in the degree that one consort is occupied in the task of dominating the life of the other, just in that degree will there be the neglect of the work of self domination, the work of subduing one's own natural loves.

     The domination of self, therefore, is the pathway to the conjugial, and there is no other; and this pathway is the same as the pathway to heaven; for the way of the one is the way of the other-they are one and the same thing; and the two who are traveling along together in this path are on the highway to heaven.

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     If one would know, therefore, how the conjugial enters, the conjugial that has its origin in heaven, love truly conjugial; and where it finds an abode and resting place, the secret will be found in the subduing one's own love of domination over the other, in restraining the delight of that love, or that lust, and in waging war with it. For the delight of the love of domination is the delight of the love of self, and this delight, this love, disjoins minds, separates from heaven, and gives origin to the love of adultery. And it is a most remarkable thing to note in this connection that if one subjugates his own delight and love of domination, the subjugation of the love of adultery will not be difficult, will follow as an effect from its cause. For when in marriage the love of domination is brought under subjection, then the one loves to think and will as the other, and the love of adultery finds no resting place there, but excites horror and loathing. When this is the case, evil, adulterous spirits no longer have any power, for they cannot endure the angelic loathing of adulteries. And the couple on earth that is in the sphere of this angelic loathing will be protected, no matter what will be the appearance of happening to them.

     Now we read that the preparation for all adult spiritual states begins in childhood. What is not begun in childhood is begun with difficulty in after-life, if it is begun at all. The chances are that a man will not undertake in adult age that to which there is not some inspiration from remains implanted in childhood. It is said that the child is the father of the man, and as the twig is bent so the tree is inclined; and this is but a recognition in common perception of the true law of mental growth. In fact, every man inclines to that with which he has been affected in childhood, whether good or evil; and this is the ground for the doctrine of remains.

     This is a general law that has been expounded before, but it is well to refresh our minds, and especially to see it in application to the truth we have now under consideration, the evil of the lust of domination in marriage.

     We usually recognize the importance of teaching and leading our children to shun, and inspiring them with the love of shunning, the things which are filthy and unclean, both as to thought and practice, things which, if nurtured and cherished, will tend, in adult age, to a life contrary to the love of marriage; and it is right and of exceedingly great importance to act against these things in our children with firmness, judgment, and prudence.

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But another thing is even more important still, which is a judicious and intelligent restraining of their lust of domination over their fellows. Instead of restraining this, many parents encourage it and take delight in it when it is observed in their children. It is this spirit of domination, encouraged in them, that will probably render the conjugial impossible in adult life, and deprive them, therefore, of all the use and happiness of heaven in depriving them of love truly conjugial.

We are told in the Doctrine that if a man overcomes his love of domination, the conquest of all other loves will be easy. And so let us look to this in our children above all other things, that they may be prepared for their promised inheritance promised by the Lord to those who from childhood and youth shun wandering lusts, and pray to the Lord for a happy union with one of the other sex. This is the Divine promise of an eternal inheritance to those who begin in early life to prepare for the glory, the happiness, and the use which is to come to all those who are willing to subdue the lusts of the flesh, in obedience to the commands of the Lord.

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POTENCY OF HOMOEOPATHY 1912

POTENCY OF HOMOEOPATHY WILFRED HOWARD 1912

     No mind of sound judgment could disagree in general with the broad philosophic treatment of the subject of Disease by Mr. Iungerich. Neither can the writer be said to oppose Homoeopathy any more than he opposes other "negative" forms of cure.

     The crucial point of the whole philosophy seems to rest on the question as to when "positive" methods are effective, and when "negative" methods are to be resorted to.

     Let us study the "positive" methods outlined in page 582 of the September LIFE, as follows:

     "Moderate food and diet, exercise and rest, sleep, moderate temperature of the air and tranquillity of the animus are the positive means to be used in the treatment of the body; agreeable conversation and society in the treatment of the animus, and theological and philosophical instruction by competent teachers who have access to genuine truths, together with the practice of self-compulsion, in the treatment of the intellectual mind."

     We here find that these methods are in reality ends in themselves, and not means to an end such as cures really are; for instance, a healthy person with the ability and possession of such powers, by unconscious habit continually engages in such exercises; thus he obeys the recognized laws of health and the whole quality and tone of such a man is positive to the reception of health. Such a person needs no cure. Therefore it would seem that such could be called positive states of health, rather than "positive methods of cure."

     To inflict "positive" methods as cures upon those in sick or negative conditions would surely court disaster. It would be of little value to enforce a healthy meal upon an unsound digestive system, or to give philosophic dissertations to one unable to stand it, without first curing those planes of the mind and body and building them up by "negative" means, if necessary, to the end that the patient may be brought into a positive state of bodily and mental activity.

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For it takes two negatives to produce one positive.

     Take, for instance, the illustration given of the irritating burr placed between shirt and skin. The rational mode-as stated by Mr. Iungerich-is certainly to remove it. But the hand or some such medium is necessary for its removal. Positive methods, such as sleep, (if possible, with a burr next to the skin), moderate food, tranquillity of the animus, theological and philosophical discussions, would never remove the burr or relieve the irritation.

     All disease really presupposes the inability to use "positive" methods, or, viewed organically, it is the very fact of the presence of disordered organism, which, acting as a basis for influx of evil, prevents the reception of orderly or "positive" healthy states;-hence the disease.

     Homoeopathy has often been attacked from the viewpoint of the "Atomic Theory." It is asserted that the molecules of the mother tincture of the drug, within the region of the 30th potency, become so attenuated or dissolved into their least parts or atoms that they are not sufficiently numerous to go round, and that, therefore, medicine of this or higher potency is a snare and a delusion, which doth perforce resolve Homoeopathy into a system of Christian Science, (flavored with a little sugar and the doctor's bill). But such a theory unhappily invalidates the arguments of Mr. Iungerich, for he truly assumes that we have been imbibing poisons, whilst the atomic theory assumes by profound and lengthy calculation, filling the simple mind with consternation, that no poison ever did or ever could exist within that little pill.

     But we well know that from the Writings and the philosophical works the atomic theory receives little affirmation. In A. C. 5084 we read: "It is a fallacy of the merely natural sense that there are simple substances such as monads and atoms."

     From the viewpoint of the advanced chemist and physicist the atomic theory is likewise being ranked among hypotheses that will not stand the test of modern research. Says a writer upon the subject: "The atomic theory, which we were taught at school to regard as the foundation of chemical science, has been scrapped upon the dust-heap of antiquated hypotheses."

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     The electron theory of matter, supported by Lord Kelvin, Maxwell, Thomson and others, though recognizing the atom as a working unit, or basis, yet has to conceive of it not as a "least substance" or "indivisible unit," but as an organism, a society of many parts.

     The imaginary atom conceived by Prof. J. J. Thomson is composed of a number of corpuscles of positive electrification, in which lie a number of negatively electrified bodies,-a conception very similar to Swedenborg's bullular theory of active centers with passives or finites as envelopes.

     The simple atom of hydrogen is supposed to contain 1,000 negatively electrified corpuscles, an atom of Mercury 200,000, and so on with other atoms, and hence it would appear that even to the modern materialistic conception the atom is by no means a single or a simple thing. There are many advanced thinkers that resolve all substance ultimately to electricity. It was this theory that caused the remark of Mr. Balfour, "That matter had not only been explained, but explained away;" and, viewed materially, this is true. For the more you sublimate matter, the more it is resolved back to the original finites and auras from which it was compounded, and the more it enters upon wider fields of activity. The things most dead, least prone to produce effects, are matters, but the more matter is attenuated, the more active does it become and not less so.

     The question is again taken up by Mr. Iungerich in the February LIFE, under the heading, "The Two Avenues for Medical Treatment;" here food as a means of cure is again advocated.

     Swedenborg's little work on TREMULATION is referred to as upholding tremulation as a system of cure. But, surely, Homoeopathy is essentially a system of tremulation, that is, as to its mode of operation. Let us take a simple case of poison,-Poison Ivy, for instance. Tremulating in all directions from the plant is its active poisonous sphere: this poison or perversion attacks the person that comes within the realm of its activity, and infects him with its influence. Now it is doubtless true that malnutrition may have provided an open plane for infection, but with the man, once poisoned, foods will not effect a cure, and tremulation-such as vibratory and massage systems, etc.,-applied externally, would but add fuel to the fire, as experience testifies.

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The higher, refined, potentized tremulation of homoeopathic dosage will, however, be effective, for such tremulations can be said to be tuned to the pitch of the tremulations of the poison. When by virtue of potentization the plane is reached whereon the disease or perversion is active,-then the application of the law "similia similibus curantur" will become operative. The whole theory of potentization seems to me to rest on this fact, namely:-that potentization is an attempt to attune the activity of a drug to a like activity, or to a like plane as that upon which the disease is operative; hence the fact that medicine of low potency will, in certain cases, be useless, whilst medicine of the same drug highly potentized proves effective. The application of the word "mysterious" to such a system is surely ill-fitted, for it is a system essentially tremulatory in its methods, rational, and scientific.

     The application of the law "similia similibus curantur"-seems to involve two things-namely:

     I. Similarity of drug, or substance of like quality to that acting as actual organic basis for the disease.

     II. Similarity of activity, or to put it in the terms of the physicist, similarity of vibrations per unit of time, of such substance.

     Without the cooperation of these two conditions similarity cannot be said to exist, and the law of "similars" cannot operate. The first involves the proper choice of the drug, the second potentization. To illustrate from the physical phenomena of sound, we strike a tuning fork of middle C pitch causing 256 vibrations per second in the fork and surrounding air, by this means we can stimulate a sympathetic activity in the C string of the piano which we will suppose to be present. Now the string is sympathetic to the sound, just as man must be first in a state sympathetic to the disease before the disease can attack him.

     The next stage is that the man is not only sympathetic to the outside force, but of himself generates such an activity, or there is present within him an actual organic basis, living its own perverted and diseased life,-which is similar to the piano itself vibrating when the middle C note is being struck.

     We now wish to annihilate such an activity. By the laws of interference, if we again strike our tuning fork, by being of like amplitude and opposite phrase the two sound waves will tend to destroy each other, so that the same activity that caused sound in the first instance now acts to the destruction of the same.

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But should we use a fork other than C, thus of different amplitude on vibration, no opposing results would be effected. Hence the necessity of potentization.

     The higher or lower notes that we might use would correspond to higher and lower potencies, for the same quality of medium is used to carry the vibrations (namely, the air), but the vibration of the medium (or the drug) is not tuned to a motion like that of the vibratory body. Hence follows no interference and no cure.

     To use a wrong drug for a certain disease would be equivalent to using a wrong medium to Produce sound,-such as ether or magnetic waves, for instance, which no matter how active would find no response.

     We are told that the homoeopaths are guilty of backing sensual experience by spiritual analogies, or arguments developed from the Writings, but we were greatly surprised when in the same paragraph the author of the complaint himself appeals to the Writings. Wow what privilege has the complainant to refer to Spiritual Truth by way of confirmation, and, at the same time, and in the same paragraph, decry the use of such privileges to the homoeopath.

     Regarding the "pumping engine" that has ceased to work, and the applications of two men for the pleasure of repairing the same,-one talking learnedly of bolts, valves, and other parts of its mechanism, and the other possessing only an acid (and an apology),-the question at once arises as to who is the man with the acid. That homoeopathy is very fittingly represented by the man who shows that he fully comprehends the whole mechanism and from his knowledge has powers of reaching the trouble, no matter how interior or intricate it may be,-is very clear. But what system we may fittingly dedicate to the "acid man" is a delicate question,-but from the description of his quantitative dosing of the acid he certainly suggests allopathy.

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SWEDENBORG'S DOCTRINE OF FORMS 1912

     CHAPTER IX.

     THE CELESTIAL FORM.

     (Continued.)

     "Into this form flows the universe which is called heaven, i. e., every solar or stellar vortex, similarly its larger and smaller volumes, as also its individual entities. I say volumes and individual entities, as if they were composed of parts properly so called, because I have no other words by which its fluxions and determinations,-since it is a form,-may be signified; I have therefore to speak infra-naturally, but we must understand, as has been said above, by analogy or by eminence. 'The whole and the part,' Aristotle says, `have the same nature' (eadem est ratio de tote et parte, etc. DE CAELO, Book I., chapter iv). For any such individual unit is a model representative of its universe.

     "Such is the interior form of any individual unit of the purest blood or of the first animal essence, which runs through the simplest fibres; and its forms should justly be called heavenly, for it draws its essences from the heavenly ether or from primitive nature. That this first substance is the nearest to these things in the universe in which the beginnings of natural things have been impressed by the Divine power, and in which, at the same time, are the most perfect forces of nature, see Trans. I., No. 529, and Trans. II., No. 227. Meanwhile very few phenomena come forth from this aura or form or are perceived by our senses, as they lie hid deeply in nature. There cannot be any question, however, that this form really exists, as without it neither the vortical forms nor the following ones in the world, nor the simple fibres of the animal kingdom could have existed; nor again those infinite wonders of nature which flow immediately and mediately from the inmost bosom of nature, and from the simple fibril and its purest essence." (THE FIBRE, 266.)

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     From the tract On the Animal Spirit.

     "The soul is spiritual, but the operation of the soul, whereby it regards the body, is celestial." (AN. SPIR. xvi.)

     The Rational Psychology.

     "The convolutions of the cortical glandules in the brain flow into the form of the most perfect spiral. . . . In the same manner the modifications take place in each individual cortical gland whose form is perpetually spiral or vortical.. .. Such a whirling motion openly appears in the external organs also, when the minds is inebriated or the brain affected with delirium. Hence it may appear with what circumgyrations the inmost sensation or the understanding is carried on, the form of whose fluxion is celestial." (R. P. 21.)

     The Animal Kingdom.

     "The animal body is a machine in which nature, governed and inspired by the Supreme Deity, has brought together and concentrated all her arts and all her sciences; wherefore this machine is made up of mere pivots and centers, which, joined and determined in a stupendous form, in one place constitute axes, in another, radii, and in a third, circumferences; so that there is no point, however minute, of any substance, and consequently no particular of any motion that is not in some center, and at the same time in some axis, radius, or circumference: thus this machine is at once a perpetual center and a perpetual circumference." (A.K. 450.)

     "Hence there must necessarily be a higher and more perfect form, which I denominate the perpetual-circular: nay, there must be a form more perfect still, that does not respect any centers as fixed, or any centers in which the motions and the circumferences terminate; but centers by and through which they (the motions and circumferences) are promoted continually: which is brought about by perpetual gyres, the beginnings of which coincide with the ends. Such is evidently the form of fluxion of the purest entities of nature, from which the perpetuity of motions is derived." (A. K., 450, note c.)

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     The Senses.

     "In the higher and more perfect forms there are peripheries from continuous radii, radii from continuous centers, wherefore the peripheries are perpetual centers; thus there are equilibria." (SENSES, 299.)

     "The first essence of the body that has life in it, corresponds with the celestial form. 1. So that thus the soul is of the celestial form; 2. upon which are endued all the beginnings of nature. 3. It [the soul] is immediately ruled by the spiritual forms; 4. that is to say, the human soul otherwise than that of brutes, which is of an inferior degree; 5. in which the animal spirit and the purer blood constitute the same thing." (SENSES, 318.)

     The Worship and Love of God.

     "In this [vortical form], lastly, may be viewed the highest form of nature, or the perpetually vortical form, which is the same with the Celestial Form, in which almost all boundaries are, as it were, erased, as so many imperfections, and still more perpetuities and infinities are put on; wherefore this form is the measure of the vortical form, consequently the exemplar or idea of all inferior forms, from which the inferior descend and derive birth as from their beginning, or from the form of forms. . . . From this form those faculties and virtues result, by virtue whereof one thing regards another as itself, nor is there anything but what consults the general security and concord, for in that form there is not given any fixed center, but as many centers as there are points, so that all its determinations, taken together, exist from mere centers or representations of a center, by which means nothing can be regarded as proper to it, unless it be of such a quality that from what is general, or from all the centers which taken together produce what is general, it may inflow into itself as a similar center, and may flow back through an orb for the benefit of all, or into what is general." (This is further illustrated by the human body. W. L. G. 6.)

     "The fifth or celestial form puts on a new perpetuity or infinity above the rest, for this again regards, as its relative center, the infra-celestial form and all its determinable points; wherefore the ideas of its fluxion are not to be marked by lines and words.

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From the ratio of this infinity, its faculty of changing states rises eminently above the preceding form." (W. L. G. 93.)

     The Arcana Coelestia.

     "The heavenly form is such that every one is a kind of center, thus a center of communications, and consequently of happiness, from all." (A. C. 2057, 2872, 3633.)

     "Everyone in Heaven is the center of all the influxes." (A. C. 4225.)

     The Spiritual Diary.

     "Every one in the spiritual world is as it were a certain center, according to a stupendous form, from the Lord." (S. D. 4090) Concerning the gyrations of the celestial forms, see A. C. 4040, 4041.

     "All angels and all spirits are centers, for the heavenly form is from continuous centers." (S. D. 6058.)

     CHAPTER X.

     THE SPIRITUAL FORM.

     From the work On the Fibre.

     "A form higher, prior and more perfect than the celestial form is the form perpetually celestial, which should properly be called the spiritual form, very remote from the ultimate or terrestrial one. By the ancient as well as by the modern philosophers, even by the theologians, the spiritual essences are called forms, which inhabit the heavens even as we inhabit the earth; some substitute a substance or power for forms, and give them the name of spiritual substances or heavenly powers; therefore, the received ways of speaking are not forsaken when by analogy, (catexochen), I call the divine spirit the spiritual form itself; for here form and substance coincide, as will be seen in what follows; in respect to this, the angels are also called forms, as angelic forms; even our mind is called by the philosopher the immortal and eternal form of forms, and by this he understands the spiritual form; but the angels and our souls cannot properly be called spiritual forms, but rather more perfect celestial forms created and adapted to the reception and influx of the spiritual form, such as are not those forms of which it has been treated just above; they deserve, however, to be called spirits, because these angelic forms and our souls, differently from the celestial forms of which the starry heavens is made, are images of the spiritual form, for they bring (ferunt) to the spiritual form their operations received immediately, for in themselves they are inferior and posterior, and subjected to the spiritual form; but we will see this better illustrated in a following treatise.

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     This form is above the whole created nature; it is, therefore, incomprehensible, ineffable, inexpressible even by the most sublime analysis of the human mind; it is form in the abstract, contemplating the other forms outside of itself and at the same time in itself, so far as they are perfect. For if we proceed by the same series as we have established above, it follows that the spiritual form refers itself to the celestial, as this to the vortical form, and so on even to the angular form, which is the last in the order of respects and representations; thus it can be said that this form contemplates the others outside of itself as well as in itself, but in itself as far as they are very perfect in their degree; for nothing imperfect can come of that which is most perfect.

     In this form there is nothing material, extended, fluid, nothing capable of terminating in nature; therefore, here no accidents and modes strive with one another, and thus there are no terms such as those by which material things are signified? unless by supereminence; for [this form] is above all enunciation, (praedicamenta); thus we must use a more abstract speech, which should be spiritual and angelic, or a more sublime thinking, in order to express and determine the powers and the essences of this form. If this form did not flow into the inferior ones, these would not exist, nor subsist, nor be moved, still less would they live, understand, and be wise; thus it is the beginning of existence, subsistence, action, life, understanding and wisdom." (FIBRE, 267.)

     The Ontology.

     "In spiritual forms a certain determination must be understood, and also an ordination of entities and forces flowing therefrom, which bear an analogy and a certain correspondence to those which exist in bodies. . . .

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With spiritual forms it is the same as with other forms, namely, that spirits derive from their form that they are what they are taken to be. And this is the reason why there is so great a variety of spirits, or of spiritual forms." (ONT.,7.)

     "Every superior form is extended, even the supreme and spiritual. It does not, however, consist of parts such as terrestrial parts are,-angular, heavy, and inert forms, and the elements of material things. But superior forms consist of substances or forms which are determined; for there must be something determinable and determined that shall be the analogue of part." (ONT. 56)

     "Therefore, such an extent is not material, seeing that a material extent is described as consisting of parts which are heavy and inert. It is rather to be called a pure or substantial extent, for bodies are aggregates of substances." (ONT., 57.)

     "The substances themselves, considered as parts in such forms, are without any idea of place, or of tendency towards center or circumference, upwards or downwards. Thus the idea of breadth, length, and thickness, such as is proper to every material extent, perishes." (ONT., 58.)

     "This non-material extent of which we are speaking cannot be said to occupy space within itself, though the extent outside of it is said to occupy space. For, while within itself there is no respect of center and place, still it occupies space in the universe." (ONT., 59.)

     The Rational Psychology.

     "We ought not to confound pure intellect with intelligence, or the intellectory with the soul; for the form of the intellectory is celestial, and the first of nature can understand nothing from itself, but only from the essence or the spiritual form; this alone understands, and causes that which follows next in order to understand." (R. P. 127.)

     "In anything that perishes or is destroyed there must be a changing in the position and connection of parts; but in a form such as the spiritual, which embraces no idea of place, center, or surface, or in which the center and the circumference and the surface are everywhere, destruction cannot be conceived of.

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This form is the very contrary of destruction, looking only to perpetuity, and, indeed, the more it is attacked, the more it resists every effort of destruction." (R. P. 498; further developed in nos. 499-503.)

     The Worship and Love of God.

     "But above this supreme form of Nature, or this celestial form, there is a form perpetually celestial, or Spiritual, containing in it nothing but what is infinite, flowing from the irradiation of the Sun of Life itself, as the other forms flows from the irradiation of the sun of the world." (W. L. G., 23.)

     "And as this [Spiritual] form flows immediately from the Infinite, or from God Himself, who alone Is, therefore in itself it lives, and is that which animates the souls of living things for the uses of their life; not that it is a universal soul, but that it animates those things which were born and made for the reception of life; for every soul is a substance by itself, which is perpetually excited, like natural essences by their auras, to live its own life." (W. L. G., 23.)

     "The inmost fibre, proceeding immediately as a ray from the soul, is called supra-celestial; the most composite fibre is called celestial, and the third degree of the fibre is called infra-celestial. (W. L. G., 92.)

     "But in the sixth form, or the supra-celestial, there is nothing but what is perpetual, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, the order, law, and idea of the universe, and the essence of all essences." (W. L. G., 93.)

     "Into these the supreme form, or that of our soul, infuses supra-celestial light, that is, life; or it vivifies all the little points of thy face with its light, or illuminates with life, whilst the second impresses and communicates to it spiritual heat, and the third adjoins nature to life, and altogether according to the vibration of that flame, tinges the face elegantly as a flower with red and white. But the fourth draws and designs the lines themselves; whilst the fifth exports or brings out to view all these conformities, as in a veil." (W. L. G., 99.)

     The Arcana Coelestia.

     "It was shown that the thoughts with the affections, when they pour themselves forth, circulate almost according to the form of the circumvolutions of the cineritious substance in the human brain.

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The circumflexions were long seen by me; they were circuits, inflexions, bendings inward and outward, such as are the said substances in the brain. But the forms of heaven are still more wonderful, and such that they can never be comprehended, not even by the angels; in such a form are the angelic societies in the heavens, and into such a form flow the thoughts of the angels, and to a great distance almost instantly, because they are according to a form infinitely perfect." (A. C., 6607.)

     The Spiritual Diary.

     "On the spiritual form of the interiors,-that it can never be overcome, but resists every attack and always remains the firmer." (S. D., 241, 2487.)

     The Divine Providence.

     "The expansions and compressions or reciprocations of the organic forms of the mind, which are the subjects of the affections and thoughts of man, are of such a superior perfection that they cannot be expressed in the words of natural language, but only in the words of the spiritual language which cannot sound otherwise than as vorticillary ingyrations and egyrations, after the manner of perpetual and inflected helices wonderfully confasciculated into forms receptive of life." (D. P., 319)

     CHAPTER XI.

     THE DIVINE FORM

     From the work On the Fibre.

     "As to the form perpetually spiritual, it is the divine form itself; not properly a form, but the pure essence, life, intelligence, wisdom most free (abstractissima) of space, time, matter, figure, motion, change, destruction. In this the philosophers agree, even the ancient ones, like Plato, who thus begins: 'The One is infinite, (Unum eat intinitum), if it has neither beginning nor end; if it is infinite, then it is without a figure, as there is nothing round or straight in it; and it cannot be carried into a circle,' (in PARMEWIDES, p. 137, 138, in our edition).

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[This form] is the mother, creatrix), the beginning and the end of all things. There is a conviction with the souls of men, that God is the beginning and the end of all things, and that his force and power penetrates efficaciously all the parts of the universe.' (DE LEG., Book IV). (All things are full of the Gods,' (in EPINOMIDE, p. 441). This form is greatly (longe) above nature; all things are outside of it. This is the infinite, Aristotle says, 'not that outside of which there is nothing, but that outside of which there is always something,' (DE NAT. AUSC.. Book III., chapt. ix). Thus he wants to assert that the world is either co-eval with the infinite or eternal; but he speaks according to the ultimate acumen of his perception; for the intellect is not able to penetrate beyond or above nature, thus not into the eternal or the infinite this is why he does not distinguish the one from the other; that, however, they are very distinct, indeed, that is to say the divide and the natural, we know better, because we have been enlightened by religion. In the meantime, that all things are beneath God, even the elements themselves or simple substances, he affirms, saying: 'All [philosophers] always make subject to the infinite some other nature of those things which are called elements,' (Book III., chap. iv). 'The elements of material things are not matter, and they are not infinite,' (DE GENES., Book II., chap. v). 'There is an element of bodies, into which the other bodies are divided, in which it exists potentially or actually,' (DE CAELO, Book, III., chap. iii). Thus it is incomprehensible; for there is in it all what is perpetual, infinite, eternal, unlimited, holy; it is the order, the law, the idea of the universe. It flows into the celestial and angelic forms, and into our souls by the intermediary of the spiritual form, and by means of the Word. Rut these are as many arcana; therefore, it is better to be silent, amazed, to fear, to adore, than to speak of this unholily, that is, naturally. Compare Trans. I., No. 296-298, and Trans. II., No. 265-268 (THB FIBRE 268.)

(To be concluded.)

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NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

     NOTES AND REVIEWS.

     The religious statistics, annually gathered and published by the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE have played strange tricks in the past with the General Convention of the New Jerusalem. This year they credit that body with a membership of 8,500 persons and yet report no increase. The Convention's Journal is more modest, reporting a membership of 6,396.

     The small numbers of the New Church make for strange company in the religious statistics. The Convention, in the list of the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, is sandwiched between the "Nonsectarian Bible Faith Churches," (with 6,396 members), and the "Dowieites or Christian Catholics," (with 5,865). The immediate neighbors of the General Church have more impressive names, viz., the "Heavenly Recruit Church," (938), and the "Church of Christ in God," (558) But what's in names or in numbers?

     The Rev. J. K. Smyth's advice to the Ohio New Church Woman's Alliance, not to discuss the Academy question nor suffrage, has brought out an indignant protest from Miss Alice K. Williams, of Urbana, O., in an open letter which is being distributed broadcast. In it the Academy is called "a twin brother of Mormonism," its members are styled "out-patients of a Bedlam," and they are reported to Mr. Smyth as believing "that a discreet amount of sin opens the way to Heaven." A postscript reads: "Those who will distribute this letter among people who will read it, will be supplied copies by applying to the writer."

     In the December LIFE, (p. 830), it was stated (from the Report of the Swedenborg Society) that this Society had "recently purchased some manuscripts of the late Rev. Tames Hyde, notably his collection of material for a Life of Swedenborg, and a nearly complete translation of Vol. III. of the work ON THE BRAIN."

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We now learn, from an unquestionable authority, that the translation in the MS. last named was the work of the Rev. Rudolph L. Tafel, revised and edited by Mr. Hyde.

     "May it not be true," asks the Rev. Thos. A. King in the MESSENGER, (January 10, 1912), "that one, and, perhaps, the most fruitful cause, of the church's loss of so many of its own young people is due to the church's attempt to teach them theology? The mind is a spiritual organism created in distinct planes; and may it not be possible that the church has made the fatal mistake of forcing a degree of instruction upon its young people that they are wholly unprepared to receive? There is nothing more sacred than a young life, just opening to the realization of something deeper than the world is able to give; and the attempt to feed that budding life with instruction drawn from Swedenborg's 'Divine Love and Wisdom,' or 'Earths in the Universe,' or Burnham's 'Discrete Degrees' is only to confuse and swamp it."

     We quite agree with Mr. King's diagnosis of the case. The New Church cannot hope to retain its children by any attempt to teach philosophical and theological abstractions, but it has been most remarkably successful when embodying the abstract principles in the daily teaching of the letter of the Word, history, language, natural science, and even mathematics, for the Heavenly Doctrine and the Science of Correspondences are of universal application. The Lord in His Second Advent comes to the children, as to all of us, only in the glory of the "clouds of Heaven." The mere light creates no vision and touches no affection, but the reflection of the light in ultimates is what produces sight and interest. This is the secret of New Church education.

     In reply to the question "What is the Spiritual Sense of the Word?" the Rev. W. T. Lardge, in his REMINDER for January, gives the following answer: "The Doctrines of the New Church are not a revelation inseparable from the written Word, (as the letter is the basis and containant of the spiritual sense), but are the Word itself in its spiritual sense,-the one being the jewel and the other the casket.

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And that revelation is the Lord Himself in His Second Advent, as is evident in the Writings." We rejoice in this complete recognition of the true nature of the Heavenly Doctrines, but do not understand what our friend means by the statement that they "are not a revelation inseparable from the written Word." The two negatives would make the sentence mean that the Doctrines are separable,-an idea which must never be entertained. They are, indeed, distinct, but never separable.
NEW TRUTH, THE ONLY TRUTH IN THE CHURCH 1912

NEW TRUTH, THE ONLY TRUTH IN THE CHURCH 1912

     The Lord is not conjoined with a passive, stagnant, or negative church, or with those in the church who are such; but only with what is reactive, responsive, progressive in church and individual. Not is He conjoined with church or individual as such, but as to their reception in doctrine and life's thought of the truths He has given in revelation. The parables of the pounds and talents illustrate this weighty principle by showing that the Lord was conjoined with those servants who made use of the truths they had received.

     The truths in any state of the progressive church, or of a developing man, that have been theretofore acquired, are like the ten sons of Jacob. Such a church or man continues to be conjoined with the Lord by virtue of progressiveness and development, and not by virtue of the truths previously acquired, except secondarily. There has to be a conjoining medium between the acknowledgment of these previously acquired truths and the influx of good which is the conjunction itself.

     This conjoining medium, when looked at from the standpoint of the former truths, appears as new truth; but when looked at from the standpoint of the inflowing good, it is the truth of good, the spiritual of the celestial, a glimpse of a deeper universal among all truths, a vision that comes through a flash of perceptive illustration to church and individual who are kindled by the affection of truth, and thereby elevated above the prejudices and mere traditionalism of things corporeal and mundane. It is fitly named Benjamin, which signifies son of the right hand, or truth from good.

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     "And he alone is left to his mother, signifies that this is the only truth of the church. Concerning this matter, that this truth which Benjamin represents is the only truth of the church, the case is thus; this truth is the truth which is from spiritual good, which is Israel. [It is this truth] which Benjamin represents when with his father. But when with Joseph, [he represents] truth still more interior. That truth, which Benjamin represents with his father, and which is called new truth, is what alone makes a man to be a church, for in this truth or in those truths is life from good. That is, the man who is in truths of faith from good, he is a church, but not the man who is in the truths of faith, but not in the good of charity, for truths with him are dead, even though they had been the same truths. Hence it may be evident how the case is with this matter, that this is the only truth of the church." (A. C. 5806. Compare A. C. 5804, 5809, 5816.)

     "The interior truth which Benjamin represents is new truth, for it is interior with respect to the truths which are beneath." (A. C. 5843.)

"A medium to be a medium must draw from both sides, namely, from the internal and from the external, for otherwise it is not a conjoining medium. The medium which Benjamin represents derives from the external or natural, that it is new truth there, for the new truth which he represents is in the natural. But the medium derives from the internal represented by Joseph, by influx. Thus it derives from both." (A. C. 5822.)

     Without such new truth, church and man are like the ten sons of Jacob, who were fitly described as spies coming to discover the nakedness of the land. A church or man who does not will to enter more interiorly into truths previously learned, or who will not see the use of new developments in methods and practices, becomes negative, critical, and indifferent towards the truths of the church. (A. C. 5432) Without such new truth, church and man are like the ten apostles who murmured when it was suggested that James and John should sit on either side of the Lord. For by James among the apostles is meant the same as by Joseph among the twelve brothers, viz., charity or spiritual good, (see A. C. 6340); and by John is represented the same as Benjamin or the spiritual of that celestial, the truth of good.

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And by their mother, who asked that they should sit on either side of the Lord, is represented the same as is meant by Rachael, the affection of interior truth which perceives that the conjoining medium between the Lord and the formerly learned truths of the church consists in new truth and a perception from influx of its verity. That such truth is the conjoining medium is illustrated by John's reclining in the Lord's bosom, and by his being the one among the apostles whom He loved the most.

That such truth is the only truth of the church is represented by the Lord's words to Mary: "Woman, behold thy son," by the prophecy that John should tarry till the Lord came, and by the act that to John alone was given a vision and perception of the New Jerusalem.

Provision must be made by every progressing church or developing man that new truth receive a hearing. This provision, in general, devolves upon the clergy but in particular it rests on everyone in the church. If the sermons preached in the church do not contain new truth, new and more internal universals within the previously known truths, the church is not fed. Mere exhortations to live and apply the same truths which are known to all become, by repetition, tedious and insipid, and no longer kindle and exhilarate the mind. There must be at the same time the conjoining medium of new truth, be it actually some intrinsically new truth, as was the perception that the Writings are the Word, or a new presentation of the old truths in a different setting or application. There cannot be new good unless there be new truth, for there must be new skins to contain new wine. The good of the spiritual church is a life according to the truths in the Writings, and unless there be new truths drawn from the Writings, there is no new good, but there gets to be a perfunctory, mechanical carrying out of certain rules or codes, with a resulting satisfaction that one's whole duty is circumscribed by these. There must be new truth in order that there may be something new to live for and that thus there may be a perpetuation of spiritual good in the church. Unless these laws of the conjoining medium be fulfilled, the Lord cannot inflow with the highest good and make of His bride a celestial church.

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"This is the reason that Benjamin represents a conjoining medium, and also new truth; new truth, when with his father, and a conjoining medium when with Joseph. This is an arcanum which cannot be expounded more clearly; but it cannot be understood, except by those who are in the thought that there is with man an internal and an external distinct from each other, and who are at the same time in the affection of knowing truths. These are illustrated by the light of heaven as to the intellectual part, to see what others do not see, thus also this arcanum." (A. C. 5822.) E. E. I.
JANUARY QUARTERLY 1912

JANUARY QUARTERLY Editor 1912

The three leading articles in this number are profound and carefully prepared, and exhibit considerable scholarly research. Mr. J. Howard Spalding has a paper on the question: "Is the Spiritual Philosophy of Swedenborg Idealistic?" Mr. E. C. Mongredien writes on "The Memories," and the editor, Rev. Jas F. Buss, contributes a paper on "Divine Appearings Before and After the Incarnation."

The contention of Mr. Spalding is "that, according to the spiritual philosophy of Swedenborg, all the objects of sense by which we are surrounded in this world, from the starry heavens to the lowliest animal, mineral, or vegetable, are as to their spatial qualities, appearances-and appearances only. They exist from states of mind, Divine and human, and inherit the spacelessness of their causes." . . . "The doctrine I am combating," he says, "[is] that space is in the objects of sense-perception, the doctrine of 'intrinsic space,' or, alternately, 'materialism.'" . . . . "What we really see is not any object outside of ourselves, but a state of our own brains." "[As] we have within ourselves the external world of which alone we have any knowledge, what need is there to postulate an independent external world exactly resembling it?" "The universe is thus a plenum, in which there is nothing but God and what is from God; and the derivatives are as devoid of intrinsic space as their First Cause." "The appearances of space in the natural world belong to the great family of 'AS IF's,' indispensable to finite human life, whether in this world or the next, but dangerous, mischievous, even fatal, if they are permitted to generate the conviction that they are, essentially, just what they seem." . . .

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I have arrived at the conclusions embodied in this paper after much thought and study, and I believe it is impossible for anyone to adopt them except very slowly."

     We certainly hope it will be "very slowly," if Mr. Spalding really means what he says in the astonishing statement quoted above: "Seeing that we have within ourselves the external world of which alone we have any knowledge, what need is there to postulate an independent external world exactly resembling it?" If this means anything at all, it means that each individual is to regard himself as the only being in the universe, and that there is no universe outside of himself!

     To support these admittedly startling conclusions, Mr. Spalding makes use of two arguments: 1. Because sensation is not in the object, but in the eye-not really in the eye, but in the brain; and essentially not in the brain, but in the Lord who is present there by influx-he arrrues that there is no intrinsic space because no use or function for it to perform. 2. Because God is spaceless, and all the successive derivatives down to the material world are spaceless, it would follow, he argues-since the process of forming successive derivatives is uniform throughout-that the material world is spaceless.

     Mr. Spalding's first argument proves only that there is spiritual influx from within outwards, as opposed to natural influx from without inwards. It proves this and no more. Since Swedenborg frequently speaks of man as a microcosm, and the created universe outside of man as a macrocosm, there is little warrant to assume that the latter is a mere projection of the former, or any less real. Both are nothing without the continued support of the Lord's influx, and both have corresponding planes and degrees. The PRINCIPIA and the works preparatory to it are a philosophy of the Lord's creation of, and operation into, the macrocosm; the later physiological works are a philosophy of the Lord's creation of, and operation into, the microcosm; and the work DE INFINITO, teaching that the Lord is within the least finite and without the greatest finite, the created universe, shows the relation of microcosm and macrocosm.

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Mr. Spalding adduces Swedenborg's statement, "You will perceive that the maximum and minimum of space in no wise differ from each other," as a further argument that there is no intrinsic space. It is true they do not differ from each other when compared to the Infinite since the ratios of such numbers as 1 and 10000000 to the infinite are the same, namely, o; but can he really wish us to believe that the numbers 1 and 1000000 in nowise differ from each other?

In the second argument Mr. Spalding overlooks the fact that the first created derivatives do have space and time, though such space and time are relative to their priors, and definable according to the laws on their own planes. Each new derivative was created into a more ultimate species of space and time, and the last derivative into the material space and time. On this subject, see an article by A. Acton in the LIFE, August, 1911. To have an idea of the space and time on higher planes, it is necessary to dispel the corporeal idea of material space and time. This is what is meant by Swedenborg's exhortation to lift the mind above space and time; an exhortation which Mr. Spalding again construes as an argument against intrinsic space. In S. D. 3452 Swedenborg confesses how he, tool at one time, was infested by phantasies about space and time, and he then states as follows how he was rescued from these pitfalls: "I was afterwards led by the Lord himself into a certain perception of forms, the idea of which exceeded immensely all the ideas received by geometricians, for even the lowest human forms, as those of the intestines, so vastly surpass the forms apprehended by geometrical ideas, that they can by no means be perceived by them." The mind must rise above the corporeal thought of a lower form, in order to perceive a higher one. What the nature of these higher forms is has been set forth in NEW CHURCH LIFE in a series of articles on the "Doctrine of Form.' An excellent presentation of how the Infinite could make the finite from Himself is to be found in the doctrine of motion set forth in the COSMOLOGY by L. Beekman.

It seems rather curious that the editor of the QUARTERLY should publish Mr. Spalding's article without a strong dissenting comment, in view of his emphatic dissent, on page 93 of this issue, from Mr. W. Ray Gill's postulate. "That it is only in appearance that angels and spirits have bodies as we know bodies in this life."

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Mr. Gill believes they have intrinsic bodies, but proper to their plane but Mr. Spalding seems to teach that there is no real space, not only in the other world, but even in this, and, therefore, there are no bodies, but only appearances of bodies, even here.

The subjects that Mr. Spalding and Mr. Mongredien are discussing are philosophical subjects, and the shortcomings in both articles are largely due to the fact that neither has considered the quite definite philosophies on these subjects given in the Scientific Works. The Writings are the Word of the Second Coming, and as such have passages that can be made to favor almost any philosophic heresy current in the world, especially because of the fact that the various philosophic or scientific references given in the Writings only come in incidentally as illustrations and do not of themselves constitute the chief general of a subordinate field. The great value of the correlation of the Scientific Works as the true philosophic handmaid to the Word of the Second Coming is that they constitute a bulwark against the introduction of philosophies counter to those in the Scientific Works and the Writings and thus protect the church from dangerous attacks. The idealistic philosophy of Mr. Spalding verges closely on that of Charles Augustus Tulk, who carried to such an extent his belief that the objective world was just a projection of our mental states that he declared the Lord never really was on earth, but only had a fantastic appearance of being so for the sake of producing by it beneficial results on those who believed in the reality of the illusion.

Mr. Mongrediens article is a valuable and exhaustive consideration of nearly all the passages in the Writings on the subject of the memory, yet lacks the philosophic and organic framework given in the RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. It is hard to follow on account of this, and also because there is no diagrammatic chart to picture the various subdivisions he makes. One postulate of the writer is that the male sex makes more use of the internal of more immaterial side of the natural memory, whereas the fairer sex turns more to that external material side of the natural memory, which is closely connected with the organs of speech-which is interesting, if true.

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Mr. Buss demonstrates that the Lord was fully glorified on the evening of the resurrection day, and therefore earlier than the time of His Ascension, as some have thought. He cites A. R. 938, A. E. 412, A. C. 1925 to show that the Lord's mode of appearing now is the same as it was prior to the Incarnation, namely, by infilling an angel with His presence. He then takes up the various passages in which contrasts are made between the character of influx and illumination before and after the Incarnation, and shows by thoroughly sound and logical reasoning that there is no reference here to a difference in the mode of His appearing.
"NEW" NEW CHURCH LITERATURE 1912

"NEW" NEW CHURCH LITERATURE W. H. A 1912

     Five books are at hand, fresh from the New Church Press.

     From the Board of Publication, New York. SWEDENBORG: HOW FROM BEING A SCIENTIST AND PHILOSOPHER,

     HE BECAME A THEOLOGIAN AND SEER. By Julian K. Smyth, Mr. A. 50 pp. Price, 25 cents.

     THE CHEAPENING OF RELIGION. By James O. Fagan. WHAT CONSTITUTES SPIRITUAL LIVING. By the Rev. John Goddard. 73 pp. 12 mo. Price, 25 cents.

     RELIGION AND LIFE. A Year Book of Short Sermons on some phase of the Christian Life for every week in the year. By the Rev. Julian K. Smith. 333 pp. 12mo. Limp Leather, in box, $1.25.

     From J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

     HIDDEN RICHES. By Rev. James Reed. 147 pp. 12 mo. $1.00.

     For years there have been heard in the Church at large expressions of a desire for a new class of New Church literature, which should avoid narrow technicalities and go out joyously to the world with the message of the New Age, which-it has again and again been asserted-only needed the replacing of the repelling clothing of Swedenborgian mannerisms with verbal dress in accord with modern fashions of thought, to find acceptance in a world famishing for the truth and eagerly searching for it, yet hitherto cold and unreceptive to such advances as Swedenborg and his disciples have made in a hundred and fifty years.

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     There is some reason to believe that the volumes before us have been prepared with the intent of fulfilling this desire, and if we may judge by the enthusiasm with which they are announced, there exists in the minds of their promoters some hope for their success. It is worth our while, then, to note what are the means to which their sponsors look, to introduce the New Church to the world.

     We may note first of all that as books they are tasteful, even elegant, in print and binding. In style and diction, one and all are admirable, in some part eloquent. Affectionately they offer their message with abundant and luminous illustration; with careful and earnest reasoning they seek to convince their readers-of what?

     First-Of some very general religious truths, of practical applications of general religious principles.

     Second-Of certain definite truths, as to the internal sense of the Word, for instance, which the wise reader will recognize as of the New Church, indeed, but which the writers present as if quite as well known and as well understood as any religious platitude common to all the Christian world.

     But when we ask, wherein do these books bear the distinctive message of the New Church? their unanimous reply is startling. For one might search all these books from cover to cover and still be ignorant that the Lord had made His Second Coming, or that a New Church had been established in the world.

     This omission seems to be of deliberate intention. Swedenborg, so far as he is at all referred to, is described or quoted merely as a great personal intellect, not as the instrument of the Second Coming of the Lord. Even reference to Swedenborg in the major part of these books is but casual and slight.

     Such reference, we grant at once, is not to be expected from Mr. Fagan's pamphlet, for he is not a Newchurchman at all, and his monograph is but the republication of a striking article from the ATLANTIC MONTHLY. The question aroused by this book is, "Why should it have been brought out by a New Church publishing house?"

     Mr. Smyth, in his smaller volume, which is a republication of his address before the International Swedenborg Congress in London, of course mentions Swedenborg, for Swedenborg is his theme.

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The notable thing about this address is that with all its high power of oratory, its scope is the glorification of the man Swedenborg; the Lord's work through Swedenborg, the effecting of His Second Coming, the establishment of a New and Crowning Church among men, are not mentioned.

     Mr. Reed declares indeed in his preface that the system of interpretation which he has employed is that found in the writings of Swedenborg; but again it would appear to be the writings of the man Swedenborg, and not of the Lord through Swedenborg.

     In Mr. Goddard's little book we find two casual references, very brief and very general, to Swedenborg, whose name in each case is mentioned only in a footnote. And with Mr. Goddard also we find the same lack of appeal to a Divine source of truth in the Writings. The factors in the development of the spiritual life, upon which he lays emphasis, viz: Observance of the Sabbath, Devout reading of the Word, Preservation and strengthening of the ideal life-might quite as well find their inspiration in Judaism as in the New Church.

     Mr. Smyth, in the book of fifty-two sermons, addresses the emotions. He largely emphasizes the personal; takes hold of his readers by the power of eloquence. In this field we frankly recognize his pre-eminence. But in all his more than three hundred pages, the references to Swedenborg are few, and almost apolopetic:

     A simple proposition, formulated years ago by an illumined scribe. (p. viii.)

     This declaration by an illumined and close spiritual observer. (p. 151)

     "Prayer," wrote an illuminated teacher years ago, "is internal speech with the Divine." (p. 172.)

     Let us recall a phrase of Swedenborg (p. 275)

     Thus and so many are the references in this entire volume to him who was the Lord's instrument in His Second Coming. Not that Mr. Smyth is chary of quotation; Browning, Tennyson, Spencer, Edwin Markham and more have been welcome to give form to his thoughts; but it would seem that of deliberate purpose he has refrained from making free use of that of which he is the ordained priest and teacher.

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All these books, admirably written, and with apparently uplifting power presenting general religious truths, seem to us to have been written in vain, if their purpose be conceived of to be the bearing witness to the Second Coming of the Lord, to the establishment of a New and Crowning Church, vital to the life of humanity, in a world given over to the subtle falsities and permeating evils of a dead Christianity.

If we may parody an old story: If one should say of these sermons of Mr. Smyth's, "They are beautiful, inspiring, elevating-I do not believe that Phillips Brooks could have done any better,"- -the rejoinder might justly be made, "I do not know that he could; but I think that he could have done about as well." W. H. A.

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Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. The fifteenth anniversary of the organization of the General Church was commemorated by a special meeting of the resident ministry and candidates-fifteen in all together with the Rev. N. D. Pendleton, who had come on from Pittsburgh to attend the meetings of the Consistory. The as yet unwritten form of the organization of the General Church was the subject of an interesting discussion, after which the ministers adjourned to the "Dutch Kitchen" to celebrate with simple refreshments the birthday of the General Church. Attention was called to the fact that all of the six founders, who met on the sixth of February, 1897, on the sixth day of the week, were present this evening. The predominance of the number "six" on the occasion may have been a "coincidence" or not, but it was certainly representative of the state then prevailing-one of severe trial and anxiety. It was pointed out, also, that the occasion was unique in this respect that for the first time in the history of the New Church a general organization was then effected at the sole initiative of members of the priesthood. Tender memories were recalled and gratitude expressed for the Mercy of the Lord in leading the General Church thenceforward through paths of peace and prosperity by means of that element which, perhaps, chiefly distinguishes our present leadership-Patience.

     The work of the schools was somewhat interrupted-but with profit for the Church as a whole-by the protracted meetings of the Consistory which were held in the mornings of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, February 6-9, and at which the past and present policies and methods of the General Church were carefully reviewed. The aims and principles of the present were seen to be the same as those which had distinguished the Academy from the beginning. Forms, methods and other externals had changed, but many of the peculiarities with which we were charged in the past and from which we are supposed to have "reacted" in the present were recognized as belonging largely to the plane of imagination.

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It was decided to have meetings of the Consistory annually during the first week in February. The members of the Consistory are, besides the Bishop, the Rev. Messrs. Odhner, N. D. Pendleton, Synnestvedt, Acton, Doering and Waelchli.

Swedenborg's birthday was observed by a lecture to the schools by Mr. Whitehead, after which a holiday was declared. In the evening an original drama of the spiritual world was presented by the Rev. E. E. Iungerich. To those who believe there is a great and useful field of work in the dramatization of episodes from the spiritual world the play seemed like a view into heaven, and marked a step in advance of previous dramatic efforts. The leading theme was the adventures of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, daughter of Peter the Great, from the time of her awakening in the other world until her marriage in heaven with De La Gardie, the Swedish nobleman (see S. D. 6027). Around this theme were grouped various other typical episodes culled from other parts of the Writings. Too much credit cannot be given to Miss Helene Iungerich for her effective and subtle arrangements of scenery and costumes; nor to Mr. George Heath for the skill and reverential spirit with which the various actors under his direction had become imbued. The rendering of the 45th Psalm by the choir, during the wedding scene in the third act, contributed greatly to the heavenly sphere of the play.

As yet no final decisions have been reached by the various committees to consider the several phases of our church building. But active deliberation is going on, as is plainly in evidence by the many-cornered debates that take place in the meetings of the society whenever any of the mooted points are aired. Instruction from the Doctrines in matters appertaining to this subject has been taking the place of the usual doctrinal class on Friday evening, and on two successive Fridays valuable lectures on Architecture were given by Mr. Gerald S. Glenn and Mr. Cornwell. The proposition of having an upper chamber back of the altar, in which to administer the Holy Supper, is receiving careful consideration; see T. C. R. 669.

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     The Bishop has resumed his class in the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM With the ladies on Tuesday afternoons. The Rev. G. H. Smith is conducting a class with the young men of the society.

     PITTSBURGH, PA. Don't think for a minute that because news notes from this city are not regularly published that we are a slow, sleepy set of individuals with the "nothing to do till tomorrow" habit. The truth is that we are a very busy and bustling community so far as church activities go.

     For this letter we date our chronicles from December 13th, 1911, to February 13th, 1912.

     On Sunday, December 24th, the Holy Supper was administered. The following morning the children held their usual Christmas celebration and were the happy givers and receivers of presents to and from the church.

     On Friday, December 29th, the society held a dance at the Bellefield Club, which was quite a successful event. Following this there were numerous social happenings among the young folks, which, being of a personal nature, we cannot record here. We make it a rule to mention only such occurrences as are participated in by the whole society.

     On Sunday, December 31st, the members of the congregation were invited to the home of Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Ebert, to listen to the reading of a scientific paper by Miss L. G. Beekman, on "The Human Form as an Organ Recipient of God." The following Sunday the reading was continued at the home of Rev. and Mrs. N. D. Pendleton, and thereafter consecutively at the homes of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Schoenberger, Dr. and Mrs. W. B. Boggess and Mr. and Mrs. L. J. Schoenberger. These meetings, a new feature in our society, have been truly interesting, and we look forward to a continuance of them.

     On Thursday, January 18th, the semi-annual meeting of the society was held in the church building. Reports of officers and committees were made. It was reported that a charter had been granted to the "New Church Corporation of Pittsburgh." The purpose of this corporation is to act as a holding company for all properties which may be turned over to it as trustee for the Church of the New Jerusalem of Pittsburgh.

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The charter members of the corporation are W. H. Faulkner, H. P. Fuller, A. O. Lechner, S. S. Lindsay, A. P. Lindsay, D. A. Pitcairn, and L. J. Schoenberger. The proposition to make an addition to the present building of the society, so as to provide a hall for social purposes, was discussed and many ideas and opinions were set forth. There is no question but that this improvement is greatly needed and that there is a strong desire for it among the majority of our members.

     Friday, January 26th, was the date we celebrated Swedenborg's birthday this year. It tool; the usual form of a banquet. Mr. Hermann Lechner, who recently returned from New York, acted as toastmaster. Mr. Lechner is to be congratulated on the manner in which he performed his duties. Following are the subjects bought up and the speakers: "If Swedenborg Were Here Today," George A. Matbeth; "Reflections Drawn From Swedenborg's Use of the Daily Hours," Harvey L. Lechner; "The Rules of Life," Paul Synnestvedt; "Swedenborg and the Visible New Church," W. E. Brickman; "The Different Classes of Readers of the Writings-Swedenborg's Definition," N. D. Pendleton.

     On Monday, February 5th, Mr. and Mrs. D. E. Horigan entertained at cards. The members of the society were invited as a whole, and a very pleasant evening was spent.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. This center of sanctity and New Church activity has been much occupied during the last month with social and other functions. On Friday, January 26, Mr. Charles Francis Browne, distinguished artist and traveller, gave us a talk on Church Architecture, illustrated with stereopticon views of ancient and modern churches.

     It formed an excellent addendum to Mr. Caldwell's lecture upon the Temple of God previously mentioned. In speaking of this mention should have been made that the pictures included a series of views of the Jewish Tabernacle and its furnishings.

     On January 29th the usual Philosophy Class was omitted in favor of the banquet celebrating Swedenborg's birthday. The time was propitious, the subjects well chosen, the speakers satisfactory and the sphere cheerful and joyous.

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Some of the younger men were given an opportunity to show their qualities in public speaking. The subjects were Courage, Humility, Diligence and Use, first in the abstract and then as applied to Swedenborg.

     On the 31st an Informal Dance was given at the Club House.

     February 6th a musicale was given at the residence of Mr. Seymour G. Nelson. The next day, the 7th, was the regular time for the "Steinfest," a peculiar monthly function indigenous to Glenview. Upon these occasions the cacophonious platitudes of the world and of old church social functions are never heard. The subject of this particular evening was "Regeneration," with three speakers and Mr. Harold McQueen as toastmaster.

     Mr. Swain Nelson, highly esteemed in the Park as the veteran Newchurchman of Glenview, has been seriously ill, but now, to the delight of everybody, is recovering. J. B. S. K.

     BERLIN, ONT. The celebration of Swedenborg's Birthday in the Carmel church this year extended over several days. On Friday, January 26th, the school celebration was held. It opened with a masquerade party during the afternoon; then followed the supper, prepared by the older pupils. During the week preceding the pupils of one of the younger classes had written compositions on Swedenborg, and the three best of these were read at the supper, and to the writer of the best of the three was awarded as a prize a copy of Odhner's LIFE OF SWEDENBORG FOR CHILDREN. The dishes of ice cream were topped with little flags of red and white, on which the date of Swedenborg's birth was inscribed and as the flag staffs were pins the children were thus supplied with badges, which some have been wearing ever since. After the supper there were charades, games, dances and songs.

     In the sermon on Sunday, January 28th, on "'Borrowing from the Egyptians," allusion was made to Swedenborg's borrowing-to his acquiring from the learned world and presenting to the New Church what could be of use to that Church.

     On Monday, the 29th, the Society's celebration was opened in a unique manner-by a wedding in the chapel, the parties of which were Mr. Ivan Northgraves and Miss Mary Thompson. The wedding march was sung by the choir as the couple approached the altar, which was appropriately decorated for the occasion.

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After the wedding all went down to the school room, where a banquet was held. The decorating committee had practically transformed the room. Overhead white streamers gave a tent-like effect, on each wall a picture of Swedenborg stood forth in its festive surroundings, while two large inscriptions proclaimed the two-fold nature of the celebration, the one reading "Dominus Providebit. Em. Swedenborg, Servant of the Lord," and the other, "Conjugal Love is the Love of Loves." (With reference to the first inscription it may be said that "Dominus Providebit" was a motto inscribed by Swedenborg on some of his philosophical works.) In due course, the first toast, "The Church," was proposed. And now the assembled company were surprised to have the lights turned out on them; but very soon a new light appeared at the end of the room, a transparency of the portrait of Swedenborg. The effect was delightful, and immediately the next toast was proposed, "Emanuel Swedenborg, the Means for the Descent of the Heavenly Bride," to which Mr. Fred. Roschman responded. Then followed toasts to "Emanuel Swedenborg, the Herald of Conjugial Love," responded to by the pastor; to the Newly Married Pair, responded to by Mr. Ivan Northgraves; and to the Parents, responded to by Mr. William Northgraves. After the banquet there was dancing into the late or, rather, the early hours. W.

     LONDON. Further activities for the autumn and winter session have experienced a slight metamorphosis to meet growing conditions. The young people have formed themselves into a social club composed of five groups, with a view to provide for the monthly socials of the society. Thus far three meetings have been held under this plan, with the inauguration of New Church literary efforts. In September the subject of "Music" was dwelt upon; October gave us a very successful whist drive, and in November two papers and debate centered on the invention and use of "Printing."

     Under the supervision of our pastor and Miss Waters the school social was held a few days before Christmas, when the children very credibly rendered a cantata, entitled "The Seasons."

     Since September the Doctrinal Class has been held on alternate Sunday evenings instead of on a week day. This change has considerably aided an increase in the attendance.

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     On Sunday, January 28th, the celebration of Swedenborg's birthday was fittingly honored in the form of a supper and a full program of papers and speeches. Mr. Czerny arranged a series of subjects on the establishment of the New Church, and responses were made by nine gentlemen. The Rev. W. H. Acton dwelt more particularly on Swedenborg's unique use. Several of our Colchester friends were present, and we were also pleased to have Mr. and Mrs. Pryke, of Northampton, who have been frequent visitors this winter.

     Needless to say the echoes of the British Assembly have haunted us in full force. Socials, walks, good English fire-side gatherings, and even train journeys have invariably led to the subjects sprung upon us on that memorable occasion. Perceptions vary but we still stand firm.     F. W. E.

     COLCHESTER, ENGLAND. Our fortnightly socials have been thorough successes, while the lectures on Astronomy by Mr. Potter and the Cosmology classes under Mr. Rey Gill have gone on as usual. On December 24th the Holy Supper was administered to 23 communicants, and was followed in the evening by selections from the solos and chorus of Handel's "Messiah." The rendering was good and everyone enjoyed it immensely.

     The Christmas service was, as always, a joyous occasion, the pastor's address, the grand old hymns and the happy children all contributing their part to its success. On January 4th a children's New Year's social was held, which was attended by practically the whole society. All were out to enjoy themselves and they were successful, for the large majority contributed to the program, on which were 35 numbers. It was admitted to be the gayest, heartiest and most enjoyable event in our history of Children's Socials.     J. C.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES. The Rev. D. V. Bowen, who for two years ministered to the Cambridge Society, is now located at Yarmouth, Mass. At a union Thanksgiving service in his church the Congregational minister read the Scripture and Mr. Bowen preached the sermon.

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     At Baltimore, Maryland, on Sunday, January 7th, 1912, Augustus E Spamer died in his 69th year. He was secretary of the General Convention for the last 21 years, and active in the affairs of the Baltimore (English) Society and the Maryland Association.

     Beginning with February 1st, the Rev. E. J. E. Schreck will devote himself to the North Side Parish of the Chicago Society. The Englewood Parish, to which he had also ministered during the last eight years, has sent a note to the MESSENGER, declaring Mr. Schreck's leaving was not caused by doctrinal controversies, but came about from a belief, on the part of many, that a new pastor might create new interest in our church."

     The death of the Rev. F. V. K. Crownfield is announced in the daily press, but has not been noticed in any of the New Church journals. Mr. Crownfield was at one time a clergyman in one of the Old Church denominations, but came over to the New Church, was ordained, and for some years served as pastor of the Pittsburgh (Convention) Society. As a minister, Mr. Crownfield was of sound and conservative tendencies. He retired from active work a number of years ago.

     DURBAN, NATAL. (From a private letter.) We seem to be always in touch with Bryn Athyn by the medium of the LIFE, which still maintains its high standard of interest and instruction, and ought in the long run to convert many, let us hope all, to the correct standpoint of the Church.... We are very much alive still, and the future for the society here promises well when one looks at the numerous children around, whose interests are being guarded in the Academy spirit, even by Professed Conference supporters. One and all of the parents are alive to the necessity of keeping these tender plants in the Church by sound instruction. I am not quite right in saying one and all because there are some who neither attend services themselves, nor do they seem to recognize that they are taking a grave responsibility in neglecting their children's spiritual needs; but these are few.

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ORPHANAGE FUND 1912

ORPHANAGE FUND WALTER C. CHILDS 1912

     Announcements.

     The attention of friends in the Church is called to the fact that the Orphanage Fund is nearly exhausted, and is insufficient for disbursements that have been authorized by the Council for the aid of children during the coming four months. It is hoped that this statement will suffice to fully remedy the situation.

     Contributions, of any amount, will be thankfully received and promptly acknowledged by the Treasurer.
     WALTER C. CHILDS,
          Treasurer,
          56 Pine Street,
          New York City.
SWEDENBORG AND ERNESTI. II 1912

SWEDENBORG AND ERNESTI. II C. TH. ODHNER 1912

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[Frontpiece: Swedenborg's "Pro Memoria" Against Ernesti.]

Ernesti's unfavorable review of Swedenborg's FOUR DOCTRINES appeared in the year 1763 Two years later the theological circles of Germany were greatly stirred by the publication of a little volume entitled SWEDENDORGS UND ANDERER IRDISCHE UND HIMMLISCHE PHILOSOPHIE, (The Earthly and Heavenly Philosophy of Swedenborg and others, Frankford, 1765), by Friedrich Christopher Oetinger, a celebrated Wurtemberg prelate and theological writer of somewhat mystical and spiritualizing tendencies. Without committing himself to a complete acceptance of the whole doctrinal system of the New Jerusalem, Oetinger in this work speaks very favorably of Swedenborg's revelations and publishes a translation of the descriptions of the spiritual world which are introduced between the chapters of the ARCANA COELESTIA, vol. I.

Dr. R. L. Tafel states, (Doc. II., p. 229), that "soon after this book appeared, it was condemned in unmeasured terms by Ernesti in his NEUE THEOLOGISCHE BIBLIOTHEK." This, however, is a mistake, for Ernesti does not mention the work in his magazine, though in the same year, (1765), he prints a furious review of Oetinger's larger work, the THEOLOGIA EX IDEA VITAE DEDUCTA, (N. T. B., vol. VI., p. 617). The notion of a "Theology derived from an Idea of Life" strikes most unpleasantly upon the ears of the Leipzig champion of faith-alone, though otherwise there is no evidence of any Swedenborgian influence in Oetinger's work. It is possible, however, that Ernesti attacked the "Earthly and Heavenly Philosophy" in some other publication, or privately accused Oetinger before the Wurtemberg authorities.

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Be this as it may, the Government, in March, 1766, ordered the remainder of the edition to be confiscated, and called upon Oetinger to defend himself against the charge of having published the book without the imprintatur of the censor. This he did, in a letter to Duke Charles of Wurtemberg, in which among other things he states that "even though a hundred Ernestis should gnash their teeth over it, I considered myself bound in conscience to see it through the press, yet not to submit it to the censorship of the theologians, but to Prof. Kies, the Dean of the Philosophical Faculty." (Doc. II., p. 1031)

     Ernesti, in 1766, followed up his campaign against Swedenborg with the following review of his most recent book.

     ERNESTI'S REVIEW OF THE "APOCALYPSE REVEALED."

     "After the appearance of the ARCANA COELESTIA and the DOCRINA NOVAE HIEROSOLYMAE, we were by no means surprised to see that all explanation of the Revelation of John has followed. On the contrary, we regarded the former publications as preparatory to the latter. After all they have not remained without adherents. The example of Oettinger, one of the foremost of the Bengelians,* is well known. This work also will find admirers, and its system of explanation will perhaps, through its novelty, displace some other system, as is usually the case. For a Cocceian it would be just the thing, although it would have to suffer some changes on doctrinal points. But let us first hear what the author tells about his system.
     * Ernesti always misspells Oetinger's name. He hated Oetinger as a follower of JOHANN A. BENGEL, the greatest theologian of Wurtemburg, (1687-1751), a man of "profound critical judgment, extensive learning, and solid piety," who always labored for the recognition of the spiritual import of the Scriptures and the realization of the actuality of the spiritual world. The chief of his disciples were Oetinger, Jung Stilling, Lavater, and Oberlin, all of whom became more or less interested in Swedenborg's Writings.

     Those who have hitherto toiled with the explanation of the Apocalypse, he says, have been unable to know what lies hidden in it, for the meaning is entirely spiritual, and this they could not know. On this account they have made all kinds of conjectures in relation to the history of worldly kingdoms and their conditions, in some way also in relation to the Church.

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But this book does not treat of worldly things, but of heavenly things, like the whole Sacred Scripture.

     It is to be known that since the Last Judgment, which took place in the spiritual world in the year 17571,(of which the author gave an account in a special work), there was formed a new heaven of Christians, namely of those who had acknowledged the Lord (Jesus) as the God of heaven and earth, (Matth. 18:8), and who at the same time had repented of the evil works which they had done in the world. From this heaven there is to come a New Church on the earth, which is the New Jerusalem. No one is able to explain the Apocalypse but the Lord (Jesus) alone, for each word therein contains arcana. On which account it has pleased the Lord to open my eyes and to teach me. No one, therefore, should believe that I have taken anything from myself or from an angel. I have learned all things from the Lord alone, (just like the apostle Paul).

     Now let us consider the work itself. It is introduced by a short summary of the theology of the Roman Catholic and the Reformed Churches, because, as the author says, there is much said in it about Babel, which represents the Roman Catholic religion, and also of the Reformed Church, whereby he means the Protestants. In this compendium, therefore, the difference between the Lutheran and other Protestant denominations is [not] indicated. The teachings of other sects, from the Manichaeans down to the Herrenhuters [Moravian Brethren], are omitted, because the Protestants have rejected them as heretics.

     The method of explanation of each chapter is as follows: He begins by a Latin translation of each chapter. It is the VULGATA.* This is followed by a summary of the spiritual sense of the whole chapter in general and of all the verses one after another, and finally a more explicit explanation of the whole chapter according to words and subjects. As an appendix there are at the end of most of the chapters either some dogmatic observations or description of heavenly things. We promise that the latter will be received with applause by certain persons who themselves are having heavenly visions.

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We shall describe none of these, but must present the system of interpretation.
     * What a blunder of the learned reviewer!

     The contents of the first chapter is as follows: the Revelation is from the Lord alone, and will be received only by those who are to be is His New Church, that is, in the New Jerusalem, and who will acknowledge Him as the God of heaven and earth. Moreover, the Lord Himself is described as the Word.

     The second and third chapters are directed against the Christian Churches who either regard the truth of doctrine and not good works, or else regard the latter alone and not the former; or who lead a good life but cherish falsities in the doctrine, or those who have faith combined with love or without love. All these are invited to the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem, etc.

     The imagery of the fourth and fifth chapters refers to the preparations made in heaven for the Judgment, which is to take place according to the Word. Further, it has reference to the fact acknowledged in all the three heavens, namely that the Lord alone is judge because He alone is the Word.

     The sixth chapter describes the exploration of those upon whom the Last Judgment is about to come,-as to what kind of understanding they have had of the Word, and as to what extent they have lived according to it; also the state of those who were kept under the earth and who are to be liberated at the time of the Last Judgment; likewise those who have lived in evils and falsities.

     The seventh chapter refers to those who are in the Christian heaven and to their separation from the evil.

     In the following chapters, 8-11, the exploration and unmasking of the Protestants is treated of, i. e., according to their doctrines, especially their doctrine of justification by faith alone and their doctrine of the Lord (Jesus), and how those are rejected who do not believe that the Lord alone is God, His Humanity divine and that one has to live according to the ten Commandments.

     The twelfth and thirteenth chapters treat of the New Church and its doctrine. The church is the woman, the doctrine her son. The Dragon is the doctrine of the trinity in God, the dualism in the person of Christ, together with a justification by faith alone. It treats further of the protection of the Church against persecution, and of the growth of that Church.

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     The fourteenth chapter treats of the new Christian heaven, and of the New Church, and the proclamation of its advent is also treated of. In this connection is added an admonition to abandon the doctrines of the present church concerning faith without love. The fifteenth and sixteenth chapters describe the state of the Protestant Church, its faults, false doctrines and bad morals. The eighteenth chapter treats of the Roman Religion in just the same manner, and of its destruction. The nineteenth chapter describes the joy of the angels because of that event. It proclaims the Advent of the Lord, the New Church and its doctrine, the general call to it, the opposition of the Protestants, and their removal and condemnation.

     Then follows the twentieth chapter concerning the damnation and extermination of the Dragon, the judgment upon the pious, and the general Judgment. Then the twenty-first chapter describes the state of the New Church after the general Judgment, and its doctrine and mode of life. This subject is continued in the twenty-second chapter, which ends with the promise and assurance that this revelation of the Lord will be explained at the proper time, (as has now been done by the author), that the Lord will appear and will he conjoined with His own.

     Our readers will not expect that we shall also relate how the forms of the angels, the beasts and their colors, etc., are explained, and why the author explains them thus and not otherwise. It is self-evident that there is much guess-work and abuse of similar synonyms and imagery in the Bible, especially of the figurative expressions, plays-oil-words, and the like, as is common also with other expositors. It may perhaps be of interest to learn how the author describes the doctrines of the New Church. It is, indeed, the very same as he had presented in the former works, but we repeat them briefly from the present work in order that it may be seen once more how it is possible by the use of Biblical forms of speech, and by the diligent use of the name of the Lord Jesus, and of the Word, to hide naturalistic and Socinian ideas of doctrine.

     In the preface to the last chapter the author says that those will be of the New Church who believe in Christ and live according to His precepts. But what he means by it is clear from this that he rejects the justification by faith alone, reproves the Protestant Church, and threatens its destruction on account of it.

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Still more plainly he declares himself in the explanation of the 11th verse or chapter 21, where the new city of God is symbolically described. We will give an extract of this passage, which may also serve for a sample of his manner of interpretation.

The WALL of the new City, i. e., of the New Church, is the Word of God according to its literal sense, from which the spiritual sense and the spiritual doctrine is taken. For the letter is the basis for the spiritual sense; it contains and confirms it, in order that it may not be lost. This wall is GREAT and HIGH, because the contents of the Word are true and good. The GATES signify the acknowledgment of good and truth, by which one enters into the church; and the PEARLS of which the gates are made signify the excellence of this acknowledgment. By the TWELVE ANGELS over the gates are meant all good and all truth in heaven, while in the supreme sense the angels signify the Lord Himself, in a more general sense heaven, which consists of angels, and in a special sense the truth and good from the Lord. The FOUNDATIONS OF THE WALLS are the doctrines of the Church, because upon them it is founded. That the NAMES OF THE APOSTLES are written upon them, indicates the preaching of this doctrine through the Apostles. The sum and essence of this doctrine consists of two things: love to the Lord and towards the neighbor. By love to the Lord is meant faith, and by love towards the neighbor is meant the keeping of His commandments. (Matth. 22:35 f.) For the Law and the Prophets represent the whole Word. The GOLDEN REED signifies the ability to perceive the quality of the New Church, which the Lord gives to those who possess love. The QUADRANGULAR form of the New Church signifies the righteousness which is in it. The length and the breadth being EQUAL, signifies that good and truth make one. By the 12,000 furlongs is signified the whole complex of the truth and good in this Church, which consists in the good of love.

We pass by the rest of the explanation, for this part shows quite sufficiently the author's system of doctrine in his New Church or New Jerusalem." (N. T. B., vol. VII., 1766, pp. 685-692.)

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     This review, though apparently fair and dispassionate, must be valued in the light of prior and subsequent statements. Historically, it had most serious consequences. Dr. Johan Rosen, of Gothenburg, translated it into Swedish, and published it, with some comments favorable to Swedenborg, in his PRESTETIDNINGAR, (Clerical News), for 1768. It was this publication, and especially the criticisms of the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone that aroused the wrath of the Gothenburg Consistory, and led to the religious trial which Swedenborg described as "the most important and the most solemn that has been before any council within seventeen hundred years."
     * Dr. Clemm, professor of Theology in the University of Tübingen, and son-in-law of Oetinger, published the first collection of "Swedenborg Documents" in the work noted above. It contains an account of the anecdotes concerning the Fire in Stockholm, the Queen's Secret, and Madame de Marteville's Receipt, and also publishes the brief correspondence between Oetinger and Swedenborg. (Vol. iv, pp. 205, f.)

     Little by little the Dragon in this world was waking up and beginning to sharpen his claws. In the year 1767 Dr. Ernesti in the eighth volume of his BIBLIOTIIEK, (pp 860-892), published a review of the VOLLSTANDIGE EINLEITUNG IN DIE RELIGION UND GESAMMTF, THEOLOGIE, (Complete Introduction to Religion and general Theology), by Prof. Heinrich Wilhelm Clemm*, of Tübingen. After numerous sneering criticisms of Dr. Clemm's theological elucidations, the reviewer comes to the chapter on Swedenborg, on which he comments as follows:

     "But still more do we wish that the author had left out the appendix of this chapter, concerning SWEDENBORG and the letters to his valued correspondent, HERR OETTINGER, or that at least he had simply uttered a non liquet in regard to the Swedenborgian anecdotes. It is perfectly clear from SWEDENBORG'S writings, and from the extracts from them which we have published, that he is a naturalist, such as the gross Fanatici, and that he conceals his naturalism under the cover of Biblical expressions, or turns Biblical theology into a naturalism, as the Socinians have done in another way. And this is the key of the whole matter. Beside the three possibilities which Dr. Clemm suggests,-that Swedenborg's narrations are either mere phantasies, or the blinding tricks of an evil spirit, or the truth,-there is a fourth solution which undoubtedly is the correct one.

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They may be fictions by which he would deceive the world, and he may well laugh in his heart-as, indeed, they deserve,-at the people who believe in him and who do not understand his art. Are there not in Church History plenty of similar cases of fictions such as these, by which their authors have deceived simple and credulous people, or persons inclined to mystic dreaming, in order to gain fame and standing for their erroneous notions in religion? And have they not also achieved the desired effects? And our age is becoming ever more gullible to such deception, when even learned persons are found to be so much bent upon such dreams and phantasies, and are so easily convinced. SWEDENBORG knows this well enough."

     This concludes the references to Swedenborg, and Ernesti now returns to the delightful task of masticating Dr. Clemm, who is evidently suspected of hidden Swedenborgian tendencies. These are not easily found, but Ernesti finally detects the doctor in the flagrant crime of speaking of a future "saeculum majoris lucis," and of "a new economy in the world." At last he has his victim where he wants him. "This," exclaims Ernesti, "this is too much! This would require an entirely new revelation, and this no theologian can admit! This smacks too much of Fanatismo! God has spoken to us for the last time through his Son and the apostles. The economy which He then established in place of the Mosaic law is to last unto the end of the world, and also the Sacred Scripture as it is. For it is according to this that all men are to be judged on the last day. We mean it well towards the Herr Doctor and value his gifts, as he must know from our words and deeds, but for some time we have been in grief on his account. If he had said things like these a hundred years ago, what would have happened to him? But nowadays one may say such things and worse! Of course, HERR OETTINGER, in whom our prophesy has been fulfilled, is a prelate!"

     And so the hungry "bear," realizing that he could not "literally" feast on the remains of prelate Oetinger's son-in-law, sadly returns to the meager diet of his own paw! "Ipse alimenta sibi."

     SWEDENBORG'S REPLY TO ERNESTI.

     For ten years Swedenborg suffered in silence the flow of Ernesti's lying tongue,-his sneering insinuations and allusions, his various and self-contradictory charges or Naturalism, Fanaticism, Sabeilianism, Socinianism, and Cocceianism,-accusations most remarkable, not to say ridiculous, as coming from a learned Doctor of Theology who was supposed to have some knowledge of Church History.

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When finally Ernesti mentioned Swedenborg by name, accusing him of sacrilegious abuse of the Scriptures, hypocrisy, deliberate intention to deceive the world, etc., the persecuted man at last replied in a brief but telling note, worthy alike of a gentleman, a scholar, and a New Church Christian,-the "Pro Memoria against Ernesti," concerning which Swedenborg wrote to Dr. Beyer in a letter dated Amsterdam, July 2, 1771: "I enclose two copies of a Pro Memoria against Ernesti. If you chose you may communicate one of these to the members of the [Gothenburg] Consistory, since it will be circulated in Germany. What is said therein is applicable also to your Dean [Ekebom]." (Doc. II., 354)

     The "Pro Memoria" reads as follows in English: "I have read the things written concerning me by Dr. Ernesti in his Theological Library, p. 784,* and I have seen that they are mere vituperations against my person, and I have not found there a grain of reason against anything in my Writings; and yet to attack any one with such poisoned barbs is contrary to the laws of honor, wherefore I judge it unworthy to fight with that celebrated man by similar means,-that is, to reject and refute vituperations by vituperations; for this would be like two dogs fighting with each other with barkings and gaping jaws, and like females of the lowest kind who in their altercations throw the filth of the street in the faces of one another. Read, if you please, what has been written in my latest work, the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, concerning the Arcana disclosed by the Lord through me, His servant, and afterwards conclude, but from reason, concerning my Revelation.
     * This is a slip for p. 874

     "Further, against the same Dr. Ernesti there is written a Memorable Relation which is introduced into the above mentioned work, the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, 11. 137, pp. 105-108, which, if you please, should he read."

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     Some interesting details concerning this Pro Memoria, which was printed in the form of a small hand-bill, (copies are exceedingly rare), were discovered by the Rev. E. J. E. Schreck while visiting Holland in the year 1890. In the Thysius Library in Leyden he found a copy of the VERA CHRISTIANA RELIGIO, which had belonged to Swedenborg's friend in Amsterdam, Johann Christian Cuno, and bound in this volume was a copy of the printed Pro Memoria, together with a MS. copy of the same, in Swedenborg's handwriting. From a marginal note in Cuno's hand we learn that the latter had inserted a reprint of Ernesti's last attack on Swedenborg in a small collection of anecdotes concerning Swedenborg, which Cuno had printed in Hamburg, 1771, a copy of which he had sent to the aged revelator. The latter then wrote the autograph copy of the Pro Memoria against Ernesti which he sent to Cuno, with the request that he communicate it to his friends. Cuno, however, replied in a very superior tone that he "did not consider it advisable to make known personalities and irritating hatred, being more inclined to the endeavor of making up quarrels than fomenting them." Being a somewhat cold admirer of Swedenborg as a person, but having not the slightest interest in the Doctrine of the New Church, the self-satisfied Amsterdam burgher could not appreciate the reasons of the Pro Memoria, but attributed it to an anger foreign to a heavenly mind,-"tantae animis caelestibus erae?" Swedenborg, however, being, according to Cuno, "skilled in anger," received the "admonition" of his young friend with displeasure and "published by the press the same paper that he had sent to me," with a few verbal changes noted by Mr. Schreck in his account of the discovery in NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1890, p. 214.

     ERNESTI'S "FAMILIAR SPIRIT."

     The Memorable Relation in the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, n. 137, which refers to Dr. Ernesti, describes a conversation of ancient and modern theologians in the spiritual world. On the right stood a group of the Apostolic and Ante-Nicene Fathers, wearing beards and their natural hair; on the left stood men renowned in later ages for their written or printed works, many of whom had no beards, and wore curled wigs made of women's hair; and some of them wore ruffled collars, (in collavils ex volvulis*), and same had clerical collars with bibs.

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     * This, in the old English translations, was rendered "collars of twisted intestines"!

     "In front of them all stood a man,-a judge and critic of the writings of this age,-with a staff in his hand. He struck the floor and demanded silence, whereupon he ascended a pulpit and breathed forth a groan. He wanted to follow it up with a loud exclamation, but the groaning forced back the voice into the throat. At last he spoke, saying: 'Brethren, Oh, what an age! There has risen up from the herd of the laity one who has neither gown, tiara, nor laurel, who has plucked our faith from heaven and has hurled it into the Styx. What unspeakable shame! This man, [Swedenborg], in place of our faith,-which, being a faith in three divine persons and therefore in the whole of the Deity, is saving to the utmost-has transferred faith to the second person; yet not even to Him, but to His Human, which we call Divine because of the incarnation of the Son of God from eternity, but is there any one who thinks of it as anything more than merely human? From this, what else can result but a faith from which naturalism flows as from a fountain?'"

     At these and some further remarks his shaven, bewigged and becollared companions on the left clapped their hands and shouted their approval, while the ancient Fathers on the right sternly reproved their degenerate successors for having abandoned the genuine truths of the Christian religion. The spokesman of the Fathers finally invited Swedenborg to state "what those who are called 'Evangelical' believe or were expected to believe, concerning the Lord the Savior."

     Swedenborg thereupon recited a number of passages from the FORMULA CONCORDLE, and then, turning to the "great judge and critic" who presided, asked:

     "I know that all here present are associated with their like in the natural world; tell me, I pray, do you know with whom you are associated?"

     "He answered in a grave tone, 'I do! I am associated with a celebrated man, the captain of a host in the army of illustrious men in the church.'"

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     "As he answered in so grave a tone, I said, 'Pardon me, if I ask if you know where that celebrated leader lives!'"

     "He answered, 'I do know; he lives not far from Luther's tomb.'"*
     * Luther's tomb is at Wittenberg, which is but forty miles from Leipzig.

     "At this I smiled and said: 'Why do you mention the tomb? Do you not know that Luther has risen, and has now renounced his erroneous ideas of justification by faith in three Divine persons from eternity, and, therefore, has been placed among the blessed in the new heaven, and sees and laughs at those who run mad after him?'"

     "He replied, I know, but what is that to me?'"

     "I then addressed him in a grave tone like his own, saying: 'Inspire your celebrated man, with whom you are associated, with this: Whether there is not reason to fear that in writing as he did against the worship of our Lord and Savior, he at the same time robbed the Lord of His Divinity, contrary to the orthodoxy of his church, or allowed his pen to plough a furrow in which he
thoughtlessly sowed naturalism?' "

     "To this he replied: 'This I cannot do, because he and I in this matter are almost of one mind; but what I say he does not understand, while I clearly understand all that he says.' This is because the spiritual world enters into the natural and perceives the thoughts of men there, but not the reverse; such is the condition of association of spirits and men."

     Swedenborg then, from the FORMULA CONCORDLE, further proved the real heterodoxy and naturalism of the celebrated leader and his associate spirit, who finally turned away in silence. Another spirit thereupon started up, claiming to be associated with an eminent man in Gothenburg, "and from him I at one time thought that your new doctrines savored of Mohammedanism." After an indignant refutation of this accusation, Swedenborg concluded: "There are two points in this charge,-naturalism and Mohammedanism-which are wicked lies and crafty inventions; two deadly stigtnas designed to turn aside the wills of men and to deter them from the holy worship of the Lord."

     The "eminent man in Gothenburg" was Bishop Lamberg, (see NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1910, P. 158), whose opinions were also shared by Dean Ekebom.

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That the celebrated leader who lived "not far from Luther's tomb," was Ernesti, is manifest not only from the internal evidence, but also from the testimony of Cuno, who, in a letter to a friend in Hamburg, dated March 5, 1771, states that Swedenborg told him that "every man has his good or evil spirit, who is not only constantly near him, but also sometimes withdraws from him, and appears in the spiritual world. But of this the man still living knows nothing; the spirit, however, knows everything. Such a familiar spirit has everything perfectly in common with his human companion; he has in the spiritual world visibly the same figure, the same countenance, the same tone of voice; he also wears the same garments as the man on earth; in short, Swedenborg said, the familiar spirit of the Queen, [Louisa Ulrica, of Sweden], appeared exactly as he had so often seen the Queen herself in Stockholm and had heard her speak.

"In order to lessen my astonishment he added that Dr. Ernesti, of Leipzig, had appeared to him in a similar manner in the spiritual world, and that he had had a regular disputation with him. I wonder what this learned professor will say when he hears of this. Perhaps, The old gentleman is crazy and in his second childhood. He will laugh at him, and who can blame him? It is inconceivable to me how I myself can refrain from laughing when I hear such extraordinary things from him. And what is more: I have often heard him relate similar things in large parties consisting of ladies and gentlemen, among whom, as I was perfectly well aware, there were persons given to mockery; but to my great astonishment no one thought of laughing. As long as he speaks it is as if every person who hears him was charmed and compelled to believe him." (Doc. II., 484, 485)

(THE END.)

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MYSTERIES OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 1912

MYSTERIES OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Rev. W. B. CALDWELL 1912

     "And the disciples came, and said unto Him, Why speakest Thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, Out to them it is not given." (Matthew 13:10, 11.)

     Our Lord had spoken the parable of the Sower to the multitude by the seaside, and afterwards, when He was alone, the twelve disciples asked of Him the meaning of the parable, asked also why He had addressed the multitude in parables. His answer was to the effect that the multitude would not have understood if He had spoken otherwise, and that it was better for many that they should not understand. "Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." (Matt. 13:13, 15.)

     The Lord then explained to the disciples that the sower sowing the seed which fell on various kinds of ground represented the teaching of the Word, the implantation of the truth of the Word in human minds, and its various reception by men. To the disciples this general spiritual meaning of the parable could be unfolded because their interiors were opened, and they could receive such interior truths with understanding and affection. They were among the few at that time whose interiors had not been closed by the loves of evil reigning in the natural man. And therefore the Lord said to them, "Blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear." (v. 16.) Their spiritual understandings had been opened by the love of truth, and for this reason it could be given them to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, while to the multitude of the Jews this could not be given.

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     With the Jews for the most part the spiritual eyes and ears were closed and non-receptive because of the evil loves reigning in the natural with them. "For this cause the mysteries of faith had never been revealed to them, insomuch that it had not even been said to them openly that they would live after death, nor was it openly said to them that the Lord would come into the world to save them; yea, they had been kept in such ignorance that they did not know that there is an internal man, or that there is anything internal; for if they had known and acknowledged these things they would have profaned them, and so there would never have been any hope of their salvation in the other lift. This is why all the mysteries of faith were hidden away and covered over by the representatives of their Church, and this is why the Word was given to them in the prophetical style." (A. C. 302.) This is why the Lord spoke to them only in parables. If interior truths had been revealed to them they would have rejected them in heart, or have devoted them to evil ends, and thus committed profanation, to their eternal hurt. In the mercy of the Lord the mysteries of interior truth were veiled before the multitude, and unveiled only in the presence of the disciples.

     But there was another class of men in the multitude for whose sake the truth was expressed in parables,-the simple in heart who were in great ignorance, who could receive the truth only as accommodated to their apprehension in the form of the parable story, who could receive it with a holy reverence, though not with an interior comprehension. To this class belonged the children of the Jews, to whom those stories would be told, and by whom they would be received in a holy and innocent manner, to remain with them until adult age, when perchance they would desire and love the spiritual teachings they contained. The disciples themselves had been of this class, having been taught the stories of the Old Testament in their childhood, and thus kept in a state of simple and holy faith, being prepared thereby to receive the Divine stories told them by the Lord, and also new spiritual ideas by open instruction. For "when they were alone, He expounded all things to His disciples." (Mark 4:34.)

     With the disciples a new and more interior Church was instituted by the revelation of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to them.

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They, and all who were like them in the capacity to be enlightened by the Lord, constituted the internal of that Church in its beginning. In the external of the Church were many others who came to the light, but who remained in relative ignorance and simplicity, in a gentile slate. The children within that early circle of Christians were in that state. To the internal men of that Church the Lord spoke openly, but to the external men of the Church We Spoke only in parables, which also were for those who remained outside of the pale of the Church,-Jew and gentile,-who either rejected or knew nothing of the Christian doctrine. This is expressed in the version of the text in Mark, "And He said unto His disciples, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables. (4:11.)

Now the disciples in the text represent the internal men of the New Church of this day, to whom the Lord has revealed the mysteries of faith in the Heavenly Doctrines; but those "who are without," to whom He speaks only in parables, are the external men of the New Church,-the simple-minded, the children,-and in a broad sense all in the world who hear the Word but do not interiorly understand it. The subject of the chapter in which our text occurs is the teaching and accommodation of truth. For the chapter opens with the parable of the sower, which in the internal sense, treats of the insemination and implantation of truth, and in special of the accommodation of the Divine Truth to the degrees of men in the world, to the degrees of the mind in every man, to the various ground of reception in the minds of men. To the internal or spiritual mind the Divine Truth is openly revealed in spiritual doctrine, doctrine from the internal of the Word, in a form to be rationally perceived and understood, believed and loved. To the external or natural mind the Divine Truth is adapted in natural forms of comparison and similitude, as in the parables; in representative imagery, as in the prophets; in history, as in the historical parts of the Word. In all of these the Divine Truth is adapted to the comprehension of he natural mind in corresponding natural forms. By this the spiritual truth of heaven is clothed and veiled, and thus brought within natural apprehension, to the end that the Divine Truth may find a resting place and habitation there.

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     Truths thus accommodated to the grasp of the natural thought of man are essential as introductory to spiritual ideas, and as permanent ultimates thereof. For we are taught that "to the ideas which man cherishes concerning the Divine secrets there always adheres some idea derived from mundane things, by means of which they are retained in memory and reproduced in thought; for without some idea derived from mundane things man cannot think anything whatever. And that therefore if Truths from a Divine origin were set forth nakedly, they would never be received, but would exceed all man's grasp, thus also his belief." (A. C. 2520.) From this we may see the interior cause for the adapting of the Divine Truth in the forms of the written Word on all its planes,-history, prophecy, parable, and doctrine.

     In the chapter before us, which in the internal sense treats of this very subject, there are six parables besides the parable of the solver, and in each of them the kingdom of heaven is likened or compared to some natural thing, and thus presented to the mind under the form of a natural similitude, every particular of which corresponds to some truth or state of heaven. The "kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field," the "kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man seeking goodly pearls," the "kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind," and so on. And we are told that such natural appearances are seen to the life in the spiritual world as actual representations of the heavenly states of the angels; that the thought and speech of the angels often is presented before spirits below in the for-In of parables and representations of vineyards, paradises, and feasts, such as those spoken of by the Lord in the world. (DIARY 3356.)

     When the Lord spoke the parables He spoke by correspondences, thus naturally and at the same time spiritually, even as He spake the whole Word,-to men, and at the same time to angels. In like manner His miracles all were natural representations of His Divine power in heaven, and the records thereof contain in themselves arcana concerning the Lord, heaven, and the Church, for which reason they are Divine miracles, and to be distinguished from miracles not Divine. It is the same with the parables.

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They are Divine stories, and to be distinguished from all other stories. "One who does not know that everything the Lord spoke in parables was representative and significative of the spiritual and celestial things of His kingdom, and in the supreme sense of the Divine things with Him, may have no other idea than that they are like common similitudes, and have nothing more stored up in their bosom. But although they appear in external form like common similitudes, still in their internal form they are such that they infill the universal heaven, because there is an internal sense within every particular, which sense is such that the spiritual and celestial of it diffuses itself through the heavens in every direction like light and flame. That sense is altogether elevated from the sense of the letter, and flows from the single expressions, and from the single words, yea from every jot." (A. C. 4637.)

We know the power of comparisons, similes, and metaphors in literature, the power of a story to convey a truth to the mind, or to confirm a point of truth already known. By such means a truth is becomingly veiled, and also is insinuated more quickly and immediately to the perception of interior minds. There is such a power in the Word, and it lies in the correspondence of natural and spiritual truths,-the power residing in a natural parallel, comparison, or parable, to teach, illustrate, and confirm a spiritual truth, to present a natural plane for the immediate influx of Divine light out of heaven from the Lord.

When the seed sown in the earth is likened to the truth of the Word implanted in the mind it is a correspondence of the giving of truth by influx of light from the Lord, the Sun of heaven. And by this comparison and correspondence one who is informed as to the doctrine concerning the influx of spiritual light into the mind is carried from the natural image to the spiritual reality. To the man of the Church, who has been introduced by Revelation into the realities of spiritual doctrine, it is given to "know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven." But to the child, and the childlike mind, it is spoken "in parables." And it is highly desirable that children should be taught the truth in parables, and that hidden mysteries should not be thrust upon unprepared minds before the light of heaven dawns and finally breaks in all its fulness upon the mature mind.

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There is another power in parables,-the power of mystery. It is said that the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven were known to the disciples. They had been given to see the truth hidden behind the veil of the parable story. It is the presence of this inner truth, indicated by the comparison of the unknown kingdom of heaven with a known natural thing, that imparts the power of mystery to the parables. Mystery of its very nature has a power to allure and attract, to draw along the mind that is seeking for truth, to quicken its desire to know the unknown. Those who have reverence for the Word are given to feel that there are hidden wonders and secrets not apparent in the letter, but still indicated there by the very style of the Word. It is the general sphere of the internal truth there which affects the humble and reverential mind, investing the Scripture with the charm of mystery, the charm of hidden wonders. Even with the angels there is ever new mystery in the infinite depths of the Word "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." (I Cor. 2:9; Isaiah 64:4.)

At a certain period in the development of the human mind mystery plays a most important part. In the life of the child there is a period when the affection of knowing is quickened by mystery, by an awakened consciousness of the existence of what is unknown. At that time the imagination is enkindled and formed by the sense of mystery in nature, in human life, in all the child's environment. Adapted to this use are stories of human history, fairy tales, fables, poetry, and the drama. In the field of sacred literature are the Divinely provided stories of the Word in both Testaments, and the stories of heavenly scenes given in the Writings. It is exceedingly important that the faculty of imagination should be cultivated in childhood by such means as we have mentioned, as well as by such ultimate work and play as will develop the creative gift of the same faculty. In the exercise of the imagination, with its delight in mystery, and in the solving of mystery, begins the individual thought of the child, the rudiment of understanding and perception.

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And it is a mistake to dull this faculty by teaching too many things scientifically at that period of life, and especially to attempt to impart the secrets of spiritual and natural truth before a plane has been laid through the sense and imagination, through impressions in abundance from nature and human life, and from the literal sense of the Word.

Normal development requires a speaking to the child in parables, in mysteries, and by this it is prepared for the later age when the mind will not be so content to abide in mystery, but will long to solve the riddle of unknown things. This later age comes, we know, when scientific instruction has led to the opening of the faculty of reason, with its delight in knowing the relation of things one to the other, its delight in comparison and analogy. It is then that the science of correspondences, together with the general truths of Doctrine, may open the inner recesses of the Word, and disclose the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. And though the awakening of this faculty is marked at first by a certain glorying in its new-found knowledge, a glorying in its budding intelligence, this in turn must give place to a humble acknowledgment of ignorance and finite limitations, and the confession that there are infinite Divine mysteries in the Word,-mysteries that never call be fully grasped by human minds, though they may be ever more fully known and understood to eternity.

It is to this humble state, a state of innocence in the acknowledgment of ignorance, that the Lord can reveal the mysteries of heaven in all the glory of Divine Truth as it is known to the perception of the angels of heaven. They are "hidden from the wise and prudent, but revealed unto babes." "And the disciples said unto Him, Why speakest Thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given." Amen.

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TRUE AND THE FALSE UNIVERSITY 1912

TRUE AND THE FALSE UNIVERSITY WM. WHITEHEAD 1912

     (Read at the "Founders' Banquet," Bryn Athyn, January 14th, 1912.)

     The earliest educational activities in this country were governed by the doctrines of the Protestant evangelism. The early colonial universities were literally the children of the churches. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton were made by Congregationalists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians. In the course of time, however, at the instance of the far-sighted Virginian philosopher-statesman, the university ceased to be the offspring of religious dogma; it became the child of the state. Freedom succeeded to doctrinal propaganda as the keynote of educational policy. In an atmosphere of freedom from religious control state universities sprang up rapidly, especially in the West.

     The first use which these educational institutions made of their freedom was to minimize, as far as possible, the importance of any relation between doctrine and education. Religion as a science of spiritual law was relegated more and more to the private theological seminaries. Wherever theological departments still remained in the universities they were held back by the growing contempt of their relation to culture, and by an alleged fear of dogmatism. Any insistence on the necessity of distinctive religious education was met by a growing irritation, and by charges that the interests of Protestant doctrine were inimical to the development of a true educational culture. Obeying the general current of European education, the ultimate authority in culture became no longer religion. Indeed, the very word "authority" became as unpleasant to the educationalists as the word "parents" is apt to be the newly-emancipated youth who has just broken the strings which have tied him to his home. Yet, at that same time, with a curious illogicality, educationalists,-prompted by the evolutionist school,-wore homage to another authority by which they consented to be bound in a far more rigid bond than ever religion had imposed.

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Truth was asserted not to be the truth until it had been submitted to the verification of the senses. Sensual authority was asserted to be the ultimate authority. The assertion was often unconscious, but it was not the less clear and unmistakable. Even the principles of psychology,-a pure science of the mind,-became such that they depended on little else than laboratories for their formation. Material progress was instantly the order of the day;-an unprecedented progress in physical, civil and moral scientifics which has lasted to this day. The development of the laboratory, the increase of specialist knowledges, the added attention to external needs and methods,-all received a great impetus because men no longer had to stop to trouble themselves with religious scruples, or appeals to religious authorities. Thus, by a misuse of freedom, a great deal of harm and a great deal of good ensued to human education.

In appearance, however, the new movement portended nothing but good. The States desired men trained in truths of a technical and practical nature. They needed men for their civil uses, e. g., agriculture, the mechanic arts, and militarism. Congress encouraged such desires, and helped to provide the material needs. The new movement in education towards an exclusive concentration on physical, civil and moral scientifics coincided precisely with the growing needs of the nation. And very quickly economic and ethical needs became the dynamic forces which stood at the back of the colleges and universities. Business not regeneration was die goal of education. As Chancellor James R. Day pointed out to several educational bodies at Syracuse, on December 29, 1911, vocational education had become the main cause of the rapid growth of the colleges. True, liberal or cultural studies were still to be encouraged, but only so far as they were recognized as indispensable servants of vocational studies.

At this point a Newchurchman might well ask, "Are there any gains in all this so-called educational progress other than sheer material gains? Is there any advantage to the Church?" For the Newchurchman is well aware, from the testimony of Swedenborg and the teachings of history, that there is a certain university state, so to speak, favorable to the reception of New Church doctrines.

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Such a state is marked by great freedom of thought and speech, and opportunity of material-conditions always favorable to those scholars who love the truth for its own sake. The above questions can be answered in the affirmative.

     A remarkable publication of the natural materials of education has taken place during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Many of the university professors systematically put the results of their investigations, reflections and discoveries into books, lectures and addresses for the natural development of their particular scientific, and for the information of their colleagues and the public. Even qualified students are encouraged to print and put on record the fruits of their own work. This has naturally resulted in a high degree of specialization, and in the effort to keep pace, at all costs, with the demands of the modern world. Such work has been done in as great an atmosphere of freedom as is consistent with co-operation with fellow-professors and the aims of the particular foundation. Academic liberty of speech is now generally recognized is American universities as "essential to the very existence of an institution of learning" (see pronouncement of Board of Trustees of University of Pennsylvania: PUBLIC LEDGER, Jan. 12, 1912). Such conditions will be easily recognized by the historical student as presenting at least the opportunity to the "simple good" of Christendom to become acquainted with the doctrines of the New Church, as well as affording an unprecedented chance to New Church professors and teachers to gather certain natural basic scientifics in preparation for the higher thought of the coming New Church university.

     Yet, so far, the chief use made of the above conditions has been to destroy those very foundations on which alone a true religious education should be built. One remarkable effect of the educational anarchy into which the severance of religion from culture has plunged the modern schools may be seen in the confusion of the "scientific" and "philosophical" stages of education. This is illustrated admirably in the relations of the "college" and the "university" in this country.

     The difference between a college and a university in this country has never been so clear as in Europe. In fact, it is only since about 1880 that any serious distinction has been made between collegiate and university standards of education.

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Nevertheless, the perception is growing-as it was bound to grow-that "college" and "university" instruction calls for something like discrete degrees of knowledge, The college education is being seen to consist of a thorough discipline of instruction in scientifics-that is, thorough instruction in the scientifics of language, ethics, psychology, history, politics, etc., on the one hand, and in the scientifics of biology, anatomy, physics, chemistry, geology, mathematics, etc., on the other hand. University instruction, however, is being recognized to lie rather in the field of philosophic inquiry concerning the above scientifics. It is seen to be the plane of more universal studies-of inquiry after the more abstract phases of truth-of pursuit of those principles of unity which should inspire a more formal arrangement of the preparatory scientifics. "There is a disciplinary stage in education which is the requisite introduction to the higher and freer work of the university," says Daniel Coit Gilman. "This is the sphere of the colleges."

But now comes the rub! The university, in climbing for the planes where truth of higher orders may be found, finds itself baffled by the fundamentals of life-which tower as steep and mysterious as ever to the modern man. The university, with its feet on the solid ground of sensual scientifics, finds no ladder from earth to heaven. It finds no knowledge of discrete degrees. That there may be and must be such degrees is sometimes conceded. Men like Lodge, Grosscup, Arrhenius and others have given us many interesting hints of this sort. In fact, a knowledge of such degrees is absolutely necessary to the modern hypothesis of unceasing progress unless the human race is to stop blankly some day in a cul-de-sac. But what discrete degrees are is not known and cannot be known without admitting the testimony of a divine revelation regarding them, given through a Swedish scientist, Emanuel Swedenborg. This latter field of inquiry, however, is so far rejected by the universities; and any and all kinds of religious "authority" are denied as the source of true education, "Swedenborgianism" among the rest.

Being left to their own human resources-which are the increasing resources of physical, civil and moral truths-the philosophical studies of the university are compelled to fall back upon, and arise out of, the scientifics of the college stage.

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In fact such quasi-philosophical studies are hardly more than fully illustrated definitions of those natural laws which the senses perceive to be involved in the scientifics. Hence the search for higher truths of the true university stage of learning finally results (except in a few special cases) in naturalistic "philosophies" and "sciences" regarding man and nature. That these are acceptable to the modern world and agree with its ideals of life is demonstrated in the growing power of the colleges and universities, which are rapidly elbowing aside the institutions of home and church and welding the fabric of modern civilization into a vast institutional naturalism. It will be clear that such results are diametrically opposed to any educational system in which the universal principles of true religion and the rehabilitation of marriage institutions are to have the supreme place. For the tail is not only made to wag the dog, but the dog almost ceases to exist. It becomes nearly all tail.

There remains, however, one way in which the policy of the modern universities might find a just vindication. If the natural "philosophy" and "science" of the modern man can be found to agree with the natural philosophy and science implied in the Writings of the New Church, then there is less reason for distinctive New Church education in those stages of education. There would seem even less reason to fear the spheres of the universities if their "philosophies" were actually true to nature. But fidelity to the nature which God made, and fidelity to the sensual scientifics which man has made concerning nature, may become two wholly antagonistic things. For fidelity to nature implies fidelity to God. "Ye cannot serve God and be faithless to nature," says the modern man, pleading for a greater development of study in natural truth. This is true-with a qualification. The qualification might be stated thus, "Neither can ye serve nature and be faithless to God." The truth is, that the studies which God intended to be joined together, man has put asunder. The words of the Redeemer have been forgotten: "Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

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For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and its righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matth. vi., 31-33).

The present drift of our studies in several departments certainly indicates that as distinct a line of cleavage is taking place between the "philosophies" and "sciences" of the modern universities, and the distinctive philosophy and science now beginning to live within our schools, as has already been drawn between the religion of the Old Church and the religion of the New Church. And, because of the nature of the bond postulated by our revelation between the things of nature and the things of revelation, it is difficult to see how the distinctiveness of our education will fail to become more pronounced and more forbidding to non-religious educationalists. We cannot give away our distinctiveness and still possess it. Nor are true Newchurchmen-yielding to the fascination of greater material advantages elsewhere-likely to go over to support educational institutions whose ends are, in the long run, antithetical to our own.

It may, however, be justly asked, "What are the prospects that modern universities and colleges will ultimately adopt the natural philosophy and science implied in the Word and detailed in the scientific preparatory studies of Swedenborg? When our distinctive education has more completely emerged from its formative stages, will the scholars of the old universities come boldly out into the new university?" For it is true, as Swedenborg has prophesied, and history has plainly demonstrated, men here and there have come forth, loving the truth for its own sake and not for the sake of intellectual glory or reputation or gain. Moreover, the conditions extant in modern education would seem to be remarkably analogous to former historic conditions which have favored such conversions. There is today great freedom of discussion and opportunity of material. Not only may the Gentiles freely seek after the preparatory truths suited to their simple state, but New Church professors and teachers are able without hindrance to gather certain needed basic natural truths in preparation for the higher thought of the coming New Church university.

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It is well to preserve an open mind on this difficult question. But it must be clearly stated that the evidences of any general movement in favor of our distinctive ends, even when the most is made of occasional signs, are slight and discouraging. As yet there is not sufficient warranty for undertaking any movement for the salvation of anybody but ourselves. It is true that remarkable confirmations of Swedenborg's theories frequently issue from the universities. But it should be borne in mind that such confirmations relate generally to physical data rather than to interior principles. They concern only the raw materials of study-which remain, by their very nature, the same, whether the student be a Newchurchman, a Campbellite, a Catholic, an agnostic, or a member of the Hepziba Faith Association. When remarkable confirmations of our distinctive spiritual doctrines, as well as of our distinctive physical data, begin to appear, there would seem to be time enough to pay more attention to the above subject.

The only logical outcome of a comparison of educational ideals is a plea for a true and an actual university. True, such a plea is apt to present an idealistic possibility rather than the practical probabilities, inasmuch as hope constitutes the main part of our building material at present. Our resources are slight. The men and women available are few in number. Only a limited amount of natural progress can be made in one generation. And, whatever our intellectual pride may suggest, it is only common sense to recognize that our path bristles with spiritual dangers. Only a fastidious abhorrence of self-righteousness will prevent us from studying frankly such dangers. For instance, there is the danger, whilst gathering scientifics, of being content to accept the quasi-philosophies of the world, because of their plausibility, or our own lack of perception or willingness to labor. There is the danger of becoming so lost in admiration of the intellectual abilities and moral excellencies of many of the leaders of thought in the modern universities (facts which no sensible man denies), that we become unconsciously turned aside from our original purpose of distinctiveness.

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There is the further danger of unwisely surfeiting our educational system with scientifics that have not been properly digested, or properly presented, or placed into their true relation to our philosophy and its existing stage of development. Such dangers are bound to be especially acute in a formative stage, because of the time and labor which must necessarily be devoted by some to the collection of materials-a stage unconsciously opposed to philosophic development. Most of these dangers, however, are professional questions whose solution depends (1) on the special qualifications of those who gather scientifics for our use; (2) On the persistent labors of New Church professors and instructors to sustain the distinctiveness of their profession; and (3) on frank and reciprocal relations of charity between educationalists, laity and clergy.

After all, that our task is not impossible is indicated by the measure of success already attained, by a providential material prosperity, and by the history of certain Old Church contemporaries. For, in spite of the spheres hostile to any kind of distinctive religious education, the Catholic University, of Washington, approximates in many respects to European universities, though it was created by the Pope for the sole purpose of a distinctive Catholic education in this country. Besides their schools of theology, the Jesuit fathers and the Sulpicians sustain highly efficient colleges of scientifics. The wisdom of this distinctive policy is seen in the remarkable growth of Catholicism in America in recent years, a growth which becomes alarming to the dwindling Protestant bodies whose life is ebbing away in secular universities. We can here borrow from Catholic prudence; and look to provide for central university teaching which shall influence and guide the instruction given in all collegiate, secondary and primary departments of our schools. As yet, the burden of such teaching has lain on the two professional departments of theology and female normal instruction.

The immediate practical step to be taken towards this end is, to learn how to secure and how to keep, as teachers, men of special gifts, of careful training, of resolute will, and who,-above all,-will love the truth of the Church better than they love natural truth, or father, or mother, or friend, or wife. Such men should also be assisted to create the natural conditions which are indispensable to the growth of a university, viz., opportunity of material for study, facilities for professional training, freedom of publication of results, and, above all, as great an atmosphere of academic freedom as is consistent with professional co-operation and with the distinctive ends of our education.

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It is safe to say that all our material and executive development will be of little value to us unless we first possess such men and such conditions. If in the universities of the world there is the immediate hope of such men, let us seek and find them. But the writer believes that it agrees with a sound principle of the Academy that the best "university missionary work" still lies in the proper university education of its own children and its own young men and women. By "the proper university education" is meant not merely collegiate discipline in scientifics,-but the education of a true university learning in which our distinctive philosophies and sciences will find a free development, and to which the temporary sojourn in modern collegiate scientifics is but a prelude and an introduction.
ARCANA OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 1912

ARCANA OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE E. E. IUNGERICH 1912

The languages of the Semitic group: Hebrew, Aramaic, Syrian, Samaritan, Arabic, etc., have two marked characteristics. They are written from right to left, the celestial order, and they have no letters for the vowels. Languages of the Japhetic group, as those in Europe, are written from left to right, the spiritual order, and have letters for the vowels co-ordinate with those for the consonants and placed alongside them in the written line. In another group of languages, which some call Hamitic, and of which the Japanese is a modern example, the written line descends vertically from the top to the bottom of the page.

Originating in the pre-Christian era, it is certain that these languages would partake of the representative force and character possessed by other objective phenomena. Racial and spiritual characteristics of such differences as those of the Semitic, Japhetic, and Hamitic peoples would appear in their speech and in the written forms it assumed. Languages arising on earth during the period of representative churches would, to a certain extent at least, represent the flow of the heavenly, gyres with which there was a correspondence.

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In this respect they would resemble the languages in the spiritual world, about which the following arcana are given us from revelation:

     "Whence such writing is, was also, perceived, that namely, it is according to the form of heaven, which is of such a nature. . . . Celestial angels know perfectly what corresponds, as in what way good proceeds to this or that quarter, and this from ingrafted knowledge, because they are led by the form of heaven. Hence is their writing and many other things; so that they know what is true without teaching. It is permitted me," says Swedenborg, "to relate a certain marvel about a like matter. When angels see any spirit walking below them, then they instantly perceive from the path in which he is walking, and the bendings of the path hither and thither of what quality he is, and what he is thinking, etc. . . . Thence it might be manifest to me that the inflections of the writings are according to the form of heaven." (S. D. 5583.)

     "In the spiritual heaven the writing is like writings in the world, with Roman letters." (Ibid. 5561)

     "In the celestial heaven, however, they have no such writing, but the letters are different, almost like the Hebrew." (Ibid. 5562)

     "The letters with the angels of the celestial kingdom are with some like the Arabic letters, with others like the Ancient Hebrew letters, [supposed to be the present Samaritan letters, the square Hebrew characters now used having come into use during the Babylonian captivity], but inflected above and below, with signs above, between, and below." (T. C. R. 241.)

     "The Word written in the old Hebrew language, where all the letters are curved, has a more immediate communication with heaven." (L. J., Post 261.)

     The present Hebrew letters are alphabetic. Originally, as is the case with nearly all the ancient languages, they were ideographic, being pictures of objects. What these objects were has been preserved in many cases in the names of the letters. Thus Resh, the name of the letter R, means "head," and Beth, the name of the letter E, means "house," etc. The importance to the New Church of a knowledge of these ideographic values will be considered presently when the arcana of their celestial correspondence are taken up.

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     I. THE VOWEL SIGNS.

     Dots and lines, or combinations of them, placed above or below a letter, indicate the vowel which follows it. A single dot above a letter is O, Cholem; a single dot below, is I, Chireq (pronounced as I in "machine"). Two, three, or five dots below a letter are E, (pronounced as E in "they"). But three dots in a line slanting downwards from left to right is a U, Quibbuts. A dash under a letter is A, (as A in "father"), Pattach, and a small T under a letter is generally A, but sometimes O, Kamets. The semi-consonant Vau becomes the vowel O, if a dot is placed over it; or the vowel U, Shureq, if the dot is placed in its bosom. The semi-consonant Jod forms a diphthong with a preceding vowel-sign.

     Before the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, Hebrew was written without vowel points. When, however, it became a dead language, and the Jews, dispersed as they were, into different nations of the earth, would naturally forget the true pronunciation of the sacred text, no less than its meaning in many important passages, it became almost necessary that every word should be fully pointed, so as to leave no doubt in the mind of the reader. . . . For this purpose, vowel marks were added, and also a system of accents, which, taken in the aggregate, compose the system of Hebrew orthography as we now have it.

     According to Lee, the first vowel marks were a single point above a letter to denote A and O, and a single point below a letter to denote E or I. The semi-consonants Vau and Jod in the text stood for U and Y, respectively. The single point above the letter has become the modern Cholem, O, and the single point below the letter has become the modern Chireq. The various signs for E, Tsere, Shwa, Seghol, Chateph-Seghol, are only the original point below the letter doubled, trebled, or quintupled. To distinguish A from O, the point above a letter was lengthened to a dash; but as there was already a dash there as another grammatical sign, the dash to indicate it was transferred to the bottom of a letter.

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To indicate the sound of an A verging still to be found in manuscripts and this became the sign Kamets, a small T. Qibbuts was probably invented to take the place of a Vau which had dropped out. This hypothesis of Lee merits some consideration, because of a partial analogy with the classification of vowels given in revelation. E and I, which are spiritual vowels, are appropriately below; O as a celestial vowel is appropriately above; and A which is intermediate between the celestial and the spiritual was first above, and then below.

     The following arcana about the vowels and vowel-signs are furnished by revelation:

     "They, [the celestial angels], stated that the vowels there are for the sound, and that they cannot enunciate the vowels I and E, but in their place they have Y and EU, and in place of Et EU, and that the vowels A, O, U are in use with them, because those vowels give a full sound, but I and E give a restricted sound." (De VERBO iv). Possibly by EU is meant Qibbuts. In another passage the somewhat variant statement is made that they have "AO in place of A, Y in place of I, and EU in place of AE." (S. D. 5622.) Possibly by AO is meant Kamets in place of Pattach.

     Vowels merely serve for sound. (S. D. 5620.) Vowels are for sound, and in sound there is affection. (H. H. 241) By a vowel because it serves for sound, there is meant something of affection and love. (A. R. 29.) Each letter is an affection. (D. Wis. vii:5.) Vowels signify something that conjoins, and, therefore, have the meanings of such prepositions as apud, cum, in [viz., adjoined to, conjoined with, in]. (S. D. 6063.) The vowel I signifies "what is from the interior," O signifies "cum or apud," and U signifies "all things." (S. D. 5787)

     "By the vowels they express affections; by the consonants the ideas of thoughts proceeding from those affections, and by the words composed of both, the meaning of the subject under consideration." (H. H. 261.)

     "Since vowels do not belong to language, but to the elevation of its words by the sound, therefore in the Hebrew language the vowels are not expressed, and they are also pronounced variously. Hence the angels know the quality of a man as to affection and love." (H. H. 241.)

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     "I have been taught by the angels, that the Hebrew language is such, that only the sense of the letter ought to be attended to, not thus the letters, which was confirmed by many things; wherefore also, in the beginning it was written without points. [At the time] when it was thus read without points, then the sense alone was attended to, and thence the accents of the vowels were formed." (S. D. 2414.)

     "Whether the points, [in the Hebrew text], are divinely inspired, may to some extent be known from the prophetical writings where the sense can be understood by no one, except from the Lord, and by those to whom the Lord is pleased to reveal it." (S. D. 2414.)

     "The Hebrew language is such, that there are in it many anomalies. It was seen that it was hence permitted, lest the reader should twist the sense, each according to his phantasy...that points were afterwards put to the text." (S. D. 2414.)

     "It is also evident that it was of the Lord's Divine Providence that all the letters of the Word in the Hebrew text were numbered by the Masorites." (DE VERBO ix.) The Masorites also furnished the vowel signs.

     "In the Word there are Divine and arcane things of heaven even in the jots, apexes, and little horns." (H. H. 260.)

     "From these things is manifest that not one jot, apex, or little horn would pass away from the law." (DE VERBO iv.)

     II. THE CONSONANTS.

     There are twenty-two distinct characters whose names are given in order as successive heads in the 119th Psalm. Their corresponding values in English are given approximately by the initial letters, with the exception of Aleph and Ain which are usually silent. Vau is a W, Jod a Y, and Cheth a rough H like the German Ch. Schin is SH, but it is used also to mean S. Six other letters, the aspirates, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Caph, Pe, Tau have two pronunciations. Their usual equivalents are B H or V, G H, D H, K H, P H or F and T H. But when they receive a dot in their bosom, they drop the rough H sound and become B, G, D, K, P, T. The dot which does this is called Daghesh Lene, that is, soft pointing. It makes a harsh letter soft.

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When a letter has to be doubled, it is never written twice, but receives a dot in its bosom to indicate the doubling. This dot is called Daghesh Forte, that is, strong pointing. It makes a letter harsh.

     There are thus two kinds of harshness in Hebrew letters; that of the six aspirants without Daghesh Lene, and that occasioned by a doubling of consonants through Daghesh Forte These two kinds of harshness appear to be referred to in A.C. 1759, and further teaching about harshness is given in DE VERBO iv and S. D. 5622.

     "The speech of celestial spirits cannot easily flow into articulate sounds or words with man, for it cannot be adapted to any word in which there is [1] any harsh sound, or in which there is [2] a doubling of consonants." (A. C. 1759.)

     "Harshness in the letters is in use in the spiritual heaven, because there they are in truths, and by truths in understanding. But in the celestial heaven all are in the good of love and thence in wisdom, and truth admits what is harsh but not good." (DE VERRO iv.)

     "I read something in the Hebrew tongue without the harshness, and rapidly skimming the vowels as only sounds; and from the syllables alone they formed the celestial sense in the inmost heaven, and declared that there was correspondence." (S. D. 5622.)

     (To be continued.)

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NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

     The bound volume of NEW CHURCH LIFE for 1911 is now ready and for sale at the price of two dollars.

     Mr. Alfred H. Stroh reports that a portrait of Swedenborg's elder sister, Anna, who married Archbishop Eric Benzelius, has recently been discovered at Gronsce, near Stockholm.

     "No portions of the Word can be read or sung, devoutly and reverently, without bringing to bear upon those so employed the spiritual influences of corresponding societies in the heavens. Even though men may be ignorant of the spiritual sense, that effect will necessarily follow. The suitability or unsuitability of any portion of the Word for public use is, therefore, not so easy a matter to decide as some people imagine; and it is quite possible for the Church to act from motives of apparent expediency and by so doing inflict serious loss upon those who worship." (MORNING LIGHT, Feb. 24.)
LIBRARY EDITION OF THE APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED 1912

LIBRARY EDITION OF THE APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED W. H. A 1912

The American Swedenborg Society has recently completed the publication of its "Library Edition" of the APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED, the six handsome volumes being issued simultaneously as the publishers thought it best to await the revision of the complete work before issuing any part. The work of revision was in the hands of the late Rev. Louis H. Tafel up to the middle of the fourth volume; after the death of Mr. Tafel, the revision of the remaining portion and the reading of the proofs have been in the charge of the Rev. John Whitehead.

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     The present revision is based on the translation of the Rev. J. C. Ager, which was issued by the American Swedenborg Society in 1890-1895,-a fact of which no mention is made in Mr. Whitehead's Preface. In general it may be said that Mr. Ager's translation has been closely followed. An extended review of that edition appeared in NEW CHURCH LIFE for 1895, p. 60, and it is not necessary, therefore, to dwell at length on the present revision. There are, however, a few important changes consistently made, which should be noted.

     Ex, which Mr. Ager commonly renders "by," is correctly translated "from."

     Procedere is rendered "to proceed" instead of "to go forth."

     Affectio veri and affectio bon, which Mr. Ager everywhere translates "affection for truth" and "affection for good," are restored to their correct rendering, "affection of truth" and "of good."

     Mr. Ager's "outmost," for ultimus, is properly displaced by "ultimate."

     "Conjugial love" is restored in the place of Mr. Ager's "marriage love," though unfortunately the phrase "amor vere conjugialis" is usually translated by "true conjugial love," and only once by the correct, strong and beautiful term "love truly conjugial."

     The term "proprium" is still in banishment, though the Latin term is introduced in parenthesis after the word "own." The weakness and awkwardness of this procedure is seen at once in the following quotation: "The Lord is not conjoined with what is man's own, (proprio), but with His own that is with man. The Lord removes what is man's own (proprium), and gives of His own, and dwells in that." (n. 254.) We are glad to see the term "cognition" retained, and "knowledges" set free from the redundant "memory knowledges," but the revision still suffers from a fear of "scientifics."

     On the whole the new revision is an improvement upon Mr. Ager's translation, though it would appear that no effort has been made to effect any thorough-going revision, the revisers being satisfied to make only occasional verbal changes, leaving the general style and diction unaltered.

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The print and book-making are of the usual excellence of the other volumes of the Library Edition. It is agreeable to note a minimum of the small type which in large part marred the beauty of the previous edition published by the American Swedenborg Society, quotations from the Word alone being thus differentiated from the rest of the text.

As usual, the sixth volume contains as Appendices the works ON THE DIVINE LOVE, ON THE DIVINE WISDOM, THE CREED OF ATHANSIUS, and CONCERNING THE LORD AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. W. H. A.
"DIVINE PROVIDENCE" IN SWEDISH 1912

"DIVINE PROVIDENCE" IN SWEDISH H. L. O 1912

     A new translation of THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE has just been issued by the New Church Publishing Association in Stockholm. All other recent translations have been from the pen of Mr. Manby, and it was therefore a surprise to find the name of T. Holm-hitherto unknown to us-as the translator of the present volume of 358 closely-printed octave pages.

     According to the Preface the translator's object has been to penetrate into the author's thoughts and "reproduce them as precisely as possible." In many instances, however, he has failed to do so, because of a general disregard of even the most common distinctions of technical New Church terms.

     While we realize the great difficulties of reproducing the exact meaning of abstract Latin terms into the Swedish tongue, it is surprising that Mr. Holm has not taken advantage of the suggestions already offered by Mr. Manby toward the solution of many problems, for Mr. Manby, in his long experience as translator, has proved extremely successful in combining accuracy with diction. The present translator has not had the same experience, wherefore his work should not be too harshly judged.

     In some cases Mr. Holm has succeeded in reaching exact denotations. There is an instance of this in n. 6, where it is said that the Divine, in its descent into the lower degrees, becomes choked up (obstipatur) with earthy matters. Mr. Holm brings out the fundamental idea of obstipatur as meaning "twisted obliquely" (snedvrides).

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The new translation has no critical notes, and is evidently published more for the sake of missionary work than for study by Newchurchmen, There are, however, numerous footnotes and editorial insertions which rather confuse than explain, especially since italics are not used for Latin words, and the distinction between brackets and parentheses has been overlooked. An amusing footnote is attached to n. 147, where the sentence: "this is not contrary to liberty and rationality, but secundum lilas" occurs in the text. The translator has taken the greatest pains to find out what lilas could mean, and concluding that the author meant limas he renders the phrase "according to careful examination." It is self-evident, however, that "lilas" is a printer's error for illas, the only possible reading of the phrase being: "according to them"!

In the Preface of the book, where the attitude of the publishers should have been voiced, we search in vain for any recognition of the work as a revelation or Divine gift. Personal appreciation of Swedenborg as a great moral teacher and references to his useful influence on mankind-that is all. We sincerely hope that the book will find very many readers, but also that those outside the Church, in whose hands it may fall, will read the Preface-last. H. L. O.
"EVANGELICAL NEW-CHURCHMAN" 1912

"EVANGELICAL NEW-CHURCHMAN" 1912

Under the auspices of the Canada Association the Rev. E. D. Daniels has begun the publication of a four-page, double-column, monthly, entitled THE EVANGELICAL NEW-CHURCHMAN, which, if we may judge from the general tone of the introductory editorial on "For what this paper stands," seems to mean "The Methodist" New-Churchman. It stands "first and foremost for the experimental Christian life," for that "interior life" which "is found mostly in the Protestant sects which existed with numerous membership even before the Lutheran Reformation, and from the third century." We suppose the editor refers to the various sects of Montanists, Manichaens, Paulicians, Albigenses, Flagellants, and other movements of "enthusiastic spirits," which found a modern revival in the great Methodistic movement of the eighteenth century.

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Beside this, however, our new contemporary stands "for all that is good and true in both the prelatical and the Protestant lines of ecclesiastical history."

     While professing to be strictly non-controversial, the editor in his first issue rushes into the fray with a thinly veiled contribution to the discussion on the "doctrine of permissions," and in the February issue he enters the lists of those whose one and only battle-cry is "the Writings are not the Word of God."

     In stating his position, the editor unwittingly performs a real service to the Truth by first explaining the position of "those who go so far as to hold that the Writings of Swedenborg are the Word," and he does this so intelligently and clearly that one might suppose his statement must convince both himself and his readers:

     "Their view is that the Word assumes different forms in different dispensations; and now, in the new dispensation which has dawned, it assumes the form of a new revelation adapted to the rational mind. The Most Ancient Church called Adam had no written Word. Their revelations were through open vision. The succeeding or Ancient Church, which is called Noah, had a Word in which spiritual things were represented in natural things by the then well-understood science of correspondences But men became so evil that the spiritual meaning of natural things was lost, and was preserved only among a few, especially in Syria. Men began to regard natural things alone. Hence came idolatry; and in the Divine Providence this first Written Word was lost, and another, namely, our present Word, was given in its place. This was not finished until the Lord made His first advent and the Gospels and the Apocalypse were given. But in our day the Lord has made His second advent in the new Writings through His servant, Swedenborg, which Writings, constituting a revelation to the rational mind, are the Word in this new dispensation which thus has been inaugurated."

     But after this remarkably fine exposition of the Doctrine concerning the Word throughout the Ages, the editor continues:

     "This, so far as it relates to the Writings of Swedenborg, is not the position of this paper, nor of the Canada Association, nor of the General Convention of the New Jerusalem Church to which the Canada Association belongs.

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Our position is that there is but one Word, even in its external form, alike for the first Christian centuries and For that new dispensation which in its beginnings is already here. That Word consists of the plenarily inspired books of our present Bible, That is the only Word; there is no other, and there never will be any other." Even if the Ancient Word should be restored to us, it would not be the Word, according to this line of thought. As to the Writings of Swedenborg, they "are not the Word, but the Divinely given light which interprets the Word anew, especially in its darker portions."

The "darker portions" are the Word, but the "Divinely given light" is not the Word of God, but something infinitely inferior!

The editor points the difference between the two divergent attitudes towards the Writings by the remark: "When those of the opposite view would receive guidance in, or justify, any course of conduct, they appeal to the Writings; but we appeal to the Word in the light of those Writings." It would be interesting to know how Mr. Daniels can "justify" his conduct in making such an insinuation by any appeal to the Word in the light of the Writings.
"EXPURGATION" OR "COMPILATION" 1912

"EXPURGATION" OR "COMPILATION" W. H. A 1912

In the last volume of the LIFE (p. 343) it was pointed out that the BROCKTON DECLARATION, and even more openly the "REASONS" for it afterwards published, were essentially the denial and repudiation of the Second Part of Conjugial Love, and might logically be expected to be followed by the publication of a volume expurgative of the offensive portion.

This logical result was foreshadowed by the action of the Woman's Council of the Illinois Association, which at a meeting held March 29, 1911, voted to request the publication of an edition of CONJUGIRT, LOVE containing the First Part only. This may have been the source of the "urgent request" received by the Swedenborg Publishing Association, of Minneapolis, announced in its Annual Report for 1910, "to have the first part of Swedenborg's work on CONJUGIAL LOVE, or perhaps certain chapters from this part, (the last part being only a narration of hellish conditions and the laws controling these it is thought not useful to include), gotten out to be placed in all libraries of Purity books."

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     Now comes the further action of the New York Association on February 22, bringing still nearer the same end, namely, the elimination of the Second Part of the work on CONJUGIAL LOVE, although carefully couched in such terms as to admit of a different purpose being claimed.

     The MESSENGER reports the resolution to have been "offered on behalf of women of the Association who passed them at a meeting in Brooklyn, Feb. 3, 1912."

     Moved, That this gathering of New Church women of the NEW YORK ASSOCIATION respectfully suggest to that body that it undertake the printing and publication in book form, attractive to outsiders, selected passages concerning the sixth commandment from Vol. V. of APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED, together with certain selected excerpts from the first half of CONJUGIAL LOVE, the whole to present a clear and definite affirmation of the New Church doctrine on marriage.

     Moved, also, That we suggest that this compilation: be placed in the hands of a committee of six appointed by the President and consisting of two ministers, one layman and three women.

Is this "compilation" or "expurgation"? Is the spirit back of it affirmation, or denial and repudiation?

     The NEW YORK AMERICAN thus refers to the incident:

     On motion of Mrs. Joseph Mills a committee was appointed to expurgate the work of Emanuel Swedenborg. On his works the very fabric of the church rests, yet they are to be expurgated. It is much as if the Methodists decided to eliminate part of the Bible, or Turks to slash the Koran.

     And the Rev. Arthur Mercer is reported by the NEW YORK JOURNAL to have said:

     It is most unfortunate that the necessity for this expurgation exists, but it seems some of our sect have come to regard Swedenborg as infallible. He had the ideas of his time. We should recognize that he made mistakes.

     Mr. Harvey, Pastor of the Philadelphia Society, scouts the idea of expurgation.

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     "A movement within the New York Association to expurgate portions of the work of Emanuel Swedenborg will meet with no sympathy from members of the sect." He had not heard that the thought of expurgating the theological works of Swedenborg had taken any definite form, although he had heard that a few people objected to a few of the teachings. But the idea of expurgation, in his opinion, was absurd and would not be tolerated. The teachings of Swedenborg would stand as he wrote them.

     The Rev. H. S. Conant, Pastor of the Baltimore Society of the Convention, was equally certain that there would be no expurgation of the works of Swedenborg.

     The MESSENGER is indignant at what it declares to be wilful misrepresentation on the part of the "public press throughout the country," and brands the report of "expurgation" or "repudiation" as absolutely false. But we will give the MESSENGER'S own words. It affirms:

     The resolutions were advocated in part by some who hold firmly to the entire reliability of Swedenborg's teachings, and who resent as false the interpretation put upon some of those teachings by a few people within our body who seem unable to grasp their true meaning as interpreted by the vast majority of students of the Church, and who have insisted in carrying on a kind of campaign with "expurgation" as one of its chief aims. The resolutions were favored and passed solely on the ground that a book presenting the New Church doctrine of marriage, compiled from various parts of Swedenborg's Writings, very much as has been done in Vol. IX. of Barrett's SWEDENBORG LIBRARY, should be a useful book to enable one to place m the hands of persons wishing to know what the Church teaches on this subject. The proposed book is not a republication of the first part of CONJUGIAL LOVE; it is to be a compilation; and it would be a great mistake for the Church to get the impression from a sensational newspaper report that the New York Association had made a move towards having Swedenborg's Writings, or any part of them, "expurgated." It has done nothing of the kind.

     But the MESSENGER does not inform us why such a "compilation" should be prepared, when Swedenborg's own exposition of the subject of marriage, in the manner in which he intended it should be presented, already exists in the book CONJUGIAL LOVE. Is it to be believed that the book CONJUGIAL LOVE will be given the precedence, in case such a "compilation," as the resolutions propose, should be actually published? W. H. A.

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"EXIT" THE REV. ARTHUR MERCER 1912

"EXIT" THE REV. ARTHUR MERCER Editor 1912

Larger New York has recently witnessed what was, let us hope, the last scene in the long drama that was introduced to the public by Wm. McGeorge & Co in their attack upon the Academy of the New Church at Lancaster, Pa., on July 1st, 1908. Our readers are familiar with the succeeding acts and the dramatis personae, all of whom have now withdrawn from the stage, leaving the lonesome figure of Col. Williams in sole possession of the field, still undaunted, still fighting, and now in his latest pamphlet addressing himself "to the President of the United States, Government and State Officials, Senators and members of Congress," etc.

The last of his companions-at-arms to forsake him is the Rev. Arthur Mercer, of Brooklyn, whose final exit has been quite sensational. We have already reported Mr. Mercer's resignation from the pastorate of the Brooklyn Society, which was to go into effect on October next. Col. Williams, however, made things move a little faster by sending some of his choice literature to the Brooklyn papers, in the hope of stirring up some trouble for the prospective meeting of the New York Association of the New Jerusalem. His amiable purpose was amply fulfilled. Interviewers visited Mr. Mercer, the Swedenborgian pastor in Brooklyn, and the latter started to "talk" in no uncertain tones. A flood of newspaper stories followed, about "Samuel Swedenborg," the supposed immoralities of the "Swedenborg Bible," the troubles and fights in the New Jerusalem, etc., all served up in the usual spicy and intelligent style of yellow journalism. As a result of the unpleasant sensation thus created, the Brooklyn Society demanded the immediate withdrawal of Mr. Mercer from their pulpit. This was accepted and more newspaper interviews followed, in which Mr. Mercer announced his intention of joining the Universalist Church. On March 3d he preached his first sermon (printed next day in the BROOKLYN EAGLE), in the Universalist Church at Gorand Ave. and Lefferts Place, Brooklyn, where he freely aired his views on the subject of the "strange trances, in which Swedenborg had, or thought he had, direct personal intercourse with people and things in the spirit world," all of which "may have been largely only the vivified and objectified memories of his subconsciousness."

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     While the New Church may not, in Mr. Mercer, have lost a worker of sober judgment and rational thought, it has certainly lost a spirit of exuberant imagination and flow of words. Here is a sentence from his sermon, describing the "ecclesiastical vanity of the New Church: "If you imagine that sitting on a pile of books and imbibing [!] a collection of theological formulas, and shouting for the New Jerusalem, constitutes you an interne of the crown of glory of all the Churches, surely it is an easy price to pay for so high an order of sanctity." This will do as a sample; we will not weary our readers with the rest of Mr. Mercer's Parthian shots at the Writings and the Church-which is so well rid of him. Unlike the MESSENGER of March 6th, we cannot wish him success in his new field "as one who is working for the establishment of the Lord's Kingdom upon the earth," for it is self-evident that, unconsciously, he is working for the opposite.

     Nevertheless, though we can judge only from appearances, we believe that Mr. Mercer, like Col. Williams, may be sincere in his course, more sincere, or at least more logical, in living up to the conclusions drawn from the false premises which were first presented to them by the leaders of the Convention than those leaders themselves. For when we compare the negative spirit of the radical pupils with the negative spirit of the frightened teachers, it does not appear that the negation of the former differs essentially from the negation of the latter. Some recent utterances make it quite evident that the pupils differ from the teachers only in the courage of their convictions.

     Mr. Mercer berates as "intolerable ecclesiastical vanity" the belief in the infallibility of the revelation given through Swedenborg. Mr. Ager, occupying his old pulpit in Brooklyn, on the very Sunday when Mr. Mercer is unburdening his heart to the Universalists, speaks of "the authority of the Writings" as a dubious phrase," upon the meaning of which "no two persons have been able to agree." And the MESSENGER, the organ of the General Convention, in the comment upon Mr. Mercer's retirement already quoted, refers to the "infallibility of Swedenborg," as a "bugaboo," as an "imaginary feel which scarcely anyone has so much as seen."

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Mr. Mercer, in his sermon, makes appeal to the "truth within you, because God is within you," and the MESSENGER in a leading editorial appeals to the testimony of "millions of Christians" who have accepted "the Lord as their Saviour because they have experienced the inflow of His spirit," thus appealing to personal sensation as the supreme arbiter of truth.
APPARENT SHADOWS IN THE LETTER OF THE WORD 1912

APPARENT SHADOWS IN THE LETTER OF THE WORD Editor 1912

     In his letter on "Reading Selections from the Word," published in the present issue of the LIFE, the Rev. E. J. E. Schreck points out that the Israelites insisted "upon being the representative Church,. . . and hence the record of the gross, low, and sometimes unspeakably vile states of the ancient Jews and their ancestors and related nations has come to constitute a great part of the letter of the Word. Had they not insisted, the letter of the Word would have been different, and would nevertheless have been Divinely powerful to teach us all Divine Truth unto salvation."

     While this is entirely true, it is necessary to remember also the larger fact that the very existence of the written Word is due not to the state of he Jews alone but to the origin of evil. If mankind had not fallen from its pristine celestial estate there would have been no need for any written Word, but men would have possessed the Divine Truth written upon their hearts. But when sin and hell came into existence, the Word was written in ultimates in order to save man from evil, and no matter where, when, or how the Word might have been written under other than Jewish conditions, it would nevertheless of necessity have had to deal with evil, and would have had to describe evil in order to combat it.

     Gross and vile as were the ancient Jews, they were not interiorly worse than the antediluvian prophaners, for instance, and as to their essence the evils of the Jewish nation are the same as the evils of all other nations. And the Israelitish people were chosen as the representative of a Church, not only because of their insistence, but also in order-for the Divine purpose-that the Word might be written in the form in which we now have it, to bring salvation by means of the Divine Truth to all kinds of men, even the grossest and most external.

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It was for the same reason the Lord chose to assume a human from Jewish ancestors; it was His choice, not the choice of the Jews.

     Our correspondent, therefore, goes entirely too far when stating that "the letter of the Word is not always couched in terms which are of the Lord's choice," and that "the literal sense of the Word in the form in which we have it, is not the Lord's work: it is not such as the Lord would have it. The Israelitish people are responsible for it,-not the Lord."

     Such a line of thought, and expressions such as the statement that "certain expressions...are obnoxious" to the Lord, are apt to lead the mind to think of the Word as a merely human work, not as a work Divine throughout. It is not "certain expressions" that are "obnoxious" to the Lord, but the love of self and of the world, all evil in general. Had evil not arisen there would have been no question about the Lord's choice of "terms, for there would have been no terms at all. But since it did arise, all the terms of His Divine Word are equally of His own choice, for His own purposes of Salvation. Were each man to pick out of the Sacred Scriptures all the terms which he might think "obnoxious to the Lord," and not of the Lord's choice, we would soon have something far worse than "higher criticism." But the Word of the Lord in the letter is Divine and holy in every word and syllable, and there is not a single term that was the choice of any man. The very words were given to the prophets without any volition of their own, and they were inspired and dictated-not by any spirit or angel, (though through them), but from and by the Lord alone who completely filled with His Divine the human of the revealing medium. The Word, therefore, is His work throughout, and He alone is "responsible" for it. He is not "responsible" for the evil of humanity, but He is "responsible" for the means whereby He has chosen to save humanity from eternal damnation. But the term "responsible" should not have been used in this connection.

     We must consequently demur from the statement of our correspondent that "the Writings themselves indicate that the repugnance to certain parts of the letter arises from a state induced by the Lord Himself."

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The repugnance to which our correspondent refers is not a repugnance to the Divine Word either in pare or as a whole, but is a repugnance to the evil that is described-and always condemned-in the Word. It is this evil that does "violence to the ideas and to chaste ears," not the Divine Truth concerning it.

Our correspondent points out the importance of a man, when reading the Word, being in "a general state of holy affection for the Word as a whole," but he insists that the reader must also be "in holy affection for the portion he is reading." It seems evident to us that this particular affection, in order to be genuine, must be part of the reader's general affection and attitude towards the Word. Even an atheist may be interested and touched by certain portions of the Word which may appear to coincide with his own affection of natural good, but such an affection is not genuine since it is a particular without a genuine general love. But the man who loves the Word as a whole loves every part of it, because the whole is to him the loving voice of his Father in the heavens. He may not understand it all; some parts may seem wearisome or terrible to his natural man, but his general spiritual love of the Word as a whole carries him past the seeming shadows with an undiminished adoration of the Word itself.

The central truth, upon which we should fix our attention in the discussion of this subject, seems to us to be the fact that the Lord has fulfilled the Word; that He and He alone is omnipresent in every part and portion of His Word in the letter; that He has filled the clouds of heaven full with His Glory. It is not a question as to how the world looks upon it, or how our own natural man is apt to look upon it, but as to the way the Newchurchman within us should look and does look upon that letter in which the Divine Truth is in its fulness, in its holiness, and in its power. As Newchurchmen we judge from internals, and then from the internal glory all shadows disappear and are dismissed as unworthy of consideration. And so, in reading the Word, all dark appearances are dissolved like mists in the presence of the Internal Sense, in the mere realization that there as an Internal Sense.

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Everything depends upon the general attitude we take towards the Word. If the clergy of the Church, and the teachers and parents, permit themselves to assume any wavering attitude, any position of fear or hesitation, the whole Church, and especially the young and the simple, are also bound to be affected by this sphere, and the influence of human prudence will then interfere with the holy delight of the family worship far more than the apparent shallows in the letter of the Word. But if the attitude be affirmative and fearless throughout, as to particulars as well as in general, nothing that is in the Word itself will interfere with the holy delight of worship. For the affection then prevailing will be an affection for the Word from the Word, the Divine affection of the Lord, who is the Word, operating without human interference.
ORPHANAGE FUND 1912

ORPHANAGE FUND 1912

The attention of friends in the Church is called to the fact that the Orphanage Fund is nearly exhausted, and is insufficient for disbursements that have been authorized by the Council for the aid of children during the coming four months. It is hoped that this statement will suffice to fully remedy the situation. Contributions, of any amount, will be thankfully received and promptly acknowledged by the Treasurer. WALTER C. CHILDS, Treasurer, 56 Pine Street, New York City.

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READING SELECTIONS FROM THE WORD 1912

READING SELECTIONS FROM THE WORD E. J. E. SCHRECK 1912

Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     I have read your article in the February issue on "Reading the Word Without Omissions" with great interest, and I heartily agree with your main argument concerning the holiness of the Word and of every part of it, and concerning the importance of reading the whole Word. But so far as my proposition is concerned, you are fighting a man of straw, for I did not advocate that certain portions of the Word should not be read at all. The readers of your article would probably be surprised to learn that in my letter to the MESSENGER, which you criticize, I referred to the recent publication of a Calendar by the "New Church League" of the General Convention, for the study of the Word from beginning to end, and that I commended it. What I proposed was another additional reading chart for a distinct purpose, namely, that of family worship, the lessons to be brief in accommodation to present-day conditions.

     The question, then, is not whether the whole Word should he read through, but whether it is proper to make selections from the Word for distinct states, such a that of family worship.

     A number of considerations lead me to favor such selected readings: 1. Neither the Word nor the Writings anywhere prescribe for family worship a daily reading of the Word that shall be continuous, from the first chapter of the Word to the last; 2. The letter of the Word is not always couched in terms which are of the Lord's choice; 3. Yet it is adapted to an immense variety of states; 4., The law concerning the conjunctive efficacy of the Word with heaven is based on the reading of it with holy delight; 5. The Writings themselves indicate that the repugnance to certain parts of the letter arises from a state induced by the Lord Himself; 6. Yet these, though not suitable for family worship, nevertheless may be read with delight when the internal sense is understood.

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To all of these considerations I may add, that many portions of the Word suitable for family worship fall naturally into short sections,-much shorter than the chapters-and thus meet the practical requirements of present-day conditions.

     1. As to the first of these considerations, it is virtually admitted in your article.

     2. That the Lord did not choose certain expressions in the letter of the Word, but that they are obnoxious to Him, is evident from all that is said in the Writings about the manner in which the Jews became representative of the Church, about their state, and about the law governing the writing of the Word among them. It is dramatically taught in the Word, by the story of the tables on which the Commandments were written. The tables of stone represented the literal sense of the Word; and the writing upon them, the internal sense. (A. C. 10,453.) The first set of two tables were the work of God, but these were dashed in pieces by Moses. The second set were hewn out by Moses himself. Clearly, then, the literal sense of the Word, in the form in which we have it, is not the Lord's work: it is not such as the Lord would have it. The Israelitish people are responsible for it,-not the Lord. They insisted, contrary to the Lord's Will, upon being the representative Church, (A. C. 4317, 10,430, 10,612, &c.). And hence the record of the gross, low, and sometimes unspeakably vile states of the ancient Jews and their ancestors and related nations, has come to constitute a great part of the letter of the Word. Had they not insisted, the letter of the Word would have been different, and would, nevertheless, have been Divinely powerful to teach us all Divine Truth unto salvation.

     But the letter of the Word is such as it is. The Lord has adopted it,-although much of it unwillingly, and only as a concession, (Mark x. 4),-to be the ultimate of His Divine Word. Does it follow that we are to make use of every part of it at any and all times? The history of its formation convinces me that this does not follow.

     And this brings me to the next consideration:

     3. The letter of the Word presents the greatest variety of features, adapted to all the marvelous variety of states through which a man can pass. Does he need instruction in genuine truth?

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There are places where the water of life of the genuine truth of the internal sense comes from the depths of the Word to the surface in the literal sense. Does he need comfort in affliction? There are in certain passages of the literal sense such expressions of the unfailing mercy and wisdom of the Lord that they "that labor and are heavy laden" are greatly comforted thereby. Certain portions of the letter have been so written that they call be sung, as the Psalms of David. Other portions, again, have been written in story-form, in adaptation to states of children and the simple. Some of the historical portions, again, are adapted to little children; while others of the same do not interest the little ones, but are of great interest to older boys. There are portions of the letter of the Word that are so uninteresting, so dry, that their very dryness, like the dry bones in the valley seen by Ezekiel, spurs man on in certain states to discover how they become vivified by the Spirit of the Lord.

     Such all analysis of the Word can be carried on almost indefinitely. Enough has been said to show that not every part of the literal sense of the Word is equally suitable for all persons, nor for every state of the same person, although, of course, every part of the Word meets many different states. It is a joy to know that the Word even in the letter is so diversified, and that it is adapted to the immense variety of human states. It belongs to that very rationality to which the Writings are addressed, to study out what of the letter of the Word is adapted to specific states.

     The question before us concerns itself with a distinct human state and need. The state of family worship: the need for cultivating states of holy delight. For in family worship we have a state of external holiness, (within which is internal holiness according to the development of the interiors of those who are participating in it). It is, therefore, a state for which provision is made in the external sense of the Word in portions that are adapted for it.

     4. Now let us examine the argument made in the Writings concerning the law of adaptation to states in the reading of the Word.

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     There is a wealth of teaching to the effect that, when reading the Word, a man must be in affection for it, (A. C. 5275, 2311, &c), and in a state of holiness (A. C. 3304, 3735, 9280, &c.); and, indeed, not merely in a general state of holy affection for the Word as a whole, but in holy affection for the portion he is reading; as is shown in the following typical passage:

     These arcana . . . are delivered in the form of history, so that the Word might be read with delight even by children and the simple, for the end that, while they are in holy delight from the historical sense, the angels who are with them may be in the holiness of the internal sense. (A. C. 3982.)

     The argument turns on the delight afforded by the story-form of portions of the literal sense. Children and the simple love stories. Therefore the letter of the Word has stories. Herein it is accommodated to an external state and yields external delight. Yet the delight is holy, because the story is read as being part of the Word of the Lord, and therefore with reverence.

     This is one illustration, and a very telling one, of the law governing the conjunction of heaven and earth by means of the Word, and which is, that man shall read the Word with holy delight or affection, for angels are attracted principally by the state of affection of the reader.

     5. Now, there are portions of the literal sense of the Word which do not afford holy delight. There are many varieties of such passages. Among them are such extreme ones as the Writings themselves describe as "doing violence to the ideas and to chaste ears." (A. C. 2466.) This, surely, is not descriptive of "holy delight." And it is inconceivable that the Writings here indicate that those who are thus shocked belong to the impure to whom therefore these passages are impure. (See your pages 109-110.) The plain meaning is that ideas of decency and morality which are insinuated by the Lord Himself, the Reformer and Regenerator, and "chaste tars" formed hg Him who is the only source of chastity, are hurt by such passages as these, which are plainly not "the work of God" (Ex. xxxii. 16).

     6. The reader of your critique might conclude, especially since you seem to think that a reading calendar necessarily prescribes all the reading of the Word which is to be done, (see your page 108), that I would omit any and all reading of such portions of the Word.

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But if he did so, he would he greatly mistaken. Even such portions of the Word are to be read by man. He may even learn to read them with holy delight. But he cannot so read them, until "the letter with its historical sense, as it were vanishes," (A. C. 1504, 1886), because he perceives the internal sense of such passages, and when, therefore, the "cloud" of the letter that had been dark, forbidding, and undelightful becomes suffused with the Divine "glory" of the internal sense, which powerfully affects with heavenly joy and holy delight.

     He learns this internal sense in states when he studies the Word when he applies himself to search it out by the means which the Lord has mercifully given in the Writings. These states are indeed not unattended by delight, but in them the intellect leads and devotion follows. In family worship he is not in such a state of intellectual exercitation and of consequent devotion, but a different set of affections is active.

     Those are few who, from previous study and consequent intelligence in things heavenly, have at least some conception of the internal sense, and who can therefore experience a holy delight and affection when reading such portions as, in the literal sense, are either uninteresting or actually shocking. With the many, the literal sense is prominent, and in such passages induces a state of undelight and even of repugnance, (as shown above in A. C. 2466), instead of "holy delight."

     In conclusion, let me repeat, that what I am advocating is, not omission of isolated portions of the Word,-I recognize the force of your argument on this point,-but, rather, selection of special portions of the Word that are best suited for the distinct purposes of concerted daily family worship.
     E. J. E. SCHRECK.
          6814 Union Avenue, Chicago,
          February 22d, 1912.

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PHOTOTYPING OF SWEDENBORG'S MANUSCRIPTS 1912

PHOTOTYPING OF SWEDENBORG'S MANUSCRIPTS ALFRED H. STROH 1912

Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     Recent communications published in the New-Church Messenger and NEW CHURCH LIFE, advocating a new edition of the Latin ARCANA COELESTIA, and calling into question the reliability of the phototyped MSS., should, I think, be carefully examined by all who are interested in the publication of Swedenborg's works, but with the following additional information before them.

     THE PHOTOTYPED MANUSCRIPTS RELIABLE.

     The ten magnificent volumes of photolithographs edited at Stockholm by Dr. R. L. Tafel, 1869-70, have been made the basis of several editions of the text and of translations of Swedenborg's scientific and theological works. The photolithographic method, in which photographs and a stone plate for printing are used, is much less exact than the phototyping method now employed. Of all methods of reproducing MSS. by means of stone, zinc, copper, or gelatine plates, the last mentioned, or the phototyping method as we usually call it, is incomparably the best for the reproduction of manuscripts.

     This phototyping method is so exact that it reproduces not only all details of the handwriting, but even the texture of the paper and numerous details which the naked eye can hardly detect. So exact is a phototyped manuscript. The reproductions by this method have also been employed with remarkable success by Professor C. Vinet in correcting the text of a portion of the DIARIUM SPIRITUALE and by Mr. A. H. Searle in copying out for the press the INDEX BIBLICUS; and the ADVERSARIA has been employed by Professor Alfred Acton in his new translation of that work.

     PROPOSED NEW EDITION OF THE "ARCANA" TEXT.

     The President of the Convention, the Rev. J. K. Smyth, has recently proposed in the MESSENGER that the Rev. E. J. E. Schreck be sent to Sweden to edit a new edition of the Latin text of the ARCANA immediately from the original manuscript.

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As editor since 1902 of the phototyped reproductions of Swedenborg's MSS. and of the printed editions of the scientific works, I am of course well acquainted with the difficulties encountered by every student and editor of Swedenborg's sometimes very difficult MSS., and the ARCANA is one of the most difficult. I can therefore well understand Mr. Schreck's statement in the NEW CHURCH REVIEW, 1910, pp. 562-563, after he had examined the MS. of the ARCANA: "I discovered enough to cause me to realize more fully than I had anticipated the necessity of phototyping these manuscripts at an early date, and of delaying the reprinting of the Latin text until the editor can have the phototyped manuscript before him, on which to base a critical edition." And in a subsequent article Mr. Schreck points out the desirability of an editor of this MS. having the original pages before him in order to reduce liability to err to a minimum.

Ever since Mr. Smyth published his proposal I have of course been deeply interested in this new project, although I have hitherto not published anything concerning it, having intended to write fully about it in my annual report. I am in heartiest sympathy with this project to improve the text of the ARCANA and to again place an edition on the market, whether the editing be done in Sweden or elsewhere, and Mr. Schreck certainly is one of our most competent editors. But I am not in sympathy with anything which throws doubt upon the reliability of the phototyped manuscripts. (See Mr. Schreck's communications to the MESSENGER for Jan. 10th, p. 25, and to the LIFE for February, p. 113.) The case of "THE SUMMARIES OF THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE PROPHETS AND PSALMS" should not be cited in this connection, for the manner in which that reproduction was edited is beneath criticism, and has nothing to do with the reliability of the phototyping method as such and as supplying a satisfactory basis for the text of the works which have been phototyped.

It should be fully understood that the reproduction of Swedenborg's MSS. by photographic processes is the most exact and reliable method known, and that their printing by types is essentially a very different and much less reliable method, because of the impossibility of avoiding false readings and printers' errors.

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No methods of reproduction, either by hand, typewriting or typesetting, can compare with or supplant photographic methods in point of accuracy. As the editor of the phototyped editions I therefore desire to endorse most emphatically the surpassing accuracy of those editions and of the phototyping method, and this especially in view of the fact that the London Swedenborg Society, the General Convention, the Academy of the New Church, the New York Swedenborg Society, the Rotch Trustees, and the Swedenborg Scientific Association have already invested and are continuing to invest their funds in reproducing Swedenborg's MSS. by the phototyping method, and there should be no suspicion or anxiety concerning the surpassing accuracy of the photographic processes employed.

     PROGRESS IN PHOTOTYPING SWEDENRORG'S MANUSCRIPTS.

     The Photolithographs having been published in 1869-70, the phototyping was begun twenty-five years later, and the first volume issued was the edition of the SUMMARIES OF THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE PROPHETS AND PSALMS published by the Academy of the New Church, Stockholm and Philadelphia, 1896. Through no fault of the Academy, which made every effort to secure an accurate reproduction, the editing was carelessly done at Stockholm, and an imperfect edition was the result, although later on corrected by the reprinting of the faulty pages. The publication of this work, however, performed the important use of forwarding the general plan to phototype which has been vigorously prosecuted since and developed by the printer to a "high pitch of perfection. From 1901 to 1907 followed the three folios of the MEMORABILIA or DIARIUM SPIRITUALE, from 1903 to date the three folios of the INDEX BIBLICUS, and in 1910 the reproduction of the ADVERSARIA was undertaken, and such progress has been made that the third and concluding volume is now in press. Besides the nine stout folios reproduced since 1901, progress has also been made with the volume of MISCELLANEA THEOLOGICA, With ARCANA, Vol. I., and with Part I. of SWEDENRORGIANA.

     On returning to America in 1903 after my first mission to Sweden, energetic steps were taken to forward the phototyping and the printing of the scientific works.

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Addresses were delivered in Bryn Athyn, Chicago and elsewhere, and especially in New York, under the auspices of the American Swedenborg Society, in which the phototyping of the MSS. of the ARCANA and APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED was strongly advocated. Articles were also published in NEW CHURCH LIFE explaining the importance of the MS. drafts of those works and why they should be phototyped in order to facilitate more accurate editions of the text. The state of affairs with regard to the ARCANA had indeed been pointed out very clearly by the Rev. J. R. Boyle years before, but nothing came of it. During my first visit at Stockholm in 1902 I also suggested to the Rev. James Hyde and to the Rev. Theodore F. Wright, who were in Stockholm at the time, the advisability of phototyping the INDEX BIBLICUS instead of copying it by hand as had been proposed. The project to phototype was endorsed by both of the above named gentlemen and led to the undertaking of the work by the Swedenborg Society in 1903. Before leaving Sweden I prepared an estimate of the approximate cost, and the last pages of the work are about to leave the press.

The necessity of a new edition of the ARCANA text on the basis of the original manuscript was clearly understood by the late Hon. John Bigelow, who addressed a letter on the subject to the Rev. J. F. Potts, dated July 10th, 1910. About the same time I suggested to Mr. Schreck in London during the Swedenborg Congress that he undertake the task of re-editing the text of the ARCANA, especially as the proposal to phototype the draft was likely to be accepted. On July 11th followed the memorable meeting of representatives of American societies with the Committee of the Swedenborg Society, when it was recommended unanimously not only to phototype the ARCANA, but also the other unreproduced theological MSS. I was present at the meeting referred to and spoke several times on the important business in hand. I should certainly have called into question the reliability of the phototyping method if after several years of experience with it I had considered it unreliable, but I have always admired the great exactness of that method and found it exceedingly trustworthy.

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     The chief result of the meeting on July 11th, 1910, a result not second in importance to the Congress itself, was the decision of the representatives to recommend the phototyping of the following MSS. in the order named: ADVERSARIA, MISCELLANEA THEOLOGICA, ARCANA, COELESTIA, With INDEX, APOCALYPSIS EXPLICATIA, first draft, INDEX OF APOCALYPSIS REVELATA. It was also decided to publish Swedenborg's miscellaneous documents and letters in MISCELLANEA THEOLOGICA and SWEDENBORGIANA II. and following parts.

     Having returned to Sweden, the phototyping was begun in August, 1910, and has proceeded at such a rate that the funds appropriated by the united societies for the first two years, at the maximum rate of ?800 per annum, are almost exhausted. At the present rate several volumes of the ARCANA will be in press in the near future.

     When the MSS., now decided upon for reproduction, shall have been phototyped, I shall be prepared to recommend the continuance of the work by the phototyping of certain theological and scientific MSS. of Swedenborg. It has often-been pointed out that the New Church owes it to posterity that the priceless works left by Swedenborg in manuscript shall be reproduced by the most exact photographic methods which can be employed. This is one of those self-evident principles upon which the whole New Church in America and England has been united for over forty years, and the Church in Sweden has also recently done its part. This work having been pushed to a successful conclusion there will be possible a complete edition of Swedenborg's works, the inevitable OPERA OMNIA EMANUELIS SWEDENBORGII.
     I remain, yours sincerely,
          ALFRED H. STROH.

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Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     MIDDLEPORT, O. We celebrated Swedenborg's birthday on Sunday evening, January 28, at the Misses Grant's home, about twenty-five persons being present. In response to the toast to the Lord's Servant, Dr. S. B. Hanlin read extracts from Swedenborg's DREAM BOOK, showing how he was gradually withdrawn from philosophical studies and prepared and called to his great mission.

     To the toast to "Liberty as essential to the establishment of the New Church," Dr. W. A. Hanlin read what Swedenborg wrote of the Dutch Republic and the great advantages they derived from the liberty they enjoyed in comparison with other countries, and also his strong protest in the Diet of 1761 against increasing the power of the king of Sweden.

     In response to the toast to "Social Life, as the ground for the cultivation of true love of the Neighbor," Mr. F. G. Davis read what Cuno says of Swedenborg in society in Amsterdam at the age of eighty. Each one present also read an extract from Swedenborg's Writings, and we had other toasts and sang songs appropriate to them, making a very interesting evening.

     The sermons, beginning the 28th and lasting through February, have been studies of the New Jerusalem, its walls of jasper and its street of gold. The men's philosophy class has finished the work on the SOUL, and has begun on the ECONOMY OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. The ladies' class having read the COSMOLOGY is now beginning the WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD.

     Of social life as a Society we do not have a great deal, partly because of having so few young people, except at our monthly suppers, but as our classes all meet at the various homes there is always something of social life in connection with them. At the Wednesday evening doctrinal class we have read the little work on "CHARITY" and are now reading "THE DIVINE LOVE" in A. E.

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     GLENVIEW, ILL. February 6th, under the auspices of the Social Committee (Mr. and Mrs. S. G. Nelson) we enjoyed a musicale in which Mr. Jesse Stevens and Miss Winnefred Stevens were the chief artists.

     Feb. 7th the Steinfest was held; the subject discussed was Regeneration. The subject of Geniatrics was injected by Dr. King when the other began to falter. At the Philosophy Club a large and interested audience listened to some thrilling revelations concerning the Spleen.

     The day of the good St. Valentine was celebrated by a party at which there was much merriment and which was enjoyed by all. Washington's Birthday furnished the event of the month, in the shape of a theatrical exhibition given by the school. The actors were all children; the audience were all parents, aunts, sisters, cousins, brothers and uncles, and of course it was an interested audience. The little actors displayed surprising ability and intelligence in assuming the various characters. The social events of the short month of February wound up with a Leap-year Party, an occasion which was provocative of much laughter and enjoyment.

     A Memorial Service for Mrs. George Blackman was held on Sunday, March 3d, in the form of a service. It was attended by the members of both Sharon and Immanuel Churches.

     CHICAGO, ILL. When Bishop Pendleton visited us last October arrangements were made to resume our activities in Sharon Church, with Mr. Caldwell, of Glenview, as pastor. We are not as yet in a position to call a resident pastor. Services are held every Sunday afternoon in the church on Carroll Ave. On the last Sunday of each month, however, a Doctrinal Class is held instead of a service, and the class is followed by a supper. This arrangement has proven eminently successful, providing an opportunity for doctrinal instruction and discussion, and also for a social meeting of the members.

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A quiet and restful sphere has prevailed at these gatherings, with a manifest disinclination to hurry home.

     The Christmas Festival was held on Sunday afternoon, Dec. 24th, and was attended by adults and children to the number of 56. A service in the church was followed by an assembly in the class room around the Christmas tree, when gifts were distributed to the children, after which they sat down to a supper.

     After the Class on Jan. 28th the supper took the form of a Swedenborg's Birthday Banquet, with speeches on the subject of Swedenborg's Rules of Life. Mr. John Forrest spoke on "Reading the Word," Dr. Marelius on "Faithful performance of uses," Dr. Starkey on "Trust in Divine Providence," and Dr. Farrington on "Propriety of Behavior," these speeches proving a most interesting treatment of the subjects contained in the Rules of Life. Mr. Chas. F. Browne then spoke on the "Equanimity of Swedenborg," which led to an informal discussion of the subject of "Genius."

     Dr. King has attended two of our suppers, and favored us with most interesting and inspiring addresses on each occasion. One was on the subject of "Work," and the other on the subject of "Rest," which were treated both from a spiritual and natural aspect, with much excellent advice as to the proper arrangement of our work, and the proper use of rest, not only for physical benefit, but for mental and spiritual uplift by reflection and meditation. We called attention to the statement in the Writings that spirits who are deliberating appear to lie down, and to rise up when they have reached a conclusion. E. V. W.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES. After a vacancy of two years in the Baltimore German congregation, caused by the Society's inability to secure the services of a pastor speaking both German and English, the pulpit has finally been filled by the Rev. G. L. Allbutt, of the Baltimore Northwest Mission, who will preach to the Society in English twice a month.

     The First German New Church Society, of St. Louis, Mo., has united with the English Society under the Rev. C. A. Nussbaum.

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The property of the German Society has been sold to an Afro-American congregation for the sum of $6,000, less than half the amount it would have brought a year ago.

     The New Church mission in Minneapolis is experiencing various vicissitudes. Owing to a change of location, most of the former constituency have deserted, and the missionary, the Rev. Axel Lundeberg, in his former efforts to convert Unitarians finds them "absolutely closed to all spiritual influences, living entirely and exclusively on the natural plane, and incapable of taking interest in anything but critical research leading to negation and spiritual nihilism." At a celebration of Swedenborg's Birthday in Minneapolis, Mr. Lundeberg lectured in English to an audience consisting of Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Americans.

     ENGLAND. The death of Mr. Jonathan Robinson at South Manchester, Feb. 10th, 1912, at the age of 78 years, removes from the scene one of the most prominent members of the New Church in England. He was the son of Mr. Thomas Robinson, founder of the Society at Failsworth, and was like his father a pronounced "radical" in the Church, much opposed to the Divine Authority of the Writings and all other Academy principles, against which he wrote a great number of pamphlets.

     The Rev. William Westall passed into the spiritual world on Jan. 28th, at the age of eighty-four years. He received his early education in the New Church Day School at Accrington under the Rev. Jonathan Bayley, was ordained a New Church minister in 1865, and served successively at Bolton, Salford, and Middleton. He was twice elected President of the General Conference, but was not otherwise prominent in the work of the Church.

     The Rev. Arthur Faraday died on Jan. 20th, 1912, at the age of seventy-one years. Born of one of the oldest New Church families in England,-his great-grandfather, William Faraday, was ordained a New Church minister in 1797,-Arthur Faraday studied Theology under the Rev. Rudolph L. Tafel in 1855, and was at one time connected with the Academy circle in London, but left the Academy together With Mr. Tafel. In 1887 he removed to Scotland as assistant minister at Cathedral Street, Glasgow, under the Rev. J. F. Potts, whom he assisted also in the work on the SWEDENBORG CONCORDANCE.

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In 1890 he became the minister of the Society in Snodland, where he remained for over twenty years. In die year 1901 he made a three months' visit to the United States, paying a visit also to Bryn Athyn, where he is pleasantly remembered. Together with Mrs. Faraday he compiled a complete Index to the INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY and all the other English New Church Journals of the past century. It is to be hoped that this Index will be published before long.

     SWEDEN. The New Church has now two recognized societies in this country, for on the 19th of last December the royal seal was affixed to the charter of "The Swedish New Church Society in GOTHENBURG." This is one of the useful results of the general assembly (in Gothenburg) last summer,-an event which in all probability will become annual.

     During the Christmas holidays the services in STOCKHOLM were well attended by an average of 75 persons, which seems to indicate growth. Thirty-three persons partook of the Holy Supper. As usual here a party for the children was a feature in the holidays, and all turned "children for a day."

     Swedenborg's Birthday was observed by an evening's entertainment in a hired hall. The program, besides speeches and songs, included an address by Mr. A. Stroh on the philosophical development of Swedenborg's Doctrine of Degrees. Mr. Stroh also showed a series of lantern slides on Swedenborg's Life and Work, which he has been collecting for the Academy of the New Church.

     To spread the knowledge of the Writings in Sweden, a "net of advertisements" of Swedenborg's Works has been spread abroad by friends of the Church in different parts of the country, and the Book Room in Stockholm reports very favorable results from this system of missionary work; in Karlstad, a town of a little more than ten thousand inhabitants, thirty-five copies of HEAVEN AND HELL Were sold during the month of January alone.

     RUSSIA. The Rev. G. L. Allbutt, of Baltimore, reports in the MESSENGER some news from Russia, communicated in a letter from a friend in St. Petersburg, with whom he has been in correspondence for many years.

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He says: "I continue to find somewhat to my surprise that nearly all the Russians to whom I have spoken about Swedenborg have heard of the great Seer and know something about him." This friend largely distributes in different parts of St. Petersburg the useful little New-Church almanacs published by Mr. James Speirs. He has placed copies of this and circulars relating to the International Swedenborg Congress in the reading rooms of the principal hotels. An Anglican Church clergyman in Moscow has been much interested in the Congress' book. Two ladies to whom the Russian translation of two of Swedenborg's works strongly appealed on an electric tram gladly accepted the soiled copies which had been casually shown them, as they were on their way to the provinces, and had not the opportunity to visit the regular place of sale. As this correspondent says: "Let us hope in the Lord's Providence good results will spring."
UNIVERSITIES OF CHRISTENDOM 1912

UNIVERSITIES OF CHRISTENDOM Rev. W. F. PENDLETON 1912

     Announcements.

     The letters of Swedenborg to Dr. Beyer, as well as other letters written by him during the same period, are to be regarded as a part of the inheritance given to the New Church, as a part of its teaching, its doctrine, its revelation. In them some things are set forth that are not given in the same form elsewhere in the Writings. Among these is the brief statement concerning the universities of Christendom, in a letter to Beyer written at Stockholm in February, 1767. (Doc. 234.) In this letter Swedenborg says, as translated by Dr. Tafel, "The universities of Christendom are now first being instructed, whence will come new ministers." Previous to this statement in the letter Swedenborg had been speaking of the increase of the new heaven, and adds these words, "By degrees a, that heaven is being formed, the new church likewise begins and increases." Then he speaks of the universities of Christendom in the language we, have quoted, and immediately adds these words, "For the new heaven has no influence over the old clergy, who deem themselves too learned in the doctrine of justification by faith alone."

     Now what does Swedenborg here mean by the universities of Christendom? The first and most obvious meaning is that out of these institutions called universities will come "new ministers" who will labor for the establishment and increase of the New Church. If we may interpret what Swedenborg says by the result, as well as by the teaching that the New Church is at first to be confined to a few, we may safely conclude that Swedenborg did not have in his mind any idea of a large number of new ministers coming from the source of which he speaks.

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It is well known, however, as a fact of New Church history, that a few of its prominent ministers and scholars have come from the universities of Christendom.

     It would, however, be a view too limited and narrow, if we confined our thought to those institutions that are literally called universities. Broadly considered, therefore, the schools of Christendom are meant, the education of the Christian world, and in a still broader view an education in the natural truth of the world, which, in some degree, even the uneducated have. Since, however, all natural truth among men is from the Word, we would say, taking a still broader view, that education in the natural truth of the Word is essentially what is meant by the new ministers who will come from the universities of Christendom, and this wherever and by whatever mode or instrumentality that education and preparation may take place.

     The natural mind must be opened and formed first, before the opening of the spiritual mind can take place. The opening of the natural mind comes first in order of time, and its opening and formation is effected by means of natural truth from the Word, the fountain of all truth; but the opening of the spiritual mind is effected by the spiritual truth of the Word, which takes place, especially in adult life. No man can become a true New Church priest or New Church scholar, unless there be in him some opening of the spiritual rational mind. A man may, without this, do a great amount of valuable and useful work; but he is not a true and genuine priest and scholar of the New Church, filled with its spirit and life, unless the spiritual mind has been opened in him, that is, unless he, as to his spirit, has been introduced into the new heaven, and is in consociation with the angels there.

     This is clearly in view in what Swedenborg says in the language preceding the words concerning the universities of Christendom. In answer to the question, "How soon the New Church may be expected," he tells Dr. Beyer that "the Lord is preparing, at this time, a new heaven of those who believe in Him, and acknowledge Him as the true God of heaven and earth, and look to Him in their lives, which means to shun evil and do good; for from that heaven the New Jerusalem is to come down."

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And Swedenborg says that the privilege is given him "to see daily spirits and angels, from ten to twenty thousand, descending and ascending and being set in order." Then he adds the words, as already quoted, "By degrees as that heaven is being formed, the New Church likewise begins and increases." He then speaks concerning the new ministers from the universities of Christendom.

The descent of the New Heaven is, at the same time, the ascent of the New Church, or the descent of the New Heaven into the individual is, at the same time, his ascent and introduction into the New Heaven. The manifest inference is, that there will be some in the universities, some educated in the schools of the world, some who have had their minds formed by the natural truth of the Word, whatever their worldly environment may be, who can be introduced as to their spirits into the New Heaven, and thus, coming under its influence, be prepared to become true and loyal ministers and scholars of the New Church, leaders in the work and establishment of the Church. There is thus, in the letter to Dr Beyer, a thread of connection between the idea of the New Heaven, and the idea of the universities of Christendom, a connection that is interesting and instructive.

But why should the universities be mentioned as the starting point of the preparation of new ministers by a natural education for the up-building of a New Church? It would seem that we have the clue in the words which immediately follow. After saying that new ministers are to come from the universities of Christendom, he at once adds, as giving a reason for it, "For the New Heaven has no influence over the old [clergy], who deem themselves too learned in the doctrine of justification by faith alone." This would appear to be an effectual answer to those who hold that the New Church is to come down from the New Heaven to the clergy of the old church, and by them transmitted to the laity; for the reason is distinctly given why this cannot take place, the reason being that the old clergy are so confirmed in the doctrine of faith alone, that they cannot be brought under the influence of the New Heaven, cannot be introduced as to their spirits into that heaven, and hence that the New Church cannot come down from the New Heaven through them. That there may be exceptions to this does not disprove the rule that the clergy of the old church, those engaged in the active work of the ministry, are so confirmed in their falsifications of the Word, that it is not possible for the New Jerusalem to descend to the earth through them.

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But how is it that there is more hope of the universities than of the clergy in active work? The reason seems to be that the clergy who are meant here are men of maturer years, and thus more confirmed in falsities of doctrine and of life than the young men who are studying for the ministry in the universities. Experience has shown that the men and women who come into the New Church from the old, take this step in their earlier years. After the age of thirty, states of affection, habits of thought, and practices of life, become, for the most part, confirmed, and a radical change of state is seldom made after that time. This seems, therefore, to present the reason why Swedenborg saw more hope in the students of Theology in the universities than in the ranks of the clergy, who were older men, already in the practice of their profession, already confirmed in their ways of thought and life. But even this hope was relative; it was not a large hope; there was no prospect of the accession of numbers even from the universities. For Swedenborg had already been informed, as he records in the Writings, that not many of the former church, after reaching adult age, would come into the New Church. There would, however, be a few, a sufficient number to make a beginning, and he tells Dr. Beyer substantially that this beginning would be made in the universities with a few young men studying for the ministry, who would become the teachers and leaders of the infant church, now about to be born into the world.

The words to Dr. Beyer have been fulfilled and a number of those who have been the teachers and leaders of the Church in the past have come as young men from the universities, from the schools of the world, young men who have received their education without a knowledge of the New Church, but who, while still young men, have undergone the great change of mind and life which is involved in coming from the old to the near.

What has happened in this way in the past will doubtless happen again in the future from time to time. But call the New Church, as it grows and increases, continue to depend on this source of supply?

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The answer is involved in a close scrutiny of the words of Swedenborg to Dr. Beyer. What he says is an answer to the question of Beyer, "How soon may a New Church be expected?" The New Church had not yet come into existence as a visible institution on earth, and the beloved Beyer was anxious to know when it would be expected to begin. The answer of Swedenborg was directed to this question, When would the New Church begin? and Beyer was told that as soon as the New Heaven was formed, the New Church on the earth would begin in the universities. This had already been fulfilled in Beyer himself. He was a professor in a university, and had, as we are told, been introduced as to his spirit into the New Heaven; and Swedenborg Probably had Beyer himself in mind as a striking example and illustration of the truth he was communicating to him in this remarkable letter. Swedenborg was telling him how and where the New Church was to begin, that this would be with some others as it had been with him and by such men would be effected the early institution of the Church; nor does it appear that Swedenborg was speaking otherwise than of the church in its infant beginnings, such beginnings as were made shortly after his death in Sweden, in England, in the United States, and such beginnings as may be made even now in any nation where the New Church has not yet been established. But it does not appear that Swedenborg intended, in what he said to Beyer, to indicate to him how the New Church is to be continued, where it has been once established, and has increased in numbers.

It is evident from common experience and common sense, as well as from the revealed laws of order, that after the New Church has passed the infant stage of its existence, there must, at some time, be provided in itself the means of its own perpetuation; that it is not always to depend on outside sources for its increase. While it may continue, and must continue for a long time, to draw materials from the outside world, as subsidiary aids to its development, it cannot continue to depend upon the universities of Christendom for the mainspring of its existence and growth. It is like the infant when he becomes a man. As an infant he has no power for the increase of his kind, but when he becomes a man this is given him for the perpetuation of the race.

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The New Church in its infant beginnings must depend upon the old as a kind of mother. But this is not to continue when it has grown to the stature of manhood. It must then have in itself the means of its own increase and perpetuation; it must have it and will have it, that it may continue to live and grow and become permanent in the world.

Swedenborg, therefore, in the letters we are considering does not foreshadow what the New Church will do in the later stages of its development, after it has passed the infant period of existence; nor is there any positive or direct indication given anywhere in the Writings, so far as I know, as to what will be done by the New Church in this matter; hence we are left to act according to the dictates of judgment and reason, enlightened by revelation, as applied to the needs of the Church, as these needs arise and appear. The indication is clear, as already pointed out, that with the Church as with every human form the time will come when it will have given to it the means of providing in itself for its own perpetuation.

The New Church begins with those who have been brought up and educated in the old, which fact is not surprising, not only because there were no others with whom it could begin, but because the New Heaven itself, from which the New Church descends, was made up of the same class of men and women-those who had been born and educated in the old church. But the time is to come when a new element is to be added to the life of the New Heaven, which will inspire a new state in the Church on earth. This new element to be added to the Christian heaven will be of those who have received the doctrine of the New Jerusalem on earth and lived its life. When this new state in heaven is felt on earth, then will the New Church have received into itself the seeds of its own perpetuation; and then, without doubt, it will; be inspired to provide its own schools and universities,-those seminaries of the future-wherein the dominant influence from within will be the New Christian Heaven, yea, the New Church Heaven; wherein the workers in large part will themselves have been introduced, by the affection of truth and repentance of life while yet on earth, into that heaven, and into consociation with the dwellers therein.

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     Whether such a commencement has yet been made, whether a new university even in its beginnings, wherein the dominant influence is that of the New Heaven, has, as yet, been born, is, perhaps, too much for us at present to assert. To see a thing and hope for it is not, as yet, to possess it, except in an inmost sense. To have a thing in sight is, indeed, something, but it is important to avoid a feeling of false security. Let him who standeth take heed lest he fall. When the angels receive new blessings they are inspired to a greater humility than before, and are thus prepared for the increase which is to come. The spirit of elation, the spirit of exultation without, at the same time, a spirit of humility, is not of the true Christian spirit, and will lead to fatal results in the end.

     Let us remember that where birth is to take place, there is always the danger of abortion, that so long as we are in the enemy's country it is still possible that the ark of the Lord may be made captive by the Philistines, that it is still possible for the spirit of Babel to enter and defile the sanctuary of the Lord.

     Whether our own movement to establish a university under the influence of the New Heaven, dominated by its life, inspired by its love of truth for its own sake-whether this movement is premature we do not, as yet, know, for the future is concealed from us. The generations to come will know better than we know now, for they will have the advantage of a retrospect; but the horoscope of the future is known to the Lord alone, and He never fully reveals His Providence until after the event.

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LAW AGAINST ADULTERY 1912

LAW AGAINST ADULTERY Rev. ALFRED ACTON 1912

     "Ye have Created that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you, Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." (Matt. v. 27, 28.)

     The Lord's teachings in the fifth to the seventh chapters of Matthew treat solely of the life of charity which was to be established in the church then commencing. From the first word to the last, the Sermon on the Mount, that is to say, the Revelation given from the divine love of man's salvation, treats of nothing else but the life of charity,-the life of charity not in externals or in the body only, but in internals or in the heart. The former or Jewish church had been in mere externals, its worship and its charity had been merely of the speech and deed. But an internal church was now to be established, and, therefore, the laws of internal charity were now given. This is clear from the words occurring in an early part of the Sermon on the Mount, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven," that is to say, unless an internal church shall succeed the former and external church there can be no salvation.

     The Lord follows these words by a series of expositions each introduced by the words: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time. . . . But I say unto you." In these words the Lord does not abolish the former law, but confirms it, and, at the same time, unfolds its interior meaning. For He was not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill.

     The laws that had been given to the Jews were not merely external laws, that is, they were not laws that concerned merely the speech and action. For no revelation, however external, concerns merely these. All Divine Revelation has for its end the salvation of man, or his purification from evils. And therefore it teaches what evils are, and that they are to be removed not only from the deed but also from the intention.

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This is true also of the Jewish church. Although that church was merely an external church,-although its members were of so external a character that they could not understand interior truths,-although therefore the revelation made to them was an external one, and the worship established among them a representative worship, nevertheless the revelation and the worship had for their end the salvation of all who would truly receive it. And therefore the revelation was not merely an external revelation, but was one in which interior truths did indeed appear. For the most part these truths were deeply enswathed in correspondential statutes and precepts respecting a ceremonial worship. Yet there was not lacking a revelation of something of the internals of the Word, something of the true laws of charity and worship. For these shone forth from the garments of the Word even as the face and hands of a man that is clothed. This is evident from the Old Testament, and especially from the ten commandments, wherein are gathered together all the laws of genuine charity. In those commandments the people were told not only that they should not kill, and commit adultery and steal, but also that they should not covet these things, that is, that they should not cherish evil in their heart. The same teaching is abundantly given throughout the Old Testament. For there the Jews are exhorted to wash themselves, and make themselves clean; to love the Lord, not only by external deeds, but with all their heart and with all their soul. "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts," was the burden of the Jewish Word,-a burden that is repeated again and again, and is summed up in the words of one of the latter prophets; "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly before thy God?" But the Israelitish Church did not heed this teaching; they placed their religion in the rams and the rivers of oil, but not in the justice and mercy that were required of them.

It is this fact that is involved in the words, "by them of old time." Ye have heard that it was said by them of "old time." According to the original Greek, these words might equally correctly be translated, "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time."

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And, indeed, both translations are necessary to a full understanding of the meaning involved. The Divine Law, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," was said to the Jews of old, yet it was by those Jews, that is to say, from their proprium, that the law was understood as applying only to the external crime. And therefore the Lord, in the new revelation that he gave, added to the Divine Law, and,-as is indicated by the word "but," "but I say unto you,"-He, as it were, amended it. Yet in truth, the Divine Law was not and could not be amended. What was amended was the law as understood by the Jews,-the law as it was said "by them of old time."

As given in the ten commandments, the law was, not only "Thou shalt not commit adultery," but also, "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife," and these words open up the whole of the internal law of chastity. But it is a remarkable fact that with the exception of the ten commandments, throughout the Jewish Word, there is nothing to indicate that aught else was directly forbidden but the actual external crime against marriage,-a fact which would indicate that the Jews were incapable, or unwilling to comprehend any more internal truths. It is true that in the early part of Genesis, we read that a man shall cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh,-words in which the internal of the commandment against adultery is plainly involved,-but these words were not given to the Jewish church, but to the church that preceded Abram; and they were preserved to be added to the Jewish Word, in order that such of the Jews as chose might receive some light from a revelation such as could not be made to their own church. It is also true that the Jewish Scriptures everywhere exhort to purification of the heart, but they rarely, if ever, do this in direct reference to the crime of adultery.

Therefore, when the Lord said, "But I say unto you, whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart," it was, indeed, a revelation,-a revelation to the wicked among the Jews, who, by their lax marriage laws, were continually breaking the spirit of the ancient law, and who, as shown in their history, could hardly be restrained from breaking its letter.

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It was a revelation also to the simple, who now for the first time heard: a truth hitherto unknown in that darkened age. It was not only wrong to break the marriage vow,-this they had heard,-but it was wrong, a sin against God, to cherish in thought and will and imagination any lust or desire that involved such a crime. And in the hearing of this truth was involved the possibility of opening an interior plane of the human mind.

For every thought of man so far as it is interior opens the interiors of his mind. Though that concern the world and the body, and its passions and deeds, do, indeed, open the mind, that is to say, they impress themselves as forms and states on the organic substances of which the mind is built up, and there by constant re-iteration become, as it were, self-active, and self-living. But such thoughts are like gross forms which can affect only the grosser substances of the mind, can bring only those grosser substances into the life and activity of conscious thought and will. Hence such a man is a merely natural man, whose mind is formed after the image of the world around him, and can be affected and stirred up into activity and delight only by the things of the world, and the gross spheres of its pleasures. But when more interior thoughts are brought to the mind,-such thoughts and reflections as are, as it were, removed from the gross things of the world and the body, they are introduced as finer and more subtle forms that can affect and impress themselves on the finer substances of the mind, and rendering those substances respondent and reactive to the activity of the light and heat of heaven, can manifest themselves to man as an activity of thought and perception that are entirely independent of and above the gross things of the world and the body.

This is what is called in the Writings the opening of the interior degrees of the mind. By truths which concern the world and its goods and ills, its laws and its science, the natural or lowest degree of man's mind is opened. By truths which concern the Lord and His Church, or which concern the spirit of man and the life of his will and understanding, the spiritual or internal degree of the mind is opened. When, therefore, men are ignorant of spiritual or internal truths, they remain, and cannot but remain, natural and sensual.

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But when spiritual truths are revealed, men enter into the possibility of becoming spiritual. It must be remarked, however, that while thought concerning spiritual or internal truth opens the interior degrees of the mind, yet these degrees cannot be kept open by mere thought. The knowledge of spiritual truths makes it possible to every man who has such knowledge, to lift up his thought more or less into the light of heaven, but he cannot remain thus elevated, unless love is conjoined to the thought,-unless he loves to lift up his mind, to think of spiritual things,-to shun all that opposes them.

     To those then who listened to the Lord's words, a new and interior truth was revealed,-and in this revelation was contained the possibility of the opening of the interiors of the mind,-the possibility of an internal church, which should think and live in the world, but not from the light of the world. The Lord taught that not only the commission of adultery was a sin, but that it is lascivious and filthy thought and will, secret and cherished desire and lust,-it was these that made and, indeed, were the real sin. He taught that men might abstain from actual adultery, and yet commit it in their spirit. And with this teaching, those who heard could reflect upon the state of their spirit,-could there see the evils that were to be shunned, and could, if they choose, shun them there.

     The Jewish church was a purely external church whose laws, save in a general way, concerned mostly the externals of conduct and ritual. But when the Lord came He taught truths that concerned not the body, but the spirit of man; and by this means He established an internal church, which should see and know its Lord, should receive truths from the Word, and should see in the light of those truths, and live them.

     The Christian church was, in truth, an internal church, that is, as established by the Lord, it was capable of thinking internally or concerning the things of heaven,-capable of seeing that murder and adultery consisted of more than the deeds of the body, and hence capable of shunning these evils in spirit as well as in body. It was capable,-but has it exercised that capacity? History and experience show in the plainest way that the faculty and opportunity of becoming spiritual has not been exercised in the Christian church since its early years.

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The murderers and adulteries and thefts that have characterized Christendom from its first recognition by the powers of the world, that is, from the fourth century when Christianity was adopted by the Roman emperor,-crimes which were at their worst among the leaders of the church,-these are too well known to need recital. The Christian Church has retained the teachings of the Lord, but, like the Jews of old, they have made them of none effect. With the opportunity of becoming an internal church offered to it by the Lord, it has become, like the church that preceded it, a merely external church, whose laws and life are concerned with the actions of the body, and the external motives, that is, the impulses and passions and emotions which immediately inspire those actions. It has closed its eyes to the internal truths of the New Testament. It does not teach, and its members do not reflect upon the laws revealed by the Lord,-laws which concern man's spirit, that is, his will and thought; but its whole effort and endeavor looks to the world,-the eloquent sermon that will bring fame, the rich offices that will bring wealth, the pleasures of the senses that will bring enjoyment. The thought is directed to the deeds of the body, to the respectability of worldly society, and but little if, at all, to the thought and will of the heart, or to the establishing of heavenly society. It is true, that in the past ages, as at this day, there have always been some who were in genuine good; but this state has not prevailed in the Christian church; it has not directed its councils and teachings. If we take a just view of the state of that church, we shall find that it is internally characterized by covetousness, and envy, by hatred and adulterous lusts, and, by many other evils of will and intention, and, also, as regards many of its members, by actual deeds of evil.

In no respect is this more plainly to be seen than in the commandment against adultery. The Christian world is truly an adulterous generation. It is so recognized by every heathen nation that has anything of sound reason; and it must be so recognized by every man who will see the things around him, and who will search into the depths of his own heart. Adultery is, indeed, condemned by the Christian church; but the condemnation, as a condemnation by the law of God, is inspired rather by the traditional teaching handed down from early times, than by any real perception of the evil itself.

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For the most part appeal is made to honor, self respect, the maintenance of society and the home, and other like considerations, which concern only the life in the world. But where do we see the standard of the New Testament raised up,-that it is the will and desire of the heart that is the real crime? Nay, though the state of the Christian world in respect to the perversions of marriage is well known, the Christian church rarely lifts up its voice to speak of it; it avoids it as something forbidden, or when it speaks, it speaks as do the atheist and the deniers of our Lord, who can equally well treat of this evil as seen in the light of the world. That this is truly the state of the Christian church,-that that church offers no real, no internal, no spiritual opposition to the evils of adultery, is manifest in the state of the world that is the fruit of that church, the Christian world. There adulteries, fornications, and evils that are not to be named, are rife,-so rife that they infest the youngest in society and in the home-but why dwell upon a picture so hateful, but so familiar. Suffice it to say that if one word were required to characterize the state of the Christian world, it would be that it is an adulterous state.

And with this state has come also blindness as to the truth,-even the truth directly revealed in the New Testament,-that the will constitutes the deed. Not that men would not acknowledge this as a proposition of the understanding, but that they do not reflect upon it, it does not come to mind as a truth of life, a truth to inspire to the life of repentance. The eyes are so directed to the world that the whole thought is engrossed in appearances, in the conduct of the body and of the external mind for the sake of appearances before the world. And, therefore, beneath the external respectability of society, lurks everywhere, but thinly veiled, and ever and anon breaking forth from its coverings, the love of self, the love of pleasure, and especially the love of adultery. With no genuine recognition of these evils as springing from the heart, with no genuine resistance to them there, with resistance directed mainly to the saving of appearances, what wonder, that, when restraints are removed the evils of the heart become the evils of the act;-nay, that they break forth into the act even despite restraints and appearances.

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This is especially the case in the evil with which we are dealing. For this evil is directed to the destruction of conjugial love, which is the fundamental of all natural loves and is, therefore, the ultimate into which the hells inflow, into which all evils of the spirit inflow,-evils which are inmostly directed to the destruction of the marriage of good and truth, and of the conjunction of man with the Lord which is the marriage of the Lord and the church. For if the ultimate of chaste conjugial love cannot be preserved, then it is not possible to establish the church, it is not possible for the church to become the bride of the Lord.

That this may be possible, it has therefore pleased the Lord to again reveal the law concerning adultery, that men may see it is evil, may see it and shun it in thought and will as a sin against God, and as destructive of all religion. To the Jewish church the external statute was given; to the Christian church this statute was confirmed, and that men might have the power to resist the evil which it forbids, there was added the internal truth, that they must direct their resistance to the thought and will of the heart. This truth has been forgotten in the Christian church, and now it is again revealed. And in this revelation made by the Lord in His second coming, the law given from Mount Sinai is confirmed; the internal truth contained in that law as taught in the New Testament is also confirmed. And in order that there may be strength With men to resist the overwhelming power of evil,-in order that there may be on earth and in men's minds ultimate forms of truth wherein the Lord can be present with His Divine power,-in order that there may be genuine resistance to evil, and thus the establishment of genuine conjugial love,-in order for all this, the Lord, in confirming the former revelations, has added new truths never before known,-truths whereby the real source of the adulterous love with which the Christian world is infested may be seen,-a source which is the falsification of truth and the adulteration of good. This more interior truth could not be openly revealed to the Christian church, on account of the state then prevailing; and yet it was revealed to that church, but in veiled language, which, though not understood by men, was yet understood by angels when read by men in the sphere of worship.

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It is this truth that is contained in the words that immediately follow the text. "If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee. . . . If thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee."

     But the new revelation to the New Church has not only added interior truths to the former revelations whereby they are confirmed,-it has also expanded and explained the truths formerly revealed. The Jewish law, thou shalt not commit adultery, is shewn to include all manner of fornication,-and not only deeds, but also all manner of unseemly speech and unseemly sight directed against the holiness of marriage,-speech and sight with which the world is full, and which, when they enter the mind through the senses, there furnish the ultimates for the entrance and abode of adulterous spirits. These also are to be shunned, as well as actual deeds. Evil spirits must not be given this foothold in the mind, for so, far as man willingly gives them this, so far will they have possession of his will and thought,-and so far will he be powerless to resist their allurements.

     This is the expansion that is given to the Jewish law. A similar, but still wider expansion is given to the law revealed in the New Testament. That law is, that desire cherished in the heart constitutes the deed. But this general truth is now infilled with particulars whereby it is illumined, strengthened and confirmed. What man does in his will and thought, that constitutes the deed of the spirit; and what man does in his spirit that he will do after death when the fears and restraints that have been impressed on the external memory by precept and experience are laid aside. What man does in his will and thought that he does in his spirit, and therefore if man will examine his will and thought, he may thereby know what he is doing in his spirit in this world, and what he will actually do in the other world.

     The spirit of man is free, and is ever held in freedom by the Lord. It inmostly resists all compulsion except self-compulsion. Even while we are on earth our spirit is freely acting out its will and thought,-yea, as freely acting them out as it will do in the spiritual world. If the man be sincere,-if his will and thought be such as need not hide their faces, then they are acted out in the deeds of his body and the speech of his mouth; and when such a man enters the other world he continues, in greater perfection, the same life he has led on earth.

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But where the will and thought are evil,-where, therefore, they are not expressed in external speech and act, because of fear for the loss of fame and gain, yet they are expressed in the imagination, that ultimate of the mind where the thought pictures to itself the world of its delights, and where it dwells secure in the enjoyment of those delights. In the imagination we are supreme masters of our world. We people that world with whom we will, and we do with them whatsoever we will. In our imagination we are rulers in a world of our own creation, or rather in a world that is the real appearance of the states of our mind in respect to the reception or rejection of the things of heaven. Our imagination is a world that truly reflects and presents to view our thoughts from love,-a world which is our love itself in very form and action,-a world in which the spirit is free. Our imagination is, therefore, a picture of our spiritual world, nay, it is the spiritual world which we shall behold after death. There we may see our spiritual surroundings, the society we will keep, the things we will crave and do. And because the regeneration of man is to be affected in the spiritual world, that is to say, because it is the spirit that is to be regenerated, therefore the ultimate scene of man's combat against evils must be the world of his imagination. Here he may see his loves and their delights, here, by virtue of the Divine truth, he can resist them and refuse them possession of the kingdom. It is not that we are to morbidly reflect that we are nothing but evil, that our motives, even in the shunning of evils, are inspired by the love of self. This we may freely confess, for it is taught in revelation and is confirmed by reason and experience. But what man is required to do is to examine those affections which stand forth pictured in his imagination, and upon which the sight of his thought looks to lust after. When these affections are forbidden by the Divine Law they are to be put away, that is to say, the eye is no longer to look upon them with desire and longing, but is to set its gaze on that which is given by the law of the Lord. If this is not done then evil rules, and, whatever man may appear before the world, he will after death rush into this evil as openly and as willingly as he does in this world in his imagination.

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It is here, then, in the world of our imagination, in the world with which our spirit finds itself surrounded, the world in which our freedom is most sacredly guarded,-it is here that the recognition of evil, and the resistance to evil is to take place.

     This is the expansion, if we may so call it, that the revelation to the New Church has given to the truth revealed to the Christian Church in the words, "But I say unto you, whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." The words have a wider meaning than the crimes against marriage,-for they involve the shunning of every affection that opposes the establishment of the church with man,-that opposes the conjunction or marriage of good and truth with man,-that opposes the marriage of the Lord and the Church,-all which affections find their fit ultimate in the destruction of the conjugial. It is the conjunction of the Lord with the Church that is the subject treated of, and, therefore, it is expressed in words relating to marriage which is the ultimate representation of that conjunction, and to the violation of which is directed every evil that opposes that conjunction.

     If a man would shun the evil of adultery, he must shun evil itself as it reveals itself to his examination in the imagination. Shunning the evil of adultery in the external is of little avail for the spiritual growth unless there is internal resistance to evil itself,-to the evil of the loves of self and the world in the thought and will. Without this, men may indeed succeed in avoiding the evil of adultery in speech and deed, but they will be powerless to escape its influence over the imagination,-powerless to really resist it, for it is the very palladium of the evil loves that he cherishes.

     Here, then, in the world of the imagination, is the battle to be wrought against the adulterous sphere of the hells which now fills the Christian world. Here is to be established the ultimate of the marriage of good and truth,-the desire and prayer of the heart for chaste marriage; and when it is established here then it is actually with man, and will be ultimately provided for him, if not in this world, still in the world to come. But one thing must precede before there can be any battle against evil in the imagination, and that one thing is the establishment of order in the speech and deed of the body.

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So long as the body does evil, and the mouth speaks evil, so long it is in vain for man to fancy he resists it in his will and thought. As the Jewish law preceded the Christian, as a representative before the reality,-as again the Christian law preceded the spiritual law of the New Church, like the external preceding the internal,-so it must be in man's life. The Jewish law is the law that concerns his speech and actions. The age in which this must be impressed on the mind is the age of childhood. Children are to be trained to obedience to the laws of heaven, in speech and act,-trained to worship, trained to truthfulness, honesty, charity, and chastity. By this training there is established with them the external of the church, its representation, in which can be implanted the internal and genuine church. If the external does not precede the internal cannot follow. Here is the work of New Church education,- the work of every parent,-the expression of his love for the eternal welfare of his children. And ii this work is not done in childhood, it must be done in after-life. For as was said it is vain to imagine that evil can be shunned in thought and will, while they still occupy the speech and deed.

The laws of the Christian Church, especially as given anew to the New Church, are to be established with man in youth and early manhood, that he may be reformed before he is regenerated. Youth, then, and early manhood, is the time when especially he is to fight the battle against evil in the world of his imagination,-to shun it in thought and will, as he has already learned to shun it in deed and speech. Here his parents can no longer guide and direct him, but he must look to the Lord alone as His Father, and to the truths of the church as the mother that will cherish and bring into being a new will and a new understanding. If this work is not done, it is vain to talk of the establishment of a spiritual and internal church; vain to talk of the marriage of good and truth, of perception and celestial love. For until the external church is established in the will and understanding of man, that is, in the world of his imagination, the internal church can never be with him. And so, ii this work is not done in early manhood, it must be done in later years.

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It is when this work is done that the real truths of the New Church will appear, and that the New Church will truly be manifested as the Crown of all the churches that have hitherto been upon the earth,-a church in which there will be a charity, a love, a perception that have hither-to been undreamed of,-a church in which all these heavenly gifts will be ultimated and concentrated in the fundamental of all loves-love truly conjugial. Amen.
PHOTOTYPING PROCESS AND THE PRINTING OF SWEDENBORG'S TEXTS 1912

PHOTOTYPING PROCESS AND THE PRINTING OF SWEDENBORG'S TEXTS ALFRED H. STROH 1912

     In a recent communication on "The Phototyping of Swedenborg's Manuscripts," the progress of the work at Stockholm was described and the reliability of the phototyped manuscripts and the method employed in producing them were defended. The present article will furnish a more particular account of the phototyping process and of the manner in which the printing of Swedenborg's MSS. is being carried on at Stockholm.

     THE PHOTOTYPING PROCESS.

     In the series of photolithographs of Swedenborg's MSS, which appeared at Stockholm, 1869-'70, under Dr. R. L. Tafel's editorship, both scientific and theological MSS. were reproduced, and even Swedenborg's printed DE CULTU ET AMORE DEI with the author's marginal notes. The influence which these photolithographic reproductions have had upon the publication work of the New Church has been very great, indeed, not only in the editing of texts, but also in the issuing of translations made immediately from the photolithographs. But compared with the volumes now being phototyped, the photolithographic reproductions present a rather rough appearance.

     Forty years ago the MSS. were often taken apart, the separate leaves being then photographed. Several of the volumes have remained unbound to this day. Steps have, however, now been taken to rebind them and to repair by the labor of a very skillful Swedish hinder, Mr. Gustaf Hedberg, all the volumes at present unbound and also others the binding of which has been injured by the tooth of time.

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Today the MSS. are not pinned up for photographing, but they are laid into two wooden cases with a plate glass front and locked by the janitor of the Library of the Academy of Sciences. Thus locked the cases pass back and forth daily from the Academy to the printer, and must be back in the Library by a specified time. While at the printer's, the firm of Lagrelius & Westphal, only the undersigned is permitted to open the boxes with a Set of keys received from the Librarian of the Academy. The responsibility is great, and the most stringent care is taken in the photographing and use of the MSS. if they are taken out of the cases for specially difficult photographing or for the retouching of the negatives. By proper attendance to these details the work is much lightened for the phototyping firm, nor do so many printing plates need to be discarded, as was formerly the case, when proofs were sent to the Academy of Sciences. The work is now done on the negative instead of on the proofs or printed editions, except to a small extent.

After the MSS. have been laid in the glass cases, care having been taken to brush away the snuff, also sometimes sand which Swedenborg used in drying them; and bird seed, etc., (which, if no other proofs existed, would indicate that Swedenborg kept birds), the photographing of the opened volumes under glass and the retouching of the negatives follow in their order, and finally, the negative is copied in the following manner by a photo-chemical process upon a heavy ground slab of plate glass: First a quantity of chromogelatine is poured upon and spread evenly over the glass plate, which is then dried in boxes in which the air is kept at a special temperature, (about 56- Celsius). Then the negative is copied upon the prepared plate, the parts which are reached by light being dry, other spots remaining more or less damp according to the quantity of light which has acted upon the chromogelatine. After the chrome has been washed away by water the plate is no longer changed by the action of light. The plate now has a granulated surface consisting of very small points, some of which being dry will take the ink when the plate is in the printing press, while others being less dry take more or less ink. In this way the beautiful gradations in shading and the fine, soft tone of the printed pages is produced.

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     From the above it will appear that the phototyping process differs from other methods in being in high degree a chemical method, other systems of reproduction by stone, copper, steel and zinc being far less delicate. Their appearance also is "hard" when compared with the reproductions made by the phototyping process which produces especially beautiful results with peculiar "soft" tones. Due to the chemical nature of the process the little points upon which the printing depends are exceedingly small and the gradations of moisture make gradations of shading possible to a wonderful extent.

     Even while the printing is going on I have often seen the work-men blowing gently upon a plate through a paper horn, the increase of moisture thus preventing certain parts becoming darker than they ought to be. It may be added that the presses must work very slowly in this process, so delicate is the gelatine plate, and much time is consumed in producing the first satisfactory impression. The gelatine surface being so sensitive, only 500 to 1,000 copies can be printed from the same plate, but as only 110 copies of Swedenborg's MSS. are phototyped they are as fine and clear as possible.

     Coming now to the question of color, it is possible, by printing several times, to reproduce illuminated MSS. very beautifully by the phototyping process. Swedenborg's MSS., however, are never illuminated, but are always written in inks whose shades today vary all the way from deep black to dark and light browns and even to light yellow. In printing an ink composed of even parts of black and brown matter is employed. Since the yellow parts of the writing, sometimes very much faded and almost illegible, become darker and darker by the photographing and printing, the reproduced page is sometimes even more legible than the original.

     In some methods of reproduction by photographic processes transferred to stone and metal plates, the ink is taken from the cylinders upon the points of the surface, the quantity taken varying according to the height of the points. In other methods the ink lies in hollows on the metal surface, the depressions being more or less deep, and consequently producing more or less dark impressions at various points according to the quantity of ink.

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But in the phototyping process chemistry and the physical variations of moisture are of chief importance During the time the plate lies in the press it is occasionally washed with a glycerine mixture in order to cause the gelatine to swell slightly and preserve the moisture in such proportion as is necessary for the printing. Having had any opportunities to observe the various stages of the phototyplng process during the past ten years, I call only express my unqualified admiration for its subtle delicacy and finish and for the high quality of the results produced by the present printer, Mr. Christian Westphal, the character of whose work has been much praised not only in Scandinavia, but also abroad.

THE PRINTING OF SWEDENBORG'S MSS. AT STOCKHOLM.

Passing now to the general question of printing Swedenborg's texts by types, various editions of the text and of translations made either directly from the photolithographs or from the texts based upon them, have been published under the editorship of Dr. S. H. Worcester and others. Other texts were edited with great care many years go by Dr. J. F. I. Tafel, Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson and others, but a great revision of former texts and the publication of new texts is now in hand since the phototyping was begun in 1896, and the Swedenborg Scientific Association founded in 1598. Having been engaged in such work for many years the idea has finally entered my mind that the scientific texts of Swedenborg now passing through the press should be stereotyped, and that the theological texts to be printed should be issued in Pages of similar size and appearance and likewise stereotyped, so that a future complete edition of Swedenborg's works will be possible at a greatly reduced cost. Concerning this proposal to prepare for a future edition OPERA OMNIA EMANUELIS SWEDENBORGII memorials are now being sent to the chief printing societies of the New Church in England and America. Sooner or later such a complete edition of Swedenborg's miscellaneous early works and documents, of his scientific and philosophical works, and finally, of his theological works, will be undertaken, and why should not preparations for it be made now, when large sums are being sunk in the printing of miscellaneous texts!

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     One of the most important projects to print Swedenborg's texts advanced in recent times is that of the Rev. J. K. Smyth to employ the Rev. E. J. E. Schreck upon a new edition of the Latin ARCANA COELESTIA. This project is worthy of all commendation and support, for not only would the publication of a new edition of the "Arcana" make accessible a large portion of the new material now being phototyped but the way would be opened for the inclusion of the theological works in the proposed OPERA OMNIA, and Mr. Schreck, who is pre-eminently qualified to edit in the most critical and approved manner such difficult texts, would be devoting years of valuable labor to the theological texts while the early portion of the complete edition is being to a large extent edited for the first time and stereotyped. The high character of Mr. Schreck's editorial work has been shown in his admirable edition of the Latin-English "Summaries of the Internal Sense of the Prophets and Psalms," published by the New York Swedenborg Society some years ago.

     The New Church at large and the printing societies in particular, have during recent years shown an increasing interest in the phototyping of Swedenborg's priceless MSS. and in the publication of his scientific and theological works at Stockholm. I shall now describe briefly the various methods which have thus far been employed in editing texts, both scientific and theological.

     The old method of copying by hand has been employed on a grand scale by the Swedenborg Scientific Association. The copyists having done their preliminary work I have afterwards collated the copy with them and then made a minute comparison of the copy with the original MS., entering corrections and notes in red ink. Such a revised copy has been used by Professor Alfred Acton in editing the Latin text of Swedenborg's work on COMMON SALT recently published by the Swedenborg Scientific Association. This text is without doubt faithful to a high degree, but supposing that a student of it is in doubt, what is he to do? The only source for accurate comparison is the original MS., and, therefore, every line by Swedenborg should be phototyped. Then every student can have access to a reproduction of the original so faithfully executed that according to the laws of probability doubts can hardly ever arise as to the right reading of a phrase or word.

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In the first production of a printed text, and in the revision of former texts the phototyped reproductions have already been found invaluable, and will become still more so as the years roll on and the originals fade and become more and more brittle.

In editing Swedenborg's scientific texts for the series of the Academy of Sciences I have always made copies myself or had them made, afterwards revising them several times before going to press. But the proofs have been read repeatedly, by myself and others, not with the copies, no matter how accurate they might be, but with the original MSS. In Vol. III., however, I have had an opportunity of editing two Swedish MSS. by Swedenborg recently discovered which had previously been phototyped in Part I. of Swedenborgiana. The phototyped reproductions and the original MSS. were both employed and I can assert with the greatest certainty that the phototypes were perfectly reliable in every detail. Since the MSS. are no more permitted to leave Stockholm as in the days of Dr. J. F. I. Tafel the importance of the phototyped editions for editors residing beyond the shores of Sweden is at once apparent. Printed texts may be based directly upon the phototypes or checked by them, the MSS. at Stockholm being used only in extremely doubtful cases, none of which have as yet arisen so far as I know. By making use of the various methods above described the sure foundations for a complete and very exact edition of Swedenborg's texts will be laid not only in Sweden itself, but also in England and America.

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ARCANA OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 1912

ARCANA OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE Rev. E. E. IUNGERICH 1912

     II. THE CONSONANTS. (Continued.)

     Attention is invited to an apparent paradox on this subject between the teachings of DE VERBO iv., T. C. R. 278 and S. S. 90 on the one hand, and S. D. 5620 on the other. [N. B.-The writer has examined the latter in the photolithograph, and found it to agree with the published edition.]

     In T. C. R. 278 and S. S. 90, which are identical, we read:

     "Also that they, [the celestial angels], did not express any consonant letters harshly, [aspere], but softly, and that thence it is that certain [quaedam] Hebrew letters, are dotted internally as a sign that they be Pronounced softly."

     In DE VERBO iv, we read:

     "Also that they do not express any consonant letters harshly but softly; and that harsh letters like Daleth and Koph with the others do not signify anything unless they enunciate them with a soft sound; and that this is the reason why several, [pleraeque] letters are pointed internally which signifies they are to be pronounced with a soft sound."

     But in S. D. 5620 we read what seems the reverse:

     "Celestial angels said to me, about the Hebrew tongue, that all the letters, or syllables therein, have a correspondence, and that, according to the inflections and curvatures, they have a significance in agreement with the heavenly form. It was permitted them to examine the letters from beginning to end, also certain words; and they said that there is a correspondence, except in the case of certain harsh letters, as Daleth, Caph, Koph, and several which are pronounced harshly. But they said, that as far as there is harshness in them, so far they do not correspond. They also said that for this reason, in the earliest times, they were not harsh but soft, and that, therefore, in everyone of such there is a dot in the middle; and that this dot signifies that it is Pronounced harshly, but that without the dot not harshly."

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     In my opinion, the dot referred to in the first three passages as causing a soft pronunciation, is Daghesh Lene in the aspirates; whereas the dot referred to in S. D. 5620 as causing a harsh pronunciation, is Daghesh Forte, which doubles a consonant. Without the knowledge of these details of Hebrew grammar, the passages would remain irreconcilable. It is perfectly legitimate to assume that Swedenborg might use one of these rules in one case as illustration, and the other in another case.

     III. JUDAIC EXEGESIS.

     About the second century of the Christian era, the Jews assigned numerical values to the Hebrew letters, and made use of these in their mystical exegesis of the Word that is set forth in the KABBALA. The first ten numbers were assigned in order to the first ten letters, from Aleph to Jod. To the next nine, from Caph to Koph, were assigned the numbers twenty, thirty, etc., to one hundred. To the remaining three letters and to the final forms of Caph. Mem, Nun, Pe, and Tzaddi were given the values by hundreds from two to nine hundred. To make larger numbers, a diaeresis placed over one of these letters gave it a thousand times its assigned value.

     The system of interpretation based on the numerical value consisted in taking some word or group of words in the Bible, computing their numerical value according to the above equivalents, and then identifying their sought-for meaning with some other word or words that could be shown to have the same numerical value. Thus the Hebrew letters in the blessing of Judah, (Gen. 49:10), "Shiloh will came," can be shown to have the numerical value, 358. Now as the Hebrew word for Messiah can be shown to have the same numerical value, 358, the sapient conclusion was reached that the Shiloh who was to come must be Messiah.

     The conclusions reached by these methods were, for the most part, absurd, as when Isaiah 61:9 was interpreted to be a prophecy of the decree by the Council of Venice in 816 A. D. that every Jew should wear a saffron-colored robe. (LIFE, 1888, 128.) This system of interpretation eventually degenerated still further, especially as its chief end was for the purpose of incantations, exorcisms, and the finding of formulas that would lead to the acquisition of the world's riches.

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This is perhaps an explanation of the reason why the Jews whom Swedenborg was endeavoring to convince about the existence of an internal sense in the Word, replied, "that interiorly in the Word there is nothing but gold." (T. C. R. 845) With this Swedenborg agreed, provided that by gold be understood "the good of love."

     IV. THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE SEPARATE LETTERS.

     The teaching of revelation is that complete senses can be drawn from the separate letters by the angels. The exposition of the Word by groups of words gives the natural sense, and the exposition, word by word, gives the spiritual sense. The exposition of the Word, letter by letter, would give the celestial sense, which treats of the Lord.

     "An angel who was with me said that they knew entire senses from the letters themselves, and that each letter had its own sense; and that they knew it from the inflections of the lines in each letter, besides that [which is known] from the letter itself separately. . . . It is known in the third heaven what the letters themselves signify, and they read it according to the letters. They said that in the sense extracted from the letters, the Word treats of the Lord alone. This is the reason why the flexures in the letters derive their origin from the flow of heaven, in which more than, others are the angels of the third heaven. Wherefore, the angels from What is innate are versed in that writing, because they are in the order of heaven and live together according to it. They also explained before me the sense of the Word in Psalm 32:2 from the letters or syllables alone, and said that the sense in general is that the Lord is also merciful to those who do evil." (DE VERBO iv.)

     In S. D. 5622 it is said this verse was read, "without the harsh accents, and almost without the vowels." The reading of this verse is also mentioned in T. C. R. 278 and S. S. 90.

     To illustrate the difference between the spiritual and the celestial senses, let us consider this verse more closely. It reads in the letter, "Happy the man to whom Jehovah imputeth not evil, and in whose spirit is no deceit." The spiritual sense, given in PROPHETS AND PSALMS is, "that the just is blessed."

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This sense does not suggest the Lord except remotely, for it fastens the thought on man and what he must do in the work of salvation, and there clings to it something of the personal idea of merit. But in the sense extracted from the separate letters, "that the Lord is also merciful to those who do evil," the attention is directly fixed on the Lord, and the idea is presented that it is only by the Lord's mercy that any one is saved, and that man is of himself wholly evil.

     Before taking up the material given in the Writings to determine what are the significations of the various letters, it would be well to consider briefly a theory on this subject that has been adopted in the Cambridge Theological School. As basis of this I have before me three letters of date November 6, 1899; November 11, 1899, and September 21, 1910.

     The theory starts with the general premise that the most universal concept of creation is that of the human form, and then makes the unsupported assertion that each of the Hebrew letters is the ideograph of some part or parts of the human body, on the correspondences of which their celestial signification is to be determined. In carrying out these principles, the propounder of the system has worked from the present square Hebrew characters, which were not the original letters, and apparently has come to his conclusion solely from the resemblance to parts of the body that his unaided eye could discern. As fruits of this theory we note the following:

     Gimel is supposed to be a picture of the lower part of the chin, the neck, and a projecting shoulder. It is then assumed to correspond to connection or nexus. But this, as will be subsequently shown, is the correspondence of Vau.

     Daleth is said to be a picture of the breast, the upper horizontal stroke being the shoulder; and the vertical stroke the side of the body. It is said to correspond to abundance, because milk flows from the breast; and also to separation, because what flows out becomes separated.

     He is called a Daleth with an added wavy line, [although most texts have it a straight line]. The wavy line is supposed to show what passes through the breast, viz., breath, or abstractly, life.

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     Vau is regarded as a picture of the right eyebrow and the right side of the nose, and is then taken to refer to the senses located in the head, whereupon it is given the correspondence knowledge.

     Resh is regarded as the chin and front part of the neck, and, therefore, represents the head and signifies intelligence.

     Tau is regarded as a combination of Resh, the head, with a downward stroke which is diagnosed as the foot. As a combination of head and foot it is given the correspondence "an intelligent going forth of life."

     As a criticism of this theory, I would say that its author has not followed up the clews given in the Writings themselves; and I believe that if he had done this, he would have come to different results. Though he has started with a general postulate that sounds plausible to a Newchurchman, experience has taught us that a fair-sounding generalization from the Theology does not alone establish the truth on a subordinate plane.

     As an aid to greater light on this subject, we will adduce all the material given in the Writings, adding what seem to be legitimate deductions therefrom.

     (1) HE.

     The signification of only one letter, He, is given in the Writings. Because it is in the name Jehovah, and is a breathing, it signifies what is "infinite and eternal."

     "The explained to me what Jod signifies, and what Aleph, and what He, and what those letters separately, and what conjointly, and that He which is in Jehovah was added to the name of
Abraham and Sarai to signify the infinite and eternal." (DE VERBO iv.)

     "He also taught me what Jod, what Aleph, and what He signify, but what the rest signify it was not allowed him to tell." (S. D. 4671)

     Only three letters were explained to Swedenborg, but the meaning of two of these, Jod and Aleph are nowhere recorded. Nevertheless enough material is to be found in the indirect suggestions of the Writings, and in the study of ideographs to reward those who will delve in such fields for the meanings of these and the remaining letters.

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     (2) VAU AND JOD.

     With reference to Vau, we read:

     "When one state, [in the internal sense], terminates and another succeeds, which is a marked [change], it is indicated, [in the original tongue], either by IT WAS or IT BECAME, [both of which began with Vau], and a change of state less marked is indicated by AND, [which is the letter Vau], on account of which these words occur so frequently." (A. C. 4987.)

     "It is to be known that the Word in its original tongue lacks signs of terminations, [inter-punctuation marks], wherefore, in their place were such expressions as JEHOVAH SAID, and JEHOVAH SPOKE, [both of which begin with Vau], and in the place of signs for smaller endings or distinctions was the word AND, [which is Vau], wherefore this also occurred so frequently." (A. C. 7191.)

     "The speech of the celestial angels is also without hard consonants, and rarely glides from one consonant to another except by the interposition of a word which begins with a vowel. Hence it is that the little word AND, [Vau], is so many times interposed in the Word, as may be manifest to those who read the Word in the Hebrew tongue, in which that little word is soft, and from both sides sounds like a vowel." (H. H. 241.)

     From what is said about these uses of Vau, it is evident that its internal meaning is "CONJUNCTION." Its ideographic meaning, "a hook," supports this. Further support for this is found in the fact that by receiving a dot above it or in its bosom it becomes the vowels O or U, for, according to S. D. 5787, O signifies "cum or apud," and U, "all things."

     Jod is so closely associated with the sound I, Chireq, that it seems reasonable to assign it the same meaning, viz., "What is from the interior." (S. D. 5787.) This agrees with its ideographic meaning, "a hand," whose correspondence is "power," that is, the manifestation of what is from the interior. Jod is the "jot," mentioned in Matthew 5:18. A jot which will not perish means that the ultimates in which is all power will not be destroyed.

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     (3) BETH, LAMED, ALEPH, TAU, NUN, TETH, DALETH, CAPH, AND KOPH.

     What is said in the Writings about letters of the Latin and Greek languages may be transferred to the equivalent Hebrew letters. "In the Spiritual Heaven the writing is in Roman letters." (S. D, 5561, 5579.) "But in the Celestial Heaven. . . the letters . . . are almost like the Hebrew letters." (S. D. 5562) It can, moreover, be established that there is a natural derivation of Greek and Roman letters from the similarly sounding Hebrew letters through the Phoenician.

     To BETH, therefore, can be given the meaning of B, declared in S. D. 6063to be "glory and majesty." This agrees with its ideographic value, "a house," especially when regarded as the temple of the Lord, His Divine Human. How significant then that the first letter in the Hebrew Word as well as the Ancient Word should have been the letter Beth. (Breshith, in the beginning.)

     To Lamed call be given the meaning of L, which is thus explained in DE VERBO xxvi.: "[In order to express `horses harnessed to a chariot,' the spiritual angels write only L; and this letter expresses it. . . . They also write 'the understanding of doctrine' by means of L, but they are then in higher thought, from which it was evident that there are correspondences in the words of their language." The ideograph of Lamed is "oxgoad," faintly suggestive, in this connection, of discipline in the acquisition of learning. The Hebrew verb Lamad,-to teach, to instruct, seems connected with the more interior meaning of I, that was disclosed by the angels.

     The meaning of Aleph is obtained from the Greek Alpha.

     "It was said that all syllables and letters in the spiritual world signify things, and that thence is the speech and writings there; and that, therefore, the Lord describes His Divinity and Infinity by Alpha and Omega, by which is signified that He is all in all things of Heaven and the Church." (A. R. 38.) By Aleph, I take it, is meant that the Lord is all in all things in Heaven. Elohim, which begins with an Aleph, was given Him as a name to indicate His Divine transflux through the heavens.

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The ideographic value of Aleph, "an ox," is possibly connected, for the ox in ancient nations was a symbol of the Divinity. Aleph and Tau, as first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, would seem to have the same meaning as Alpha and Omega in the Greek alphabet, since it is as first and last letters that the meaning assigned to them in A. R. 38 is given. This might suggest the meaning of Tau, as "all in all things of the Church."

     To Nun should be given the meaning of N, which in S. D. 6063 is said to mean "the evil," except when it has a dot over it, [making the syllable No], and then it means "the good." The correspondence of Nun and also Teth, as well as of the harsh letters Caph and Koph, (said with Daleth in S. D. 5620 to be so harsh that they have no correspondence unless a dot is placed in them), appears to be with faith alone." "That they who separate faith from charity are called Nicdaitans is especially from the sound of that word in heaven; for it sounds from truth or faith, and not from good or charity." (A. E. 107)

     (4) THE REMAINING LETTERS.

     To discover the meanings of other letters, a study might be made of Psalm 32:2, the celestial sense of which is "that the Lord is also merciful to those who do evil."

     Another field for study is the alphabetic Psalms 111, 112, 119, 145, to judge from the following citation: "Because every single letter signifies a thing in the spiritual world, and thence in the angelic language, therefore David wrote Psalm 119 in order, according to the letters of the alphabet, beginning with Aleph and finishing with Tau as may appear from the initials of the verses there. A similar thing appears in Psalm 111, but not so obviously." (A. R. 38.)

     It is a principle in the exposition of the Word that the leading doctrine in a series appears as the first word in it. It should follow in the Hebrew verse, that the leading doctrine would appear not only in the first word, but even in the first letter. In Psalm 119 each of the eight verses written under the caption of one of the Hebrew letters has that letter as its first letter. This frequency of recurrence, making the leading doctrine more easy to discover, would recommend this Psalm as a profitable one for exposition. In Psalms 111 and 112, consisting of ten verses each, each of the first eight verses has successive pairs of the Hebrew letters as initials of the two clauses into which it is divided.

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In the last two verses are three clauses whose initial letters are in order the last six letters of the alphabet. Each of the verses in Psalm 145 begins in order with a letter of the alphabet, with the curious exception that there is no verse beginning with Nun.

     In Psalm 119 the names of several letters occur as initial words, an indication that disposes one to regard these as valid basis for the celestial meaning of the letter. We find, for example, under Gimel, Gemol, "reward," in verse 17; under Jod, Yadhekha, "thy hands," in verse 73; under Samech, Somkheni, "support me," in verse 116; under flirt, Enai, "my eyes," in verse 123; under Pe, Pi, "my mouth," in verse 131; under Resh, Posh, "head," in verse 160.

     In this brief survey, suggestions as to seventeen of the twenty-two letters have been presented. For the letters Cheth, (a fence?), Zain, (a weapon?), Mem, (water), Tzaddi, and Schin* (tooth), has not been found as yet any evidence to strengthen the presumption that the assigned ideograph is correct or incorrect, or to suggest some root as valid basis for the internal sense.
     * In Psalm 112:10, in the clause beginning with Schin, is Shinayoo-"his teeth."

     We can hardly expect, however, to see the establishment of the correspondences we have suggested or any others, as true beyond peradventure, except on the basis of exposition of the Word with this in view.

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NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

     The MESSENGER for March 20th contains a brief but vigorous editorial review of Col. Rudolph Williams' recent pamphlet, entitled A MENACE TO PUBLIC MORALITY, and is followed by an editorial on "Insanity" and another on "Tendencies toward Insanity."

     The Rev. Willard G. Day, of Baltimore, has just published the first number of a New Church journal called THE MISSIONARY. It contains a brief moral address in the form of a sermon, entitled "The Law of Life;" a poem to the editor's brother-in-law, recently deceased; and a list of all ordained New Church ministers in the world, including those of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, in chronological order, according to the dates of ordination.

     THE MEDICAL ADVANCE for Dec. 1, 1911, publishes a paper on Swedenborg by Dr. John M. Turner, the President of the International Hahnemannian Association, being the "President's Address," delivered at the last annual meeting. The paper dwells at length on the "Swedenborg Congress" of 1910, and reviews in a most sympathetic spirit the scientific works and principles of Emanuel Swedenborg. The references to the Theological Writings are those of an advanced Newchurchman, and caused an English correspondent in the February number to "protest against Swedenborgian doctrines with regard to the other world being advanced as something that all Homeopaths should receive because they are Homoeopaths."

     Mrs. John C. Ager in a recent lecture in Boston expressed wonder "if we, as New Church people, would ever teach our children about Swedenborg as we do about other eminent men, and of his wonderful books, such as the ARCANA COELESTIA.

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We should not deprive them of this great and important knowledge," she said, "and I feel the deepest gratitude to my parents for having started me on the teachings of Swedenborg." We can appreciate Mrs. Ager's gratitude, but regret the state of the New Church in which such a wondering question can be possible.

     "In six years or so Mr. J. M. Dent has sold between 10,000,000 and 11,000,000 volumes of his Everyman's Library. Of that huge total about a fourth have been sold in America, where the Everyman's volumes are being largely used in schools and colleges.

     "The interesting thing about Everyman's Library, as its founder will tell you, is the high success of the unexpected book. You would have thought that the Everyman reprints of Ruskin would have sold very largely. They have sold well, but not to the extent which had been expected. Swedenborg's Book, Heaven and Hell, has been a conspicuous success in Everyman's Library. It is typical of other books that have made notable successes, that is to say, books of light and leading in olden days which somehow have been lumbered up by the dust of the ages and only dragged into fresh print in Everyman's Library.

     "Clearly, what this means is that the English democracy had in a dim, distant way heard of those books, that they were books worth reading, worth getting, and when they came within reach, why, the democracy just jumped at them."-James Milne, in the BOOK MONTHLY.

     Mr. Edwin Markham, the poet, sends us a prospectus of a work compiled and edited by himself, consisting of selections from the "Remarkable Writings of Thomas Lake Harris: a Compendium of the Radical Teachings and Occult Experiences of the Greatest Seer of Modern Times." The volume is to contain chapters from Harris' "Secret Books," relating to all kinds of mystic nonsense, "to which is added the Science of a New Social Harmony and a Revelation of the Divine Man-Woman and their Bridal Mystery," etc. The members of the New Church who recently expressed great rejoicing at Mr. Markham's appreciative tribute to Emanuel Swedenborg, will learn with regrets that he is now championing the insidious and blasphemous spiritism of Thomas Lake Harris.

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Several New Church friends in England are having the work on the DIVINE PROVIDENCE printed in Braille in five or six volumes, the third of which has now been completed. A copy of the work has been sent as a gift to Miss Helen Keller, of Wrentham, Mass., who, in a letter to the Rev. George Meek, of Nottingham, expresses her great appreciation of the book. Miss Keller, who, though blind and deaf, is a wonderfully accomplished linguist, has recently taken up the study of Hebrew under the direction of the Rev. J. E. Werren for the purpose, as she writes, "to know with first-hand knowledge, and thus grasp more fully the new interpretations of the Scriptures."
"DIARY" AND THE SPIRITUAL BODY 1912

"DIARY" AND THE SPIRITUAL BODY Editor 1912

The statement in an editorial note in the February LIFE that "it must be remembered that this work [the SPIRITUAL DIARY] was not edited by Swedenborg himself in final form for publication," has caused a doubt among some of our readers as to our attitude towards the Divine authority and doctrinal infallibility of this work, and, in fact, as to all the posthumous writings which were not edited by Swedenborg himself. We sincerely regret that our statement was so worded as to make possible any such apprehension or misapprehension, which seems somewhat surprising in view of our many previous expressions on this subject.

As to its universal and particular contents of Doctrine we believe the SPIRITUAL DIARY to be as Divinely perfect and infallibly true as any other of those Writings which were revealed by the Lord alone through an immediate inspiration of Divine Doctrine to Swedenborg's rational mind. The fact that this work was not written out in a final edited form for publication does not make a single statement less trustworthy than the statements in any of the other works.

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The language of the DIARY, however, is at times somewhat elliptical, being chiefly memoranda of "news right fresh from heaven," quickly noted down by day and by night, without regard to external finish of style, and on this account it is manifestly necessary, in the case of any apparently obscure passages, to compare these carefully with corresponding statements in the edited works, where the same teachings are more fully written out,-and this not for the purpose of correcting the teachings of the DIARY, but in order to gain a more complete understanding of their import and application.

     Thus in regard to the subject of "the bodies of spirits and angels," there are in the DIARY numerous passages which state in so many words that spirits do not possess a body. It is not a question of the shape of their bodies or the form of their bodies, but the statements are that spirits do not possess a body. Are we, then, to stop our studies at this point, and reject the universal teaching of all the Writings, (including the DIARY itself), that: spirits and angels do possess a spiritual body, or are we to interpret the passages in question in the light of the universal Doctrine?

     Our respected friends themselves, who, in their loyalty to the passages in the DIARY insist upon the statements being taken as a finality, nevertheless suggest a compromise in the interpretation that spirits in reality only possess a brain, and that the rest of their bodies is an appearance dependent upon self-conscious reflection. In this interpretation they themselves go beyond the literal statement of the passages in question, and, therefore, we do not think that we are guilty-any more than they-of disloyalty to the DIARY if We Venture to suggest that the language of these passages is elliptical and does not express the full meaning of the whole Doctrine.

     If, then, we compare the passages in question with the corresponding passages in the ARCANA,-written within the same period of time, and in many cases taken almost word for word from the DIARY,-We find beyond any peradventure that the meaning of the statements in the latter work is that spirits do not possess a material body such as they had in the natural world,-not that they do not possess a perfect and permanently complete spiritual body.

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     But this conclusion is regarded by one of our correspondents as too obvious, and he, therefore, seeks for some further and interior interpretation. It is not obvious, however, to spirits newly arrived in the spiritual world,-spirits who, while here below, had regarded matter as everything, and spiritual substance as nothing. They awaken in the other world and find themselves still clothed with a body. Naturally they conclude that it is the same old body in which they had gloried in the world of matter, and refuse to believe that they are now in the spiritual world. In order to convince them of the existence of a life after death they are permitted to suffer many remarkable experiences. A hand is taken away, and other hands appear. The whole spiritual body disappears and they seem to themselves a nothing. All these things take place,-not in heaven but in the world of spirits, soon after death,-and the phenomena are induced upon them from the religious phantasies which they have carried with them from the natural world. It would be a terrible mistake to accept these temporary phenomena, permanent actualities of the eternal life.

     Thus interpreted,-not by us but by the Heavenly Doctrine itself,-the statements in the DIARY are seen to be in full harmony with the universal teaching of the Writings as a whole, and the Divine authority of the SPIRITUAL DIARY, instead of being dissolved, is still further established in our faith.

     We earnestly invite those of our friends who may still object to our position on this subject, to write their objections in a form intended for publication, for the subject is of the utmost importance, and we view with extreme regrets the growing up of a dissatisfaction with the LIFE Within private circles, that may be dissipated by a frank and friendly discussion in our pages for the benefit of the New Church public.
TULKISM 1912

TULKISM L. D 1912

Mr. A. W. Manning, of Riverside, California, objects to the characterization of the teachings of Charles Augustus Tulk, in the LIFE, March, 1912, p. 183. He briefly outlines the ideas of Tulk as he understands them, basing his plea for their soundness on the following, quoted from Tulk's RECORD OF FAMILY INSTRUCTION:

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     "It is evident from this view, how different is the doctrine of the New Church, in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ, from that of the ancient sect of Manichaeans, who denied the reality of his natural appearance, and treated it altogether as a fiction, or a delusion of the senses. We, on the contrary, hold that he was to the full as much an object of all the senses as ourselves, and that there is no reason to doubt the testimony of those who saw, and touched and heard him, than we have to doubt their testimony that they beheld one another."

     No single statement, such as the above, can be taken as the expression of a man's entire religious or philosophical opinion. Every particular must be viewed in the light of its own general, and every single idea and its expression must be considered from the viewpoint of that system of thought to which it belongs. It is not our intention to enter here into a lengthy discussion as to the real' nature of Mr. Tulk's teachings, but we refer the reader to the LIFE, October, 1889, p. 160; June, 1890, p. 89, where his writings and those of some of his followers are quite fully reviewed.

     Mr. Manning has rightly counted Tulkism as one of the many forms of idealistic philosophy, but he seems to have lost sight of the fundamental error of them all. All idealism is based upon the undeniable fact that the only things that man can really be said to know are those modifications of the brain, of the corporeal sensual, or of the imagination, which we call images, and the combinations of these into ideas or concepts. Starting from this, idealism either denies or questions the reality or actuality of the whole material universe including man's body and senses and it also denies or questions the actuality of anything within or above man's conscious ideas, such as a spiritual world, or a personal or impersonal God. The different schools of idealism differ chiefly in where they draw the line between affirmation and denial. In the dictionaries we find these definitions:

     IDEALISM:

     "The system or theory that denies the existence of material bodies, and teaches that we have no rational grounds to believe in the reality of anything but ideas and their relations."-WEBSTER, 1903.

     "The doctrine that in external perceptions the objects immediately known are ideas and ideas only.

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The system that explains the phenomenal universe by referring it to idea in one or other of its forms."-STANDARD.

     "The metaphysical doctrine that the real is of the nature of thought; the doctrine that all reality is in its nature psychical."-CENTURY.

     Idealism is well described in these quotations:

     "But speaking of idealism in itself, it is an unphilosophical system, and, in the end, has a dangerous tendency. Its radical vice lies in maintaining that certain things, which we intuitively know or believe to be real, are not real."-McCosh. INTUITIONS.

     "It is the very essence of Kantian idealism that objects are not there till they are thought."-E. Caird, PHIL. OF KANT.

     Though this little sketch of idealism is perhaps too incomplete to establish the point, yet we believe that there can not be found any real common ground between the Doctrine in which the Lord has made His Second Coming, and idealism; that is, there is no true idealism. For idealism, starting with the assumption that the only realities are the thoughts and imaginations of man, leads ultimately to the infernal persuasion that there is no God except when man thinks of Him, which is expressed currently in the world by the epigram, "The greatest creation of Man is God."

     Tulk has tried to unify with a worldly philosophy in which Firsts and Lasts are denied, a Divine Philosophy in which are established Firsts, Lasts, and Intermediates. He must necessarily pervert and distort one to fit the other.

     In regard to the Lord, Tulk's general teaching plainly is that Jehovah did not actually take upon Himself a material human body, but that He did assume the image or idea of a human body in the minds of all men who saw Him; as is shown in these quotations:

     "That all changes and progressions of state, whatsoever and wheresoever attributed to the Lord-whether, in the works of Swedenborg, we read that Jehovah God assumed and glorified the Humanity, underwent temptations, etc.; or, in the Letter of the Word, that that Humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ, was born in space and time, grew to manhood, hungered and thirsted, moved from place to place, suffered and finally died, an object of the senses in this natural world-are so attributed according to the appearance only, existing and subsisting from, and, therefore, corresponding to, those varying states of the human mind according to which the Lord appears." (M. C. Hume-Rothery, SKETCH OF TULK, P. 56)

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"They ['who mingle and confound the truth of the spiritual sense with the appearances of truth that belong to the letter'] have been driven to the necessity of supposing the Lord Jehovah to have clothed Himself with a humanity, (etc.). This mysterious tenet, . . . is happily to the full as unintelligible as it is erroneous. . . . But all such attempts must ever prove abortive." (C. A. Tulk, SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCY, p. 104.)

Such an image or idea of a human in the minds of men would be real and an "object of all the senses" just as a dream is real and involves all the senses. The phantasies of a madman are to himself the most real of all things, and if he tells us of them we cannot doubt his testimony as to their reality with him, although we know they are real to no one else. Hence we see that a statement such as that quoted by Mr. Manning from Mr. Tulk, that the Lord "was to the full as much an object of all the senses as ourselves, and that there is no reason to doubt the testimony of those who saw and touched and heard Him," when made by an idealist, is in no way equivalent to the teaching of the Writings that the Lord came into the world by assuming a material human body with all its weaknesses and evil heredities from a Jewish virgin. L. D.
HUMAN PRUDENCE 1912

HUMAN PRUDENCE E. E. I 1912

In the teachings of the Lord to His disciples, there is little mention of the need of human prudence. In sending them out into the world of the vastated church, as sheep in the midst of wolves, He had said: "Take no thought for your life what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. . . . Provide neither gold nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes nor staves. . . . When they deliver you up take no thought how or what ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. . . . Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow-but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

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Yet in contrast with these teachings that apparently belittle and condemn the exercise of the most necessary matters of human prudence, we find a parable about a king who is praised for not engaging in warfare until he had weighed the hazards of the contest, and a stirring watchword to the Apostles to be "wise as serpents, and harmless [literally, hornless] as doves."

We meet with this apparent paradox in the Writings themselves. On the one hand, there are the oft-repeated statements to the effect that human prudence is nothing and Divine Providence is everything; and we are told that the rule of the Divine Providence is to be acknowledged not only as universal, but as entering into the veriest singulars of life. On the other hand, the man of the Church is exhorted not to stay supine like a stalk or a stone, awaiting influx, but to be active and doing in all matters of spiritual as well as natural life.

The dilemma here is like the one between living in the world and not being of the world. The cultivation and exercise of human prudence is not what is forbidden. That which is forbidden is the making of the matters of the mundane and corporeal life to be of such burning concern as to rule the thought at all times and render it impossible for us to lift our thoughts above material cares and join with those who are contemplating the spiritual things of the Church. We need to be reminded continually not to bury ourselves in cares and anxieties, and to remember "to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness," that is, to learn the truths of His kingdom and to acquire that righteousness which consists in living them. We are not, however, to suspend the exercise of vigilance and human prudence. Although the Divine Providence acts everywhere, and the Lord inflows into the veriest singulars of the created universe,-man remains, nevertheless, in the appearance that he has human prudence, and that he acts of himself. It is not enough that we be harmless as doves in the acknowledgment that the Lord alone rules and that all things are of Divine Providence. We must also remember that we are stewards of whom an account will be required, and we must act according to the appearance that we live of ourselves and have a human prudence.

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What is forbidden in the New Testament, as well as in the Writings, is the confirmation of this appearance to the exclusion of the acknowledgment of the Lord's rule in all circumstances. The fifth of the doctrinals of a Newchurchman's creed is "That these [goods] are to be done by man as from himself, but that it is to be believed, that they are from the Lord with man, and through him."

Human prudence is weak and fallible, and prone to err. Man's acting, as from himself, is often poorly regulated, injudicious, and disorderly. Yet man must use his human prudence and must act as from himself, and even strive to cultivate and improve both so as to develop a greater prudence and circumspection than has been shown in the past. Past events in which his human prudence played a part need to be scrutinized in order that from this self-examination there may be found a lesson that will be of profit for the future. Although such self-examination is fraught with infestation by accusing spirits, who strive to inject distress of mind and unwillingness to submit to the Lord's Providence, this should not deter him from malting it. If he should see from a more mature experience that his human prudence in some past event had been at fault, there is no reason why he should not admit it. He should not strive for the spurious comfort which rests on the basis of excusing himself with the thought that he could not have helped things, and that the Divine Providence was responsible. Such an attitude in reality betokens little respect for the Divine Providence, but a lack of humility in himself and an unwillingness to conduct an examination that might lead to the detection of a fault and to a subsequent determination to act more wisely in the future. In reviewing a past event we can be simple as doves if we acknowledge that, after all, the Divine Providence operated in all its contingent circumstances to bring out the greatest good compatible with the conditions then existing. But we will lack the wisdom of the serpent if we assume that these contingent circumstances and conditions were foreordained, and that a wiser action on our part could never have changed the event; or, if we refuse to analyze our actions with the desire to see wherein we might have acted more wisely.

We are taught in A. C. 3900 that the exhortation "to be wise as serpents" is what is referred to by the Lord's words in Matthew xxiv, "Behold, I have told you before," and that the disciples of the Lord's church have that wisdom if they are not seduced by those who say, "Lo, here is Christ, lo, there!

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Behold he is in the wilderness . . . . behold, he is in the secret chambers." The false prophets who utter these cries are said (in A. C. 3900) to be in the Christian world, and these cries betoken their false doctrines and theories which are not to be believed.

     The disciple of the Lords Church needs to be harmless as a dove, in the sense that he must not elevate his self-intelligence above the teachings of revelation, (cf. D. P. 310), the authority of which he must admit as the law of life. But this state of simple obedience must not make him a prey to every one who comes with the cry, "Lo, here is Christ," and would endeavor under the plea of authority to force acceptance of doctrines inimical to revelation and sound reason. There is needed the wisdom of the serpent, the rational study of the fields of sensual experiences with which such foes invest themselves, to protect the citadel against their incursion.

     Such a foe is the report, based on mere sense-impressions, that the Christian Church is becoming leavened from within, into a New Church. There are many who fancy they see signs of its amelioration, and who argue, like serpents believing these appearances, that now there need be made no distinction between the Old Church and the New, and that both may celebrate their sacraments, marriages, and worship in common. An equally insidious and dangerous foe, albeit on the intellectual plane chiefly, is that forced identification of this or that doctrine or philosophy in the world as being similar to the New Church Doctrine. We may cite, as an example, two early Newchurchmen in Sweden who, endorsing the theory of the transmutation of base metal into gold as a New Church doctrine, became prey to a counterfeiter, who led his guileless associates into a discreditable enterprise. The danger to the church of such proceedings is that of associating the doctrines with what is very likely to prove fallible and fallacious.

     It is one thing to search the Writings to obtain the true relations and balances of spiritual truth, the truth of revelation. For this, the chief requisite is the acknowledgment of their authority and a preferring of their teachings to all others.

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But it is quite another matter to determine the truth on a subordinate plane. For this there is needed the circumspection and prudence of the serpent, to guard against the acclaiming of any theory as the truth on the basis of merely sensual appearance or fancied analogy with the theology.

     How truth on a subordinate plane is to be obtained may be deduced from the following passage: "[1] A natural love from the spiritual gives intelligence in civil and moral matters. [2] But a spiritual love in the natural gives intelligence in spiritual things; whereas [3] a merely natural love with its consequent pride, does not give any intelligence in spiritual matters, but gives the faculty of confirming whatever it pleases, and after confirmation so infatuates the understanding that it sees the false as the true and the evil as the good." (A. E. 1171.)

     The great majority of modern gentile doctrines and theories have undoubtedly been derived from a love of this third kind, a merely natural love brooding for corporeal reasons solely on the phenomena of its particular field. The only source of a higher love is in the Doctrines of the New Church. Where some ray from there has not penetrated, no higher love can be kindled at this day. Now a Newchurchman living in the world and obliged to make decisions in this or that field for the carrying out of his natural life, will generally turn to those theories and doctrines which seem to his opening mind to be less repugnant to and more in agreement with the Doctrines. This, however, does not cause it to follow that such theories or doctrines in the world are intrinsically in agreement with the New Church, nor that they will continue or ought to continue to be the most efficient and sensible on their own plane. The fact that he sees analogies here and there, is as yet of more use to his spiritual faith than it is as a witness to their being the truth on their owe plane. For, as just read, a spiritual love in the natural is not the one which gives illustration in civil and moral affairs; although it may give greater intelligence in spiritual matters from the fact that he has been meditating on those.

     Yet there is truth on subordinate planes, there are systems and theories there, like the statue within the marble block, which, when found, will enable the Newchurchman to make wise and just applications of the phenomena of those planes.

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To determine this truth, there is required in the investigation, a natural love from the spiritual. The investigator must be free to examine all the phenomena on that plane, no matter under what school or system they may be found; and he must have a natural love of the work on that plane, but a natural love from the spiritual, one that sees the value of the truths of that plane as a support for the theology, yet also loves the truth on that plane for its own intrinsic sake. There is little hope of getting the genuine truth on a lower plane if it has to be dictated to by a higher plane, and is not allowed to have an as-of-itself reactivity. It is not within the province of pure theologians, by making a cursory examination of this or that field, to single out appearances of analogy and from these determine what is the final law on that plane. Work on these subordinate planes is the work of a life-time, the work, perhaps, of generations, before the real truth there is obtained.

Therefore, our attitude towards the gentile theories on subordinate planes should be one of great latitude, flexibility and patience. We should, however, guard ourselves from being persuaded that this or that gentile theory on a given plane is the only one for a Newchurchman to hold. It is not unlikely that many, if not every theory, on a given plane, may contain some elements of the genuine truth there. It is quite possible that every theory in it may be nearly if not altogether false. We are obliged to make use of the theories on these planes, just as we are obliged to make use of our fallible human prudence; and that should cause us continually to re-examine these fallible theories just as we should continually re-examine the acts of our human prudence in the quest of improvement.

There appears to be at present in the New Church a general movement in the direction of a scholarly and orderly development of these subordinate fields. We may consider it as a sign of a Providential guiding in this movement which may bring the New Church to rule the nations with a rod of iron, that within the last few years there has been a growing realization of the truths of the philosophical works of Swedenborg; and that in them have been found confirmations of what Swedenborg says of them, viz., that when he wrote them he was introduced by the Lord into the natural sciences, being moreover inspired with a love of the truth, in those planes, for its own sake.

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[See Letter to Oetinger, Doc. 232.] In other words, when he wrote these works, he had that natural love from the spiritual which is the pre-requisite to determining the truth on subordinate planes.

Many references to truth on subordinate planes do occur in the Writings, but their use there is chiefly illustrative, and not to give us in a structural whole the truth of the subordinate field, or a direct key to the universal laws of lower planes. Their use in the Writings is chiefly to illustrate spiritual truth, or to give to the spiritual love, by which a devout reader is imbued, further intelligence in spiritual matters.

The watchword for the disciple of the Lord's New Church is to be "harmless as a dove" by his loyal recognition of the Divine authority of the Lord in the Word of His Second Coming; and also to be "wise as a serpent" by guarding its citadel from incursion from false theories and doctrines. In this latter use, a great positive work can be done if the central, nuclear, philosophic truths of all subordinate fields, that are considered in the Scientific Works, be applied as a touchstone and exemplar in all his studies on subordinate planes. E. E. I.
WILLIAM GILL 1912

WILLIAM GILL F. R. COOPER 1912

     In Memoriam.

     By the entrance into the spiritual world of Mr. William Gill, the General Church of the New Jerusalem loses one of its most active and devoted members. His affection for the church, coupled with his ability and genial personality, placed him deservedly to the fore during the thirty years of his connection with the New Church in Colchester.

     Mr. Gill was born in London on March 29th, 1854, the family removing to Ipswich shortly afterwards. He was a member of the Baptist denomination, and it was while conducting a Bible class that the writer of this memoir became his scholar, and it is worthy of note that the open state of his mind at this time indicated a state of preparation for the reception of the Heavenly Doctrine.

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     It was about 1880 that Mr. Gill, in conversation with a Mr. Baldwin, (a prominent layman connected with the New Church in Ipswich), expressed to him his desire to know more of the future life. He lent Mr. Gill the work on HEAVEN AND HELL, the truth of which he at once accepted, occasionally attending the services of the New Church then held in the town, and continuing his Bible class. It was apparently quite by chance, in 1883, that his attention was drawn to the "Northlight Studio" in Colchester, which he promptly decided to occupy, and from that time to the present the "Studio" has become a household word so far as the church is concerned.

     Upon his arrival in Colchester Mr. Gill entirely severed his connection with the Old Church and found the New Church very active, as a result of the missionary efforts of the Rev. Joseph Deans. Entering at once with his accustomed zeal and ability, he was appointed chairman of the committee, and the following year deacon of the society, and in 1886 a teacher in the newly formed Sunday School. He was appointed treasurer in 1899, a position he held under the varied fortunes of the society until his death.

     In 1886 the Academy doctrines were introduced, and Mr. Gill, while not at first enthusiastic, yet increasingly his sympathies inclined in this direction, and if, upon the introduction of the COLCHESTER NEW CHURCH MONTHLY, his sympathies were strained for a brief space, this was due to the methods employed rather than the principles involved. After the secession of the supporters of Conference, Mr. Gill gave his hearty support to the Rev. T. F. Robinson during his ministry, and to the Rev. E. C. Bostock during several years, his son, Mr. Rey Gill, attending the London School at this time.

     After the trouble of 1897 the four years' ministry of the Rev. W. H. Acton found Mr. Gill a firm supporter of both the church and school uses.

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     The severe conflict of 1900 and 1901 was consummated by the inauguration, in 1902, of the members of Colchester Society as a "congregation of the General Church of the New Jerusalem" by the Rev. E. C. Bostock, and thus was reached a new state of peace and freedom, and no one was a more delighted recipient than Mr. Gill, who now became a member of this body.

     The Rev. Andrew Czerny's pastorate opened up new channels of use, and with the renting of the Priory Street room, Mr. Gill rendered valuable assistance in furnishing, etc., and by many personal gifts added materially to its use and appearance. He also performed an important use, (since 1902), by conducting fortnightly meetings, thus compensating as far as it was possible the absence of our pastor. The Sunday School also received his valuable assistance, and for quite a long period he conducted a weekly preparation class for the young people. He had a great affection for the music of the church, seldom missing the usual singing practice. The last one he attended (less than a month before his death), some surprise was expressed that he was able to be present. He replied, "I felt it my duty to make the effort." How characteristic is this reply, and how aptly it portrays the character of our friend and brother, with whom we have been privileged to labor these many years

     But far more precious than the above record is the memory of our brother, as the living embodiment of the goods and truths of the New Church, of the sphere of the church in his home, and his constant affection for all uses connected with the church were at all times strenuous for the general good. Memory recalls the many happy meetings in which we have shared the hospitality of his home in the delightful sphere of the church, and the many meetings and reunions with friends at home and from distant lands in the garden at Maldune. These are living entities. Eternal and enduring they have brought strength and courage to us, and have imbued our children with an affection which will support them through the years that are to come.

     But while no more we shall hear his voice, or be inspired by his genial presence, in our meetings or assemblies in this world, yet his call to higher uses will bring us interior strength and consolation and a greater unity of purpose in the work of the church that is before us.
     F. R. COOPER.

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PHOTOTYPED EDITION RELIABLE 1912

PHOTOTYPED EDITION RELIABLE E. J. E. SCHRECK 1912

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     Mr. Alfred H. Stroh has published a very interesting letter in the MESSENGER of March 13th, from which it appears, that, in his estimation, such remarks of mine as were published in my letter to your journal last January, have cast a very serious doubt upon the reliability of the phototype edition of the manuscripts.

     No one would be more sorry than I to have any doubt cast upon the necessity and superior excellence of the phototype edition. My use of the adverb "absolutely," in the phrase "The Phototyped MSS. not absolutely reliable," was intended to convey the idea that such faults as there might be, would be few.

     In view of any possible misunderstanding of my letter, I wish to corroborate all that Mr. Stroh says about the trustworthiness of the phototype process as explained by him, and to say in detailed information about the phototyped "SUMMARIA SENSUS INTERNI," that the blemishes I found therein did not affect the text, except at the edges of some of the pages, (two or three), where some of the marginal numerals constantly employed by Swedenborg in this unique work, were omitted. As I am not familiar with the exact process of this method of printing, I cannot tell how the press failed to produce these portions of the writings. Mr. Stroh points out that it was due to editorial carelessness.

     But since then Mr. Stroh has been in charge of this work, and with our knowledge of his thorough scholarship, his extreme conscientiousness, his immense capacity for laborious painstaking with minute details, we may rest assured that such faults as marred the phototype of the SUMMARIA, are being most carefully guarded against in the manuscript passing through his editorial hands.
     E. J. E. SCHRECK.
          6815 Union Avenue,
               Chicago, March 18, 1912.

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ATMOSPHERES, NATURAL MIND AND LIMBUS 1912

ATMOSPHERES, NATURAL MIND AND LIMBUS ALFRED H. STROH 1912

     In continuing the discussion of the subjects included in the title of this paper, attention must first be called to the writer's former contributions in the LIFE and the NEW PHILOSOPHY for the years 1904 to 1906. The present introductory article will he confined to a general treatment of former and later results and to a definition of my general position according to a series of six propositions.

     I. The teaching of the WRITINGS with regard to discrete degrees* should be followed in all New Church discussions of theological, philosophical and scientific questions, and not necessarily the teachings of Swedenborg's scientific and philosophical works, which sometimes disagree with one another and with the Writings.
     * Will the writer point out wherein the doctrine of Degrees and Series, as first published in the ECONOMY OF THE ANIMAL. KINGDOM disagrees with the doctrine as revealed in the Writings?-ED.

     One of the most striking features of recent New Church history is a great development of philosophy and science, based largely upon a study of Swedenborg's earlier works. I am in heartiest sympathy with every effort to study and develop this important field, an essential part of a true New Church education, and with this end in view I have devoted years of labor to the deciphering and editing of Swedenborg's earlier works. But the enthusiastic study of the new material has not by all students been carried on with a due regard to the true relationship of Swedenborg's scientific works to the Writings, and certain erroneous positions are the result. I am confident, however, that after the fermentation of recent years the pure truth will finally appear. The obscurities will vanish in the clear sunlight of Divine Truth: In Thy Light shall we see Light.

     In studying any subject whatever, theological, philosophical or scientific, the New Church student should employ the doctrine of degrees as revealed in the Writings. Nothing less will suffice, neither the teachings of Swedenborg's earlier works, nor the speculations of the princes of philosophy, nor the dogmas of the captains of science. The Writings repeatedly declare the fundamental importance of the doctrine of degrees in the understanding of every subject, and therefore that doctrine had to be revealed, for which reason we ought to follow it in all our discussions.

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If we read the little work on the INTERCOURSE OF SOUL AND BODY, the grand universals of truth there revealed concerning the creation of the universe and its degrees both natural and spiritual, concerning the kingdoms of nature and spirit, and the structure of mind and body,-when we contemplate these Divine Teachings, the finest flowers of philosophy and science fade out of sight; the torches of nature pale before the brightness of the Spiritual Sun. And observe the wonderful simplicity of that work: in a few pages the most profound problems of cosmology and psychology are solved in language so simple and so clear that even untrained minds, if humble, may see with greater accuracy than those whose understanding is filled with merely human learning and speculation. That wonderful little book unfolds before us a panorama of the creation of the universe and of man.

But we live in the natural world, and if we progress we must see Divine and spiritual truths in all things of that world, and if opportunity arrives apply that which is abstract to the problems of the Church and State. And so it has happened that in our New Church Education we are confronted with the grave question of what to teach on purely philosophical and scientific planes, and we have gone to Swedenborg's earlier works. That we did so was inevitable, but that those works have been by some elevated into a position of well nigh infallible authority is indefensible. The positions regarding them vary extremely between the two poles of absolute acceptance and absolute denial. But why should we not follow Swedenborg's own statements concerning his preparation? In well known passages he affirms that from having been a natural fisherman he became a spiritual fisherman, and that from 1710 to 1744 he was prepared by the sciences. He nowhere says that his earlier works are the Word, nor a revelation, nor unquestionable guides in all matters pertaining to philosophy and science. What he says is that he was prepared by the sciences, and we should therefore view his earlier works as a record of that preparation.

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To say that because he was prepared by the sciences he made no mistakes nor changed his position from time to time,* is to say that which cannot be maintained in view of a large mass of evidence supplied by Swedenborg's early letters and works. On the contrary, in scientific investigations and philosophical discussions errors are necessarily made by reason of the very methods which must be employed. Only by repeated observations, experiments, and analyses of evidence, is the truth more and more nearly approached. In this way the history of human investigation is strewn with wrecked hypotheses, but some have survived since the time of the Greeks. As Swedenborg progressed he also gave up from time to time prior positions and modified his system, being ever led by the Lord into a deeper understanding of the secrets of nature, of the degrees of the universe and man. But on comparing Swedenborg's scientific works with the Writings we find numerous minor differences, and with respect to the two worlds, the number of degrees in each, and their relationships, there art most striking differences to which we shall refer below. For the detailed presentation of evidence covering the whole field, collected during the past ten years in Sweden, further articles will be necessary, but compare the teachings of Swedenborg's early works on astronomy and geology with his PRECURSOR of 1721, MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS OF 1722, With the PRINCIPIA Of 1729 and 1734, on such subjects as the number and kinds of particles, on the flood, habitability of the planets, ages of the patriarchs, position of Eden, origin of plants and animals; and then compare all these works with the later scientific works and finally with the Writings. You will find striking agreements, but also striking disagreements. We shall, however, here confine ourselves to the atmospheres, natural mind and limbus.
* When, where, and by whom have Swedenborg's earlier works been "elevated into a position of well nigh infallible authority" or "the Word?" Again, who has ever asserted that Swedenborg, while being prepared by the sciences, "made no mistakes nor changed his position from time to time?"-ED.

II. There are three infinite discrete degrees in the Divine, and consequently there are three atmospheres in both the spiritual and natural worlds, which correspond because the natural sun corresponds to the spiritual sun.

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     If we go directly to the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM we learn that there are three infinite degrees in the Divine, and therefore there is a trine in all created things. Thus there are three spiritual atmospheres created by the spiritual sun in the spiritual world, and three natural atmospheres in the natural world by the natural sun as a mediate. Because the natural sun corresponds to the spiritual sun, all degrees from the natural sun in the natural world correspond to the degrees in the spiritual world from the spiritual sun. I submit that this universal doctrine of creation and degrees is taught throughout the Writings, that it is our only standard, and that it should be followed without question in the interpretation of Swedenborg's PRINCIPIA and other earlier works. Every effort to reverse the order of interpretation by forcing the four atmospheres of the PRINCIPIA and later works upon our interpretation of the Writings is unwarranted and leads to endless confusion. There is no possibility* of seeing an agreement between the four atmospheres of the PRINCIPIA and the six atmospheres of the Writings because 4 does not equal 6.
     * Is it not rather unsafe to make so sweeping an assertion? The writer can only speak for himself. It is not the PRINCIPIA alone that teaches the doctrine of four atmospheres, but the SPIRITUAL DIARY likewise, (n. 222). If there are six atmospheres, there certainly also are four. Why not look for agreements rather than disagreements?-ED.

     But although the PRINCIPIA and the Writings do not agree on so important a subject as the number of atmospheres in the universe, we nevertheless find in the PRINCIPIA a mine of physical science and natural philosophy and we may follow therein several important stages in Swedenborg's preparation by the investigation of degrees and influx as he could see them before the opening of his spiritual eyes. On account of the differences between the PRINCIPIA and the Writings with regard to the number of degrees in the universe, not to mention other important differences,-for only after his spiritual eyes were opened could Swedenborg comprehend the real distinction between the natural and spiritual worlds,-I submit that the PRINCIPIA Should indeed be studied with great energy as a most important part of Swedenborg's preparation by the sciences, but that it should not be followed when it disagrees with the Writings on the number of degrees and in other respects.

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     An effort was made some years ago to make the three atmospheres of the Writings agree with the four of the PRINCIPIA by interpreting that work so as to place the first aura prior to the natural sun, but in that case it must correspond to a spiritual atmosphere prior to the spiritual sun.* The author of this attempted harmony, the Rev. L. P. Mercer, admitted the difficulty. But in later times the PRINCIPIA has been interpreted by Miss Lillian Beekman and other writers as in reality referring to both worlds with their suns and atmospheres. I shall prove in a later article that this attempt has likewise failed, partly because the number of atmospheres in the PRINCIPIA can by no method of interpretation, however liberal, be made to agree with the number of atmospheres in the Writings, partly because the whole PRINCIPIA system is mechanical and geometrical and does not teach two series of degrees, a spiritual and a natural, but one series, in which the spiritual, as Swedenborg then grasped it, was on the plane of the first aura, which is quite different from the teaching of the Writings.
     * Why not? The spiritual Sun was created from the Infinite itself, which is the most real and substantial of all atmospheres,-the atmosphere which alone holds the universe together from within and from without,-the atmosphere in which we all live and move and have our being.-ED.

     III. The degrees of the mind correspond to the atmospheres, and there are three degrees of the spiritual mind and three of the natural mind.

     In his earlier works Swedenborg not only records his investigations of the inorganic universe, but also applies the results obtained to an analysis of the body and mind. In doing so he entered still more interiorly into the secrets of creation, but the degrees of the mind described by him before his spiritual eyes were opened agree with the PRINCIPIA degrees, not with those of the Writings.

     The great and striking difference between the degrees of the universe and mind as presented in the early works and in the Writings is that in the former the degrees of substance and activity are altogether mechanical and geometrical, the whole creation being in space, time and motion, while in the Writings the sharpest distinction is constantly made between the natural universe,-which is geometrical, mechanical and fixed, and in the creation of which times and spaces arose,-and the spiritual universe, which is above space and time.*
     * But not above motion.-ED.

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     In his period of preparation Swedenborg was led to see that the degrees of the mind correspond to the atmospheres, but because his spiritual eyes were not yet opened he did not understand the difference between the natural and spiritual, between natural and spiritual atmospheres, nor did he know that everything mental corresponds to spiritual atmospheres and kingdoms, and everything of the body to natural atmospheres and kingdoms. For these reasons every attempt to make the psychology of the earlier works, so far as the degrees are concerned, agree with the psychology of the Writings, is bound to fail, and we therefore find that the six degrees of the mind as presented in the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM unfold a new psychology, just as the same work unfolds a new doctrine of atmospheres It is plainly taught that there are three degrees of the spiritual mind* and three degrees of the natural mind, nor should these six degrees of the mind be confused with the degrees of nature and the body. On this important subject see the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, and additional passages as given in Burnham's DISCRETE DEGREES, with which I am in entire agreement on this subject.
     * Will the writer define what he means by the "Three degrees of the Spiritual Mind?"-ED.

     IV. The three degrees of the natural mind correspond to the three degrees of the spiritual mind, but both series of degrees ore in the spiritual world, there being nothing mental in the natural world, nor anything living from the sun of nature.

     Everyone who has discussed the natural mind with Newchurchmen in various societies of our Church knows that there is great confusion about this subject, and about what is meant by "natural" in general and in particular. This confusion no doubt arises from the failure to distinguish between the natural or lowest heaven, the three degrees of the natural mind which are below the natural heaven, and the natural world which again is below the spiritual world in which the natural mind and natural heaven exist.

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We need only turn to the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM and to other works referred to in Burnham's DISCRETE DEGREES, to obtain the clearest and most definite teachings with regard to the six degrees of the mind, and particularly with regard to the function and correspondence of the three degrees of the natural mind. Those degrees are with the good in correspondence with the three degrees of the spiritual mind corresponding to the three spiritual atmospheres.

     It should be emphasized that the degrees of the natural mind, in which natural thought exists, are in the spiritual world, for this is not only specifically taught in the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, but also appears from the passages in that work and in the INTERCOURSE OF SOUL AND BODY, which emphasize the truth that everything mental is in the spiritual world, for in the natural world everything is from the sun of nature which is pure fire, and dead, and thus the origin of all dead things, and all things of the mind pertain to the spiritual world, the world of life. The mind is a receptacle of good and truth, of spiritual heat and light, and nothing of the body call receive spiritual heat and light, for the body is composed of natural substances, all of which are from the dead sun of nature.

     V. The degrees of the spiritual mind are open with the good, those of the natural mind with the evil.

     The degrees of the spiritual mind are open with the good, and correspond to the three atmospheres of the three heavens, celestial, spiritual and natural, but those degrees are closed with the evil. With the good the three degrees of the natural mind are in harmony with the three degrees of the spiritual mind, because they are in a spiral turned upwards towards heaven and the Lord, consequently towards Life and its Source. With the evil, however, the three degrees of the spiritual mind are closed and the three degrees of the natural mind in the hells, their spirals being turned away from heaven and the Lord, towards the things of nature and the body, consequently towards dead things. The evil are therefore turned towards the outermost things of the natural mind, and the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION even says, No. 103, that with them their limbus is the highest, for they are as it were turned inside out and upside down.

319

     It has seemed advisable to discuss in some detail the exact number of degrees of the spiritual and natural minds, partly in order to show that those six degrees call by no means be made to agree with the PRINCIPIA degrees, as is evident on even a cursory comparison, partly because our last proposition depends directly upon a clear understanding of the relation of the degrees of the mind to the "inmost" or soul, above the heavens, and correspondingly of the degrees of the body to the "limbus," composed of the "purests of nature."

     VI. The "limbus," consisting of "the purests of nature," corresponds to the "inmost" or soul in the "heaven of human internals" above the angelic heavens.

     Since the degrees of the natural world correspond to the degrees of the spiritual world, the degrees of the body correspond to the degrees of the mind, and therefore the highest degree of the body, or limbus, corresponds to the highest degree of man's spirit or inmost soul. This conclusion inevitably follows from the previous discussion and from the admirable presentation in Burnham's DISCRETE DEGREES. It is there shown that the outmost of the natural mind is the limbus, but that part of the natural mind does not think* because it is composed of the substances of nature.
     * Is it not rather difficult to conceive of a degree of the mind that does not think?-ED.

     There have been those who confuse the limbus with the spiritual body, and who maintain that the limbus is transferred after death into the spiritual world. Such a notion is evidently in complete disagreement with not only the specific teachings concerning the limbus itself, but also with the whole doctrine of degrees of substance and form. The Writings plainly teach that the substances composing the spiritual mind as well as the spiritual body are spiritual, and that the substances composing the body and its highest degree or the limbus are natural. ALFRED H. STROH.

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Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. The absence of news last month from this centre by no means betokens lack of doings. Indeed, there is so much to chronicle that we shall have to confine ourselves to the most summary statement.

     In connection with the Friday classes Mr. Gerald Glenn and Mr. Cornwell gave each an illustrated lecture upon church architecture, in general favoring the Gothic style. The Civic and Social Club gave a very exciting debate upon the subject of the "Referendum" and the "Recall." A political speech from ex-Congressman Wanger was also much enjoyed.

     The last "Club night," or informal social, was the most enjoyable we have had, following as it did right after the wedding of Miss Ruth Hicks and Mr. Charles R. Pendleton, Jr.

     The site for the new House of Worship has finally been decided upon. It is "the knoll" just beyond Mr. Gerald Glenn's house, on the "Mill Road." The preliminary plans have also been received and passed upon.

     Prof. Acton's classes on Wednesday evenings, reading the WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD, are very much enjoyed by a goodly number. Prof. Odhner, in the absence of the Bishop, is giving us a course of three lectures on "The Golden Age." We have recently enjoyed visits from Mrs. Harvey Farrington, of Chicago; Mr. Harvey Lechner and Mrs. Charles Ebert, of Pittsburgh; Mr. and Mrs. Ray Brown, of Toronto, and Miss Amelia Nelson, of Glenview, Mr. Rudolph Roschman, of Berlin, and Mr. Randolph Childs, of New York. H. S.

     ABINGTON, MASS. The Abington society has had the pleasure of meeting and entertaining another person from B. A., Mr. Richard Price, who is now in Lynn. He has been with us three Sundays, and our last Friday supper was postponed until Saturday evening in order that he might be a guest.

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An unusually pleasant time was enjoyed. Our Friday suppers have been very interesting lately. We try to have one or two instructive games, and in that way there are no idle moments. G. M. L.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. The early days of March were ushered in with a Steinfest, conducted by one of the young men of the Park, Mr. Felix Junge. He arranged the subject of "Gardening" with considerable skill so that the various speakers could deal with it in either a material or a spiritual sense. One of the most important uses of these Steinfests is that of giving the men of the church opportunities of perfecting themselves in public speaking an art of great importance in modern life.

     On the 8th of the month we were favored by a "travelogue" with stereopticon views of South America by our own Mr. Charles Francis Browne, the distinguished artist and world wanderer. The views included some excellent photographs of the mountainous bluffs that form the shores of Magellan's Straight.

      A card party on the 19th brought out a full concourse of the wealth, beauty and aristocracy of the Park. Mr. and Mrs. John Synnestvedt, of the current social committee, were the hosts. On April 1st a general social with diversions, games, "stunts" and amusing devices of various kinds was held under the same auspices.

     The most important event of the season so far, and a novelty with us, was the children's Easter Festival with representations in the nature of Tableaux vivants of sacred subjects. It was considered both by the congregation and by those who took part in them as a form of worship or a service, and the sphere was solemn, reverential and intensely interesting. The representation were in a series appropriate to the Easter Festival. They were in order:

Abraham and Isaac sacrificing a Lamb.
Moses raising the Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness.
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.
Overthrowing the Traders and Healing the Sick in the Temple.
Pilate washing his Hands before the People.

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The Women and the Angel at the Tomb.

     Although something of an experiment with us, it left nothing to be desired in the way of an appropriate celebration for devotional people. The young ladies made the costumes, arranged the figures, made the changes, and carried on the complicated processes necessary for an artistic representation with skill and with a devotedness that no money nor material rewards could buy; they were animated by affection for the church and delight in the task.

     COLCHESTER, ENGLAND. Early on the morning of February 23d Mr. William Gill entered the spiritual world. Although Mr. Gill had been in somewhat indifferent health for some time, it was hoped by all to be only of a temporary nature, and that he would soon be restored to his usual health. But after consulting a specialist grave fears were entertained, as an operation was deemed necessary. This was performed on February 19th, and as a result hopes were entertained of his recovery, but pneumonia supervened, and he passed away as above stated.

     The funeral took place on February 26th at Woking, Surrey, the Rev. A. Czerny officiating.

     On Sunday evening, March 3d, a memorial service was held conducted by our pastor.

     At the conclusion of the service, in response to our pastor's invitation, Messrs. Appleton and Cooper briefly spoke of the important uses rendered by Mr. Gill to the church in Colchester, and of the love and affection which always animated him in all matters affecting the good of the church.     F. R. C.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES. The Rev. J. O. Menschner, many years ago pastes of the German New Church Society of Newark, N. J., died at Orange on March 7th. Mr. Menschner was one of the chief supporters, in this country, of the pseudo-celestial movement of Albert Artope in Germany, and was also the author of a pamphlet violently assailing the Academy and the General Church. Owing to his propaganda, the German New Church Society in Newark became extinct. The English Society in the same city is also dissolved, the remaining members having united with the Society in Orange, N. J.

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At the services of the Church of the Redeemer in Lakewood, Ohio, on Palm Sunday a class of fourteen adults were confirmed by the Rev. Thomas King. They were all recent converts to the New Church, from various denominations.
SPECIAL NOTICE 1912

SPECIAL NOTICE Editor 1912

     Announcements.

     PROGRAM OF THE ANNUAL MEETINGS.

     May 16th, Thursday, Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Swedenborg Scientific Association, at Odd Fellows' Temple, Philadelphia, Room A, 7th Floor, corner Broad and Arch Streets; 10:30 A. M., Meeting of Board of Directors; 2 P. M., Meeting of the Association.

     May 26th, Sunday, 11 A. M.: Ordination of M. Ernest Deltenre and of the Rev. Eldred E. Iungerich

     June 6th, Thursday Afternoon, 3:30 P. M.: Meeting of Theta Alpha.

     June 7th, Friday Afternoon, 3:30 P. M.: Meeting of Theta Alpha; Evening, Theta Alpha Banquet.

     June 8th, Saturday, Meeting of Teachers' Institute: 9 A. M. and 2 P. M.

     June 10th, Monday, 10 A. M.: Annual Meeting of Corporation of the Academy of the New Church, at its principal office, 2115 Land Title Building, Philadelphia.

     June 13th, Thursday, 9 A. M.: Closing Exercises of Elementary Schools in Bryn Athyn.

     June 14th, Friday, 10:30 A. M.: Commencement Exercises of the Academy of the New Church. Annual address. Papers by Rev. Ernest Deltenre, Mr. Donald Lindsay, and Mr. Loyal D. Odhner; 8 P. M.: Senior Ball.

     June 15th, Saturday, 10:30 A. M. and 3 P. M.: Annual Joint Meeting of the members of the Corporation of the Academy and the Faculties of the School. All graduate members of the General Church are invited to attend.

     June 17th, Monday, Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Academy of the New Church.

     June 21st, Friday, 10 A. M.: Meeting of the Consistory 8 P. M.: Symposium of the Clergy.

     June 22d, Saturday, 10 A. M.: Meeting of the Council of the Clergy; 10 A. M.: Meeting of the Executive Committee; 8 P. M.: Annual Address Council Of the Clergy: Rev. W. B. Caldwell.

     June 23d, Sunday, 8 P. M.: Men's Meeting.

     June 24h, Monday, 10 A. M.: Meeting of the Joint Council; 8 P. M.: General Council.

     June 25th, Tuesday, Council of the Clergy.

     June 26th, Wednesday, Council of the Clergy.

     June 27th, Thursday, Council of the Clergy.

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[Diagram: The Involution and Evolution of the Word.]
SUCCESSIVE DISPENSATIONS 1912

SUCCESSIVE DISPENSATIONS Rev. C. TH. ODHNER 1912

     As every society of men forms one larger man, so the whole of mankind in its most universal aspect is a "Maximus Home," one Greatest Man, possessing all the forms and functions of an individual man. And the spiritual history of this Greatest Man, from first creation to the present day, has been similar to the life-story of a single man, for the Church of God among men has passed through the ages of infancy, youth, manhood and old age, and when at last it seemed to die, it rose again into a new spiritual and everlasting life.

     As every general thing consists of parts similar to itself, so each of the successive ages of the Lord's One and universal Church has in itself been a Church or general Dispensation. In the past there have been four of these general Churches, corresponding to the four atmospheres of the universe, the four quarters of the world, the four periods of the day, the four seasons of the year, the four ages of a human life. For the Church of the Lord first arose in the East, in the golden dawn of innocence and love of God; this was the morning, the spring-time, the infancy of the race, when men lived and breathed in the very atmosphere of Heaven. But they fell from their pristine glory, and another Age succeeded, spiritual indeed, but not celestial. The Church had moved from the East to the South, from the love of God to the love of the neighbor. The atmosphere now prevailing was a magnetic aura of mutual love, and the sunlight of spiritual wisdom still shone upon men in the noon-time and summer and early manhood of the race.

     But this Church also perished, and mankind moved from the South to the region of the setting sun.

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Love, charity and wisdom were lost among the gathering clouds of falsity and evil. Men became purely natural, but there still lingered about them an Ether of Faith, though this Faith was mostly blind obedience to precepts the spirit of which had been lost in the mist of earthly loves. The Sun of Righteousness then arose, with healing in His wings, but men comprehended it not because their deeds were evil. A few simple folks beheld the Light, as through a glass darkly, and what they saw they proclaimed rejoicing, and thus they passed on the knowledge of the Lord in His Human to a new Church which for a short time shone brightly as a new and glorious Star in the dark firmament. But this same Church moved on from the West to the North. The Star, by the magic formulas of man-made creeds, soon lost its luster, then disappeared. An obscure knowledge of the Lord remained with some, producing a still breathable air, but the light of the Word sank beneath the horizon of the Dark Ages, and a night of universal ignorance, a winter of cold indifference to the life of charity, spread their shroud upon the dying Church. Death followed, and the Last Judgment after death, but then immediately the God of Mercy appeared in the clouds of heaven to raise His Church into new and everlasting life. This new Light first appeared in the frozen North, but it will lead the Church Eastward forever.

     NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S DREAM.

     The foregoing life-story of Mankind is described in wonderful epitome in the dream of the great king of Babylon, recorded by Daniel.

     "Thou, O king, didst see, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and its aspect was terrible.

     "The head of this image was of fine gold his breast and arms were of silver, his belly and his thighs were of brass.

     "His legs were of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

     "Whilst thou wast seeing, a Stone was cut out, which was not cut by hands, and it smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.

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     "Then were broken to pieces at the same time the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold; and they became as the chaff from the threshing floors of summer, so that the wind carried them away and no place was found for them. And the Stone which smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth." (DANIEL 2:31-35.)

     The Golden Head of this Image of the Ages represents the first or MOST ANCIENT CHURCH upon this earth, a church which in the letter of the Word is called by the collective name of "Adam." In the traditions of antiquity it was known as the "Golden Age," because Gold corresponds to the love of God, the supreme of human loves, which reigned universally in that celestial age. The Breast and Arms of Silver represent the second general Church which is called the ANCIENT CHURCH,-in the Word signified by "Noah" and his sons. This dispensation is known as the "Silver Age," because Silver corresponds to the spiritual love of the neighbor, a noble love, second only to the love of God. The breast and the arms are the abode and instruments of this love.

     The Belly and Thighs of Brass signify the third dispensation, called the ISRAELITISH CHURCH, which is also known as the "Brazen Age," because Brass corresponds to natural good and especially the good of blind obedience to the letter of the Law, which was the only genuine good among the descendants of Israel. As the belly is the receptacle of all food for the body, and as the superior body rests upon the thighs, so all celestial and spiritual goods are collected in natural good and rest upon it.

     The Legs of Iron, and the Feet of Iron mingled with Clay, stand for the fourth general church, called the CHRISTIAN CHURCH, the "Iron Age." Iron corresponds to the solid facts of natural truth, the basis of all interior truths and goods, and the legs and feet correspond to the same. To the Christian Church were given the natural truths of the literal sense of the Word, and the most fundamental of these truths was the knowledge that the Creator of the universe had been born a Man on the earth. But the miry Clay, of which men make imitation stone, signifies the false notions of human conceit; and the Feet of Iron mingled with Clay represent the latter days of the Christian Church, when the truths of the Word were profaned by man-made dogmas.

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     The Stone which was not cut by hands, and which smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay and became a great Mountain filling the whole earth, signifies the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem. Springing from the Infinite Wisdom of the Lord in His Divine Human, this Doctrine was not fashioned by the hand of man, but is in itself the Rock of Ages which the builders had rejected. This Doctrine came at the consummation of the Ages and produced a Last Judgment upon the Churches of the past. It will in time be proclaimed throughout the earth and upon it will be established the fifth and crowning Church, THE CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM, which shall never pass away. To this Church will be given all the genuine truths and goods of the former Churches. It will rule (feed) the nations with a scepter of Iron by means of true Science and Philosophy. The Brass of natural good will be restored by means of genuine Ethics based upon Conjugial Love. The Silver of spiritual Charity and the Gold of celestial Love will make glorious the streets of the New Jerusalem, and in the midst of the City men will again eat of the Tree of Life.

     THE ANALOGY OF HISTORY.

     Throughout the four Churches of the past there has been a notable repetition of analogous states and events, which are summarized as follows in the CORONIS, the appendix to the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION:

     I. In each Church there have been four successive states or periods, in the Word called morning, day, evening and night. (COR. 5)

     II. In each Church there have followed four changes of state, of which the first has been the appearance of the Lord Jehovih and Redemption, and then its morning or rise the second has been its Instruction, and then its day of profession; the third has been in Decline, and then its evening or vastation; the fourth has been its End, and then its night or consummation (COR. 6.)

     III. After its consummation or end, the Lord Jehovih appears and performs a Judgment upon the men of the former Church, and separates the good from the evil, elevating the good to Himself in Heaven, and removing the evil from Himself into Hell. (COR. 10.)

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     A CHART OF THE AGES.
The Most           The Golden           Infancy,      The heavenly      The East, or
Ancient               Age, the           morning,     of celestial     love of the
Church,           head of          springtime.     Aura.               Lord.
Adam.           gold.

The Ancient      The Silver           Youth, and      The magnetic     The South,
Church,          Age of the          early man-     Aura, spiritual     love of the
Noah.               Breast of          hood, noon                    neighbor and
               Silver.               and                          wisdom.
                              summer.

The Israel-          The Brazen          Later man-     The Ether,          The West, the
itish               Age, the belly     hood, noon     celestial-          good, of
Church.          and thighs of     and summer.     natural.          obedience.
               brass.

The                The Iron Age     Old age     The Air,          The North,
Christian          the legs of iron     and death,     spiritual-          simple faith,
Church.          and feet of          evening,     natural.          and ignorance.
               iron and clay.     night and
                              winter.

The New          The rock          Resurrection The celestial     The East,
Church, the          from Heaven.     and eternal     Aura, together     together with
New                               Life.          with all the     the whole
Jerusalem.                                   atmospheres.     experience of                                                       mankind.

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     IV. After this the Lord Jehovih establishes a new Heaven from the good elevated to Himself, and a new Hell from the evil removed from Himself; and He induces order upon both, that they may stand under His auspices and obedience to eternity. (COR. 14.)

     V. Out of this new Heaven the Lord Jehovih derives and produces a new Church upon the earth, which takes place by means of a Revelation of Truths out of His mouth or out of His Word, and by means of Inspiration. (COR. 18.)

     VI. This Divine work, as a whole, is called Redemption, without which no man can be saved, because he cannot be regenerated. (COR. 21.)

     To these general laws of analogy we may add the following:

     VII. In each Church, just before its consummation, there has been a temporary Reformation, as a protection for those who could still be saved, and as a preparation for the new Church to come.

     VIII. Each new Church had its rise among the remnant of the former Church, but in its fulness it was established among Gentiles who had not been contaminated with the evils and falses of the perverted Church.

     Bearing in mind this Analogy of History, we may now briefly review the successive states of the four Churches.

     THE MOST ANCIENT CHURCH.

     1) The rise or morning of the Lord's Most Ancient Church is described in the Word by the creation of heaven and earth. The first men created,-the Preadamites,-had "Heaven" implanted in their internal man, but their "Earth," or external man, was "empty and void." As to all external things they were like infants,-corporeal, sensual, and ignorant,-and their internal man could take possession of their external only by successive degrees of education and up-building, represented by the six days of Creation, until finally the state of Adam, or the celestial man, was reached.

     2) The noon-day glory of the Golden Age is described by the seventh day and by Adam and his wife in the Garden of Eden.

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The tree of life in the midst of the garden was their power of Perception, by which Jehovah God revealed to the celestial men all things of love and faith. Will and understanding were at that time one faculty, and the Word of God was written, not in a book, but upon the hearts of men. The Church on earth was in open communication with Heaven; the love of God, and from it conjugial and fraternal love, reigned supreme, resulting in a state of innocence, wisdom, peace and joy such as have never been known since those happy days. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil also grew in the garden, for the celestial man was in complete freedom of choice between internal life and external life, but refused to choose the latter.

     3) Thus ages passed in prehistoric bliss, until a time came when some individuals deliberately listened to the voice of the serpent,-the fallacious appearances of the senses,-in preference to the voice of Jehovah. The idea of self-direction by means of worldly knowledge arose and took hold of a later generation, and thus men fell from their celestial state. The Garden of Eden was closed and a state of evening, decline and vastation set in upon the Church.

     4) As each succeeding generation grew worse by the accumulation of hereditary evil, they gradually sank into a state of profanation by mingling celestial goods and truths with sensual lusts and persuasions. Before complete night overwhelmed them there was a brief period of Reform, when a generation known as "Enoch" undertook the work of collecting and writing down the traditions and doctrines of the Golden Age. This book, however, was soon hidden away from the destructive fury of the antediluvian race, which rushed headlong into such monstrous evils that they were finally destroyed as by a universal good. Through their wicked life their channels of internal respiration were choked up, and as they did not possess the power of external breathing, they perished in the night of the judgment.

     THE ANCIENT CHURCH.

     1) The rise and morning of the second Church is represented by the salvation of Noah and his family in the ark. Noah, whose name means "rest," was a generation of antediluvians who still possessed some remains of unperverted good and truth, and with whom the channels of external respiration were opened.

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     2) This Church of the Silver Age existed at first among a few in the land of Canaan, but was afterwards established among many nations in Asia and Africa, represented by the sons and descendants of Noah. The light of the Ancient Word was, in fact, extended throughout the earth, for the mythological systems of all gentile races are derived from this common origin. The men of this Church did not possess the celestial perception enjoyed by the Golden Age, but instead thereof a spiritual conscience of truth was given to them, by means of which they were able to subdue the evil inclinations of their native will. Hence charity and wisdom reigned among them, and some still enjoyed open communication with the angels of Heaven. Religion, philosophy and science dwelt peacefully together, and the science which they most especially cultivated was the science of the correspondence of all natural things with their spiritual prototypes.

     3) In the course of ages men began to abuse these gifts by applying them to the service of worldly and selfish loves. "It came to pass, as they journeyed from the East" that they desired to build a tower of bricks in Babel'. The Church was invaded by the love of ruling over the souls of men by means of man-made doctrines. For this purpose the priesthood entered into communication with evil spirits and began to pervert the science of correspondences by magical practices. Religion became esoteric, and the truths of the Ancient Word were withheld from the common people. Correspondences were gradually forgotten, and men began to worship as gods the images which had been raised as symbolic representations of the various essentials and attributes of the One God. Thus polytheism and idolatry arose everywhere in the Ancient Church; the former charity was lost in the strife of contending heresies and sects; men no longer "understood one another's speech" in the declining day of the Silver Age.

     4) Lest the final judgment should be hastened, a temporary Reformation was instituted in Syria by Eber, who established among his descendants the Second Ancient or Hebrew Church. The forgotten books of the Ancient Word were restored and the worship of Jehovah, and the practice of animal sacrifices was introduced in order to keep the frenzied nations from sacrificing human beings. This reform, however, lasted but a few generations, the Ancient Word was finally lost and the light of the Ancient Church was gradually extinguished in one nation after another.

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     THE ISRAELITISH CHURCH.

     1) No genuine spiritual Church could now be raised up, for universal idolatry reigned throughout the earth. In order to establish at least the semblance of a true Church, Jehovah therefore revealed Himself to Abraham who chose Him as the patron god for himself and his family. After the release of the Israelites from their captivity in Egypt the Church was formally established among them through the revelation given to Moses, the beginning of which was a portion of the Ancient Word. This was a church which in the most minute things of its ritual represented a true spiritual Church, but it was not in itself a genuine church, for the Israelites knew not the meaning of their representative worship and cared nothing for spiritual or celestial things. It was a purely histrionic church, and the only good which kept the people together as a church and nation was the good of obedience,-blind, unquestioning obedience to the letter of the Law. As long as they obeyed, it was well with them; as soon as they doubted or disobeyed, disaster overtook them. For the conjunction of Heaven with the earth now depended upon mere forms, and if these forms had been perverted mankind would have perished.

     2) The noon-day and summer of the Israelitish Church began with the conquest of Canaan, extended through the reign of the judges, the high-priests, and the first three kings, culminating in the victories of David and the glory of Solomon, when the first great Temple was raised in Jerusalem, and the worship of Jehovah was fully established.

     3) The decline of the Church set in with the division of the nation into two hostile kingdoms, representing the strife which always arises between faith and charity, between the spiritual and the celestial, when both have been perverted and separated from one another. Israel, or the spiritual kingdom, was finally carried away by Assyria, or false reasoning proceeding from the love of the world; and Judah, or the celestial kingdom, by Babylon, the love of dominion.

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     4) The vastation of the Jewish Church is represented by the seventy years of captivity in Babylon. A temporary Reform took place after the return of the Jews to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. The Law and the Prophets were brought forth from their hiding places, and the Jews became very strict and orthodox indeed, but the spirit of prophecy had died. The people had become a generation of vipers and hypocrites, who rushed from one enormity to another, the terrible story finally culminating in the crucifixion of Innocence Itself. A few years later the Judgment fell upon the insane nation by the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews.

     THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

     1) The rise and morning of the fourth Church took place in the days when the Lord in His Human preached His Gospel of Love to the few simple folks who alone were willing to believe Him. He came not at first to the Gentiles, but to the lost sheep of the children of Israel. After the Ascension of the Lord, the remnant was quickly collected, but was soon compelled to leave forever the doomed Church of the Jews, The Gospel now passed over to the Gentiles, and before the age of the apostles closed it had been preached in every part of the Roman Empire.

     2) In the midst of relentless persecutions Christianity grew like a young giant, and the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. Nor was the growth merely external, for the Gospel of Love produced a new charity and a new life among those who received it, and Christian Theology for a time gave promise of increasing light. This halcyon state of primitive Christianity lasted about two hundred years.

     3) From the beginning the Christian Church had been infested with heresies of various kinds, and as the Church grew the heresies increased in number and virulence to the detriment of the primitive charity and purity of doctrine. The sufferings of the martyrs created sympathy and caused multitudes to enter the Church through persuasion rather than rational conviction. When the persecutions ceased and Christianity was established at the imperial court, the Church became the highway to political influence and power, and the ancient Roman love of dominion took universal possession of the Church. Councils were assembled to force dogmas upon the conscience of men.

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At the first of these general meetings, held at Nicaea in the year 325, the Godhead was divided into three persons, and at the seventh and last ecumenical Council, again held at Nicaea, in the year 787, the worship of images was formally sanctioned. Thus tritheism and idolatry were established throughout the Christian Church, and the Dark Ages followed, with the rule of the Scarlet Woman enthroned in the city of the seven hills.

     4) In the middle of the night a cock-crow was heard in Germany, and a Reformation took place in preparation for the final Judgment. The Word of God was liberated from the prison house of the Roman Catholic Church, but as a whole, the Reformation miscarried. All the false dogmas of the Councils remained in full force, and to them was added the doctrine of instantaneous salvation by faith alone, without charity and good works. Thus the sun of charity was darkened, and the moon of faith no longer gave its light. All spiritual life now died in the Christian Church, and finally, in the year 1757, the Last Judgment fell upon it in the spiritual world. The imaginary heavens of Christian hypocrites were thrown down into hell by the Revelation of the Lord in the spiritual sense of His Word. The simple good spirits who for ages had been held captive under the altar were now released and formed into a New Heaven from which, in time, a New Church could be produced upon the earth. The Old Christian Church still remains in this world as an external institution, but its dogmas are crumbling and its power broken forever.

     THE NEW CHURCH.

     The declining life-story of the Church having been completed, an everlasting ascent has now commenced. A new and unending Church has dawned, the Age to which all the past Ages have looked forward as the fulfillment of prophecy.

     The conception of this New Church was effected by means of the Second Advent of the Lord in the power and glory of His opened Word. The Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem was revealed in the inspired Writings of the servant of the Lord, Emanuel Swedenborg, but its Advent was perceived at first only by a few faithful shepherds watching over their flocks in the night. A few wise men also came to worship the newborn Light in the Word.

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Gradually a few disciples were gathered, but as soon as the presence of the New Church was perceived in the world of spirits; the crew of the Dragon began its assaults. Persecutions from without soon gave place to more insidious attacks from within the ranks of the New Church itself. All the heresies and all the evil forces from the dead Churches of the past will unite in the endeavor to devour the woman with the Man child, but their assaults will be vain, for the Lord has come in the power of His glorified Human and will remain with His New Church for ever. Human organizations in the New Church may have their rise and decline, but the New Church itself will never pass away, for the Divine Truth of the Word has been revealed in a form so rational and self-evidencing, that it can never be extinguished among men who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to be kindled by the fire of Divine Love.

This New Church will at first, and perhaps for ages, remain among a few in the Christian world, but as these few remain faithful to the Light, and pass it on to posterity, the Church will gradually increase among many, who in each generation will come into clearer and purer light and life. And in time this Light will come also to those who now are gentiles, and among them it will be established in a fulness and glory of which we as yet can have no conception. It will then become on earth what it is in Heaven.

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MARRIAGE OF GOOD AND TRUTH 1912

MARRIAGE OF GOOD AND TRUTH Rev. ALFRED ACTON 1912

"And if thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee, for it is better for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from the, for it is better for thee that one of thy members should perish attn not thy whole body should be cast into hell." (MATTH. V:29-30.)

     In the words preceding those of our text the Lord taught that the man of the church was to shun anger against the neighbor, that is, the evil of hatred and revenge; that he was to acknowledge the Lord, and that from the enlightenment thus received he was to see and shun the more interior evils that are contained within hatred of the neighbor. Further, the Lord taught that before this was done there could be no conjunction between man and the Lord. "First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Following this the Divine teaching in given that this conjunction must be effected on earth and by means of obedience to the Divine Truth which is here called the Adversary with whom man is to be reconciled while he is in the way with him.

     Then comes the words that immediately precede and, in the spiritual sense, are a part of the text, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you, Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." In these words the Lord teaches concerning the conjunction between God and man, to which what has preceded has served as an introduction; and this teaching, as shown in a former discourse, is that man is conjoined to the Lord when he removes from the world of his imagination the evil delights that oppose this conjunction.

     That conjunction with the Lord is the subject treated of is indicated by the fact that the words concern marriage, by which is signified the marriage of the Lord and the Church; and by the further fact that immediately afterwards come the words of the text, which close with the promise of eternal life for those who obey, and of eternal death for those who do not obey.

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"For it is better that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."

But though in the spiritual sense the subject of the Lord's words is the conjunction of the Lord with man, that is to say, the means by which that conjunction is to be effected, yet, speaking to those who were to form the future Christian Church, the Lord could not reveal this openly; for internal truths could not then have been comprehended, because of the simplicity and ignorance of the people. Therefore, the Lord taught concerning this marriage or this conjunction as it is represented in the natural,-and, therefore, in language and ideas which were comprehensible. This is the reason why, after teaching concerning worship, or the approach to God, the Lord teaches concerning marriage, saying that those who do not in heart shun evils that oppose marriage are in its opposite, and are breakers of the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

But there is a deeper origin of the evil forbidden in this commandment than the external desires of the will;-those desires are the ultimate manifestation of the adulteration of good and the perversion of truth; and those who are in this spiritual adulteration and perversion are necessarily in the corresponding natural evil,-if not in actuality, still in intent; the reverse is also true. This is the real reason why the sphere of the Christian world is an adulterous one. This quality does not spring merely from the loves of the flesh; for these loves exist with every man and every nation; and yet of all the nations of the earth, it is not the heathen that are distinguished for crimes against marriage, but it is the Christian world,-the world in whose possession the Word has been placed, and to whom the Lord is revealed,-and this is the quality of the Christian world because it has denied the Lord and perverted the Word. This denial and perversion is that spiritual adultery whereby the Church which should be the bride of the Lord has become defiled and destroyed; and which is manifested in its corresponding natural evil.

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     In order, therefore, that there may be an internal resistance to the sphere of extra-conjugial love that now fills the Christian world, there must be established on earth a resistance to the spiritual evils that destroy the marriage of good and truth, and the conjunction of the Lord and the Church. Resistance to actual evil in the imagination will deliver man from those loves and introduce him into something of conjugial love,-nay, we are taught that all who make this resistance are in the marriage of good and truth, that is, that within them there is the marriage of good and truth from which alone springs conjugial love in the external or natural man. Yet there cannot be any interior entrance into this marriage of good and truth unless spiritual truths be known and acknowledged. And hence, at the end of a church, when truths have become falsified and goods adulterated and profaned by admixture with evils, when there is darkness as to spiritual things because there is no love of them, then there is little power to resist the overwhelming sphere of evil that streams forth from spirits in the world of spirits and from the spirits of men still on earth. There is always some resistance, for there are always some who lead the life of repentance,-but these are the simple,-they are in ignorance, and, therefore, in obscurity. And, therefore, although they are in the will of good yet they are withheld from internal temptations, in which, because of the obscurity in spiritual truths, they would succumb, because they could not resist more interior evils.

     In the simple and by them the conjugial sphere of heaven is present on earth with its power to resist the sphere of natural adultery; and, indeed, it is because of the presence of the simple good in the Christian world that that sphere is restrained as it is,-that men, whatever the thoughts of their heart, are still held to an external acknowledgment of evil. But the simple, because of their ignorance, cannot, except in the most general way, serve as the medium and basis on earth for the reception of the sphere of resistance to spiritual adultery. While ignorance and darkness reign in the church, there is not present on earth this power to resist the internal evils whose external' manifestations are so manifold around us.

     That there may be this resistance, that there may be on earth the genuine marriage of good and truth, it is necessary that spiritual truth be revealed, that it be seen in light and acknowledged in heart.

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It was not possible to reveal this truth to the men of the Christian Church, even in its beginning when it was as yet unperverted. This was owing partly to the fact that it was first necessary that external knowledge be established,-that the sciences be cultivated to serve as aids and confirmations of spiritual truths, before spiritual truths themselves could be revealed; and partly also because truths could not be revealed to the Christian Church because the Lord foresaw that that Church would come to an end. It was at the end of that Church, when all the truths revealed by the Lord had been interiorly defiled,-but also when the natural sciences had been cultivated, printing had been invented, and political and religious freedom had been established, -it was then and then only, that the Lord could reveal to the simple spiritual truths by which there might be a genuine entrance into the spiritual marriage,-truths by which that marriage might have a genuine, full, and complete existence in the minds of men on earth, truths by which men might enter interiorly into the mysteries of faith, might have interior comprehension of spiritual truths, and might conjoin those truths to the good of life. With this revelation came also the possibility of an internal resistance to the adulterous sphere of the Christian world,- not merely a resistance to the natural evil, but also a resistance to the spiritual evil-the denial of the Lord and the perversion of the Word-that are the spring and active source of the natural evil.

And with this revelation with its possibilities for initiating man interiorly into the marriage of good and truth comes also the possibility of entering into genuine conjugial love. It is because of this that in the New Church where spiritual truths are revealed there is also given the promise of the establishment of genuine conjugial love such as has not been since most ancient times. It is because of this that the work on Conjugial Love has been given to the New Church as a revelation of Divine Truth concerning the marriage of one man with one wife, which is the one and only ultimate of the spiritual marriage of good and truth. And let those who would enter into conjugial love,-who are those who are in the will of entering into the spiritual marriage,-let them read well this book and ponder over it if they would be strengthened to resist the spheres of that evil love-the active manifestations of the sphere of the violation of the spiritual marriage of good and truth.

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It is only from spiritual truth received and acknowledged that there can be genuine and powerful resistance to the internal sphere of adultery which is the sphere of the adulteration of good and the falsification of truth; and as was said, spiritual truths could not be revealed to the first Christian Church because of the darkness of the times. But though it could not be revealed, Yet in a way is was revealed,-that is to say, it was revealed by the Lord, but in language which could not be comprehended as to its internal meaning This revelation concerning the marriage of good and truth which is the genuine origin of conjugial love is what is contained in the words of our text, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast is from thee;. . . if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee. For it is better that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." When the simple in the Christian Church read these words, they could not enter into any internal comprehension of their meaning; but when in their reading there was the acknowledgment that the Lord's Word was holy, then the words were in their minds as the ultimate whereby the angels could be enlightened in spiritual truths. For every word and every image in the mind of man serves to stimulate and excite active thought, whether good or evil, in the spirits by whom he is surrounded.

These words of the Lord were understood by the men who heard them only in their most general meaning, namely, that if a man's members, that is, his eye or hand, were prone or allured to the commission of evil, he must resist their efforts, and, as it were, cast them from him. That the early Christians did not understand these words except in this general sense, and that they had no idea that the Lord meant a literal cutting off of eye or hand, is clear from the facts of the case. For so far from inflicting torments on themselves, they were men busily engaged in their worldly occupations,-as the disciples in their fishing,-and moreover, like the Lord Himself, they were accused of consorting with publicans and sinners.

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But with the decrease of the primitive state of innocence and the entrance of the love of self blinding the eyes, these words began to be understood by some as a literal command; and we have the remarkable spectacle of men actually cutting off eye and hand lest they offend against what they called chastity. And even after this practice was utterly discredited, it yet continued in an internal form, and indeed continues even now, in the immuring of men and women in monasteries, to, as it were, cut off eye and hand lest they offend.

     We need merely mention these things, for it is clear to everyone that no man can be delivered from evil lusts by bodily disfigurement or by self-immolation; and yet, except the meanings we have mentioned, the Christian Church has nothing to offer in explanation of the Lord's words.

     Those words, however, contain the interior arcana respecting marriage, namely, that there can be no interior resistance to adultery, and hence no entrance into genuine conjugial love, except by the entrance into the marriage of good and truth; and that there can be no entrance into this marriage except as man enters into the affection of spiritual truth by the casting off of thoughts and deeds springing from the proprium.

     By the eye is meant the understanding, and by the hand the deed. By the right eye and hand are meant thought and deed from the affection of love, and in the present case from the affection of evil love; for we read that they are to be cast out lest man perish. That eye and hand correspond to thought and deed is manifest. That the right corresponds to affection may be seen from phenomena of the spiritual world and also from the Word. In the spiritual world all quarters take their origin from the Lord who is perpetually in the east. And, therefore, the right with him who faces the Lord is the south, and the left the north,-and the south in the spiritual world is where the wise dwell, that is, those who are in wisdom from the affection of truth,-while in the north are those who are in intelligence from truths learned and who thence acquire the good of obedience. Hence the south or right corresponds in the Word to thought from affection, but the north or left to thought not from love but from obedience; and, in an evil sense, as when the goats were separated from the sheep, the left corresponds to those who are in truths separated from good.

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That the right is the south and the left the north is clear also from the words of David, "The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine, as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them, the north and the right, thou hast created them." (Ps. 89:11, 12.)

     It is thought from affection, and deed from affection, that is, thought and deed from the affection of evil love, that opposes the marriage of good and truth; and it is these that man is commanded to utterly cast out. It is the right eye and hand that are to be cut off and not the left, for the left signifies thought from the understanding, enlightened by the Word, and the left hand signifies deed from the understanding similarly enlightened. It behooves man to think and act from his understanding, but not from the understanding inspired by the affections of the proprium. The natural man gyres from right to left, that is, from affections of merely natural loves to thoughts and deeds inspired by such affections. That is to say, he gyres downwards to the world, for natural loves look only to the body and the world. Indeed, we are taught that the inmost and invisible substances of the brain of an evil man are set in this gyre; and the truth is confirmed when we reflect that all man's voluntary actions are directed by the brain, and that with evil men there is a perpetual striving downwards to the world and to the sensual delights of the body.

     There is here a clear manifestation of a gyre downwards; and that this gyre is a gyre from right to left, is clear when we reflect that by right is signified and actually represented affection,-and the affections of the natural man are evil. It is this gyre that is to be turned, that is, the interiors of man's mind are to be reversed, untwisted, as it were, and turned in the opposite direction, that is, from left to right, or from the understanding of truth to the will of good. And that this is an actual untwisting is clear from the pain and the difficulty we experience in turning the thought to spiritual truths, in holding them so turned, and in resisting the powerful and intrinsic conatus or endeavor that is felt to turn them downwards.

     When man thinks and acts,-whether the act be externally accomplished or not,-when man thinks and acts from the affections of the natural man, that is, from his proprium, he thinks and acts against the Lord and heaven, against the Church and against the conjunction of heaven and the Church, which is the conjunction of the Lord in man's inmost with the Lord as the Divine Truth in his external; this opposition is manifested in the mind by interior denial of the Lord, the perversion of the Word, the adulteration of good, and most ultimately of all, by the turning to extra-conjugial love.

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     The sphere of the conjunction of love and wisdom, or of good and truth, or of spiritual heat and light is the universal sphere that goes forth from the Lord and pervades the universe. For good is the very substance and life of all things, and truth is their form; and the two are eternally together in the inmosts of all creation,-ever preserving all things. This sphere is the universal conjugial sphere. It flows into the soul of man and of every animal and vegetable, and into their bodies, and there presents an image of itself. It flows into and perpetually sustains our natural sun, and the atmospheres that spring therefrom, and present it in an image as the fruitful play and sport of heat and light. With man this sphere is received in his soul and from thence flows into the body when the latter has become mature, and there manifests itself as the love of the sex.

     It may, therefore, be said of every man at the beginning of regeneration, that he is gifted with two loves that are with him an yet are not his, that is, are not yet appropriated to him as his own, namely, conjugial love, or the marriage of the heat and light of heaven, in the inmosts, that is, in his very soul; and the love of the sex implanted in the interiors of the body. The one is given him that he may enter into heavenly happiness; the other that it may serve as the basis, and, as it were, the matrix in which conjugial love may be born from within and stand forth as his own possession.

     Man is set between these two loves that he may appropriate and be ruled by the one or the other as he chooses. By heredity he is inclined to look to the world; the gyres of his mind are hereditarily turned from right to left, from the affections of the proprium to thoughts inspired thereby. But on the other hand, he has the power of elevating his understanding,-of seeing, as it were, from his left eye, and acting with his left hand; and he has also placed before him the Divine Truth which teaches him how he shall think and how he shall act.

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By obedience thereto the gyres of his mind are changed, and there flows from above the marriage of good and truth; and this inspires him with the affection and desire of uniting truth to good in himself,-of uniting to the truth that he has learned, the good of obedience, and as he does this, so good from within flows in and is united to the truths confirmed in the understanding. And then man begins to think and act from heavenly affection, felt as affection in himself; the spiritual affection of truth. This is what is meant by the marriage of good and truth with man,-not that marriage in his inmost soul, for this exists with every man good and evil,-but that marriage as appropriated by the man himself. It is this marriage and this alone that is the origin of conjugial love in the natural mind; for as from this marriage there is an inmost conatus or desire to unite truth to its good and good to its truth, so this marriage flowing into the love of the sex inverts that love so that from being the love of the sex in general, and directed only by the natural, it becomes the love of one of the sex, inspired by the spiritual love of truth, and guided by wisdom. Such a man is a tower of strength in the world; for by him is present and active on earth the power of resistance against the adulterous sphere of the world both internal and external.

If the Divine Truth is not received in the understanding and then loved, man thinks and acts from the loves of the proprium, that is, he sees with his right eye, and acts with his right hand, so that his sight and act offend against spiritual life, which is genuine life. Then the internals of the mind are closed, and the internal sphere of the marriage of good and truth flows in, as it were, only through chinks and crannies, so as to preserve with him the human faculty of elevating his understanding if he will. But as to his own proper mind, that which is himself, he is opposed to this marriage; and what is remarkable, this opposition manifests itself as the actual perversion of truth and adulteration of good, and the actual impulse to that which violates marriage, sometimes the one and sometimes the other and sometimes both. For though with such a man there is no internal acknowledgment of truth still less of the Lord, yet there is apparent or professed acknowledgment; and the truth is thus interiorly defiled by being conjoined to evil affections.

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And again, while there is no genuine acknowledgment of good, or no genuine obedience, yet good is assumed by the external mind, but in the man himself it is adulterated by conjunction with the falses of the imagination springing from evil. The goods and truths which should form man into a church, the Lord's bride, have become adulterated and falsified, and this is the secret spring and nourishing source of the extra-conjugial loves in the natural mind, which act out their crimes on the stage of the world.

"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; if thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee,"-this is the command now revealed in opened form to the man of the New Church; that is, he is to remove from himself all thought and understanding that is inspired by the loves of the natural man and its appearances. From such an understanding comes denial of God, denial of the Lord, denial of the Word, denial of the spiritual world, and the rejection of the life of charity. It is the sphere of this denial operating in the understanding that is to be seen and condemned, that is to say, plucked out, and then to be removed or cast away. And together with it, are to be cast away the deeds that flow from such springs of denial,-deeds which are the speech and actions uttered and wrought in the inner recesses of the mind,-secret speech against God and the Word and in favor of nature and human prudence. These are to be removed because they offend man by taking from him the gift of regeneration. The offending right eye is to be plucked out, and the sight, that is, the thought, is to be derived from an understanding enlightened by Divine Revelation whereby man is confirmed in belief in God, and the Divinity of the Lord, and the holiness of the Word. For it is better to enter the other life maimed as to the natural, that is, with the affections and thoughts of the natural man subdued, and, as it were, cut off, than that those affections shall enter that world to be held in curb by the restraints of hell.

Extra-conjugial loves must indeed be shunned; man must cease to gaze with longing and desire upon the imaginations conjured up by evil lusts.

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But the true source of strength in the combat,- the true origin for the descent and establishment on the earth of love truly conjugial,-is the spiritual affection of truth,-an affection which is commenced by the acknowledgment of truth because it is revealed, and which increases according to man's life. It is desire for this spiritual affection of truth that leads man to approach the Lord, and to read and meditate upon His Word; nay, the reading is itself a prayer for the gift of the affection of truth; and this affection, when received is a sign of conjunction with the Lord and of reception of the conjugial sphere of the marriage of good and truth. But with the prayer must come resistance to the interior sphere of adultery which is the sphere of denial of the Lord and the Word. When there is this then there is internal and thus genuine resistance to all extra-conjugial loves which oppose or destroy the marriage of men. The regenerating man may still feel the power of these loves,-a power which is strengthened by ultimates. But this is for the sake of confirmation in the resistance. For it is a certain truth that so far as there is resistance to the interior sphere of adultery which is the violation of the spiritual marriage of good and truth, so far is that marriage established with man and will descend and manifest itself in the desire for chaste conjugial love,-a love which is ever one with the spiritual affection of truth.

That this affection may be established upon the earth, it has pleased the Lord to institute a New Church in which spiritual truths are now revealed. And with the revelation is given also the promise of the restoration of conjugial love,-a love which will be restored with all who love the spiritual things of the church and do its goods.

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PROVIDENCE AND CALAMITY 1912

PROVIDENCE AND CALAMITY Rev. W. B. CALDWELL 1912

               "For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." (Psalm xci:11, 12.)

     The Divine Providence of the Lord operates both immediately from Himself with men and mediately through the spiritual world. By His immediate presence and influx the Lord gives life itself to man, and also preserves that life in his soul from all possibility of harm and destruction. By His influx through the spiritual world the Lord gives man that life which appears as his own,-the spiritual life of his mind, with its freedom, intelligence and wisdom. But because this gift of spiritual life depends upon man's choice in freedom, the Lord can impart and preserve it with man only to such an extent as man is willing, though at the same time His omnipotent Providence ever guards against such an abuse of that freedom as would bring about man's total destruction.

     The Divine Providence with respect to the spiritual life of every man operates continually to elevate him to heaven and eternal life. This operation is never remitted for a single moment, nor is it absent from the least particular of man's life in the world and to eternity. In every most minute detail Providence is present striving to lead him upward from a lower to a higher condition of spiritual life. It deals with man's own prudence and freedom in a marvelous manner incomprehensible to him. By a thousand things that appear to be accidental Providence is leading him away from the injury and destruction that he would bring upon his own soul, permitting only so much of misfortune as can be turned to good, and preserving man from the full consequences of his own purposes and ambitions, which in themselves are nothing but evil, and can lead to nothing but evil. For the Divine acts ever against the proprium of man, and never with it. And when the man is unwilling that the Lord's Providence should lead him to a blessed eternity in heaven, he is at least preserved from that lowest hell which he of himself would seek.

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     This operation of Providence with respect to man's spiritual life is, as we have said, an operation by influx through the spiritual world, through angels and spirits, who, in their various capacities, are ministers of the Lord to men in the world. Through angels and good spirits the Lord operates to give man with what is good and true, influencing him toward the rejection of the evil and the false, so far as he in his freedom allows. But the evil and the false flow from hell, and are communicated to man by evil spirits flowing into his evil affections, to such an extent as man permits the activity of those affections. Evil spirits from hell desire nothing but harm and destruction to man's spiritual and natural life, and, therefore, the operation of Providence with respect to their influence upon man's life is one of prevention, and of permission only so far as it can be turned to lesser evil, and in the end to good.

     With respect to evil the Divine Providence is Providence,-foresight and also permission. Good alone is provided, evil is foreseen, and is either prevented or permitted. The hells are in every effort to burst forth and commit evil, but they are only permitted to do so to such an extent as good may be produced thereby. And thus "Providence round about the evil of hell is nothing else than a directing and determining of that evil to lesser evil, and so far as possible to good." (A. C. 5155)

     Evil spirits flow into the evils of man's will, endeavoring to excite and augment it, and unless they were withheld they would foment and increase his evil to his utter destruction, body and soul; they would bring upon him every possible form of mental and physical suffering, both through his own win and the will of other men; they would torture and wound him spiritually and naturally. But they are restrained by an omnipotent power, and prevented from causing more of harm to man than is conducive to his spiritual welfare, to the preservation of his free choice, and to his amendment by spiritual and natural temptations.

     And as a means to this prevention it is a provision of the Divine mercy that angels are also present with man, striving to influence him for good, insinuating their spheres of good fortune and happiness, moving him as far as possible to resist the assaults of the hells, moderating and restraining his evil inclinations, and at the same time limiting the activity of evil spirits therein.

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And so far as man is willing they inspire him with faith and confidence in the Lord, with trust in His Providence, and thus with a protection against the infestations of the infernal crew, and a power to resist them when they attack,-when, if possible, they would visit upon him the most direful injuries, and the woe of their own infernal state.

     These angels of mercy never leave man. They are present with him every moment of his life, being near or remote according to his acceptance or rejection of their kind offices. Through them the Lord protects man in every least incident of his earthly life, and ii it were not for this unceasing Providence he would suffer misfortunes and calamities of every kind, small and great, spiritual and natural, at the hands of the devils of hell, whose malice and cupidity are persistent and unrelaxing. "For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."

     It is a truth clearly perceived by the spiritual-minded man that no ill can befall one who puts his trust in the Divine, and who at the same time co-operates with Providence by acting to the best of his ability in every contingency of life. No ill can befall him because, whether his circumstances and condition be sad or happy, unfavorable or prosperous, they still tend toward his eternal good, safety, and peace in the end. From trust in the Divine he regards all evil that befalls him as the only means whereby he may be brought to the good in which he will remain forever. Even the misfortunes the cause of which he cannot trace, and which he calls accidental, he regards as a permission of Providence, as a means to some good end, foreseen and permitted by an omniscient God, who guards him in all his ways. "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows."

     Assurances like this are given in the Word of God to the end that we may learn to ascribe all good to Providence and all evil to hell; also that we may regard all the misfortunes caused by evil as permitted and overruled for a good end.

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For if the Divine Providence regards even the fall of the sparrow, numbers the very hairs of the head, and protects us in our walks lest we stumble and fall, surely it is most particular in its operation with respect to man's spiritual life and eternal welfare, which is important above everything of natural life, and to which every least thing of the natural life looks and prepares. And, therefore, it is a truth that everything unfortunate in man's natural life is permitted for the end of good to his spiritual life.

The natural misfortunes depicted in the Word represent spiritual misfortunes from which man is preserved during the regenerate life. When it is said that man is guarded lest he "dash his foot against a stone" it signifies that he is upheld by the Lord by means of the angels lest he fall away from spiritual life to his eternal injury. The "foot" represents the natural, and when this causes man to stumble, when it leads him astray, the whole man falls.

The greatest of misfortunes is to fall in temptation. For if man does not conquer in temptation no good is brought out of the trial, and he becomes worse than before. And, therefore, the Divine Providence guards lest the man who is in good be led astray by the evil of his natural, and lest evil spirits flow in to cause natural misfortunes that would be detrimental to his spiritual life, though at the same time such misfortunes are permitted as can be the indirect means to good. And also the Lord's Providence guards lest a man be infested by evil spirits and thus led into temptations, if it is foreseen that he would fall in them. When evil spirits come to one who is confirmed in evil they find no resistance to their presence; hence they cannot infest, cannot induce temptation, because the angels that are with such a man find no plane or resting place, no good in him to defend. By this, as it were, automatically, evil men are guarded against profanation, guarded against the state that follows with those who succumb in spiritual temptation. Thus the protecting arm of Providence is over the evil as well as the good. Though profanation cannot always be prevented if a man persist in it, the laws of Providence operate to prevent this as far as possible, and this chiefly by the presence of angels with one who has once been interiorly admitted to the good of the church.

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And this protection against the greatest calamity that can befall a human being is what is meant in the words of our text, "He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."

     The natural man regards as a calamity anything that deprives him of the pleasures of the body and the world,-life itself, riches, honors, and various natural blessings. The loss of these is indeed a trial and affliction to all who suffer it, be they good or evil. But the spiritual man regards the loss in one way, the natural in another. The spiritual man looks to the cause and purpose in any such loss, and thus thinks of the Providence in it, and the use that may be promoted by it. And when he seeks he win find, sooner or later. But the natural man considers only the loss and deprivation to himself and his own, and in his heart ascribes it to a cruel Providence, considering not that the "Lord is good to all," and that "His tender mercies are over all His works."

     Thus every misfortune that overtakes a man presents an opportunity to look to the Divine and acknowledge His Providence, or to deny the Divine and His Providence. Indeed, Providence acts silently and secretly for this very end, that men may be free to ascribe all things to an over-ruling Divine, or to chance, fate, and an unkind Deity. The spiritual man ascribes all good to the Lord, all evil to permission for the sake of some greater good; the natural man believes himself to deserve all good, and curses an unkind fate for all evil that befalls him.

     It is true, however, that misfortunes have one common effect upon both the good and the evil. They check and subdue the desires of the natural man, and thus act as a suppressing punishment. "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. . . . Moreover by them is Thy servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward." (Psalm 19:9-11.) When the evil of the natural man rises to its height, goes to an extreme, it comes to its punishment,-its judgment; for when it exceeds bounds it destroys equilibrium, introducing a state of disorder which cannot last.

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And it frequently happens that this judgment is brought about by external means such as misfortunes, which deprive the natural of its delight, placing a check upon its freedom, and thereby restoring man's spiritual equilibrium and balance, bringing him back to a state in which he can shun evil in freedom if he is willing, bringing him to a self-examination and repentance, which with the spiritual man is sincere and permanent, with the merely natural man compulsory and temporary. And, therefore, no one is necessarily reformed by natural misfortunes, even though with the regenerate they are indirectly the means of emendation, being the ultimate form of spiritual temptations.

Now while it is a truth that no essential ill can befall the good man, it is also true that both good and evil men are let into common misfortunes. With many this fact is a stumbling block to belief in a Divine Providence. But on this subject we are instructed in the Heavenly Doctrines, as follows: "I have spoken with angelic spirits concerning the misfortunes of the faithful, who, as is known, suffer equally with the unfaithful, and still more. The cause stated was that some of them are thereby let into temptations, others for the end that they may not attribute good to themselves; for if they were excepted, they would then attribute it to their own goodness; thus they would ascribe merit and righteousness to themselves. That this may not be done, they, equally as others, are let into common misfortunes, and like others, suffer loss as to life, and as to wealth and possessions. But if they were not of such a quality as to attribute good to themselves, they would often be excepted from common misfortune. Thus there are hidden causes which act. For it is known that when misfortune is at hand many of the faithful think of their own good, and that they ought to be spared on account of the good they have done; and if they were spared, they would glory in the idea that it was because they are good, and thus they would cast it up to the evil; consequently they would ascribe good to themselves." (DIAR. MIN. 4630)

When, therefore, we are told in the text, and elsewhere in the Word, that the good are preserved from misfortune, we must also admit to the rational view the truth that they often suffer alike with the evil, though always to their spiritual good fortune in the end. For the Divine Providence regards what is eternal, and never what is only of time except for the sake of the eternal.

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     Furthermore, it is a truth that the Providence of the Lord regards primarily the good of many, and the good of a few only for the sake of many, which in reality is for the good of all in the end. It often happens in the course of natural events that the good of a greater number, and thus a larger and more lasting good, can be brought about only by the temporary misfortune of a few. In wars, for example, a few perish on the battlefield for the good of a whole nation,-the good of that nation in the present and in the future.

     Every war, and every great disturbance and calamity in the natural world, ultimates the overthrow of some gigantic evil in the spiritual world, ultimates a conflict between the forces of good from the Lord and the forces of evil from hell, and results in some great good brought about by the overthrow and complete subjugation of some hell that has burst its bonds for a time, to threaten the destruction of heavenly order, perhaps in the form of an imaginary heaven invading the heaven of angels. Such imaginary heavens are continually forming on earth also,-human works in which there is more of pride and selfishness than love of the neighbor. And these must from time to time he broken up by a judgment, the scene of which is chiefly in the spiritual world, but the signs and results of which are seen upon earth. Like storms in nature they are followed by periods of order, Peace and security,-benefits which could not be provided for mankind without a temporary loss and calamity to a few.

     In the light of rational truth, therefore, the man of the Church forms the habit of looking to the Providence that is in all things great and small, the direct Providence in all things essentially good, the indirect Providence in the permission of things evil and calamitous. In all things he perceives a confirmation of his faith in the Lord's infinite and eternal purpose of good to all men, whatsoever may be the appearance of the means employed, which belong to His unsearchable Divine Wisdom.

     In the light of such a rational faith we may see that nothing is ever destroyed that is essential to the stability of the universe, or to the eternal uses of Divine order. In reality nothing in the universe can perish. What appears as destruction is the transformation of forms into other forms that can better serve the uses of Providence.

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Nothing is ever really lost, not even a devil of hell. He lives to eternity that he may serve some use in the economy of Divine order.

In the light of rational faith in Providence we may see that all misfortunes whatsoever, whether they are the result of human carelessness or deliberate intent; whether they are caused by the operations of nature, and are called accidental; whether they are spiritual or natural; are caused by an influx from hell, but are over-ruled by the Lord for some good,-some good that could not otherwise be brought about. The Writings of the Church bring us abundant testimony to the truth of this. There is no natural calamity but has a spiritual cause, and that cause in the hells, which break their bondage and flow into the world of spirits, giving rise to spiritual spheres of misfortunes and destruction, prevailing for a time over the sphere of good inflowing from heaven,-prevailing just so long as it is foreseen by the Lord that some good may eventually result. And when such spheres of hell are also permitted to inflow and operate in the sphere of nature, or through the will of man, then natural calamities occur,-but only when it is foreseen that a greater good may come by means of them. It is thus that infestation is caused in the regenerate life, for the sake of man's spiritual good. He must be "led into temptation" that he may be "delivered from evil."

There are those who attribute misfortune to the Divine, saying that the Divine is the cause because He does not avert them. All merely natural men do this in heart. But the truth is that misfortunes of the most direful kind are constantly averted by the Divine. Every man of himself would rush into calamities indescribable were he not withheld every moment by the Divine power of the Lord. But that some misfortunes are not averted by the Divine omnipotence is because the Divine wisdom ever regards the end, which is the reformation of mankind in freedom, which requires equilibrium between evil and good, and necessarily involves the permission of evil,-the permission to will evil, and to do evil within certain limits. Misfortunes, therefore, cannot always be averted without destroying the end, which is the salvation of the human race in freedom, though they are averted by the omnipotence of the Lord when that freedom itself is endangered by the preponderance of evil.

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Men in their limited vision cannot always discern what good is intended by the misfortunes that are permitted by providence. What the natural man regards as a misfortune often is a great blessing in disguise. The loss of some natural blessing often is the gain of some spiritual blessing. Indeed, every man must suffer the loss of the natural that he may gain the spiritual, and when he has achieved this, he will regard the loss of it as the greatest of calamities. "And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear. Fear him, which after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him." (Luke 12:4, 5.)

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NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

Editorial Department.

At a recent meeting of the Swedish Academy of Sciences Professor Nathorst exhibited lantern slides illustrating among other things "Swedenborg's fossil tree and trunk," preserved in the State Museum, and referred to them as "the first specimen collected by a Swedish investigator." We have heard of the "Swedenborg whale," whose bones reside in Upsala, but we never before heard of the "Swedenborg fossil tree. " Small pieces of this great rarity have recently been presented by Prof. Nathorst to the London Swedenborg Society and to the Academy of the New Church.
NYTT LIF 1912

NYTT LIF Editor 1912

"NYTT LIF," (New Life), is the title of a four-page Swedish American New Church monthly, edited and published by the enthusiastic New Church missionary in Minneapolis, the Rev. Axel Lundeberg, who writes as eloquently and vigorously in English as in Swedish. The two issues thus far published must be regarded as very successful efforts to spread a general knowledge of the Heavenly Doctrine among Swedenborg's numerous countrymen in the new world, and from a literary and cultural point of view they leave nothing to be desired. Being himself a convert from Unitarianism and Skepticism the editor especially directs his artillery against all kinds of materialists. Here is a sample of his style in dealing with "Ernest Haeckel's vain attempt to solve the problem of the universe"

"He who in the least degree has investigated modern Psychology, cannot but marvel at the matchless assurance with which Hackel dispatches as solved problems questions of which he is as ignorant as the savages of Africa, nay, more so, for the latter at least possess some idea of the existence of a higher world. One hardly knows whether to weep or laugh when reading the desperate and fruitless attempts of the great prophet of materialism to explain away his own soul and to convince the world that he himself is nothing but a dressed-up ape sitting in a professorial chair and writing lengthy harangues on things known and unknown to him."

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This kind of talk reminds us of August Strindberg and certainly will not put the reader to sleep. We hope Mr. Lundeberg will keep up his aggressive campaign and that his readers will be numerous. The price of his journal is but fifty cents a year, and may be ordered through the Academy Book Room.

     Our readers will be interested in the following review of Miss Beekman's recent work, in the MESSENGER of May 1st:

     "THE KINGDOM OF THE DIVINE PROCEEDING is the striking title of a new book by Miss Lillian G. Beekman. No less striking is the cover, a greenish black, with the title printed in white ink. Is this intended to be emblematic of the light of the Divine Proceeding upon the dark background of man's ignorance?

     "Miss Beekman has made a name for herself as a close student of Swedenborg's philosophical writings, and of their correlation with modern science. In the present little book she makes an attempt to fix the conclusions of Swedenborg, the philosopher, concerning the origin of the world, its elemental kingdom and its continued sustentation, into the statements of Swedenborg, the revelator, on the same subjects. She takes the reader by the hand and leads him from the pinnacle of present-day science to the lofty regions of Swedenborg's philosophy.

     "Her frequent references to both series of Swedenborg's writings, the philosophical and the theological, open up new vistas even to the student of Swedenborg and stimulate him to further researches. And among the rest he will find that though he may have studied the PRINCIPIA, yet if he has neglected the little work ON THE INFINITE, published by Swedenborg simultaneously with the large work, he has failed to grasp thoroughly the Christian principles that governed Swedenborg even as a man of science and philosophy.

     "THE KINGDOM OF THE DIVINE PROCEEDING covers eighty-two pages 8vo, and is published by the Academy Book Room, Bryn Athyn, Pa., at fifty cents."

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THIRD VOLUME OF SWEDENBORG'S MINOR SCIENTIFIC WORKS 1912

THIRD VOLUME OF SWEDENBORG'S MINOR SCIENTIFIC WORKS E. E. I 1912

     After an interval of three years, the third volume of the series of Swedenborg's scientific works in the original tongues, has appeared. According to the original plan, this volume would have ended the series to be published under the auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. But the interest aroused since the inception of this plan, has induced the Royal Academy to continue publishing all the other scientific works.

     More than two-thirds of the present volume is taken up with the [1] Principles of Natural Things, [2] iron and Fire, and [3] Finding of Longitude, which works besides being published in Swedenborg's time were also translated into English by Dr. Strutt and published under the name of Swedenborg's Chemistry in 1874, [4] The Essence of Nature, (Discours emellan Mechaniquen och Chymien om naturens wasende), a dialogue between mechanism and chemistry, as well as [5] the Stoppage of the Earth (En ny theorie om jordens of stannande) appear for the first time in print.

     We note also the appearance of a new work on the retardation of the earth's motion, which has never been chronicled* in any bibliography of Swedenborg's work, the [6] En ny mening om jordens och planeternas Gang och Stand, etc. The manuscript of this work "is in the possession of Jarl Emberg, Esq., Stockholm, and has been in his family for many years, having originally come into its possession through Secretary Von Kochen, an official of the time of Charles XII." The title of this new work is similar to [7] the Earth's Revelation, also included in this volume, which has already appeared in an English translation by Disa May, published in 1900.
     * Except by Mr. Alfred H. Stroh.

     Three other works included in this volume have already appeared in English translations, in the NEW PHILOSOPHY. They are [8] Fire and Colors, [9] Corpuscular Philosophy, and [10] Causes of Things.

     [11] The Artificia nova mechanica receptacula navalia, et aggeres aquaficos construendi, was published in 1721 with the Finding of Longitudes, but has never been translated.

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Ten of the eleven works in this volume were written during the years 1717-1721. The Corpuscular Philosophy was written twenty years later.

The preface and introduction to this volume are from the pen of the editor, Mr. A. H. Stroh. Under the caption, "The Sources of Swedenborg's Early Philosophy of Nature," Mr. Stroh gives a painstaking, scholarly review of the Cartesian controversy at Upsala, followed by a comparison of Swedenborg's philosophy with the philosophies of Descartes, Newton, and Polhem in regard to the constitution of matter, a vacuum, light and color. In regard to the constitution of matter, he shows that Swedenborg believed in an atomic theory, although divorced from the usually accompanying fallacies of a vacuum and an indivisible ultimate atom. E. E. I.
DIVINE ARCHEOLOGY 1912

DIVINE ARCHEOLOGY Editor 1912

The modern science of Archeology is one of the most evident results of the Last Great Judgment which took place in the spiritual world in the year 1757. The Lord in His glorified human appeared in the "clouds of heaven" when the internal sense of the Word was revealed through Emanuel Swedenborg. The Divinely rational truths of the new revelation set free the "souls under the altar" from the bonds of ancient dogma and deception, and as by a mighty east wind cast down the imaginary heavens of Catholic and Protestant tyranny. A new and genuine Christian heaven was formed, through which the heavens of the Lord's Ancient Churches could freely flow down to bless mankind with the treasures of the Ages of Silver and Gold. To their influence chiefly is due the new interest in hoary antiquity which stirs the modern world.

On the earth the first effects of the Last Judgment were seen and heard in the crash of ruined despotisms. The downfall of the Jesuit dominion was the first to herald the era of spiritual freedom. The American Revolution next established upon the earth the first home of complete religious liberty.

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The French Revolution, following, shook Roman Babylon to its foundations and under the aegis of the Corsican spread far and wide the cry for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

     Incidental to Napoleon's triumphant progress was the French occupation of Egypt in the year 1799,-the most useful result of which was the discovery at Rosetta of a stone which proved to be the very key that had been wanting for ages to unlock the rusty portals of ancient Egypt. The science of Egyptology arose like a Phoenix from ruined temples and buried tombs and at once struck a tremendous blow at the literal interpretation of Scripture by demonstrating the impossibility of the time-honored chronology which had limited the history of the human race to six thousand years.

     Some forty years later the world was again startled by the resurrection of ancient Nineveh from the mounds of Kuyunjik, and the science of Assyriology suddenly took its place beside that of Egyptology. The results to Religion were even more important than the discoveries in Egypt, for now, from Nineveh and Arbela, from Babylon, Nippur, and Ur of the Chaldeans, there came to light a mass of documents very closely related to the Biblical accounts of Creation, Paradise, the Fall and the Flood,-stories so ancient that a new school of Biblical Criticism claimed for them an antiquity greater than that of the Bible itself.

     Further and further back reached the chronological claims of Babylonia and Chaldea,-to six, seven, even ten thousand years before our era. Ancient Egypt was found to be but a child of Chaldea, with Ethiopia, Libya and Phoenicia as branches of the same stock. The civilization of China and of the whole Mongolian race was traced back to the banks of the Euphrates. The brotherhood of all nations was established in many surprising ways, for the study of Sanskrit lore proved the common origin of Latin and Teuton, Celt and Slav, with branches of dusky brethren in Afghanistan and India. Thus the materials of Archeology accumulated in bewildering abundance, and towards the end of the nineteenth century still another forgotten civilization was unearthed in Syria and Asia Minor,-the empire of the ancient Hittites, whose secrets still continue to baffle the learned world. And synchronously with all these discoveries the geologists dug up from the strata of the earth the new science of Paleontology, with its paleolithic and neolithic men claiming for the human race an antiquity of untold ages.

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     But with all this enormous wealth of new knowledges and sciences the modern world must still confess its disappointment in the continued absence of-light! Paleontology has tried in vain to trace the descent of man to an "anthropoid" ape, but no "missing link" has ever been found, and as to the origin of man the learned world is as much in the dark as ever. Egyptology and Assyriology discovered the essentially and intensely religious nature of the ancient civilizations on the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates, but as to the meaning of these religions the professors admit themselves at a loss. The more they study, the more multiple, complex and confusing appear the endless lists of divinities, with ever changing names, and with symbols and attributes closely interwoven and yet distinct. Archeologists and students of comparative Mythology are in despair at the apparent impossibility of constructing any intelligible systems out of this rope of innumerable particles of scientific sand.

     To that serene Faith which is the bulwark of human happiness, modern science has brought no increase of light or of confirmatory strength. It has only served to tear Christianity from the ancient moorings of Divine Revelation, and the churches are drifting helplessly on an ocean of doubt and confusion. The "good old book" which in past ages was looked' to for the explanation of all mysteries of faith and science, has been rejected as a stupendous compilation of successive forgeries, and there is no longer any certainty as to the common source of tradition and legend, myth and religion. That there was such a common source every rational student admits, but where it is to be found, or how it is to be understood, the learned world knows not.

     And yet the Light that is wanting to co-ordinate and explain the facts of Archeology and kindred sciences, was revealed even before the era of modern discoveries was ushered in. At the middle of the eighteenth century there was published at London a work in eight quarto volumes, entitled ARCANA COELESTIA, QUE IN SCRIPTURA SACRA SEU VERBO DOMINI SUNT, DETECTA, "The Heavenly Mysteries which are in the Sacred Scripture or the Word of the Lord, disclosed."

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The author of this work, one of the foremost scientific men of his age, frankly stated that he had written, not from human light and learning, but from immediate Divine inspiration. This confession at once brought upon Emanuel Swedenborg the incredulity, contempt and ridicule of the learned and the religious worlds, and in this attitude they have persisted until the present day, steadily refusing even to open the book in which they could, if they would, find the solution to all the problems that now bewilder them.

     For in the first volume of this work there are revealed whole aeons of human history, the very existence of which have been forgotten by historians since the days of Herodotus, remaining only in the fabulous classic legends of Golden and Silver Ages to which no modern scientist pays serious attention. But in the ARCANA COELESTIA the historic existence of these traditional ages is demonstrated with mathematical precision and consistency by means of a new or, rather, rediscovered science,-the Science of Correspondences,-which in ancient times was the "science of sciences." And this Divine Archeology, reaching back to the very birth of mankind, was not dug up out of ruins and dust heaps, nor yet out of the strata of the earth, but out of a mine of infinite wealth,-the Word of God in the Sacred Scriptures.

     Within the literal sense of these Scriptures there are depths beneath depths of interior meanings and hidden senses, by a series of discrete degrees referring first to the general religious history of mankind, then more universally to the religious life or every individual man, and, inmostly in every single word, to the Divine life of our Lord and Savior.

     In the series of papers on the Golden Age, which is introduced in the present issue of New CHURCH LIFE by a general survey of the Successive Dispensations, we deal only with that interior sense which lies nearest to the surface of the letter,-the Internal Historical Sense of the Word as contained in the opening chapters of GENESIS, and as now disclosed in the first volume of the ARCANA COELESTIA, revealing the history of the Lord's Most Ancient Church among the men of this earth, the Church of Adam, the Church of the Golden Age. We can present here only an outline of this history; for fuller details the reader must go to the Divine Revelation itself, which every discovery of modern science serves but to confirm, and with which every tradition or myth of antiquity falls into harmonious and illustrative lines.

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AS SOME OTHERS SEE US 1912

AS SOME OTHERS SEE US Editor 1912

     Several years ago a lovely old New Church lady said to me that the chief thing that hindered the growth of the New Church was New Church people. As I looked admiringly at my charming friend I thought she could never have hindered any one, and I also thought that I was not of consequence enough to have either helped or hindered any one. With more experience I have come nearer to my beautiful old friend's opinion.

     We are too self-satisfied, too anxious to keep to our own kind, too aware of how much we know, too stylish, too anxious to stand well with the world and with society, too selfish. At least that is the way we appear to common people, people who need New Church doctrine that they may apply it to their lives and so walk in the way of salvation.

     For example: I have been told by those who certainly appeared average bright that they could not learn New Church doctrines nor attend with profit New Church services because they could not understand what the New Church teaches. Oh, for the ability to speak plainly and simply enough to be understood even by the unlearned and by children! And I was told, when about to remove to a place near a New Church house of worship, that that church was the most aristocratic in the town, common, uneducated, poor folks (like myself) never went there!

     Some people that I met in a manufacturing town asked me my church preferences. On my telling them they replied: "Swedenborgians we know about them. The mill owner where we used to live was one. There was a chapel and regular services at the place."

     "Did you ever attend?"

     "Oh, no," was the surprised and amused reply; "no one but his family and their friends and visitors ever did. It wasn't for the likes of us."

     Of course, those mill people were greatly mistaken; but, I wonder if the owner of the mill had tried to enlighten them.

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And I know they needed New Church truth to shape their lives by, just as you and I do.

     A young girl who did housework in a New Church family became interested enough to attend our church and Sunday School a few times.

     "But," she finished in telling me about it, "I really could not keep it up; the girls in the Sunday School class snubbed me so because I was a kitchen girl."

     Those girls were dependent upon their fathers, while my friend was helping hers to bring up a large family of children. Don't you think she ought to have been encouraged that she might receive strength and comfort from New Church truth! (MESSENGER, May 1st.)
"CONJUGAL" AND "CONJUGIAL" 1912

"CONJUGAL" AND "CONJUGIAL" Rev. LEWIS F. HITE.* 1912

     * In the New Church Review for April, 1912.

     The difference in the meaning of the terms "conjugal" and "conjugial" has given rise in the New Church to some discussion and perhaps to some confusion of thought. So far as the writer is aware no explanation has been given based upon exact scientific analysis and at the same time in the light of the New Church doctrines.

     Conjugalis, the Latin form of "conjugial," is a denominative adjective, formed by adding the adjective-making suffix -alis to conjugio-, the stem of conjugizlm, the o disappearing according
to the law of noun stems before a suffix beginning with a vowel.

     Conjugium is a verbal noun formed by adding the suffix -ium of result to the verb-stem conjuga-, making a noun that designates the condition or state resulting from the action named by the verb. Hence conjugium is a noun of resulting condition; and, from a slightly different point of view, it is the name of the state in which the verb's action is realized.

     Conjugium is properly applied to the marriage union regarded as a state of interior life resulting from the personal union of husband and wife.

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     Conjuga is a derivative verb from the root conjug-, designating the general notion of joining together. Conjuga has the special meaning of joining some one to oneself by marriage rites.

     Conjugalis, the Latin form of "conjugal," is a denominative adjective, formed by adding -alis, the adjective suffix of characteristic, to conjug-, the stem of the noun conjux, which designates the person joined with another in marriage, and so properly a consort, either husband or wife. Conjugalis, therefore, designates what belongs to, or relates to, the person so joined. It has reference to the personal relations of those joined together. Conjugalis can be paraphrased as meaning "characteristic of the conjux," or consort. Conjugal love, then, would mean personal love, and so natural love.

     Conjugialis, on the other hand, designates what belongs to, or relates to, the resulting condition brought about by the joining; or to the state in which the end of the joining is realized. It implies a reference to this state. The periphrasis of conjugialis would be, "characteristic of the conjugium," that is, the marriage union. Conjugial love accordingly is the love which characterizes the state in which the ends of marriage are realized.

     The word "marriage" is a translation of both conjugalis and conjugialis. Marriage love may be either conjugal love, that is, personal, natural love,-or conjugial love, the love that binds the inmost souls of husband and wife.

     The New Church doctrines distinguish between the merely personal love and genuine conjugial love. Personal love may be merely natural; but conjugial love is always and essentially spiritual. Personal love may have its origin in various personal affinities, or in mere sensual sexual passion; but conjugial love has its origin in the union of love and wisdom in the Lord. Marriage in the truest and highest sense exists only in the Lord as the union of Love and Wisdom. Human marriage is a progressive realization of this union of love and wisdom. Men and women are created with the capacity and the inclination to unite in this progressive realization. The difference of sex is traceable ultimately to the difference in the way the man and the woman receive the Divine life of love and wisdom in their souls. The man receives love and wisdom in the effort to be wise; the woman receives love and wisdom in the effort to appropriate the wisdom of the man.

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The capacity for union between the two, lies in the mutual dependence and co-operation of these two forms of effort. The effort to be wise is supported by recognition and appropriation; the effort to appropriate is stimulated by increase of opportunity. As a result of the union, the man grows more wise, and the woman more loving. This is a very abstract characterization, but it points to a bond in the internal' and essential natures of the man and the woman. This bond Swedenborg calls "conjugial love" (amor conjugialis) and often "the conjugial" (conjugiale). The task of the reader and translator of Swedenborg is to understand clearly, and to put into English, the meaning of this term conjugiale.

     First as to the contrast between conjugiale and "conjugal," we have the following:

     Love truly conjugial is here treated of, and not the common love which is also called conjugal, and with some is-no other than limited sex love. But love truly conjugial is with those only who earnestly desire wisdom, and therefore progress more and more into it. (Conjugial Love, n. 98.)

     Conjugial love proper, then, is an accompaniment of wisdom, and develops with wisdom. It is essentially different in origin and quality from conjugal love, the ordinary sexual love. Conjugial love comes from an inner principle of spiritual union. This inner principle Swedenborg calls "the conjugial" (conjugiale). What, then, is the principle? We have the direct answer to this question as follows:

     It is the desire of living with one only wife. And it is in the Christian man according to his religion. (Conjugial Love, n. 80.)

     The human conjugial and religion go together at every step. Every advance, even every step from religion and in religion, is also an advance and step from the conjugial and in the conjugiai that is peculiar to the Christian man. (Ibid.)

     This conjugial is otherwise described as the inclination to love one of the sex and the faculty for receiving that love; and these are implanted in Christians by creation. We read:

     The reason why the inclination to love one of the sex, and also the faculty for receiving that love, is implanted in Christians from birth, is because the love is from the Lord alone, and is become a matter of religion. (Conjugial Love, n. 466.)

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     Translators have tried to avoid the cognate word "conjugial" as the equivalent of conjugiale, by using such phrases as "the desire for marriage," "marriage love," "the marriage principle," and so on. Perhaps "the conjugial principle" is as near an equivalent as is attainable; unless indeed we adopt directly the word conjugiale itself, and keep the word "marriage" strictly to the translation of conjugium.

     Swedenborg was quite deliberate in his choice of the neuter adjective instead of the abstract noun; and our translations suffer by neglecting his preference,-as they do, for instance, when they translate bonum and verum, "goodness" and "truth." Swedenborg's constant contention is, that the good and the true are not abstraction, but actual concrete forms of life.

     Accordingly conjugiale is the name of an active essential power of the soul. It is an element in man's spiritual constitution, and the fundamental spiritual element of his nature. It is the source of his religion, his morality, his intelligence, and all his joys when these are pure and unperverted. To put it otherwise, it is the fundamental of all human loves. It is the original essence of human life. Man's will and understanding, with all their functions and powers, grow out of it. It is a complex and immensely rich mental and spiritual fact. From it proceed attitudes, tendencies, thoughts, desires, purposes, and in truth the whole body of life's energies. It is "the precious pearl of human life, and the repository of the Christian religion." (Conjugial Love, n. 157)

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BABYLONIAN LITTLE ONES 1912

BABYLONIAN LITTLE ONES ALFRED E. FRIEND 1912

     Communicated

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     Your editorial in the February issue, entitled "Reading the Word without Omissions," contains a reference to Psalm 137, v. 9, "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rock" or "stone," the internal sense of which is given as, that the life of "the budding affections of the love of self" should be dashed out "against the stone of Divine Truth," where evidently "rock" or "stone" is made to stand for Divine Truth.

     I beg to submit that the internal sense given is wrong, and finds no support in the Writings, although the usually accepted interpretation of the passage is the one you give.

     The spiritual sense of these words is given in A. E. 41127 where we are instructed that the "rock" in this place denotes "the ruling falsity of evil," the very opposite to Divine Truth, and the meaning is made clearer when instead of "dasheth" we read "disperseth;" the Concordance translates "scattereth." A parallel passage is to be found in Isa. 2, v. 20.

     Those who would so carefully pick and choose from Divine Revelation for the reading of others surely forget that the Lord's Word is "like a fire and like a hammer that scattereth the rock." (Isa. 23:29.) See again A. E. 411:24.
     Yours faithfully,
          ALFRED E. FRIEND.

     REPLY.

     The passage in the APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED to which our correspondent refers, reads as follows:

     "'Happy is he who shall seize and shatter thy babes against the cliff.' (Ps. 137:9.) 'Babes' here do not mean babes, but falsities springing up; for Babylon is here treated of, which signifies falsities of evil destroying the Church's truths of good; the destruction of these is signified by 'shattering them against the cliff;'-the 'cliff' signifying the ruling falsity of evil, and to 'shatter' signifying to destroy.

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He who abides in the mere sense of the letter of the Word and who does not think beyond it, can easily be led to believe that he is called 'happy' who does this with the babes of his enemies, when yet that would be an enormous crime, but he is called 'happy' who disperses the falsities of evil springing up in the Church, which are here signified by the 'babes of Babylon.' " (A. E. 411:27)

This passage,-the only one in the Writings explaining the internal sense of this text,-seems rather obscure and contradictory at first view, but a closer inspection shows that the "babes of Babylon" are treated of first in a good and then in an evil sense. In a good sense they signify "the Church's truths of good" which [in Babylon] are destroyed by the "cliff" of its ruling falsity of evil. In an evil sense the same "babes" signify "the falsities of evil springing up in the Church," and he is called "happy" who disperses them. It is self-evident that in this connection the "cliff" is used in a good sense, meaning the truth of good, for this alone can disperse falsities of evil.-ED.
MISUNDERSTANDING 1912

MISUNDERSTANDING ARTHUR B. WELLS 1912

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     I wish to answer a few of the editorial queries appended to Mr. Alfred Stroh's communication printed in the May issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE.

     You ask on page 314, "When, where, and by whom have Swedenborg's earlier works been elevated into a position of well nigh infallible authority,". . . etc.? I would answer: in Bryn Athyn from 1906 to the present time by several New Church ministers, the most ardent advocate being in my estimation the Rev. E. E. Iungerich.

     On page 315 you refer to the SPIRITUAL DIARY, no. 222, and on page 316 you ask why the first aura of the PRINCIPIA should not be regarded as prior to the spiritual sun. If you will study number 222 of the SPIRITUAL DIARY carefully you will notice that the first aura is spoken of as originating from the sun of the natural world and that it, together with the other three atmospheres, is called natural.
     Respectfully yours,
          ARTHUR B. WELLS.
               Fields Sta., Pa., May 5, 1912.

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ANSWER.

Our question as to "When, where, and by whom," etc., had reference to public utterances; with views privately expressed, the LIFE, as a public journal, has nothing to do. If our correspondent will carefully study our question on p. 316, he will find that we in no wise suggested that the first aura of the PRINCIPIA should be regarded as prior to the Spiritual Sun, but that the latter was created from the Infinite itself.-ED.

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Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. The spring meeting of the Bryn Athyn Church was devoted as usual to a consideration of the Parish School and its work. This time the subject upon which the teachers gave reports was the teaching of morals in the various classes and in connection with the different subjects. The papers were inspiring and suggestive, largely, no doubt, because they sprang fresh from the field of daily experience, and were well illustrated by examples. I cannot resist giving just a few of the things emphasized by the different teachers to give the flavor of the meeting. Kindergarten: Giving up to each other. Grade I: Prompt obedience, order, example of teacher. Grades II and III: Hero worship, interdependence of nations and individuals. Grade IV: Spheres, preparation of state, chivalry, personal influence of teacher. Grades V and VI: Motives, power of choice and practice, acts from habits of courtesy. Grades VII and VIII: The power of the teacher, and sources of inspiration. Necessity of all concerned working together. Good order at all times. Moral stimulus of literature.

     Besides the papers the Rev. Richard DeCharms outlined a few of the many lessons suggested by actions and characters in the letter of the Word. The importance of music in stirring the affections, and of art work in begetting an appreciation of beauty and balance, also of manual training for initiative, industry and the cultivation of thought from some affection of use, were in turn adverted to by the respective teachers in each field.

     The Bishop in summing up called attention to the fact that what saves a man is a moral life from religion and not, as it is so often taught, apart from religion.

     On May Day the younger children held a Maypole dance and marched down the road to lay garlands at the door of the Bishop and of the newly married pair.

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The little children who were hearing the story of Ulysses, gave a dramatization of leading incidents, which made up in sincerity and action whatever may have been wanting in elocution or artistic finish. The costumes and accessories were all made by them.

     Mrs. Colley gave a recital by the children, singly and in chorus, and later, gave also a farewell recital to the children, assisted by her daughter and several of her older pupils. It was a double treat, for they not only gave the music, but Mrs. Colley gave us a vivid picture of what each piece meant and its setting. "Anitra's Dance," for instance, means a lot more when you see in your mind's eye the Arabs sitting about, with camels and tents as a background, a rug upon the sand and the sheikh's daughter swaying to the tune of the pipes.

     The Civic and Social Club held another Saturday evening dance, which was furnished with a good program and good music.

     The local branch of the Librarians' Association met recently in Bryn Athyn. Prof. Odhner laid before the thirty visitors a view of Swedenborg's life and work. Miss Amena Pendleton's paper on "Folklore for Children" was much appreciated.

     Mr. and Mrs. Heath provided us with a rattling good play, "Fanchion, the Cricket." Mrs. Heath herself played the Cricket, and the entire company, which was unusually well balanced, gave a meritorious presentation in every part. It is indeed remarkable what this couple, imbued with a strong love for this use and thoroughly trained and experienced themselves, have been able to do with amateur material. There must be native ability in the said "material," too. Can we hope to develop a real musical, artistic and dramatic tradition and sphere here? This is what we are striving for by all the means so providentially offered.

     Among the other "goings on" here, perhaps we ought not to omit mention of the "nature walks," the trips to Memorial Hall, Horticultural Hall and the Zoo, of various classes with their teachers. Picnic lunches are again in demand, and the canoe fleet has reappeared in force upon the paradise reflected in the Pennypack.

     In connection with the Phi Alpha dance we had the pleasure of seeing the faces of several of the former students, notably Mr. Homer Schoenberger, of Pittsburgh, and Mr. Geoffrey Childs, of New York.

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     Mr. Walter Childs also looked in upon us, and Miss Lucy Boggess, of Middleport, made a brief visit. But our most distinguished visitors, both by reason al age and long service to the Church, were Mrs. S. Coffin, of Arbutus, Md., and the Rev. O. L. Barler, of Beatrice, Nebraska. A reception to Mr. Barler and the local clergymen was tendered by Mr. John Pitcairn. Mr. Barler has many old friends here, but for others it was the first meeting.

     Some two score of our friends went in to the city recently to attend the annual meeting of the Swedenborg Scientific Association. The papers were unusually suggestive and interesting. The meeting was notable also from the presence there of both the President of Convention and the Bishop of the General Church. Both addressed the meeting upon the importance of the study of Swedenborg's earlier works.     H. S.

     SCHOOL LETTER.

     Perhaps your readers, Mr. Editor, at least that ever-increasing number of them who have been here, would enjoy a few random notes, both grave and gay, about the current happenings in and about the Academy Schools.

     Bryn Athynites know that our main sustenance is derived from certain aerial and ethereal chyles interstitially circumfluent in the circumambient atmosphere, and hence our students pay very little attention, as a rule, to the more crass infilling materia of the table,-but one day, rumor has it, the Dorm boys determined to see how it would feel to have just one real good fill. Now a "boy's fill" is a most illusive mystery, a sort of nirvana, which is often dreamed of but never actually realized. However, they did their best with chicken and oyster stuffing, etc., etc., all at a cost of some 37-1/2 cents per plate. How near is heaven in our youth!

     So far no casualties have been reported.

     Speaking of heaven reminds one of the fairy dance given by the "Deka" recently. A certain member of the faculty, going at 11 o'clock to see what had become of his daughter, caught a glimpse of a leafy cavern opening downward, with the legend, "Fairyland," flaming over the entrance.

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At the bottom was a suddenly dissolving view very like fairy opera, with beauty and music and laughter floating up around the corner. It does seem as if all the best things in this life are always just "around the corner!"

It is curious how in these April days, (the calendar says May, but do not be misled), sunshine and shadow chase each other across the landscape. This week two highly trained teachers, (strangers), who came out to visit our Schools, and the County Superintendent, went away full of praise, not only of the strong spirit of unity of purpose pervading our schools, and the evident mental activity shown in the classes, but also of the courtesy and seemly behavior which they noticed. This was timely, as it helped us over the discouragement of the week before, when at a men's meeting we were shown how some of the boys occasionally fall below our standards. Probably both these views are correct, and yet both are needed to complete the picture of a devoted and loyal institution, doing its best and yet not closing its eyes to the seriousness of its problems and defects. Speaking of problems, there are two or three very much in evidence here just now which would be of great interest to the friends of the New Church education, if space permitted a statement of them. First is the desirability of having the Seminary students located where they could pursue their round of work and play without being at all times in contact with or under observation of the adolescent boys. You cannot give young people the best preparation for life in a social vacuum, of course, but too much sociability is worse than none at this age. Another grave problem is that of supplying trained teachers for the College. The Normal School supplemented by outside training is beginning to bear fruit in the Elementary Schools and in the Seminary, but as yet no young men seem to be definitely training themselves for the teaching profession. So far our reliance has been mainly upon college and university training in subject matter, but even the teachers so trained are difficult to hold, owing to the inadequacy of the salaries. Meanwhile we have twenty-six names on the list of paid teachers. On the other hand, the office, library, janitors, dining hall, and outside force carries a total of twenty-seven names, together with a greater number of men and horses used from time to time on day work.

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In other words, we have the spiritual requisites and the physical or ultimate paraphernalia must completely and generously provided for. What we lack now is for our graduates and others to get into action, and send in both students and money, as their own means increase. This is bound to come, but meanwhile, as can be seen from the above, the very completeness of our equipment is drawing heavily upon our resources.

Talk about "audacious!" Our new Library building has certainly set a high standard for us to live up to. Instead of one Book Room agent keeping his eye on a coagulated mass of undigested books through a window, we now have a professional librarian with a force of six trained assistants, shaking things out of their cocoons, spreading their beauties wide on many shelve and through many departments, thoroughly analyzing and classifying every volume and every page. And all the while it is growing like a new born butterfly! Perhaps this is because we have spent such long years longing, needing, hoping that some future day Providence would open up to us the possibilities and the instrumentalities that are now at our very hand. And the realization is so much better than even our fondest dreams! ALUMNUS.

PHILADELPHIA, PA. The Advent church has enjoyed another season of quiet activity. The attendance at the Sunday services hardly varies except for an occasional visitor or two. Three new members have been enrolled, one through the gate of baptism, and two, Mr. Arthol and Miss Evelyn Soderberg, with the rite of Coming of Age. The most substantial growth has been in the attendance at our Thursday evening doctrinal class and supper. The patient and persistent work of Mr. Fred. Cooper with the singing practice, is showing very gratifying results in our services. The church social held in April also gave us some of the pleasant results of the Sunday evenings occasionally spent by the younger set in a musical way. There was also one "real swell" dance for this same set in March. Perhaps we ought to put the emphasis this time upon the development of the Sunday School, which is led by Mr. Sam Simons.

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Situated as we are, we feel that our future must come largely out of this work, and the zeal and study put into it by all concerned, have set it fairly upon its feet. During the year the children have become thoroughly versed in the topography, tribal divisions, etc., of the land of Canaan, besides some general ideas of the holy significance of that land. Mr. Will Cooper has also taught them to read and recite the First Commandment in Hebrew. Their singing is a pleasure to hear. With such good work being done it seems too bad that we have not more children to receive the benefit. Few or many, however, they must be furnished with those precious "few things" which the Lord can afterwards increase to a bountiful harvest. H. S.

     ABINGTON, MASS. On Sunday, April 28th, Dorothy Waitstill Freeman, third child and first daughter of Mr. and Mrs. B. R. Freeman, was baptized at the morning service. Dorothy Waitstill is our second "Academy baby" in New England.

     It afforded the friends of the General Church great pleasure to receive a visit from the Rev. W. H. Alden, and enjoy his service on the morning of the fifth of May. G. M. L.

     CHICAGO, ILL. On Sunday afternoon, March 30th, following the custom we have adopted this year, we had a doctrinal class and supper instead of the usual service. The sphere was peaceful and full of interest. In the class the pastor treated of the subject of Representations, giving an account of those that continually appear to the life in the world of spirits, many being scenes and incidents like those in the letter of the Word, granted spirits to perform and witness for their delight and instruction. Something similar has been attempted in our Church in the form of tableaux, and when properly conducted are of great use, especially to the young.

     At the table, after a bountiful supper, we had the pleasure of listening to a talk on the subject of "Recreation," by Dr. King, who had been invited to add his always-welcome fund of wisdom to our gathering. One point especially impressed us,-that genuine recreation is followed by a longing to return to one's work. The pastor spoke of the fact that the angels also have what may be called spiritual recreation, which is glorification of the Lord.

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During the evening Mr. C. F. Browne, on behalf of the members, presented a little gift of money to Miss Eleanor Lindrooth, in grateful recognition of her very efficient and painstaking work as organist. A vote of thanks also was tendered Mr. Nels Johnson for many hours of affectionate labor bestowed upon the building, making it a neat and pleasant place for our worship and social gatherings.

     On Sunday, April 14th, a special supper was held, preceded by the annual meeting of the Society. Fine weather increased the attendance, and we had a "legal quorum," and more, which has not always been the case in this city of magnificent distances. The meeting opened with an address by the pastor on the subject of "The Spiritual Bond that makes the Church," which proved of great interest. At the supper table three new members were formally received into the Society, swelling our total to 42. The congregation now numbers 89, including 43 children. A number of short speeches gave expression to the feeling that we have made progress, and that we may look forward with encouragement to the future. Special thanks were due the ladies for the excellent menus they had provided. E. V. W.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. The philosophy class has met every Monday night during the month. The Lungs and the Skin were the subjects to which the members were treated. A stereopticon lecture in which special attention was paid to the local birds of the park occurred on the 12th. This was by the Rev. Wm. Caldwell. The next evening was devoted to an entertainment by home talent exclusively. A duo was well rendered by Miss Adah Nelson and Miss Helen Weidinger; Mr. Alec McQueen grave a comic reading, entitled "Fly Paper." Mrs. Junge and two of her charming daughters gave a comic, original, local, personal, topical song of which the words were by Mr. Junge and the music by Miss Elise Junge. A lecture, conversational disquisition of verbal critique upon the play of Macbeth, was given by Dr. King.

     The Friday evening classes have been devoted to the consideration of church buildings in general and in detail.

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The subject was illuminated by ancient history and illustrated by modern instances. Egyptian monoliths, Greek temples, Italian palaces, churches by Inigo Jones, cathedrals by Christopher Wren, and the architecture of the Renaissance were considered; so far as possible teaching from the Writings were given as to the origin of the altar, the repository, the form of basilica, its proper site, its orientation, the approach, the nave, the reredos, the Gallilee porch, and the numerous other particulars that enter into or have entered into or should enter into an ideal church building.

     BERLIN, ONT. Easter celebration in the Carmel church began on the Sunday preceding that day, when the service was commemorative of the Lord's state of humiliation, and the sermon was on the passion of the cross. On Easter Sunday the glorification of the Lord was celebrated, the sermon being on the Lord's resurrection body. In the afternoon the Holy Supper took place, this being preceded by the baptism of an infant.

     On the 26th of April an entertainment was given in the school room. A number of the young ladies presented a play, entitled "The Ladies' Meeting;" songs and recitations were also given by the young people. Afterwards refreshments were sold and a number of money-making devices put in operation. From the whole, the sum of sixty dollars was realized, which goes towards the laying of a new cement sidewalk from the street to the church building; and besides, all much enjoyed the evening.

     May 9th, which is founders' day of the Phi Alpha Fraternity, was suitably celebrated in Berlin. The Berlin Phi Alpha boys gave a dance to the society in honor of the occasion. The school room was prettily decorated with streamers of blue and white on the ceiling, and fraternity pennants on the walls. One of the features of the evening was an orchestra, which added a great deal to everybody's enjoyment. The evening closed with an outburst of school spirit; the boys who have been to Bryn Athyn sang their songs; the girls sang theirs; both sang school songs together; the "yells" were given; as one of the girls remarked, "It was just like being back in dear old Bryn Athyn." The boys were congratulated by all on the success of the event, and the hope was expressed that it might become an annual one. W.

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     TORONTO, ONT. On January 29th we had one of the very best celebrations of Swedenborg's Birthday in our history. Many members were absent, but the papers and speeches were so comprehensive and full of instruction concerning the vital things of life that it was a spiritual feast to those who were able to be present.

     There were two subjects for the evening: "Swedenborg the Servant of the Lord" and "Swedenborg the Philosopher." Cronlund read a paper on the first subject and another on "The Animal Spirit." The marvelously clear and simple explanation, in the latter paper, of our reception of life from the Lord, was a revelation. Such instruction, if reflected upon, must draw us nearer to the Lord and the other world.

     The children held their celebration on the 30th. The Theta Alpha gave them a happy time by taking them for a sleigh ride in High Park, starting at 3:30; providing them with a substantial supper at the church on their return and afterwards entertaining them with games.

     The Theta Alpha gave a very successful masquerade at the church on February 16th. It was amusing to try to guess the well concealed individualities under the pretty, comic, or clever costumes, and the arrival of several young people from Berlin added to the difficulty. Mrs. Wilson won the lady's prize as an Indian maiden, Mr. Lewis Rothaermel the gentlemen's prize for his Hamlet costume, and Mr. Hubert Hyatt as a ghost won the prize for the best concealed identity.

     On the 29th of February our pastor and his wife entertained the young people at their home. The married people of the society were entertained at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Somerville on March 8th. Military euchre was the order of the evening, but after supper followed the usual informal social gathering which New Church people know so well how to appreciate and enjoy.

     We had a pleasant little gathering at the church on the evening of the 12th of March, when we gave a miscellaneous shower for Mr. N. A. Carter and Miss Langlois.

     Mr. Carter and Miss Langlois were married in the church on the afternoon of the 14th. We are glad to welcome Mrs. Carter among us.

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     Beginning on Wednesday, March 20th, Mr. Cronlund commenced the subject of "The Science of Correspondence" in the doctrinal classes.

     An interesting men's meeting was held on April 19th, when the subject for discussion was "The Third Principle of the Academy-the Priesthood."

     One of our young men, Mr. John Longstaff, has left us to take a position in Montreal. We are always sorry to lose any of our number, but he has our good wishes for success in his new sphere of use.

     Two new families have been added to our numbers, Mr. and Mrs. Craigie with their two daughters and little son, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith with their two little girls arrived from England on April 19th. We had the pleasure of welcoming them among us at a social in the church on May 3d, when a delightful sphere prevailed and everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.

     Both these families have received instruction in Academy principles in England, so we receive them as an added strength to our society. B. S.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES The semi-annual meeting of the Massachusetts Association, on April 19th, was attended by It ministers and 59 delegates. The annual address of the general pastor, Rev. James Reed, was entitled "Our Attitude toward Swedenborg's Writings." He showed that occasionally it is necessary for us to review our reasons for the faith that is in us. We cannot inherit faith. Neither can we acquire it from others. When once we have gained the faith that the revelation of the second coming of the Lord is Divine, it is difficult to turn back on it. Mr. Reed dwelt especially on the necessity of taking the affirmative rather than the negative attitude toward the Writings. If there are matters which we do not understand now we can safely hold them in abeyance, confident that some time we may see them clearly. The address was one which was eminently suited to a wide circulation, and the matter of securing such circulation was placed in the hands of a committee.

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     The publication office of the NEW CHURCH MESSENGER and the headquarters of the New Church in Chicago, including the rooms of the Western New Church Union, have been removed to the Steinway Hall Building, 64 East Van Buren Street. This is the building located on the site of the old Van Buren Street Church. The Steinway Hall Building itself was formerly owned by the Chicago Society.

     "Not content with sending out to the President of the United States, Government and State officials, Senators and members of Congress, ministers and laymen of the New Church, and others, his pamphlet, entitled A Menace to Public Morality, Mr. Rudolph Williams has followed up the pamphlet with a personal letter to the Governors of fourteen States calling their attention to our organization as a public menace. And yet Mr. Williams persists in remaining a member of the organization and chooses to advertise himself as such; when he must know how objectionable his membership is, and that in the eyes of nearly all in the Church he is regarded as one of its most persistent and least worthy enemies." (NEW CHURCH MESSENGER, May 1st.)

     The Rev. Hiram Vrooman has tendered his resignation as Pastor of the Providence Society and is to take up his residence at Crystola, Colo. Mr. Vrooman is president of the Co-Workers Fraternity Co., an organization with educational purposes, which expects to start an important educational work at Crystola. Mr. Vrooman goes to look after these interests. Mr. Vrooman states that he is by no means leaving the ministry of the New Church, but on the contrary, thinks that his plans will enable him to render a much larger service to the church than if he remained in Providence.

     The Rev. B. Edmiston, for nearly thirty-two years the pastor of the society in Riverside, Cal., has recently resigned from this charge, owing to the infirmities of old age.

     The Rev. Clyde W. Broomell, who resigned the pastorate of the Roxbury Society, in Boston, in order to accept the invitation of the Convention's Board of Missions to take up a three year's campaign in Texas, began regular work in San Antonio at the end of November, 1911. The resident New Church people in that city have recently organized themselves into an incorporated Society with a charter membership of fourteen.

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Regular Sunday services, morning and evening, are held in the hall of the Woman's Club, with congregations ranging from thirty to fifty. A bequest of $20,000 was recently left to the Convention for the purpose or New Church work in Texas, and specifically providing that half of it should go to work in San Antonio and half to El Paso, provided again that the former has a membership of fifty within five years, and that the latter place have a membership of fifty within ten years. In view of these "strings" tied to the bequest, Mr. Broomell is concentrating all his efforts on the work in San Antonio, where, he feels confident the requisite membership call be gathered together within one year.

GREAT BRITAIN. A lecture on "Swedenborg's Philosophy in the Light of Modern Science" was delivered on March 26th by Prof. Sir W. F. Barrett, F. R. S., under the auspices of the Swedenborg Society, at the rooms of the Royal Society of British Artists, in Suffolk Street, London, Count Wrangel, the Swedish Minister, presiding. The lecture was profoundly appreciated throughout, but does not seem to have created the great stir in the learned world that many had anticipated.

The Rev. Henry Maclagan died at London, February 27th, at the age of eighty-three years. Mr. Maclagan was introduced into the New Church through a short-hand correspondence with Isaac Pitman, and served for many years as leader of the Society in Newcastle, but was not ordained into the ministry until the year 1890. His most valuable contribution to the literature of the Church are his series of Commentaries on the Scriptures, in which the Internal Sense is explained seriatim in parallel columns with the literal sense. Of these Commentaries he published THE TWO BOOKS OF KINGS, (1905), and, just before his death, THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS. Further volumes, dealing with NUMBERS and DEUTERONOMY are in the press. These works consist entirely of extracts from the Writings. H. S.

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Rooms and Board at the Bryn Athyn Inn 1912

Rooms and Board at the Bryn Athyn Inn Various 1912

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     For terms, apply to MISS C. A. HOBART, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

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ORIGIN OF MAN 1912

ORIGIN OF MAN C. TH. ODHNER 1912

Time was when to doubt the scientific accuracy of the time-honored ecclesiastical theory of the creation of the world and of the origin of man, meant temporal persecution, accompanied with the threat of eternal damnation. From this spiritual slavery, which had lasted a thousand years, mankind was set free, once and forever, by the Last Great Judgment.

Human science then with a mighty bound cast off the shackles by which it had been fettered since the beginning of the Dark Ages, but at the same time it also cast away faith in everything that could not be established by the evidence of the senses. The ancient Hebrew Book, which so long had been made to serve as the prison house of human reason, now came to be looked upon with distrust, then with anger and hatred. Its literal inspiration and Divine authority were rejected in the light of the astounding discoveries of Geology, Anthropology, Comparative Anatomy, Biology, and all the other new sciences. The biblical story of creation in six days by a Divine fiat was scoffed at as an ancient Semitic myth now fit only for the nursery. The universe, it was found, was not ruled by any teleological wisdom of Divine Love, but by self-established Natural Laws, and as the chief of these the Law of Evolution was enthroned in the place of a personal God.

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     THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

     Organic life, as well as inorganic substance and form, was recognized as subject to perpetual change, variation, progress and development. The idea of any discrete and impassable degrees between the species and genera and kingdoms of nature was rejected in view of the ever multiplying discoveries of approximations of organic forms. All definite boundaries were broker down, and plants and animals became one in the unbroken chain of self-created and self-evolving biological phenomena.

     Man, the final and crowning link of this chain of evolution, was hailed as the most highly developed genus of animal life. Far from having been created in a state of human perfection, far from having degenerated by a subsequent general "fall," mankind throughout its history had experienced nothing but a continuous and triumphant march of progress and ascent. When first appearing in the "infallible" Record of the Rocks, man had been a savage of the lowest type, removed but a step from his immediate ancestor, the "anthropoid ape" or "Lemurian man," whose remains, unfortunately, have not yet been found, though his reconstructed image may be seen in papier-m?ch? in the university museums. Upward, ever upward, by natural and sexual selection and the survival of the fittest, from protoplasmic cell, through slime and mud, through all the vegetable forms and the stages of fishes, reptiles, birds and beasts, through Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, the changeful amoeba continued its unbroken progress. Not quite unbroken, however! The evolution was checked for a time by certain unfortunate mistakes. Somewhere in its progress the man-animal was seized with a desire for everlasting life and therefore invented the notion of existence after death; next he created the idea of an infinite God, and, finally, some unscrupulous God-worshipper manufactured an alleged Divine Revelation.

     These things, for some thousand of years, retarded the natural evolution of the species, but have now at last been removed by science, and mankind is once more free to return to its soul-less, God-less and Word-less animalism. Sometime in the future, perhaps only after countless aeons, there will evolve from the present homo a glorious being as far superior to the present man as the latter is to his tail-less simian ancestor,-unless universal race-suicide or the extinction of solar heat intervenes.

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     THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION.

     Modern evolution, after all, is not very far removed from its mother, the old orthodoxy. Like the latter it begins its story of creation from-nothing. "Of the causes which have led to the origination of living matter," says Huxley, its high priest, "it may be said that we know absolutely nothing." And with equal frankness the evolutionists admit that as to the future of the human race they know nothing. If they know nothing of the beginning and nothing of the end, we may well question the infallibility of their knowledge of the intermediate steps.

     It must be freely admitted, however, that the great school of evolutionists, in their enthusiasm for the only working hypothesis ever offered to them, has brought to light not only an immense mass of valuable facts, but also many apparent general truths, which on the surface, at least, bear a resemblance to the verities revealed to the New Church. The Newchurchman recognizes that the term Evolution is synonymous with Development, and that the theory of the Evolution of species and of the animal descent of man is based on actual and universal appearances which can be explained only by the Doctrine of Series and Degrees. Swedenborg, a hundred years before Darwin, taught that primeval man appeared like an animal and lived like an animal, but was not an animal any more than a creeping infant of today is actually a beast. Nor does the Newchurchman quarrel with the theory of an original Stone Age, for stone was undoubtedly the most common material for human implements in the days before Tubal-Cain became the "instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." (GEN. 4:22.) The man of the Golden Age was a Paleolithic man, like his ancestor, the Preadamite, but the use of stone implements by no means proves him either an animal or a ferocious savage.

     As far as cranial measurements may be trusted to establish intellectual capacity, the most archaic skulls yet found exhibit the Paleolithic man as a gentleman of remarkable intelligence, as far superior to the ape as the average modern European or American, while his drawings on rock or ivory prove him an artist of no mean ability.*

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Whether the men of the Old Stone Age were the true primeval men not, the record of the rocks by no means establishes the theory of his animal descent. This theory, moreover, is based on so many negations, assumptions, uncertainties and missing links, that it is now beginning to be doubted by the foremost men of science. The evolutionists committed a fatal error when admitting only the mute evidence of dead rocks and bones, while refusing to admit not only the witness of Divine Revelation but also the testimony of man himself in his own behalf,-the testimony of language, history, and universal human tradition.
     * On this subject see the papers of D. Gath Whitley in the PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW, October, 1906, and in the RECORDS OF THE PAST, 1909, pp. 39, 83.

     THE WITNESS OF DIVINE REVELATION.

     From its own memory, indeed, humanity cannot possibly know anything as to its creation and earliest infancy, for, as with the individual so with the race, the memory of beginnings is lost in the oblivion of unconsciousness. But as the individual remembers that which he was told by his parents, so the race, as a whole, in every corner of the earth retains more or less obscurely the memory of that original instruction which was once given by the First Parent, the Maker who alone is able to reveal the manner of His work. This Divine instruction is still extant, containing in its bosom not only infinite spiritual verities as to the interior creation,-that is, the regeneration,-of man, but also a wealth of natural truths in regard to the creation and earliest history of mankind, truths for ages forgotten and unsuspected until revealed anew by the Lord in His Second Coming.

     In the letter of the Word we learn briefly that "God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." And we learn further that Jehovah God formed man, dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."

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     SWEDENBORG'S DOCTRINE OF THE CREATION OF MAN.

     On the basis of this Divine instruction it was given to Swedenborg to develop a Doctrine of Creation, the central idea of which is that of the "breath" of God, i. e., the creation of the universe and of the earth and of all life upon it by means of the atmospheres proceeding from Him as the Sun of the spiritual world. While we cannot enter here upon a study of the Doctrine of Creation* as a whole, we note the following general principles in regard to the creation of man.
     * For a summary of this Doctrine see the OUTLINES OF SWEDENBORG'S COSMOLOGY, by Lillian G. Beekman, Bryn Athyn, Pa., 1907.

     A DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING SWEDENBORG'S DOCTRINE OF FORMS AND DEGREES.

Forms          Human degrees          Elements               Motions

Divine     God man               First Natural Point     Pure Conatus
Spiritual     Human Soul               First Aura               Animatory
Celestial     Intellectual Mind          Second Aura               Animatory
Vortical     Animus               Ether                    Axillary or central
Spiral     External Sensories     Air                    Axillary or central
Circular     Body and Blood-vessels     Water                    Undulatory
Angular     Bones                    Minerals               Local and tremulatory

     I. The human soul was created by means of a membranous precipitation in and out of the bullular substance of the universal atmosphere of the spiritual world. Immediately proceeding from the Infinite God-Man, this supreme aura in its least elements conveys His finite image and likeness. This alone is what makes our soul human and immortal and differentiates it from the souls of animals and plants, all of which have their inmost origin in lower atmospheres.

     II. This inmost vessel of human life was further enclosed in a series of coverings formed in and out of the three successive atmospheres of the natural world,-the solar aura, the ether, and the air,-providing the lower planes upon which the intermediate degrees of the human mind could be built up by subsequent life and education in the world. Thus a complete human seed was produced, containing within itself, in potency, the whole human form with all its successive degrees and faculties, lacking now only the ultimate degree of forms.

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     III. This ultimate degree is the angular form, the form of rest and inertia, which could be provided only by the salts and chemicals of the mineral kingdom, the "dust of the ground." By the infilling or insertion of such angular particles into the interstices of the spherical forms which constitute the spiritual and atmospheric structure of the first human seed, these higher forms reached final materialization, fixation and ultimate permanence.

     IV. These necessary angular forms, held in solution in the waters of the earth, were not, as yet, sufficiently accommodated for their infilling service to the human seed, or to the animal kingdom as a whole. A medium was needed whereby these salts and chemicals could be properly refined, sublimated and combined for this supreme service, and this medium was the universal vegetable kingdom in whose laboratory, as is known, the substances of the mineral kingdom are prepared for the use of animals and men.

     V. This infilling mother-service of the vegetable kingdom to the first animal and human seeds could be performed only within individual plants acting as matrices or wombs, in which oviform matter, specially prepared, could receive and conceive the animated seeds begotten of the atmospheres. Between the vegetable and the animal kingdom there is a complete correspondence not only in general but in particular, and thus in the beginning each species of plant served as the matrix and nurse of a corresponding animal seed.

     For the formation of the supreme of animal bodies, which was to contain the soul of immortal man, there was created a most perfect vegetable matrix, a veritable Tree of Life.

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     THE ARBOREAL BIRTH OF MAN.

     Such, in brief, we understand to be the doctrine of the creation of man as found in Swedenborg's philosophical works, and this doctrine is supported by many statements in his later theological Writings. A poetic yet profoundly scientific description of the creation of organic forms is presented in his work on THE WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD, the last in the series of his scientific and philosophical treatises. It is a summary of his whole system of Cosmology, Physiology and Psychology, and he states concerning it that he was told in the spiritual world that "it was a Divine book." (Doc. II, p. 209.)

     According to this sublime prose-poem, organic life began upon the earth with the creation of vegetable seeds in the virgin soil. From these seeds all the subjects of the vegetable kingdom sprang forth, first grasses and herbs, then shrubs, and, finally, trees. All these plants now began to swell with oviform substances which, in turn, became pregnant with animal seeds created within them, and each order of plants gave birth to a corresponding order of animals. From the grasses and herbs came forth the insect world; from the shrubs came the birds of the air, and from the trees came the beasts of the earth. The story continues:

     "But there was still wanting that son of the earth, or that mind under a human form, from which the paradise of the earth might look into the paradise of heaven, and from this look again into that of the earth, and thus from a kind of interior sight could embrace and measure both together, a being who from a genuine fountain of gladness and love could venerate and adore above everything the Bestower and Creator." (n. 30.)

     In the midst of the most temperate region of the orb there was a most beautiful grove, a paradise within a paradise, "in the midst of which, again, there was a fruit tree which bore a small egg, the most precious of all, in which, as a jewel, nature concealed herself with all her powers and stores, to become the initiament of a most consummate body. This fruit tree hence was called the Tree of Life." (n. 32.)

     "Into this little egg, then, the Supreme Mind infused a super-celestial form or soul, which was life capable of containing what is infinite.

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All things of nature now joyously conspired to the birth of this soul into the world. The Tree of Life unfolded its branch into a soft and easy womb; the neighboring trees contributed their sap for its nutrition, and extended their young shoots as arms to support the burden of the leaf-clad mother. All things being ready, the parturient branch gently deposited its burden on the couch underneath, and the Firstborn broke through the bonds of his enclosure."

     "It was midnight, and the constellations, as in applause, glittered with increased brightness upon the first-begotten infant, the hope of the whole human race, reposing with his breast and face upwards, and his tender hands lifted to Heaven, moving also his little lips, venerating his Divine parent with the purest thanksgiving that the workmanship of the world was now completed in himself." (n. 39.)

     Our first mother was created in a similar manner from a tree in a neighboring grove.

     The story of creation, related above, may seem on the surface like a playful allegory, not to be taken as literal scientific truth, but the closer it is studied in the light of universal principles, the more it appeals to our reason, as in harmony both with Divine Revelation and with the facts of science. Swedenborg does not present his theory of the creation of man from a tree as a dogma for the New Church, but as an inevitable conclusion of his whole cosmological system. In the opening pages of his ADVERSARIA,-written immediately after the WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD,-he speaks of the latter as follows:

     "In my treatise on the WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD, Part I., I treated of the origin of the earth, the paradise, and the nativity of Adam, but according to the leading of the understanding and the thread of reason. But since the human intelligence, unless inspired by God, is by no means to be trusted, therefore it is necessary for the sake of verity to compare those things which were presented in the above mentioned little treatise with the things revealed in the Sacred Code . . . ."

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     "When, now, I have sedulously compared these things, I have been astonished at the agreement," but he adds somewhat cautiously: "Whether man was formed immediately out of the earth, and thus did not run through his ages from infancy to youth; or whether he was formed mediately from an egg., etc., is left to the faith of the reader. But since 'one day' signifies an entire space of time, or a cycle of many years, he could also have been born from an egg, and the egg not immediately from the soil of the earth, but mediately by means of the fibers of some vegetable subject or tree, by which the essences which were to pass over into blood, could have been rectified. If so, he would nevertheless have been formed out of the dust of the earth, for whatever runs through the roots or fibers of vegetables, is from the earth." (nos. 9, 10, 15.)

     The idea of the creation of man by means of a tree may seem novel as a philosophical proposition, but was by no means foreign to the conceptions of ancient nations.

     "The traditions of trees that brought forth human beings, and of trees that were in themselves partly human, are current among most of the Aryan and Semitic races, and are also to be found among the Sioux Indians," observes Richard Folkard in his great work on PLANT LORE, LEGENDS AND LYRICS, P. 117, and he gives the following instances of such traditions:

     "In one cosmogony-that of the Iranians-the first human pair are represented as having grown up as a single tree, the fingers or twigs of each one being folded over the other's ears, till the time came when, ripe for separation, they became two sentient beings, and were infused by Ormuzd with distinct human souls." (Ibid., p. I.)

     "The Greeks appear to have cherished a tradition that the first race of men sprang from a cosmogonic Ash. This cloud Ash became personified in their myth as a daughter of Oceanos, named Melia, who married the river-god, Inachos [Noah], and gave birth to Phoroneus, in whom the Peloponnesian legend recognized the fire-bringer and the first man. According to Hesyclicus, however, Phoroneus was not the only mortal to whom the Mother Ash gave birth, for he tells us distinctly that the race of men was 'the fruit of the Ash.'

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Hesiod also repeats the same fable in a somewhat different guise, when he relates how love created the third or brazen race of men out of Ash trees. . . . But besides the Ash, the Greeks would seem to have regarded the Oak as a tree from which the human race had sprung, and to have called Oak trees the first mothers. This belief was shared by the Romans. Thus Virgil speaks:

     "Of nymphs and fawns, and savage men, who took

     Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn Oak?"

     "Juvenal, also, in his sixth satire, alluding to the beginning of the world, speaks of the human race as formed of clay or born of the opening Oak, which thus becomes the mystical mother-tree of mankind, and, like a mother, sustained her offspring with food she herself created." (Ibid., pp. 6, 7.)

     The following is the old Northern story of "Ash and Embla," the Ash and the Elm trees, as told in the EDDAS:

     "One day, as the sons of Bor, [Odhin, Vili and Ve], were walking along the seashore, they found two stems of wood, out of which they shaped a man and a woman. Odhin infused into them life and spirit; Vili endowed them with reason and the power of motion, and Ve gave them speech and features, hearing and vision. The man they called Ash, and the woman, Embla. From these two descend the whole human race, whose assigned dwelling was within Midgard." (Mallet's NORTHERN ANTIQUITIES, P. 406.)

     THE HOME OF PRIMEVAL MAN.

     Whether one couple only, or many simultaneously, were first created, cannot be ascertained, nor whether autochthons appeared in the various parts of the earth, or in one region only. As to the original home of man, the claims of modern science are divided between Western Europe;-the hunting ground of the so-called Paleolithic or pre-glacial man,-and an imaginary "Lemuria," a supposed sunken continent somewhere in the Indian Ocean, where the ape first lost its tail and prehensible feet, and developed human teeth and a sense of humor.

     Dismissing as unproved these learned phantasies, we turn our attention to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean as the well established home of the most ancient civilizations.

395

The Old Stone Age people of Western Europe never developed any history, but Syria, Chaldea and Egypt, before historic times, had gained a civilization to which primeval man could have reached only after millenniums of steady growth. Here also we find remains of an original Stone Age, but far more ancient than that of the European Paleolithic man, whose domesticated animals, moreover, are all of an unmistakably oriental origin. It is a most significant fact that all those inseparable companions of man,-the sheep, the cow, the horse, the dog and the hen,-have their architypes in Western Asia, as do also all the domestic grains and vegetables with the sole exception of some modern American species, such as the potato and the maize.

Everything points to the fact that the Paleolithic men were more or less ignorant Gentiles, living in the outskirts of the contemporary oriental civilizations. The archaic type of their geological surroundings does not prove their superior antiquity, for the strata were not formed simultaneously all over the earth. The geological formations, and the flora and fauna, of Australia and New Zealand of to-day are of the type which North America exhibited perhaps a hundred thousand years ago. All geologists agree that England and France arose out of the sea at a period when the Lebanon mountains were hoary with age. Why, then, insist upon the Paleolithic Englishman and Frenchman as the true type of primeval man?

Climatic conditions also point to the Nile-Euphrates region, and especially the land of Canaan, as the one best fitted for human life in its first infantile state,-a subtropical climate which would afford a steady and moderate heat with an abundance of vegetable food. Instead of being, like Paleolithic man, surrounded by the terrors of encroaching glaciers and ferocious monsters such as the cave-bear, the cave-hyena, the flying dragon, the sword-toothed tiger, etc., the primitive man in Larger Canaan lived in a veritable Paradise, where all things were "very good," as God had made them. For "evil uses were not created by the Lord, but arose together with hell," (D. L. W. 336),-thus after man had fallen from his original celestial state.

396

Whatever be the antiquity of the Saurian monsters unearthed in various parts of the world, it is a significant fact that not the slightest trace of them has been found in that region which Divine Revelation and human tradition unanimously describe as the original home of man. It is in lands of comparatively recent formation, and in them alone, that we find the remains of the gigantic monsters which geologists claim as antedating man. They may, indeed, have preceded man in those lands, but this fact,-if a fact it be,-does not prove that they preceded man in Canaan.*
* For an excellent summary of the long discussion of the question whether evil animals preceded man, see the paper on "'Evolution' or 'Separate Creations,'" by George E. Holman in THE NEW CHURCH QUARTERLY, London, July, 1911.

Purely geological speculations as to the antiquity of man are too uncertain to be of any value. Some claim that man first appeared some forty millions of years ago; others are satisfied with forty thousand years. Not the slightest trace of human remains has been found below the strata of the Tertiary period, but it is not known when those strata were formed in the various parts of the earth. The question is as impossible of solution as it is unimportant to the student of humanity, for history and philosophy are interested in the living conditions, and especially the spiritual conditions, of man, rather than in the mere number of his years.

397

PREADAMITES 1912

PREADAMITES Editor 1912

     "The world has hitherto believed that the creation of heaven and earth, in the first chapter of Genesis, means literally the creation of the universe, and that Adam means the first man of this earth; nor could the world have believed otherwise, in view of the fact that the spiritual and internal sense of the Word has not been disclosed until now." (CORONIS 23.)

     By "the world" in his statement is meant the Jewish Church and the Christian, immersed as they have been almost from the beginning in the shadows of the letter, but to this dead literalism there have been a few notable exceptions among both Jewish and Christian writers.

     The first one to venture upon an allegorical interpretation of the story of creation in Genesis was PHILO JUDAEUS who lived in Alexandria in the time of the Lord. Combining a Jewish knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures with the idealistic doctrines of Plato and a notion of correspondences derived from Egyptian sources, he came Very near to the discovery of a spiritual sense in the Old Testament.

     Paradise to him meant nothing but spiritual perfection, (DE MUNDI OPIF., paragraph 54). The trees that grew in it are the thoughts of the spiritual man. The fruits that they bore are life and knowledge and immortality. The four rivers flowing from one source are the four virtues of prudence, temperance, courage and justice, each derived from the same source of goodness, which goeth forth from Eden, the wisdom of God with man. The tree of life signifies Religion, which alone bestows immortal life to the human soul. (DE ALLEG. I.) Eden, which means "delight," is a symbol of the soul when it sees that which is right, exults in virtue, and prefers the supreme delight-the worship of the One and Only Wise-to the myriads of men's grosser pleasures.

     The allegorical interpretations of Philo were revived among the Christian Fathers of Alexandria, especially Clement and Origen, but this kindling light was soon extinguished in the darkness brought on by the controversies of the Ecumenical Councils.

398

Henceforth Adam and Eve were regarded as literally the first human pair created, nor was there any doubt of this until the year 1655, when Isaac Le Peyrere, a French Protestant writer, published a work in Paris entitled PREADAMITAE, in which, from Scripture and history, he labored to prove the existence of human beings previous to the time of Adam. This was the first time the term "Preadamites" was used, and the idea stirred up a lively controversy in France, Belgium, Holland and England. The book was confiscated by the Catholic authorities and the author was imprisoned and forced to recant his "heresy," but the idea survived and was defended by a number of writers. It is to these latter that Swedenborg refers in the following statement in the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION:

"It is believed by many that by Adam and Eve in the first book of Moses are not meant the men first created, and in proof they have brought forward arguments respecting the Preadamites, drawn from the computations and chronologies of certain Gentile nations, and from the words of Cain, the first-born of Adam, to Jehovah: 'A fugitive and a wanderer I shall be on the earth, so that whosoever findeth me shall slay me.' Therefore Jehovah set a sign upon Cain, lest any one finding him should slay him. (GEN. 4:14, 15.) Afterwards Cain went forth from the presence of Jehovah, and dwelt in the land of Nod, and builded a city. (GEN. 4:16, 17.) Consequently it is maintained that the earth was inhabited before the time of Adam. But by Adam and his wife is meant the Most Ancient Church on this earth." (T. C. R. 466.)

The idea of "Preadamites," therefore, did not originate with Swedenborg, but the idea of Adam standing as the generic name of a Most Ancient Church, an entire dispensation or spiritual civilization, and that the whole creative story contains internally the account of the establishment of this Church through the individual and racial regeneration of the first men,-this was an entirely new conception which was for the first time revealed in the opening chapter of the ARCANA COELESTIA.

399

     I.

     "HEAVEN" OR THE INTERNAL WITH PRIMITIVE MAN.

     "'In the beginning God created heaven and earth.' The Most Ancient time is called 'the beginning.' By the prophets in various places it is called 'the days of antiquity' and also 'the days of eternity.' The 'beginning' also involves the first time when man is regenerated, for he is then born anew and receives life; hence regeneration itself is called the new creation of man. 'Heaven' signifies the internal man, and 'earth' the external man before regeneration." (A. C. 16.)

     Man is literally a creature of heaven and earth, for his soul or internal man is actually formed out of the very substance of heaven, even as his body or external man is formed out of the materials of the earth. The substance of heaven is that universal spiritual aura or atmosphere which first proceeds from the Sun of Life; its constituent elementaries are of a bullular form,-inconceivably minute shells made up of second finites passive, containing within a small volume of first finites in a state of most intense activity. Their animatory or pulsating motion is that of good itself proceeding from the ardor of Divine Love, but tempered by the enclosing shells whose form is that of truth itself, because of absolute order, harmony and elasticity. By this atmosphere of good and truth in corpuscular form the heat and light of the spiritual Sun are accommodated to the reception of angels and spirits; in this aura of absolute elasticity spiritual beings can live and breathe and move; and out of its imperishable substance the human soul is created and endowed with immortality. Hence it is that "heaven" with man,-that is, his soul or internal man,-is a form of order itself.

     It is the universal teaching of the Heavenly Doctrine that "man was created a form of Divine Order, because he was created the image and likeness of God; and because God is Order itself, therefore man was created the image and likeness of order." (T. C. R. 65.) And we are further taught that "God created man from order, in order, and into order." (T. C. R. 71.)

     In him, as the crowning work of creation, was concentrated the order of the entire universe,-in his soul or internal man the order of the heavens, and in his body or external man the order of the whole natural world.

400

     "When man was created, all things of Divine Order were brought together in him, so that he became Divine Order in form, and consequently a heaven in miniature." (H. H. 30.)

     "In man the internal man was formed after the image of heaven, and the external man after the order of the world, and this is why man, by the ancients, was called a microcosm or little world." (H. H. 30 Refs.)

     "I have been told by the angels that man was created according to the form of the three heavens; and that in this way the image of heaven has been impressed upon him, so that man is a little heaven (mikro-ouranos) in the least form; and that this is the source of his correspondence with the heavens." (A. C. 4041.)

     As to his body and physical faculties, also, he was created in and into all that natural order which is still preserved among the lower forms of life which do not possess the power of perverting the order of their creation.

     "If man were without hereditary evil he would be born into the Divine order itself, namely, into love towards the Lord and into love for the neighbor; thus there would be implanted in him all and single things which are of faith; even as animals, which are born into their order, are born into the affections which are natural to them, and then there are in them all the things which are of their life. But when [man turned] against order, then the case was otherwise, indeed." (S. D. MIN. 4635.)

     "If man were imbued with no hereditary evil, the rational would then be born immediately from the marriage of the celestial things of the internal man with his spiritual things, and the faculty of knowing would be born through the rational, so that on coming into the world a man would at once have in himself all the faculty of reason and of knowing, for this would be in accordance with the order of influx, as may be inferred from the fact that all animals whatsoever are born into all the faculty of knowing what is necessary and helpful in securing food, safety, habitation, and procreation, because their nature is in accordance with order. Why, then, is man not born into it, except for the reason that order has been destroyed in him, for he alone is born into no knowledge?" (A. C. 1902.)

401

     "If man were in the order into which he was created, i. e., in love towards the neighbor and in love to the Lord, he, above all animals, would be born not only into scientifics, but also into all spiritual truths and celestial goods, and thus into all wisdom and intelligence; for he is able to think of the Lord, and to be conjoined with him through love, and thus to be elevated to what is Divine and eternal, which is not possible to brute animals; thus man would then be directed by no other than the general influx from the Lord through the spiritual world." (A. C. 6323)

     It is to be noted in these statements that they do not teach that primeval man was created in the full possession of all natural scientifics and spiritual knowledges, but that he was created with the full and unobstructed faculty or ability to receive them as soon as presented to his external senses. An animal, with its instinctive faculty of discrimination, cannot be said to know, a poisonous herb until it meets it in the field. Then, from the sphere of particles surrounding the herb, an animal "instinctively" knows that such an herb is contrary to its affections and thus harmful, while a human being of today would not know this until after painful experiences. All his senses and perceptions have become blunted and perverted through hereditary and acquired evil. When born a man knows not even the way to the mother's breast; and his later instincts, until corrected from without, are all directed to the doing of mischief to himself and others, and he is naturally averse to unselfishness, obedience and every form of order.

     Not so primeval man, the unperverted image and likeness of God. Although when first awakening to consciousness of life, he was empty and void of actual knowledges, there was with him not only a natural instinct or faculty of discriminating between what would be good or evil for his body, but also a corresponding spiritual instinct as to what would be good or evil for his soul. To everything good and true there was an instantaneous "Yea, yea," while to anything evil and false there was as swift and unerring a "Nay, nay."

     Thus both as to soul and as to body, primeval man was the epitome of heaven and earth, and the medium by which both could be united with their One Source.

402

Within his soul he possessed all the virtues of heaven, and within his body all the powers of the natural universe.

     "Man was so created that the Divine things of the Lord may descend through him down to the ultimates of nature, and from the ultimates of nature may ascend to Him; so that man might be a medium that unites the Divine with the world of nature, and the world of nature with the Divine; and that thus the very ultimate of nature might live from the Divine through man as the uniting medium; which would be the case if man had lived according to Divine order." (A. C. 3702:1.)

     "That man was so created is evident from the fact that as to his body he is a little world, for all the arcana of the world of nature are stored within him; for every hidden property there is in the ether and its modifications is stored within the eye; and every property in the air is stored within the ear; and whatever invisible thing floats and acts in the air is in the organ of smell where it is perceived; and whatever invisible thing there is in waters and other fluids is in the organ of taste; and the very changes of state are in the sense of touch everywhere in the body; besides that things still more hidden would be perceived in his interior organs, if his life were in accordance with order. In such a state were the most ancient people, who were celestial men." (A. C. 3702:2)

     Such, then, was the state of "heaven" with them, the state of the internal, or soul, with man at his first creation, and such also was the state of his "earth" or external man, which was formed from, out of, and in correspondence with the internal man.

     It is to be noted that the word "heaven" in Hebrew (shamayirn), is a dual form, meaning, literally, "the two heavens," and this because of the two faculties of will and understanding, created in the image and likeness of the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom.

     With the first man, however, as with His Divine maker and architype, these two faculties were one. While distinct and distinguishable, as substance and form, they were not separate, as after the fall, but one as to every endeavor and activity.

     "Man was so created that the will and the understanding should constitute one mind." (A. C. 2231.)

403

     "From the beginning man was so created that his will and understanding should make a one, so that he should not think one thing and will another, nor will one thing and think another. Such is the state with the celestial, and such it was in the celestial Church which was called 'Man' or 'Adam.'" (A. C. 2930.)

     As substance is the only real thing, and form is only the outward determination and appearance of substance, so the will-or the affection of good,-was with primitive man the ruler of the understanding, while the latter was only the formal outward expression of the will. This will was filled with nothing but love,-the love of God and of the neighbor,-and this love ruled over the whole mind, with nothing to oppose or obstruct it. Created from God out of heaven (caelum), it was a purely celestial, i. e., heavenly mind.

     "The celestial are those who are in the affection of good from good, but the spiritual are those who are in the affection of good from truth. In the beginning all were celestial." (A. C. 2088.)

     II.

     THE "EARTH" OR THE EXTERNAL, WITH PRIMITIVE MAN.

     "And the earth was empty and void, and thick darkness was upon the faces of the abyss.

     As "heaven" was the internal man or soul of the first begotten of the human race, so "the earth" was his external man, his body and rudimentary mind. As with every man when first born, so with the Preadamites this rudimentary mind was in the beginning "empty and void,"-empty of good and void of truth,-before instruction had begun to inform the understanding, and before experience of the Divine Love had awakened the affections of the dormant will. It was a period of unconsciousness and oblivion, the shadows of night covering an abyss of ignorance, before the breaking- of the first gray dawn of spiritual life. (A. C. 17, 18.) This "abyss" (tehom) was the riamat of the ancient Chaldeans, the Chaos of the Greeks, the Ginungagap of the Northmen. In the external man, by itself, there is nothing of good and of truth, except from the internal man. Regeneration consists in bring down "heaven" to the "earth" with man.

404

     "The reformation of the men of the Most Ancient Church is meant by the creation of heaven and earth. That before this there was not any Church, because men were without good and truth, is signified by 'the earth being empty and void;' and that before they had been in dense ignorance, and also in falses, is signified by there being 'darkness upon the faces of the abyss.'" (A. E. 294e.)

     These "falses," with primeval man, were not falsities of evil, for, as yet, there was no evil, but the first fallacious conclusions of half-awakened senses, drawn from appearances, such, for instance, as the revolution of the sun around the earth. Born of the earth, the external sense-life of the Preadamite by nature inclined to the earth, even as his internal man, born of heaven, inclined to its own celestial home. Thus the Creator had established a balance and a freedom in the midst of which the rational mind-all along the line of its gradual development-was to exercise its royal prerogative of an absolute and unlimited power of choice in spiritual things.

     "The rise and morning of the Most Ancient Church is described by man being made or created in the image of God, because every man, when first born, and while an infant, is interiorly an image of God, for the faculty of receiving and applying to himself those things which proceed from God is implanted in him; and since exteriorly he if also formed dust from the earth, and hence there is in him an inclination to lick that dust, like the serpent, (GEN. 3:14), therefore if he remains an external or natural man, and does not become, at the same time, an internal or spiritual man, he destroys the image of God, and puts on the image of the serpent which seduced Adam." (CORONIS 25.)

     In the exercise of their God-given power of choice it was possible for each one of these Preadamites to self-determine the extent of his spiritual development. Each one was free to choose and remain in a lower good, or to pass on to the highest celestial good. In the beginning all were equally infantile, ignorant, simple, and some of them, while of their own choice remaining in this state, were taken to the spiritual world, to form there the most external parts of the future Maximus Homo,-that collective, "Greatest Man," which is composed of the entire human race of the past, now living and working as One Man in the higher world.

405

Swedenborg thus describes his encounter with the spirit of one of these primitive men, (or of one who was in a very similar state):

     "It was shown to me of what quality were the Preadamites, who were regenerated by the Lord, and called Adam.

     "A certain [spirit] spoke with me with a speech such as was not swiftly distinct as is ordinary speech, but in words in which there was but little of life; thus it could be heard what kind of life there was with him. I also heard him speaking when I woke up in the night: he was placed to guard me, and said that the evil ones wished to carry me off; I have heard that such a one is a guard, and that he is not evil, but that he had small residue of life: thus that he was an external man, but that still he had internal things in his externals, though there was but little of the internals. Thus he was not such an external man as those of our own day, in whom externals are separated from internals; but with him there were internal things present, though but little. This was now manifested to me, and thence I could know,-and, indeed, from his speech,-that there was but little of interior life. It was insinuated or said that the Preadamites were such, thus that they were not evil. It was also insinuated and perceived that they then had relation to the hair of the genital members. Whether this one was a Preadamite cannot be known, because the Preadamites lived so many ages ago, and at this day there are very many such; otherwise there would not be correspondences referring to that [genital] hair." (S. D. 3389; their swift inauguration to a more internal life by means of a kind of trituration in the other world, is described in nos. 3390-3399.)

     The "Greatest Man," or the whole of Heaven as one collective Man, is organized into provinces and societies corresponding to all the various organs and organic functions of the individual man. It appears that the Preadamites, i. e., those of them who died while in this first and external state of spiritual development,-collectively perform a function corresponding to use of the hair which covers and protects the organs of reproduction. While most external, this is a noble and celestial use,-the guarding of that upon which depends not only conjugial love itself, but the propagation and hope of the entire race.

406

To the first-born generation the Divine Generator gave no other command and no other use than this: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."

     From the very beginning He who made man male and female, had implanted into the two sexes the universal magnetic attraction toward one another, (C. L. 46), for from the beginning He had created for each masculine half of the human being a corresponding feminine partner, from eternity pre-ordained for him, and to all eternity remaining with him as, indeed, his "better half," Whether in the beginning there was "monogenesis" or "polygenesis," (i. e., the creation of one pair or many couples); whether, according to Plate's idea of the first "androgynous" man, the two were created in each other's arms, or, according to Swedenborg, borne by separate trees in the Garden of Eden,-still there must have been an instantaneous recognition by the conjugial pairs, and the conjugial and propagative impulse was the first truly human affection awakened. Conjugial love, which became the crowning glory of the Lord's Most Ancient Church, was at the same time the most fundamental and ultimate of all human loves, and the guardianship of this love was given as an eternal use to the first-born infants of the human race.

     Infants they were, indeed, though from the first probably of full-grown stature, able to move about and to select the necessities of life, which an abounding nature everywhere held out to them. At first, indeed, they crept upon the ground on all fours, like every infant, but with the continual endeavor to raise the head and the stature from the ground towards heaven:

     "If man were born into the love [into which he was created], he would not be born into a thick darkness of ignorance, as now every man is born, but into a certain light of knowledge and thence intelligence into which also he would quickly come. At first, indeed, he would creep like a quadruped, but with an inherent endeavor to raise himself upon his feet; for however much like a quadruped still he would not turn his face downward to the earth, but forward to heaven, and so he would raise himself so as also to be able to look upward." (D. P. 275)

     While in this lowly estate, they were scarcely to be distinguished from the beasts of the earth, and we are, indeed, told that at first they "lived as wild animals":

407

     "In the preceding chapters [GEN. 1, 2, 3:1-19] it has been treated of the most ancient people, that they were regenerated; first, those who lived as wild animals [qui sicut ferae vixerunt], and who at length became spiritual men; then those who became celestial men, who constituted the Most Ancient Church." (A. C. 286.)

     However much like animals, they were not animals, any more than the creeping infant of today is actually an animal, for unlike any animal there is with him the continual endeavor to raise himself upon his feet, and to look upward from the ground to heaven and to an eternity of progress and development. (T. C. R. 417.) They lived "sicut ferae," indeed, but the word "fera" includes all "living things" and is not confined to "ferocious beasts."

     The recollection of their original beast-like state was deeply impressed upon the early race-memory, and in the subsequent development of celestial innocence and humility it became so vivid that they actually referred to themselves as nothing but animals in comparison with the One Divine Man.

     "The most ancient people knew,-and, when they were in a state of self-humiliation, also acknowledged-that they were nothing but beasts and wild animals, and that they were men solely by virtue of that which they had from the Lord, and therefore they not only likened to beasts and birds, but also termed beasts and birds whatever belonged to themselves." (A. C. 715.)

     This humble acknowledgment was gained especially by a comparison of themselves with that radiant Being who, in primeval times, revealed Himself to them as the Divine Man,-the only truly Human Being who is the Infinite Architype of finite man.

     "To those of the Most Ancient Church, with whom the Lord spoke mouth to month, the Lord appeared as a Man; on this account they called no one 'Man,' except Him and the things which were of Him; neither did they call themselves 'men,' but only those things in themselves-such as every good of love and every truth of faith-which they perceived they had from the Lord. These things they said were 'of a man,' because they were of the Lord." (A. C. 49.)

408

     As these Divinely Human things of the Lord were received by the race on earth, the idea of manhood was extended so as to include in a derivative sense those who had become spiritually as well as naturally the image and likeness of God.

     "That by 'Man' is meant the man of the Most Ancient Church, or the celestial man, was shown above; and, indeed, that the Lord alone is Man, and that from Him every celestial man is man, because His likeness; hence every one who was of the Church, no matter who he was, was called 'man;' and at last this name was applied to every one who, as to the body, appeared as a man, in order to distinguish him from beasts."

     Though "empty and void" of actual good and truth, the creeping animal-like Preadamite was in no sense evil, either by heredity or by actual sin, but he was like a fruitful field, bare as yet of vegetation, but filled with noble seeds sown by the Divine husband-man.

     "If man were born into the love into which he was created, he would not be in any evil, nay, he would not even know what evil in for he who has not been in evil, and hence is not in evil, cannot know what evil is; and if he were told that this or that is evil, he would not believe that such thing were possible. Such was the state of innocence in which were Adam and Eve, his wife; the nakedness for which they did not blush, signified that state. The knowing of evil after the fall is what is meant by the eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." (D. P. 275.)

     Neither in the letter of the Word nor in its internal sense do we find any intimation that primitive man was created in a state of external perfection of culture. Even in the Garden of Eden there were, at first, no arts and sciences, no garments, dwellings, trade or literature; in fact, scarcely anything answering to the modern ideas of "civilization." The absence of these things, however, does not imply a state of savagery or ferocious barbarism, such as modern science is inclined to ascribe to "Paleolithic" man. It will not do to draw conclusions as to his conditions from the state of modern savages, for, according to all ethnological researches, the modern savage has proved to be-not a primitive man in a state of arrested development-but a degenerate descendant of an original higher type.*

409

It is curious that the Evolutionists, who always point to the history of the individual as the epitome of the race, should persist in ascribing savagery to our racial Infancy. Whenever do we find in a newborn babe-a savagery a cunning and murderous cannibal? Why not admit, instead, that primitive man was an innocent child instead of a ferocious half-beast? Paleolithic man may, indeed, have been a hunter, a killer and flesh-eater, but, as has been shown before, Paleolithic man was by no means the original primitive man.
     * The Australian aborigines, for instance, had their origin in the cultured races of the Dravidians of Southern India, as has been proved by Horatio Hall in his LANGUAGE A TEST OF MENTAL CAPACITY (Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. Vol. IX., 1891)

     According to the letter of the Word the killing of animals, even for sacrificial worship, did not begin until after the fall of mankind. With abundance of the fruits of the earth all about, the infant race did not "slay and eat;" there was no need of it, and the tender inclinations derived from the Father of Mercy were utterly opposed to the destruction of life. That the Preadamite was not a flesh-eater Swedenborg teaches in the ARCANA COELESTIA n. 1002:

     "The eating of the flesh of animals, regarded in itself, is something profane, for in the most ancient times they never ate the flesh of any beast or bird, but only seeds, especially bread made from wheat, also the fruits of trees, vegetables, milk and its various products, such as butter.

     "To kill animals and eat their flesh was to them a wickedness, and like wild beasts. They took from them only service and use, as is evident from Genesis 1:29, 30. But in process of time, when men began to be as fierce as wild beasts and even fiercer, they then, for the first time, began to kill animals and eat their flesh; and because man's nature was such, it was permitted him to do this, and is still permitted to this day; and so far as he does it from conscience, so far it is lawful for him, since his conscience is formed of all that he supposes to be true and thus lawful. No one, therefore, is at this day condemned because of eating flesh."

     In concluding this account of the external conditions of primitive man, we take pleasure in quoting the following noble words of the Duke of Argyll:

410

"There is no necessary connection between a state of mere childhood, in respect to knowledge, and a state of 'utter barbarism,'-words which, if they have any definite meaning at all, imply the lowest moral as well as the lowest intellectual condition. Consequently, no proof-if proof there be-that primeval man was ignorant of the industrial arts, can afford the smallest presumption that he was also ignorant of duty or ignorant of God." (PRIMEVAL MAN, pp. 132, 133)

     HOW "HEAVEN" FIRST CAME TO THE "EARTH."

     III.

     Having described the state both of "Heaven," or the internal man, and of the "Earth," or the external man, as in the beginning created by God with the first-born race, we may now proceed to describe briefly how heaven and earth became one with them, and the Church of the Golden Age established among men.

     The purpose of God in creating mankind was to establish in this world an earthly heaven, as a seminary and training school for a life of eternal bliss in the heaven of the higher world. In the beautiful words of the ancient Chaldean legend: "In order to save them, He created mankind, the Merciful One with whom is the calling into life." And salvation could not be given even to these innocent first-born infants, except by the process of regeneration, for, like all their descendants, they were born natural, and within this natural man a new man a spiritual and celestial man, must be born again for eternal life. This spiritual creation or regeneration is what is described in the internal sense of the creation story in Genesis.

     In six days God made heaven and earth, and-"six days thou shalt labor and do all thy work." The number six in this connection signifies spiritual labor, the combat with evil and falsity in the trials and temptations which must precede the Sabbath of eternal peace. With the Preadamites this week of labor was not a combat against actual evil and falsity-for these did not yet exist but a combat against the native tendency of the natural man to gravitate downwards, to live in the senses alone, to seek the lowest good instead of the highest.

411

To overcome this tendency Divine instruction was necessary, and also various vicissitudes, both natural and spiritual, resulting in a vastation of merely natural delights. These, with them, took the place of the temptations experienced by the later race of fallen men. Their regeneration, indeed, was an evolution rather than a revolution,-an unobstructed leading forth of the soul to reign over its yielding natural kingdom; and not, as with us, a desperate struggle with a rebellious kingdom in every corner possessed by the devil and his crew. Nevertheless, with them as with us, regeneration was a gradual process, represented by the six successive days of creation.

     Their first awakening from the night of thick darkness hovering upon the faces of the abyss, is described in the words: "And the Spirit of God moved upon the faces of the waters. And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light."

     "By the Spirit of God is meant the Divine Mercy of the Lord, of which it is said that it 'moves', as the hell upon her eggs, and here upon those things which the Lord stores up with man, and which in the Word are often termed 'remains'; these are knowledges of truth and of good, which never come to the light of day until external things have been vastated. These knowledges are here called the 'faces of the waters.'" (A. C. 19.)

     The tender Mercy of the Lord for His finite images on the earth cannot be described in human language, but a faint suggestion is conveyed in the idea of mother-love hidden in the Hebrew word merachafeth, "moving," a gentle, almost imperceptible but continuous motion, like that of the hen brooding upon her eggs,-the life-awakening motion of the mother's womb. In the Hebrew the word for "mercy" (rechem) is the same with the one for "womb."

     When the first man was created no earthly mother received him in her arms; no earthly father stood by to protect and lead; no heaven of angels surrounded him with the silent but mighty services which all new-born infants ever afterwards have enjoyed. How, then, could they exist, how were they led and cared for? To this question Swedenborg gives the following answer:

     "That the Lord from the first creation of man has led the human race.

412

     "There occurred this delicate doubt: how the first man, and those who were first born, could have existed before the greatest body [of Heaven] was formed? I brought a confirmed answer in a spiritual idea which persuaded, that the first man and those who were first born, were led by no one but the Lord alone; for the Lord is the all in all things, nor is there any effort from the individuals in heaven and in the spiritual world except from the Lord, and this as well before man was born as after he was born, for man, as to all his degrees, existed similarly before his nativity as after it. Without the Lord nothing could have been created, nor exist created, wherefore also He alone sustains the human race, as He did of old. Now He does this by means of angels and spirits, but then He did it immediately, without angels and spirits. For His human race was from the beginning, and for it He has every care." (S. D. 2591.)

     In the sphere of His essential Divine Human, the Human from eternity from which is everything human in heaven and on earth, the Lord led His first-born race immediately from Himself, appeared to them as the Divine Man without the intermediation of angels or spirits, and, indeed, "spoke with them face to face." (A. C. 49.) How this was done, by what veilings the Divine Light was accommodated to their tender eyes, we know not; we only know that it took place, and that there was no other way possible When afterwards an angelic heaven was formed from the spirits of departed men, He used their ministry in His revelations because they needed this service and not because it was impossible for the Almighty to reveal Himself immediately as a Man.

     This first revelation of Him, from eternity was the Light of the world, was in the supreme sense the Light that dawned on the first day of creation. And from the instruction then given there dawned at the same time upon the Preadamite a first recognition of his own darkness and weakness, a realization that he of himself was nothing, but the Lord everything Then, and then only, could he begin his week's "labor" of regeneration, each successive "day:' or state beginning in the obscurity of an "evening" and ending in the more glorious "morning" of a newer and higher day.

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The first step in this new birth was a "dividing of the light from the darkness," an ability to discriminate between genuine truths and mere appearances. Gradually the first fruits of a spiritual life began to show themselves upon the earth of his external life,-first the tender herbs of budding spiritual thought, then nobler and more fruitful shrubs and trees of growing ideas and perceptions, and thus in time there were formed in his mind the two great "luminaries" of charity and faith, for from a natural man, he had now become a spiritual man. But still the "labor" continued, for the celestial sabbath-day had not yet been reached. The preceding state had been largely one of intellectual reformation; now began the regeneration of the will through the awakening of living affections,-first, the affections of knowing, (the fishes of the sea), then the affections of truth, (the birds of the air), and, finally, the affections of good, (the warm-blooded beasts of the earth).

Thus, "in the course of time, by means of instruction, experience, inspiration, and revelation, there was given them to know all the things which were of faith, to which at once there was an inward assent, so that they had a perception of these things because they agreed with their affections." (S. D. MINOR, 4636.)

In this manner, from the purely corporeal and sensual state in which they had been created as to their external man, they became natural-rational men, able to receive and obey the loving mandates of their Teacher. From this level of obedience they rose to the state of the spiritual man who obeys not only because he has been commanded by a beloved Master, but because he himself is profoundly convinced of the beauty and truth of the teaching. And, finally, from this state of spiritual conviction they attained the perfection of the celestial man,-the only man that is truly human,-who not only loves the truth of the Lord's words, but immediately perceives and loves the good thereof, the supreme good which is eternal salvation. And thus the Preadamite became an Adam, the image and likeness of God in the human rational mind that he had built up for himself, as of himself, in freedom according to reason, by submitting himself to the re-generating Hand which willed to bring "heaven" down into the "earth."

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LAW REGARDING DIVORCE 1912

LAW REGARDING DIVORCE Rev. ALFRED ACTON 1912

     It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him giver her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. (Matth. 5:37, 32.)

     The whole of the Lord's discourse from the Mount contains nothing but the law of charity which was to prevail in the Church established by Him; that is to say, His discourse was the revelation of interior truths of life for the establishment of an internal Church, in place of the former and external Church. And therefore He so often says, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time. But I say unto you.

     In the verses immediately preceding that of our text, the Lord teaches the interior truths respecting marriage and its opposite, showing first that it is lust that constitutes the violation of marriage, and not merely an external act, as held by the Jews; and then that it is only from the marriage of good and truth in the internal man, that is, from the spiritual marriage, that conjugial love can proceed, and with conjugial love a genuine and internal resistance to the evil of adultery. This revelation is what is contained in the verse commencing "Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her," and in the following verse commencing "If thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee."

     Following this the Lord lays down a new law of marriage,-a new external law, as the ultimate and containent of that conjugial love which was to be established in the internal Church: "It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife save for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery."

     The Jewish Church was a merely external Church, and had no knowledge, and still less any perception of internal truths.

415

Hence it was not nor could be in conjugial love. For conjugial love, which is the eternal marriage of one man and one wife, is not possible except with those with whom the spiritual mind is opened,-and this can be opened only by the spiritual truths of the Word. Therefore to put away the wife, even for slight causes, while still an evil, yet with the Jews was not a profanation of conjugial love; that is to say, it did not result in commingling the truths of the spiritual man with the false persuasions of the senses. And because of this, and because moreover the Jews were an adulterous generation and could not be wholly restrained, therefore it was permitted them to divorce their wives for slight causes,-though under certain regulations. That this was merely a permission is manifest from the Lord's words in Matthew: "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." (19:8.) By "from the beginning" is meant in the genuine Church which preceded the Jewish Church, and in which was the knowledge of interior truths; and more particularly, the words signify the Most Ancient Church which flourished in the golden age of conjugial love. But even in the Jewish Word we find plain teaching that the divorces apparently countenanced among the Jews were but a permission because of the hardness of their heart. For we read in Malachi, "Take heed to your spirit, and let none deal-treacherously against the wife of his youth. For the Lord, the God of Israel, sayeth, that He hateth putting away; for it covereth violence with its garment, saith the Lord." (2:16.) Yet, for the reasons stated this putting away was permitted; and the same also may be said of concubinage, which was also permitted in the Jewish Church.

The internal reason for these permissions was that a wife represents the affection of truth, and in an inmost sense, wisdom itself. In the external Church there is no genuine affection of truth nor any perception of it, nor, indeed, much active thought concerning it, but the men of the Church believe that to be true which is taught them by men of authority. Thus falses and obscurities are accepted as readily as truths. Nevertheless, if there be obedience and simplicity, the Lord can conjoin Himself in a way, even with those falsities or obscure truths,-not, however, as a husband with a wife, but as with a concubine.

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That this might be represented, concubinage, and also divorce which is but another form of concubinage was permitted among the Jews, with whom also the laws governing it served as some restraint to the natural man.

     But when an internal Church was to be established, wherein truths could be seen in spiritual light, these permissions were entirely abrogated, and the law was given that for no reason shall marriage be dissolved, save only for adultery. And in the New Church, which is to be a genuine internal Church, this law is repeated and confirmed, and also further explained.

     The reason for this is, that the marriage of one man and one wife is the very ultimate of the spiritual marriage of good and truth which makes the internal Church, and this spiritual marriage is now possible to all who will look to the Lord, read His Word and obey it, for it is now possible to enter into the understanding of interior truths, and to obey them, that is, conjoin them with the good of life. But this possibility could not be established, nor could it be preserved, unless the ultimate of this marriage which is the marriage of one man with one wife were also established For ultimates are like bonds and girdles which bind together and contain internal truths, and without which those truths would be dissipated to the winds.

     It was for the sake of the establishment of genuine conjugial love and its preservation among men that the Lord gave t, the Christian Church the new law respecting divorce, that by the observance and establishment of this law preparation might be made for that time when truths should be revealed which could not then be received. At this day when the Christian world is ignorant of conjugial love, nay, is interiorly opposed to it, this law seems gradually to be losing hold on the minds of men. With little or no knowledge of the spiritual law within it, there seems to be in the Christian world a growing disposition to openly, or tacitly ignore this command given by the Lord; and it may be that this also is to be permitted because of the hardness of the heart. But in the New Church the law is to stand as the law of the Church.

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The law is given anew to the New Church, and to it, is now added the teaching that for the sake of the establishment of conjugial love, the conjugial friendship and the conjugial life shall be preserved in externals, even where there is not conjugial love between the partners; and that where life together is not possible then separation may be permitted,-but not divorce, except for the cause of adultery and all that the word implies.

This law is the external within which alone can the internal which is conjugial love, be built up. And therefore, we repeat, it was given by the Lord as a new law binding upon the Christian Church, to which, at the same time, the opportunity of becoming an internal Church was offered. And, further, it is to be jealously preserved by the New Church to which internal truths are now offered in their fulness as the gift to all who will receive.

But there are more interior reasons for this new law respecting divorce. Man represents the love of growing wise, because he is the very form of that love. Woman represents wisdom itself, because she is the very form of wisdom. Or, what is the same thing, man represents truth from the love of growing wise, and woman represents the reception of that truth, or the affection of truth. In an internal Church wisdom must be united to the love of growing wise; or, what is again the same thing, affection must be conjoined with truth from the love of growing wise, which affection is called the genuine affection of truth. Only in an internal Church, is this possible; that is to say, it is possible only in a Church where spiritual truths are revealed. These truths are to be received from the love of growing wise, and when received they are to be loved and obeyed, in order that from them genuine wisdom may be born, which shall be wisdom in its beauty given by the Lord, and which shall be raised up like Eve from the rib of Adam, and shall be given to man as the wife and consort of his life. In the internal Church, wisdom, which is truth in the life, is to be conjoined with the love of growing wise, and these two are to be one and indissoluble, even as husband and wife. Neither can their union be broken, unless wisdom unites itself with some other love,-with the love of self, or the love of learning, or the love of the world. In this case it is no longer wisdom, but becomes truth falsified and perverted,-it is no longer a wife, but an adulteress.

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When this state arises in the man of the Church, it necessarily leads to actual adultery, if not in the body, still in the spirit. And when this state prevails in the Church, when its members are led, and their thoughts and actions inspired, not by the love of wisdom, but by other and merely natural loves, it is with such loves that the truths of the Word are then conjoined, and the Church then becomes perverted and corrupt.

This is the reason why, at this day, when spiritual wisdom has descended from its mountain height to its valley, when, with most men, the love of growing wise is little more than the love of acquiring fame and wealth and the instruments of worldly ease; and with women, the love of wisdom is become, not the love of the wisdom of the husband, and the will to be conjoined therewith, but merely the love of his fame, or perchance, of her own beauty and attractiveness and its power over men, or, in many cases, a merely natural love of marriage without any love of spiritual wisdom,-it is because of this, that the Christian world is an adulterous generation, and that the sphere that opposes marriage finds so ready a place in the heart of man. It is because of this also that, at this day, imagination and sentiment are more highly esteemed than reason and judgment,-and especially than spiritual reason which at this day, is condemned and despised as ignorance and simplicity. This, moreover, is the reason why, at this day, women so largely rule; for even though they may not actually rule, yet they rule indirectly in the fact that it is the sentiments and passions of the animus that largely guide men, especially in moral and spiritual affairs, rather than the dictates of rational judgment.

There is no truth in the Church unless it be seen and acquired from the love of growing wise; and it is not genuine truth until it is conjoined with the love of wisdom. These two, the love of growing; wise, and the love of wisdom, are the two consorts that are to be united in the spiritual marriage which is the marriage of good and truth,-and this with every man who is to be a man of the Church and an angel of heaven. Without this there can be no real wisdom in the Church, howsoever it may appear to be. For true wisdom comes from the knowledge and reception of Divine truth, and this cannot be received into the interior thought, unless it be received by the love of growing wise conjoined to the love of wisdom.

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Before this spiritual marriage is effected, truth resides only in the memory, and it is from the memory that men reason and dispute about it, but with little interior guiding sight, except of a general sort, as to what is true and what false. But when the spiritual marriage is effected then there is the perception of truth that is to be true, and hence comes certainty and conviction.

This is the reason why immediately after the teaching concerning marriage, the Lord abolishes the law respecting swearing or the making of vows. "But I say unto you, Swear not at all. Neither by heaven for it is God's throne; nor by the earth for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king; neither by thy head, for thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your conversation be, Yea, Yea, Nay, Nay; for whatever is more than these cometh of evil." To swear is to confirm truth while it is yet in the memory, and in this state man is in obscurity and may confirm falsity equally with truth, provided only it has been taught him by those whom he respects, or, provided that it agrees with his own natural affections. But to say Yea, Yea, Nay, Nay, is to see truth from within, that is to say, because it is present in the heart from the marriage of good and truth.

We have said that this marriage must take place with every man, and we now add that it cannot be effected with any man unless it be conjoined with conjugial love. That is to say, unless that man be also in conjugial love. By conjugial love is meant the love of one man for one wife; and just as this love is not possible without the spiritual marriage, which is the marriage of good and truth, so the spiritual marriage is not possible without conjugial love. If the spiritual marriage of good with its truth, or of love with its wisdom be present in the interiors, it must descend also to the external, and there, inverting and regenerating the love of the sex, raise up conjugial lore as a gem from its matrix. But if the interiors are the place where truths are conjoined with evil affections, then these, flowing into the external man, turn the love of the sex into what is opposite to conjugial love. Therefore no man can be in the spiritual marriage unless at the same time he is in chaste natural marriage, if not in actuality, yet in potency.

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The reverse of this is also true, viz., that no man can enter into the spiritual marriage, unless he shuns all that is opposed to conjugial love in his external. The two go hand in hand, and there is no regeneration without them. For as man shuns the evils against marriage in thought and will, as well as in word and deed, so he strives as from himself to live in conjugial chastity The external which he thereby forms is the ultimate within which is gradually opened by the Lord a new internal in which truths coming down from heaven are united to the love of truth; and this internal is the spiritual origin of conjugial love. It is known to all men that the relations of man and woman are universals of life,-that they enter into all things of life for good or for ill,-but it is now revealed for the first time that these relations are the ultimates of the spiritual marriage, or the opposite thereof, which is what makes the universal quality of man's spiritual life, or of the life of his spirit. This is clearly revealed for the first time to the New Church, but it was obscurely taught by the Lord when He gave as the law of the Christian Church, "But I say unto you. That whosoever shall put away his wife save for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery"

When the Lord taught truth openly from His own mouth He made it possible for the Church to be conjoined with Him as a bride to her husband; with every man of the Church it becomes possible for truth to be conjoined with its good, and good with its truth; and that this possibility may be established and preserved, the Lord instituted the law of marriage. But the Christian Church did not fulfill its promise of becoming an internal Church; it soon departed from the beginnings of the spiritual marriage which were witnessed in the primitive Church. Yet the law respecting marriage was preserved and more firmly established. It was preserved because the Lord Himself was present as the Word is in the midst of the Christian world and it was preserved in preparation for the New Church, where as the promise is given, conjugial love will be raised up with all who become spiritual by loving the spiritual things of the Church.

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     We have said that the marriage of good and truth is not possible without conjugial love in the natural, and that conjugial love in the natural is not possible without the marriage of good and truth. We would now note another and similar arcanum that is revealed to the New Church, namely, that the spiritual marriage is possible in its fulness only in the actual marriage of one man with one wife. Many important truths are involved in this simple statement. It involves that marriage is the ultimate end to which every man of the Church will look as to the crown of his life; and that, as the Church grows by the growth of the life of heaven in her members, this end will be provided by the Lord. It involves that all who are in the spiritual marriage are also potentially in the natural marriage. But,-the most pregnant meaning perhaps of all,-it involves that the regeneration of man is not possible without the sphere of woman, nor the regeneration of woman without the sphere of man. The truths of the Church are to descend through the husband from the love of growing wise. But they are not truths unless conjoined with the love of wisdom which is with the wife only. Something of this may be clearly realized by every husband, when he reflects that the wisdom of his life is to love the wife alone; and that if he is not in this love he is in insanity, howsoever many the truths in his memory. And it may be realized by every young man, if he reflects on his state when he is in the love and effort for the conjugial life, and on his state when assailed by evils that oppose the conjugial life.

     And so with woman. Woman alone is the love of wisdom; nay, a wife is wisdom itself in its very form and beauty. But this love of wisdom is not genuine, it is but a representative,-a possibility,-until it is actually conjoined with the truth of wisdom received through men. So far as it is conjoined with other than such truth, so far it becomes insanity.

     The Church will grow so far as husbands grow in the love of being wise, and wives in the love of wisdom; so far as her men truths. This does not mean that men alone are to learn truths. It means nothing unnatural, nothing strange to reason. Both men and women are to approach the Lord,-to read the Word, to derive truths therefrom, to live their life in accordance with the are cultivators of her truths, and her women lovers of those indications of Providence as they are given to see them.

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But as man does this, so he becomes more and more a man,-more and more a means by which truths in greater light are present on earth; and as woman does this so she becomes more and more a woman, more and more a form of the affection of truth, by whom that affection becomes present in the world. Wisdom increases and the love of wisdom, and the Church becomes more fully the bride of the Lord,-a Church in which not man rules nor woman, but in which conjugial love alone rules,-conjugial love between husband and wife,-that universal love by which the Church conjoins herself to the Lord, as a bride to her husband, in an indissoluble marriage that shall not be broken.

And now to our one only God, Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and dominion, for ever and ever, Amen.
JAMES GLEN 1912

JAMES GLEN L. E. Wethey 1912

Mr. L. E. Wethey, in the MESSENGER for May 1st, quotes the following from a letter from Mr. F. R. Wiltshire, of Georgetown, British Guiana, regarding the earliest Newchurchman in that section of the world: "We have writings of him in books and papers of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of our city. He died here after leaving America. After coming here, it is said he bought a sugar plantation and became opulent, but the charity which existed in his heart did not allow him to treat the poor slaves as other men did, and the estate soon got away from him, leaving him in a state of bankruptcy. He then became a soldier, in which position he was caught sleeping one night and was condemned, and had to run the gauntlet which was done as follows: Two files of soldiers were drawn up and he had to pass between, when every one gave him a cuff. He afterwards resigned and went to the Demerara river, preaching to the Indians (evidently the first N. C. Missionary to Indians), and died there in obscurity. A Mr. W. H. Wellstock then took charge of his mission for a short while until his death, and a Mr. Plater then took charge. This society became extinct in 1840, chiefly from the fact that the slaves could not receive the doctrines, being rather ignorant, and the slave owners could not bow to so charitable a persuasion.

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The church then completely died out, and was not revived until 1900 by the Rev. G. Gay Daniel, who is now in the United States."

The James Glen, here mentioned, was one of the earliest evangelists and founders of the New Church in England and America. He received a copy of HEAVEN AND HELL from the captain of the vessel on which he travelled from Demerara to London, in the year 1781, was one of the six receivers who organized the first New Church society in London, in December, 1783, and in June of the following year was the first to proclaim the Heavenly Doctrine in America by lectures in Philadelphia and Boston. He was also the first to propose the distinctive establishment of the New Church with its own worship and sacraments, in London, 1787 The society in Demerara, to which Mr. Wiltshire refers, was organized by James Glen on August 3d, 1788. For some years he labored strenuously to spread a knowledge of the New Church among the negroes in British Guiana, but when he recognized the futility of this effort, he retired to a hut in the midst of the tropical forest, where, completely isolated, he devoted his last years to the undisturbed enjoyment of studying the Writings. Here he died on September 9th, 1814. For further details see our biography of James Glen in the LIFE for July and August, 1895. It would be interesting to know if there is any connection between his work and the present society of colored New Church people in Georgetown.

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NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

The appearance in this issue of so large an installment of our history of the Golden Age is due to the absence of other suitable material. This is a very unusual situation which we hope the writers in our church will speedily remedy.

     Among the visitors at the recent Convention in Washington there was a Hindoo, Mr. Prundit (Pundit?) Pearay Lal, who assured his enthusiastic audience that "when the New Church reaches India it will set things on fire; it will spread like leprosy." Quickly recognizing the unfortunate character of the simile, he hastened to add, "only, of course, in a good sense," but the explanation leaves us still wondering.

     The Rev. S. C. Bronniche, the New Church missionary in Copenhagen, has issued the first number of a new Danish or rather, Scandinavian, periodical, entitled NORDISK NYKIRKELIGT TIDSKRIFT. The articles are in the Danish tongue, with the exception of the first installment of an important paper in Swedish on "the Cosmogony of Emanuel Swedenborg and the Kant-Laplace Theory," by Hans Hoppe, translated by Miss Cyriel Lj. Odhner from the ARCHIV FUR GESCHICHTIS DER PHILOSOPHIE.

     Mr. Titaro Suzuki, who translated HEAVEN AND HELL into Japanese three years ago, is now, according to the MORNING LIGHT, engaged in translating the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM. This can be no easy task, since the Japanese language is with difficulty adapted to abstract thought. Mr. Suzuki's experience as teacher of Oriental philosophy in Chicago will, no doubt, prove valuable, as the present work is even more abstract than the former. The competence of the translator is greatly augmented by his deep interest in Swedenborg's teachings.

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At the meeting of the "New Church Institute of Education" in Boston on May 25, it was decided, by unanimous vote, not only to discontinue the co-education feature of the Waltham School, but also to make a change in the name. Hereafter it will be known as the "Waltham School for Girls." Mr. George B. Beaman, the successor of Mr. Benjamin Worcester as Principal of this school, reports, as the reason for the change of name, that "experience has shown repeatedly that the term 'New Church' in the name of the school creates in the public mind the immediate inference that the school is purely denominational, and it is the firm belief of the school management that the prejudice thus formed stands in the way of the growth of the school." This is a movement in the right direction. It is letter to be "good red herring" than to be "neither fish nor fowl."
LIFE OF SWEDENBORG WITH A POPULAR EXPOSITION OF HIS PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGICAL TEACHINGS 1912

LIFE OF SWEDENBORG WITH A POPULAR EXPOSITION OF HIS PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGICAL TEACHINGS Editor 1912

The LIFE OF SWEDENBORG WITH A POPULAR EXPOSITION OF HIS PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGICAL TEACHINGS, by the late George Trobridge, which was somewhat favorably reviewed in the LIFE a few years ago, has been re-issued by the publishers, Fred. Warner & Co., London, in the form of a substantial and handsome volume, which is sold at the price of one dollar. It is an enlargement of the former twenty-five cent paper edition, and is brought up to date by including an account of more recent events, such as the removal of Swedenborg's body from London to Upsala, and it is further enriched by some fifteen fine portraits and illustrations, some of them new to our eyes. While this work leaves very much to be desired from almost every point of view,-historical, scientific, philosophical and theological,-it is, at least, a finished literary production, avoids disputed issues, and is in a thorough manner what it professes to be,-a "popular" exposition.
Title Unspecified 1912

Title Unspecified Editor 1912

THE NEW PHILOSOPHY for April publishes the first of a series of "Physiological Papers," by Miss Lillian G. Beekman, which are of the utmost importance to the development of an interior understanding of the human form in all its degrees and faculties. As in the papers on the "Kingdom of the Divine Proceeding," which appeared in the LIFE, the language is at times obscure, but if the reader will patiently read and read again the weighty sentences, he will obtain not only an abundance of new and interior perceptions of wonderful truths on both natural and spiritual planes, but also, in time, a general light, which will prove of inestimable value in comprehending the relation of the Writings to the philosophical works of Swedenborg, and, from this, the relations of soul and body, of spirit and matter; of the spiritual world and the world of nature.

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Cavillers may find many faults with the form of these papers, but those who seek the truth will look for the substance rather than the form.
INTERESTED YOUNG PEOPLE 1912

INTERESTED YOUNG PEOPLE H. L. O 1912

     Mr. C. W. Barren, in the MESSENGER of June 5th, speaks enthusiastically of the young people who were attendant, or, more correctly, non-attendant, at the recent meetings of the General Convention in Washington:

     "These young people did not concern themselves with routine of Convention votes, or parliamentary proceedings. They romped joyously over the Capitol, the Congressional Library, on the river, and the hills, in the museums, and in the White House, gathering intellectual stimulus and spirit. Then they gathered in the large hall and danced the hours away with the merriest faces, the lightest steps and the freest hearts."

     It is not criminal, nor very uncommon, for youth to prefer a merry time to a serious one. But the correspondent interprets this weakness of youth as a promise of the Church's progress: "Some ministers may sit in council to discuss creeds and man-made prayers, principles and ceremonies, but the young people at Washington will do none of these things, and, therefore, I do not concern myself about the dogmas or authority of creed or ceremonies or the future of the Church. I am content to leave it where I think I found it, at Washington, in the hands of happy, joyous, sweet-faced, pure-minded, earnest young people, seeking to put their religion into life; and I muttered with Henry James, 'Society, the redeemed form of man."' "I departed, saying, 'I care not how many are our members, but give me quality in our youth. That I have seen in Washington and I have no anxiety concerning the future of my Church.'"

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     Such an anxiety, however, is felt by the organizing secretary of the Swedenborg Society's Examination Scheme for Young People, Mr. F. A. Gardiner. In an open letter addressed to all New Church parents and published in the MORNING LIGHT for May 5th, he submits the grave fact that this scheme of sustaining the interest of the young in the systematic study of the Writings after they have left Sunday School, is, practically considered, a failure; and he incidentally lays bare the insufficiency of the Sunday School as a substitute for distinctive and thorough New Church education.

     The object of the scheme has been to provide a continuation-course of study of Swedenborg's works for those who leave the Sunday Schools, and, as a stimulus, it offers generous prizes in New Church books to the winning candidates of an annual competition-examination in the subjects covered by the course. The results are then quoted: Out of 66 New Church Sunday Schools with a total (last year) of 8,082 pupils, 25 Schools, with 2,640 children, have not entered a single candidate to the continued course during the whole ten years that this course has been available, although their attention has been called to its advantages every year with unfailing regularity. This year only 20 schools entered with 54 candidates. But we will quote Mr. Gardiner.

     "With these thousands of young people who have passed through New Church Sunday Schools and are, therefore, eligible for the course of study in question, the entries this year amount to 54 candidates, that is to say, under three per cent. Viewed in the light of these figures, the condition can best be described in the word 'failure.'"

     Mr. Gardiner, no doubt, realizes that there are many young people who are faithful readers of the Writings, even if they are unable to compete in his scheme. But the peculiar interest in the article is that the writer appeals to the parents to help the situation. In our judgment no progress can be made in the New Church schools without the support and active sympathy of the parents. For, as Mr. Gardiner says, "the future of the Church depends largely upon the rising generation within it."     H. L. O.

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"PLEASE SAY A GOOD WORD FOR THE OLD FAITH" 1912

"PLEASE SAY A GOOD WORD FOR THE OLD FAITH" H. L. O 1912

     This pathetic appeal was enclosed with a pamphlet on the Trinity, which was sent to us for review. The title is THE THREE DIVINE PERSONS AND SALVATION and the author, a Presbyterian minister, bears the highly orthodox name of John Calvin Elliott. It is unusual, nowadays, to find a public champion for this superannuated dogma, but here all its senile decrepitude is freely displayed. Mr. Elliott, after quoting some passages and explaining them so as to confirm the tri-personal idea, and after pointing to the universality of such a belief in the Christian denominations, endeavors to defend the statements in the Athanasian Creed, where each person is said to be God, eternal, infinite, and complete in all the attributes of divinity, and still not identical with the other two, but a person by himself, or a self-conscious will.

     The general system which the author pursues is quite simple and as old as the creed itself. Whenever he appears to teach three gods he soon amends the impression by using a phrase which wipes away the trinal idea, but in the next sentence he restores it for the sake of orthodoxy, thus swinging between the extremes as regularly as a pendulum. The first grand argument is that "the interrelations of the three Divine persons are not revealed, and are mysteries to the finite mind. Many gifted and devout students," he continues, "have given their best thought to the solving of this mystery. Many illustrations have been employed in the effort to explain, but they are all confessedly inadequate." Mr. Elliott then sets out to do some more inadequate expounding by denying that "personality" implies individual difference.

     This is certainly a very delicate distinction. Each Divine person is infinitely (i. e., as to all infinite attributes) identical to the other two, because "if either differed, it would indicate a being less than infinite." Here, then, logic has conquered at last. The learned trinitarian is forced to admit that these "three persons of the Godhead are therefore to us practically and substantially one." This admission, however, frightens its author. If the divine or infinite attributes are identical, and yet a personal differentiation is to be made, this distinction into three could be only a distinction in something finite!

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This has, at least, the value of being logically possible, but our orthodox friend, finding himself on the brink of Sabellianism, (which teaches that the Trinity means but three different manifestations of the one God), quickly adds that "in effecting our salvation from sin, each of the Divine persons has a particular and special part" to play,-"a part that is not attributed to another." And so, finding it unprofitable to elucidate to his readers what is meant by "separate personality" apart from "individual difference," he offers a further ("inadequate") illustration, by delineating the distinct offices which the three persons fill in the theory of the Vicarious Atonement. No arguments are offered to support the "Divine Comedy," which is described throughout the rest of the pamphlet, but, as confirmatory to the operation of the Holy Spirit, he adduces personal experiences.

The Writings prophesy that "Arius will prevail unto the end"; the denial,-conscious or unconscious-of the Divinity of the Lord underlies all heresies. To this, and to the exaltation of man, does the philosophy of the fallen church plainly tend. "God, the Son, is the most loved person in all history," and "Man was in some sense a member of this [Divine] family," phrases such as these show the danger that lurks within the falsity of three Divine persons, a falsity which not only generates doubts as to the existence of anything spiritual, but also denies that the Lord Jesus Christ in His glorified Human is Jehovah made visible, and that the holy sphere by which He operates for our salvation is the Spirit of Truth which leads unto all Truth. H. L. O.
STRINDBERG AND SWEDENBORG 1912

STRINDBERG AND SWEDENBORG H. L. O 1912

The name of Swedenborg has again become prominent in the Swedish press in connection with the death of the famous writer, August Strindberg, who lately astonished his contemporaries by avowing himself a disciple of Swedenborg. This sudden change is so much the more important as this writer is reputed to be the greatest of all modern Swedish literary men,-a poet, dramatist, essayist and narrator of first quality, combining some of the characteristics of Zola, Bernard Shaw, Chesterton and several other gifted but eccentric spirits.

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When the Nobel Prize was not awarded to him, the people of Sweden subscribed a large national gift, which was tendered him this year on his sixty-third birthday, as a testimonial to the esteem in which he was held.

     Strindberg has already been noticed in the pages of the LIFE (1909, p. 45); he was there described as having been, in former years, "the standard-bearer of the school of decadent realism in Swedish literature," and his genius was said to have been brilliant, but skeptical and libidinous.

     This may, perhaps, be partly accounted for, when we know that his life began in the gloom of an unhappy family, by whom he was never understood. He early acquired a habit of religious brooding and a cynical frankness, which accompanied him throughout his career and marred his work.

     Satirical wit and brilliant originality first brought him to the fore as a dramatist. He especially devoted himself to the dramatization of history and to the championing of the reform-forces that railed against the ruling powers in the social and moral world. He boldly exposed errors wherever found, with a view-no doubt-to the betterment of society, but as yet never attaining beyond a criticism that offered no remedy for the conditions it condemned.

     Strindberg at first supported Socialism, but soon he began to realize that the true social doctrine must be based upon aristocracy of mind. With a pessimistic dissatisfaction with the whole tendency of modern thought and morals he entered upon a close examination of the general ground, object and character of the Science, Philosophy, Arts and Letters of our day. The BLA BOK (Blue Book), edited in three volumes, was inscribed: "To Emanuel Swedenborg, the teacher and leader, this book is dedicated by the disciple." This work was the result of the author's long felt yearning to express his utter disgust with the aimless superficiality of modern scientific research. While terming atheism perverse and foolish, he also denounces the half-Christians, who blush for their God. In a great number of essays and "talks" his versatile mind challenges the seemingly well-established laws of modern science along every known and unknown line of research.

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A Newchurchman may easily discern the grounds of his attack, but must differ from the methods which he employs. For in his eagerness to throw the shadows of doubt upon empiric Science he exposes himself continually to the charge of being superficial in his observations or experiments and blind to the arguments and facts of his opponents. Sometimes a most simple explanation can overthrow his reasonings altogether.

     If we overlook this weakness, the book will be seen to possess a unique value. It strikes at fundamental errors; and while its author supports his views by quoting extensively from all types of noted literary men from Plate to Rousseau, yet it is to Swedenborg the closing word is given. He cites Swedenborg on every subject and in an almost reverential manner. For, says he, "in the BLUE BOOKS I have returned to Christianity as the only form of spiritual life I can accept."

     The lesson which, above all, he received from Swedenborg, was the warning that appearances are fallacious. By applying this rule Strindberg arrived at several of the maxims of New Church Science; he ridicules the evolution of man from beasts and even suggests the possibility that many of the geological strata are precipitations of dissolved chemicals instead of sediments; he believes in the existence of a Golden Age, and points to the universal testimony of mythology for confirmation; and he even credits plausibility to Swedenborg's cosmological conceptions.

     Strindberg was married three times, but, on the whole, his family-experience must have been unhappy, if we may judge from his pessimistic doubts whether pure conjugial love is ever attainable amid the present state of self-love and moral decay. He appears to lay all the blame on woman, however, and supports this opinion by misquoting Swedenborg to the effect, that while man corresponds to the rational, woman corresponds to the love of self. Were, as in numerous other instances, he misunderstands the Seer's profound doctrines, from lack of systematic study.

     The latest of Strindberg's works that we have seen, is entitled RELIGIOUS RENAISSANCE OR RELIGION VERSUS THEOLOGY. In this little book the author pleads for the abolition of the State Church and the lowering of creed barriers between Christian sects. He quotes his own experience with dogmatism:

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     "My first and best religious instruction I received from my nurse, who taught me the little masterpiece, 'God who loves the little ones'* and then the Lord's prayer and the Blessings; these reach a long way; in fact, they suffice for our whole life. Afterwards, in school, when the Catechism had to be studied, the religious feeling decreased; and then in College, when we studied 'leider auch Theologie,'** and still worse, Dogmatism, or the history of human errors, then we became free thinkers and turned with horror from the formulated Christology.
     * A Swedish children's prayer.
     ** Alas, also Theology."-(Faust.)

     "When, on the roads of life, I had forgotten all theology, I finally found Religion, but only in the Bible without explanations.

     But he soon qualifies this last statement: he now tries to interpret the Word according to the method which the Lord revealed in His second advent.

     Of all the celebrated men who, from time to time, have expressed appreciation of Swedenborg, few, if any, have grounded their faith upon his principles of exegesis, the doctrine of Correspondences. This, however, seems to have been the case with Strindberg. In the BLUE BOOK he mentions correspondences only as useful in the interpretation of dreams. But in his last work he devotes two whole chapters to the defense and elucidation of the new spiritual exposition and the discrete senses of the Word. Yet he often enters into questionable speculations and it is evident that he thinks Swedenborg also should be interpreted allegorically, or that every reader should "translate" him for himself.

     At the end of the same chapter he says: "This may suffice to suggest in what direction a more profound biblical research should be developed; and Swedenborgians should so comprehend their sublime mission of introducing and applying their teachers' method of exposition, that a swift end could be put to the worthless squabble, whether the Bible is an inspired book, whether Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, whether the Assyrians worshiped Jahve, and whether the cherubim were winged bulls." Such was the last message of this restless spirit who, despairing of the state of fallen Christianity and just beginning to perceive the new light dawn upon Scripture, passed away to the land of fulfilled wishes, on the 14th of last May.

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     The last years of his life seemed to have been devoted almost exclusively to researches in the Word. When he laid down his pen for the last time his desk was full of Hebrew dictionaries and Bibles, and he has declared that Hebrew "is the most beautiful and wonderful of all languages." During the last fourteen years he is also said to have experienced states of "hallucination," which are recorded in an unpublished work. This, according to Swedish papers, will probably not be published for a long time, since it "is closely connected with the name of Emanuel Swedenborg." This is a pity, for these experiences would be the truest testimony, no doubt, concerning Stringberg's Swedenborgianism.

     Strindberg was no Newchurchman; but he fearlessly terms himself "a Swedenborgian" and defends Swedenborg against the satirical poet, Kellgren, the most insidious enemy that the New Church in Sweden ever had; his usefulness in this respect is great.

     It would be difficult to prophesy the influence which Strindberg's Swedenborg-propaganda will exert in Sweden and elsewhere. His use was mostly that of removing some of the prejudices that hinder the spread of the New Church, but he added new obstacles of his own making, because his superstitious form of mind prompted him to favor metempsychosis and similar fantastic notions. To the audience which he addresses, however, even his fancy may convey great truths.

     Strindberg is to be honored, first of all, for his brave defense of the Word of God. On his deathbed he clasped the Bible to his breast and said: "Everything personal is now obliterated. I have done with life. My accounts are finished. This only is true."

     Thus ended a stormy life. Let us, in conclusion, quote the poet's own words: "How beautiful it is to behold an Old Age with regained understanding and the innocent faith of childhood!" H. L. O.

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CONVENTION AND ITS COUNCIL OF MINISTERS 1912

CONVENTION AND ITS COUNCIL OF MINISTERS E. E. I 1912

     The ninety-second annual session of the General Convention was held May 11-14 in Washington, D. C., at 16th and Corcoran streets, in a building which the MESSENGER, not without a touch of vanity, calls "The National Church." The Council of Ministers sat in Baltimore in the church at Calvert and Chase streets, on May 7th, 8th and 9th.

     In the opinion of the MESSENGER, this was "the greatest Convention great in spirit, in hope, in unanimity, in peace, in loyalty to the Lord and to His Word. After the troublous times of recent years, it seemed almost too good to be true." "The unexpectedly large number of delegates," writes the Rev. W. F. Wunsch, "was first to delight us. And throughout the meeting the steadily large attendance kept revealing the earnestness of these people, who felt that they were being drawn up to a more compact Jerusalem and sharing in a new prosperity within her palaces. Throughout the past year the President of Convention had been inspiring among our people that urgent earnestness about taking some signal constructive measures for building the church up and out, which became the spirit that filled Convention proper and the meetings of the lesser bodies, too. That earnestness came out of trouble; and it is to be hoped that it was, and is, the gift of Him who seeks laborers for His harvest; but there must be a foreman to direct and lead; and there was."

     It is unquestionable that the members of Convention have grown sick of the losing fight that some of its pamphleteers have been waging with the Heavenly Doctrines. The evidence of the existence of an actual lack of charity towards brethren in the Church, by Convention clergy, as shown in the Brockton Declaration and kindred manifestations, has also been a trying spectacle to those who had hopefully supposed that this clergy made up by the good of life and the breadth of charity what they lacked in the direction of studying and teaching the doctrines of the New Jerusalem.

     To those sick of these fights in which there was nothing to gain and everything to lose, the President of the Convention brought an elixir by his practical pleas for constructive work.

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But what were the "signal constructive measures for building the Church up and out," as Mr. Wunsch expressed it? They were evidently measures calculated to stir the souls of men deeply, to judge from the following comment by the MESSENGER on one of the discussions: "As speaker after speaker rose during the discussion, the enthusiasm of the meeting grew until it was fairly electrifying. Many said afterwards that nothing like it had ever before been seen in the New Church. A hymn was sung, and, after the benediction, the delegates and their friends went home rejoicing at the new spirit which has come over all the work of the Convention." The cause of such rejoicing in the belief that a new era for the Convention had dawned, lay in the fact that:

     "1. The new Book of Worship was adopted and recommended for use by all Societies of the Church.

     2. The new Constitution and By-Laws of the Convention were adopted unanimously.

     3. An Augmentation Fund was established for the help of the weaker societies and missionaries to provide more adequately for the support of the ministry.

     4. The Sunday School and parish house building of The National Church were shown to be in a fair way to completion, and were helped.

     5. A paid Secretary was engaged who shall devote his time to the interests of the Church.

     6. A new edition of the PRINCIPIA. Swedenborg's great scientific work, was presented."

     The deliberations of the Council of Ministers in Baltimore centered chiefly about the ripening of these six measures that were to inaugurate a new spirit of internal, if we may use that word, constructive work in the Church. Of the various other matters that occupied their attention, we note the following:

     The petition, originating with Mrs. Jane Dearborn Mills, of Massachusetts, and signed by one hundred and ninety-nine names, to authorize the publication of an abridged edition of CONJUGIAL LOVE so expurgated that no one would be ashamed to have it lie open on his table, was presented, but found not one minister to defend it.

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     The Rev. O. L. Barler, who had been openly branded as disloyal to the Convention because of his pamphlet, which pleaded for charity and truthfulness even towards the Academy, was given the opportunity to present a paper in his defense. As the charge was a public one, it is to be hoped the Council of Ministers, as a matter of fairness, will make the defense public, even if it entail some adverse reflections on a previous action of that body. If there is any truth in the report that there is a new spirit of charity and internal development in the Convention, it cannot long endure ii it is accompanied by a stifling of just criticism, at the expense of fair play.

     The committee appointed to report on the resolutions of the Rev. A. B. Francisco, was heard, and some discussion followed. These resolutions, presented at the previous Convention, were, (1), to brand as false and impossible the doctrine that the Writings are the Word, and (2), that "such belief, itself entirely unwarranted, justifies grave and terrible evils of doctrine now in existence and makes possible great evils of life." "Obviously," writes the Rev. W. F. Wunsch with regard to this second resolution, "as we know only from the circumstances, however, out of which these resolutions arose, they allude to alleged false teaching and possible evil practice which has been so much the unhappy topic of recent Church meetings, that no one can pretend to miss the allusion; but we have no evidence before us of the alleged false doctrine or possible evil practice, nor are we so much as told in a 'Whereas' how the alleged false doctrine and possible evil practice are or can be the outcome of the belief that the Writings are the Word." The same writer, and his colleague in this report, the Rev. C. W. Harvey, show no hesitation, however, in pronouncing that the Writings are not the Word.

     According to Mr. Harvey, to call the Writings the Word, is "to confound the form which God gave to good by direct inspiration of its human scribe, and the form of that form, which, through illumination, while reading the Word, God could get into the rational mind of Swedenborg and through his exposition derivatively into our minds." To make the matter still clearer, the following is added: "The Lord to the New Church is, therefore, whatever of the Substance we can grasp and love and receive into us by life, through the forms God gives Himself in His revelation, led by the secondary form, derived from the first, which He grave Himself in Swedenborg's mind and works, the secondary form by the requisite enlightenment to recognize the first form, and then the Substance."

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Could anything be more lucid? Mr. Harvey admits, however, that Swedenborg did write "Adventus Domini on some of his works, but explains carefully that this was only a coming in potency and not in actuality, and that to say Swedenborg's works are in full sense the Second Advent, is like saying that the Baby Christ was in the full sense the first or personal advent."

     Mr. Wunsch regards the Writings as doctrine derived from the Word, and related to it "as a formulation of material is to the material itself." "Is not this," he urges, "the concrete relation which Swedenborg himself insists obtains between his doctrine and the Word. Why say more?"

     But without pausing to answer this pertinent question, Mr. Wunsch pushes on to state that the Writings only expound the spiritual sense of the Word "incompletely," that they cannot be said to contain the spiritual sense of the Word, in the face of explicit teaching that the literal sense of the Word is the containent of the spiritual and celestial senses, that they are not, exhaustive, that the language is inadequate, that they lack the wonderful series and coherence marking the spiritual sense as it lies in the Bible, and are "but an inexhaustive and incomplete exposition of that sense." "The Writings are related to the Word as a verbal and otherwise limited exposition of its spiritual meaning. This is the concrete fact: Why go farther?" Why, indeed, in view of the teaching in the Writings that only the celestial can perceive that rational truth is Divine, and the further teaching that the Heavenly Doctrines are similar to those held by the men of the Most Ancient Church, as Swedenborg testified after making the comparison!

     In the ensuing discussion Mr. T. Mower Martin, of Toronto, read a number of extracts from the Writings to show that they are the Word and that the term "holy" could properly be applied to them. But this solitary voice of truth was carefully counteracted by the Rev. John Whitehead's laying stress on the fact that Swedenborg calls the Bible the Word and the Writings the Heavenly Doctrine, and that they must be distinct or otherwise we could not speak of a relation between them.

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"The Writings," he said, "are doctrine-necessary to a true understanding of the Word, but deriving all their authority from their conformity with it?"

"Why say more? Why go farther?" The Convention is evidently less inclined than ever to answer these pertinent questions. And yet its members believe they are on the dawn of a new era, or, as the MESSENGER expresses it, "in a mood of readiness, of eagerness, of get together." E. E. I.
COMPROMISE WITH SPIRITISM 1912

COMPROMISE WITH SPIRITISM Editor 1912

The MESSENGER for May 15th pleads editorially for a broader toleration for a mixture of New Church doctrine with Spiritism. Referring to some recent "advertising matter of a spiritualistic nature," in connection with which the names of two New Church ministers are used, our contemporary observes that the literature in question "ignores some thirty commands in the Word against the practice of spiritualism, and goes solid against the plain teachings of the Writings of the Church, which show that the only lawful way to be led is by the Lord through the Word." In View of its recognition of this universal law, it is surprising to find the MESSENGER immediately suggesting a compromise by asking: "Is there not a standpoint of view from which we might gladly have something of the New Church faith go even into Spiritualism?" And the editor assures us that "the Spiritualism taught in the advertising matter referred to is the best kind of Spiritualism possible. It is made better than the usual sort by the apparent acceptance of the Bible and of many of the teachings of the New Church. In short, the New Church ideas accepted make Spiritualism better, and much less dangerous." . . . . "There is philosophy in a Spiritualist clinging to the New Church and not absolutely rejecting Spiritualism. If a Spiritualist utterly rejected his faith for pure New Church truths, he would not be able to bring even a few New Church ideas into Spiritualism. One friendly to Spiritualism is far more able to benefit those of his faith by introducing the truth than is one who puts it utterly away."

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     This is strange advice from the organ of a Church which aims to be, above all else, a missionary institution, for according to this "philosophy" every receiver of New Church truth ought to remain in his old ecclesiastical connection, in order to help along the permeation or percolation of the new wine through the old bottles, and thus in the end there would never be any distinct body of the New Church such as, according to the MESSENGER, "may properly stand before the world as the best qualified and reliable exponent of New Church teachings." It is stranger still for a New Church journal to encourage the fusion of New Church truths with any other "faith," knowing, as we do, that "the Faith of the New Church cannot possibly be together with the Faith of the former Church, and that if they are together, such a collision and conflict will ensue, that everything of the Church with the man will perish." (B. E. 102.) "From what has been said, it follows that they who have confirmed with themselves the faith of the Old Church cannot, without danger to their spiritual life, embrace the faith of the New Church, until they have first rejected and thus extirpated one by one all the points of their former faith." (B. E. 103.)

     If such terrible dangers result from the commingling of truths with falsities, still worse is the commingling of truths with evils. For Spiritism is not, properly speaking, a faith or a religion, but a practice. The Spiritists do not profess any special creed or principles, and have no worship, unless it be the worship of demons. Their whole movement rests upon the practice of intercourse with the dead, an evil practice exercised in open defiance of the most explicit commands of God. As long as this practice is continued it is as vain to talk about any "better" or "best" kind of Spiritualism, as to talk about any better or best kind of deliberate disobedience to the laws of God. It is an open evil, proceeding from evil and leading to nothing but evil. It can be made "better" only by an absolute repentance and shunning of this evil of Necromancy, in which case it ceases to be Spiritualism. The only way to improve it is to kill it.

     The infusion of any number of "New Church truths" into this hellish Pythonism makes it worse instead of better.

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The truths themselves are profaned by making them excuse and confirm the evil practice, and the evil itself is made more seductive by being surrounded with a halo of light. The MESSENGER thinks that Spiritism is thereby made "much less dangerous," but the whole history of the New Church teaches otherwise. The dangers of the vapid mutterings and stupidities of ordinary Spiritism are as nothing compared with the insidious persuasions and interior evils flowing forth from the "New Church" kind of Spiritualism, and it is a noteworthy fact that these evils are always, in the end, aimed against the pure Conjugial. We could relate a great number of instances, historically established.

Modern Spiritism is nothing but the result of a renewed activity among the hells of the ancient magicians, consequent upon the restoration of the Science of Correspondences and of the truths of the Ancient Church in the revelation given to the Church of the New Jerusalem. From its earliest history the New Church has been infested by the efforts of these magical hells, but, unfortunately, a knowledge of interior New Church history has never been cultivated by the MESSENGER. There are some in the Church, however, who still remember the story of the exegetic Philanthropic Society in Sweden, the story of Pernety and Oegger in France, of Hofaker and Artope in Germany, of Harris and White in England, and of Holcombe and Christy in America, (not to mention numerous less celebrated cases). For nearly a quarter of a century the New Church has enjoyed a rest from spiritistic infestations, but the MESSENGER'S recent editorial cannot but act as an invitation to our ancient enemies.

The immediate result of our contemporary's utterances is shown in its issue for May 22d, Where a minister of the General Convection expresses his pleasure at the editorial referred to. While admitting the unlawfulness of intercourse with spirits as long as a man is in "the love of self," the writer believes that "the whole aspect changes" when "there is humility and a state of regeneration," for then the man is "associated with angels in heaven." He fails to state just when the love of self wholly leaves any man while in this life, or the fact that the self-consciousness of pure unselfishness is the surest sign of spiritual pride.

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But he believes that "then the man's spiritual senses may be opened, and he may see those in the spiritual world and converse with them without any injury to himself," and he asserts that "this is clearly taught in the SPIRITUAL DIARY, n. 1587," which teaches nothing of the kind but simply describes the conditions on this earth in ancient times and the conditions on other earths where the human race has not, as here, "passed from internals to externals." And he concludes with the question, "May not there some day develop a New Church Spiritualism which will not be disorderly?"

To this question every Newchurchman should reply with an instant and unequivocal "Nay!" For he possesses a source of teaching and leading far superior to anything enjoyed by any other age or in any other earth, superior to instruction from any good spirits or even angels, (who, after all, know but little, as they are the first to admit),-a revelation more excellent than all miracles, because it does not compel a man's faith, but leads him in freedom according to reason to speak face to face with the Father Himself, now revealed in His Divine Human as the Divine Rational Truth.
IMPRESSIONS OF THE RECENT CONVENTION 1912

IMPRESSIONS OF THE RECENT CONVENTION G. A. MCQUEEN 1912

     Communicated

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:-
     I have just read the excellent reports of the recent meeting of Convention given in the NEW CHURCH MESSENGER. The writer of those reports has very successfully conveyed to the reader the sphere which prevailed. I personally seemed to be participating in the delights of the states of peace, and hope of good times to come. The excellent addresses of both ministers and laymen seemed to support the idea that Convention had taken a new step of some kind, and was about to enter upon a period of progress.

     Upon thinking the matter over, several questions forced themselves into my mind: Had there not been similar Conventions in times past? What was there really new, after all?

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I have no doubt that the pages of the MESSENGER Of twenty-five or thirty years ago would show that there existed the same eloquent exponents of the Doctrines as then understood, the same kind of reports from the missionary field, the same amending of the Constitution, the same fraternal addresses, the same discussion on the support of the ministry; in fact, everything practically the same.

     From the standpoint of the Doctrines, can it be said that Convention as a prominent representative body of the New Church has taken any really new step until it announces as its belief that the Writings are the Word of the Lord Himself, and they are the Second Coming of the Lord; and that the acceptance of those Writings in faith and life is what constitutes a member of the New Church? We know there are members of Convention who do so believe in the Writings, but does the organization stand for this? I have my doubts.

     One subject was discussed at Convention which I think should be considered by us of the General Church of the New Jerusalem. In speaking of the scarcity of students for the priesthood it was suggested that many young men might be attracted to the use if the Church could give some assurance that they would be supported. This idea may or may not prevail in our own body and I would like to hear what our teachers have to say on the subject. I do not see why the profession of the priesthood should be treated differently than the profession of the physician or the lawyer. The young man in either case should start with the idea that he can perform this or that particular use. He must have the love for it, and the ability to carry it out. From this standpoint of use, the question of monetary results does not come up. If, on the other hand, he chooses his profession with regard to future remuneration, then as things go at the present time, he will seldom decide on the priesthood. It is, of course, very nice to feel assured that you will be taken care of in the future, but, after all, is there any employment in this world in which a man's worldly condition can be assured? Do we not, in the end, have to depend on the Divine Providence?
     Yours sincerely,
          G. A. MCQUEEN.
Glenview, Ill., June 10th, 1912.

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Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. Except the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Roydon Smith the chief events of this month have been connected with the closing of the schools, not to mention the lesser social affairs due to the presence of visitors. Among those we note: Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Nelson, Mr. Leonard Gyllenhaal, and Mr. Louis Cole, of Glenview; Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Lindsay, Dr. Marlin Heilman, Mrs. Louis Schoenberger and Mr. Robert Caldwell, of Pittsburgh; Mr. and Mrs. Don Edmonds of Washington, D. C., Mrs. W. H. Benade reached Bryn Athyn in time to honor the Theta Alpha with her presence. She expects to spend the summer here searching the archives for material for a biography of the late Bishop, which she is preparing. Other visitors have been Miss Ora Ebert, of Allentown, Mr. E. C. Brown of New York, Mr. Archie Scott, of Canada; Miss Carita Pendleton, of Macon, Georgia; and the Misses Crissie and Minnie Schill, of Canada, with their brother, George Schill.

     On the last Sunday of May, (the day of Pentecost), Dr. Ernst Deltenre and Mr. Eldred Iungerich, were ordained by Bishop Pendleton, the former into the first degree of the Priesthood, and then, owing to the nature of his mission and the maturity of his preparation, into the second degree; the latter, having served some time in the first degree, was inaugurated into the second. M. Deltenre will soon be heard from in Holland and in Belgium, where he is about to begin all evangelistic propaganda which is perhaps unique in the annals of the New Church. Mr. Iungerich will probably undertake the Pastorate of the Baltimore Society at Arbutus, where he has been ministering for some time. The whole ceremony was most impressive and inspired the assurance that a widening of our Church's activities was about to take place.

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     The closing of the Elementary School took place on Thursday morning, June 13th. "The Red" and "the White" were distributed as rewards to those who had earned them by standing exceptionally high in conduct, in scholarship, or in both. Rather few obtained both, as the standard has been raised in the upper grades. Superintendent Doering's address about Samuel, his call and ministry, was much appreciated, and afterwards the teachers of the Elementary School presented Miss Grant with a set of Swedenborg's work on "The Brain,"-as a suitable testimonial to her, who has given so much time and thought to the management of that school.

     At the graduation exercises the next day, four papers were read by the following: Mr. Loyal Odhner, as honor graduate; Mr. Donald E. Lindsay, the valedictorian of the class of 1912;the Rev. E. Deltenre, who received the degree of Bachelor of Theology, and the Rev. Alfred Acton, who, together with the Rev. H. Synnestvedt, was honored with the degree of Master of Arts. We regret that space forbids a summary of these stirring addresses.

     The graduates were the following: From the College: Messrs. Donald E. Lindsay, Harold Doering, Loyal Odhner, Darrel Hicks, and Allan Pendleton; from the Seminary: the Misses Mamie Woeck, Anna Hoffman, Vida Pendleton, Florence Roehner and Erna Sellner; from the Normal Department, the Misses Vida Doering and Rosalba de Anchoret; from the Theological Department, the Rev. E. Deltenre.

     The Teachers' Institute was field early in June "to avoid the rush," but it was decided to try to hold them in the Fall, and September 8th has been set for this year. It is hoped that at that time some teachers from the other centers may be with us. The Ethics Committee was continued, and a paper on the lecture method was much discussed. Further details of this meeting as well as the Joint Meetings of June 15th and possibly some Papers connected with the graduations, may be looked for in the forthcoming Journal of Education.

     Interspersed between these events there were three notable meetings of allied organizations-the Theta Alpha, the Sons of the Academy and the Alumni Association.

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As each of these held a Banquet, it is perhaps well that no one could qualify for entrance into all three! From all accounts, the ladies' meetings must be accorded the palm. The class of '96 had charge of the program, and brought into prominence the ideal of home building as the woman's use par excellence.

     The "Sons of the Academy" (under their able and jovial president, Mr. Rob. Caldwell) discussed with warm affection and zeal many features of their work, and decided to recommend the formation of local chapters and the provision of a suitable means of keeping informed of the work at the center, and of each other's existence.

     The Bishop's address to this meeting, from notes upon the subject of organization, was most suggestive. We may now hope that full reports of these meetings will soon be available to their various members.

     One of the social events of the year, which looms large in the calendar,-of the undergraduates at least,-is the Senior Ball. Everyone was there who had the good fortune to be invited; the music was superb, and the partings so soon to come only lent zest to the joy of dancing. Most if not all of the students remained until the next evening, in order to attend the wedding of Mr. Roydon Smith and Mrs. Bessie Edwards Colley. The church was decorated in exquisite taste, and all the music was of an unusual character. At the dance which followed the Reception we were again treated to a small orchestra. Even the older folks could not resist such music.

     On Sunday the scattering began, and by Monday night Bryn Athyn was well-nigh empty of students and guests. Some are planning to "cross the ditch." Mr. Pitcairn, with his sons, Theo. and Harold, intends to visit North Cape, Norway, and Sweden; Miss Hogan, Miss Falk and Mr. Hugo Odhner will visit Stockholm; and Miss Jane Potts and Miss Constance Pendleton are going to take another tour in Europe.

     Life here is just one continuous round of pleasure, but it is always better when some time elapses between these two series of events. Some day perhaps the Academy and the General Church will be manned by two separate crews, except for those through whom the two uses are kept coordinated.

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Oh, yes, I forgot the best news of all. Mr. Pitcairn has added another $200,000.00 to the permanent endowment fund! H. S.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. The composite head, phrenologically speaking, of the Glenview Society is acquiring an extraordinary bump of constructiveness. Three houses are now in course of erection and more coming. The sound of hammer and saw is mingled with the piping of the birds and the guttural booming of the frogs. One of the new houses is too far from the reporter's point of view for the noise of the carpenters to be heard, but as a neighbor is struggling (unavailing struggle) with a new tune on an old accordion, it may be said to rise like the towers of Ilion to the sound of music. Mr. Sidney Lee, Mr. Jesse Stevens and Mr. Paul Carpenter are the prospective increments to our society. Speaking phrenologically again, our head may be said to have a considerable development of the bump of destructiveness, for a graceful building of chaste design and solid construction has been torn down during the last week. It goes to make room for modern improvements.

     Mr. and Mrs. Wm. H. Junge have been the social guides of Glenview for the past month. A dance in which the participants endeavored to shadow forth some popular advertisement was one feature of the month. Another was a social in which the assembly room was arranged so as to resemble a summer garden. During the evening readings, singing, music recitals and finally dancing served to entertain and delight the guests. The groups of people now to be seen standing around the park, talking energetically and with gesticulation, are simply small gatherings of committees discussing the next General Assembly. K.

     BERLIN, ONT. On the 13th of May the members of the Carmel Church were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kertcher at the celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of their wedding day. The school room was beautifully decorated for the occasion. The celebration opened with a banquet, at which the following toasts were given: "The Church; The First Love and Its Revival," responded to by the pastor; "Love Truly Conjugial," responded to by Mr. Rudolph Roschman, and "The Happy Couple," proposed by Mr. George Schnarr and responded to by Mr. Kertcher.

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After the banquet followed cards and dancing. An orchestra provided music, both during the banquet and for the dancing. All present, numbering more than a hundred, greatly enjoyed the festive time.

     The 24th of May, Victoria Day, was celebrated by a picnic on the school grounds. Games and contests of all kinds, for old and young, were provided. After supper an immense bonfire was lit and fireworks were set off. The evening closed with a dance in the school room. W.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES. The Rev. William Wunch has resigned the Pastorate of the Society in Bath, Me., to accept a call to Roxbury, Mass.

     The Society in Pittsburgh, Pa., of which the Rev. John Stephenson is the pastor, has withdrawn from connection with the Pennsylvania Association, in order to connect itself with the Ohio Association, on account of the geographical location.

     The Rev. Eugene J. E. Schreck, on June 2d, announced to the North Side congregation of the Chicago Society that he had accepted a call from the Scottish Association to minister to them for a year, beginning on October 1st, 1912. The Rev. Percy Billings, on June 2d, was formally installed as pastor of the Kenwood Parish, Chicago.
Wanted 1912

Wanted E. F. STROH 1912

     Announcements.

     For the Library of the Academy of the New Church, a copy of the LITURGY, Philadelphia, 1876, first edition. Also, a copy of the fourth edition.
     E. F. STROH,
          Librarian.
BRITISH ASSEMBLY 1912

BRITISH ASSEMBLY ANDREW CZERNY 1912

     Special Notice.

     The eleventh meeting of the British Assembly of the General Church of the New Jerusalem will be held on August 3d, to 5th, at the Rooms of the London Society of the General Church, at 169 Camberwell Grove, London, S. E. The members and friends of the General Church are cordially invited to attend. Visitors are requested to send notice of their coming to Mr. F. W. Elphick. Frederick Lodge, Carshalton Park Road, Carshalton, Surrey.
     ANDREW CZERNY.

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AFFIRMATIVE IN CHILDREN 1912

AFFIRMATIVE IN CHILDREN Rev. W. F. PENDLETON 1912

     (Address delivered to the ladies of the "Theta Alpha," Bryn Athyn. June 6, 1912.)

     So important is the principle of affirmation that it is represented by one of the tribes of Israel, the tribe of Dan; but a mere blind affirmation, if it should continue as the chief state of the Church, becomes faith alone, or faith without charity; hence the tribe of Dan is omitted from the enumeration of those who were sealed by the angel in the Apocalypse. But as Dan was the entrance to the Holy Land from the north and from the west so the principle which Dan represents, the affirmative principle, is the first principle of the church in the order of time, but the last in the order of importance. It is the first spiritual thing into which man enters in the regenerate life. He is in it before adult age is reached, and is in a resemblance of it when in early childhood. It is not natural for a child to be in the negative. This is rather a product of after years, when a man begins to love and live a life of evil.

     In looking into the definition of the affirmative and the negative, we find that to affirm is to assert that a thing is so, as when the child affirms or asserts that what its parent says, what its teacher says, what the Lord says in His Word, is true, and is prepared not only to assert the truth of it, but stands firm in the assertion of it, and will defend it as true against all who attack. But by the negative is meant that spirit and tendency which is ever ready to deny what is asserted by another as true, whether that other be a man or whether it be the Lord Himself.

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The importance of the affirmative in our children, and the importance of doing our part in cultivating it in them, is at once apparent; and indeed, it would seem to present itself before us, as one of the leading duties of parents to their children, in preparation for the spiritual life which is to come in adult age. But let us hear, before we proceed further, what the teaching of the Heavenly Doctrine is on this subject; for there is no phase or aspect of spiritual life left untouched in that fountain of all truth, the spiritual sense of the Word of God.

In the ARCANA COELESTIA, n. 2689, we are told of the importance of knowing who it is that can be held in the affection of good and truth by the Lord, and who it is that cannot; that those who can be held in that affection can be reformed and become spiritual and that those who cannot be held in it cannot be reformed and made spiritual men. We are then told that every man in childhood is held by the Lord in the affirmative that what is taught by his parents and teachers is true; that this affirmative with those who can become spiritual men continually grows and is strengthened by learning truths from the Word as they grow older, and by resisting evil as sin. By being thus held in the affirmative of truth, the affection of truth grows and becomes a spiritual affection, from which they combat in temptations, and from which they finally overcome the enemies of their spiritual life. This most desirable of all ends can by no means be accomplished except with those who can be held in the affirmative inspired in early childhood.

In n. 2568 we are taught that there are two principles, one of which leads to all folly and insanity, and the other which leads to all intelligence and wisdom. The one which leads to all folly and insanity is called the negative principle, and the one which leads to all intelligence and wisdom is called the affirmative principle. Those who are in the negative deny all things that cannot be comprehended by the senses of the body; deny the existence of God and the spiritual world, because they cannot be seen by the physical eye, or heard by the physical ear. The spiritual mind with these is finally closed to the influx of heaven and the Lord, and the natural mind only remains open to the world and receives only the influx of hell.

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But those who are in the affirmative declare at once all that to be true which the Lord teaches in His Word concerning Himself and the heavenly life, asserting that it is true because the Lord has said it, even if they do not as yet understand it. The way is thus opened in them to all intelligence and wisdom, such as these are with the angels in heaven, where the principle of the affirmation of truth, or the affection of truth, reigns supreme, becoming in them an eternal spring or fountain of truth.

We are further told in this number, (2568), that all are at first in the affirmative of truth, all in childhood and early youth, but that afterwards doubts enter or are admitted into the mind; that those who admit doubts and continue to cherish them, are finally led by evil spirits, who inspire the doubts, to deny and finally to reject the truth, opening the way and confirming themselves in the way to all folly and insanity, and that this takes place with all those who incline to a life of evil. The inclination to a life of evil unresisted, is what leads the mind to the continued cherishing of doubts, and the resulting confirmation of a life of evil. These are said to be in doubts before they deny, but happily there is another class who are in doubts before they affirm. This is so because the Lord permits evil spirits to infuse doubts with all, in order that there may be full freedom of choice, and that by freedom they may be led in the pathway of reason to all heavenly intelligence and wisdom. These are they that are in doubt before they affirm, and these are they that suffer themselves to be led by the Lord, that suffer themselves to be inspired by Him with love to Him and charity towards the neighbor.

In n. 2588 the subject is treated at large, and the importance of the affirmative principle as the one only gateway to spiritual life is strongly set forth; and we are told that every man after the period of childhood thinks from the negative or from the affirmative, that every man enters into the one state or into the other by his thought; that they who think from the negative, believe only, have faith only in that which enters from the world, and this because they have only the things of the world and the flesh, on account of inclining more and more to a life of evil; for no man can believe in or have faith in anything but that which he loves and takes delight in; all else is finally cast out as things of no value, and are never again remembered.

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     In the light of the teaching of this cumber, (2588), the essential importance of thinking from the affirmative comes clearly before the mind, of thinking from the affirmative, and of continuing to think from it even from early childhood to the states of adult life, and to the end of our natural life. They who think from the affirmative are they who believe in simplicity of heart that what the Lord says in His Word is true; that it is true because the Lord says it; and because the Lord says it in His Word, it can be understood and will be understood by all those who believe in Him and wait patiently for Him. It is thus true that they who continue to think from the affirmative established in early childhood, will be enlightened by the Lord, and by this light be led in the way of all intelligence and wisdom, in the way of all charity and love. For as we read, (4096), where there is love or affection, there is continual affirmation of that which is loved. The continuance of affirmation, therefore, from early childhood is the continuance of loving the things which the Word of God teaches.

     In n. 3913 of the ARCANA COELESTIA we are told that the spirit and principle of affirmation, preserved from early childhood, is the medium by which the external man is conjoined to the internal. This conjunction-that of the external man with the internal-gradually brought about, is the one end in all the regenerative processes. This affirmative, remaining from early childhood, is itself the beginning of regeneration. That which causes the affirmation, we are told in this number, (3913), is good or love flowing in from the internal man, and the affirmation of truth is the sign of the reception of that good in the external man, a sign of the conjunction of the two. We are told further that this good cannot flow into a negative principle. The good of charity, the good of love to the Lord, never flows into the natural of any man where a negative principle reigns. It cannot enter, or, if it does, it is at once extinguished.

     Children, and indeed all the well-disposed, all who are in charity-for children are in the beginnings of charity-all who are in any degree of charity, in any degree of love to the Lord, are in the affirmative of truth, because by virtue of the good of charity and love, there is, as we read in the DIARY, a universal affirmation flowing in from the Lord, impelling every man-at times even the evil-to say that "the Word is the Word, that the Lord is the Lord, and that there is a providence even in most singular things." (S. D. 4533.)

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When a man is in the affirmation of such truths, even though he knows them but obscurely, we are told that then and continually "innumerable affirmations are insinuated by the Lord." We are then told that children are in this universal affirmative, and that "the affirmatives of childhood are either confirmed by one thing after another even to adult age, when they become regenerate, or they decrease and become by degrees doubting affirmations, and finally negatives." (S. D. 4536) Every infant is thus in a universal affirmative from the Lord, and this will grow and increase in them, will become their own, will become the spiritual affection of truth in adult years; or it will gradually decline, will he finally shut out, and a negative from hell will reign supreme.

The plain duty of everyone, therefore, is, not to admit into the mind doubts, objections, or negatives of truth, but to resist them at the first entrance and not allow them to get possession of the active thought. For we read in the SPIRITUAL DIARY, n. 3614, that "those who do not admit objections against the knowledges of faith are secure from evil spirits." Then it is added that "certain spirits complained that they could no longer be present, because as long as any one remains [firm] in the knowledges of faith, it is not allowed to admit objections. They said, therefore, that they had no means of leading them, saying also that it was by this means that they seduced them; for it is especially by such things [that is, by objections admitted into the mind] that they lead men astray; that by a single objection all confirming truths, however numerous, are rendered of no effect: for man is so borne on by his cupidities, which produce phantasies, that he willingly admits objections, of which a single one then becomes stronger than a thousand confirmations. Wherefore in order that a man may be true or in true faith, he ought to be in the opposite [of this], so that one truth may prevail over a thousand and ten thousand objections; thus evil spirits flee, for they cannot live in such a sphere."

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That is, evil spirits cannot live in a sphere of the firm and continued affirmation or truth. It will be understood that this teaching has reference to the truths of the Word that have been once admitted into the mind and have become the truths of one's faith. When a truth of revelation has been once admitted into belief, we should not permit a thousand or ten thousand objections to move us from our faith in it. In this firm faith is security from evil spirits.

     In the ARCANA Swedenborg says, "Once also, when I was thinking of the influx of life from the Lord, and was revolving on some doubts, it flowed in from heaven, that no attention should be paid to a thousand objections and reasonings from fallacies." (4669.)

     In the DIARY again we read that "if the mind remains long in objections, it comes into obscurity, then into doubt, and at length into denial, which it has been often given me to learn from spirits; for in every universal truth there are myriads of myriads of truths; and there are as many objections, because there are as many contraries, since every truth has its contrary, which the mind, when seeing from inverse order, favors, and is thus blinded." (1955.) The origin, therefore, of doubts and objections to the truth is in things contrary to it, or in falsities, which then invade the mind and take possession of it if resistance be not made.

     In the SPIRITUAL DIARY, 3549, the subject is illustrated by the example of certain truths, concerning which doubts should not be admitted into the mind, namely, that the Lord, or God in His Human, rules the universe, that the Lord alone is life, and that the proprium of man is nothing but evil; and the teaching is added that with those who do not admit objections to these and similar truths, evil spirits cannot remain, but are dispersed.

     Again in the DIARY, n. 3602, We have the teaching that "objections are not to be made against the knowledges of faith," that is, a man is not to make them himself, or allow them to enter his mind, so as to cherish them and dwell upon them, when made by others; for, as we are then told, the angels love only the confirmations of truth, and admit these alone into their minds, but all things which militate against the truth, they cast out,-all objections, all doubts; for the angels know full well that all such things rise up from hell, filled with the spirit of negation.

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     In the light of this teaching, and other similar teachings in the Writings, it is clear that the one important thing to look to in the home and in the school is cherishing in children a spirit of affirmation, and banishing from them as far as we are able a negative spirit. The teaching is plain that if a man be held in a spirit affirmative to truth, through childhood and youth to adult age, and through adult age to the end of life, he will be saved. It is the salvable quantity in every man, the salt in him-the salt preservative of spiritual life.

     But we as parents and teachers are interested in the mode and manner of preserving this state in childhood. With the adult the mediation of the parent ceases, and the individual is then under the immediate leading of the Lord, and he is responsible then to no other. But the Lord has for our good given us a certain share in the care and education of our children, in preserving the affirmative in them-the one essential thing in all their education.

     It is ever important to remember that the work of preserving the affirmative in children is the Lord's work, and not ours except in the outward appearance. In this outward appearance, which is a real appearance, we have our degree of responsibility; and on the plane of this appearance we may mar, injure, or cause to be destroyed the Lord's work, by acting against the Divine operation, and thus preventing the ultimation of the Divine purpose.

     Our function as parents and teachers is that of co-operation, and co-operation looks especially to the removal of obstacles to the Divine influx, even as the gardener removes the weeds that the growth of the plant may be unhindered. We have before us what the obstacles are to the preservation and growth of the affirmative state he continual weighing and revolving in the mind the doubts and objections to the truth.

     Now the teaching and command of the parent is the truth to the child. The parent is the mediator appointed of the Lord for the little one, and he speaks as representing the Lord; and just as we as adults are not to admit doubts and objections to the teachings and commands of the Lord as given in His Word, so the child must not be allowed to admit doubts of what his parent says or commands.

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In this law, judiciously exercised, will be found the secret, so far as the parent is concerned,-the secret of preserving the spirit of affirmation in childhood and until adult age.

It is not a part of the purpose of these remarks to endeavor to point out the particular modes by which this law may be carried into effect with children, but merely to call attention to the law itself, and the importance of it. The application must be left to each parent and each teacher, according to the light which is given when the occasion arises. Those of us who teach doctrine from the Word can do nothing more than call attention to general truths, general laws, but the light of application is given by the Lord alone, without the mediation or intervention of man; and the Lord gives this light when the occasion arises, when the need appears, for the exercise of it; and He will give it to everyone who asks this light of Him, in that spirit which is affirmative of the truth of His Word.

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TESTIFICATION OF TRUTH 1912

TESTIFICATION OF TRUTH Rev. W. B. CALDWELL 1912

     "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches." (Revelation XXII:16.)

     These words, coming toward the close of the Book of Revelation, are a solemn declaration to the effect that the things contained in this Book are from the Lord alone. The opening words of the Book are of similar import, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw."

     By "the things which must shortly come to pass" are meant those which would surely take place at the Second Coming of the Lord, which were predicted in the Apocalypse throughout. But because these lie hidden under the prophetic style of the Book they have never been understood in the Christian world, nor could they be understood until the spiritual sense was revealed by the Lord in the Writings of the New Church. And so we are told in the APOCALYPSE REVEALED, n. 9531 that the words of the text, "'I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches,' are a testification by the Lord before the whole Christian world, that it is true that the Lord alone manifested the things which were described in this Book, and also those which have now been opened. That the Lord here names Himself 'Jesus' is that all in the Christian world may know that the Lord Himself, Who was in the world, manifested the things described in this Book, and also the things which have now been opened. That it is from the Lord alone in His Second Coming is also clearly evident from the later words in this chapter, 'He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.'" (Rev. XXII:20.) And while it is said that the angel was sent to testify it means a testification from the Lord, because the angel did not do this from himself but from the Lord.

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The expression "to testify" is said of the Truth, for it is the Truth that testifies of itself, from itself, and concerning itself; and the Lord is the Truth Itself, Who testifies concerning Himself in the Word, even though it be given through angels and men.

     When, therefore, in the Writings of the New Church, the declaration is made that the explanation of the Apocalypse is also from the Lord alone, it is in reality the Lord Himself in His Divine Truth testifying by means of the' Revelator "in the churches," that is, before the whole Christian world, that the Lord alone has opened the internal sense of the Word, and that the Divine Truth testifies to this of Itself.

     Another notable declaration to this effect is made in the APOCALYPSE REVEALED, 472, Where it explains the Tenth Chapter, treating of the mighty angel who appeared to John, "having in his hand a little Book open," and where Swedenborg says, "I will open what was in the little Book. In the little Book were the things that are contained in the DOCTRINE OF THE NEW JERUSALEM CONCERNING THE LORD, from beginning to end." And then follows a summary of the chapters in that work.

     From these things it is plain that the Revelation to the New Church unfolding the spiritual and Divine sense, of the Apocalypse is from the Lord alone, and that this is meant by the words of the text, "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches."

     But although the Writings of the New Church testify to their Divine origin, not only in the works on the Apocalypse but throughout, and although the man through whom they were given frequently declares this, and gives manifold testimony in proof thereof, still there have been few in the Christian world to receive the Heavenly Doctrines, and even among these few many who have not accepted them with full acknowledgment of their claim to Divine Revelation,-the very Divine Truth, and thus the Word of the Lord. Some, no doubt, in their simplicity, have not grasped their full significance. While accepting and applying to life many of the truths of the Doctrines, they have not risen above the idea that they are the works of a man.

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Others, more deeply confirmed in this idea, discount the solemn testimony of the revelator himself, interposing their own prudence as to the acceptance or rejection of this or that part, whereas this not only casts doubt upon the credibility of the writer himself, but in reality invalidates all that he wrote. Either his claim is true, or he is an imposter,-a false witness,-in whom no credence is to be placed. There is no middle ground between acceptance and rejection for those who are sufficiently enlightened to comprehend the true significance of the Writings. Either their claim to Divine authority is true, or they are subject to human interpretation. It is well, however, to view with charity the attitude of the less enlightened, and to remember that there are many degrees of faith in Divine Revelation. This, indeed, is foretold in the Writings themselves, with respect to their own reception in the Christian world.

And there have not been wanting, we believe, those who have received with full acknowledgment the express declaration of the Writings that they are from the Lord alone. This acceptance, however, has not been based solely upon the claim the Writings make,-the ultimate testification and testimony everywhere found therein,-but primarily upon a perception of their truth, a perception springing from having seen the truth and loved it with joy of heart. Men are willing to acknowledge what they love, willing to see and confess the truth if they love it. And such an acknowledgment of the Divine Truth of the Heavenly Doctrines is made by those who from good at heart are in the spiritual love of truth. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." (John VII:17.) Those who at heart love to do the will of the Lord will be led by Him to see the Divine Truth in its own light,-the light of heaven,-to become eyewitnesses of the Divine Truth testifying concerning Itself, as it does in the undoubting mind that is opened by the love of truth to receive it. This is the most interior form of faith, the most interior reception of the Heavenly Doctrines,-reception in a perception of their truth, opening every page of every book to a light that is withheld from one whose faith is less because his perception is less.

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One who has arrived at this internal faith believes in the Doctrines because he sees them to be true, because the self-convincing light of Divine Truth shines in his mind, unclouded by the interpretations of his self-intelligence. He believes without any other witness than this. And he is confirmed in his faith by everything in the Writings, everything in the Scriptures, everything in natural science. He is confirmed by reason, and by his own experience. Swedenborg's testimony is but an added confirmation.

But no one comes at once to this sublime faith, this angelic faith, for it is angelic. We are told that "in heaven truth itself testifies concerning itself, because it is the very light of heaven; for when the angels hear a truth they immediately know and acknowledge it. But in the world the truth must be borne witness to, and when it has been testified to it is acknowledged." (A. R. 6.) Many aids are needed to the implantation of truth in external faith as the basis and beginning of internal faith,-the faith of perception. These aids are needed for children, for the simple, for all at first. And among these necessary aids to faith is the solemn declaration made in all Divine Revelation, "Thus saith the Lord." This prepares the receptive mind for the truth that is uttered. If it is the Lord's voice it is to be believed, even in blind faith. Rational faith will follow, when the truth is seen and understood, spiritual faith when it is loved and lived. The influx of the Light of heaven, the Divine Truth Itself, will then testify and convince. It is true because it is true.

From this we see the importance of the oft-repeated declaration in the Writings to the effect that the things there revealed are from the Lord alone, who inspired the writer immediately, and who sent angels and spirits to him to testify to the truth. In the world before men there must be this ultimate testification to the Divine Truth on the part of the human instrument of Revelation. The Lord taught this when He said in the world, "My doctrine is not mine but His that sent me. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him." (John VII:16, 18.) He said also, "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true." (John V:31.)

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But because He bore witness to the Divine Truth even in the human upon earth He also said, "Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me." (John VIII: 14, 18.) Thus He sought not His own glory, but the glory of Him that sent Him, not the glory of the human in which He appeared before men, but the glory of the Divine within Him. He taught not the word of a man, but the Word of God. And so it is to be with those whom the Lord sends as ministers of Revelation. When an angel speaks in Revelation, he speaks from the Lord, and announces the Lord's Word. If a revelator is truly a servant of the Lord, he speaks nothing from himself, but all from the Lord, that he may "seek not his own glory but the glory of Him that sent him."

     In the wisdom of His Divine Providence the Lord has always revealed His Word of Truth in the world through the instrumentality of men, and through angels and spirits to men. Even when He Himself came among men and spoke the Divine Truth, He appeared like a man, so that few believed that His Teaching was Divine. While the Divine Truth in Itself needs no human witness, yet it is according to order that it should always be given to men through men, and testified to before men by men. For the truth is never insinuated immediately by the Lord into any mind before it has first been received outwardly from the Word revealed in a special manner through His chosen prophets.

     In the ancient churches the Divine Truth was revealed through angels to the father of each family, who bore witness to it before his children when he taught them. Among the Jews it was revealed through Moses and the prophets, and was accompanied with signs and miracles, thus ultimate testifications. And when the Truth was no longer received on earth, it was not insinuated immediately with men, but the Lord Himself put on the human of a man, that He Himself might teach the Truth in the world.     He said to Pilate, "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." (John XVIII:37)

     John the Baptist, too, was sent before to bear witness to the truth, to prepare for the Lord, to teach introductory truths as a preparation for the teaching of the Lord.

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This testimony of a man was needed before the Lord Himself could proclaim Divine Truths openly in the world. But that this testimony of a man was not needed when the Lord Himself began to teach is meant when it is said, "John came for a witness, to bear witness to the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light." (John I:7, 8.) John represented the letter of the Word, and thus Divine Truth adapted to external faith, which later gives way to the truth internally seen and believed. And so the Lord said, "John was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. But I have greater witness than that of John." (John V:35, 36.)

But even though the Lord Himself had come and taught the Divine Truth with His own mouth, it was according to the order of His Providence that men should continue to be the means of Revelation, to bear witness to the Truth, and thus lead others to Him Who is Truth Itself. After His resurrection He said to the disciples, "Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations. . . . And ye are witnesses of these things." (Luke XXIV:46-48.) This was fulfilled, we know, both by the disciples who became martyrs,-that is, "witnesses,"-and by their public preaching and teaching of the Gospel. And so John, at the close of his Gospel, says, "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true." (XXI:24.) Nor did the testimony of the disciples end here. They were to be sent forth from their angelic homes to proclaim and bear witness to the Gospel of the Lord's Second Advent throughout the spiritual world, which also was foretold by the Lord when he said, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, . . . He shall testify of me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." (John XV:26, 27.)

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     We have now seen that it has been according to Divine order that all former Revelations of Divine Truth upon earth have been made through the instrumentality of men, who bore witness and testified to the truth before men; that even when the Lord Himself came to bear witness to the Truth He came in the form of a man. And we may see the Providence in this order, which regards not only the accommodation of Divine Truth to men through men, the ultimate proclaiming and testifying of Truth with the human voice for the sake of external faith as a beginning, but also the protection of the Divine Truth from profanation,-and at the same time the preservation of the freedom of men to accept the Truth as Divine and authoritative or as merely human and fallible. That this freedom has always been preserved is evident from the great number of men in all ages who have rejected the Truth, so solemnly revealed and declared. And the same sacred utterance of Truth has been the means of its implanting with certainty in the minds of the believing.

     It is not so remarkable, therefore, that in the way of Providence the Second Coming of the Lord, the coming of the Spirit of Truth, should take place by means of a man,-a human servant and human witness,-through whom this Revelation of interior Truth could be accommodated to men in the world, and at the same time be so given that all are free to accept or reject it. "Since the Lord cannot manifest Himself in Person (except to the spiritual eyes of men), when yet He has predicted that He will come to establish a New Church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He will do this by means of a man, who is able not only to receive the Doctrines of the Church in his understanding but also to publish them by the press. That the Lord has manifested Himself before me His servant, and sent me to perform this office, I testify in verity; and also that, from the first day of that call, I have received nothing whatever, pertaining to the Doctrines of that Church, from any angel but from the Lord alone while I read the Word." (T. C. R. 779.)

     The Writings do not come to us with "Thus saith the Lord" as the prefix to every book and chapter, as in the Old Testament style. For they are the Divine Truth in rational form, accommodated to the rational understanding and perception of man, and interiorly received only when rationally seen and believed.

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Then indeed they are acknowledged as the Lord's own Word. It is also true that the Divine Truth is always stated there with power and authority, and with no uncertainty, and that the rational demonstration of the truth always begins from such a statement. But if the truth were presented there in merely dogmatic form, it would persuade the external but not the internal of man, which is averse to compulsion, admitting truths only in the form of reasons. At the same time it was necessary as an aid to first reception, and as a confirmation to rational faith that the truths of Scripture and of science should be everywhere added, and also that the revelator should present proofs of his Divine call, with solemn attestation to the Divine origin of all that he had written.

This testification he frequently made, and in the final work of the Writings we are told that his testimony is in the place of miracles at this day. "The manifestation of the Lord in Person, and introduction into the spiritual world, both as to sight, and as to hearing and speech from the Lord, is superior to all miracles, since we do not read anywhere in history that such intercourse with angels and spirits has been conceded to anyone since the creation of the world. . . . The testimonies of this intercourse are the books published by me concerning HEAVEN AND HELL, and as to the Memorable Relations in the last work, entitled TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, . . . and besides those various testimonies there are others in the world both known and unknown. . . . And in addition to those most evident testimonies, the spiritual sense of the Word has been disclosed by the Lord through not one iota of which could be through me, . . . not one iota of which could be opened except by the Lord alone. . . . What are miracles compared to this! They are not performed at this day, because they seduce men, and make them merely natural, closing the interiors of the mind, in which faith ought to be enrooted" (INVITATION 43-46).

Such testimony as this is as essential to the Divine Revelation given at this day as in former days. While in heaven, and in the internal of man, the Divine Truth testifies to Itself, and convinces of Itself, before the external of men in the world it must be set forth with solemn testimony, to the end that it may first of all gain their attention, next their interest and early faith, finally their rational faith and love, with full acknowledgment that it is the Lord's own Truth and Word.

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"I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. And He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I came quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."
CHURCH OF THE GOLDEN AGE 1912

CHURCH OF THE GOLDEN AGE C. TH. ODHNER 1912

     ADAM, THE MAN OF THE GROUND.

     "And the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. . . . And Jehovah God made a mist to ascend from the earth, and watered all the faces of the ground. And Jehovah God formed man, dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and man became a living soul." (Gen. 2:1-7)

     Gently as the dew of the dawn in springtime, the tranquility of peace descended upon the regenerated man of the Golden Age after the labors of temptation had ended in the rest of the Sabbath. His external man, formerly represented by the general term "earth," had now become a cultivated and fruitful "ground," the very ground-work of the new celestial man who, from it, was called ADAM.

     Even as in the Latin tongue the generic term for "man," homo, is derived directly from humus, "ground," so in the Hebrew Adam, "man," is derived from adamah, "ground,"-more literally, "reddish soil," for as a verb the word adam signifies "to be red" or "ruddy." The red color, as is known by universal perception, is the color of love, the color of natural as well as heavenly fire; it is the highest and most active of all colors, the color of life itself.

     The name ADAM, therefore, presents the idea of a man of the highest and most active love-the love of God,-a love filling his entire being from the inmost soul to the outermost body or ground.

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This love is the breath of eternal life, which Jehovah God breathed into the "nostrils," i. e., the spiritual perception, of this His most perfect creature; and because this highest human love renders him who receives it a perfect image and likeness of the Only True Man, therefore the celestial man of the Golden Age became known in the race-memory by the highest, noblest, most simple of all human names.-ADAM,-Man.

     II.

     THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

     "And Jehovah, God planted a garden from the east in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed." (Gen. 2:8.) A "garden" signifies the Church as to intelligence and wisdom, in which the herbs represent natural knowledges, the Shrubs spiritual thoughts, and the trees celestial perceptions The name EDEN in the Hebrew means delight and loveliness, (comp. the Greek hedone, "sweetness"), and in the internal sense it signifies celestial love. The "east" represents the Lord. The "garden of Eden from the east," therefore, means the intelligence of the celestial man, which inflows from the Lord by means of love. (A. C. 98.)

     The state of intelligence and wisdom, of love and innocence, in this celestial Church, may be illustrated by the following general teachings:

     "The man of the celestial Church was regenerated as to the will, by being imbued from infancy with the good of charity; and when he had attained to a perception of this, he was led into the perception of love to the Lord, whereby all the truths of faith appeared to him in the intellect as in a mirror. The understanding and the will made in him a mind altogether one, for by the things in the understanding it was perceived what was in the will. Herein consisted the integrity of that first 'man' by whom the celestial church is signified." (A. C. 5113)

     "On this account the most ancient times were more acceptable to the Lord than the ages that followed. Innocence then reigned, and with innocence, wisdom. Every one then did what is good from good, and what is just from justice. To do what is good and just with a view to self-honor and gain was a thing unknown.

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They did not then speak anything but the truth; and this not so much from truth as from good, that is, not from the understanding separate, but from the will conjoined with it. . . .     And because then it never entered any one's mind to attack the inheritance of another, and thereby to get wealth and dominion for himself; therefore the love of self and the love of the world were at that time far away, and every one rejoiced at heart at his own good, and no less at the good of the neighbor." (A. C. 8118.)

     "The more interiorly celestial of the angels do not allow 'faith' to be mentioned, nor anything whatever that has a merely spiritual origin; and if it is spoken of by others then instead of faith they have a perception of love. Still less can they endure listening to any reasonings about faith, and least of all any mere scientifics concerning it. For by means of love they have a perception of what is good and true from the Lord; from this perception they know instantly whether a thing be so or not; wherefore when anything is said about faith, they answer simply that it is so, or that it is not so, because they Perceive from the Lord how it is. This is what is meant by the Lord's words in Matthew: 'Let your communication be, Yea, yea, Nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.'" (A. C. 202.)

     III.

     THE TREE OF LIFE AND THE TREE OF SCIENCE.

     "And Jehovah God made to grow out of the ground every tree desirable to behold, and good for food; the tree of lives, also, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the science of good and evil." (Gen. 2:9)

     "A 'tree' signifies perception; a 'tree desirable to behold' signifies the perception of truth; a 'tree good for food,' the perception of good; the 'tree of lives,' love and faith thence derived; the 'tree of the science of good and evil,' faith derived from what is of the senses, or of science." (A. C. 102.)

     The reason a tree corresponds to perception is that the whole vegetable kingdom answers to the intellectual mind, just as the whole animal kingdom answers to the win with its living affections.

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The highest subjects of the vegetable kingdom are trees, which perform the greatest uses, and afford the widest views, even as in the intellectual mind perceptions are the inmost and most far-seeing insights.

"At this day it is unknown what perception is." (A. C. 104) Literally it means a "catching through," (per-capere), a quick taking of the real meaning, by penetrating the veil of appearances. Regarded in itself it is the flash of light first seen in the inmost of the mind when the fire of love descends from the will into the understanding. With animals this inmost sensation is called instinct; with human beings, as now constituted, it is called intuition, which is possessed in a greater degree by women, who are forms of affection, than with men, who are forms of thought. But neither men nor women at this day possess spiritual perception, for with both the will is perverted and therefore intuitively catches only at falsities which may excuse and confirm the evils of selfish and worldly loves. Through the long and painful course of instruction, adversity and temptation, we may, indeed, attain a degree of conscience, by which we may discriminate between good and evil, but few if any at this day possess so pure a love as to render the light of this love a perfectly safe guide in all things of the spiritual life. This love, however, and consequent perception, will he restored, little by little, in the New Jerusalem, for in that celestial city the tree of life will once more yield its fruits.

In the midst of the Garden, as its inmost and most precious possession, there was a noble tree, the Tree of Life, in which all the men of the Golden Age were the branches. This Tree, like all the other trees, was a perception, the supreme and inmost realization of the presence of Jehovah God in their midst,-a perception which with them was an actual sensation of the Infinite Love and Mercy. This perception was their very life, and hence was truly called their Tree of Life,-the mainspring that vivified all their loves and thoughts and endowed them even while on this earth with all the blessedness of eternal life. What this perception meant to them can but faintly be realized by us who at the best have only a rational conviction of the presence and guidance of the Lord, while with them it was a continual living experience of the visible Father who securely holds the hand of the child.

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     But at the boundary of the Garden there was another tree, the tree of the science of good and evil, which had been planted there by God Himself. This, too, was a perception, the sensation or the actual appearance that man in all things lives as it were from himself and thinks, speaks and acts as of himself, for without this appearance man would deem himself a slave or an automaton. The men of the Golden Age realized this appearance as much as do we who "trust in God but keep the powder dry," but far more than we they realized that this appearance is but an appearance. Placed in the equilibrium between these two trees or perceptions, the celestial men enjoyed a perfect freedom of choice, the freedom without which life is not human life, but in this their freedom they joyously chose the Tree of Life. It is to be noted that they knew about the tree of science, but had not yet been forbidden to eat thereof. The forbidding came later when their descendants, sated with the fruits of heaven, first began to incline towards the fruits of the world.

     Much is involved in the story of the two trees, as may be seen from the following teachings of the Heavenly Doctrines:

     'To eat from the Tree of Life is to understand and be wise from the Lord; and to eat from the tree of science is to understand and be wise from one's own self." (C. L. 353.)

     "The Tree of Life signifies a man who lives from God, or God living in the man; and as love and wisdom, or charity and faith, or good and truth, make the life of God in man, these are signified by the Tree of Life, and, hence, the eternal life of the man. . . .

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But the tree of science signifies the man who believes that he lives from himself and not from God; thus that love and wisdom, or charity and faith, or good and truth, are in man from himself and not of God; and he believes this because he thinks and wills, and speaks and acts, in all likeness and appearance as from himself." (Ibid.)

     "The Tree of Life signifies the will of good, and the tree of science signifies the understanding of truth. The man of the Most Ancient Church was forbidden to eat of the latter, because the regenerated man ought no longer to be led by means of the understanding of truth, but by means of the will of good; otherwise that which is new of his life perishes." (A. C. 8891)

     "It is allowable to acquire knowledges of all that is true and good by means of every perception from the Lord, but not from self and the world, that is to say, by searching into the mysteries of faith by means of sensual and scientific things, for thereby that which is celestial dies." (A. C. 126.)

     "The men of the Most Ancient Church were by no means forbidden to acquire the knowledges of good and evil from heaven and from the world. But they were forbidden to view these knowledges by the posterior way, (a posteriori), which is done when conclusions are drawn from them respecting heavenly things." (A. E. 739.)

     "The Tree of Life means the Lord as to His Divine Providence, and the tree of science means man as to his own prudence" (D. P. 241)

     In short, the two trees represent the internal and the external, both of which are necessary to every perfect state. It is of order to view everything first from within, and then from without. It is of disorder to view anything from without, and then speculate concerning the things within. It is of order to accept the fact that of ourselves we know nothing, but that the only source of spiritual knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, is the Lord in His Divine Revelation as the only true Teacher. And it is of order to confirm His teaching by our own experiences and observations. But it is of disorder, and leading only to ignorance, stupidity and death, to deny the possibility of Divine instruction, and to accept as our only guides our own sensations, experiences, and would-be "reason" and "science." For the whole history of our race bears witness to this lesson of universal application:     "Thought from the eye closes the understanding, but thought from the understanding opens the eye." (D. L W. 46)

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     IV.

     THE RIVERS OF EDEN.

     "And a river went out of Eden, to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and was into four heads." (Gen. 2:10.) "A 'river out of Eden' signifies wisdom from love, for 'Eden' is love; 'to water the garden' is to bestow intelligence; to be 'thence parted into four heads' is a description of intelligence by means of the four rivers." (A. C. 107)

     The rivers of the garden of Eden describe the general state of the Most Ancient Church as leading principles or doctrines, flowing from their faculty of perception; that is, their knowledges of good and truth, their rational understanding, their spiritual intelligence, and their celestial wisdom, all proceeding from their love of the Lord as streams from their fountain. For "be it known that there is no wisdom which is not from love, thus from the Lord; nor any intelligence except from faith, thus also from the Lord; and that there is no good except from love, thus from the Lord; and no truth except from faith, thus from the Lord." (A. C. 112.)

     "The most ancient people, when comparing man to a 'garden,' also compared wisdom, and the things relating to wisdom, to 'rivers,' nor did they merely compare them, but actually so called them, for such was their manner of speaking." (A. C. 108.)

     As water is the universal correspondent of truth, so a river, being an inflowing collection of waters, corresponds in the highest sense to the Word of the Lord which flows forth from His mouth. And as the Word is nothing but doctrine or Divine teaching, so rivers correspond to leading principles of doctrine, flowing from the Word. These, when received by man, produce knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, and therefore a river signifies "truths in abundance, which are of service to the rational man, thus of service to the understanding for doctrine and life." (A. R. 683.)

     The river which went out of Eden is the same "pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal" that flows through the midst of Paradise Regained, the New Jerusalem, with the Tree of Life on either side of the river; for there is but one such river, the Word of God, translucent from the spiritual and celestial senses within.

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In the Most Ancient Church, indeed, this Word of God was not written in a book, but it was written by the finger of the Creator upon the entire universe, and the meaning and lessons of this Word were written upon the hearts of celestial men. This Word, also, has been again opened by the Lord to His New Church in the Heavenly Doctrine, which is the infinite stream of Divine Wisdom from the Divine Love.

     In a literal sense the "four heads" or rivers of the garden of Eden actually describe the boundaries of the land of Canaan in its widest extent, for it was here that the Most Ancient Church nourished (A. C. 567, 4454)

     "The name of the first is Pishon; this it is which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone." (Gen. 2:11, 12.)

     The river PISHON has not been identified with any river now existing, but the land of Havilah undoubtedly refers to a district of northern Arabia, to the southeast of the land of Canaan. As this land was "compassed" by the Pishon, we may be permitted to suggest that this river is the same as the Jordan in its primeval state, before the Dead Sea had opened its chasm to prevent the Jordan waters from flowing through their ancient channel into the Red Sea.

     Be this as it may, in the internal sense of the Word the river Pishon signifies "the intelligence of the faith which is from love," for such intelligence is the first derivation of "wisdom love." The land of Havilah signifies the intellectual mind itself, stored with gold, bdellium and onyx stone, that is, with genuine good and truth. (A. C. 110)

     The river GIHON, "compassing the whole land of Cush," signifies the cognition or Spiritual knowledge of all things belonging to good and truth: and the land of Cush, or Ethiopia, everywhere in the Word signifies the mind stored with such cognitions. (A. C. 116.) This river, undoubtedly, is identical with the Nile, which runs through Ethiopia as well as Egypt. (See A. C. 5196; A. E. 569:5).

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     HIDDEKEL, "which goeth eastward towards Asshur," is clearly identical with the Tigris,* and signifies "the clear-sightedness of reason, while Asshur, or Assyria, signities the rational mind itself. (A. C. 118.)
     * Assyrian Idiklat, (an arrow); Arabic Diglat, Persian Tegel and Teger, Greek Tigris.

     PHRATH, the fourth river, is the same as the Euphrates, and signifies the "scientific" or natural knowledges which have their home in the external memory and constitute the last or most ultimate degree and boundary of the intellectual mind. (A. C. 120, 9341.)

     The four rivers, therefore, present an outline map of the region where the Church of the Golden was once established, and they describe at the same time a psychological chart of the men of that Church; in all their mental degrees and faculties. In this garden of Eden Jehovah God placed man "to till it and take care of it," (Gen. 2:15), by which is signified that the celestial man was permitted, from internal perception and wisdom, to enjoy and cultivate all the exterior faculties and degrees of the mind,-intelligence, reason, cognition and science,-but not to regard these as belonging to himself, because they are of the Lord. (A. C. 122.)

     V.

     OPEN COMMUNION WITH HEAVEN.

     Not only did the men of the Most Ancient Church possess the unique faculty of Perception, by which they intuitively recognized the nature of all things good and true as soon as presented to them, but they also enjoyed the privilege of open communion with the angels of heaven.

     "Man was so created that, while living on earth among men, he might at the same time also live in heaven among the angels, and while living in heaven among angels, at the same time also live on earth among men: so that heaven and earth might be together and act as one, and that men might know what is going on in heaven, and the angels know what is going on in the world; and so, therefore, that when men would depart this life they would pass from the Lord's kingdom on earth into the Lord's kingdom in the heavens, not as into another kingdom, but as into the same as that in which they had been when living in the body." (A. C. 1880.)

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     "Man was so created by the Lord as to be able while living in the body to speak with spirits and angels, as in fact was done in the most ancient times; for, being a spirit clothed with a body, he is one with them. But because in the course of time men so immersed themselves in corporeal and worldly things as to care almost nothing for aught besides, the way was closed." (A. C. 69.)

     "Such were the ancient times, and therefore angels could then have intercourse with men, and lead their minds home to heaven in a state almost separated from bodily things, and conduct them about [in heaven], and show them the magnificent and blessed things there, and likewise communicate to them their own happiness and delights." (A. C. 8118.)

     This open communion with the spiritual world was at that time a perfectly safe and orderly means of instruction in things Divine, for there were then no other inhabitants of the spiritual world but the angels of heaven. But after the fall had taken place, after the human will had become corrupted and hell had come into existence, intercourse with spirits was no longer safe. For ever since that time the spirit of the earth-dweller is no longer in heaven amongst the angels, nor indeed in hell amongst the devils, but is kept unconsciously in the world of spirits intermediate between heaven and hell. Heaven cannot approach him immediately on account of the evil in his will, and hell cannot approach him immediately on account of the truth in his understanding. But in the intermediate world he is in a perfectly balanced state of freedom, surrounded by a mixed company of good and evil spirits who have not yet entered their final abodes, and who are as unconscious of their superior influence upon us, as we are unconscious of our own inferior influence upon them.

     If any one on earth, for unlawful purposes and by magical means, dares to lift the veil that separates the two worlds, the spirits become conscious of the individual with whom they are present, and the evil spirits immediately take advantage of their superior influence.

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Their malicious hatred and cunning arts are greater than any man can cope with, and they know no greater joy than to take possession of his freedom and reason, in order to destroy him, body and soul. They love especially to insinuate themselves into the man's evil affections, flattering his pride and conceits,-above all his religious conceits,-suggesting, for instance, that he is a celestial man and that they are angels of heaven. When once they have the unfortunate man in their clutches, he can never get rid of them, (except by the most severe repentance), but they haunt him day and night, argue away all his truths, destroy his faith in the Lord and his love for his wife, and strive by might and main to make him as insane, physically, as they are spiritually.

     Such are a few of the dangers that lurk in the path of him who at this day ventures to cultivate open intercourse with spirits. But it is not only fraught with supereminent perils, but it is also utterly useless for any good purposes. For evil spirits can instruct us only in falsities; and good spirits, if asked for instruction respecting the other life, answer with Abraham: "If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." (Luke 16:31)

     In the New Church, above all churches, there is no need of instruction in anything from any spirits or even angels, for to this Church there has been given a Divine Revelation in which the Lord Himself instructs us openly concerning all the things contained in Moses and the Prophets and speaks to us plainly of His Kingdom in the other world, in greater fulness than any spirit or angel could ever know or tell. What better Instructor could be wanted or found?

     We have dwelt at some length on this subject, because Swedenborg's statements concerning communion with angels in the Most Ancient Church have frequently been used as arguments in favor of Spiritism. Lest Swedenborg's attitude towards the Pythonism of the present day be misunderstood, we quote the following teachings.

     "To speak with spirits at this day is rarely given, since it is dangerous, for then spirits know that they are with man, which otherwise they do not know; and evil spirits are such that they cherish a deadly hatred against man, and desire nothing more than to destroy him soul and body." (H. H. 249.)

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     "By intercourse with spirits men are brought into such a condition as to their souls that they are speedily in danger of their life, wherefore I would dissuade all from cherishing any desires to speak with them." (Doc. II. p. 232.)

     "To speak with a spirit mouth to mouth is most dangerous because the spirit enters into the affection of the man's proprial love, which does not agree with the affection of heavenly love." (Doc. II. P. 387.)

     "Man does not know the quality of his own affection, whether it is good or evil, and with what other affection it is conjoined. And if he is in the pride of his own intelligence, the spirit favors every thought which is thence." (A. E. 1182.)

     With these warnings in mind, we may return now to the heavenly communications of the men of the Golden Age.

     VI.

     THE WORD IN THE GOLDEN AGE.

     "The men of the Most Ancient Church had the knowledges of true faith by means of revelations, for they conversed with the Lord and with angels, and were also instructed by visions and dreams which were most delightful and paradisal to them. They had from the Lord continual perception, so that when they reflected on what was treasured up in the memory, they instantly perceived whether it was true and good, insomuch that when anything false presented itself, they not only avoided it, but even regarded it with horror." (A. C. 125.)

     "Revelations were made to the men of the Most Ancient Church by means of which he was from his infancy initiated into a perception of goods and truths, but as those revelations were inseminated into his voluntary part, he without new instruction perceived innumerable things, so that from one general [principle or perception], he knew from the Lord the particulars and the singulars which now men must learn and thus know, and then after all they can know scarcely a thousandth part of them." (A. C. 895)

477

     "After they had acquired a general knowledge, these general leading principles, as we may call them, were confirmed by things innumerable, by means of perceptions; and these innumerable things were the particulars or individual things of the general principles to which they had reference. Thus were the general leading principles corroborated day by day; whatever was not in agreement with these they perceived to be not so, and whatever was in agreement they perceived to be so." (A. C. 597)

     "The men of the Most Ancient Church had the most delightful dreams and likewise visions, and what these signified was at the same time insinuated into their minds. Hence also they had paradisal representations. Thus the objects of the external senses, such as the things of the earth and of the world, were to them as nothing, nor did they perceive anything of delight in them, but only in the things which they signified and represented; wherefore, when they beheld earthly objects they did not think at all about them, but only about those things which they signified and represented, which to them were most delightful, being such things as exist in heaven, by virtue whereof they beheld the Lord Himself." (A. C. 1122, 2179.)

     "The men of the Most Ancient Church were indeed aware of the external objects relating to their bodies in the world, but did not care for them, perceiving in all the objects of sense something Divine and celestial. Thus, for instance, when looking upon any high mountain, they were not impressed with any idea of it as a mountain, but with a sense of its height, and from this they had a perception of heaven and of the Lord. . . . It was similar in other instances; thus when they recognized the presence of morning, they had no idea of it as the beginning of day, but as the heavenly morning, the day-dawn in the mind; hence the Lord was called the Morning, the East, and the Dayspring. Whatever they saw with their eyes gave rise to some celestial idea, and thus with them all things, both in general and in particular, were redolent with life." (A. C. 920.)

     Such, then, were the perceptions of the Golden Age,-the trees in the Garden of Eden, desirable of aspect and good for food,-and these perceptions, taken as a whole, constituted the Word of God with them.

478

     The Word of the Lord has indeed existed with men at all times, for without it there could be no communication between the Creator and His human creations, but this Word has been given in a different form to each succeeding age. The Word of the Most Ancient Church was the very essential Word itself, the sum substance of Divine Truth itself perceived within and instantly received not only by the rational understanding but by the affections of the life's love; hence those men may be called living forms of the Divine Word. The Divine Truth was inscribed upon their very hearts, and hence there was no need of any Word existing in a written form. (A. C. 1121, 2896; A. E. 617e).

     The Word with them consisted of "general principles of celestial and eternal verities,-principles such as these: that the Lord rules the universe; that all good and truth are from Him; that all life is from Him; that man's proprium is nothing but evil and in itself dead; besides many other truths of a like nature. In all this they received a perception from the Lord representing innumerable things tending to confirm them and to harmonize with them. Love, with them, was the chief thing of faith, and by means of love it was given them of the Lord to perceive whatever had relation to faith, and in consequence faith with them was love." (A. C. 597.)

     "The very essential of the Word was to them the Lord." (A. C. 3432.)

     VII.

     THEIR PERCEPTION OF GOD.

     As has been stated before, mankind in its primitive state had no other idea of God than that of a Divine Man, for from the beginning He had revealed Himself in no other form than as the Divine Prototype of those who were created in His finite image and likeness. At first,-before as yet there was a heaven of angels,-He revealed Himself in and through the sphere of His own proceeding Divine, which, being the sphere of the Divine Man, was in itself a Divinely Human sphere. As the Divine Man, therefore, He revealed Himself to the first-born men and as such spoke to them face to face. (A. C. 49)

479

And afterwards, when a heaven of angels began to be formed, His Divine sphere filled this heaven, and, passing through heaven as through a collective greatest Man, continually brought back to the men on earth the perception and image of the Divine Man. And besides this general perception, they enjoyed also an actual individualized and objective vision of Him as a Man, for whenever a Divine revelation was to be communicated to His children on the earth, He filled some one angel with His presence,-for the time being putting to sleep the consciousness of that angel whose human form He had borrowed,-and thus spoke through the mouth of this angel who then was transfused with Divine radiance. Thus it was that the men of the Most Ancient Church worshiped as the Divine Man the Infinite Existere in which is the Infinite Esse. (A. C. 3061, 4687.)

And this perception and vision of God as Man as to His Divine Celestial and His Divine Spiritual,-that is as to His Divine Love and Divine Wisdom,-would have been sufficient to all eternity for all purposes of human progress and salvation, ii mankind had remained in its pristine perfection; for we are distinctly instructed that "if the Most Ancient Church had remained in its integrity, the Lord would have had no need to be born a man." (A. C. 2661.) For to those who are spiritual and celestial, a spiritual and celestial revelation is sufficient, but when mankind by the great downfall had lost its heavenly birthright and became natural, sensual, and corporeal, the Divine Father in His mercy descended even unto their own lowest plane and veiled His Divine Soul in a natural, sensual and corporeal human assumed from a virgin. This human nature He infilled with the Divine on every plane; so that at this day there is no man so deeply sunk in gross sensualism, but that the Divine mercy is there with him in his depth, speaking to him in a human language that even he can understand, and thus, if willing, he can be saved for heaven.

By coming into the world, therefore, He took unto Himself a more complete power than that which He exercised among the children of His unfallen race, and on this account the Sun of Righteousness now shines as "the light of seven days," because it now reflects His own natural image.

480

And now that He has come again in that Human which He glorified,-now that He has revealed Himself as Divine Rational Truth adapted to every plane of human comprehension,-He has thereby established a Church which is to be the Crown of all the Churches that have existed since the beginning of the world. For to no other Church but the New Church, the Church of the New Jerusalem, has He revealed His own Human, His own Divine-Rational Human.

And by virtue of this Revelation, now given in the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, the New Church of the future will become even more perfect* than the Church of the Golden Age, for,-speaking of the Race-man as a whole,-their innocence was an innocence of childhood, an innocence of blissful ignorance which should never have been disturbed. But since it was disturbed, the Lord in His infinite Mercy and Wisdom has turned even this most lamentable evil into the highest good. For, with the whole bitter lesson of human history as a background, and with the voice of the visible Lord guiding us forward, the men of His New Church can in time enter into a new and more internal celestial state, an innocence of wisdom, an age of gold "well refined."
* See T. C. R. 767 and INVITATION TO THE NEW CHURCH, n. 52.
CONTINUOUS AND DISCRETE DEGREES IN THE WORD 1912

CONTINUOUS AND DISCRETE DEGREES IN THE WORD Rev. ELDRED E. IUNGERICH 1912

     A friend writes: "Will you please tell me if the following diagram is a proper illustration of the several senses of the Word? If not correct, please tell me wherein it is faulty." (See A. C. 8443)

     DISCRETE DECREES OF DIVINE TRUTH.
1st     degree for the Celestial Heaven          Spiritual
2d     "          "     "     Spiritual     "               Spiritual
3d     "          "     "     Natural     "               Spiritual
4th     degree, Rational, the Writings          Natural
5th     "          Sensual, the New Testament          Natural
6th     "          Corporeal, the Old Testament     Natural

481

     This diagram virtually coincides with the one given by Rev. E. S. Hyatt to illustrate A. C. 8443 (see N. C. LIFE, Oct., 1903, p. 590). With the help of a little explanation, both diagrams can be made serviceable to an understanding of the truth that the Revelation given to the New Church is as much the Word as any other Divine Revelation.

     First. Obviously we are not to restrict all or any of the three: Testaments grouped in the lowest step of the scale to that plane alone. Each has within it senses accommodated to the five interior degrees of creation. All three and notably the Writings, (DE VERBO 13, p. 135), proceeded from the Lord's mouth, and what has proceeded from the Lord's mouth must be the Word of the Lord. (A. R. 52, 836, A. C. 5576) All three and notably the Writings, (T. C. R. 508), are continuous truths from the Lord, and contain interior senses within the outermost sense which is accommodated to the world. (A. C. 3464.)

     The Lord is the inmost of all three. In Him they are distinctly one. In proceeding from Him they also make one; although the further they are removed in the scale from Him, the greater is the appearance of their diversity.

     The written Word with an angel of a given heaven, treasured in his repository, is not our Bible or Swedenborg's Writings, but the same internal which both have in common on that particular plane. Nevertheless, on account of the similarity of external appearances in both worlds, the Word read by the angel would; appear at one time either as the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Writings. An appearance as the latter is mentioned in T. C. R. 461. To give crowning illumination upon a discussion between Swedenborg and several angels, there was suddenly presented to their gaze a cedar table placed beneath an olive tree whose trunk was encircled by a vine. On this table was the ARCANA COELESTIA. Upon the publication of the BRIEF EXPOSITION there occurred marvelous phenomena which are to be classed; among the marvels accomplished by the Word. And that there: might be no doubt this was a book of the Word there was written on all copies in the spiritual world: "This Book is the Advent of the Lord." The appearance of the Word in the form of a book of Swedenborg's took place before the apostle John, for in the little book (Apocalypse, chap. X) which he was commanded to eat "were those things which are contained in the DOCTRINE OF THE NEW JERUSALEM CONCERNING THE LORD, from beginning to end." (See A. R. 472.)

482

The Word possessed by the angel contains continuous degrees on that plane, each of which would severally correspond to one of the three Testaments here. The nature of the external appearance there would be determined in every case by the end to be effected by that particular reading of the Word. In each case there would be a correspondence between the end and the appearance, and these several correspondences would not necessarily be of exactly the same nature. Says Mr. Hyatt: "The natural rational expressions which externally manifest the Writings correspond to spiritual rational things for those who seek them within the mere letter."

Secondly. The Word for men on earth is the Word in its sixth degree. This is the literal sense of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings. "Truth Divine in the fifth degree, or as it is in the lowest or first heaven, can be somewhat perceived by a man in illustration, but yet is such that a great part of it cannot be enunciated in human words. . . . But 'Truth Divine in the sixth degree is like that with man, accommodated to his apperception. Such is the sense of the letter of the Word." (A. C. 8443.) Says Mr. Hyatt: "We have four discrete forms of the Word, three of which are in the heavens and one in the world. The latter is given in three continuous degrees emulative and expressive of the three discrete degrees of the Word in the heavens. These three continuous degrees of the forms of the Word are distinguished by the natural forms of presentation ultimated by the three distinct languages chosen for them, and which are the same ones that were written over the Lord on the cross, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. . . . The externals vary the accommodation to finite reception discretely for each of the heavens, and the world, and continuously for the three planes of man's natural mind."

That the Writings as read on earth are read in their natural sense and are a literal sense of the Word, though one which is more translucent than that of the other two Testaments, is almost self-evident. "(The Spirits) have said . . . that the things which I have written are (very) rude and gross. . . .

483

I perceived by a spiritual idea that it was so: that they were very rude; and therefore it was granted me to reply that they are only vessels in which purer, better, and more interior things can be infused, like a literal sense." (S. D. 2185.) But the literal sense of the Writings is so given that there the interior spiritual things can be imbibed almost directly by one who reads and meditates upon them with delight. It is on account of this their virtue in the natural world today that they deserve to be called even in their letter the Internal Sense of the Word. They are the glory in the cloud. By them alone may we be affected by the same glory in the letter of the other two Testaments. They give the "genuine sense and understanding of the Word." (S. D. 1464.) "It is to be known that man while he is in the world is at the same time in the internal sense of the Word, when in the genuine doctrine of the Church as to faith and as to life, for by this doctrine the internal sense of the Word is then inscribed on both his understanding and will. . . . When such a man comes into heaven, he comprehends the Word only as to its internal sense, and knows nothing about its external sense which then appears to him as a cloud that absorbs the rays of his light." (A. C. 9430) Hence the remark of the spirits, and the assent of Swedenborg while in a spiritual idea, that the literal sense of the Writings was comparatively rude and gross.

Thirdly. The series of continuous degrees in the natural, viz., rational, sensual, and corporeal, is not altogether satisfactory when applied to the literal sense of the three Testaments. In the first place, the literal sense of each Testament has all three of these degrees. In the second place, it is not appropriate to speak of a corporeal sense.

That some parts of the external of the Old Testament are like some of the New Testament and conversely; and that a few parts of the Old Testament and still more in the New Testament give the internal sense almost naked, and in this respect are like the great part of the Writings, is not to be questioned. The statements that "He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God" (John 3:34) and "By everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live" (Deut. 8:3) are in as clear and rational a form as the teaching that "No man has religion without revelation and all revelation is with us the Word." (A. E. 963.)

484

The Writings also have in their letter all three continuous degrees of the natural sense. The various objects of the spiritual scenery recorded so frequently in the Writings mean precisely what the same objects mean in the other two Testaments, the internal sense being related to the manifestation by the identical law of correspondence. A certain spiritual phenomenon is depicted in the seventh chapter of Daniel, by four beasts: a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a dragon, ascending out of the sea. The same phenomenon is depicted in Apoc., chap. 13, by a single beast ascending out of the sea. This beast was like a leopard. It had the feet of a bear, the mouth of a lion, and received its power from the dragon. The same phenomenon is depicted in the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, n. 185, by men whose heads were covered with a lion's skin, whose bodies were covered with the skins of leopards and whose feet were wrapped in the skin of bears. These were driving in sleighs which had the form of a dragon. The spiritual signification of this manifestation is then exhibited, not in this instance by a direct unfolding of the correspondences of these objects, but by a transition of the description to the truly rational envelope of their spiritual meaning, given thereupon as an account of the beliefs of these men. In the main, however, the Writings are in this purely rational envelope.

The objection to calling the lowest of the three natural senses the corporeal is because this term is to be applied to the Lord who by glorifying the very flesh and bones established in His Divine Human a Divine Corporeal. The Lord who as the First is above all six degrees of Truth Divine, is as the Last a seventh or corporeal degree which terminates the series at its nether end. The six degrees of Truth Divine are a span between the Lord within and the Lord without man. They are to initiate the several planes in man into a life according to Divine order, and that there may be an initiation of a plane it is necessary that the truth which informs and reforms it should be of a higher degree. For the good, that is, the harmonious activity of any plane, is conjoined and wedded to the truth of a higher order.

485

As man has a corporeal degree, the truth which comes to man in the density of its cloud, (called in A. C. 8751 the maxime naturale), should preferably be termed sensual truth. Sensual, interior sensual, and rational, would seem to be the best terms to place in the diagram. It is probably on account of the conjunction of good with truth of a higher order that the senses in each of the three heavens are called in A. E. 1024, Divine Celestial, Celestial Spiritual, and Spiritual Moral.

That the truth which informs a plane is of a higher order than the good of that plane, gives an explanation as to why Truth Divine never compels, but solicits and uplifts; why a Divine Revelation does not forcibly and directly state conclusions and deductions which the man of the Church by a true reasoning from that Revelation could come to as of himself. There are not a few who declare they will not accept the teaching that the Writings are the Word until they see it stated in just that language in the Writings. Says Mr. Hyatt: "He (the Lord) has taken. . . care that it (the external of the Word) should not be such as to force its Divine Authority upon anyone. Nevertheless, voluntary self-compelled acknowledgment of the Authority of the Writings as a rational form of the Divine Word is necessary to all reception of the genuine life of the New Church." As the truth is higher than the plane which is to be actuated, and as the actuation of the plane must be as of itself, it would not be orderly for the truth to club down particular objections one by one ad infinitum, nor for the plane to expect such treatment before it consented to live. It is never possible to convince a man who will not reason from universal principles, for as often as one particular objection is clubbed down, a hundred others equally untenable leap into its place. To reason that the Writings are the Word because they proceeded from the mouth of the Lord, is to reason from universal principles, that is, from the Lord. But to start from the verimost external of the Writings and base the conclusion upon the peculiarities of external style and composition, and the absence of required declarations in the exact language desired, will only plunge the mind into a labyrinth of confusion. To reason from the Lord is to reason from heaven; but to reason from the surface is to reason from hell.

486

For he who reasons from the Lord wills to be led by the Lord; whereas he who reasons from the surface wills to be led from self, and from self alone.

"That the Word is holy and Divine from inmosts to outmosts does not appear to the man who leads himself, but to the man whom the Lord leads. The man who leads himself sees naught save the external of the Word, and judges about it from the style; but the man whom the Lord leads judges of the external of the Word from the holy that is within it. The Word is like a garden, which may be called a heavenly paradise, in which are desirable and delightful things of every kind, desirable things in fruits, and delightful things in flowers. In its centre are the trees of life about which are springs of living water. And round about it are forest trees, about which are rivers. The man who leads himself, judges of that paradise which is the Word from its circumference where the forest trees are; the man whom the Lord leads judges from its centre where the trees of life are. The man whom the Lord leads is actually in its centre and looks to the Lord; but the man who leads himself is actually sitting in its circumference, and looking outwards to the world." (A. E. 1072.)

487

NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

     We have just received a copy of the new edition of Swedenborg's work on GENERATION, translated and edited by the Rev. Alfred Acton, and published by Dr. Felix A. Boericke. It is a magnificent volume within and without, and we heartily congratulate these gentlemen and the future students of the book. A more extended notice will appear in our next issue. Copies, (at $3.00, postage 19 cents), may be ordered through the Academy Book Room or from Boericke & Tafel, 1011 Arch St., Philadelphia.

     The latest production of Rudolph Williams' tireless pen is a folder with the startling title: "At One-ment in Doctrine practically are the Convention and the Academy." The "new thing" brought forth from the treasury of the Colonel's imagination is that the Rev. J. K Smyth in his sermon on "The Pearl and the Swine" sets forth pure Academy Doctrine. Neither the Academy nor the Convention find this to be the case, but Mr. Williams nevertheless suspects "that possibly a conspiracy to academy-ize the Convention exists and is fast consummating its work!"

     A correspondent asks "what answer to give to his sister in Germany, who wants to know whether it is right for her to pray for her departed husband or not." While we do not find any direct instruction as to this question in the Heavenly Doctrine, we know that the departed will be led to his final destination absolutely according to his own choice, and that our prayers cannot add any increase to the infinite Mercy of the Lord. It is always right to think of our departed friends and hope the best for them, for they will, if well disposed, perceive and rejoice in the sphere of our continued affections, but it is as unlawful as useless for us to attempt by entreaties to interfere with their freedom and reason or to change the course of the Divine Providence.

488

     The London Swedenborg Society reports an excellent circulation of its publications; the total number delivered during the year having been 11,284 as compared with 5,426 in 1911. Of this number 2,960 were volumes of the Writings themselves in English, 42 of the Philosophical works, 593 volumes and parts of the Concordance. The sale and distribution of the Writings in other languages have been as follows: Latin, 47 vols.; French, 33; Italian, 9; Welsh, 204; Magyar, 15; Japanese, 852; Dutch, 7; Danish, 893; Spanish, 30; and 5 vols. each representing a different language. Copies of HEAVEN AND HELL in the Japanese have been presented to 59 public libraries, to 49 theological schools, to 292 monasteries and 384 to various missions. Messrs. Warne & Co. have sold the phenomenal number of 53,152 volumes of the Writings and of Trobridge's LIFE OF SWEDENBORG.

     Dr. Teitaro Suzuki, the Japanese translator of HEAVEN AND HELL, who is now engaged in the still more difficult task of translating the DIVINE PROVIDENCE, On June 11th delivered an address before the London Swedenborg Society on "A Japanese Impression of Swedenborg." Our readers will be interested in the following extract from MORNING LIGHT of June 15th:

     "A senior friend of mine who is the chief prosecuting attorney in the Supreme Court of Japan is a religiously minded person-and he was one of the first who bought the Japanese copies of Heaven and Hell. When I met him later, he was enthusiastic about the book, and highly recommended it to the Japanese public, which is lately, I am sorry to say, losing faith in the world to come, or rather in a world which exists along with this one. He ascribed one of the reasons why crime seems to be growing rampant lately in Japan to the lack of the knowledge of a coming life. For this reason, he said, in those provinces in Japan where religious thought is sadly on the lowest stage of reception there are more horrible crimes committed than elsewhere.

489

He has a group of friends who are all interested in similar matters to those described in Heaven and Hell, and they are all highly intellectual people, and occupying offices of responsibility in various departments of life."

Mr. E. H. Bayley, in his address as chairman at the recent annual meeting of the Swedenborg Society, rejoiced that distinctive terms of the Writings, such as "cognitions" and "scientifics," had now been consigned "to the scrap-heap." He professed to "tremble for the fate of those other blessed words which always bring tears to my eyes,-'confasculation' [sic!],'compagination,' 'interiors and exteriors,' 'goods,' 'uses,' 'singulars' and 'generals,' and 'remains.'" Terms such as these "are the only things which stand between us and a wide circulation of the Writings." It may be inferred that the gentleman is but slightly acquainted with the Writings, as a wide reading would have been disastrous to his lachrymal glands.
LIFE OF SWEDENBORG IN THE BOHEMIAN TONGUE 1912

LIFE OF SWEDENBORG IN THE BOHEMIAN TONGUE A. SELLNER 1912

     EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. (The Life and Religion of Emanuel Swedenborg the Apostle of the New Religion.) By Jaroslav Janecek. Prague, Bohemia. 154 pages.

     We welcome the appearance of this little volume in the Bohemian language, as an earnest contribution to the continuation of the active missionary work inaugurated by Mr. Jenecek some months ago by the issuance of the monthly Novu JERUSALEM. Among the thirty or more millions of multi-lingual Austria Hungary, there are at least six million native Bohemians, and in addition to this there are several million who are conversant with the Bohemian language. The present volume, therefore, is addressed to a large public, and the name of its author, a man of high repute in Austrian literary circles, should ensure a wide circulation and a respectful hearing.

     The work is intended as a comprehensive introduction to Swedenborg and his Writings, and, to sum it up in a few words, it is concise, exact, and most readable.

490

Its thirty-five short chapters are an evidence of the skill of the author in presenting facts in a form so concise and attractive that each chapter is sufficient to itself. In this way the author reviews Swedenborg's childhood, his travels, his official position, his membership in learned societies, his many anticipations of modern discoveries, his numerous scientific works making an imposing list of the published and posthumous works written prior to 1743. The opening of his spiritual sight; the circumstances of the first publication of the ARCANA; anecdotes including Kant's testimony, evidencing Swedenborg's intromission into the spiritual world; his parliamentary life; the persecutions against Oetinger, the first German translator of the Writings; and the persecution directed by Felenius and Ekebom against CONJUGIAL LOVE; Swedenborg's prediction of his own death, his last moments, and the testimony of his contemporaries as to his private life, conclude the biographical part of the volume before us.

     The remaining portion of the work is devoted mainly to an account of the New Church, commencing with a complete list of the Theological works, (Latin, with Bohemian translation). A short chapter is devoted to showing the nature of these Writings, that they are written "not by human learning but by Divine Inspiration," and that in their composition Swedenborg used no other sources than the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures and the indexes thereto made by himself.

     This chapter is very good so far as it goes, but although it speaks at length of the New Church and of the New Jerusalem seen by John in the Apocalypse, we miss here and also throughout the book any distinct announcement that these Writings are the Second Coming of the Lord, and it is to be hoped that in the continuance of the work in Bohemia this will yet be openly proclaimed so as to leave no doubt that the New Church rests upon the foundation of the Lord Himself in His Second Coming.

     After noticing the recent activity in Sweden beginning with the removal of Swedenborg's remains and culminating in the Swedenborg Congress at London, and the Swedish publication of the philosophical works, Mr. Janecek closes his book with a brief review of New Church activities in modern times, both in the matter of the numerous languages into which the Writings have been translated, the many journals of the Church, including the NEW CHURCH LIFE, and the various bodies (Convention, Academy, Conference, etc.) which are carrying on the work of the Church.

491

We note on the last page an announcement of the forthcoming Bohemian edition of HEAVEN AND HELL, translated by Mr. Janecek, the announcement including the table of contents of the work. By this time the book is doubtless already published, and will be a timely sequel to the work before us which so ably and affectionately introduces Swedenborg to the Bohemian people.
A. SELLNER.
"THE PEARL AND THE SWINE" 1912

"THE PEARL AND THE SWINE" Editor 1912

     The sermon on the "Pearl and the Swine, or Marriage and its Perversions," by the Rev. Julian K. Smyth, has been issued in pamphlet form and has been widely distributed. Its treatment of the subjects involved in the title has been described as marking a new era in the Church, and we therefore supposed that this sermon had developed some new and unexpected solution of the moral questions which have so long disturbed the General Convention. We have failed, however, to discover in it any new light, but find instead a sweeping denial of plain teachings of the Heavenly Doctrine.

     Mr. Smyth recites in his usual eloquent style certain general truths concerning the marriage relation, such for instance as the fact that "in man the thought element predominates, and in woman the affectional element," and he traces the origin of "marriage love,-the love of one man for one woman,-to the union of goodness and truth in the soul of each individual." He describes with a charming tenderness of touch the holiness of true marriage, and depicts in earnest words the horrible results of the perversions of "marriage love."

     All this is of course good, but when it comes to the interior and vital truths on the subject of conjugial love,-truths which are known to the New Church alone,-Mr. Smyth is all but silent.

492

There is not even a hint of the eternity of marriage from conjugial love, and the idea of marriage as an inmost union of souls and minds, based on unity in religious faith, is hardly suggested, even in a remote way. And yet, without these truths how can there be any spiritual idea of marriage?

     Besides these faults of omission, however, there are in the sermon statements of so dangerously misleading a character, that criticism of them seems to be an imperative duty.

     In tracing the source of the "marriage principle" from the union of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, Mr. Smyth makes Swedenborg say that there is in the Lord "an ineffable blending of love and wisdom which make Him what He is. These two Divine elements are twain, and yet by a Divine and irresistible attraction, they unite as one." And again, the "illumined teacher" has these words put into his mouth: "Listen again, You think I speak vaguely when I say that marriage love has its origin and its counterpart in the union of the Divine Love and Divine Wisdom,-the feminine and the masculine elements,-in the Divine Being Himself;" and Mr. Smyth goes so far as to describe the union of these "feminine and masculine elements" as "Divine nuptials."

     Now where in all the Writings does Swedenborg make use of dualistic expressions or ideas such as these? "Two Divine elements;" "the feminine and masculine elements in the Divine Being Himself;" "Divine nuptials!" Such expressions are totally foreign to the theology of the New Church, which teaches that in the Lord there is but one Divine element or substance,-the infinite Divine Love. The Divine Wisdom is not an element or substance by itself, but is one with the Divine Love, as the Divine form is one with the Divine substance.

     The notion of two Divine elements,-the one masculine and the other feminine, which by a Divine and irresistible attraction are united as one in Divine nuptials,-suggests the profane and abominable idea of a dual and bisexual Godhead. We do not for a moment believe that Mr. Smyth has any such idea consciously in his mind, but that there is real danger in the terms which he employs is evident from the notion of a father-God and a mother-God, which is widely abroad in the Christian world at this day through the propaganda of the "Christian Science," with its invocation of "Our Father and Mother God, all harmonious."

493

Mrs. Eddy is said to have derived this blasphemous idea from a perversion of the New Church doctrine, and now and then similar perversions have appeared even in New Church literature. (For a full exposure of this heresy, see NEW CHURCH LIFE, April, 1905, pp. 236-248.)

     In his treatment of the perversions of "true marriage love" Mr. Smyth completely rules out of court the teachings of CONJUGIAL LOVE concerning the degrees intermediate between conjugial love and scortatory love. The forms which he describes as "less grievous" and therefore "tolerated by God," he nevertheless condemns as "always swine, always filthy," and he declares that "the suggestion of anything neutral between them [the pearl and the swine] is impossible. It is a perversion of the plain meaning of this little parable."

     The "perversion," then, must be charged to the work on CONJUGIAL LOVE, which teaches that there is a wide neutral ground between heaven and hell, and that the very purpose of the "intermediates" is to separate the pearl from the swine.

     It would seem that this indiscriminate condemnation of the intermediates is the chief cause of the great popularity of the sermon. It has apparently acted as oil upon the troubled waters of the Convention. The temporary calm gives intense satisfaction to the MESSENGER, which, in an editorial of June 26th, finds "the church," (that is, the Convention), "united in purpose, harmonious in action, purified in doctrine" and "prepared now for extension among many."

     But pleasant as this dream may seem, the fact still remains that the "purity of doctrine" as exhibited in the Brockton Declaration and Mr. Smyth's sermon will not bear comparison with the explicit teachings in the work on CONJUGIAL LOVE. The very things which the President of the General Convention denounces as "always swine, always filthy," the Lord in His Second Coming describes as "intermediate," (C. L. 455, 459, 462), as "something moderate and ordinate," (459)1 "something, as it were, analogous to marriage," (459), Something from which scortatory love differs as much "as a dirty linen cloth differs from one that is washed" (463)

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These are the words of the Divine Revelation.

It might be supposed that Mr. Smyth's sermon would have been permitted to remain the final word, at least for a while, among those who follow his leadership, but the editorial in the MESSENGER, referred to above,-while rejoicing in "the disappearance in Convention of the desire to prolong discussion on subjects that have been distressing,"-immediately proceeds to prolong the same a little more. It states among other things that "the members of Convention, without the exception of a single one, are a unit in the faith that permissions, and like things called 'just' or 'allowed,' in the sense these words are used in the doctrines of the church, are never 'laws of order,' but rather the exact reverse."

This statement, however, does not state the truth. To our certain knowledge no one has ever claimed that the "permissions" in question are "laws of order." The only claim that has ever been made is that the Divine teachings in the work on CONJUGIAL LOVE are Laws of Order. The "permissions," as acts, must be left to individual responsibility. But when it is denied that the teachings of the Heavenly Doctrine are laws of order, it becomes the duty of every loyal Newchurchman to maintain their authority. This is the beginning and this is the end of the stand which the Academy has taken, and here it still stands.
NINETEENTH OF JUNE 1912

NINETEENTH OF JUNE T. MOWER MARTIN 1912

It is probable that very many New Church people, even amongst those who help to celebrate this day as one to be kept in remembrance, would not be averse to a fuller understanding of its meaning and importance than they at present possess.

The subject is mentioned three times in the "True Christian Religion," at nos. 4, 108, 791, but in order to a comprehensive and clear apprehension of it, it is necessary to collate many passages from the other books, and to learn something of the immutable spiritual laws of Divine operations which made this missionary work necessary in that world. There are also many references to the subject which throw much light upon it in Tafel's DOCUMENTS concerning Swedenborg, which are extracts from letters and papers in Swedenborg's own handwriting.

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In fact, the whole of this intensely important subject would require a volume; here only a short attempt is to be made to show its value towards building up that clear conception of what the New Church is and its relation to the former or "primitive church" that all New Church people ought to possess.

     In order to put this matter briefly and yet so that some succinct idea of it as a whole may be had, it will be necessary to mention the Last Judgment which took place in the world of spirits in 1757 according to the order of events in our world and time, for although there is no time as such in the spiritual world, it is so intimately connected with this world of space and time, which is its ultimate and basis, that we measure by time what they measure by state; and not until that judgment took place could the doctrine of the New Church as a whole be ultimated in its "universal and particular" form such as we have it in the "True Christian Religion."

     When this was accomplished and a body was thus made in this world of effects then and not before could the disciples of the Lord who correspond to the goods and truths of the true Christian Church be sent to impart them to the vast multitudes who had been released by the last judgment, and who were to help to form the new heaven from which is to descend the influx that is to build up the New Church on earth, when those who nominally constitute it become alive to their responsibility and leaving their own will and self-derived intelligence behind, (their father and mother), determine to follow the Lord Jesus Christ as the God of heaven and earth, whithersoever He goeth.

     This was necessary because no heaven can exist without an appropriate basis on earth, therefore as the order or law is, that all creative influx descends to ultimates and there creates and operates, the letter of the Word was opened that the "truths continuous from the Lord" therein hidden might be brought forth into the light in which man's external rational is kept in freedom by the Lord, so that he may accept and form his life according to those truths which are themselves the way to heaven. Of this heaven we read:

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     "When the last judgment was completed a new heaven was created or formed by the Lord of all who, from the Lord's advent up to that time, had lived a life of faith and charity, since these alone are forms of heaven; it follows that it was composed of both Christians and Gentiles, but chiefly of infants from all parts of the world, who have died since the Lord's (first) coming." (N. J. 2.)

     Of the infants we are expressly told further that they "were received by the Lord, educated in heaven, and instructed by the angels, that they together with the others might constitute a new heaven. It seems therefore to follow that the work of the disciples was necessary for the instruction of both the Christians and Gentiles before they too could constitute a part of the new heaven.

     One great lesson we should learn from the story of this wonderful missionary effort is that the New Church is a missionary effort from its very beginning and that just as the Lord sent forth His disciples, first in the natural world and afterwards in the spiritual world, so He is sending us forth to teach both by example in our various callings and offices and by precept imparted through ministers, missionaries, and books, all those we come in contact with.

     This day, too, the 19th of June, might well be chosen as our Mission Anniversary; coming so soon after the annual Convention it should be the day for planning the year's work in every Society and Association, and by the Mission Board; thus we should have the stimulus of the recurring anniversary with its associations with that wonderful establishment of the new heaven through which we ourselves receive light and life from the Lord.

     One more consideration: No. 2 N. J. H. D. goes on to say: "Hence it may be seen of whom the new heaven consists and thereby what is its quality, namely, that it is altogether unanimous." And we are not unanimous, how then can we form a basis? "From innumerable individuals consociated according to the form of heaven unanimity exists, and they become as one;" and above: "For in the spiritual world love is conjunction."

     Let us see to it, therefore, that whatever our differences may be as to doctrinals we combine together in use and work for the Lord's church. (T. MOWER MARTIN, in the MESSENGER, for July 3d.)

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Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. Besides the meetings of the Council of the Clergy,-an account of which appears elsewhere in the present issue of the LIFE, there is little to report this month from this quiet place with the exception of our recent celebration of the Nineteenth of June. This occasion was unique in at least one feature, the appearance of a new toastmaster, Mr. William Whitehead, whose efforts were crowned with marked success. The old toastmaster, whose voice has worn away from past services, was much pleased at getting a chance for once to make a speech. Bryn Athyn gatherings are a bit difficult to hold to a prescribed program, especially in the warm season, and it must be said that the newly fledged toastmaster behaved with admirable fortitude in the little disarrangements which he found himself powerless to avert. Several communications were read, including one from Dr. Richardson, of Toronto, and one from Pastor Hussenet, of Paris. Mr. Synnestvedt responded to the leading toast of the evening, "The University as an arm of the Church." The response, which held the interest of every one, was in the nature of a resume of historical evidence bearing upon the vital importance of institutions of learning to the work of the past Christian Church, and a correlation of our own great uses here.

     Then followed three toasts to the three great pioneers of the Academy movement,-Robert Hindmarsh, Richard DeCharms and William H. Benade,-which were answered, respectively, by Mr. Odhner, Mr. Charles E. Doering and Mr. Acton. These orations carried us back to the earliest history of the Church, and put our hearts in touch with the struggles of those great men who fought so bravely for the interior development of the New Church.

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Mr. Odhner and Mr. Doering paid grateful tribute to the first two heroes who in single-handed combat paved the way through the wilderness and laid the spiritual foundations upon which others were to build, and Mr. Acton, in his eloquent tribute to Father Benade, carried the thought of the preparatory work to its fulfillment, as he crowned his delightfully personal reminiscences with a tribute of gratefulness to him who had been the instrument in the hands of the Lord in bringing to fruition not only the idea of New Church Education but, above all, the growing acknowledgment of the Writings as the Word of the Lord in His Second Coming.

     The evening closed with a number of informal toasts,-one to our honored visitor, Mrs. Benade, whose absence on this occasion was specially regretted, another to our brilliant toastmaster, and a third-as usual the final one, "To the Babies," which this time included the most recent arrival, the first thirteenth baby born in Bryn Athyn.

     The annual meetings of the Council of the Clergy, of the Executive Committee, and of the Joint Councils, were held with us beginning Friday, June 21, and continuing through the following Thursday. The most important action taken was the unanimous recommendation by the Council of the Clergy to the Bishop of the inauguration of the Rev. N. D. Pendleton into the Third Degree of the Priesthood. The ordination will take place in the fall, at time and place yet to be appointed. With the exception of the Annual Address, delivered by the Rev. W. B. Caldwell Saturday evening, there was but one paper presented, this by the Rev. F. E. Waelchli on "The Divine Human before the Incarnation." The Rev. E. E. Iungerich presented for consideration the transcription of Swedenborg's marginal notes upon his Schmidius Bible, from the photolithograph. This comprises some fifty thousand words, and when printed will make a work about the size of THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM. A full report of these meetings will appear in the next issue of the LIFE.

     BALTIMORE, MD. A survey of the last five months finds many events in the local society that will be of interest to the General Church public.

     Of chief importance is the step elevating this body from a Congregation to a Society. From 1902 to 1912, its official name had been "Baltimore Congregation of the General Church of the New Jerusalem."

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But on July 7, 1912, it was regularly organized into a body having the full form of government of a society of the General Church. Its spiritual and moral affairs are under the direction of the pastor, Rev. E. E. Iungerich, elected June 3, and of six lay counselors selected by him; while its civil, financial, and business affairs are directed by a business committee of five laymen elected annually in October. The present official name is "Baltimore Society of the General Church of the New Jerusalem." The principles on which this society is founded are the acknowledgment of the Lord Jesus Christ as the only God, and the recognition of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg as the Word of His Second Advent, and as the sole guide to intelligence and wisdom of life and to an understanding of previous revelations. It gives unqualified approval to the policies of the General Church to place secular as well as religious instruction under New Church auspices, and to promote a distinctive social life among children and adults within the church; and endorses the policy of colonization as a means to realize these ends, and also to render possible a more interior state of mutual love within a society. Realizing how vital to the cause of the New Church it is that there should be marriages for heaven within the church, and that the existence of conjugial love between two requires in addition to the joint acknowledgment of the Heavenly Doctrines, a conjunction from similarity of minds and animus, it welcomes the policy of education and social life within the Church as means to develop such similarity.

Early this year, the fire-engine bell which had tolled to meetings within the chapel during the past year, was exchanged (with the addition of various donations) for a real church bell which is a veritable treasure. It was found in an antique shop in Baltimore by Dr. R. L. Coffin, and weighs over a hundred pounds, On one side is a small vignette of the virgin and child, and on the other is a fleur-de-lis with some additional ornamentation, But its value to the society is the date that follows the inscription FAIT PAR JEAN BAZIN, NANTES, 1770. Its tone is rich and full, and can be heard at the distance of a mile. It was dedicated by the Rev. A. Acton on the occasion of his visit this spring, and rung for the first time then.

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It is suspended from a framework built about ten feet from the east end of the chapel to the north of it.

     On June 16, the celebration of the 19th of June took place in the chapel with an attendance of 23 adults and 38 children. Interesting papers on the various earths outside our solar system were given by Messrs. R. S. Coffin, H. W. Gunther, E. E. Iungerich, R. Trimble, J. P. Coffin, and L. R. Behlert. Such astounding facts as whistling through the ear, women who sewed with their toes, women who could be handsome yet humble, and shadows which could be projected by spirits at a distance, were put forth on the authority of several of the speakers. Mr. Iungerich was also responsible for a song in three verses to those who dwell in the umbra, in the penumbra, and under the sun's full light.

     The kindergarten under Mrs. S. M. Coffin has been discontinued during July and August, but with the hope of its being resumed in September. The Sunday School has also been discontinued during these months, on account of the hot weather, but in its place the pastor, who is staying at Arbutus during the summer, takes afternoon walks with various groups of children. The subject of the Friday doctrinal class during the summer is the RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY with reference to the affections of the animus and the texts of the sermons on Sunday are from Luke 16, verses 15 to 23. E. E. I.

     COLCHESTER, ENGLAND. Since my last letter the uses and activities of the Society have been well maintained, a result in no small degree due to the fact that our children are taking an active interest in these uses, and from an affection which we trust will increase with the years.

     On Feb. 4th Swedenborg's birthday was celebrated. A substantial supper was provided by Mr. and Mrs. Motum. Our pastor presided and, including five visitors from London, thirty-five were present. Fight papers were presented, prepared by the men of the Society. The usual toasts were honored, and a very useful and enjoyable time was spent.

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     The day following, Mr. and Mrs. Motum invited the children to a social evening. Mr. Potter gave a short address suitable to the occasion, and dancing and games filled out the time.

     The state of growth here is evidenced by two coming-of-age celebrations: Feb. 15th that of Mr. Norman Motum and on June 6th of Mr. Sanfrid Appleton, each making his confession of faith on the Sunday following These celebrations were attended by practically the whole society, and, with the sphere of the church which prevailed, it is needless to say they were of the greatest use to us all. Our young friends were each presented with several volumes of the A. C. by the society as a mark of appreciation of past services.

     On March 3d a memorial service was held for Mr. W. Gill, our pastor officiating. An excellent address was based on Psalm 90:12, with selections from the Psalmody and concluding with the hymn, "Patience." In response to an invitation by our pastor, Messrs. Appleton and Cooper spoke of the important uses rendered to the society for so many years by Mr. Gill and of his affection for the Heavenly Doctrines. On March 7th, at a meeting of the society, Mr. W. Rey Gill was unanimously elected treasurer to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his father. On April 11th a fairy play, entitled "Puck's Joke," was given at the room. It was the joint production of the Misses Hilda Potter and Beryl Gill. It was of real merit and came as a great surprise, and evoked hearty applause. The second part included songs, recitations and an amusing dialogue, "Valentine's Day," and a collection in aid of the "Extension Fund" amounting to $21.

     On April 8th, Easter Monday, the children's social was held. Old and young had a good time, concluding with a brief address by Mr. Appleton. On April 14th, in place of the Doctrinal Class, a selection of solos and chorus from Handel's "Messiah" was rendered by the choir, under Mr. Potter, to an audience of fifty-three. The vocalists, who numbered fourteen, acquitted themselves admirably. On May 2d the concluding lecture on astronomy, and a fortnight later a resume of the series, was given at the studio, illustrated by Sixty lantern slides, loaned by the British Astronomical Society, of which Mr. Potter is a member.

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Our appreciation was expressed by several members and also the hope that in the future it might be possible to confirm the scientific facts more fully from the Writings of the Church. F. R. COOPER.

     LONDON. Since January the little circle at 169 Camberweil Grove have had two socials of a literary nature and three for music, dancing, etc. The subjects of "Architecture" and "Japan" inspired two writers to wield the pen for their respective groups. The decorations and artistic imitation of Japland by some of the young ladies added much to the sphere of the "Far East."

     The fortnightly doctrinal class has devoted its attention to the study of the work on the "Divine Providence," and at the conclusion of each class there has been a music practice.

     June the 19th received a calm but loyal recognition. A table tastefully arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Rose and family welcomed a good number of friends, including Mrs. Gill and Mrs. Potter, from Colchester. Mr. Czerny opened the programme of subjects relating to the quality and growth of the New Church, which were responded to in the form of short papers by Messrs. Ball, Howard, Rose, C. Howard and D. Elphick. Mr. Waters added in extempore and Mr. Anderson a mirthful vote of thanks.

     The traveling spirits of the society have brought us in touch with Holland, Sweden and North London. Mr. Posthuma brought a kindly message from the circle connected with Mr. Barger; Mr. John Posthuma, en route in North Europe, visited Mr. Stroh; and several of the friends attended some of the meetings of the General Conference at Camden Road.     F. W. E.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES. The California Association met this year in San Diego, April 19th, to 21st. The Rev. Thos. French was elected as a candidate for the vacant office of general pastor, and recommended to the General Convention for appointment. On account of the World's Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco and the Fair of San Diego, which are to be held in California in 1915, the Convention will most probably be invited to hold their sessions of that year in one of these places.

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The Association also resolved to ask the Convention to cooperate with them in holding a Swedenborg exhibit at one or both of these exhibitions. Six hundred dollars are to be raised within the Association towards defraying the necessary expenses of this undertaking.

     GREAT BRITAIN. The General Conference met at Camden Road, London, on June 22d, under the presidency of the Rev. S. J. C. Goldsack. It was not a large Conference, and the attendance at the sessions was not well maintained. When a vote, that required counting, had to be taken, the house numbered about eighty, but eleven hundred persons were present at the Garden Party given by Mr. David Wynter at his beautiful home, "Bishopswood." The sessions of the Conference itself appear to have been even more void of interest than is usually the case.

     At the ordination service held on Thursday evening, June 27th, three former students of the "New Church College" were ordained into the Ministry: Mr. Charles E. Newall, son of the Rev. E. C. Newall; Mr. George Boswick Meek, son of the Rev. George Meek; and Mr. Richard Hooper Teed, who comes of a family long known and respected in London.

     The Rev. Joseph Deans has concluded his long services as a missionary minister, having accepted the pastorate of two societies in the London district. The Rev. W. H. Claxton has left Kearsley to take up the position of missionary minister in London.
MAN A TEMPLE OF GOD 1912

MAN A TEMPLE OF GOD Rev. WM. B. CALDWELL 1912

     Announcements.

     (Read at the public session of the Council of the Clergy, Bryn Athyn, Pa., June 22, 1912.)

     We read in the ARCANA that "Everyone who lives in the good of charity and faith is a Church, and is a Kingdom of the Lord, and hence is called a Temple and a House of God." (A. C. 6637e.)

     In this comparison of man with a Temple or House of God the chief idea is that the man of the Church is a dwelling-place of the Lord. This is what a temple is representatively, and what the man of the Church is actually. As a temple is built to be a representation of the Lord's presence in the Church upon earth, so man by regeneration is built or formed into an actual abiding-place of the Lord. With one who by regeneration has been introduced into the good of charity and faith, the spiritual mind is opened and formed to receive the influx of Divine Love and Wisdom in the heat and light of heaven, and in these the Lord is spiritually present with angels and men. For the Lord dwells in His own with the human race, thus in the Divine Love and Wisdom that proceed from Him, being received most immediately by the spiritual forms of the human soul and mind, created in His image and likeness. This is His actual presence, His most intimate presence with finite beings,-presence by the adjunction of His Infinite Life to the finite forms of the human mind, to the affections of the will and the thoughts of the understanding, to the good of charity and the truth of faith, with one who is in the life of the Church.

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     And when the Lord is thus spiritually present in a man, He is also present by correspondence in the natural of man, in the ultimate work and worship performed by the body. For the natural is then formed to an image of the spiritual. The man is then internally an angel of heaven, an image of the whole heaven, a heaven in least form, and hence also a church in least form. For the church is the kingdom of the Lord upon earth, and is composed of individuals who are themselves churches in least form, with whom the Lord is actually present in their spirit, and by correspondence in their bodily acts of worship, as also representatively in the forms of the temple wherein living worship is performed. Hence, then it is, according to the statement, that "everyone who lives in the good of charity and faith is called a Temple and a House of God."

     When in the Jewish Church the Habitation or Tabernacle, and afterwards the House of God or Temple, were built by command, "that the Lord might dwell among them," these sanctuaries were representatively in the human form, the form of man, the form of heaven,-because they were to be the habitation of the Lord in His Divine Human, representing His spiritual presence in a genuine church and in heaven. And when the Lord came into the world among the Jews, when He "came to His Temple," He spoke of it as His Father's House, and likened it to the Temple of His Body, that is, to His Divine Human. From this and other teachings of the Lord the early Christians learned that the Temple was a type of the Lord's kingdom in heaven and on earth, and that the Church is the "body of Christ." And so also the apostles compared the Church and the man of the Church to a Temple of God, as in the following passages from the Epistles, which are referred to in the Writings to illustrate the designation of man as a Temple of God.

     "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." (I Corinth. 3:16, 17.) "And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (II Corinth 6: 16.)

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"Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." (Ephesians 2:19-22.) And to these we may add the words of Peter, "Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance I knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me." (II Peter 1:13, 14.)

The passages from Paul quoted above are referred to in the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, and it is there shown how man is built into a Temple of God. "With man, as with a temple, the end, intention, and purpose is salvation and eternal life. In these there is a correspondence with the will of man, wherein those three are. Afterwards he derives the doctrinals of faith and charity, from parents, masters, and preachers, and, when he becomes of his own judgment, from the Word and dogmatic books. All of these are means to the end, and in these there is a correspondence with the intellect. Finally there is a determination, (of the will), into uses according to doctrinals as means, which is done by acts of the body, caned good works. Thus the end by mediate causes produces the effects, which are essentially of the end, formally of the doctrinals of the Church, and actually of uses. Thus man becomes a Temple of God." (374)

From this we learn that as in the building of a temple the purpose and end is a representation of the Lord's presence, and worship of the Lord for the sake of salvation and eternal life, so in man the end is that he may be formed actually into an angel of heaven, a receptacle and abiding-place of the Lord in eternal life. This end is in the will of everyone in the beginning of regeneration, and from it he seeks the means, which are the truths of the Word, to be stored in his memory as the material out of which his understanding is to be formed, and this comes in the second stage or period in the building of the mind. The actual construction or formation takes place in the life of uses, when, as is stated, there is a "determination of the will into uses," into actual endeavor and work, the will acting through the understanding and forming it, producing thereby the fruits of charity and faith.

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And so the actual formation is effected by experience,-not only natural experience but spiritual experience in the life of the Church, involving repentance and the labors of temptation, whereby evils are removed and goods implanted in their place.

     For the regenerate man is not complete, his spiritual mind is not fully formed, until there is good in the will, truth therefrom in the understanding, and the doing of uses in act,-until the ideas and affections of truth in the brain descend through the fibers into the body. The spirit or mind is then fully formed in the interiors of the body, and becomes an image and receptacle of the three heavens, a church and a heaven in least form, a Tabernacle of God.

     The Lord alone is the Builder of this Temple which is man. He alone is Creator and Regenerator. The Lord alone forms man at the first, and in the regeneration He alone imparts the love of good, enlightenment in the truth, and power in uses. He alone inspires the will of the mind with the desire of eternal life, moves it to seek the truths that are the means of its formation, and to do the uses that ultimate the full form of the spirit. For "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." (Psalm 127.) Even as the builders of the tower of Babel.

     But there is also a part in this spiritual work that man is to do in every appearance of himself, exercising the spiritual freedom that has been given him by the Lord. He is to seek with urgent effort as the means of regeneration, cultivating and developing his own mind by learning the truths of the Church and actively thinking them. He is to labor diligently in uses, with teal, judgment, and prudence. And he is to meet with courage and fortitude the trials of spiritual temptation. Thus he is to act as of himself in all things of the spiritual life, though acknowledging in heart that the Lord alone can spiritually build and form him into an angelic temple. Indeed, without this work of man, and the work of other men in his behalf, preparing him to become a heavenly habitation, the Lord cannot enter to abide with him interiorly in his spirit, and to gift him with the eternal life of heaven.

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     This wonderful conjunction of the Lord with the free will of man, and the operations of Divine Providence which are unknown and unconscious to man is illustrated in the Writings by comparison with a man who is about to build a house. "He acquires for himself the requisite materials, but the Lord afterwards, without man's knowing, builds the house from the foundation to the roof, exactly adapted to the man. And unless man acquires for himself the things requisite for the house he will have no house to live in. So in reformation: The things which man is to acquire for himself by his own labor are the knowledges of truth and good from the Word, from the doctrine of the Church, from the world. The Lord operates the rest without man's knowing it. But it is to be known that all those things requisite for the building of the house, which are, as was said, the knowledges of truth and good, are merely a store of materials, which are not living before a man does them, or lives according to them as of himself. When this is done the Lord enters, and vivifies and builds, that is, reforms. That house is the intellect of man, for therein is his wisdom, which derives all that is its own from love." (A. E. 11542.) To which we may add this from the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, "Every man ought on his part to approach God, and so far as man approaches, to that extent God on His part enters. This is like as with a Temple. First it must be built, which is done by the hands of men, and afterwards it is inaugurated, and prayer is offered that God be present and unite Himself with the Church there." (126.)

     Let us now consider more particularly how man is built by the Lord into a temple of God, how the end and purpose of regeneration is implanted in the will, how man as of himself from that end is to acquire the means, or the materials, which are the truths out of which his mind or spirit is to be formed, and how the actual formation is effected by the determination of the will into uses.

     The truth is that man is formed both naturally and spiritually by the Lord alone, by an immediate Divine operation, both before his birth into the world and after it, even in that part which man appears to perform for himself in the regenerate life.

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     The teaching is, "That the Lord conjoins Himself to man in the womb of the mother from first conception, and forms him." (D. Wis. III:1.) He is the "Creator, Former, and Maker from the womb." (Isa. 43:1.) "That He conjoins Himself to man in two receptacles, in one by love, in the other by wisdom." (D. Wis. III:2.) "That the Lord creates with man and afterwards forms with him a receptacle of love, which is his will, and adjoins to it a receptacle of wisdom, which is his understanding" (Ibid. II:1.) "That from those receptacles by continuity are led forth and produced all things of the body from the head even to the soles of the feet." (Ibid. II:2. See also V.) "That one receptacle is for the will of the man to be, and the other for his understanding, and yet there is nothing whatever of his will and understanding Present in the formation." (III:5.) "Life alone from the Lord does the forming, the life by which man afterwards is to live." (III: 5)

     By these statements, together with the particulars of the context, we are told in the Writings how the Lord moulds man in the beginning, gifting him with an immortal soul, an image and receptacle of Divine Love and Wisdom, and how, operating through this purest and inmost form, He weaves and builds the temple of the body. "Thou hast possessed my reins: Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. My substance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139:13-16)

     The soul's life is involuntary and imperceptible, but from the moment of birth conscious life begins in the body, in the opening of the lungs and cerebrum, in the faculties of sense and motion, and in the cupidity and imagination of the animus, which are as the will and understanding of the natural mind. But the mind proper, the mens, with its higher will and understanding, are not opened until the moment of re-birth in adult age, when first the spirit draws breath in the atmosphere of spiritual truth. Though even during minority, by means of remains, this mind is kept in a state to be opened. (A. E. 1056)

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And in the meantime the soul is in the Perpetual endeavor to open the mind from within, to awaken the latent love of the will and wisdom of the understanding, and to form the mind to an image of itself, which, however, is not possible until man is affected by the truths of the Word, which alone touch the will of the mind, and excite a spontaneous response therein, opening the inner door for the soul's operation. (A. E. 739.)

This will of the higher mind is moved and acts only when it has been affected by spiritual truth in freedom, when the influx of good from the Lord meets the truth of Revelation in a heavenly marriage Under any compulsion from without the will closes up like a nerve pricked with a needle. And in this very quality of the mens lies the free-will of man. It acts only under self-stimulus, as it were, even as the cortical glands in which it is organically situated that all the life of the mens lies the free-will of man. It acts only under self-stimulus, as it were, even as the cortical glands in which it is organically situated.

And by this self-stimulus we mean that all the life of the mens inflows from within, from the soul, from the Divine through the soul, which life opens and forms the mind when it has responded to the touch of revealed truth. And so even this, man's proper mind, is formed by the Lord alone. And so we read that "The reformation of man is altogether similar to his formation in the womb, with the sole difference that the man who is being reformed has will and understanding, which he had not in the womb. But still this difference does not take away the likeness and analogy. For the Lord, when He reforms and regenerates man, in like manner leads his will and understanding, although it appears as if man leads himself, because of the will that has been given to him and the understanding that has been given to him. But still he knows from the Word that it is merely an appearance, which is for the sake or that in themselves both in him are as they were in the womb; namely, that they were not the man's, but that those two faculties have been given to man, in order that he may will and think and do and speak as if from himself, but still knowing, understanding, and believing that they are not from him." (D. Wis. IV.)

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     In this view, it may be remarked there is no such thing as a self-made man, though this does not take away the complete appearance that man is as it were to make himself, and that he becomes such as he makes himself, acting as of himself in everything of the regenerate life, and in the preparation for it. This we must now consider.

     Before the actual building of the temple of God in man can take place, before the spiritual mind can be opened and formed by the Lord operating through the soul, there must be a preparation, which consists in the gathering together of materials, the storing of the knowledges of natural and spiritual things in the memory, and the development of the sense, science, and reason of the natural man, beginning in infancy and continuing throughout minority under the spur of natural affection, and in adult age, if man is willing, under the impulse of spiritual affection, the end of good in the will. But the essential thing in this preparation for the opening and forming of the spiritual mind is the storing of spiritual knowledges from the Word, the knowledges of faith and charity, for we have seen that the will of the higher mind responds only to spiritual truth. And it was said in the statement before read, (T. C. R. 374), that the second stage in the forming of the temple of man comes when he "derives doctrinals of faith and charity from parents, masters, and preachers, and from the Word and dogmatic books when he becomes of his own judgment."

     The need of this storehouse of knowledges for the formation of the spiritual mind is clearly pointed out in the Writings. In the DOCTRINE OF FAITH, (25-33), a chapter is devoted to the subject, and it is there said that "this storehouse is especially necessary, since without it faith cannot be formed; for the knowledges of truth and good enter faith and make it; if there are no knowledges, faith does not exist; a faith altogether void and empty is not given; if the knowledges be few, a scanty and meager faith is formed. If they be many, a faith rich and full, according to their abundance, is formed." (28.)

     And again we read, "In order that the spiritual mind may be opened and stored, it is necessary that it have a storehouse, from which it may draw its supplies; for unless man have this storehouse he is empty, and there is no Divine operation into an empty man.

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This storehouse is in the natural man and its memory, in which everything knowable can be stored up, and thence drawn forth. In this storehouse for the formation of the spiritual man there must be truths which are to be believed, and goods which are to be done, both from the Word, and from doctrine and preaching from the Word. These man learns even from infancy. But all of these, in whatsoever abundance they may be, and even though they are from the Word, are natural before the spiritual mind has been opened; for they are only science." (A. E. 7905.)

And again, "Before man can be regenerated he ought to be instructed in all the things which can serve as means, namely, goods and delights of the affections for the voluntary, truths from the Word of the Lord, and confirmations from elsewhere, for the intellectual. Before man has been instructed in such things he cannot be regenerated, for they are foods. This is why a man cannot be regenerated until he comes to adult age. But for every man there are peculiar, and, as it were, proper foods, which are provided for him by the Lord before he is regenerated." (A. C. 677.) "Both truths and goods are to be collected or gathered into the memory before he is regenerated, for without these collections of goods and truths, through which the Lord operates as through media, man cannot be regenerated." (A. C. 679)

The principle involved in this need of a storehouse or supply of food for the growing mind or spirit is of universal application. For it is founded in the universal law that the Divine operates from firsts through ultimates to intermediates in all the production of uses in forms. "The spiritual sun, or the Divine Love, cannot by its heat and light create anyone immediately from itself, for such a one would be Love in its essence, which is the Lord Himself. But that sun can create out of substances and matters so formed that they can receive heat itself and light itself. And so also the sun of the world cannot by its heat and light immediately produce germinations on the earth, but only from the materials of the soil, within which it may be present by means of heat and light, and thus cause vegetation." (D. L. W. 5.) It is similar with the universal operation whereby the uses of all created things ascend and return to the Divine from whom they were; the things in the natural world ministering directly or indirectly to the formation of the mind of man, to the building of this heaven in least form, thus to the end of creation,-an angelic heaven from the human race, the Temple of God on high. "He layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters."

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That this universal law may operate in the forming of the mind or spirit of man, the Lord has provided a storehouse of spiritual goods and truths in His revealed Word, a store of that celestial and spiritual food, without which the human spirit cannot grow in wisdom as its body grows in stature by means of material foods; without which the soul cannot take to itself a spiritual body in which it may have a heavenly abiding-place forever. This spiritual body is the mind that is to be formed within the material body, formed by means of goods and truths inflowing from the Lord through the spheres of the spiritual world, which takes place when the ultimate goods and truths from the Word are provided as vessels for this spiritual reception, the formation being performed in such things as are of the natural world, called civil and moral. (See T. C. R. 583.)

The body and its animus, therefore, is the matrix or womb, in which the spirit is formed during regeneration, in which the soul takes to itself a spiritual body, conceived of good in the will, nourished by truths in the memory, and brought forth by the conjunction of good and truth in act. And when the material body has thus fulfilled its chief use, it is put off. This we see in all creative operations,-the putting on of a body which is afterwards to be put off. Thus do we acquire many things in the course of life that merely serve as means to better things, as the matrix to the precious stone, as the seed which must die that the plant may live. Our Lord Himself fulfilled this law when by birth into the world He took upon Himself a body which He afterwards put off, which He put off successively by glorification, finally and fully at the resurrection. "I lay down my life, that I might take it again." "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. He spake of the temple of His body." And there is an important truth to be observed here, that the Lord in putting off the body, the infirm human taken from the mother, took nothing from it,-none of those things which finite man retains from the natural and keeps to eternity. But the Lord put on a Divine Human from the Divine in Himself, from the Infinite Father,-a Divine Human complete to ultimates.

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This indeed finds analogy in man, in the forming of the new spiritual mind or body by the soul, which body, however, gathers and retains something from nature, which was in no sense the case with our Lord.

     We know that the end and purpose for which man is born into the natural world is that an angelic mind may be formed in him, formed by means of the ultimate things provided in the world, the essential of which are truths from the Word. This mind can be formed only in man, only by a Divine operation whereby the soul of man takes to itself a spiritual body within the material body. For if this mind were formed immediately in heaven, without man's natural birth, it would not be permanent,-an eternal abiding-place or temple of the Spirit of God. (See Div. Wis. VIII.)

     Now the soul, as we have said, puts on this spiritual body by the forming of the mind or spirit in the regeneration, the ultimate material being supplied by the storehouse of which we have treated. It will now he in order to consider what this mind is. The Philosophical Works, the Adversaria, and the Writings have much to say concerning it, but we have only space here to present a summary of the teachings of the Writings.

     In the Latin it is called the Mens, from the Sanskrit man,-which means to think. Thus it is named from its faculty of thought. The mens is the higher mind in man as distinguished from the lower mind or animus, which plane or degree man has in common with animals. The mens, therefore, is a truly human faculty not possessed by animals, although the sour of animals is in the sphere of our mens, the second aura, the human soul or anima having its field in the first aura.

     The mens is called the rational and intellectual mind, because it is intermediate between the soul and the body, able to look up to God and heaven, or down to the world and the body.

     It is called the spiritual mind, because spiritual things are the proper objects of its thought and will, and also because it is composed only of spiritual substances, while the animus or natural mind is composed of both spiritual and natural substances. It is, therefore, the spiritual or internal mart, as distinguished from the natural or external man.

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     This mind is the spirit of man, in a complete human form. While he lives in the world it is interiorly in the whole and every part of the material body. After death it is the spiritual body, with certain substances added from the inmosts of the natural body. This mind, therefore, is the man himself.

     Pausing in this summary let us note this statement from the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM: "The mind of man is the man himself; for the first web of the human form, that is, the human form itself, with each and all things of it, is continued from its beginnings from the brain through the nerves. It is this form into which man comes after death, and who then is called a spirit and angel, and who is in all perfection a man, but spiritual. The material form, which is added and superinduced in the world, is not the human form from itself, but is from that spiritual human form, being added and superinduced so that man can do uses in the natural world, and also take with him from the purer substances of the world a certain fixed containant of spiritual things, and thus continue and perpetuate life. It is a truth of angelic wisdom that the mind of man not only in general but also in every particular is in a perpetual endeavor toward the human form, because God is Man." (D. L. W. 388.)

     "The spirit of man is not a substance separate from the viscera, organs and members of man, but adheres conjointly to them. For the spiritual accompanies every stamen of them from outmosts to inmosts, and hence also every stamen and fibre of the heart and lungs. Wherefore, when the nexus between the body and spirit of man is dissolved, the spirit is in a similar form to that in which man was before. There is merely a separation of spiritual substance from material." (D. Wis. VII.)

     Continuing our summary, we gather from the teachings that the mind is organically situated in the cortical substance of the brain, and in the fibers proceeding thence to form all the organs of the body. As this mind or spirit is in the human form it is a heaven in least form, and is called man's spiritual world.

     In the mens there are will and understanding, or affection and thought. "The changes of its state are its affections, the variations of their form are thoughts. The existence and permanence or both of these is memory, and their reproduction is recollection. Taken together they are the human mind." (D. Wis. V, p. 279.)

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(By the memory of this mind is meant the internal memory, or memory of the life, not the external memory, which is one with the animus and body.)

     In the mens the affection of the will is the affection of spiritual good, which actually is the modification or change of state in its organic substance, produced by the inflowing heat of the spiritual sun. The thought of its understanding actually is the variation of its form, produced by the inflowing light of the spiritual sun. It feels and sees as by internal motion and sense in the heat and light of heaven. Its understanding is called the internal eye. (A. C. 6032.) And, therefore, it is nourished only by celestial and spiritual foods, which are goods and truths, (5293), whereby it may be enriched and perfected to eternity. (L. J. 12.) In the conjunction of its will and understanding it is a form receptive of love truly conjugial. (C. L. 1-2.) In the conjunction of its will and understanding there is the endeavor and determination to uses. And so it is a form of love, wisdom and use, in three degrees, an image of the three heavens. (D. L. W. 239.)

     Its thought is rational, intellectual, spiritual. Thus it thinks universally, abstractly from natural objects, persons, and words. (5614) Nothing enters the mens but intellectual ideas or reasons. (7290.) In its conclusions rational judgment and perception are formed.

     This mind is conserved by the Lord in its integrity, above the possibility of harm from lower things, though it grieves in the presence of evil. (D. L. W. 270.)

     During man's life in the world it is opened only by the affection of spiritual truth. The thought of its understanding may be opened temporarily by the truths of the Word, but this is not permanent, and does not fully open the mind, unless its will be opened also by the shunning of evils as sins. (D. L. W. 269.) And unless this opening of both its understanding and will take place during life in the world, a man is not saved for heaven, for it cannot then be opened after death.

     When the mind has been opened by the affection of truth and by repentance it reduces the natural mind to correspond with itself. (D. L. W. 260.)

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     During regeneration infinite things are performed by the Lord in forming the mind, few of which become conscious to man. Thus the Lord alone, operating through the soul, forms the mind, and clothes it with its corresponding needs through the senses of the body.

     We may add that in most ancient times the melts was conjoined to the anima or soul, and governed by it. And in the forming of the mind no storehouse in the natural memory separate from the internal was necessary. By Divine influx and leading from within the perception and will of the mens was formed, the correspondences in nature ministering through the senses. Born into the affections of good, and truth, and without hereditary evil, the men of that time, by "instruction, experience, inspiration, and revelation," could be given to know all things of faith, to which they immediately assented. (S. D. MIN. 4636) In their organic perfection they became images of the Lord's tabernacle of creation.

     But after the flood the mind was disjoined from the soul, (Adv. 922), and a restoration of their conjunction could only be effected by the process of regeneration, effected by the posterior way, by revealed truths stored in the natural, by the thought and faith of truth, by shunning evils and thereby willing good, thus by all the means described in the Writings whereby the man of spiritual genius is saved. We will not stop to enlarge upon this, but only to say that this process of regeneration at this day involves two things, the opening and forming of the understanding by truth, which is called reformation, and the determination of the will into uses, which also includes the removal of evil. Only by this latter is man actually and fully re-born.

     We have already treated of the storing of the natural memory for this later use. We must now, in conclusion, consider the final stage, which is the actual forming of the mind by means of the store of materials provided for it, the actual construction of the temple in man.

     The two things necessary are reflection and the determination of the will into act,-reflection and application,-which two in reality are one, when during reflection in the truth the will is determined by intention, resolve, and endeavor, which become act when there is opportunity.

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     With respect to the use of reflection in forming the mind we have this teaching in the ADVERSARIA, "The formation of the mind itself takes place by means of the external senses, through which are derived the knowledges of things, which infix themselves in the memory. From these as from a storehouse are taken the objects or things that are turned over in the superior mind. This versation is called thought, and from thence is intellect." (924.) This versation, then, or this turning over or revolving of things in the thought of the mind is what is meant in general by reflection and meditation in the truth, and includes all the process of rational thought from the memory, whereby truths are extracted from knowledges as bees suck honey from flowers, whereby man sees within himself and confirms the truths of Revelation, and forms a rational conclusion in favor of truth against falsity. By this the understanding is reformed.

     The real formation, however, is effected by the Lord alone. There is a point where our own effort of thought is to relax, that the Divine influx may reduce the chaos to order, and bless with perception. And this we know is done for us by the Lord chiefly in sleep, not only in natural sleep but in spiritual sleep, when the striving of the proprium and its prudence is quiescent, and there is submission to the Divine will, a "forsaking of all to follow Him." The dawn of perception comes with the orderly arrangement of truths in the mind by the Lord, and the silver is found in the sack's mouth, placed there gratis and unknown to us. Rational reflection, therefore, can but prepare the material for the actual construction of the temple of the mind. The Lord alone builds the house.

     But the effect and result of reflection must be more than rational conclusion, if the forming of the mind is to be complete. Within that conclusion there must be a determining of the will toward act and use. And this will take place if the affection of the will is touched by the truth, for this is the affection of good, which spontaneously seeks to clothe itself with truth in the understanding, and with a natural form in the works of the body. This will take place if there is repentance during reflection, interior repentance in the shunning of evil as sin, which alone opens the mind to its inmost spring.

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Good inflows into the will from the Lord when there is resistance to evil in the combat of temptation, which takes place first of all during states of meditation and reflection. It is then that there is an outpouring of evil and inpouring of good. (See D. P. 296:10.)

     This is the chief and central thing in the part that man is consciously to perform in regeneration, the removal of evil from the external mind by conscious effort of thought in the internal mind. This done by man on his part, the Lord on His part removes evil and insinuates good in its place. And this good in the will of the mind is the active of spiritual love, which spontaneously determines itself into uses, into the complete human form, that it may ultimate its ends of use, and the new mind or spirit is not fully formed until this is done.

     The new spirit, conceived of the love of truth, and gestated by reflection, is born by the doing of uses. Thoughts and intentions in the head are to become acts of the body, that the mind, not only in the head but in the whole body, not only in the brains but in the fibers throughout, may be formed into an angel of heaven.

     The quality of this angel-man will be according to the labor put upon it, the effort of the man himself in all his co-operation with the Lord, and the labor of other men in the part they are given to play in ministering aid to Him who alone builds the house.

The essential of the formation takes place in the beginning of regeneration at the birth of the new spirit. The development is to follow, as man spiritually grows from infancy to ripe manhood,-to that ripe state of spiritual life which comes in the old age of the body, then ready to be put off, that the fully-formed angel may rise to eternal life in heaven, to be a pillar in the everlasting temple of God.

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SWEDENBORG'S MARGINAL NOTES IN THE SCHMIDIUS BIBLE 1912

SWEDENBORG'S MARGINAL NOTES IN THE SCHMIDIUS BIBLE E. E. IUNGERICH 1912

     Codices 89 and 90 of the MSS. of Swedenborg in the Royal Library at Stockholm consist of fragments of the Old and New Testaments, of the Latin version by Sebastian Schmidius [Schmidt], professor of theology at Strassburg, and published by him in 1696. On the margin of this Bible Swedenborg entered in Latin many critical' expository comments on the text, and there are references to passages in the Bible, ADVERSARIA, INDEX BIBLICUS, ARCANA COELESTIA and APOCALYPSE REVEALED. Many words in the Latin text are underscored, and various signs or marks occur in the margin, such as the abbreviations OBS., N. B., the numerals 1-16, and the marks [two parallel lines], +, -, -, [check mark].

     There are scarcely any notes in the portions from Leviticus up to Isaiah, and from Obadiah through Malachi. They are somewhat more numerous in the New Testament, but the parts of Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, and Amos, that have been preserved, are copiously annotated. A conservative estimate would place at 48,000 the number of words that occur in these marginal comments, or about one-half as many as are contained in the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM.

     The missing portions are Genesis 27-37, Exodus 1-37, Jeremiah 24-39, 45-47, Ezekiel 15-23, 28-42, and many parts in Isaiah. Some of these missing- portions were deliberately removed, a number of them having evidently been cut off with a pair of scissors. (Doc. 310, 313.)

     The whole of this Bible with Swedenborg's marginal notes was photolithographed in 1870 under the direction of the Rev. R. L. Tafel, but by a mistake of the printer the two books of Samuel were left out. Instead, however, of giving us the fragments just as they are, Mr. Tafel, through a mistake in judgment, supplied the text of the missing portions from another copy of Schimidus Bible borrowed from the Royal Library in Stockholm.

522

As a result, the reader of the photolithographed edition cannot always tell whether the absence of notes on a given page is due to the fact that none were written by Swedenborg, or that the page is missing in Swedenborg's copy. The Tafel DOCUMENTS do not give specific information here, and the reader is obliged to refer to the original copy for satisfaction, a thing which the photolithographing of the Bible should have obviated.

     As an instance in point, there are three annotations that appear to be written in a different handwriting from Swedenborg's. These occur at pp. 528, Is. 57; 763, Matth. 22:11; and 874. Apocalypse. Instead of the distinct slant that characterizes Swedenborg's handwriting, these notes are written in a vertical, copy-book style. Moreover, the notes on page 874 at the commencement of the Apocalypse are written in German. As pages 528, 763 have no other note or sign besides the first two annotations in question, there is nothing by which to decide as to whether said notes are in the original fragments preserved at Stockholm or whether they were in the other Bible which Mr. Tafel introduced so unfortunately. But on page 874, where the third annotation occurs, the sign + is found six times on the page, and as this sign frequently occurs on pages which Swedenborg has annotated, it seems reasonable to conclude that the three annotations in the foreign handwriting did not come from Mr. Tafel's alien Bible, but are in the original fragments at Stockholm.

     The German annotation, p. 874, which has an occasional Latin word interjected, is as follows:

     -nas Brighmannus, edid. = Apocalypsin Apocalypseos. De qua vide T-I [Pro] gram : N. 34 p. 7, quo in [pro] grammata plurima in re invenies.
[in ex]positione Circa : Septem Ecclesias
-N. Hoffmannus Jenae 1661 edid = Chronologia Apocalypticam Ib;
[Clar]issimus Chorier Zi
-obse hat nach Hn. Burnat.
Salesburgensi, ein fiinft
100 jahr alt Msstu gezei =
[gt] die Offenbahrung mit figiiren vorstellend, waren
Aesops fabeln ebenfals mit figiiren aufge =
[statt] et gefolget; unde conclusit, das diejenige welche

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[die] zweig [?] wercke also vereinigt hatten, allen ansi =
[chten] nach, eins so glaubwurdig gehalten als das andere.
Burnats Reisebugher p. 12.

     [Thomas [?] Brighmann published a Revelation of the Apocalypse about which see vol. I, preface No. 34, page 7, in which preface you will find many things in the explanations about the seven churches. Herman [?] Hoffmann at Jena in 1661 published an Apocalyptic Chronology. The most celebrated Chorier [?1 Zi - obse [!] has, according to Herr Burnat, of Salzburg, shown a five century old MS. presenting the Apocalypse with illustrations. Aesop's Fables, treated in similar manner with illustrations, had been followed. He concluded thence, that those who joined the twin works in such a manner, must according to all appearances have taken one to be as credible as the other. Burnat's Journal, p. 12.*]
     * Possibly some of our readers may supply information about the Brighmann, Hoffman, Chorier Zi--obse, and Burnat here mentioned.

     As to the date of composition of the annotations in the Schmidius Bible, Dr. Tafel shows that it must have followed that of the ADVERSARIA and INDEX BIBLICUS, and assigns the period from June to October, 1747, as the time, (Doc. 313, n. 85, 88, 89). Though it is unquestionable that the majority of these notes were written during this period, there is evidence that some entries were made at an earlier date, and that others were written as late as 1768. (1) In the ADVERSARIA at Joshua 17 we read: "4583. These things similarly, especially those which are underscored with lines." These underscorings obviously refer to those in the Schmidius Bible at this text, and they must have been made before the ADVERSARIA was written. (2) At Gen. 9:20: "But Noah began to be a man, tilling the ground," we find the marginal reference, "C:4:2. N:345" This is a reference to A. C. 345, in which is to be found an explanation of "tilling the ground." At Deut. 32:15 we find the marginal reference, "N:4832 expl: quod sit falsum mali," and on referring to A. C. 4832 we find falsity of evil treated there. At John 17:21, after a lengthy marginal note upon the teaching that the Lord dwells in what is His own with man, we find this reference, "Videatur N:9338 fin." At the end of A. C. 9338 is the statement that the Lord dwells in what is His own with man. At Apoc. 21:18 occurs an explicit reference to the ARCANA: "De auro et argento, in Verbo, arc:coelest, n. 1551."

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Finally, the reference "n:634" at Apoc. 20:4, is nothing else than a reference to APOCALYPSE REVEALED, N. 634, where the subjects of the text in consideration are treated of.

     The only work that had been done upon these notes since they were photolithographed 40 years ago, was a draft by the Rev. C. T. Odhner of about two-thirds of the notes in Daniel; and an uncompleted transcription of the notes in Genesis and Exodus by the Rev. A. Acton. In 1911, the writer's attention was drawn to the valuable and important matters contained in these notes. With the assistance of the Collegiate Class of eight students in the Academy, one thousand words in each of the most copiously annotated books of the Bible were transcribed. These results, together with the above-mentioned drafts on Daniel, Genesis and Exodus, have now been carefully revised, and the remaining portions not as yet transcribed were brought to a close during the ensuing year. In offering this work for publication, the writer is confident that more than ninety per cent. of the notes have been accurately read, and that of those notes which could not be read, or in which the reading was questionable, the chief obstacle is due to gaps or lacunae, affecting in places a half dozen letters of a whole column of lines. In some cases the context would suggest what the missing words are. But what the writer has not been able to accomplish in such interpretation, it is obvious may be done more readily by others after the transcription as it now stands has been published.

     The following selections will give an indication of what valuable matters are contained in these notes:

     (I) At I Kings is the reference, "II Par:9:29, 12:15, 13:22, 16:11, 20:34, 24:22." By "Par," is meant "Paralipomena" or Chronicles. If the reader will look up these references he will see they are references to a book written by Nathan the prophet, Ahijah the Shilonite, Iddo the seer and prophet, Shemaiah, the prophet, Jehu the son of Hanani, and Isaiah the prophet, and that its name is "the book of the Kings of Judah and Israel." The obvious conclusion is that the authorship of the books of Kings is the joint work of these personages.

     From this illustration it may be seen how much valuable information may be obtained from only a single reference to chapter and verse.

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Even the study of words that Swedenborg has crossed, so as to introduce others in their place, may lead to profitable results. We have in view Ezek. 9:3 where "Messiah" is crossed and "God Messiah" inserted in its stead, which suggested the thought that by Messiah was meant the Lord while on earth, but by God Messiah, the Lord glorified. There are places where Swedenborg amends Schmidius's translation by adding words that were omitted, or by substituting others for those used. It is possible also that some weighty matters of correlation may be involved in the various signs that occur in the margins.

     (2) If the reader is interested in the subject of government he will find the following pertinent statement at Gen. 46:34: "Matters of the kingdom and the church are distinct, but when hey are separated, matters of the church, thus pastoral functions, are an abomination. Otherwise, however, when conjoined, as primitively in Melchizedek, and as they are in themselves, [intrinsically], but when they are divided they are nothing else than an abomination."

     (3) A puzzle in spiritual mathematics occurs at Ezek. 48:v. 10, 13. "Let the dimensions be observed. 25,000 signifies what is holy from 5x5, so 10,000 from 5x2. Length is 5x5, because it tends by successive order, but it is qualified as in human minds; but breadth not likewise; they signify sphere. . . ." "These special measures are from five, which signify life after death, and 9, for it is early morning, as 2-1/2 is 5, and 2-1/4 is 9. But 10 is the same as 5."

     (4) A statement against the use of wine is found at Ezek. 46:21, "That he must not hold such things as could disturb his spiritual and intellectual matters, for thence are evil fruits, and base and undelightful things, like diverse cupidities, for the evils of man are excited by wine, wrath, etc., and disturb the states of heavenly life."

     (5) At Gen. 9:2 is an archaeological note of interest. "There the posterity of Eber came together with the posterity of Ham, and became idolaters, for Shinar was the land of Nimrod, Gen. 10:20."

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     (6) Dan. 9:2 gives us the following curious statement: "But Greece signifies those, who indeed are ruled not according to the letter, but according to the interior and the more interior sense, but yet disagree at heart; wherefore a fight takes place among their princes, as the salt of the New Church among the leaders of the Old Church."

     (7) An important teaching about influx is given at Hosea 8:1: "The trumpet against the palate, is thus like an eagle, because they cry out deeply to the heart and teach. The covenant is the inscribed law, for the kingdom of God Messiah is inscribed in all things in nature, diversely, so also it must be in minds, for the spiritual and the celestial continually inflow from God Messiah through the soul into the minds, but when the copula has been torn, namely, when the intellectual mind is empty, and the will without any conscience of truth and good, then there is no covenant, and the law is that revealed matter which is thus given to oblivion, see verses 12, 13."

     (8) Again, notice the important distinction between the celestial and the spiritual, to be found at Ezek. 46:16: "Concerning the kingdom of God Messiah, that it is given gratuitously, [it being no one's], but the prince's, that is of God Messiah, foreshadowed in Joseph, as elsewhere, among the Levites, whose possessions were not to be sequestrated. It is celestial things which are not to be sequestrated, but spiritual things are those things of the prince which are given, but are taken back again, for without alternation, there is no joy or felicity. The celestial is continuous or perpetual."

     (9) As an example of exposition, note the following comments on the account of Jehoiakin's burning the books of prophesy, recorded at Jer. 36: "It treats here of the internal law, or the internal man, which, [matters], are revealed in the Scriptures and prophets, thus to the Gentiles, and are declared to them by God Messiah, for Jeremiah represents Messiah and Baruch the Word of God Messiah, written, revealed and manifested in the prophets; next that the Jews were first astounded, but then burnt it. For such was their vastation that they did not even want to understand the more interior [matters] of the law and ritual, on which account when they heard them they desired to kill both Jeremiah and Baruch, that is, Messiah Himself, and the prophets, but could not, since [they were], sayings ii] from conscience.

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Wherefore it is read that they were hidden by Jehovah. In the more interior sense here is meant the Word of God, that is, God Messiah, and His kingdom written in the hearts, which natural men have burnt with fire, that is, by their own cupidities, in the winter house. In the winter house is the rational mind, which becomes altogether cold, when there is nothing of heavenly love.

     In the universal sense it treats of all men, who burn up the internal man, and the verimost internal law in the hearth in the winter house; whence the penalty, which is vastation, that the earth or mind must perish, so man and beast or its activities, verse 29, cease upon the globe, or the corpse is cast in daytime to the conflagration. Day is truth, which will perish in the heal of cupidities, for it is obscured."

     (10) Note the following admirable exposition of the seven churches and the summary that follows, both occurring in the notes to Apoc., chap. 2: "The significations of the churches: Ephesas, those who labor much in the propagation of the doctrine of faith, but thence promise to themselves rewards for their works, and thus leave out charity and heavenly love, and instead draw in the love of self, or for the sake of self. Smyrna, those who voluntarily enter into miseries, and on that account wish to be saved. Pergamos, those who mingle profane with holy matters, or evil works which they explain as good. Thyatira, those who judge of the Word of God Messiah, and of the mysteries of faith, from their own understanding, and thus suffer themselves to be seduced by evil spirits. Sardis, those who have faith, but not saving faith, because a faith not from love. Philadelphia, those who are of saving faith. Laodicea, those who are lukewarm, thus a commingling, and thence what is unclean, which must be spewed out before spiritual heat is given. These must first undergo dire temptations, so that the united matters may be loosed, and each may be restored. . . .

     "These goods, what they are by order. (1) To acknowledge the Lord. (2) To act repentance. (3) To learn spiritual truths, and so they will do good, and will come into heaven."

     (11) There are occasional references to Swedenborg's spiritual experiences.

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     At Gen. ch. 1. (1) "That now for some years I have spoken almost continuously with spirits and angels, and they with me. (2) That thus I have been instructed about the state of souls after death. (3) About the diverse kinds of spirits who seduce man. (4) About hell and its various and cruel affections and punishments. (5) About the heavens and the felicity of the souls who are there. (6) About the doctrine of true faith, as it is acknowledged in the universal heaven. (7) About the interior and the more interior sense of the Word of the Old as well as the New Testament, which is its spirit and life."

     At Gen. 9:13: "See the annotations concerning the spirits about me, in Tome 4, at the end."

     At Gen. 13:1: "By names, things are regarded in heaven. Names are in the inferior heaven, things in the superior."
At Is. 1:28 to end: "Hell and its degrees are described. Shame is ascribed to those who are in a lighter hell."

     At Jer. 49:32: "Every crime has its punishment in itself, which is manifested in the other life."

     At Jer. 50: "Babel means the genii who are still at large in the third heaven, and suppose they enjoy heavenly joy. See the written volume. Chaldeans are the spirits there; because there are many varieties of these, therefore their differences are here set forth."

     At Jer. 51:10: "These things involve mysteries concerning the Last Judgment, namely, that the faithful in the heavens and on earth turn themselves to God Messiah, and thus that God Messiah takes compassion on them, whereupon [His] face is averted from the unfaithful, and thus hell is relaxed, so as to rush upon the furies in the neighborhood of heaven, and then this heaven is made habitable for angels and conversely."

     At Lam. 2:15: "The gladness of evil spirits, what it is, when they see the Church devastated, or Messiah in extreme temptations."

     At Ezek. 4:7: "The more interior things of the Word are besieged, exactly as are the more interior and inmost heaven by evil spirits in the sphere of the ultimate heaven."

     At Ezek. 7:21, 22: "From the true worship with them an idolatry will be made. They are given to aliens, and to the impious for spoil, and they commit profanation, which is done when God averts [His] faces from them, thus the arcanum is profaned, that is, faith in God Messiah.

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The violent are evil spirits. That evil spirits profane the arcanum of worship has been testified to me by many documents of experience."

     At Ezek. 10 ... "The church is surrounded by such furies ... they infest it, from whom it sustains a great many temptations, but afterwards in their place others succeed; likewise in the universal, or in heaven and on earth, the ultimate heaven is at this day replete with quasi furies, so that it may be wondered how that crew can ever be reduced to sanity; indeed, whatever is thought about faith, from faith in God Messiah, the furies draw out, snatch away, and prevent. But when in the end of days this ultimate heaven is purged of such furies or spirits, then the kingdom of God Messiah exists. Today a similar thing takes place in nature, as well in that of the world as in that of man, for all things of both are as it were disturbed and confounded, before they are made serene, as may be evident from many documents, namely, that a chaos of the world, as it were, exists before a heaven is separated," etc.

     At Dan. 7:25: "The heaven of spirits as well as the orb of men is meant, for there is a similar circumstance in both. There are interiorly a great abundance of spirits, who are similar to the fourth beast, thence is the seduction of men. This great number would be successively increasing if they could hide their furies. They would then become similar, because inwardly is what hides ravagings and discord, [especially] when they have begun to speak sanely, and at the same time to understand; but because spirits are so crafty, as can hardly be described, it instantly comes out before the neighbor, so that the least thing is transmitted, which from a continuous experience of 25 months of that world I am able to know; a craftiness as compared with man's understanding."

     At Ezek. 24:16: "There is described here a torment, that man cannot moan, and yet there ought to be moaning, but that it is inward. Thus the discomfort abides which corresponds to a misdeed. It is a discomfort, which comes from such a misdeed, for what is sorrowful cannot be separated by moaning or exclamations of grief, just as such a torment cannot be separated.

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The anguish of such discomfort was experienced by me today when I was writing. 1747. 25 [ ] old style. The vision and description of the anguish, representatively."

     In Hos. 4:8: "The comparison is taken from the devil's crew, which excites every man's evils, even those of the faithful, as occurs in temptations. Those spirits are said to devour evils; not unlike old vapors [devour] corpses; [besides] which also various winged creatures [devour] the things that are harmful in air, as the moth, and the air does not infest."

     At Hos. 5:14: "Lion in the supreme sense is God Messiah, thus strength and power, which is taken away, for when philosophy is consulted, then it is snatched and carried away by evil spirits. Then truth and goodness can scarcely act, as is sufficiently plain to me from experience, for evil spirits especially snatch away faith."

     At Matth. 16:3: "To-day [means] in the neighborhood of the advent of God Messiah."

     At Micah 2:13: "Concerning the deliverance of the bound from the pit by attraction."

     At Joel 1:4: "That good is more and more consumed, and man degenerates more, which is done by actual sins when they take root; thus evil increases, which unless it were extirpated, there would be intolerable torments, wherefore God Messiah says, Unless the day come more swiftly, that all flesh would perish; the caterpillar, the locust, the cankerworm, and the wingless locust follow one after the other, so always more venomous spirits, for destruction begins from externals. There are, therefore, four kinds of evils, thus of destroying spirits, which are here signified. . . ."

     (12) We cannot pass by the significant note to Matth. 28:19, which enjoins baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The note reads: "That is, in the name of Jesus, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for in Him is the whole Divinity."

     (13) In conclusion we present the following notes on the third chapter of Joel, in conjunction with the text:

     "The state of men immediately after the first advent of God Messiah and then their state about His second advent."

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     TEXT, verse I: It will come to pass afterwards. I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, so that your sorts and your daughters prophesy: your old men dream dreams, and your young men, see visions.

     NOTES: "Verse I. That God Messiah gave to the apostles the Holy Spirit is evident from many words. By dreams and visions are meant revelation as well from the mouth of God Messiah as thus from that of conscience. Dreams are the interpretations which are of old men."

     TEXT, verse 2: And also upon the men-servants, and upon the maid-servants, in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

     Notes: "Verse 2. This is upon all things, for the Gospel traverses the whole circuit of lands. Men-servants and maid-servants are those who understand less."

     TEXT, verse 3: Yea, I will show portents in the heavens and on earth; blood, and fire, and columns of smoke.

     NOTES: "Against the impious, before the last day comes. In the heavens and in the earths is everywhere."

     TEXT, verse 4: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Jehovah comes.

     NOTES: "Verse 4. The sun or representatively heavenly affection or charity, because it is null, will become obscure. The moon runs into falsity, thus into violence as elsewhere."

     TEXT, verse 5: But it shall come to pass; that everyone who will call upon the name of Jehovah, shall be saved; for in the Mount of Zion, and in Jerusalem there shall be escape, as Jehovah hath said, and among the residue, whom Jehovah calleth."

     NOTES: "Verse 5. He distinguishes the things which are from the mouth of God Messiah. It treats of the remnant, and of those who are saved. The Mount of Zion in the supreme sense is God Messiah, Jerusalem is every word which is of God Messiah, in His heavens, the Word."

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PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMEVAL MAN 1912

PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMEVAL MAN Rev. C. TH. ODHNER 1912

     THE BRAIN OF THE CELESTIAL MAN.

     The people of the Golden Age differed from the men of subsequent ages not only as to the internal and spiritual qualities described above, but also as to a number of physiological characteristics, corresponding with their distinctive psychological qualities. This difference as to bodily conditions depended chiefly upon the singular operation of the primeval human brain.

     The subjects which we now approach do not easily fall within comprehension of modern man, owing to his gross ignorance of the interior faculties of the soul as well as of the body. In order to gain even a remote conception of these things, it is necessary to introduce here some general teachings of the psychology and physiology revealed in the Writings of the New Church.

     A. As to the two brains, and their relation to the will and the understanding.

     "As all the things of the mind relate to the will and the understanding, therefore there are two brains in the head, which are as distinct from each other as are the will and the understanding; the cerebellum is especially for the will, and the cerebrum for the understanding." (D. L. W. 384.)

     "Beneath the forehead is the cerebrum, and beneath the occiput is the cerebellum; the latter is dedicated to love and its goods; the former to wisdom and its understanding." (C. L. 444.)

     "All good is received behind, and truth in front, for the cerebellum is formed to receive the good which is of the will, and the cerebrum is formed to receive the truth which is of the understanding." (A. E. 316.)

     B. As to the Voluntary alter the Involuntary functions.

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     It is to be observed, however, that the cerebellum is the organ of the Divine Will rather than of our own self-will, for "the Divine Influx into the will is into the occiput, because into the cerebellum; and thence it goes towards the front parts in the cerebrum where is the understanding." (A. E. 61.)

     The cerebellum, therefore, is a sanctuary reserved by the Creator for His own undisturbed operation in man,-an organ over which the self-will of man has no control,-and on this account the whole life-function which depends upon the cerebellum is called the INVOLUNTARY function.

     But the cerebrum, which receives all the sensory nerves and all the sense-impressions, is the seat of the conscious mind or spirit. It is here that the life, inflowing from the cerebellum, first becomes conscious of its own individualized existence in the man. The general will of the cerebellum here becomes a particular will which feels its freedom of life and power of self-direction, and hence that whole life-function which resides in and depends upon the cerebrum is called the VOLUNTARY function.

     "Sense in general, or general sense, is distinguished into voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary sense is proper to the cerebrum, but involuntary sense is proper to the cerebellum. In human beings these two kinds of general sense are conjoined, but yet distinct. The fibers which flow forth from the cerebrum present the voluntary sense in general, and the fibers which flow from the cerebellum present the involuntary sense in general. The fibers of this double origin conjoin themselves together in the two appendices which are called the medulla oblongata and the medulla spinalis, and through these pass into the body and shape its members, viscera, and organs. The parts which encompass the body, as the muscles and the skin, and also the organs of the senses, for the most part receive fibers from the cerebrum; and hence man has sense and motion in accordance with his will. But the parts within this compass, which are called the viscera of the body, receive fibers from the cerebellum, and consequently man has no sensation of these parts, nor are they under the control of his will'." (A. C. 4325.)

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     "Hence it is that the motion of the heart, which is involuntary, is altogether taken away from the [conscious] will; it is the same with the action of the cerebellum; and the motions of the heart and the forces [nerves] of the cerebellum rule the voluntary things, lest these should rush beyond bounds and extinguish the life of the body before the proper time; on this account the beginnings [inmost fibers], which act from each,-viz., from both the voluntary and the involuntary things, in the whole body go conjoined together." (A. C. 9683; S. D. 5781; D. MIN. 4714.)

     The being which we call our conscious self is therefore securely held by our Creator and Preserver within the hollow of His two hands. The one hand, above our consciousness, rules from within through our inmost soul, which is forever safe from our own interference. The other hand, below our consciousness and equally invisible to us, holds us from without and rules our outmost corporeal plane. Between these two Divine hands rests that self-conscious being which is built up through our life in the world,-the man of memory, of imagination, and of reason, possessing a conscious will and understanding on each of these three planes. The upper hand of God rules through the cerebrum, inflowing by means of Divine Truth into our understanding, and through it governing our self-will. The nether hand of God rules through the cerebellum, inflowing by means of His love, affection, and good, and thereby governing our self-will, for the latter, since the great fall of mankind, is nothing but a corrupt mass of evil and destructive tendencies.

     Nearly everything in our corporeal plane is governed by the involuntary functions of the cerebellum, and very little,-the mere surface of things,-is under the government of our own volition in the cerebrum.

     Under normal conditions we are absolutely unconscious of anything that is going on in the interior departments of the whole complex system of our body. Everything in the whole wonderful machinery is proceeding in perfect order and silence, removed from our own observation, reflection or ken. Every fibre, artery and vein is performing its appointed task; each organ, intestine, gland and cell is busy in its own use, without asking our leave or calling our attention to its work, when everything is working in order.

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     There is one region, however, or one kingdom of our corporeal system, over which the cerebellum or our own volition is given a little brief authority,-the region of the lungs and the muscular and membranous system directed by them. We can by our own will govern the operation of the lungs, for a little while. We can take a full breath or hold our breath, for a little while, and we can compel the exterior muscles to perform certain extraordinary tasks, for a little while. We can force nature, (the cerebellum), into the service of art, and we can also very seriously interfere with nature, but the latter after a little while takes out its rights when the self-life is put to sleep.

     And then, in the night-time, there begins the sweeping and the cleaning, the mending of the broken toys and the rent garments, the restoring of all that has been used up or wasted. All this work is the use of the cerebellum, the "mother nature" which never sleeps, and whose work, like woman's, never ends. For "the voluntary things with man continually withdraw from order, but the involuntary things continually bring back to order," (A. C. 9683), and it is in the night-time that man is governed by the spontaneous or natural rule of the cerebellum. (S. D. 4518) And the sole reason for this is that the LORD can then without our own interference fold us in the arms of His Divine Love and Mercy. "When man sleeps the Lord guards him most of all, for love sleeps not." (A. C. 959, 1983.)

     Now, in regard to the cerebral constitution of the most ancients, it differed in no respect from our own, except in this most important internal respect that with them the two brains were conjoined as to spiritual operations, as is the case even now with the inhabitants of the planet Mars:

     "I have been instructed that the spirits of the planet Mars, [where the race is very similar to the most ancient people of our earth], have relation to something which is interior in man, and indeed intermediate between the intellectual part and the voluntary part, thus to thought from affection, and they who are the best of them, to the affection of the thought. This is the reason why their face makes a one with their thought, and why they cannot dissemble before any one." (A. C. 7480)

     "And because they have such a relation in the Maximus Home, that middle portion of the brain which is between the cerebrum and the cerebellum, corresponds to them.

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For with those in whom the cerebrum and the cerebellum have been conjoined in, respect to spiritual operations, the face acts as one with the thought, so that from the face the very affection of the thought shines forth; and from the affection, with some signs also going forth from the eyes, the general of the thought shines forth." (A. C. 7481)

     And the reason why the two brains in the man of the Most Ancient Church were thus conjoined as to spiritual operations, was that their understanding was one with their will, or their voluntary life was one with their involuntary, and both acted as one with the Divine Will of the Lord, in the perfect repose and self-surrender of the Sabbath state.

     From this internal condition, so different from the one now prevailing, there flowed forth a number of distinctive externals of bodily life that were unique to the celestial man.

     II.

     HIS INTERNAL RESPIRATION.

     Chief of these physiological characteristics was their peculiar manner of breathing, which is thus described by Swedenborg:

     "The men of the Most Ancient Church perceived states of love and of faith by states of respiration, which were gradually changed in their posterity. Of this respiration nothing can be said as yet, because at this day such things are altogether unknown, but the most ancient people were well acquainted with it, and so are those who are in the other life, but no longer any one on this earth." (A. C. 97.)

     "What is as yet unknown in the world, and is perhaps difficult to believe, is that the men of the Most Ancient Church had an internal respiration, and no external respiration except a tacit one. . . . As these most ancient people had a respiration such as is possessed by the angels, who breathe in a similar manner, they were in profound ideas of thought, and were able to have such perception as cannot be described." (A. C. 607, 608, 805.)

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     "It was also granted me to perceive the nature of their internal respiration,-that it advanced from the umbilicus toward the heart, and so through the lips without sound."

     "It has been shown to me to the life how the internal respiration of the most ancient people silently flowed into a kind of external and thus tacit speech, perceived by another in his interior man. They said that this respiration varied with them, according to the state of their love and faith in the Lord. They gave also as a reason that it could not be otherwise, because they had communication with heaven; for they respired with the angels in whose company they were. Angels have a respiration to which internal respiration corresponds; and it likewise varies with them. For when anything befalls them, which is contrary to love and faith in the Lord, their respiration is restrained; but when they are in the happiness of love and faith, the respiration is free and full. There is something like this, also, with every man, but in accordance with his corporeal and worldly loves and principles. When anything opposes these, there is a restriction of the respiration, and when they are favored, the respiration is free and full. These, however, are variations of external respiration." (A. C. 1119.)

     "It has also been shown that the internal respiration of the men of the Most Ancient Church, which was from the umbilicus toward the interior region of the breast, in the course of time, or in their posterity, was changed, and receded more to the region of the back and toward the abdomen, thus more outward and downward; and that at length, in the last posterity of that church, which existed immediately before the flood, scarcely anything of internal respiration remained; and when at last there remained none of this in the breast, they were suffocated of their own accord, but that in some, external respiration then began and with it articulate sound or the language of spoken words; thus with the men before the flood the respiration was in accordance with the state of their love and faith; and at last, when there was no love and no faith, but a persuasion or falsity, internal respiration ceased; and with this the immediate communication with angels and perception also ceased." (A. C. 1120. See also S. D. 3322, 3324, 3490.)

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     For further study of this profound subject, we must refer the reader to the SPIRITUAL DIARY, nos. 3317, 3320-2213464, where Swedenborg describes his own remarkable experience of internal respiration, for which he was especially formed and prepared from birth and earliest infancy, and this in order that heaven might be opened to him, and that he might enter into the most profound and intense thought that has ever been granted to mortal man.

     In regard to the general subject of breathing it should be observed that every man possesses a threefold respiration. The first of these is internal and spiritual,-the respiration of the spirit residing in the cerebrum and breathing the atmosphere of the spiritual world. The second is external and of the world,-the voluntary respiration of the conscious spirit in and through the cerebrum and the lungs. And the third is also external,-the quiet, unceasing involuntary respiration which is governed by nerves from the cerebellum.

     During our wakeful hours all of these three kinds of respirations are constantly operative, the spiritual respiration then making one with the external voluntary breathing, and continually supported by the involuntary respiration. The voluntary respiration directs the muscles to do all their work as a husbandman directs his laborers, while the involuntary function, like the housewife, has charge of the whole of the internal economy, particularly the heating system and the culinary department. According to the needed efforts of the body, the cerebrum then rules the lungs in deep, voluminous breaths, especially when we brace ourselves for any extraordinary tasks, or in recovering ourselves from any violent passion.

     Again, when the man of the house returns from his outside duties and retires into his office or study for deep thought and meditation,-those studies upon which depend the real support and progress of the whole domestic economy,-the cerebellum as a good and faithful housewife immediately imposes silence upon the household. The Thinker of the family is not to be disturbed by the creaking of expanding and contracting air-cells and tubes; all noise is hushed, and a tacit external breathing ensues, regulated almost entirely by nerves from the cerebellum. The more profound the thought, the more silent becomes the voluntary breathing, as silent as the breathing of the spirit itself in its cerebral chamber; the external voluntary respiration appears almost to have vanished, until, after a period, the spirit returns to earth and recovers its foothold there by a deep, full breath.

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It is this quiet, voluntary respiration of the cerebrum mixed with the involuntary respiration of the cerebellum that is meant by the "tacit external breathing" which the men of the Most Ancient Church did possess together with the internal respiration of the spirit.

When, however, both the spirit and the cerebrum fall asleep, then ensues the purely involuntary respiration, also called the spontaneous or natural breathing, which is under the complete and undisturbed charge of the cerebellum. (A. C. 3893) There is about the gentle and regular breathing,-at times almost imperceptible,-of the sleeping man, a sacred sphere, for the angels of the highest heaven then stand on guard lest anyone interfere with the purely Divine work which is now going on in the body.

All of us, therefore, possess an internal respiration, a respiration of the spirit, in nowise different from the internal respiration of the Most Ancient Church, except in this important respect that the spirit which breathes in us is a very different spirit from the spirit of the celestial man. The spirit which breathed in his brain was an angelic spirit, a spirit which in all things willingly co-operated with the Divine Spirit, a spirit in which will and understanding were one, and both were good and untainted by hereditary evil. But the spirit that breathes in us, since the days of the fall, is a spirit which by birth and acquired nature continually strives contrary to the Spirit of God and His laws of natural order. Even with those of us who have conquered their own self-will and thus have become spiritual men, there remains forever in the subdued proprium the taint and tendency of hereditary evil, which, as long as we live in this world, will prevent the full restoration of that kind of heavenly breathing, which was the "internal respiration" of the man of the Golden Age.

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     III.

     HIS SPEECH, HEARING AND COUNTENANCE.

     Since all vocal speech is effected by various applications of the external respiration of the lungs, and since the men of the Golden Age possessed no such breathing "except a tacit one," it is readily seen that their speech also must have been different from our own. It is described in the Writings as "a tacit speech, perceived by another in his internal man."

     "Thus they spoke not so much by words,-as afterwards and at this day,-but by ideas, as the angels do; and these they could express by innumerable changes of the features and the face, specially of the lips. In the lips there are countless series of muscular fibers which at this day are not jet free, but being free with the men of that time, they could so present, signify, and represent ideas by means of them as to express in a minute's time what at this day would require an hour to say by articulate sounds and words, and they could do this more fully and clearly to the apprehension and understanding of those present than is possible by words or series of words in combination." (A. C. 607.)

     "There was shown to me what was the nature of their speed when they lived in this world,-that it was not articulate like the vocal speech of our time, but tacit, and was produced not by external but by internal respiration. It was also granted me to perceive the nature of their internal respiration,-that it advanced from the navel toward the heart, and so through the lips, without Sound; and that it did not enter into the ear of another and strike upon what is called the drum of the ear by an external way, but by a certain way within the mouth, in fact, by a passage there which is now called the Eustachian tube. And it was shown me that by such speech they could much more fully express the sentiments of the mind and the ideas of thought than can possibly be done by articulate sounds or vocal words, which likewise are directed by the respiration, but the external. For there is nothing in any word that is not directed by applications of the respiration. But with them this was done much more perfectly, because by the internal respiration; which, from the fact that it is interior, is at once far more perfect and more applicable and conformable to the very ideas of thought.

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Besides, they also conversed by slight movements of the lips and correspondent changes of the face; for, being celestial men, whatever they thought shone forth from the face and eyes, which were varied conformably. They could by no means put on an expression of countenance different from that which was in agreement with their thoughts. Simulation and still more, deceit, was to them a monstrous iniquity." (A. C. 1118.)

     As to the communication of ideas by means of the face and the lips we learn further that "the first speech of all on every earth was by means of the face, and this from two origins in the face,-from the lips and from the eyes. The reason was that the face was formed altogether to effigy those things which a man thinks and wills. Hence the face has been called the effigy or index of the mind. A further reason was that in the most ancient or first times there was sincerity, and man did not think, and did not wish to think, anything but what he desired should shine forth from the face. Thus also the affections of the mind and the ideas of thought could be presented to the life and fully. In this way they appeared to the eye also, as in a form, and very many together.
This speech, therefore, surpassed the speech of words as much as the sense of sight surpasses that of hearing; that is, as the sight of a landscape surpasses hearing it described." (A. C. 8249; compare A. C. 10587.)

     "The influx from the cerebellum insinuates itself especially into the face, as is evident from the fact that the disposition is inscribed on the face and the affections appear in it, for the most part without the man's volition, affections such as fear, reverence, shame, etc. These come from the cerebellum by means of its fibers, when there is no dissimulation within." (A. C. 4326.)

     With the men of the Most Ancient Church, in whom the voluntary and the involuntary functions acted as one, "all the involuntary of the cerebellum was manifested in the face, and at that time they knew not how to exhibit any other thing in the countenance than as heaven flowed into the involuntary tendencies and thence into the will."

542

But after the fall, when the will and the understanding were separated, "the fibers from the cerebellum changed their efflux into the face, and instead thereof fibers from the cerebrum were transferred thither, which now control those which are from the cerebellum, and this from an endeavor to form the expressions of the face according to the behests of man's own will, all of which is from the cerebrum." (A. C. 4326.)
NEW EDITION OF THE PRINCIPIA 1912

NEW EDITION OF THE PRINCIPIA Editor 1912

     As all of our readers, unfortunately, do not subscribe to THE NEW PHILOSOPHY, we appropriate from the July issue of that excellent journal the following editorial review of the new edition of the PRINCIPIA:

     As will be seen from the Transactions published in our present issue, the long expected edition of the PRINCIPIA has at last been published by the London Swedenborg Society. Besides the PRINCIPIA proper the work,-which is contained in two volumes,-also includes the first translation of the LESSER PRINCIPIA,-here called the "Minor Principia,"-Swedenborg's SUMMARY OF THE PRINCIPIA, and his ARGUMENTS FOR THE PRINCIPIA. The price of the two volumes is, we believe, $6.50 plus $1.00 for customs duty.

     At its recent annual meeting the SWEDENBORG SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION extended to the SWEDENBORG SOCIETY its heartiest congratulations at the completion of this great work, and in these congratulations every student of Swedenborg's science will undoubtedly join.

     But there was also a strong note of adverse criticism. For considerable indignation was expressed at the inclusion in this edition of the PRINCIPIA Of Certain observations introduced in an Appendix by Professor Very, which, in effect, characterized the teachings of the PRINCIPIA as obsolete, though still to be admired as a bold attempt to solve a difficult problem. "His hypothesis (says Prof. Very) may have to be modified so as to be scarcely recognizable. Some of them must be abandoned entirely; but nothing can dim the glory of this magnificent dash into the unknown. It will stand alongside of the sublime poem of Lucretius, which no one accepts as a true picture of the cosmos, but which will remain as one of the monuments of a heroic struggle of the philosophic intellect to reach freedom."

543

     The same kind of criticism is even more baldly stated in the Foreword, by Sir W. F. Barrett, where the first-and the vital part of the PRINCIPIA, While admired as "a first daring adventure into the unknown," is yet characterized as being certain to "repel, or excite a smile in the scientific reader." Even the Introduction by the Rev. Isaiah Tansley, while devoted to adducing from modern science confirmation of Swedenborg's doctrine, is not entirely free from this unfortunate blemish of negative criticism. We read, for instance, that "Swedenborg fails to provide for the formation of a definite concept, yet he makes a bold attempt to account for the derivation of the finite from the infinite." "He is sometimes lost in the maze of his own theories." He "was not always clear and accurate" and "while some of his deductions touch modern science at many points, others are questionable in the light of rigid scientific proof."

     The general effect of such negative criticism is the production of the impression that the PRINCIPIA is a work of merely historical interest whose doctrines are of importance, not as teaching anything unknown to the modern world, but only so far as they anticipate what modern science has already discovered independently.

     It is not that there is any objection to scholars holding such an opinion, or publicly expressing it. This is obviously legitimate. But to incorporate negative criticisms in the work itself,-the work of a master mind,-this is indeed deplorable. And the more so in that the criticisms are made from the standpoint of an agnostic science which is confessedly in darkness respecting the very subject with which the PRINCIPIA deals; a science, moreover, which has been forced, in some respects, to more or less obscurely broach theories which are clearly set forth by Swedenborg as truths of the reason enlightened by the acknowledgment of a divine wisdom creating.

     We do not wish to be understood as meaning that the PRINCIPIA contains no errors; nor would we object to mathematical corrections like those included in Professor Very's Appendix, where such are obvious.

544

But we do hold that Swedenborg's scientific works occupy a unique position as setting forth the means, that is, the philosophy, whereby their author was prepared to receive in his understanding and publish to the world the revelation contained in his theological writings. This should be obvious to all Newchurchmen,-and it is Newchurchmen who are responsible for this edition of the PRINCIPIA.

The scientific works are invaluable and even essential for a fuller comprehension of the theological. In the past they have been largely neglected, or misunderstood, and now that a beginning, (and it is only a beginning), is being made of their study, a glimmering being had of their wonderful Philosophy, of their service to the theological writings, it would, to say the least, be only the part of modesty for editors to refrain from negative criticism,-criticism, moreover, with which many profound students of Swedenborg emphatically disagree-and to allow the great philosopher, at least in his own works, to speak for himself without the warnings and cautions of lesser minds.

545

NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

     Editorial Department.
     THE NEW AGE, our small but wide-awake Australian contemporary, in its June issue Publishes a deeply appreciative review of Miss Beekman's recent work, THE KINGDOM OF THE DIVINE PROCEEDING. We were glad to see at least one intelligent review of the book.

     Mr. Alfred H. Stroh reports that he has recently found in the State Archives in Stockholm a political speech, written by Swedenborg, in which he praises the "Era of Freedom," (1719-1772), when Sweden, though nominally a monarchy, enjoyed a virtually republican form of government. It is remarkable that this era coincided with the greatest part of Swedenborg's own active period of life.

     From the New Church Board of Publication we have received a copy of John Bigelow's work, entitled THE BIBLE THAT WAS LOST AND IS FOUND, beautifully printed and bound, and furnished with an Introduction by the Rev. Julian K. Smyth. The work itself consists of a deeply interesting account of how the author became acquainted with the Writings of Swedenborg and his conversion to the New Church, (see our issue for February), especially through the revelation of an internal sense in the Word and of the Science of Correspondences. The account and comments are not only affecting to a Newchurchman, but ought to be convincing to any open-minded reader outside the Church. The price of the book is one dollar.

     The first appearance of Mr. William Whitehead as editor not only of the Academy's annual JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, but also at the same time of a new periodical, the BULLETIN of the "Sons of the Academy," is an occasion for congratulation both to himself and to his readers.

546

The JOURNAL has never been more ably edited, and the BULLETIN is sparkling with quiet humor. We hope the BULLETIN will live long and prosper as a means of closer communication between those who have enjoyed the inestimable benefits of a New Church education in the Academy Schools. From the CATALOGUE Of the Schools we notice that these were attended last year by one hundred and sixty-nine pupils, which we believe to be the high-water mark thus far; and from the JOURNAL we learn that the Academy at present is worth $1,296,922 in property and invested funds, not counting Mr. Pitcairn's recent endowment of $200,000. While these figures should be no cause for elation, they should certainly be a cause for gratitude to the Lord and His instruments who have so amply provided for the great uses of the Academy.
"BUT NOT" 1912

"BUT NOT" Editor 1912

The Rev. James Reed, in a paper on "Our Attitude toward Swedenborg's Writings," in the NEW CHURCH REVIEW for July, 1912, concludes with the following summary: "Our attitude toward Swedenborg's Writings should be that which is due to a Divine revelation,-a revelation from the Lord, of doctrines contained in the Word, and now first brought to light,-a revelation whereby the Lord is made manifest in the Word with a clearness and fulness never before known,-a revelation addressed to man's rationality, enabling him to enter understandingly into the deeper things of faith,-a revelation which, the more it is examined and tested, is seen to be a connected and complete whole,-a revelation which is infinite in its scope, and capable of endless unfoldings hereafter,-a revelation so strong and sure in its essential principles as to forbid, with regard to any of its details, a doubting or unbelieving spirit. Is not this a platform on which, as brethren with a common faith and hope, we can stand unitedly and lovingly together?"

This strong affirmation would, indeed, be a platform on which the whole Church could work together, were it not for the unfortunate fact that Mr. Reed himself knocks every promising plank apart in a preceding statement of negation, (p. 340): "It should be needless to say that Swedenborg assigns no such place to his own writings, [as he does to the Word].

547

He nowhere claims that they are Divine truth itself, containing infinite meaning, that within them are spiritual and celestial senses, that they serve to conjoin man with the Lord and to consociate him with angels, or that any part of them is holy even in the very letters. Hence they are entirely different from the Word, which holds a position that is all its own. They are a Divine revelation, but of a kind unlike any that has preceded them. They are of and from the Word, but are not the Word itself."

     "But not,"-these two little words are the favorite expressions of the negative spirit,-two little grains of dust that blind the whole eye. Analyze Mr. Reed's two statements and it will be seen that every affirmation is stultified by a contradictory "but" or "but not," making the whole conclusion a heap of salt that has lost its savor.

     The Writings are "a Divine revelation, a revelation from the Lord, of doctrines contained in the Word" but are "entirely different from the Word." They are "a revelation whereby the Lord is made manifest in the Word" but do not "serve to conjoin man with the Lord and to associate him with the angels." They are "a revelation which is infinite in its scope, and capable of endless
unfoldings hereafter," but not "containing infinite meaning." They are "a revelation so strong and sure in its essential principles, as to forbid, with regard to any of its details, a doubting or unbelieving spirit," but are not "Divine Truth itself."

     Be not deceived, therefore, dear reader, by any Greeks bearing good-looking gifts, for inside every one of them you will find a small but deadly "but not."

548

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY 1912

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY F. E. WAELCHLI 1912

     Reports.

The Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Council of the Clergy of the General Church of the New Jerusalem was held at Bryn Athyn, Pa., June 22d to 27th, 1912.

     The work of the ministers during the year, told in their reports, will be found, summarized, in the report of this Council to the Joint Council, given on another page in the Minutes of the Joint Council.

     The subject of a Catechism was discussed. It was felt that some book is needed to guide parents, especially isolated members, in the religious instruction of their children. THE CHILD'S TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, by Thomas Hitchcock, was highly recommended by some of the ministers, excepting the chapter on the Second Coming; and it was thought that this book might well be recommended to parents until the time comes when the General Church call prepare a work that will more fully meet the need. The subject was continued on the docket for future consideration.

     The Religious Instruction of the Young was considered, and the general conclusion was that the young people, as well as the children, should for some years receive this instruction chiefly from the letter of the Word, doctrine being drawn from it in accommodation to their state. The reading and explaining of the Writings does not so well meet their state, excepting such parts as are, like the Letter of the Word, in narrative form, as the Memorable Relations.

     At a public session, held on the evening of the 23d, the Rev. W. B. Caldwell delivered the Annual Address to the Council, his subject being "Man, A Temple of God." The subject was then discussed by a number of the ministers, all of whom expressed their appreciation of the paper, which appears in the present issue of the LIFE.

549

     At the close of the public session, Bishop Pendleton read a message, written on the S. S. Marquette, and mailed at Cape May, as follows: "Leaving America, we send you our love and appreciation. Respectfully, Rev. Ernst Deltenre, Maria Deltenre, Bebe M. Emanuel, Mamie Hoeck, Myrrha Hussenet, Claire Deltenre, Marie-Louise."

     The question of Ordination into the Third Degree came before the Council by a recommendation of the Bishop's Consistory that something be done at this meeting with respect to this matter.

     After discussion it was unanimously Resolved, That in the opinion of this Council it is advisable at this time that one man be introduced into the third degree of the priesthood of the New Church.

     It was then Resolved, That this Council proceed to select by ballot the man whom it would recommend for ordination into the third degree of the priesthood of the New Church.

     The ballot was taken and the Rev. N. D. Pendleton received thirteen of the sixteen votes.

     On motion, the vote for the Rev. N. D. Pendleton was made unanimous.

     On motion, it was Resolved, That this Council recommends the recognition of the Rev. N. D. Pendleton as a minister of the third degree of the priesthood of the General Church.

     The question was raised as to the advisability of the use of the term "bishop" in the ordination service into the third degree, as given in the Liturgy, it being thought by some that this title should be reserved for the presiding bishop or an assistant bishop; but after discussion there seemed to be no objection to using the form in the Liturgy.

     Several interesting discussions of doctrinal subjects took place in the course of the meetings, among them that of "Thinking in the Cold Body," mentioned in H. H. 433, and it was the general opinion that, in view of what is there said, we cannot but regard unfavorably the practice of hurried embalming. F. E. WAELCHLI, Sec'y.

550

MINUTES OF THE THIRTEENTH MEETING OF THE JOINT COUNCIL OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM 1912

     HELD AT BRYN ATHYN, PA., JUNE 24th, 1912.

     MORNING SESSION.

     1. The meeting was opened at 10 a. m. with worship conducted by Bishop Pendleton.

     2. There were present:

     OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY.

Rev. W. F. Pendleton
Rev. J. E. Bowers
Rev. Richard de Charms
Rev. E. S. Price
Rev. C. Th. Odhner
Rev. F. E. Waelchli
Rev. Homer Synnestvedt
Rev. W. H. Alden*
Rev. Alfred Acton
Rev. C. E. Doering*
Rev. T. S. Harris
Rev. E. R. Cronlund
Rev. W. B. Caldwell
Rev. R. W Brown
Rev. E. E. Iungerich
Rev. G. H. Smith
     * Messrs. Alden and Doering are also members of the Executive Committee.

     OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

Mr. Walter C. Childs
Dr. Edward Cranch
Mr. Richard Roschman
Mr. Jacob Schoenberger
Mr. Anton Sellner
Mr. Raymond Pitcairn

     The following students in the Theological School were present by invitation of the Bishop: Sidney B. Childs, Llewellyn David, George DeCharms, John Headsten, Hugo Lj. Odhner, Madefrey A. Odhner, and Donald F. Rose.

     3. The Minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.

551

     4. The Bishop stated that he had no special report to present. There was but one point of which he would like to speak. He regretted that we could not this year send a minister to the British Assembly, in accordance with the resolution passed a few years ago. A minister has been sent every year since that time. This year it was also arranged, on the side of the clergy, to send some one; but the Executive Committee stated that there were no funds for this use at present. The Committee suggested that a special appeal be made for this use; but this he did not favor, as such special appeals should only be made in cases of emergency.

     5. The Secretary of the General Church read his report, as follows:

     THE REPORT OF THE SECRETARY.

     1. The membership of the General Church of the New Jerusalem numbers at present 1,054 persons, showing a net increase of 63 members ever the membership reported in June, 1911. Altogether 72 members have been received since the last report, while, on the other hand, 9 members have passed into the spiritual world.

     2. The following members have died:

Mr. Oscar Glenn, Erie, Pa., September 2, 1911.
Mrs. Sylvia E. Tyler, Denver, Col., November 9, 1911.
Mr. Walter F. Van Horn, Bryn Athyn, Pa., November 10, 1911.
Mr. Richard Thairgen, Brooklyn, N. Y., January 5, 1912.
Mr. H. A. Ashley, Wivenhoe, England, February 20, l912.
Mr. William Gill, Colchester, England, February 23, 1912.
Mrs. Jessie Blackman, Chicago, Ill., February 29, 1912.
Miss Charlotte N. Smith, Bryn Athyn, Pa., May 23, 1912.
Mrs. George A. Macbeth, Pittsburgh, Pa., May 30, 1912.

     3. The following new members have been received since the last report:

     I. IN THE UNITED STATES.

     Brockton, Mass.
Mrs. Adele E. Tilton.

     New York City.
Mr. George Dykes.
Mr. Wm. C. Johnson.
Mrs. Margaret R. Johnson.

     Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Emery Harris.
Mr. Eric N. Nilson.
Mr. Arthol E. Soderberg.
Miss Anmia Evelyn Soderberg.

     Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Miss Fidelia Asplundh.
Mr. Oswald E. Asplundh.
Miss Helen Colley.
Mr. Llewellyn W. T. David.
Mr. George de Charms.
Miss Creda Glenn.
Mr. Hugo Ljungberg Odhner.
Mr. Madefrey A. Odhner.
Mrs. John A. Schwindt.

     Pittsburgh, Pa.
The Rev. Walter E. Brickman.
Mr. D. E. Horigan.

552

Mrs. Julian H. Kendig.
Mr. George E. Lindsay.
Mr. T. O. Rhodes.

     Franklin, Pa.
Mr. Geo. V. Adelman.

     Wyncote, Pa.
Mr. Troland Cleare.

     Washington, D. C.
Miss Chara M. Schott.
Mr. S. B. Wrisht.

     Atlanta, Ga.
Miss F. B. Crockett.

     Middleport, Ohio.
Mr. H. V. Williams.

     Pomeroy, Ohio.
Mrs. Lila Williamson.

     Waverley, Ohio.
Mr. Wm. W. Powell.

     Chicago, Ill.
Miss Pauline Downing.
Mr. John Headsten.
Mrs. Hulda E. Headsten.
Miss Amy L. Marelius.
Miss Leora C. Marelius.
Mrs. Kate H. Nicholl.

     Glenview, Ill.
Miss Gladys Blackman.
Miss Constance Burnham.
Miss Margaret A. Gyllenhaal.
Miss Freda Junge.
Mr. Harold P. McQueen.

     Summerville, Oregon.
Miss Lydia M. Hug.
Miss Anna Niederer.

     II. IN CANADA.

     Arnpior, Ont.
Mrs. Elizabeth H. Campbell.
Miss Bella Campbell.

     Berlin, Ont.
Miss Beata Roschman.
Mr. Eugene L. Roschman.
Miss Evangeline Roschman.
Miss Grace Scott.
Mr. Archibald Scott.
Mr. Alfred H. Steen.
Mr. Fred. W. Steen.
Mr. Fred. E. Stroh.
Mrs. Amelie Woelfle.
Miss Augusta A. Woelfle.
Miss Elmina Woelfle.
Mr. G. A. Woelfle.
Miss Pauline K. Woelfle.

     New Hamilton, Ont.
Mr. H. O. Day.

     Randolph, Ont.
Mrs. A. S. Evens.

     Toronto, Ont.
Miss Mabel G. Langlois.
Miss Lillian C. Wilks.

     III. IN ENGLAND.

     Colchester.
Miss Olive Cooper.
Miss Bertha M. Motum.
Mr. N. H. Motum.
Miss Winefred A. Potter.

     London.
Miss Gladys M. Bedwell.
Miss Gweyneth E. Hart.
Mr. Donald F. Rose.
Miss Olive S. Elphick.

     IV. IN ITALY.

Miss Eden Gnocchi.
Miss Loreta Gnocchi.

     Of these 72 new members, 19 were previously connected with other organizations of the New Church, 16 were at one time connected with the Old Church, 37 are young people of families connected with the General Church; of these latter, 24 have attended the Academy Schools in Bryn Athyn.

     4. The following table shows the gradual increase in the membership since the first organization of the General Church in 1897.

553

Years.      Total Membership.     Net Increase.
1897          287               287
1898          454               167
1899          504               50
1900          560               56
1901          578               18
1902          615               37
1903          650               35
1904          698               48
1905          751               53
1906          804               53
1907          834               30
1908          859               25
1909          904               45
1910          941               37
1911          990               49
1912          1,054               63

     5. The Clergy of the General Church numbers at present twenty-six pastors and ministers and two candidates for the priesthood.

     6. Mr. Gilbert H. Smith, on June 25th, 1911, was ordained into the first degree of the priesthood. The Rev. Walter A. Brickman, in January, 1912, was restored to the membership and clergy of the General Church. The Rev. Eldred E. Iungerich, on May 26th, 1912, was ordained into the second degree of the priesthood, and Mr. Ernst Deltenre, on the same day, was ordained into the first and second degrees of the priesthood.
     Respectfully submitted,
          C. TH. ODHNER,
               Secretary.
                    June 19th, 1912.

     6. The Report of the Council of the Clergy was read, as follows:

     REPORT OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY.

     The first session of the annual meeting of the Council of the Clergy was held on the 22d of June, and further sessions will be held from the 25th to the 27th.

     The annual reports of the ministers show that during the past year there have been 55 baptisms, 41 confirmations, 7 marriages, 16 funerals, and 64 administrations of the Holy Supper.

     The reports further indicate that in all the churches and societies work has been carried on regularly, and that the circles and many of the isolated members have been visited one or more times.

554

     We present, from the reports, the following points of special interest:

     The REV. J. E. BOWERS visited 42 places in seven States and in Ontario; 24 of them twice, and 18 once. In the circles and among the isolated, 162 adult New Church persons were met with; of whom 107 are members of the General Church. In the families visited are 86 children, of whom 65 are children of members of the General Church.

     The REV. N. D. PENDLETON visited Atlanta, Macon, and Valdosta, and conducted services at the two first mentioned places. At Atlanta the members of the Convention circle were present at the services, the total attendance being twenty-five. Besides the services, a meeting of the men of the General Church was held, and steps were taken for the holding of regular meetings for the reading of the Word and the Writings.

     The REV. W. L. GLADISH visited Cincinnati monthly and held two evening meetings each trip, and two or more classes for children. There has been some progress made. He also visited Rutland, Kyger, Great Mills, Md.; Sandoval and Olney. The work in Columbus has been discontinued, owing to deaths and removals.

     The REV. HOMER SYNNESTVEDT visited England last summer as the Bishop's representative, and spent five weeks in London and one week in Colchester.

     The REV. E. R. CRONLUND reports that two new families from England have been added to the congregation of the Olivet Church.

     The reports of the Rev. W. L. Gladish and of the Rev. F. E. Waelchli speak of the great benefits derived from the visits of Bishop Pendleton to their societies.

     The Council desires to refer to the Joint Council the subject of Swedenborg's Marginal Notes in the Schmidius Bible.
     Respectfully submitted,
          F. E. WAELCHLI,
               Secretary.

     7. The Report of the Executive Committee was presented by Mr. Alden, as follows:

     REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

     The Executive Committee has held three meetings during the year. The following is a summary of the work accomplished by the committee: An appropriation was made, of $300.00 from the Pension Fund, for assistance to Rev. D. H. Klein.

     The sum of $25.00 was appropriated as payment for the services of the Rev. F. E. Waelchli as Secretary of the Council of the Clergy and of the Joint Councils.

     Messrs. E. C. Bostock and R. G. Cranch were appointed a committee to audit the Treasurer's report.

555

     The salary of the Rev. J. E. Bowers as Missionary for the General Church was continued at the rate of $500.00 per annum. After some discussion as to the orderliness of such a procedure, it was voted to pay to the Bishop a salary of $2,000.00 for the year.

     The publication of a Directory of the members of the General Church, as supplement to NEW CHURCH LIFE and also in pamphlet form, was authorized.

     By resolution offered by Mr. S. G. Nelson, a committee of three was appointed by the Chair on improvement of ways and means, to report at the next annual meeting. The Chair appointed as members of this committee, Mr. S. G. Nelson, chairman, and Messrs. Jacob Schoenberger and Hugh L. Burnham.

     The special fund of $240.00, contributed by Mr. Pitcairn, for editorial assistance to the editor of the LIFE, during the year 1911, has been repeated for the present year. A special report is attached of the expenditures under this fund from the beginning.

     The question of the advisability of giving compensation for articles in the LIFE has received consideration with the following result:

     Voted: That it is the sentiment of this committee that it is not an advisable policy for the LIFE to pay for articles.

     In response to a request from Mr. Bowers for increased compensation, an appropriation was made of the sum of $200,000 per annum, from the Pension Fund, dating from November 1, 1911, and payable in quarterly installments.

     In response to the suggestion by the Treasurer as to the desirability of separating the Pension Fund and the Extension Fund from the fund in the General Treasury authorization was given by vote, to the proper officers of the General Church to open accounts with banks selected by the
Finance Committee.

     The chairman, the treasurer, and Mr. Raymond Pitcairn were appointed to act as this Finance Committee.

     At a meeting held March 25, 1912, the question of means for sending to England a representative of the Bishop during the coming summer was considered, and it was voted: That from the statement of the Treasurer it is evident that there are not in the Treasury sufficient funds to warrant the expense of the trip to England the present year, of a representative of the Bishop,-that the facts be placed before the Bishop, and that if he thinks the matter of sufficient importance, an appeal be made to the Church to meet the expense.
     W. H. ALDEN,
     Acting Secretary.

     SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT.

     To the above should be added a summary of action taken at the Annual Meeting of the Executive Committee, held on Saturday, June 22.

556

At this meeting the Report of the Treasurer of the General Church was read, showing receipts for the fiscal year closing May 31, 1912,-including balance on hand at the beginning of the year, special contributions for an Addressograph, and for Editorial Assistance to the Editor of the LIFE,-of $5,926.15 and expenditures during the same period amounting to $5,499.10 leaving a balance in the Treasury at the end of the year of $427.05.

     The Statistical Report of the NEW CHURCH LIFE was read, showing the present number of paying subscribers to be 501, which; with 100 copies sent out free, in exchange, and to agents, makes total mailing list 601 copies. The number of new subscribers during the pear was 43.

     The Treasurer stated that the number of contributions represented but small portion of the total membership of the General Church, (approximately 375 out of membership of 1,000, of whom less than one-third contribute $5.00 or more). Suggestions were made that instruction as to the use of the support of the General Church ought to be given, by the ministers or by circular letters or in both or other ways. While contributions to the support of the Church should be entirely voluntary, the suggestion was made that it might make the matter easier for all to contribute to send to each a coin card in which one or two quarters might be enclosed.

     Report from the committee appointed last year to consider improvement of ways and means was made verbally by Mr. Schoenberger to the effect that one meeting had been held and the committee could only report progress.

     Mr. Doering reported the substance of a communication received from Glenview asking if a meeting of the next General Assembly in Glenview would be agreeable to the committee; and, ii so, whether there was a General Assembly fund which might be drawn upon to assist in covering the expenses of such Assembly. Glenview agreed to raise the sum of four hundred dollars, and it was stated that if six hundred dollars additional could be raised from the Church at large, the invitation would probably be given for the Assembly to be held next year in Glenview.

     The committee gave careful consideration to the matter, and voted to undertake to collect six hundred dollars for the use of the next General Assembly, with the proviso that anything which might be left over after the expenses of the Assembly had been met, should revert to the General
Assembly Fund to be held for the use of future General Assemblies.
     W. H. ALDEN,
     Acting Secretary.

     8. The Treasurer of the General Church presented his report, as follows:

557

     REPORT OF THE TREASURER.

     FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

     GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM.

     RECEIPTS.

Balance on hand June 1, 1911                         $35.12
Interest on Bank Account                $17.80
Sale of Directory                         2.50
Sw. Scient. Assoc. use of Addressograph     2.00
                                             $22.30

     CONTRIBUTIONS.

California                    $125.00
Colorado                    26.00
Delaware                    .30
District of Columbia          2.00
Florida                    8.00
Georgia                    3.00
Illinois-General               20.00
Chicago                    20.00
Glenview                    185.65
Indiana                    24.00
Kentucky                    3.50
Louisiana                    2.00
Maryland                    13.00
Massachusetts               11.00
Michigan                    21.00
New York                    91.00
North Carolina               2.00
Ohio                         214.77
Pennsylvania-General          282.21
Bryn Athyn                    2,309.85
Philadelphia               111.30
Pittsburgh                    412.62
Texas                     3.00
Washington                    11.00
West Virginia               68.00
Canada-General               109.45
Berlin and Waterloo          128.30
Toronto                    275.76
Great Britain               32.83
Sweden                    5.00
                                             $4,526.54

     John Pitcairn Special Contribution for Addressograph          125.00

558

     NEW CHURCH LIFE.

Subscriptions and Contributions     $961.11
Advertisements                    2.25
John Pitcairn Special Contribution for Editorial
     Assistance                    24.00
                                   $1,203.36
Total                                             $5.912.32

     EXPENDITURES.

     General.

Bishop's Salary                              $2,000
Bishop's Traveling Expenses                    115.00
Salary of Missionary                         500.00
Traveling Expenses of Missionary               146.10
Salary of Treasurer's Assistant (8 months)     400.00
Rev. N. N. Pendleton, Traveling Expenses
     to Consistory Meeting                    15.00
Services Secretary of Clergy                    25.00
Printing and Mailing Quarterly Reports
     and Circular Letter                    45.45
Mimeographing papers on the "Divine
     Human"                              14.60
Addressograph Machine                         124.03
Typewriter                                   15.00
Directory of General Church                    11.50
Postage, Stationary, etc.                    140.00
                                             $3,552.08

     NEW CHURCH LIFE.

Editor's Salary                         $533.33
Traveling Expenses, etc. Editor          10.05
Printing                              882.36
Paper                                   161.10
Cuts                                   11.09
Envelopes                              7.18
Bound copies to subscribers and complimentary     12.75
Special Editorial Assistance                    244.00
Postage, Stationary, etc.                    71.33
Total                                             $1,933.19     $5,485.27
Balance on hand, May 31, 1912                                   $427.05

     CHURCH EXTENSION FUND.

     May 31, 1912

     RECEIPTS

Balance on hand, June 1, 1911               $690.17
Bank Interest                         15.00

559

Bryn Athyn                              4,581.76
Chicago                              2.00
Glenview                              22.90
Georgia                              118.25
New York                              12.00
Pennsylvania                         17.00
Berlin and Waterloo                    13.50
Toronto                              62.00
Great Britain                         1.01
                                             $5,535.59

     EXPENDITURES

Rev. T. S. Harris (Abington)                    $999.96
Rev. G. H. Smith (Secretary to Bishop)          600.00
Rev. W. L. Gladish (Middleport)                330.00
Rev. F. E. Waelchli (Berlin)                    100.00
Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal (Denver)               100.00
Rev. E. S. Price (Traveling Expenses,
     Substituting for Mr. Waelchli during
     summer of 1911                         60.00
Rev. Wm. H. Alden (Part of Expense of
     Missionary Trip to Nova Scotia and
     to Abington, Mass.)                    62.50
Rev. N. D. Pendleton (Expense and Service
     Quarterly Trips to Erie and
     Missionary Visit to Georgia)               198.00
Paris Circle                              194.18
John Headsten (For Missionary Work in
     Chicago, June to October, 1912)          250.00
Postage, Circulars, etc.                    25.73
                                             $2,920.37
Balance, May 31, 1912                                        $2,615.22

     PENSION FUND.

     General Church of the New Jerusalem

John Pitcairn, Endowment                    $50,000.00
     Originally invested as follows:
Walla Walla Traction Co., 10 bonds @ 5%          10,000.00
Eastern Orange Light & Power Co., 10
     bonds @ 6%                              10,000.00
Willamette Valley Co., 10 bonds @ 5%          10,000.00
Ontario Power Co., 10 bonds @ 5%               10,000.00
Anacostia & Potomac R. R. Co., 10 bonds @ 5%     10,000.00

     1912

Jan. 19     Sold $10,000 Walla Walla Bonds for          $10,500.00

     A gain of $500.00

560

     Feb. 14     Bought $11,000 Westinghouse Electric
               Co. bonds for                         $10,430.86
Leaving uninvested capital                              $69.14

     INVESTMENT OF INCOME.

Philadelphia Electrics ($4,000 @ 4%)          $3,203.14

     RECEIPTS FROM INCOME

Balance on Hand, May 31, 1911               $790.77
From Invested Funds (Capital)               2,502.12
From Invested Funds (Income)               120.00
Bank Interest                               10.30
                                             $3,423.19

     EXPENDITURES

Mrs. Mary Hyatt                         $300.00
Rev. D. H. Klein                         300.00
Rev. J. E. Bowers                         66.66
                                             $666.66
Isaac Starr & Co. (Invested in Philadelphia
     Electrics)                                   $1,622.11
                                                       $2,288.77
Balance on Hand, May 31, 1912                                   $1,134.42

     Fund for Special Editorial Assistance New Church Life
RECEIPTS
May 22, 1911          John Pitcairn               $240.00
April 25, 1912     John Pitcairn               240.00
                                                       $480.00

     EXPENDITURES

     1911-1912

M. A. Odhner                              $162.00
Hugo Lj. Odhner                         93.50
Donald Rose                              11.50
E. E. Iungerich                         11.50                    $278.50
Balance on Hand                                             $201.50

     COMPARATIVE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

     GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM.

     RECEIPTS FROM CONTRIBUTIONS

                    1906-7     1907-8          1908-9     1909-10     1910-11     1911-12
General Assembly               68.90
California                              50.00     87.00          75.00     125.00
Colorado          20.00          65.35          43.90     60.60          71.50     26.00

561

Connecticut                    1.00               3.00
Delaware                    .50                              .30
Dist. of Columbia     6.00           7.00          19.00                    2.00
Florida                                   5.00               8.00
Georgia          35.00          21.00          28.00     67.00          54.00     3.00
Illinois          26.50          25.00          29.00     11.10          14.50     20.00
Chicago          12.33          51.87          23.50     17.25          20.50     20.00
Glenview          181.23          145.30          152.01     165.55          133.01     185.65
Indiana          24.00          18.50          23.50     20.00          19.50     24.00
Kentucky                    7.00          10.00     2.50               8.50
Louisiana                              10.00     30.00          15.00     2.00
Maryland          6.25                    12.50     7.50          4.50     13.00
Baltimore          13.00          20.75          20.75     5.25          8.50
Massachusetts                              4.00          3.11     11.00
Michigan          27.00          24.00          14.00     44.00          10.00     21.00
Montana                              7.00     9.00          10.00
Missouri                    3.00          5.00
Nebraska          3.00          3.00          3.00     3.00          3.00
New York          12.00          19.50          50.50     55.00           60.50     91.00
N. York City          29.02          30.00
N. Carolina                                   .50               2.00
Ohio               213.00          273.55          245.50     181.00           200.00     214.77
Middleport          36.95          8.15          23.08     7.28          9.60
Pennsylvania          136.05          203.25          196.65     156.11          145.60     282.21
Bryn Athyn          2,070.75     1,803.37          1817.44     1844,66     2094.94     2,309.85
Philadelphia          163.00          115.50          105.00     114.00          112.50     111.30
Pittsburgh          419.75          349.75          434.50     394.15          382.65     412.62
Texas                                                       3.00
Washington                                                  11.00
W. Virginia          74.25          32.50          95.50     83.00          78.50     68.00
Wisconsin                    2.75          6.25     5.00
Canada          37.25          72.85          60.60     79.20          61.80     109.45
Berlin & Waterloo     115.57          112.76          176.64     116.76          125.79     128.30
Toronto          105.50          182.77          158.75     149.05          336.57     275.76
Colchester
London          45.76          38.04          41.79     39.86          41.13     32.83
Glasgow          4.05
Sweden                                                  5.00
               3834.86     3756.91     3863.36     3767.82     4091.70     4526.54

     COMPARATIVE FINANCIAL STATEMENT

     General Church of the New Jerusalem

               Expenditures          Aid to New Church Life
1906-7          $3,013.57               $519.03
1907-8          2,985.28               791.97

562

1908-9          3,021.94               797.01
109-10          3,191.52               851.66
1910-11          3,370.84               1,076.79
1911-12          3,565.91               969.83

     Bryn Athyn, June 22, 1912

     To the Executive Committee of The General Church of the New Jerusalem:

     The undersigned having been appointed auditors at your meeting a year ago beg to report as follows:

     The expenditures for the year previous to our appointment were looked into and found to be for proper purposes and correctly entered.

     The receipts shown appeared to be regular, but as the old receipt form provided for only one signature there is no proof that all receipts were accounted for. Countersigned receipts are now issued, so that two persons are each responsible for the correct statement of the receipts.

     Consultations have been held with your Treasurer and bookkeeper with a view to handling the accounts in the most simple and effective way possible. Respectfully submitted, E. C. BOSTOCK, R. G. CRANCH,

     9. The Treasurer of the Orphanage Fund read the following report:

     ORPHANAGE FUND OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM.

     STATEMENT FROM JUNE 11TH, 1911, TO JUNE 10TH, 1912.

     RECEIPTS.
Ashley, Miss H. S.                    $3.00
Barler, Rev. O. L.                     2.50
Boericke, Dr. F. A.                     15.00
Bowers, Rev. J. E.                    1.00
Breitstein, Mrs. F. O.                    4.00
Browne, C. F.                          15.00
Campbell, Mr. A. G.                     2.00
Childs, Mr. W. C.                     26.00
Cowley, Miss M.                          .50
Doering, Mr. George                    1.00
Drost, Mr. William                    5.00
Ebert, Mr. C. H.                          2.81
Evens, William                         1.00
"A Friend," Bryn Athyn                    1.91

563

"A Friend," Pittsburgh                    10.00
Fritz, Mr. Joachim                    10.00
Glenn Family                         10.00
Grant, Miss A. E.                         2.50
Heath, Mr. George (Juvenile Play)           19.95
Hoffman, Mrs. George                     1.00
Howland, Mrs. W. S.                     5.00
Iungerich, Mrs. E. C.                     5.00
Kessler, Mr. J. S.                     2.00
Knudsen, Mr. and Mrs. Knud                2.00
Lechner, Mrs. Anna M.                     5.00
McKallip, Mrs. Margaret                30.00
Mitchell, Miss Eliza                     1.00
Pendleton, Bishop W. F.                    10.00
Pitcairn, Miss Agnes                    5.00
Pitcairn, Mrs. Janet                    10.00
Pitcairn, Mr. Raymond                              1.00
Potts, Mr. S. W.                                    2.00
Reynolds, Dorothy and Alpha                          2.00
Sellner, Mr. Anton                                   5.00
Starkey, Dr. G. G.                                    4.00
Stroh, Mr. F. E.                                    5.00
Sullivan, Miss R. E.                                    5.00
Thomas, Miss Minnie                              1.00
Trimble, Mr. Rowland                               3.00
Walker, Mrs. A. E.                                   15.00
Wallenberg, Miss E. V.                               2.00
Werckle, Mrs. L.                                   10.00
Baltimore Sunday School                              8.00
Phila. Church of the Advent (Easter)                     14.15
Bryn Athyn Society (Christmas Offering)                     7.00
Bryn Athyn, April: Children's Service                    20.66
Erie Circle                                        5.00
Berlin, Ont., Carmel Church                               10.20
Middleport Sunday School (Christmas)                     3.28
New York Sunday School                              2.00
Toronto Society                                    34.22
Pittsburgh Society (Children's Christmas Festival)           34.65
Toronto Chapter, Theta Alpha                          3.75
Total Contributions, June, 1911, to June, 12                              $472.08
Add Cash Balance, June 10, 1911                                   398.29
                                                       870.37

     DISBURSEMENTS.

Mrs. E. J. Fitzpatrick                                   300.00
Mrs. R. M. L. Frost                                    180.00

564

Franklin Nabreang                                             150.00
Postage and Exchange                                        6.10
                                                                           $636.10
Balance in Bank, June 10th, 1912                                        $234.27
WALTER C. CHILDS, Treasurer.
10. Report of the Extension Committee was presented by Mr. Alden, as follows:

     REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON CHURCH EXTENSION

     The Committee on Church Extension is composed of four members, Dr. F. A. Boericke, Chairman; Rev. W. H. Alden, Secretary, and the Rev. C. E. Doering, all from the Executive Committee, and the Rev. Alfred Acton, as representing the General Council and the Council of Ministers.

     The committee has held, during the year closing May 31, 8 meetings, on the dates, June 28, October 27, November 13, November 28, 1911, and January 31, February 12, April 30, and May 30, 1912.

     Some discussion has been had in the committee as to the status of the committee, directly as to whether its functions were purely financial or included something of the ecclesiastical as well. As a result of this discussion it was voted at the meeting, November 13, 1911, "That the question of the status of the Extension Committee be brought up for consideration at the next meeting of the General Council."

     The support of Mr. Harris in his work in Abington, Mass., has been continued, also the appropriation to assist the Circle of the General Church in Paris, France.

     A regular appropriation has been made for the assistance of Mr. Gladish of $200.00, which has been paid in for quarterly installments.

     An appropriation was also made for the expenses of a trip to the South by the Rev. Dandridge Pendleton, which visit was made in spring of the present year.

     The committee has considered a proposition of the Rev. Ernst Deltenre for the establishment of a New Church Mission and Book Room in Brussels, Belgium, and has acted favorably upon it. This plan covers the renting of a house, the lower portion of which shall be fitted up as a Book Room and Chapel, and the upper part occupied by Mr. Deltenre and his family. From this center of operations, Mr. Deltenre will enter upon the propaganda of the Doctrines of the New Church. The Book Room will be regarded as a branch of the Academy Book Room, and Mr. Deltenre will represent and act for the Academy and the General Church. Provision for the renting of the house, fitting it up and the modest salary of 4,000 francs will require, for the first year, $1,800. and in following years $1,400 each. The Academy of the New Church has agreed to cooperation to the extent of establishing a branch Book Room and Library, without, however, any financial liability.

565

The Extension Fund has undertaken the financial responsibility.

     In addition to the above mentioned appropriation, an appropriation of $125.00 has been made to assist the Rev. Andrew Czerny, of London. This was only half of the appropriation made for him last year, and it is hoped to have concerning with him on the occasion of his visit to this country during the coming summer, with regard to the need for further aid.

     One hundred dollars each have been appropriated for the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal in Denver and the Rev. F. E. Waelchli in Berlin, Ont.

     Two hundred and fifty dollars have been appropriated to pay the expenses of Mr. John Headsten in Chicago during the coming summer.

     Fifty dollars per month has been paid to the Rev. Gilbert Smith, acting as Secretary to the Bishop.

     It will be observed that the work of the Extension Fund has been considerably extended. The financial report herewith submitted shows expenditures during the year, in round numbers, of $3,000.00, with the entering upon engagements which will considerably increase that amount during the coming year. The means for doing the work have been provided amply as the need arose and in advance of the need.
     WM. H. ALDEN,
     Secretary Extension Committee.

     11. On motion of the Messrs. Acton and Synnestvedt, it was Resolved, that the Minutes of the Joint Council be published annually in NEW CHURCH LIFE until further notice.

     12. On motion, the subject of the Directory of the General Church was considered.

     Mr. Odhner: The directory published last year is of very great value. But a number of errors crept into it, and I would like to see a new one published this year. The expense was not large,-about eleven dollars.

     Mr. Childs: I would favor publishing it every two years, and would suggest that the maiden names of wives be included, as in former directories.

     Mr. Alden. The number of mistakes in the directory has, I think, been exaggerated. There were not more than are inevitable in such a work. The expense was much larger than has been stated. The eleven dollars was for the mailing of extra copies from the plates of the LIFE. The main expense was in the LIFE bill, and I would like to have the consideration of this matter postponed until this afternoon, when I can give the figures.

     Bishop Pendleton: If there is no objection, further consideration of this subject will be postponed until this afternoon.

566

     AFTERNOON SESSION.

     13. Mr. Iungerich laid before the Council a transcription which he has made of Swedenborg's Marginal Notes in the Schmidius Bible, and read a paper in regard to the same. (See p. 521 of the present issue of the LIFE.)

     Mr. Acton: I wish to express my very great appreciation of both the transcription and the paper concerning it. The manuscript laid before us is the result of two years' labor, and is a work which few are capable of doing. The transcription should be published; and so also should the paper, which makes the subject very clear, and will awaken the interest of all in the Church. By this work a practically unknown field is opened up.

     In the paper things are told which were not known to any of us, as, for example, that some of the notes were made after the APOCALYPSE REVEALED was written. There is much information that is wholly new, and that will stimulate to further study. The publication of the transcript will be a complex matter and should receive careful consideration. It would be difficult to follow unless the Scripture text on which a note bears be also given. In some cases it is difficult to tell whether the note is a continuous sentence, or whether one part refers to one part of the text and another part to another. Therefore a new line should begin wherever Swedenborg begins a new line. The work should be published in parallel columns of Scripture texts and notes.

     13a. On motion of Mr. Acton, it was Resolved, that the transcript be offered to the Publication Committee of the Academy, and the paper to the editor of the LIFE.

     Mr. Iungerich: Before final action is taken, an effort should be made to obtain a transcription of the notes on the two books of Samuel, which are missing from the photolithographic Swedenborg-Schmidius Bible. Probably Mr. Alfred Stroh would do this for us.

     Mr. Price: I have made much use of Swedenborg's marginal notes in the Schmidius Bible, but in many places found them difficult to read. Wen we have a man as skilled as Mr. Iungerich is in reading Swedenborg's handwriting, we should certainly have the benefit of his ability. The cramped character of the writing in certain places shows that these were later entries; for Swedenborg's writing became more cramped as he grew elder.

     Bishop Pendleton: This transcript, if published, would furnish the ministers with very valuable material for their work, as was indicated by Mr. Iungerich's paper. How large a book would it make?

     Mr. Iungerich: Together with the texts on which the notes bear, the book would be of about the size of DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM.

     Mr. Price: Would this include a translation of the notes?

567

     Mr. Iungerich: It would not. I would like to see a translation also; but this would mean additional labor and expense. Perhaps it would be well to have just the Latin first.

     Mr. Acton: I would suggest that when Mr. Iungerich writes to Mr. Stroh he urge the publication of a new edition of Swedenborg's Schmidius Bible, in the form in which it exists, without omissions or alterations.

     Mr. Odhner: I should like to see this. But it would be a considerable and an expensive undertaking. We can hardly expect, at present, a new edition of what has already been photolithographed. But the two books of Samuel should be phototyped.

     Bishop Pendleton. The Swedenborg Society in New York might be willing to publish this work. They have funds which could be devoted to this purpose.

     Mr. Acton: There are notes on many passages that are not commented on in the Writings. The references of the ADVERSARIA would also be very useful.

     Bishop Pendleton: It would be interesting to know what is meant by the numbers in the marginal notes,-whether they, refer to the seventeen universals of the PROPHETS AND PSALMS.

     14. The subject of the Directory of the General Church, considered at the morning session, was again taken up.

     Mr. Alden: The proportional cost of publishing the directory in the LIFE was $3644. Added to this the $11.00 for extra copies, and the total cost is nearly $50.00.

     Mr. Acton: Last year it was urged that the Directory be published, and that extra interleaved copies be made. We have these copies, which can be purchased and corrections made in them. I would suggest that the LIFE publish the list of new members and the corrections of addresses, and the members can then enter these in their copies.

     Mr. Childs: I favor Mr. Acton's suggestion.

     Bishop Pendleton: Unless there is objection, Mr. Acton's suggestion will be adopted.

     15. The subject of the Statistics of the General Church was taken up, and, after brief consideration, referred to the Council of the Clergy.

     16. On motion, the subject of Freedom of the Members of the General Church in respect to Natural Truth was taken up for consideration.

     Bishop Pendleton: We are in agreement in matters of Theology. But there is considerable disagreement as to things of the world, or natural truths, and we should avoid making a position as to any natural question, as politics, medicine, and the like, an essential of the Church, but leave everyone in freedom to hold his own views.

568

The majority of our members believe in Homoeopathy, but we do not want to make this an essential in our body. The day has not yet come that we may insist that members should agree as to certain natural truths. I believe it would be useful to have this subject fully considered.

     Mr. Raymond Pitcairn: Would the matter of Church ritual be included in this?

     Bishop Pendleton: To some extent. But ritual is a matter pertaining to the clergy and to the worship of the Church. When a liturgy is adopted, it becomes a part of the worship of the Church. I did not have in mind things which belong to the Church proper.

     Dr. Cranch: In the 111th Psalm, which was read at our opening worship this morning, the teaching of the internal sense is that those who have pleasure in searching out natural truth are to do so.

     Bishop Pendleton. But they are not to impose their conclusions on the conscience of the Church. We must not consider members unsound because they have views differing from the majority on such questions.

     Mr. Iungerich: It is useful for New Church people to meet for the discussion of such questions. We tried it in Bryn Athyn this year in the meetings of the Civic and Social Club. Although feeling sometimes ran high, the meetings were useful.

     Mr. Childs: Does not this principle apply also to differences of view in regard to Swedenborg's Scientific Works? Should we consider a man unsound because he does not take the prevailing attitude towards these Works?

     Mr. N. D. Pendleton: There are two views in regard to the Scientific works. Some regard them more highly than others do. This is a situation impossible to avoid. Those who see a concordance between the Writings and the Scientific Works believe that great light and wisdom can be derived for the Church from the study of the latter. They should not consider those unsound who do not see that concordance, though they cannot help thinking that these persons have not yet entered into light in this matter. It is a subject concerning which there should be friendly discussion.

     Mr. Harris: It is difficult to divorce natural from spiritual truth. We are continually endeavoring to confirm spiritual truth by natural. If there are differences as to natural truth, we do not have a common ground of confirmation. Natural truth enters into much of our Church life, into the social life, into our work of education, and into our government. Yet it is important that in these things we do not insist rigidly on certain externals. We must observe the principle of being yielding in externals, but firm in internals.

     Mr. Raymond Pitcairn: There are among us differences as to particulars of doctrine, and the freedom to differ is recognized. How much more should this be the case as to natural things!

569

     Mr. Odhner: The freedom to differ is in accordance with the General Church principle not to enforce any intellectual matters by a majority vote.

     Dr. Cranch: We must be exceedingly careful not to confirm natural truth by spiritual; but spiritual truth may be confirmed by natural.

     Bishop Pendleton: The tendency of the natural man is to impose his conscience upon others. This was markedly the case with the Puritans. In the New Church it must be avoided, and the individual must be left in freedom. In the early Academy days there was a holding together in views on many natural things, the members being disposed to adhere to what Bishop Benade taught concerning such things. But we ran against a snag in the matter of free trade, of which Father Benade was a vigorous champion.

     Mr. Schoenberger: There should be the greatest freedom at all times and on all questions. Without freedom we cannot progress. Articles on questions on the natural plane, such as medicine and the like, should not appear in NEW CHURCH LIFE. The LIFE exists for the teaching of spiritual truth.

     Mr. Iungerich: The Doctrines have their application on every plane, though this may often be obscure. To a certain extent it is useful to discuss such application in the LIFE.

     Mr. Schoenberger: We do not discuss politics in the LIFE. Why should other questions on the natural plane be discussed?

     Bishop Pendleton: The LIFE is the organ of the spiritual life of the Church.

     Mr. Synnestvedt: There are times when there must be a firm adherence to certain externals. An example of this was Bishop Benade's controversy in the Broad Street Society, in 1854, in regard to the placing of the corner-stone. He was justified in making this an issue at that time as a rest of the principle that the Church should be guided by the Writings. No interior thing becomes a matter of application until it comes to exterior things. So in the life of the Church issues will come in exteriors, and a rigidity must be assumed when a principle is at stake. The nations are to be ruled with a rod of iron. There must be certain fixed walls of the Church.

     Bishop Pendleton: Bishop Benade was, nevertheless, a strong advocate of individual freedom. Once, when asked a question in regard to a man marrying again, he replied that a man may make a rule as to this for himself, but not for others.

     Mr. Alden: It is not out of order to instruct others as to natural truths, ii Re do not seek to compel them to believe. As regards the laying of the corner-stone at Broad Street, things would have been different in the Society had been willing to listen to Mr. Benade. He asked for an opportunity to present reasons why it should be laid as he saw to be best. But the opportunity was refused. The issue arose because they would not listen to him.

570

     Mr. Acton: All are agreed that there ought to be freedom in natural truth and in spiritual truth. In the Church there must be harmony in the fundamental things of spiritual truth. But in particulars there may be differences; and I would say that this applies also to the teachings in the second part of CONJUGIAL LOVE. Questions of spiritual truth concerning which there are different views are fair questions for discussion in the light of the Doctrines. But when we come to natural things, such as politics, homoeopathy, and vaccination, it is not clear what spiritual principle enters, and, therefore, no clear application of a spiritual principle to the natural question can be made. Natural truth acts as of itself. There are certain natural principles in all natural theories. Many persons in the Old Church think the same as we do on such subjects. Is it useful that we should endeavor to take a more interior view and discuss such matters in the light of the Doctrines? It certainly is. But I question whether in the present stage of the life of the Church it is wise to discuss such questions in the LIFE or in meetings of a Society presided over by a pastor. But they can be discussed in meetings presided over by a layman.

     Mr. Iungerich: The English QUARTERLY discusses socialism and like questions.

     Mr. N. D. Pendleton: In the discussion of such questions there is the danger that the thought and energy of the Church may be diverted away from spiritual things. We may differ and do differ as to spiritual things; but what is essential is that we cultivate charity and do not insist that others think as we do. Such charity will establish the brotherhood of the Church. So far as concerns the Scientific Works, there may be much variety as to the way of looking at them. If a man looks to the Writings as authority, we have no issue with him ii he does not regard the Scientific Works so highly as some of us do.

     Mr. Acton: Toleration consists not only in letting another man think differently, but also in being willing that he should think differently.

     Mr. Roschman: What Mr. Acton said in regard to uncertainty as to what spiritual principle enters into a natural question is illustrated in our Church building in Berlin. When we erected it, we believed that we ought to observe correspondences in the selection of material. We could not afford stone; brick has an evil correspondence; so we chose wood. We now see that by so doing we made a mistake. Had we considered only the natural question of what was best adapted to the use, and used brick, it would have been better.

     Mr. de Charms: Spiritual things should come down into natural. In civil affairs, a true government would be one where the governors try to bring the Divine Law down into natural things. But this we cannot have at this day, and so we need to uphold that which is best adapted to conditions, which is representative government. So also in social matters. We cannot have the social order of heaven; so we must adopt the best things we as, find, as, for example, cooperation rather than competition.

571

Our standard may be one thing; what we can have may be another. But we must endeavor to have the true standard; and for this we must look to the doctrines by looking to them we will be more apt to get near right than in any other way. But freedom in views must be allowed.

     17. On motion, the meeting adjourned.
     F. E. WAELCHLI,
     W. H. ALDEN,
     Secretaries.
Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. The closing exercises of the school took place on June 15th. An operetta was given by the pupils under the direction of Miss Dorothy Cole. It was very prettily staged and the parts were well sung and acted. Samples of the year's work were displayed in the schoolrooms and refreshments served.

     Our celebration of New Church Day began with the Holy Supper on the evening of the 19th. On the morning of the 18th a Festival Service was held, which was attended by the Chicago folks as well; outdoor sports agreeably occupied the afternoon. In the evening a banquet was held with Mr. G. A. McQueen as toastmaster. The following toasts were responded to: The Use of the Christian Church, by Mr. John Headsten; The Church in Africa, by Mr. H. L. Burnham; The Church in Europe, by Mr. Alfred Goerwitz; The Church in America, by Mr. Wm. H. Junge; The New Church Amongst Us, by Dr. Geo. S. Starkey.

     A dance on the evening of the 3d of July ushered in the 4th. Our observance of this patriotic day included a picnic, a parade, a ball game and after dark the "rockets' red glare" on the shore of the lake.

     A beautiful, leafy, cathedral bower had been prepared in the park for the wedding of Mr. Wm. F. Junge and Miss Elinore Rauch on the 20th of the month, but it was not to be. A torrential rain devastated the leafy aisles and the ceremony was transferred to the school house. Notwithstanding this sudden change the assembly room was artistically decorated with the feathery plumes of asparagus and presented a festive appearance.

572

The room was filled with friends and guests. At the psychological moment a procession of eight bridesmaids marched in, dressed in Empire dresses of pink chiffon, singing the wedding march from Lohengrin.

     A rope of sweet peas in flower connected the eight and formed an aisle through which the to-be-wedded pair marched to the altar. The singing virginal procession was very beautiful and impressive. The ceremony was performed by Rev. Wm. B. Caldwell.

     A reception was given immediately after; the wedding-cakes were cut, toasts were drunk and the smiling couple, now one, received the congratulations of their friends. Mr. C. F. W. Junge, the interesting nonagenarian grandfather, added to the ceremony by his presence.

     Since the last news letter the following New Church people have visited the park: Mr. and Mrs. John Headsten, Miss Headsten, Miss Hannah Nelson, Miss Ethel Schwindt, Miss Winnie Boericke, all of Bryn Athyn, (the last mentioned won her way to all hearts by her sweet singing); Miss Stella Schoenberger, of Pittsburgh, and the Rev. Frederick Gyllenhaal, of Denver, Col.

     An informal musicale and two informal dances served to fill up the time and drive away dull care. On the evening of August 6th the somewhat neglected "steinfest" was revived after a two months' interval. Mr. H. L. Burnham was the genial toastmaster. "Hope" was the subject for consideration. When Hope was all gone a comic selection was read by Mr. S. G. Nelson and the meeting solemnly dismissed. Preparations for another marriage on the 10th are being carried forward with great celerity. It is thought that Mr. Sidney Lee and Miss Olive McQueen will be the ones to be married on that occasion. A kitchen shower at Mr. Sidney Lee's new house seemed to indicate this.

     BERLIN, ONT. The closing exercises of the Carmel Church School were held on the evening of June 14th, the children rendering a program of plays, recitations and songs, which were much enjoyed by the audience. The pastor presented, for the society, copies of Conjugial Love to the pupils who left the school a year ago.

573

     The 19th of June services were held on Sunday, June 16th. The rite of confirmation was administered for Miss Elvira Deppisch and the Holy Supper was celebrated.

     The 19th of June banquet was held on the evening of the 18th. The attendance was large and the celebration one of the most successful we have ever had. The first toast was to the Church. Then followed a series of three toasts, chosen with reference to what was the subject of the doctrinal class during the past season, namely, the doctrine of degrees. The idea was that the speakers present the three things, the end, the cause and the effect, which enter into the work of the upbuilding of the New Church; and this they did ably, Mr. John Schnarr responding to "Love for the Church," Mr. Jacob Stroh to "The Study of the Doctrines" and Mr. Richard Roschman to "Working for the Church." The pastor then announced the engagement of Miss Annie Steen and Mr. Calvin Peppier. The announcement, of course, received an enthusiastic reception and the enthusiasm became unbounded when Mr. Theobold Kuhl rose and added the announcement of the engagement of their daughter, Vera, and Mr. Percy Izzard. Toasts to the couples followed, and more toasts.

     In the afternoon of June 19th we had a double wedding in the chapel. The one couple were Mr. John Evens, of Randolph. Ont., and Miss Annie Hill, of Leroy, N. Y.; the other, Mr. Henry Hellyer, of Lion's Head, Ont., and Miss Mary Evens, of Randolph, Ont. A wedding supper in the school room followed, and toasts were proposed and speeches made that were much enjoyed. Then came several happy hours spent in dancing.

     The annual picnic of the Society was held on July 31st in Waterloo Park, and young and old had a good time.

     On August 6th a dance was given in the school room by the young people in honor of two Glenview visitors, Miss Constance Burnham and Miss Gladys Blackman. The music was furnished by an orchestra and a delightful evening was spent. W.

574

     RALDOLPH, ONT. The week of July 23 to the 31st was spent by the undersigned with the Evens families at this place. The families are Mr. and Mrs. William Evens and their four children, or rather young people, three daughters and a son; and their two sons and their wives, Mr. and Mrs. John Evens and Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Evens. A center in which there are three New Church families certainly calls for the attention of the Church, and especially so when there exists such a love for the Church and so strong a desire to learn the Doctrines, as is here the case. Mr. Bowers has visited this place regularly once a year, but this has been my first visit. On Sunday, the 28th, services were held, at which there took place the baptism of an adopted infant of Mr. and Mrs. William Evens, and of the infant, the first child, of Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Evens. The Holy Supper was also administered. During the week five evening doctrinal classes were held. At four of these the study was from the chapter on the Decalogue in the True Christian Religion, and at the fifth the subject of Appearances in the other world was considered. All of the circle attended every one of the classes and the interest was strong. On the 27th the Circle had a picnic on the shores of the nearby Georgian Bay, which was much enjoyed. It is to be hoped that the day is not far distant when the General Church can provide more frequent ministrations for centers such as this; and to all members of the General Church sharing this hope we would recommend the Extension Fund as the means for its fulfillment. F. E. WAELCHLI.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     UNITED STATES. Mr. Paul K. Seymour, who for a number of years has served as headmaster of the Urbana University, has recently resigned this position, to resume his former work as a chemist.

     The Rev. L. E. Wethey, of New Zealand, who graduated from the Convention Theological School in June last, has accepted a call to the Englewood Parish of the Chicago Society.

     From the BOTE we learn that the Rev. W. J. Thiel, since May 26th of the present year, presides over a German New Church society in Chicago, which was established some years ago by Mr. Lorentz.

575

This society possesses a church at the corner of Robey and Iowa Streets, and has chosen the name of the "Jehovah Congregation of the New Christian Church."

     GREAT BRITAIN. The Heywood Society in April last celebrated its hundredth anniversary. "The membership roll of this society at present stands at 225, together with 53 non-resident members. The attendance at service is 108 in the morning and 128 in the evening, and 42 persons have partaken of the Sacrament." These figures, we understand, are quite typical of conditions in the societies connected with the General Conference.

     SWEDEN. The first General. Convention or Assembly of the New Church in Sweden met at Stockholm, June 19th and 20th, 1912, in the rooms of the New Church Publishing Society. The clergy was represented by the Rev. C. J. N. Manby, of Stockholm, and the Rev. J. E. Rosenqvist, of Gothenburg, and there were present also delegates from the two societies and some isolated members, together with 27 visitors. Pastor Manby was elected chairman; Commodore Sundstrom, vice-chairman; F. G. Lindh, secretary, and Henric Burmeister, treasurer. Various rules and regulations were adopted, and the beginning of a General Fund established.

     On June 20th the chairman delivered an address on the subject of "How to Advance the Work of the Church," in which he urged the necessity of educating ministers for the New Church in Sweden independently of the theological schools in America, whereupon the Assembly without discussion adopted a resolution favoring "vigorous measures to gain persons, as far as possible such as have been educated on Swedish soil, who may worthily occupy the position of teachers of New Church societies." Pastor Rosenqvist delivered an address on "New Church Education for the Children of the Church," which does not seem to have been received with unanimous approval. The meeting closed with the administration of the Holy Supper.

     In Mr. Manby's address, published in NYA KYRKANS TIDNING for July, the writer refers to a paper by Bishop Pendleton in the May issue of the LIFE On "The Universities in Christendom," which he construes as favorable to the institutions of learning in the Old Church.

576

"One seems to read between the lines that Bishop Pendleton is not quite sure that even his own excellently
regulated and richly provided 'Academy' in Bryn Athyn is able to compare itself with the great State Universities." No such comparison is even remotely suggested in Bishop Pendleton's paper.

AUSTRALIA. We learn from THE NEW AGE that the Australian Federal Government statistician reports 326 persons as "New Church," 151 as belonging to the "New Jerusalem," and 179 as "Swedenborgians," making a total of 656, of whom 333 are males and 322 females. New South Wales heads the list with 223; then comes Victoria, 126; Queensland, 127; South Australia, 127; Western Australia, 47; Tasmania, 4; Northern Territory, Land Federal Capital Territory, I.
Special Notice 1912

Special Notice Various 1912

     Announcements.
     THE CHICAGO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY. The Twelfth Chicago District Assembly of the General Church will be held at the Immanuel Church, Glenview, Illinois, October 11th to 13th. inclusive.

     Members and friends who desire to attend will please notify Mr. W. H. Junge, Glenview, Ill., who will provide for their entertainment.
     W. B. CALDWELL,
          Secretary.

     FOR RENT.-Large front room, furnished or unfurnished. For school season or permanently.
     RAYMOND G. CRANCH,
     Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     FOR RENT.-In Bryn Athyn, house of nine rooms. Furnace, bath, hot and cold water. For terms, apply to
     MISS C. A. HOBART,
     Bryn Athyn, Pa.

577

LIFE IN PARADISE 1912

LIFE IN PARADISE Rev. C. TH. ODHNER 1912

     THE EARTHLY PARADISE.

     The Church of the Golden Age was not only a Garden of Delight as to spiritual and celestial things, but as to all external things also it was situated in an actual Paradise on the earth. The land of Canaan in a widest sense, though at the present time filled with bleak and bare mountains, dry water courses and forbidding wildernesses, was then truly "a land flowing with milk and honey"; as Ovid has it, "flumina jam lactis, jam flumina nectaris ibant." (Then rivers of milk, then rivers of nectar were flowing.) The whole earth, in fact, as it came fresh from the hand of the Creator, was a Paradise, such as has been eloquently pictured by Swedenborg in his WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD.

     "Thus our globe respired nothing but pleasantness and plenty, and exhaled fragrances from the branches of every shrub and from the pores of every leaf and fruit, filling the circumambient air with these delightful scents, which were so many sources of fruitfulness exuding from the earth by new ways, viz., by the roots, twigs and leaves of new-born vegetations. This was that delightful garden called PARADISE." (W. L. G. 21.)

     "The earth, now enriched with its living creatures, and so amply furnished and adorned with delightful fruits, advancing and wandering through its degrees, at length reached the middle station of its spring, or the mildest temperature, and having now attained its highest degree, it overflowed with every emolument.

578

The infant wild beasts being weaned, droppings of milk flowed plentifully from the fertile and lately pregnant branches, and through new veins returned back to the roots of the maternal leaves. The grassy bed chambers acquired a consistency and coherence from the honey dropping from the combs of so many colonies of bees. . . . Every species of animal was led to the employment suitable to his nature, and provided uses and benefits for future time and for posterity. Everything, according to the nature with which it was endowed, celebrated the festal days, not only of its own spring, but also at the same time of the universal springtime.

     "The globe was now at its height, nor was anything wanting to any sense, by which it might exalt its life and replenish the soul itself with joys. For the touch there was the sweet warmth of springtime, mixed with the natural moisture of the earth, which by its influence gratified every fibre. For the smell there were fragrances exhaling from every pore of each leaf, with which the air, being full charged, expanded the inmost reticular textures of the lungs. For the taste there were fruits of the most exquisite relish, and clusters hanging down to the ground from the leafy vine. For the hearing there was a concert and lovely melody of the many chirping and caroling birds, which echoed so harmoniously through fields and groves that the interior recesses of the brain were put into a tremulous and concordant motion. For the sight there was the whole aspect of the heaven and of the earth, whose greatest objects were so distinctly ornamented by their smallest parts that they easily disposed the animal spirits to pleasure and delight." (W. L. G. 29, 30.)

     II.

     SOCIAL RELATIONS IN PARADISE.

     In this earthly heaven the people of the Golden Age lived, as do even now the celestial angels, not in crowded cities or communities, but in the roomy freedom of pastoral life.

     "In the most ancient time mankind lived distinguished into houses, families and nations; a house consisting of the husband and wife with their children, together with some of the family who served; a family consisting of a greater or lesser number of houses that lived not far apart, and yet not together; and a nation consisting of a larger or smaller number of families." (A. C. 470, 1159.)

579

     "The reason why they dwelt thus alone by themselves, distinguished only into houses, families and nations, was that by this means the Church might be preserved entire, so that all the houses and families might be dependent on their parents, and thereby remain in love and true worship. It is to be observed also that each house was of a peculiar genius, distinct from every other; for it is well known that children, and even remote descendants, derive from their parents a particular genius and such marked characteristics that they can be distinguished by the face and by many other peculiarities. Therefore, in order that there might not be a confusion, but an exact distinction, it pleased the Lord that they should dwell in this manner. Thus the Church was a living representative of the kingdom of the Lord; for in the Lord's kingdom there are innumerable societies, each one distinct from every other, according to the variations of love and faith." (A. C. 471.)

     "In the most ancient times dignities were such as were accorded by children to parents; they were dignities of love, full of respect and veneration, not on account of birth from these parents, but because of the instruction and wisdom received from them, which were a second birth, in itself spiritual, because it was the birth of their spirit. This was the only dignity in the most ancient times, for nations, families and houses then dwelt apart by themselves, and not under the rule of governments as at this day. It was the father of the family in whom this dignity was vested. By the ancients those times were called the golden ages." (D. P. 215.)

     In this Republic of Love "he ruled who was the father of the nation, and under him the fathers of the families, and under these the fathers of the households. But all these ruled from love, such as that of a father toward his children, who teaches them how they ought to live, bestows benefits upon them, and as far as he is able gives them of his own. Nor does it ever enter his mind to subject them under himself as subjects or as servants; but he loves that they should obey him as sons obey their father.

580

And as this love grows as it descends, [toward grandchildren, etc.], therefore the father of the nation acts from a more interior love than does the immediate father of the children. Such also is the rule in the heavens, because such is the rule of the Lord, for His rule is from His Divine love toward the whole human race." (A. C. 19814.)

     III.

     THEIR PRIESTHOOD AND ROYALTY UNITED IN ONE OFFICE.

     The social organization in the Most Ancient Church was therefore completely patriarchal such as has ever prevailed among pastoral and nomadic peoples, and in this most perfect and most free of all forms of government the priestly and the royal functions are always united in one office and in one person. In the Golden Age there was no separate priesthood and no separate royalty were civil rule, but the father of each family was both priest and king in his own house, and thus the whole Church was truly a "nation of priests and kings," in which autocracy like democracy was altogether unknown, for Theocracy was the only rule they could imagine possible.

     There was at that time but one ruling function, and that was the function of teaching. There was no need of threats and punishments, but the father of the household simply taught the Lord's Truth, which was at once perceived and recognized as the expression of the Lord's merciful direction toward greater blessings. Thus "the father of the family taught those who were of his house the precepts of charity, and thence the life of love, in their tabernacles, as later on in temples." (A. E. 799a.)

     "In the Ancient Representative Church the priesthood and the royalty were joined together in one person, because the good and truth which proceed from the Lord are united, and these in heaven with the angels are also joined together." (A. C. 6148) This union of the ruling functions was universal in the most remote antiquity, as is abundantly confirmed by the researches of archeology. "Priest-king" was the regular title of the rulers among the earliest inhabitants of Chaldea, and there is reason to believe that the same form of government prevailed in pre-historic Egypt.

581

The grand-lama of Tibet was until recently such a priest-king, as was also for untold ages the Emperor of China. In the time of Abraham the custom still survived in some portions of the land of Canaan, as is evident from the case of Melchizedek, (a name which means "king of righteousness"), of whom it is written that "Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was a priest to God Most High; and he blessed Abraham." (Gen. 14: 18, 19.)

     IV.

     THEIR OCCUPATIONS, DWELLINGS AND WORSHIP.

     There is not much of external interest to tell of the "simple life" of these wise children in the infancy of our race. Like the Arabs of today, "they dwelt in tabernacles and tents, and also wandered about with them, for many of them at that time were shepherds." (A. E. 799a.) "The most ancient people not only journeyed about with their tents, but also dwelt in the tents, and performed their holy worship in them." (A. C. 1102.) "There was with them no other love of riches, than that they should possess the necessities of life, which they procured for themselves from flocks and herds, and also from cultivated fields, meadows and gardens, from which they had their food. Among the necessities of their life there were also decorous homes, furnished with all kinds of useful things, and also garments. Parents, children, servants and maids in a household were busy in the care of all these things and in the necessary work." (D. P. 215.)

     It will be vain for archeologists to look for architectural remains from that Golden Age in the land of Canaan, and this for the reason that the people of that age lived exclusively in tents and also performed their worship in them. Each home was then a church of God, dedicated to His worship, and on this account the home-tent, in which the worship and the daily life were inseparable, was regarded with the utmost reverence, as the dwelling-place of God with men. In a somewhat later age, as the externals of life began to increase and simplicity decreased, special tents or tabernacles were set aside for the Divine worship, and finally they built houses of worship, constructed not of stone but of wood because the state was still a state of celestial good, to which wood corresponds, and not yet a state of spiritual truth represented by stone. (A. C. 414, 3720.)

582

The memory of this primitive tent-worship is still preserved in the Hebrew tongue where the verb halal, "to praise," to glorify," is derived directly from the word aohel, a "tent;" hence the term "hallelu-jah" means originally to "glorify Jehovah in the home tent." Hence also came the Hebrew word for "city," (ayir, Assyrian alu), for the first cities were nothing but collections of tents.

"The men of the Most Ancient Church were internal men, and had no externals of worship, while the men of the Ancient Church were external men and had externals of worship; for the former saw external things through internal things as in the noon-day light of the sun, while the latter saw internal things through external things as in the light of the moon and the stars by night." (A. C. 4493.) That is to say, there were not in the worship of the Most Ancient Church any fixed representative rites of worship as in the church that followed, but the external worship was the simple and spontaneous expression of their internal adoration of Jehovah their God. There were no rites such as circumcision, washings, or sacrifices, nor as yet any special days set apart for worship, for every day was a Sabbath, a day of adoration, purification, self-sacrifice and interior communication with heaven and with God. Nevertheless, there was also each day an external worship, welling forth from a heart overflowing with love and gratitude and with a desire to lead the younger and simpler members of the family to more internal perceptions and loves. They had no externals of worship merely representing internal things, but the internal things themselves naturally expressed themselves in outward acts, such as the act of prostrating oneself, (not merely kneeling), the act of blessing in the worship, etc. They also loved to conduct their worship not only in the tents, but also on the top of some mountain, being naturally led thither by their exalted love of God and the desire for nearness to Him. (A. C. 795, 796.)

583

     "It was perceived from the most ancient people who were from our earth, that they had thus lived in their time, and that they then knew not what it was to exercise command over others from the love of self and from the love of the world to heap up wealth beyond what is necessary; and that they then had inward peace and at the same time outward peace, and from this there was heaven among men. Those times were therefore called by the ancient writers the Golden Age, and they were described by saying that the people did what was just and right from the law written on their hearts.

     "The state of life of those times is described in the Word by 'dwelling by themselves safely and alone without gates and bars,' (Ezech. 38:11). And as their habitations were tents, therefore in the memory of this, a tent was erected which was for a house of God, and afterwards the feast of tents was instituted, in which they were glad from the heart. And as they who lived in this way were free from the insane love of exercising command for the sake of themselves, and gaining the world for the sake of the world, therefore Heaven then let itself down to them, and the Lord was seen by many in the human form." (A. C. 10160.)

     V.

     THE NAME JEHOVAH.

     Possessing as yet no external voluntary respiration, "except a tacit one," their speech, likewise, was a tacit speech, but still a speech. It was not simply a beautiful pantomime of the delicate muscles of the face and the lips, (now atrophied by disuse), by means of which affections alone could be communicated but not the distinct meanings of exact truth. As has been stated before, they also had a tacit speech, communicated to the hearer by means of the Eustachian tube, and this speech gradually formed itself into an actual language, which was one with the universal language of the spiritual world.

     "The first language of men on our earth was in agreement with the angelic language; and the Hebrew language is in agreement with it in some respects." (H. H. 237.)

     "In some languages in the world, also, there are such natural words, [i. e., 'onomatopoetic'], and the most ancient language was altogether such as is the language of spirits, which is wholly natural; the interior ideas of a man are also in that language, although the man is not aware of it; and hence it is that after death, when he is among spirits, he speaks that language without
instruction." (S. D. 4870.)

584

     The first language, therefore, that was spoken by men on earth, was one with the language of heaven, and the holiest word of that language was the name by which they knew and adored their Maker,-the name JEHOVAH. To tell all the heavenly arcana involved in this name would be impossible, but we may try to present a few general ideas. The root-meaning of this name is the idea of "Being," connected with other roots meaning to "live," and to "love." It is, properly, the only name of the Infinite Esse, the Divine Being who revealed Himself to the most ancients in the form of a Man, and who again revealed Himself to Moses under the name of "I am who I am." Nor does it only mean "I am" in the present tense, but in all tenses and modes. For the "je" in this name is found again in the future tense, (yehi), of the Hebrew verb heya, "to be;" the "he" in the participle, (hoayeh), and the "wah" in the preterite or past tense, (hawah), though the past and the future are interchangeable in the Hebrew. It literally means, therefore, "He who is, and who was, and who is to come" for the name Jehovah "also means Is, and He who Is, or who is Esse itself, He also Was, and Is To Come; for things past and future are present in Him." (A. R. 13.)

     This name, moreover, (the correct pronunciation of which is Ie-ho-ou-ah," with the accent on the last syllable), does not contain a single consonant, but is made up altogether of vowels and a breathing. Now consonants express truths, while all vowels express affections or loves. Of these vowels I and E express spiritual affections, the affections of truth; O and U express celestial affections, the affections of good; and A is intermediate, expressive of both. The breathing H finally signifies what is Infinite and Divine, being in itself pure breath or spirit. Thus the first part of the name, (Ie), stands for the life of truth, the Divine Wisdom itself; the second part, (he), stands for the life of good, the Divine Love itself; and the ending, (ouah), stands for both in Divine Union.*
     * For further study of this wonderful name, see our articles in NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1888, pp. 129, 151, 165.

585

     This the holiest and most significant of all human words was the name by which the men of the Golden Age knew and worshiped the Lord, as we are repeatedly told in the Writings, (A. C. 441, 1343; T. C. R. 9; S. D. 4772), and remarkable indeed is the history of that name. "When there is not a Church, the name 'God' is used, but when there is a Church, the name 'Jehovah' is used. . . . No one was allowed to mention Jehovah unless he had a knowledge of the true faith, but anyone might mention God." (A. C. 624.)

     How true this is may be seen from the history of the Churches. When the Most Ancient Church flourished in its integrity, the name Jehovah was the most usual, perhaps the only name of the Lord, but as it declined the name grew into disuse, was removed from the memory of those who would have profaned it, and was all but lost. In the Ancient Church, after the flood, the use of the name revived, and was the holiest of the numerous Divine names which then came into existence, but as this Church finally fell into idolatry the name was again forgotten, and this to such an extent that the Pharaoh of Egypt to whom Moses spoke in the name of "Jehovah, the God of Israel," asked in scorn, "Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Jehovah." (Ex. 5:2).

     In Egypt, indeed, the sacred name had vanished almost without vestige, (owing, no doubt, to the esoteric tendencies of the Egyptian priesthood), but with other nations the name may still be traced in the Chaldean EA or HEA, the Assyrian IVA, the Syrian IAO, and the Latin JOVE. The true form of the name, however, lingered longest in Syria, and was revived for a brief time in the Second Ancient Church, instituted by Eber in Mesopotamia. Within a few generations this Church, also, fell into idolatry, and again the name was forgotten; even Abraham knew the Lord only under the name of "God Shaddai," and to Moses the name Jehovah was entirely new when revealed out of the burning bush.

     The Israelites, indeed, knew the name from the revelation given through Moses, and in the Divine Providence the true pronunciation of the name was fixed forever by the Masorites. But, being from the beginning a wicked and adulterous generation, the Jews were not allowed to utter the name.

586

By a misunderstanding of the commandment "thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain," they never dared to speak this name, and instead read Adonai, "the Lord," wherever Jehovah occurs in the Old Testament. It was on account of the Jews that neither the evangelists nor the apostles would say the name Jehovah, and therefore they said, instead, 'the Lord.'" (T. C. R. 297.)

     The later Christians, after they began to study the Old Testament in the Hebrew, did not share these scruples, and the name Jehovah again became known in the world, but after the Last Judgment, in the present dead Church of Christendom, we may observe the same remarkable phenomenon of the ages in the growing dislike of the name, the "learned" world having unanimously; condemned it as "unscientific," adopting instead the form "Jahveh." Thus history repeats itself. But in the Church of the New Jerusalem the name Jehovah will be preserved, understood, and cherished, as in the days of the Golden Age.

     VI.

     MARRIAGE IN THE GOLDEN AGE.

     As stated in the chapter on the Preadamites, the first law promulgated by God to man was the law of marriage, for this is the most universal of all the laws that the Creator has impressed upon creation. He Himself is the infinite union of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, and from this union there could flow forth nothing but a striving for a corresponding conjunction in all finite things of good and truth, of substance and form, of active and passive. With the people of the Most Ancient Church this universal conatus or striving expressed itself, internally, by the spiritual and heavenly marriage of will and understanding, of love and faith, of affection and thought, within each man and woman. Externally, and at the same time internally, this conjugial conatus of energy-effort brought to the arms of each wisdom-man his predestined love-woman for an eternal partnership on earth and in Heaven.

     The gold of the wedding ring has throughout the ages been the fitting symbol of the marriage union, for the good of love truly conjugial was the highest good, the love of loves, in the Golden Age.

587

One Lord, one Church united with Him; one husband, one wife joined with him in every thought, and he with her in every affection,-this was the rule of life in that truly human Church of Adam. Charity, friendship, love of the neighbor, flowed spontaneously from the love of the Lord; and the dearest friend, next to the Divine Friend, and emulating Him, was the conjugial partner whom He had given to each one for time and eternity.

"'Male and female created He them.' (Gen. 2:27.) What is meant by 'male and female' in the internal sense, was well known to the Most Ancient Church, but when the interior sense of the Word was lost among their posterity, this arcanum also perished. Their marriages were their chief sources of happiness and delight, and whatever admitted of the comparison they likened to marriage, in order that in this way they might perceive its felicity. Being internal men they were delighted only with internal things. External things they merely saw with the eyes, but they thought of what was represented. Thus outward things were nothing to them, save as these could in some measure be the means of causing them to turn their thoughts to internal things, and from these to celestial things, and so to the Lord who was their all, and consequently to the heavenly marriage [of will and understanding], from which they perceived that the happiness of their marriages came." (A. C. 54)

"As every law of truth and right descends from celestial beginnings, or from the order of life of the celestial man, so in a spiritual manner does the law of marriages. It is the celestial, (or heavenly), marriage, from and according to which all marriages on earth must be derived, and this marriage is such that there is one Lord and one heaven, or one Church whose head is the Lord. The law of marriages thence derived is that there shall be one husband and one wife, and when this is the case the two represent the celestial marriage, and are an exemplar of the celestial man. This law was not only revealed to the men of the Most Ancient Church, but was also inscribed on their internal man, wherefore at that time a man had but one wife and they constituted one house. But when their posterity ceased to be internal men, and became external, they married a plurality of wives.

588

Because the men of the Most Ancient Church in their marriages represented the celestial marriage, conjugial love was to them a kind of heaven and a heavenly happiness." (A. C. 162.)

     "The people of the Most Ancient Church above all on this earth lived in genuine conjugial love, because they were celestial, were in truth and good, and were in the Lord's kingdom together with the angels, and in that love they possessed heaven. But their posterity, with whom the Church declined, began to love their children and not their consorts; and children can be loved by evil persons, but a consort can be loved only by the good." (A. C. 2730.)

     We must not suppose that the people of the Golden Age loved children less than did those of succeeding ages; they loved them far more tenderly and intensely, because more delighted with innocence than were later generations; but they did not love children because of "their own flesh and blood," but because they beheld in them so many new angels for the Lord's heavenly kingdom. Nevertheless, the love of the offspring was subordinate to the one supreme love of the conjugial partner, for this love exists primarily for its own sake, inasmuch as the conjugial embrace of two pure souls is in itself the highest of all uses; in it are hidden eternal salvation, heaven, conjunction with God.

     Thus they lived, primitive man and woman, each happy couple in an everlasting honey-moon, too deeply enamored with each other to permit any love of a more external nature to becloud their supreme love. The thought of evil had not arisen,-fornication, concubinage, adultery, divorce, polygamy, things such as these were unknown and undreamed of, but if any such thing should have been suggested to the thought, it would have been spurned with the utmost horror and loathing. (A. C. 162; A. E. 988; DE CONJUGIO, P. 32.)

     Living as they did, each family and tribe somewhat remote from others, consangouinous marriages were the rule; they contracted marriage within their houses and families, and this in order that the special kind of love and perception represented by each house and tribe might be preserved intact. (A. C. 483) The reason why the marriage of close blood relations was forbidden at a later age was on account of hereditary evil, for after the fall each family was the embodiment of some particular kind of evil tendency which, by intermarriages, was increased in intensity until finally such a family, in the Divine Providence, became extinct,-As witness, for instance, the results of the intermarriages of the Austrian and the Spanish Hapsburgs.

589

But by outside marriages the offspring inherits various evil tendencies, some of which,-such as prodigality on the one hand and avarice on the other,-counter-balance each other, and thus preserve the freedom of the subject. In the Most Ancient Church, however, the offspring inherited not evil but good tendencies, and the accumulation of such good could result only in what was better and better.

Of this crowning conjugial glory of the Golden Age the men of today can form but the faintest conception, but from the Doctrine revealed to the New Church we know that with the people of that Age conjugial love was chastity itself, innocence itself, and wisdom itself; in their marriage they found peace and tranquility, inmost friendship, confidence, blessing, satisfaction and joy, and from the eternal fruition of all these, they had happiness of life.

Lost for thousands upon thousands of years in the dark ages of sin, this most precious jewel of human life, this love truly conjugial, will be restored, so we are promised, to that new Golden Age which shall not pass away,-the Church of the New Jerusalem.

590

CITY PURE GOLD 1912

CITY PURE GOLD Rev. W. L. GLADISH 1912

     And the city was pure gold like unto pure glass. (Rev. 21:-18.)

     The city was the New Jerusalem which John saw descending from God out of Heaven. John's vision was symbolic of a New Church, the doctrine of which should be given by the Lord Himself through heaven, when the Christian Church had been consummated.

     Its wall's represent the literal sense of the Word which protect its inhabitants in all assaults of the enemy. That the walls were of "jasper clear as crystal" was to represent the fact that in this church the truths of the letter of the Word are translucent from the light of its spiritual sense.

     Its twelve foundations of precious stones represented that all the foundation truths of the Church are to be found in the letter of the Word also shining with the light of its spiritual sense; and that "in them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb," signifies that all these foundation truths unite in declaring that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one God and that His Human is Divine.

     The twelve gates of entrance, each one having over it an angel and each gate a single pearl, signifies that the entrance to the New Church is through the acknowledgment of the Lord's Divine Human and through that alone; and that this acknowledgment opens heaven as well as the church.

     And that "the city was pure gold like unto pure glass," signifies "That thence everything pertaining to that church is the good of love flowing in together with light out of heaven from the Lord." (R. 912.)

     The truth here stated is the central truth of the New Church. It is true that the doctrine of the Divine Human is the central doctrine of the Church, but this truth is that doctrine embodied in life. It is the acknowledgment in heart as well as in understanding that the Human of the Lord is Divine that produces the good of the New Church.

591

The jasper wall refers to the purity of doctrine which it derives solely from the acknowledgment of the Lord. The gates and foundations are also the doctrine of the Lord in its various forms and applications.

     But the city of pure gold like pure glass is the good of life resulting from living according to the doctrine. This is the end in view in all doctrine. For there is no value in doctrine for itself alone. Doctrine looks to an end of good or of life. This is the soul of doctrine. When doctrine ceases to look to a good life and is valued for itself alone it ceases to be good and becomes evil. The affection in it, ceasing to be an affection of good living, becomes an affection of gain or glory to one's self.

     This is why it was said that the truth here stated is the central truth of the New Church. The final end of all things of her doctrine is that the city may be pure gold.

     Let no one think, therefore, that in the New Church Doctrine is to be valued for its own sake, but solely and always for the end of a live lived from the Lord. There is no truth of the Church but looks to that end. No truth given in the Writings is so abstract but it looks to better living. And no doctrine is to be drawn by the Church from the Writings and taught except it 1ooks to the good of life. Doctrine lacking this application to life is not merely useless; it is worse. Lacking the love of good as a soul it has an evil love as its soul. For there is no empty truth. Every truth has some affection within it as its life. And where that affection is not good it is evil. The very truth of heaven, wanting a soul of good, receives immediately a soul of evil affection inspired within it from hell.

     But while this is true, and doctrine has no value as mere doctrine, but only as it looks to life, yet it is equally true that doctrine as a means to life cannot be over-valued. For without doctrine there can be no good of life.

     Without doctrine from the Word we would not know what is good, but each one would call that good which his natural man lusts after. To the natural man revenge seems good, and he would call it good but for revelation. So with murder, adultery, falsehood and covetousness. The natural man would call every one of these good because they gratify his appetites and desires.

592

He calls them evil only because he is taught by revelation that they are so.

     Man would not even know that there is a God and a life hereafter but by doctrine. There is no inborn knowledge of these things, but in every nation they are known by doctrine derived from revelation. Therefore, in valuing the good of life as the very end in all doctrine we do not belittle doctrine but exalt it.

     The Lord reveals Himself to us in doctrine. By doctrine He speaks to us. He is Doctrine; and Divine Doctrine is the Lord Himself in form adapted to our mental sight. Therefore, before the Word and before Divine Doctrine drawn from the Word we humble ourselves as in the immediate presence of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And we so humble ourselves before doctrine and bid our self-intelligence abase itself in order that through doctrine we may gain the good of life which is the end and soul of all Divine Doctrine.

     For doctrine and good of life are indeed two things; but they are two in such a way that where either is wanting both are absent. They are two things that are, as the Writings say, distinctly one; i. e., they can be separated in thought and seen distinctly but cannot be separated in fact, for one can be only where the other is also.

     Truth and good are like form and substance. Truth is the form; good the substance. Good can be seen only in a form and this form is truth, but a form without substance is only an imaginary thing; and the substance of truth is good.

     Good cannot be expressed except by truth. Say only "good" and not that this or that is good and you express nothing. But as soon as you define good and say that this or that is good what you speak is truth. In defining good you speak truth, for good is the realization in life of the truth, and truth is the realization in the intellect of what constitutes good. There is no such thing as solitary truth or solitary good.

593

     Good is, indeed, first in end and is also the last end; but to value good separate from truth is as great a mistake as to value truth separate from good. For as truth separate from good is falsity and has evil within it, so good separate from truth is evil and has falsity within it.

     Good without truth is merely natural. It is good from man and not from the Lord. It is good from proprium, and this in itself is evil. Good and truth or what is the same thing, love and wisdom, are the two essentials which from the beginning the Lord has joined together in eternal marriage, and has warned man not to put asunder. He who in the New Church exalts either one of these essentials and makes it the only essential or who to exalt one abases the other, sins against this command. And he loses both good and truth, and injures both the Church and religion, both doctrine and life.

     In attempting, therefore, to realize what is meant by the city and street of pure gold like transparent glass, let us not think to do it by exalting the good of love at the expense of the truth of doctrine. The New Church is not formed by the good of love alone. The good of love alone does not make one a member of the New Jerusalem any more than does the truth of doctrine alone. It is the good of love united with the truth of doctrine that makes the holy city and that opens its gates for man's entrance. The good of love must be realized not apart from but in and through the truth of doctrine.

      This is clearly expressed and indeed is twice expressed in the few words in A. R. explaining the meaning of the gold like glass.

     This verse reads as follows:

     "And the structure of the wall thereof was of jasper and the city was pure gold like unto pure glass." "The jasper wall signifies that every divine truth in the literal sense of the Word with the men of that Church is translucent from the Divine Truth in the spiritual sense." (911.)

     "And the city was pure gold like unto pure glass," signifies that thence everything pertaining to that church is from the good of love flowing in together with light out of heaven from the Lord."

     It is said that thence everything is the good of love. The word "thence" refers back to the Divine Truth of the literal sense of the Word. It is thence or from that truth that everything pertaining to that church will be the good of love. The good of love of the New Church is, therefore, from the truth of the Word when that truth is translucent from the spiritual sense; it is not from any other source. And to further guard the truth that the good of that church does not inflow solitary, it is added that this good flows in together with truth from the Lord.

594

     What, then, becomes of the idea held by some that the good of the New Church can be received by those who know naught of the truth of that church? Of that the New Church is coming down and permeating all the churches? Or that those in good all over the globe are of the New Church?

     No! That all such are salvable and will be saved when in the spiritual world they accept the two essentials does not make them of the New Jerusalem before they know and acknowledge those truths which found and form the New Jerusalem. These truths alone impart its good.

     The good of the New Church is received through the truth of the Word translucent with the light of its internal sense. Where is the letter of the Word so translucent except where the Heavenly Doctrine is known, acknowledged as Divine and loved and the Word is read in its light?

     This alone gives the vessels in the natural mind to receive the Divine Good conjoined with Divine Truth, i. e., the good of the New Jerusalem flowing in from the Lord through heaven. Without these truths seen in light and held by love the mind is like the perforated baskets on the head of Pharaoh's baker from which the fowls of heaven ate the food.

     How it is that doctrine and life make one and that neither can exist without the other is beautifully explained in A. R. 903.

     "The reason why all the particulars of the doctrine of the New Jerusalem have relation to these two things (viz., to the Lord and a life according to His commandments) is because they are its universals on which all the particulars depend, and they are the essentials from which all its formalities proceed; they are, therefore, as the life and soul of all the particulars of its doctrine. They are indeed two but yet one cannot be separate from the other, for to separate them would be to separate the Lord from man and man from the Lord, in which case there is no church. These two things are conjoined like the two tables of the Law, one of which contains what relates to the Lord, and the other what relates to man, wherefore they are called a covenant, and a covenant signifies conjunction.

595

Think what would become of those tables of the Law ii the first only was to remain and the second to be torn off from it, or ii the second was to remain and the first be torn off from it. Would it not be as if God did not see man or as if man did not see God, and as ii they receded one from the other? These things are said that it may be known that all the particulars of the doctrine of the New Jerusalem relate to love to the Lord and to love toward the neighbor. Love to the Lord consists in trusting in the Lord and keeping His commandments, and to do His commandments constitutes love toward the neighbor, because to do His commandments is to be useful to our neighbor." (R. 903.)

     In order to form a covenant with man and conjoin man to Himself the Lord gives His law. As man receives that law and obeys it he receives the Lord; and at the same time he loves the neighbor, for to keep the law of God is to love the neighbor. Conversely it follows that he who does not receive the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem does not receive the heavenly love of the New Jerusalem.

     Everyone who has any charity from the truth of his religion may indeed receive the essentials of religion in the world of spirits, i. e., the doctrine of the Lord and the doctrine of life, and so be saved according to the degree of good of his life in the world; but that does not make his good the same as the good of the New Church.

     Unless we think from doctrine concerning good we think indistinctly of it, and of various kinds of good make one thing. From this it has come to pass that some in the Church have made no distinction between New Church good and Old Church good, or between Christian good and heathen good, but have gone so far as to think that all who are salvable are of the New Church.

     All goods may indeed be conjoined more or less nearly or remotely, but nevertheless goods are as diverse as are doctrines. Good inflows into doctrine and takes its quality thence. As is the truth so is the good. If all good were one we should have but one heaven; but there are three heavens and innumerable societies. No heathen comes into a Christian heaven or Christian into a heathen heaven. The Newchurchman does not enter a heaven where they have only the good of the letter of the Word, nor do those who are in good from the letter enter the heaven of those whose good is from the truths of the internal sense.

596

That all who are saved acknowledge the two essentials, viz., the Lord and the life of charity, does not mean that all who enter heaven are in the New Church heaven.

     There are many heavenly societies and all of them in the two essentials. But they differ and are separated according to doctrine and the good therein received. What is it that makes the Church? Is it good of life?

     Hear what the Lord teaches in the Heavenly Doctrine:

     "The church is a church from doctrine and according to it; without doctrine the church is no more a church than a man is a man without members, viscera and organs, or from the mere covering of skin which only defines his external shape or form." (CORONIS 18.)

     It has been said in the church that the only essential is the life and that doctrine is but an accessory. But here it is said that the church is the church from doctrine and according to it; and that without doctrine the church is no more a church than a man is a man without members, viscera and organs. Surely members, viscera and organs are essential to man. Equally essential are doctrinals to the church. And in T. C. R. (245) we are taught that

     "The church is according to its doctrine-yet doctrine does not establish the church but soundness and purity of doctrine, thus the understanding of the Word; but doctrine does not establish and make the special church which is with each individual man but faith and life according to it."

     This distinction between the church as an organic body and the individual who is a church is further stated in A. R. (923)

     "It is said the truth of the church and the good of religion because the church is one thing and religion is another; the church is called a church from doctrine and religion is called religion from a life according to doctrine."

     The church as an organic teaching body is a church according to the soundness and purity of its doctrine. The individual man is internally of the church from life according to doctrine.

     Here again appear the two things which cannot be separated but are one.

597

By doctrine the Lord is present in the Church; by life according to doctrine the man of the church is conjoined with the Lord. But it is the doctrine that determines the quality of the life, and, therefore, of the good in church and individual.

     What is, therefore, the conclusion from all these teachings concerning doctrine and life? What is to be our attitude toward each? How may we expect the fulfilment of the promise that everything appertaining to the New Church shall be the good of love?

     Can we hope to attain this good of love immediately without the truth of doctrine? To ask the question is to answer it. To attain the good of love without doctrine would be to attain it without the Lord.

     The good of love is attained only through the truth of doctrine. Good loves truth and truth loves good. Where there is good there will be the desire for truth. Doctrine is undervalued and regarded as non-essential not from love of good but from the absence of good love.

     If, therefore, we would have the holy city among us "pure gold like unto pure glass" let us value the doctrine given us from heaven as we never have valued it. It is a revelation of the Lord. He is in it and is present with us in it and by it. The Doctrine is therefore holy with the holiness of heaven and of the Lord Himself. We cannot exalt it too high or love it too much. For the measure of our love of His Doctrine and reverence for it and humility before it is the measure of our love to the Lord. Make no mistake about this. To think of the Lord outside of doctrine is to think of an invisible God, with whom there can be no conjunction; while to think of Him in the Doctrine is to think of Him in His Divine Human, thus as God-Man.

     In the early days of the New Church her Heavenly Doctrine was taught distinctly, boldly and fearlessly. It was taught as the Divine means and the indispensable means of the salvation if Christendom and the human race from destruction and from hell. It was proclaimed to kings and emperors as fearlessly as to the common people. The speakers thought not of themselves or of the human instrument through whom the doctrine had been given, but they thought of the Lord in His Doctrine manifested for the salvation of the world; and they thought of men as needing this Doctrine as the very means of their rescue from the power of hell.

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     The ministers of the Church were, therefore, as bold as lions in teaching the doctrines of the New Church and in contrasting them with the doctrines of the Old Church. They did not call people to come out of a church that was almost as good, to one that professed to be no better, but they called them to come out of a church that was utterly dead and forsaken by the Lord to one that was living because the Lord was in it with true doctrine for man's salvation from evil.

     Yet they taught from love; not only from love to God but also from love toward men; not from love of doctrine alone but from desire that men through true doctrine should attain true life. While condemning false doctrine and pointing it out unsparingly they did not condemn men but sought in love to help them. This was love inspired from heaven through the doctrine. Heaven
drew near them, and from love inflowed into the doctrine in their minds and they were enlightened, and the Lord taught them what to speak. Men felt this love and responded to it. And the church grew and spread rapidly, and so long as she kept the purity of her doctrine she kept her love and thence her power. It is to this first love that we should seek to return, this love of the good of doctrine; and from that good received through doctrine as from the Lord we shall not be wanting in love toward men, pity for them, mercy toward them, desire to help them. Yet not to help them from ourselves but to help them through doctrine; for what is done through His doctrine the Lord Himself does.

     It is in this way and in this alone that the holy city New Jerusalem becomes pure gold like transparent glass, or good from spiritual truth, namely, when her Heavenly Doctrine is loved because the Lord is in it and because by it He saves His children from falsity and evil and leads them to Heaven. Amen.

599

JOVIANS 1912

JOVIANS Mrs. MABEL COFFIN FITZPATRICK 1912

     A STORY

     I. MARDA, THE SHEPHERDESS.

     Marda's hungry sheep lay scattered over a closely cropped hillside. Not a long blade of grass could be seen. Noko, the old ram, leader of the flock, bleated remindingly; but Marda did not hear, for she was mourning the loss of her black twin lambs, whose necks she had circled with wreaths of flowers each day since their birth. Noko pushed against her arm with his nose to attract her attention, and she looked up and said, "O! you must be very hungry, for Marda forgot you." Then she stood and turned slowly around, in search of another grazing ground. Picking up her crook, she pointed to a green hill across the valley. Noko ran ahead of the flock and led them across. Marda followed. She did not walk as we do on this earth, but with more of a swimming and flying motion; helping herself with her hands, the heaviness of the air supporting her arms.

     At every third step she stood quite straight and turned so as to face anyone who might be at her back, for she thought it very discourteous to turn her face from others. As she walked she peered into every bush and briar, hoping to find some trace of her lost lambs. Finally, at the very foot of the hill, she found some tufts of black wool and spots of blood. A little farther on she saw the prints of horses' hoofs, which filled her with unreasoning terror. Knowing nothing of the nature of horses, she at once concluded that they must have eaten her pets.

     Though Jupiter's years are twelve times as long as our years, the days are shorter, being about ten hours long. The people of that earth live to be about thirty of our years; they die so young, lest their numbers should increase beyond what their earth is able to support. Those who are to die within a year have a vision of the upper part of a bald or bony head, and they instantly begin to prepare for the other life. There is no night there, for their four moons shine upon them so brilliantly that they live in light and there is no darkness.

600

Instead of speaking of day and night, they speak of moontime and suntime to divide the day.

     Marda, though only about ten years old, counted by our time, was already a young woman almost old enough to be married. One of her sisters came to watch the flocks when she wished to rest. The flocks needed no shelter, but rested wherever they happened to be grazing.

     At the end of suntime or at sunset, she returned to her home to join in the sunset hour of worship. Indeed, she had two homes, one of them built of wood, one story high, the inside covered with the pale blue bark of a certain tree. The walls and ceilings were dotted with small stars. The other home was a long tent with a dome-like top; this was also colored blue inside and spotted with stars. They love the blue color and the starry heavens because they believe the stars to be the homes of the angels. In the tent they worship, have their meals and spend the warmest part of the day, to prevent their faces suffering from the heat. They make hats of the fibers of a pale blue bark to serve as a shade. They say that the face is not part of the body, but the form of the mind, because through it they see, hear and speak thoughts. The mind being transparent through the face, they are incapable of deceit. For this reason they wash the face often, keeping it immaculate.

     As Marda entered the tent her sister, Jeedra, took her hat from her and placed a large leaf, resembling the fig, on the sandy floor for her to sit on. In all there were twelve in the family, ten children and the father and mother. They all had smiling faces and shining eyes, except one big boy, Amyas, who looked very gloomy. This disturbed the parents somewhat, but the children did not notice him, for they were not allowed to look closely at one another. If they did see anything wrong or unusual they did not think of it, so, of course, could not speak of it. They were only concerned with their own faults.

     After worship and singing of psalms, they ate their supper. Fig leaves were placed on the turf in a circle instead of seats. The supper consisted of vegetables, fruits, nuts and bread. Little Isman ate only bread, but looked longingly at the other food.

601

Marda said to him, "What do you want, little one?" He answered, "I want everything, but eat only bread."

     Marda was about to speak again when a warning glance from her mother checked her. The mother knew why he ate only bread. A punishing spirit had been sent to him and it was his punishment to eat only bread and to hunger for all food but that.

     They sat at their supper a long time, not because they wanted to eat so much, but for the pleasure of conversing together at that time. They ate very slowly, talking affectionately and gaily all the while. Amyas only was silent; eating hastily, he left the tent long before the others were ready. This too was allowed to pass without a spoken word, but eloquent looks were exchanged between the father and mother.

     After supper Marda told them of the loss of the lambs and of the tufts of wool she had found and the hoof prints she had seen.

     Her father said to her, "Dear Marda, as you love us all do not speak of horses. They fill our souls with terror. Do not trouble about the lambs."

     But when Marda and the other children had gone to rest in the house of wood, their parents had a serious talk of the happenings of the day. The father said to the mother, "Beloved, it was the overlord, Logoba, who, driving his terrible horses, killed Marda's lambs."

     She, trembling at the dreadful words "horses" and "overlord," asked, "Will he, can he, take our Marda?"

     "No, dear mother, the angels will not so much as let him touch her unless she should wish to go with him."

     The mother's face recovered its usual smiling expression as she said, "Then she is safe, for she loves us and the angels."

     II. DESERTED.

     Amyas was about twelve years old and was just entering young manhood. Up till this time he had always been glad to listen to the instructing spirits and to submit to punishments from chastising spirits which had been sent to him by an angel-judge to reprove him for disobeying his parents or for his absence from a sunrise or sunset hour of worship.

602

Although often punished, he had been cheerful and happy and willingly answered each time "I-will-do-so-no-more." Whereupon the angel-judge sent the spirits away.

     But the day that Marda lost her lambs he had felt dissatisfied with the quiet valley in which he lived, and so wandered into the forest of tall trees and met there a youth of about his own age, whose face was surrounded with a circle of light. This one said to him, "My name is Furian, come with me and I will show you something that you have never seen before."

     Amyas said, "No, I cannot. I have done nothing useful today and I will now be severely punished for going this far from my own home."

     "How and why be punished? Listen to me. Once I too lived in the fear of spirits, and with father, mother, brothers and sisters. If I did but tell one little lie I was punished with dreadful pains as if a cord of hemp was knotted too tightly about my waist; and if I did but disobey the Feast command I ate only bread. Come with me and you shall be free."

     "No," Amyas answered, "today I cannot come; but tomorrow I will speak with you here again."

     On his return, he sat beside the tent, alone, sullenly awaiting his punishment and resolving not to submit. Suddenly he heard the teeth-gnashing, harsh, grating noise made by the spirit who was sent to herald the coming of a judging angel and to fill him with holy fear in order to prepare him to listen reverently. Amyas was unafraid and when the angel directed an instructing spirit to speak, he cried hastily, "Away, away, I do not wish to hear you. I will not be punished again. Away!"

     The angel then gave them the sign to leave him and left with them. While it is true that on the earth Jupiter spirits speak with men and punish them, not only for doing evil, but for thinking evil, still they do not instruct or correct those who do not submit to them willingly.

      After supper, as was said before, Amyas went oat of the tent long before the others. He walked around it many times, looking down as he walked. When he saw his brothers and sisters passing to the house of rest he took care that they did not see him, and sat down on the farther side.

603

He heard his father and mother talking together. At the mention of horses and over-lord he trembled with fear.

     Presently his father came out and found him sitting cross-legged on the turf, looking down. He then said to him, "Look up, my son, what troubles you? Were spirits punishing you that you could not enjoy eating and talking with us?"

     Amyas did not answer and his father continued, "Look up to the heavens, my son; see how bright and beautiful are the star homes of the angels! It is accursed to look down. Once, long ago, I heard of one who had been a son of my father who looked down continually. Do you know what happened to him? He was sent away from all his kindred to find his own food and to live alone in the forest. He was lost forever, my son; so look up, look up!"

     Amyas answered without lifting his head, "Do you look down, my father, and see the great snake that is crawling out from under our tent."

     "No, no, those who look up do ever see the heavens, the sun and moons and the far-beaming stars, the homes of the angels; but those who look down do ever see snakes and other noisome forms of life."

     A sudden anxiety filled the father's heart and he kneeled to look closely at his son's face. What he found there filled him with dread, and he cried, "Have your spirits deserted you? Kneel! Kneel while there is yet time and call to the Only Lord to send his angel' with punishing spirits, lest you die forever!"

     "No," said Amyas, calmly, "I will not kneel. I am tired of punishments, nothing but punishments. If I but look down, eat secretly, have one thought which I do not care to speak, or so much as miss one sunrise or sunset hour of worship, I am punished with pains or eat only bread. I am a man now and know what is good for me. I will have no spirits to torment me." His father turned his face from him and said, "Then go as that other and seek your food elsewhere, for if you stay here others may follow you and be lost. Go!"

     He went, walking slowly, not turning to look back, with his eyes still fixed upon the earth.

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     III. LOGOBA, THE OVERLORD.

     Logoba was an overlord or, as he preferred to be called, a Lord Mediator, and loudly proclaimed that he would receive the prayers of those who would worship him and that he in turn would present their prayers to his Supreme Lord, the Sun. He also said that they were not good enough to worship the Supreme Lord directly, and that only through a mediator would their prayers be answered. Logoba wished to be called Lord of Over-lords, and by means of his great strength and many servants exacted tribute from them. This tribute consisted of presents of cattle and slaves and of personal knee tribute, paid at stated times. The overlords were not permitted to oppress the good people who worshiped the Only Lord, unless, like Amyas, they had sent the angels from them and in turn had been driven from the society of their kindred.

     Amyas had not been long in the forest before he met his acquaintance of the luminous circle, who said, "O, there you are. Are you ready to go with me and be free of those inquisitorial spirits?"

     "I am already free of them. I easily got rid of them," waving his hand as if pushing them away from him. "I just told them that they could not trouble me any more. They were afraid and went away quickly."

     "That is good. Then I can take you to my master, who is a great lord. We have food in abundance. He will promise to take you to heaven without any effort on your part. You just live as you please, only believe in him, and you will' go to heaven."

     Amyas thought a while, wondering if this could be true. He had always been taught that he himself with the angels' help must do and think well if he wished for Life. However, having nothing better to do, he told Furian that he would go with him.

     Furian put two fingers into his mouth and whistled shrilly, at the same time grasping Amyas's arm. Hardly had the sound ceased to echo when the beat of horses' hoofs was heard. Frightened almost to the point of insanity, he struggled to free himself, but in vain, for Furian having fostered his body carefully was very strong.

605

Amyas, on the contrary, having been taught great contempt for his body, was without strength to resist.

     Before the horses had come to a full stop their driver sprang from a rude cart with flat, solid wheels of wood. He was a tall man dressed in yellow robes; his head was covered with a turret-like cap made of black lambs' wool; beneath the cap his hair could be seen, cut to a dish-mop, white as snow. It was Logoba, and he said, "Throw him into the cart, Furian, and let us away.

     Furian tossed him into the cart and then sprang in after him. Amyas's face and head were badly bruised and he lay quite still. Logoba mounted one of the large black horses and lashing them with a thorny whip they plunged headlong deeper into the forest. They rode a long time, penetrating deeper, until the branches of many trees shut out all light except that which seemed to come from the faces of Logoba and his slave.

     Amyas was finally aroused by the terrible pain in his head which was greatly aggravated by the jolting of the cart. Looking up and finding it was dark, he thought that evil spirits must be there. Furian pushed him with his foot as he said, "Get up, slave, you have slept long enough. We shall soon be at the master's house."

     "I can't move, the spirits have punished me for going with you.

     "So!" answered Furian, "Logoba has called me many names, but I have never been called a spirit until now. It was I who hurt you; your face was too fair for my liking and a few bruises will make you look more like a man."

     "My face bruised! What shall I do' I can't live with a deformed face."

     "Ugh? You talk like Logoba's slave girls, who, if they lose their beauty, are turned out into the forest to starve."

     Logoba, hearing voices but no words, turned and commanded, "Silence!"

     They were now nearing Logoba's house, the trees gradually thinning until they entered a courtyard paved with rough stones. Here Furian jumped down from the cart and, pulling Amyas out by one arm, dragged him to where Logoba was standing.

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A small army of slaves swarmed out from behind the house and after paying knee tribute to the overlord took the horses to water at a pool. Amyas stood between Logoba and Furian and looked around for the first time. The horses being out of sight, his frightened heart began to beat more evenly. He viewed a scene wild and strange. In his home all was conducted in an orderly and quiet manner, here all was noise and confusion; his home was irrepraochably clean, Logoba's courtyard indescribably dirty; his people seldom found it necessary to speak, while here the slaves chattered unceasingly. He drooped visibly. Logoba, noticing his lack of interest in his surroundings, spoke to him kindly, saying, "Do not look so unhappy; you will soon feel at home, after a hearty meal of roasted lambs and a good rest. Furian shall look after you. Follow him."

     Furian led him back to the rough looking shelters in the rear of the great house. Here he was stripped to the skin and given a loin cloth of goat skin. He pleaded with Furian to get his hat from the cart, a new one which Marda had just made for him by plaiting together fibres of shining white bark. The other slaves jeered at him, but Furian told him to have a little patience and his face would soon be as blotched and tanned as his own.

     A slave came out from the house beating monotonously on a drum. It was the call to gather in the audience hall. This house was a long low building of wood, raised on piles, with ladder-like steps leading up to the only door. The audience hall ran through the centre, all other rooms opening into it on either side. At one end was a square opening in the roof, directly over a dais, on which stood a chair-like a throne. Logoba now sat there, a truly majestic looking figure, the sun illuminating his yellow robes and white hair, seeming indeed the living image of his god, the Sun. He was not always a harsh or cruel master, but generally demanded only the necessary services required by the needs of his household and the collection of tribute. His slaves were well fed and led a carefree life, as long as they were willing to worship him as Lord Mediator between them and their Supreme Lord, the Sun.

     All were now gathered together to pay him homage, kneeling with their heads touching the floor.

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Amyas, alone remaining standing, was amazed to see even Furian in this abject posture. Logoba spoke to him, "You came here of your own will, therefore kneel and worship me. If you have anything to ask of the Supreme Lord, the Sun, he will grant your petitions only through me."

     "I will not kneel to any man; the Sun is not God. I have sent the Only Lord's angel from me, so cannot offer petitions to Him."

     Frowning at his temerity, Logoba replied, "Once more I command you to kneel. I am not a man, but a Lord Mediator and require you to worship me or you shall be sent away to be devoured by the wild beasts of the forest."

     Amyas, seeing that resistence was dangerous, kneeled. As he kneeled he heard their prayer:

     "O, great and mighty Overlord, pray for us. Only through thee can we be saved; pray for us. Intercede for us with the Supreme Lord, the Sun. Pray for us, pray for us!"

     Amyas was filled with horror to hear a man called Lord, and wondered why they were allowed to live, when the people of his valley were not permitted even to think wrongly about the Only Lord. So absorbed was he in these thoughts that he did not notice that all had risen to their feet and were passing out of the door. He was aroused by Furian saying, "Slow to kneel and slow to rise; well done, my innocent; well you know the high road to Logoba's favor!"

     Logoba stood at the door to receive the knee-tribute of his slaves as they passed out. As Furian and Amyas bowed he said, "Furian, you will prepare the flesh of the lambs we brought home for yourself and the stranger. You will also see that he is made strong so that he will not fear our horses. When this is done bring him to me again."

     One Ulu, on bowing, did not pass out, but said, "Will my lord listen to his servant'"

     "Speak, Ulu," Logoba answered.

     "While you and Furian were away Amnrag, the conquered Overlord, entered the hall, sat on your throne and his former slaves paid him homage, and he did plot with them to seize you and all your household."

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     "Well done, Ulu. You shall not serve today, and I will give you one of the slaves of Ammag to do with as you will. Go now and bring Ammag and his slaves here."

     Ulu went, his face shining with an evil light, thinking what he would do to Zoga, who had taken his meat the day before.

     Ammag was found, standing with his back to a tree, his slaves at his feet. Logoba had taken his dark, high cap, but could not deprive him of his white hair, which proclaimed him beyond possibility of doubt to be an overlord. Ulu, having always been a slave and a worshiper of an overlord, approached him timidly. Bowing to the ground, he said, "Will the great and mighty Ammag bring his slaves to the audience hall to speak with Logoba?"

     Ammag bowed his head in assent and followed Ulu boldly. His slaves were too frightened to walk upright, and so they crawled after him on all fours. Logoba was awaiting them, seated on his throne. Ammag walked slowly up through the center of the hall and stood proudly, waiting for Logoba to speak.

     "Ammag, you are accused of sitting on my throne and receiving the worship of your former slaves, which now are mine, a gift of the Supreme Lord, who has delivered them into my hands that they may worship Him through me. That you are no longer in His favor is very clear. I have treated you with clemency, requiring no menial service of you, or even my just due, your worship. Is this the way you requite me? As you are an over-lord I cannot have my slaves punish you, for they fear your power. For the peace of my house you shall be shut up in the place of durance and wear the dress of a traitor, the green robe of shame, whose fringe of tinkling bells will warn all if you attempt to escape; and neither my slaves nor yours shall honor you. Follow Ulu to the secret room, which has one small window opening into this chamber, that you may see our daily worship and know that I am your Mediator as well' as my servants. When you will acknowledge this kneel to me and you shall have freedom, honor and slaves."

     Ammag did not so much as look at Logoba while he was speaking and silently, but with great dignity, followed Ulu to the place of durance.

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There he unwillingly put on the robe of shame, the green robe of humiliation, fringed with bells, which tinkled clearly at every movement. The prison was merely a small room with a window near the roof, which was so low that Ammag's head almost touched it. Ulu backed out and, closing the door, fastened it with a stout wooden bar. Then, kneeling to his master, said, "It is done, lord; give Ulu the slave Zoga for his own."

     "Take him, but do not maim him. Beware of the vengeance of Ammag; he is an overlord."

     Ulu turned ashy with fear. He had thought that Logoba would protect him against Ammag's vengeance. Logoba always acceded to the requests of his slaves; then cleverly, by cunning advice, managed to deter them from profiting by his concessions. Zoga was very strong and knew the secret of tempering steel, consequently would be a very valuable slave.

     IV. THE SUPPER.

     Meanwhile Furian had taken Anuyas back to the slaves' house. There they found the others preparing a meal. A great fire was burning and suspended over it were two lambs. Their black fleece was pinned to the trunk of a tree with a queer looking wedge-shaped knife. Amyas looked at them with consternation, recognizing them to be Marda's lambs.

     Furian busied himself turning the meat around and around, and very soon announced that the supper was ready, and giving Amyas a forked stick, smoothly polished, bade him help himself. But he did not. He had always lived on fruits, nuts and bread, and at the thought of eating meat his stomach revolved and he was a very sick boy for a while. Furian was too busy satisfying his own appetite to notice that he did not eat, until Ulu came up and began to help himself. Furian picked up a large bone and flung it at his head, saying, "Go away, the master commanded me to give these lambs to the stranger and myself." Ulu dodged and, grinning, said, "The stranger does not like our food."

     Turning, Furian saw that Amyas was not eating, and making a sign to Ulu he seized Amyas by the throat and threw him to the ground, holding him there while Ulu forced the meat into his mouth.

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So Amyas ate, surprised that the flesh of animals could be so savory. After eating he was allowed to rest for a while. Then Furian and Ulu compelled him to wrestle with them until his muscles ached. This was followed by a vigorous rubbing down, after which he felt as if he had been flayed alive. Then came another hearty meal.

     After a month of this routine he was no longer a frail-looking boy, but was as strong as the best of them, and could throw even the burly Ulu with ease. Logoba favored him and made him his own personal guard. This aroused the jealousy of Furian, who had been favorite previous to Amyas's coming. Logoba kept him busy, cleverly giving him no time for reflection, hence no time for regrets, knowing that when his new habits became fixed his old life would no longer attract him.

     V. THE PLOT.

     One morning the overlord went hunting in the forest, taking Furian and Amyas with him. After riding a long way they came to a small stream, where Logoba commanded them to stop and water the horses, while he rested under the shadowy branches of a tree bearing a peculiar globe-shaped fruit. The meat of this fruit was much like our banana, but the hollow in the center was filled with juice tasting like rather sweet wine.

     Logoba, sitting apart from his servants, called to Amyas to come to him. Furian came also, but an imperious gesture of the overlord's stopped him and he retired, his heart burning with jealousy and hatred toward Amyas. Amyas stood waiting for his master to speak. Logoba had won his young heart, in spite of his calling himself a god, and he hoped that the overlord would one day see his error and learn to know the Only Lord. Now he was sensible of the honor of being called to his side. Logoba spoke, "You have been with us long enough to know that I am a mighty lord. You, of all my servants, I can trust; you are not cunning like Furian nor as selfish as Ulu. I wish to send you on a quest of great importance If you succeed you shall be happy to all eternity, for I will take you to heaven myself."

     "I live only to serve you, my lord. Command your servant."

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     "A few days before the Supreme Lord sent you to me I was riding through a small valley. On one side was a dwelling of wood and a large tent, on the other lay a flock of sheep, two of which were black. The shepherdess was not there, and, wishing their fleece for my turret cap, I seized them and, choking them to death, carried them away. The next day, hoping to see the shepherdess, I returned to the same spot. She was a girl of surpassing loveliness; her face was exquisitely fair; her eyes shone like eloquent stars, speaking of gentleness and submission, and her hair was as bright as the face of the Supreme Lord. Truly she was made to be the consort of a god."

     A pang of intense pain shot through Amyas's heart, as if the judging angel had sent all the spirits of hell to punish him, but as he heard no spirit voicing instruction or condemnation he concluded that this was death. Death for him, slavery for Marda! His master's word-painting of Marda had made her vividly real. Master, trees and horses swam before his confused vision, his soul tasted the terror of eternal death. Not since he had sent his spirits from him had he suffered so acutely. He felt as if he was drawn down into the centre of an irresistible whirlpool. He knew now what Marda meant to him, his soul's life! And he had left her of his own volition to become a slave, a traducer of the Only Lord. Logoba and death, Marda and life, so their names linked themselves in his mind.

     (To be continued.)

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Editorial Department 1912

Editorial Department Editor 1912

     NOTES AND REVIEWS.

     The ordination of the Rev. N. D. Pendleton into the third degree of the priesthood will take place at Pittsburgh on October 27th during the meeting of the Pittsburgh District Assembly.


     Mr. James Speirs, of London, died at Lint, Austria, on September 2d, on the way home after attending an "Esperanto" Congress in Cracow. Mr. Speirs, as agent and secretary of the Swedenborg Society, and as the English publisher of New Church books for nearly half a century, occupied a position of great usefulness. With the MORNING LIGHT We believe that "the members of the New Church in Great Britain will long remember him as one of the truest and most self-sacrificing of her workers."


     At the recent annual meeting of the Swedish Historical Society in Gothenburg on August 20th, a paper on "Swedenborg's importance to Swedish religious philosophy" was presented by our friend, Mr. Hjalmer Kylen, who is continually active in keeping the name and influence of Swedenborg before the Swedish public. In this paper the author establishes a very interesting connection between the early activity of Dr. Beyer with the later and more secret history of Swedenborgianism in high circles of society in Gothenburg and elsewhere during the first half of the eighteenth century. This has hitherto remained an unexplored field.


     The New CHURCH MAGAZINE for September presents as its leading article a paper on "Emanuel Swedenborg's Cosmology and the Theory of Kant and Laplace," by Hans Hoppe, of Loccum Cloister. As we have noted before this paper appeared first in the ARCHIV FUR GESCHICBTE DER PHILOSOPHIE whence it was translated first into Swedish and now into English by Miss Cyriel Lj. Odhner, and furnished with bibliographical notes by Mr. A. H. Stroh.

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     This comparative study may be of great historical and scientific interest, but the author certainly misrepresents Swedenborg's cosmological system at the very outset, when he says: "Hitherto Swedenborg has confined himself to the purely abstract qualifications of the mathematical point and its spiral motion. Now comes the difficult task of explaining, from the results at hand, the origin of the first finited physical body. Swedenborg avoids this by means of a false conclusion ever recurrent at this point in the history of philosophy: i. e., since finite bodies could not originate from themselves, and since, according to the present investigation, we have only mathematical points given, the finite must have had its origin in them." And a footnote explains very confidently that "the history of this mistake in logic is derived from the Pythagoreans by way of Origines and Descartes into modern times." But this is a hideous misconception of Swedenborg's logic, for while he describes the mathematical point as the starting point of the abstract science of geometry, he describes the natural point as the origin of a substantial and concrete universe. The mathematical point is a purely speculative entity of thought, without substance, form, dimension, motion or any other predicate,-thus a nothing from which nothing can be produced. But Swedenborg's natural point is a very different entity,--in itself infinite, and thus endowed with every possible predicate, substance itself and form itself, and the beginning of dimension and motion. The "false conclusion" and "the mistake in logic" cannot in justice be attributed to Swedenborg.


     In his new Danish magazine, the NORDISK NYKIRKELIG TIDSKRIFT, the Rev. S. C. Bronnicke publishes a very thorough doctrinal study of "The First Use of Baptism." It is a valuable contribution to the literature on this subject and very timely now that the distinctive Baptism of the New Church is being opposed with great vehemence by the Rev. C. J. N. Manby in Sweden. Pastor Bronnicke thus concludes his paper: "It is true enough that to be a Newchurchman in spirit and truth is the most important thing, and that to appear-the external presentation, confession and sign at the Baptism-is relatively subordinate. Nevertheless, no one can on that account deny the importance of the form, in the case when it is filled with its corresponding internal contents.

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For a member of the New Church knows that in the ultimates all things are in their fulness and power. Who then can assert that this is not also the case in respect to Baptism in the New Church'" Mr. Manby, in his Swedish paper, expresses great indignation at this line of reasoning, charging that he himself and all others who are not willing to receive the baptism of the New Church are thereby read out of the Christian Church. Mr. Bronnicke's study is denounced as a "miserable patchwork," which "we have read with very mingled feelings, and this not only because it is evidently directed against our own views of the baptismal question, but also because it seems so unlike the usually clear and sound style of our valued friend. It almost seems as if he had been affected by some foreign influence." It seems impossible for Mr. Manby to reason independently of the personal equation, and we deeply regret his veiled insinuations and intolerant methods of dealing with those who venture to differ from his own views.
SALVATION ARMY 1912

SALVATION ARMY Editor 1912

A subscriber asks us to give "the New Church view of the Salvation Army and the late General Booth." In reply we would state that the "New Church" point of view, as represented by our contemporaries, is most enthusiastic in praising both the "General" and his "Army" on account of the vast amount of good they have accomplished in the "permanent uplifting of the drunkard, the criminal, and the harlot." MORNING LIGHT regards the Army movement as "the embodiment of a great spiritual idea," and NYA KYRKANS TIDNING proclaims the Salvationists as the special "auxiliary troops of the New Church."

Our own view is less roseate, for we cannot get away from the impression that the one supreme and all pervading principle of the Army is the doctrine of "instantaneous salvation by immediate mercy through faith alone."

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If this is not a correct impression, then we have listened in vain to their preachings in halls and streets. Is not this at the bottom of their "great spiritual idea?" If our New Church admirers of the Army condemn the doctrine of the Atonement by the bloody sacrifice on the cross in the less enthusiastic sects of the Old Church, why should they condone it in the Salvation Army, where this doctrine is carried to the utmost limit?

It is, of course, good for society that external order is preserved by a false religiosity, but what is the spiritual and eternal effect upon the sinner who is "converted" by means of this fundamental falsity? It seems to us that these conversions, like the cures of "Christian Science," are effected by magical arts by appealing to the affections of the proprium instead of the affection of truth, and only serve to confirm the convert still more deeply and permanently in the persuasion that salvation is to be gained by faith alone, without self-examination, without the struggles of temptation and the shunning of evil, and thus without regeneration. And, therefore, we have a notion that the wretch in the gutter is apt to have a more vivid sense of his sinfulness than the uniformed and paid saint in the street who prays aloud for his sinful brother and without a blush proclaims: "Look at me! What I was and what I now am,-through faith alone!"
NEW APOLOGETIC WORK IN FRENCH 1912

NEW APOLOGETIC WORK IN FRENCH E. E. I 1912

M. Charles Byse, author of Le Prophete du Nord, has just published in two volumes a series of lectures on Swedenborg delivered at Lausanne, Switzerland, from November, 1910, to June, 1911, in the audience hall of the "Academie de Commerce." The subjects treated of, are,-"A biography of Swedenborg, scientist, philosopher, and revelator; 2, Heaven as he saw it; 3. The world of spirits; 4. Hell; 5. How to live; 6. The Divine Triad or Monotheism and Jesus Christ."

The writer gives evidence not only of a wide and at times minute knowledge of the Writings, but also of great zeal and fervor in spreading their teachings in the field he has chosen. In many respects, this work compares favorably with Noble's Appeal, but differs from it by being more an appeal to sound reason than a demonstration from passages of Scripture.

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Thoroughly at home and in touch with Old Church thought, the writer not only portrays faithfully the Divine teachings on a variety of subjects, but with a rare felicity in expression and suggestion fairly persuades his readers to grant the inferiority of the prevailing misconceptions. Like Paul in his speech to the Athenians, M. Byse, courteous and complimentary, addresses an Old Church rationalism as ii with the hope of showing that Swedenborg's teachings were only the next step forward in an orderly system of development. Though a hero-worshiper and an ardent disciple, it is Swedenborg the man who is his hero and master. From him he has gathered many pearls of wisdom, which not only satisfy the cravings of his own intellectuality, but also secure him a respectful deference among a learned clientele. He has yet to see and recognize the Lord in His Second Coming, and is still unaware that the Writings of Swedenborg are the voice of Him who speaks with authority, and not as the scribes.

"Whatever may be my admiration for Swedenborg," he tells us frankly, "I cannot consider him to be infallible. He could not be, for the simple reason that he belonged to sinful humanity. According to his own expressions, divine influx necessarily takes the form of him who receives it. Hence even the most positive inspiration after passing through the heart, intelligence, and the mouth or pen of a mere man, no matter how excellent he may be, comes to us more or less weakened, veiled, deformed, and falsified. We criticize without scruple and not without reason the teaching of a Luther, a Calvin, and even of a St. Paul. No reformer, no prophet, no apostle, has transmitted or comprehended in its absolute purity the Divine Word which was addressed to him. Only one Being ever did this, viz., He who is called the Word and who could say 'I and the Father are one. " (Vol. 2, pp. 158) Logically, this invalidates the Bible as well as the Writings, leaving to mankind as sole infallible memento of God the two tables of stone whose inscription and substance were both from the hand of Jehovah. But these, alas, were destroyed by Moses! Has M. Byse forgotten that the Holy Spirit is net only infinite and Divine, but also infallible? Has it never occurred to him that a Divine revelation, such as the Writings are, coming without interference by angel, spirit, or man, direct from the mouth of the Lord, is that promised Holy Spirit or Paraclete, the Lord with us?

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     What will probably always be an insuperable obstacle to M. Byse's coming to this acknowledgment, is that Swedenborg teaches the eternity of the hells. M. Byse declares, though without proof, that this doctrine is unscriptural, likens it to Persian and Manichaan dualism, and says it is a later infusion from Pagan sources which became incorporated among Christian beliefs. It was hardly to be expected, he urges in extenuation of his hero, that Swedenborg, although outstripping in so many respects the Protestant theologians of his age, should escape altogether unscathed from false beliefs, especially from one which was so universally accepted as this. The fact that the space assigned to heaven in HEAVEN AND HELL is six times that given to hell, suits M. Byse agreeably as an indication of the relatively small concern of hell to us who are born predestined for heaven, and also as a confirmation that Swedenborg had not penetrated far enough into the consideration of hell to discover it was not eternal.

     M. Byse is thus frankly and openly a universalist, but with this difference that his veneer of Swedenborgianism causes him to believe that the preparatory purification for heaven with the good and evil alike does not terminate on earth, but continues for a time after death. He believes that all will ultimately come into heaven, not realizing that the will is the man himself, that man is free to develop in himself a will unalterably opposed to the Divine, and that to such as do this the joys of heaven would he the utmost torture and misery, from which a merciful God protects them.

     M. Byse has championed the non-eternity of the hells since 1878, and if he has made no converts to the New Church he has at any rate convinced several learned preachers of this his favorite view.

     To him the new revelation can be a successful apologetic work only if put forth with an apology for its supposed imperfections. Rather a salt that has lost its savor, and is fit only for the dunghill! It is the Lord alone who builds the house, and no men are employed save those who will make humble acknowledgment of Him and His infallibility in the truths revealed.

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No successful evangelistic work is to be expected from those who disparage and condemn with one breath what they praise and exalt with another. The pure seeds of truth are only sown by such as have the acknowledgment that the Writings are the Word of the Lord in His Second Coming, and that all its utterances, even concerning the eternal duration of the hells, come with the authority and force of a "thus saith the Lord." E. E. I.
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF SWEDENBORG'S PHILOSOPHY 1912

SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF SWEDENBORG'S PHILOSOPHY Editor 1912

The communication on "The Status of the Scientific Works," published in the present issue of The LIFE, quotes with approval the views on this subject, expressed by Mr. G. E. Holman in the July QUARTERLY, who believes that these works "must stand in need of some correction by the application of the principles of revealed truth. This is especially so in connection with those profound speculations in the PRINCIPIA concerning the beginning of creation and the nexus between the Infinite and the finite. No detailed knowledge on such subjects is, in the nature of things, possible apart from revelation."

Granting that the PRINCIPIA, as the work of a finite mind, may "stand in need of some correction" from the Divine Light of the Writings, we are still waiting for "some correction" that shall not be in the nature of a wholesale denial of the truth of the whole PRINCIPIA system,-to be replaced by nothing but the old assertion of a creation of the whole universe by an immediate Divine fiat. We entirely agree with Mr. Holman that "no detailed knowledge on such subjects is, in the nature of things, possible, apart from revelation," but it seems to us that he goes quite too far if he assumes that Swedenborg in his preparatory career did not enjoy the light of Divine Revelation.

It has always been a matter of astonishment to us that our New Church critics of Swedenborg should continually forget that this eminent philosopher was a Christian,-that he enjoyed not only the concentrated light of all the ancient philosophers, which they had derived from the light of the Ancient Word,-but that he possessed in addition a knowledge of the fundamental truths of the Christian Religion, as revealed both in the Old and in the New Testament.

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We wonder if our friends fully appreciate what is meant by this fact, when they suggest that Swedenborg could know nothing about "the nexus between the Infinite and the finite," that he "confused spiritual things with natural," that lie knew nothing about the spiritual world and the sun of that world, etc. How do they know that Swedenborg knew nothing about these eternal verities? Was he more ignorant or more stupid than any ordinary Christian who has diligently studied the Word of God? Is it not a fact that the revelation in the Writings about these things is based upon and confirmed by teachings in the letter of the Word, which speak so plainly of them that we receive the new teachings because we recognize their harmony with the ancient truths?

If we study the preparatory works in a patient and affirmative spirit,-(and why should we not be affirmative towards our friend, Swedenborg?)-we cannot help becoming more and more convinced that he based his whole cosmological and philosophical system on Divine Revelation, the Word of God in the letter,-And in the spirit that shines out of that letter to every simple-hearted and unprejudiced man. Swedenborg possessed the very best educational advantages that could be provided for a member of the Christian Church. Nursed by two good mothers of profound piety; instructed by two eminent Christian theologians and scholars; prepared from his infancy for the Divine mission that was awaiting him; and specially guarded against the interior falsities of the perverted theology,-he surely was a "chosen vessel," the fairest, ripest fruit that the Christian Church could produce. To accuse such a mind of ignorance in respect to the primary truths of the Christian religion-going a little too far.

Swedenborg, writing in the ADVERSARIA, two years after the first opening of his spiritual' sight, reviews his cosmological system and expresses astonishment at its agreement with the story of creation as revealed in Genesis. This story, as told by his mother to the Christian boy, becomes the basis of the system expounded by the Christian philosopher, the basis of his so-called "speculations,"-which does not seem to be just the right word for his friends to use in describing the logical deductions of a master mind.

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     In the work ON THE INFINITE, as in the PRINCIPIA itself, Swedenborg clearly shows that by the "first natural point"-the corner stone of his system-he means nothing else than the "nexus," the Only Begotten, the Word which was in the beginning with God, and which became Flesh. Whence did he derive this profound conception, except from the Divine Revelation in which he was instructed from childhood? It does not appear to us that a new revelation was needed to suggest to an enlightened mind that this Logos, this Nexus, was the beginning of finition out of the substance of the Infinite.

     To the first and second "finites" of his PRINCIPIA, Swedenborg ascribes properties which quite correspond to the creative energies of the spiritual Sun. It is useless to assert that he knew nothing about that Sun, for it is often spoken of in the letter of the Word, and Swedenborg also speaks of it in remarkable fullness in the ECONOMY and in the WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD. And of his "first aura,"-which Proceeds from the first and second finites as the atmosphere of Heaven proceeds from the spiritual Sun,-he says in the PXINCIPIA that it is the atmosphere "of a higher and better world," and in the work ON THE SENSES he distinctly describes it as a spiritual atmosphere,-showing that as a Christian he actually knew that there is a spiritual world, distinct from the world of nature.

     If, in describing the first point, Swedenborg uses the word "natural," it ought to be evident to a friendly critic that he employs this term in its original and widest sense as meaning that which is produced, ("natural" from nasco, as "physical" from phyo),-A term which in this sense may be applied with perfect propriety to the whole of creation, both spiritual and material, from its first beginning to its last end, as one universal series of successive finitions.

     And "the fact that the avowed motive of his researches was the desire to discover the soul," by no means shows that he "confused spiritual things with natural'," but it shows that he regarded the human soul as a finite entity, in this sense natural, and therefore the legitimate subject of investigation by a finite mind under the guidance of Divine Revelation.

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Instead of criticizing him for this "avowed motive," we should honor him for hitching his chariot to so sublime a star; and, if we have studied the chapter on the Soul in the ECONOMY. We should hesitate in denouncing the aim of his life-work as a failure.

     The accusation that Swedenborg "looked upon the substance of the soul as some fine essence of the material universe," would,-if it could be proved,-place the Christian Swedenborg in the category of naturalists, materialists and atheists. The author of the doctrine of "Degrees and Series" in the ECONOMY cannot be thus accused with any modicum of justice. On the contrary, Swedenborg makes a sharp distinction between what is material and what is substantial; the former term he applies only to the lowest degree of substances,-those of the angular form,-while he regards all superior degrees as substantial, including the spiritual form which belongs to the human soul.

     We believe that our correspondent, Mr. Wells, misconceives the purpose of those who have become convinced of the general concordance of the principles of the scientific works with those of the Writings. Instead of accepting them "in total as a New Church science and philosophy," these students accept them as a Divinely provided basis for such a science and philosophy. And instead of trying to "stuff a butterfly back into its chrysalis," they are simply studying the wonderful development of the butterfly in the chrysalis, and they ought not to be condemned for marveling at the remarkable fitness and service of the chrysalis to the butterfly.

     In concluding, we would call attention to a noteworthy statement by Dr. Beyer, in a letter to Augustus Nordenskiold: "I cannot but think, that if there were important mistakes, Swedenborg would not have failed to warn his readers against his former writings. You would, nevertheless, oblige me very much by pointing out some of these mistakes." (Doc. II., p. 427).

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MISSION OF THE GENERAL CHURCH IN HOLLAND AND BELGIUM 1912

MISSION OF THE GENERAL CHURCH IN HOLLAND AND BELGIUM Editor 1912

     As is known to our readers from the September issue of the LIFE, the General Church has recently established a mission in the city of Brussels, where the Rev. Ernst Deltenre now resides as missionary pastor and agent of the Academy Book Room.

     From letters recently received we learn that Mr. Deltenre and family on July 21st visited THE HAGUE, Where there is now quite a strong circle, including a number of young people who are seriously interested in the Writings. After many years of isolated but indefatigable labors, our venerable and enthusiastic friend, Mr. Gerrit Barger, is thus blessed in seeing his efforts crowned with some success. Mr. Deltenre, on this his first visit, baptized three recent converts, Mr. Engeltjes, Miss Maat and Mr. Maat. There are now in Holland eight persons who have been baptized into the New Church and there are other neophytes who intend to follow their brethren through the gateway of the Church. The Dutch friends unanimously asked Mr. Deltenre to become their pastor, and he has arranged to visit them at least once in every two months.

     On August 15th Mr. Deltenre accompanied Mr. Pitcairn to PARIS, in order to look into the condition of the great stock of the Writings in French which were in danger of being dispersed owing to the financial difficulties of Madame Humann. We have not yet heard as to the result of their investigations, but they found the former New Church Temple in rue Thouin occupied by a moving picture show and bearing the inscription "Cine-Magic." On August 18th Mr. Deltenre conducted services and preached for the little society of the General Church in rue St. Lazarre, of which Mr. Hussenet is the pastor.

     In BRUSSELS Mr. Deltenre at first experienced some difficulty in finding a suitable house for the mission, but finally met a Danish gentleman who had heard of Swedenborg and who was pleased to rent his house at No. 33 rue Gachard for the uses of the New Church. Mr. Deltenre observes that "it is just as if it had been built for us."

     Rue Gachard is a side street running into the avenue Louise, and is in the best quarter of the city. The houses on that street are all built alike.

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They are light and airy, and have a hall, two rooms and a conservatory on the ground floor. M. Deltenre has made use of the conservatory as his chancel, having covered the glass with silk hangings. In the far end of it stands the repository. The conservatory opens into a large room where the congregation sit. Separated from it by two curtains is a smaller room, the book room, which is lighted from a large window by which you can sit and read in perfect quiet. A large book case is filled with the works of Swedenborg in Latin, English, French, Dutch, and German; and on a couple of tables are spread copies of the new missionary pamphlet in French, of which M. Deltenre is the author.

This pamphlet is a tasteful folder of eight pages, 7x3 1/2 in. The front page, under the caption, "Eglise Generale de la Nouvelle Jerusalem," gives the faith of the New Jerusalem in six propositions treating respectively of God, Life, the Word, the Second Coming, the Spiritual Sense, and the Writings of Swedenborg as the foundation on which the New Church is established. Then follow three and a half pages containing succinct summaries of the distinctive doctrines, presented in an attractive and suggestive manner. The reader of any of M. Deltenre's summaries will find some question forming in his mind, for the solution of which he will have to go to 33 rue Gachard. Two pages of the folder are devoted to a review of Swedenborg's life and an enumeration of his principal works. One slight inaccuracy here should be corrected. It was not Swedenborg who was ennobled in 1719 in recognition of his services, but the entire family in recognition of Bishop Swedberg's services. A short section is devoted to the organized New Church, declaring it to be not a sect, but a new dispensation, "resting on Christianity, as the latter rests on the Law and Prophets." The members of the New Church are declared to be neither mystics, theosophists, nor spiritists, and the New Church is portrayed as liberal and rational, and having no temporal or political aims to further. The public is finally invited to make use of the bookroom at 33 rue Gachard, at which any of Swedenborg's works may be read, borrowed, or bought.

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The book room is declared to be under the auspices of an American institution, "the Academy of the New Church." M. Deltenre further announces his readiness to organize classes for the study of theology, discrete degrees, cosmology, and the Hebrew language.

The tabernacle itself was dedicated on Sunday, August 25th, by a private service at which there were present, beside the Deltenre family, of Brussels, Mr. and Mrs. Hoeck and Miss Mamie Hoeck, of Bruges, Belgium, Mr. and Mrs. G. Barger, Miss Mary Barger, Miss Bertha Barger and Mr. H. G. Barger, of The Hague, Mr. John Pitcairn, Mrs. Regina Iungerich and Miss Solange Iungerich, from Bryn Athyn, Pa., and two young ladies from England. The service itself began with the solemn proclamation that "the Lord has made His Second Coming by revealing the Internal sense of the Word in the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg," and continued with lessons from the eighth chapter of the First Book of KINGS, the twenty-first chapter of the APOCALYPSIS, and the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, n. 126. There was no sermon, and the service was concluded by the administration of the Holy Supper to the adults present. After the services all adjourned to a room upstairs to partake of a banquet served at a long table. Mr Pitcairn, as toastmaster, presided at one end, while the other was graced by the presence of "la petite Marie-Emanuel." An original feature of the banquet was a dish of ice cream. in the form of a white swan surrounded by her pullets. A white horse had been ordered, but the caterer, not having sufficient time in which to prepare a mold for it, had done the best with the resources at his command. A toast to the General Church of the New Jerusalem was followed by the singing of "Our Glorious Church." Another, to the Academy, was answered by M. Deltenre in a grateful tribute to his Alma Mater. Mr. Barger is an impressive speech declared his purpose to devote the remainder of his earthly life to the work of translating the Writings into the Dutch tongue. The third and final toast was to the most recent baby in Bryn Athyn,-the first grandchild of Mr. Pitcairn.

The public opening of the Book Room and the Chapel took place on September 9th, and will, we hope, be described in our next issue.

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STATUS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS 1912

STATUS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS ARTHUR B. WELLS 1912

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
I thank you for calling my attention in the June issue of the LIFE to my misunderstanding of Your query on page 316 of the May issue. Mr. Stroh's statement reads: "An effort was made some years ago to make the three atmospheres of the Writings agree with the four of the PRINCIPIA by interpreting that work so as to place the first aura prior to the natural sun, but in that case it must correspond to a spiritual atmosphere prior to the spiritual sun." To this you query, "Why not?" etc. I think number 222 of the SPIRITUAL DIARY answers that question, for in it the first aura is spoken of as originating from the sun of the natural world, and is, together with the other three atmospheres, called natural.

I would like to call your attention to Mr. G. E. Holman's review of THE KINGDOM OF THE DIVINE PROCEEDING. I am in hearty sympathy with his statement of the status of the scientific works set forth in the July issue of the NEW CHURCH QUARTERLY. I quote the following: "Swedenborg's scientific and philosophical works are not and do not claim to be, a revelation. They are the product of a human mind; a mighty mind, and one to which more than ordinary deference is due, but still a merely human mind and consequently liable to error. It is undoubtedly true that, in his philosophical training, Swedenborg was undergoing a course of preparation for his mission as a revelator; but the spiritual plane of his mind was not opened until middle age, and it is one of the teachings of the revelation he was then enabled to convey to us, that the opening of a higher degree of mind necessarily modifies the lower degrees. However wonderful, therefore, the earlier philosophical works may be, they must stand in need of some correction by the application of the principles of revealed truth. This is especially so in connection with those profound speculations in the PRINCIPIA concerning the beginnings of creation and the nexus between the Infinite and the finite. No detailed knowledge on such subjects is, in the nature of thing, possible, apart from revelation. Marvelous as are Swedenborg's philosophical and scientific achievements, the fact that the avowed motive of his researches was the desire to discover the soul, shows us plainly that, in the early part of his life, he confused spiritual things with natural.

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He looked upon the substance of the soul as some fine essence of the material universe-something that could be found out by searching. Swedenborg's error in this respect is not to be wondered at and is excusable; but no excuse can be made for those who, having access to the Theological Writings, perpetuate the error." In support of this I wish to quote no. 422 of CONJUGIAL LOVE:

"Some, indeed, ought to be excused for ascribing certain visible effects to nature, because they have not known anything about the sun of the spiritual world where the Lord is, and about the influx thence; neither have they known anything about that world and its state, nor yet of its presence with man; and consequently they could think no otherwise than that what is spiritual was a purer natural; and thus that angels were either in the ether or in the stars; also that the devil was either or, if he actually existed, that he was either in the air or in the deeps; also, that the souls of men after death were either in the inmost part of the earth, or in some nondescript place, till the day of judgment; not to mention other like conceits, which phantasy has brought on in consequence of ignorance of the spiritual world and its sun. This is the reason why those ought to be excused who have believed that nature has produced its visible effects by virtue of what has been implanted from creation. Nevertheless those who have made themselves atheists by confirmations in favor of nature ought not to be excused because they might have confirmed themselves in favor of the Divine. Ignorance indeed excuses, but does not take away confirmed falsity; for this falsity coheres with evil and evil coheres with hell."

Swedenborg never confirmed himself in any of the fallacies into which he could not, according to Divine Revelation, help falling without a knowledge of the spiritual sun and the spiritual world. For us therefore to go back to Swedenborg's scientific and philosophical works and adopt them in total as a New Church science and philosophy seems to me like trying to stuff a butterfly back into its chrysalis. Respectfully yours, ARTHUR B. WELLS.

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ELEVENTH ANNUAL BRITISH ASSEMBLY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH 1912

ELEVENTH ANNUAL BRITISH ASSEMBLY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH W. REY GILL 1912

     The Assembly met at the home of the London Society, 169 Camberwell Grove, on Saturday evening, August 3d, 1912. The president, the Rev. Andrew Czerny, was in the chair and conducted the short opening service. After the minutes of the last Assembly were read by the secretary, reports were received from the London and Colchester Societies. The president then read a greeting from Bishop Pendleton to the Assembly. Messages were also read from the Rev. Synnestvedt, who gave a short account of the work being done in other societies of the General Church; Mr. G. Barger, of the Hague, Holland, who referred to the work now commencing there under the Rev. Ernst Deltenre after his Academy training at Bryn Athyn; Mr. Wilfred Howard, Bryn Athyn, and Mr. G. A. McQueen, Glenview. The Assembly passed a cordial vote of thanks for these letters, and instructed the secretary to communicate this to the writers.

     All visitors to the Assembly having been invited to take part in the discussions, the President read his annual address, the subject of which was "The Word in the Letter: Its Place and Use."

     Mr. Waters. We are all much indebted to our pastor for having introduced this important subject. Man is a form receptive of all spiritual things, and his mind is a plane into which all spirits flow. Any idea we experience is from spirits flowing into the image we have in the field of view of our memory at the time. Thus no idea is ours alone, but is shared with our attendant spirits. It is in this way that the letter of the Word forms a groundwork and basis in man's mind for the spiritual things which come to him through the angels. The letter of the Word is the clothing of the Lord Himself.

     Mr. Appleton. The Word is given as an ultimate basis for the Divine Truth revealed to men on earth. There is teaching given in the Writings concerning the use the Word performs to the angels even when read by little children, because they read it in a state of innocence into which the angels who delight in such simple innocence can inflow.

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But when men progress in regeneration and eventually become wise little children, they can then in reading the Word be associated thereby with the angels who are in the innocence of wisdom.

     Mr. Rose. The position which we hold in regard to the letter of the Word is a point which is constantly raised in our contact with the outside world. Outsiders think that we neglect the letter of the Word, but we use it more fully than others through our understanding of the spiritual sense within it. The spiritual sense is the soul, and the literal sense is the body. When we appreciate the existence of the soul the body seems comparatively dead, but this is only an appearance.

     Mr. Fred. Cooper. At times there is perhaps a tendency for us to neglect the letter of the Word, and to think that the Writings are the whole of the Word. I was much struck by the point made in the address that the letter of the Word is so powerful in resisting temptations. The Ten Commandments are the Word in a summary, and it is the "Thou shalt not" that has the greatest weight at such times, making us then realize that it is in the letter of the Word that such great power resides.

     Mr. Anderson. I was impressed by the apt illustration which was used to explain the cause of the letter of the Word reaching us in the form it has; namely, by the incident of truths being let down from heaven, taking on various forms in their descent, and yet being the same truths all the time. I thought of the life history of the Churches as a whole and its progress from morning through mid-day and evening to night. At each stage the Divine Truth was adapted to a lower plane, so that in the Word as we have it we have the lowest ultimate to which it could descend, and which is therefore a basis and foundation for the whole structure. All expositions must thus now he based on the letter of the Word.

     Mr. Ball. The mere reading of the Word does not affect the angels, It avails little if not read with true affection. When this is done the angels because the Word is written in correspondential form, can enter our affections and help us to understand Divine Truth. In our reading of the spiritual sense the angels are not affected in the same way that they are through the Word being read in the letter. Those in a heavenly society who during life in the world loved the Word in its letter, bring brightness to a society when they come, and the society enjoys less light when they depart. In the heavens a man appears with a beautiful, long and flowing beard according to his understanding of the letter of the Word. There has been a tendency to exalt the Writings over the Word, and to talk of the "mere letter" in a derogatory way.

     Rev. W. H. Acton. No more important subject could be discussed than that now under consideration, for the reason that the Word is the Lord. It is little understood how there is power in the letter of the Word. It is because it is the very living form and body of the Lord.

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In De Verbo it is stated that the spiritual sense has hardly any power by itself. This is because power is not in the mind till it is applied by the hands. The power of the Word is that of closing the hells and opening heaven.

     The whole spiritual world rests on man's natural ideas. Angels have the Word in the letter from our memory, and from thence select their ideas. They have the power of the Lord with them and that power is the power of removing evils with us. We do not realize that we are also protected from natural evils by the truths which are in our memories from the letter of the Word. Angels did not know till it was revealed to them that their Word was not the Word in the letter. The spiritual sense of the Word had to be revealed to them also, and this was done in the same way that it was to us.

     It needs to be emphasized that the New Church can only be established by seeing truths in the letter of the Word. We read the spiritual sense when we perceive truths in the letter of the Word. Revelation is only made in the mind of the reader.

     Mr. Pryke. The letter of the Word offers a twofold mirror on one side the Lord is seen; on the other man's unregenerate self as typified by the Jewish history. The, letter of the Word is being more and more totally rejected by the Christian world, and, when we remember that the Word is the Lord's Human, we can be more and more grateful that we have been drawn out of that Church.

     The first session of the Assembly was now adjourned, and refreshments and a social hour together brought the evening to an end. Among the toasts honored were "The New Bishop, the Rev. Dandridge Pendleton;" "Other Centres of the Church," responded to by Mr. Knudsen, of Philadelphia, and "The Church in Holland."

     The congregation at the service on Sunday morning numbered 100. Worship was conducted by the Rev. A. Czerny, who administered the Sacrament of the Holy Supper to 63 communicants. The rite of Confession of Faith was administered to Miss Olive Rose and Mr. Leon Rose.

     The second session of the Assembly was held on Sunday evening, the Rev. W. H. Acton being invited to conduct the introductory worship. The paper chosen for consideration was that by Mr. Howard, entitled "Man's Changes of State," which was accordingly read and discussed.

     A paper by Mr. W. Rey Gill on "Man's Memories, Before and After Death," was now called for and read.

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     Mr. W. H. Acton. The paper is a great contribution to spiritual-natural psychology. Much of it is open to controversy, and requires a great deal of careful investigation, but as a whole we can receive it affirmatively. It is from the memory that we are able to live to eternity, for it is the memory which is the ultimate receptacle of Divine Truths. It is most important for us to realize that ultimate knowledges can be acquired only before death: afterwards they can be communicated but cannot be retained. The mind should, however, not be cultivated from mere memory knowledge, but we cannot think unless we have knowledges in the memory. They are the corn stored up in the Land of Egypt.

     Mr. Cooper. The paper should be useful as an inspiration to the young people of this generation to study. In every department of knowledge we have a large field to develop. A man should not rest in the general knowledges of the Church, but should try to acquire all the truths he can. Mr. Acton has spoken of the importance of acquiring truths in this life: these truths will perfect our knowledge of the Lord and heaven.

     Mr. Pryke. The memory is developed by means of the affections. The importance of the memory is seen when we realize that the whole of our life is based thereon, and that it is the ultimate groundwork of our eternal life.

     Mr. Ball. We read of Swedenborg meeting different people in the other life: does this not prove that there are men there we shall remember and recognize?

     Mr. Czerny. This only takes place in the first state after death. Swedenborg was told who the people were that he met in the spiritual world. You will remember the Memorable Relation which speaks of two angels in different heavens who had been friends in the world, and their meetings with each other evidently took place in the World of Spirits, not in their own societies.

     Messrs. Waters, Appleton, Knudsen and Rose also took part in the discussion on the latter part of the paper.

     At the final session of the Assembly, which was held on the Monday morning, the first paper read was by Mr. W. Cooper, its subject being "The Land of Canaan in Relation to Man's Regeneration."

     Mr. Elphick. It is remarkable that Canaan, because of its correspondence to the Church, should have been situated in the geographical center of the world. In the WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD it is Stated that the original home of man was midway between the poles and the equator, and all the recent archaeological discoveries point the same way. Mr. Odhner's book on THE CORRESPONDENCES OF CANAAN has been quite a revelation to many people.

     Mr. Knudsen. The physical condition of the Land of Canaan was miraculously true in its correspondence to the various states man goes through in his regeneration.

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All the rivers, hills and mountains there have their correspondence. That little land was, all in all, and its history affected the whole world. In the same way it is a great satisfaction to us to know that though the Church is so small in numbers it is nevertheless all powerful.

     Mr. W. H. Acton. The Land of Canaan is a very marvelous country in that here only could the Church be established, and it is said that there and nowhere else could the Word be written. The Most Ancient and the Ancient Churches were established there, and from this fact every part of the land corresponds to some state of man's regeneration. The movements of its people all represented something or other happening to the spiritual state of man, and also the Lord's glorification. Everything was fruitful when the people obeyed the laws, and when they disobeyed the physical conditions of the land were affected and there were plagues, etc. Even now the physical conditions of the whole of this world are affected by the states in the spiritual world.

     Mr. Czerny. It is a fact that the history of the Land of Canaan also describes the glorification of the Lord. There is a statement in the Writings that unless the letter of the Word had been written, and the Lord's glorification described therein, the Lord would have had to have come into the world immediately after the Fall. This description in the Word serves as a basis for the angels to see the glorification of the Lord. This is one of the greatest uses that the Word has served.

     The next paper read and discussed was one by Mr. Fred. Cooper, entitled "Music as a Means to Unity in the Church."

     Mr. Rose. The paper reminds us of the uses that music has performed in the General Church. The possession of our Psalmody has brought a sphere that is unique. We have no trained musicians in our Society here, but none of us would do without the Psalmody. The national songs of a country affect the natives of that country very differently from those of any other. This fact gives us some idea of what an important part the affections play in music.

     Mr. Ball. We know the important part music has played in the New Church. The Providence of the Lord has ruled over the choice we have made in this respect. It is strange that the inspiration for the best music in the Psalmody has been taken from musical composers who lived in the dark ages. It is not always an advantage for pastors of societies to cultivate music; for instance, a clergyman who did so, shouted out in the middle of a service to a member of the congregation who was not joining in the singing, "Man, don't you feel the burning zeal?" The use of music is to teach us to get into choirs and sing in harmony and so get into line with other people.

     Mr. Cooper gave a short historical account of the various music used in the Colchester Society, and the uses it had performed there.

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We are grateful for the New Liturgy and the music therein. The hymns are much appreciated and I believe they are very helpful in the spheres they bring.

     Mr. Pryke. Music performs a great use in promoting unanimity within the Church. It forms an ultimate to the affections, and an outsider coming in call be affected by the sphere it causes. One of my earliest recollections in the New Church is Mr. Cooper's teaching of music, and this was a great help and influence in bringing me into the Church. I was struck by that part of the paper which spoke of the real essential of music being contained in the cooing of an infant. Music clothes the affections, and the more internal are the affections the more spontaneous will be our outbursts of music in the Church.

     Mr. W. R. Gill. The writer of the paper has shown that it is only when music is sung with affection that it is heard in the spiritual world. The Writings tell us that even the unconscious gestures of a man in deep thought shout aloud in the spiritual world.

     Mr. W. H. Acton. On one occasion communication was opened to heaven from some people in Abyssinia who were singing some sacred hymns, and this singing was heard in heaven in a most magnificent manner because of the deep affection in the minds of the singers. The music of the Word especially penetrates to heaven. It is interesting that in the Catholic Church Latin is used in the services, so that all in that religion in every country may worship the Lord in the same words. There is not any art or science that produces such unanimity throughout the Church as does music; and this paper was well called "Music as a means to unity in the Church." The origin of this effect of music is a spiritual one, namely, that truths will bring people together, but only affections will unite them.

     Mr. Fred. Cooper spoke of the problems in regard to the use of music that had arisen in various societies of the General Church. The Bishop has come to the conclusion that to develop the worship of the Church we must have all the forms of music-hymns, antiphons, chants and psalms. If we get into the same way of singing throughout the Church it will he much easier for us to join in the music of whatever Society we may be visiting.

     Mr. Czerny. There is no doubt that each individual is more affected by one form of music than another, so that we must retain all the forms to meet the states of everyone so that all may be able to enter into the worship. I am more affected by the singing of the psalms than hymns. This may be because the music of few of the hymns has been composed by Newchurchmen, whereas the Psalmody was specially prepared for the New Church. This fact, and the further one that the psalms are the Word of the Lord, have caused the music of the Psalmody to appeal to me most strongly, and this music should especially make for unity in the Church.

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     Mr. Rose's paper on "The Canon of Authority for the New Church" was now called for and read, but no time remained in which to discuss it. The gathering then sang "Great and Wonderful Are Thy Works," after which the benediction was given by the President, and the sessions of the Assembly were adjourned till next year. The number of those signing the attendance roll was 86, of whom 52 were members and 34 visitors. These numbers constitute a record for the British Assemblies.

     The friends all met again in the evening at a social, which gathered together all the enjoyable spheres experienced in such rich measure at this Assembly. The children were there and swelled the number of those present to over a hundred. Mr. Anderson acted as an ideal toastmaster and had charge of the program of a most delightful concert, at which all the artists were members of the London Society. It seems invidious to pick out any performer from such an "all star" program for special mention, but probably no item gave greater pleasure than the pas de seul of bliss Iris Elphick, which was danced in a most beautiful and interpretive manner to the tune of "At Our Assembly." The applause at its conclusion was tremendous.

     Most of the visitors to the Assembly stayed in London for the wedding of Miss Kathleen Waters to Mr. Will Cooper, which was solemnized on the following day. May this event, coming at the conclusion of our meetings, typify the marriage of good with truth, which we trust may be the fruit of our Assembly! W. REY GILL, Secretary.

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Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. The opening ceremonies of the schools of the Academy took place on Monday, September 16, in the chapel, when all departments were represented. Bishop W. F. Pendleton and the Rev. C. E. Doering officiated. Members of the Board of Directors, officers of the schools, and members of the faculties, were present.

     After the usual processional and introductory ritual, the Superintendent of Schools introduced the Rev. C. Th. Odhner, who delivered the Annual Address. The address was based on the words of the Lord: "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that we were drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matt. 18, 6). The address was characterized by a clear and convincing analysis of the educational conditions of modern times. As a solemn reminder of the inflexible stand which the Academy is bound to take as the educational representative of the Church, the address was one of the most successful in recent years.

     The annual reception of students by the Faculties took place in the auditorium in the evening.

     The annual meetings of the Teachers' Institute of the General Church were held on September 9-10, at Bryn Athyn. On account of the regrettable illness of the President, the Rev. C. E. Doering was elected to the chair. The annual address was delivered at the Monday morning session by the Secretary, Mr. Wm. Whitehead, on "The History and Outlook of the Teachers' Institute." In the course of the address, after presenting an analytical review of the history of the organization, Mr. Whitehead suggested that the main lines of the Institute's policy in the near future should be, to systematically conserve the divine and human traditions of the Academy,-(between which he made detailed discrimination);-Also to afford a professional body to represent the ideals and interests of the teaching profession in the New Church; to warmly encourage individuality in research work; to guard academic freedom; and to develop unity in our elementary education by means of a professional spirit.

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He also directed attention to the desirability of relieving the present strain on the teachers in the Academy schools by giving consideration to their adult social needs. A lengthy debate followed, especially on the subjects of the "conservation of tradition" and the question of the physical and moral tension of the work at Bryn Athyn. A discussion on "The Professional Relations of Teachers" was introduced by the Chairman. At the afternoon session, a suggestive paper on "The Need of Rewards in the Secondary School Period" was presented by the Rev. E. E. Iungerich. An animated discussion followed. The Librarian, Mr. Emil F. Stroh, read a helpful and much-appreciated paper on "What Can the Library Do for the Teacher and the Schools?"

At the Tuesday morning session, Miss Alice E. Grant, as Principal of the Bryn Athyn Elementary School, delivered a lengthy address on "The Montessori Method," in which a critical analysis of the worth of Dr. Montessori's didactic materials, and of some of her principles, was given. It is hoped to print a complete report of this address at a near date. The meeting expressed its thanks to Miss Grant for the address. The animated discussion which followed was sustained throughout the morning. The subject of the choosing and training of teachers from amongst those who have been in the Academy from early childhood,-urged in the Reports of the Superintendent of Schools and of the Normal work, for 1912 (see Journal of Education, 1912, pp. 63, 66),-was postponed to the Institute's next meeting.

On Tuesday evening, 10th of September, the members of the Institute held a lawn party in the grounds kindly lent for the occasion by Mrs. Mary E. Bostock. The illuminated lawns, and the historic "Brown Study"-beautifully decorated with golden rod,-made a charming background for a social evening. Mrs. M. E. Bostock, the Misses Eo Pendleton, Olive and Margaret Bostock, and Messrs. W. Whitehead and E. C. Bostock acted as informal Reception Committee. Miss Helen Colley rendered several solos.

636

A Dickens' reading, entitled "Dr. Blimber's School," was contributed by Mr. Whitehead. Much regret was expressed over the recent severe illness of the President, the Rev. Reginald W. Brown; and it was hoped he would soon return in good health.     W. W.

     PITTSBURGH, PA. During July and August all our society activities have been suspended, owing to the remodeling of the church building.

     It has long been the cherished dream of the congregation to have a building large enough to house all its various uses and to allow them to grow and progress. It is now with pleasure that we see that dream realized; for the last few weeks the contractor has been putting the finishing touches on our commodious new quarters. The first services in the new building were held on
August 25, and will be continued from now on without interruption.

     The old building is now quite unrecognizable. The chapel and small school room, now changed into a library, have been raised to the second story. In addition to this a study for the pastor has been built behind the chapel, while the first floor now consists of an assembly room, two high school rooms, a cloak room, and a kitchen.

     Heretofore, with but a room for worship and a small school room, we have been cramped and hindered somewhat in our desire to promote the welfare of the natural as well as the spiritual man. But with this new equipment we expect to find matters greatly facilitated.

     Commencing with the first Friday in October, doctrinal classes will be resumed, and in connection with the monthly suppers will be held throughout the winter. Also doctrinal instruction will be given by Mr. Pendleton on Friday afternoons to a class of children which has been the eldest class of the Sunday School. We are looking forward with pleasure to a winter which shall yield results satisfying in every way. B. P. O. E.

637

     NEW YORK CITY. On Sunday, August 11th, a representative portion of the New York circle patronized the Brooklyn Rapid Transit and the Long Island Railroad by betaking themselves to the home of Mr. and Mrs. George Hofmann at Valley Stream, Long Island, where that hospitable family dined and supped us in generous fashion. Sixteen adults and five children made up the assemblage. It was an opportunity to meet informally together during the summer and bridge over the vacation period. There was a goodly number from greater New York and also Yonkers. Miss Alice Grant and Miss Carrie Doering, of Bryn Athyn, were of the party.     C. K. H.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. The wedding mentioned in a late news letter as liable to occur actually took place on August 10th, and, as expected, the interested parties proved to be Mr. Sidney E. Lee and Miss Olive Theodora McQueen. The ceremony was a very beautiful and effective one as performed by the Rev. W. B. Caldwell. A note of harmony and solemnity was added to the occasion by a brief, introductory service. Such a short, introductory service fulfills a very important function; it allays or prevents the inevitable flutter of excitement and expectancy that occupies the last minutes of preparation before marching to the altar, and in its place tends to introduce a calm religious sphere. After a trip to Lake Geneva, where the happy honeymoon days were spent, the young couple took possession of their new home and began to order milk and meat like ordinary people.

     On August 16th a delightful fete champetre took place in the artistic grounds of Mr. H. L. Burnham. Supper was served under the wide spreading branches of "immemorial elms" while the smooth-shaven lawn served as a carpet for the guests.

     Labor day served as an excuse for having a common supper at the school house and an informal dance. Not a great many festive occasions took place during the last month, which was fortunate, for the inhabitants of the park were much occupied (when they had nothing else to do) in pumping out their cellars. The elements (when they had nothing else to do) deluged the park with rain, so that our festival ozone was much of the time dripping with moisture.

638

     On September 4th the regular Steinfest was varied by making it a ladies' night, under the toastmastership of Dr. King. Special arrangements had been made to ventilate the room so that no tobacco smoke would offend the delicate feminine sensibilities, and the beer was of a very mild brew so as to delight the female palate, and the steins were extra small so as to be more consentaneous to the female capacity. Spiced anchovies, desiccated herrings, ambrosial cheese, crisp crackers and sardelles packed in bay leaves and vinegar delighted the highly cultured palates of those present. Thus fortified with comestibles and potable fluids the assembled circle of intellect was well prepared to discuss some serious topic and to indulge in decorous mirth and becoming merriment. The subject arranged for by the toastmaster was Culture, what it is, the evidences of it, the means of its attainment, and the difference between sham and genuine culture. These were well expounded, and doubtless the ladies carried away with them a great accession of new ideas, a changed opinion of their gentlemen friends' ability, some crackers and not a few little fishes.

     Mr. Paul Carpenter and family moved to the park into the new house that has been building for the last three months. This accession of strength and numbers to our society is very welcome.

     Mrs. Adelaide Smeal passed away in her eightieth year at the residence of her daughter, Miss Florence Smeal. Old age and ill health, combined with extreme deafness, had compelled the deceased to remain within doors most of the time that she had been a resident of the park.

     During the summer the Rev. Fred. Gyllenhaal, of Denver, conducted the services, so that Mr. Caldwell enjoyed a much needed rest from his incessant activities and studies. The Rev. Willis L. Gladish spent a few days at Glenview and conducted the services once.

     BERLIN, ONT. The new season of church life opened on Sunday, September 1st, with a return to the complete order of service. Before the sermon the pastor spoke of the blessings which we, as a church, enjoy, and of the need of everyone doing his duty in order that the uses may prosper.

639

     During these days of awakening activity it was our privilege to have with us Mr. E. I. Stebbing, of Washington, D. C., who was for nine years the head-master of our school, and who left us six years ago for his present home.

     The school opening took place September 3d, with an attendance of twenty-two pupils. The head-master's address was on Politeness. Remarks were also made by the Messrs. Stebbing, Roschman and Schnarr.

     On Wednesday evening, the 4th, the opening men's meeting was held, and on Friday evening, the 6th, the opening general social.

     On Wednesday evening, the 9th, a lawn social was held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Scott in honor of their guest, Mr. Stebbing. A very enjoyable evening was spent by all, but especially by our many young people who were once Mr. Stebbing's pupils. W.

     CLINTON, ONT. During the month of August I spent two weeks with the circle at this place. Services were held on the 11th, at which twenty-one persons were present, of whom eleven partook of the Holy Supper, again, on the 18th, twenty-seven were present. Evening doctrinal classes were held four times, with an average attendance of ten, representing three families. In one of these families, which has recently settled in Clinton from England, there are two persons whose first interest in the doctrines was awakened during this visit, and the doctrinal classes were largely devoted to answering their many questions. There is an earnest love for the Church in this little circle, and a longing for more frequent ministrations than the General Church is at present able to provide. In the General Church we do not make the appeal, so often heard elsewhere in the Church, to provide for "the hungering and thirsting multitude;" but we do make the appeal,-our department of Church Extension makes it,-to provide for our little bands of hungering and thirsting members living far away from those centers where there is the constant feast of good things. It rests with those who enjoy the privileges of these centers to do their part that such provision may be made. W.

640

STARK'S CORNER, QUEBEC, CANADA. On July 14th, at the home of Mrs. A. D. Campbell, Amprior, a New Church service was held at which the Holy Supper was administered and two children were baptized. On Sunday morning, July 21st, service was held in the home of Mr. Andrew Sly, Stark's Corner, at which seventeen were present. An interesting hour was spent with the children after the service. On the evening of the same day a mission service was held in a hall at which there were fifty-seven present. I am meeting many of my old friends and relatives, and all seem interested in what I have to tell of the New Church and its heavenly doctrines. It is too soon to form an idea of the nature or cause of the interest manifested, but we are thankful that Divine Providence has opened a door for the introduction of the Truth. It is evident that a few are in full sympathy and are able to see the truth as soon as it is presented to them. Others are dull of comprehension and some oppose and reject. J. S. HARRIS.
Special Notice 1912

Special Notice Editor 1912

     Announcements.
     The Pittsburgh District Assembly will be held at the Wallingford Street Church, Pittsburgh, E. E. October 25th to 27th, inclusive. Members and friends who desire to attend, will please notify Mr. S. S. Lindsay, 359 Stratford Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa. N. D. PENDLETON, Secretary.

     Special Notice.

     THE CHICAGO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY.

     The Twelfth Chicago District Assembly of the General Church will be held at the Immanuel Church, Glenview, Illinois, October 11th to 13th, inclusive. Members and friends who desire to attend will please notify Mr. W. H. Junge, Glenview, Ill., who will provide for their entertainment. W. B. CALDWELL, Secretary.
Letters of Bishop Benade 1912

Letters of Bishop Benade Editor 1912

A collection is being made of Bishop Benade's letters and all matters in connection with his long ministry in the New Church. All persons able to contribute to this collection are requested to communicate with Mrs. Benade, who will take the greatest care of any letters sent to her, and will return them promptly. Address, MRS. WM. H. BENADE, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

642

DIRECTORY OF THE MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM 1912

DIRECTORY OF THE MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM Editor 1912

     Additions, Changes and Corrections.

     The Directory printed in the Life for October, 1911, is correct, except so far as indicated by the list given below.

     Changes of address or corrections should be sent to the Rev. W. H. Alden, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

Adelman, Mr. George V., Box 74, Franklin, Pa. (New.)
Ahrens, Mr. and Mrs. Carl, Lambton Mills, Ont., Can.
Alden, Mr. William H., Jr., 1648 N. 62d St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Allen, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis J., Sibley, Mo.
Allen, Mr. Percy B., Eraser, Colo.
Appleton, Miss Edith. (Married Edw. G. T. Boozer.)
Armstrong, Mrs. Lona G., R. F. D. No. 9, Box 2, Athens, O.
Arrington, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred, Halethorpe, Md.
Ashley, Mr. Herbert A. (Died Feb. 20, 1912.)
Asplundh, Miss Eidelia, Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Asplundh, Mr. Oswald E., Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Bedwell, Miss Gladys M., I4o Ladywell Road, Lewisham, London, England. (New.)
Beekman, Miss Lillian G., Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Behlert, Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph L., Halefhorpe, Md.
Bellinger, Mr. Charles H., 28 Springhurst Ave., Toronto, Ont.
Bellinger, Mr. Doering, c/o General Electric Co., King and Simcoe Sts., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Bellinger, Mrs. Lizzie, Waterloo, Ont., Can.
Bellinger, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest, 28 Springhurst Ave., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Bellinger, Mr. Norman G., 28 Springhurst Ave., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Bellinger, Miss Olive, 28 Springhurst Ave., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Blackman, Dr. George A., 877 State St., Chicago, Ills.
Blackman, Mrs. George A. (Died Feb. 29, 1912.)
Blackman, Miss Gladys, Glenview, Ills.
Blackman, Mr. Lewis R., 143 N. Harvey Ave., Oak Park, Ills.
Boericke, Mr. and Mrs. Edward E., 145 Gorand St., New York, N. Y.
Boozer, Mr. and Mrs. Edw. G. T., 129 Week St., Maidston, Kent, Eng.
Bornscheuer, Mr. John, Baltimore, Md.
Bowie, Mrs. Archibald. (Died --.)
Brickman, Rev. and Mrs. Walter E., 419 Evaline St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Brickman, Rev. Walter E. (Reinstated.)
Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Charles, 153 Cowan Ave., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Brown, Mr. and Mrs. C. Raynor, 30 Macdonell Ave., Toronto, Ont., Can.

643

Brown, Rev. and Mrs. Reginald W., Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Browne, Mr. Charles F., 1543 E. 57th St., Chicago, Ills.
Burkhardt, Mrs. F. P., Glenview, Ills.
Burkhardt, Miss Margaret. (Married Harvey Bush.)
Burnham, Miss Constance, Glenview, Ills. (New.)
Burns, Miss Florence. (Married Elmer C. Weaver.)
Burns, Mr. and Mrs. Robert G., E. 8th St., bet. Reed and Wayne Sts., Erie, Pa.
Burt, Mrs. Emma T., Glenview, Ills. (Widow of Jesse Burt.)
Bush, Mrs. Harvey, El Paso, New Mexico.
Caldwell, Mrs. Alice C., 104 Reed St., Rockland, Mass.
Caldwell, Mr. and Mrs. Robert R., Jr., 4319 Schenley Farms, Terrace, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Campbell, Mrs. A. D., Amprior, Ont., Can. (New.)
Campbell, Miss Bella, Amprior, Ont., Can. (New.)
Carpenter, Mr. and Mrs. Paul, Glenview, Ills.
Carter, Mr. and Mrs. N. A., 3 Norfolk Ave., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Catford, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley A., 1073 53d St., Oakland, Cal.
Childs, Mr. Randolph W., 27 William St., New York, N. Y.
Cleare, Mr. Troland, 112 Webster Ave., Wyncote, Pa. (New.)
Coffin, Mr. and Mrs. J. Price, Bloomfield, N. J.
Coffin, Mr. Roscoe S., 24 W. Lexington St., Baltimore, Md.
Coffin, Mrs. Susan M., Halethorpe, Md.
Cole, Miss Violet. (Married Allan McDonald.)
Colley, Mrs. Besse E. (Married Royden H. Smith.)
Colley, Miss Helen, Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Cooper, Mr. Frederick J., 118 N. 50th St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Cooper, Mrs. George M. (Married Reginald W. Brown.)
Cooper, Miss Olive, 11 Hospital Road, Colchester, England. (New.)
Cooper, Mr. and Mrs. William R., 1648 N. 62d St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Cowley, Mr. David M., 6236 Carmine Place, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Cowley, Miss Margaret M., 1528 Asbury Place, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Cranch, Dr. and Mrs. Edward, 813 Sassafras St., Erie, Pa.
Cranch, Mr. and Mrs. Walter A., 4120 Wyalusing Ave., Philadelphia, Pa.
Cresap, Miss Elizabeth R. J., R. F. D., Captina, W. Va.
Crockett, Mrs. T. D., 436 Crew St., Atlanta, Ga. (New.)
Cronlund, Rev. and Mrs. Emil R., 201/2 Melbourne Ave., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Daniels, Mrs. Hattie C., E. 1819 14th Ave., Spokane, Wash.
David, Mr. Llewellyn W. T., Bryn Athyn, Pa (New.)
Davis, Miss Eva. (Married Lewis J. Alien.)
De Anchoriz, Miss Rosalba, Glenview, Ill.
De Charms, Mr. George, Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
De Charms, Mr. Richard, Jr., Essington, Pa.
Deltenre, Rev. and Mrs. Ernst, rue Gachard, 33, Brussels, Belgium.

644

Deppisch, Mr. and Mrs. George J., 44 Louisa St., Berlin, Ont., Can.
Deppisch, Miss Laura, 44 Louisa St., Berlin, Ont., Can.
Dexter, Mrs. Luise, 347 Elm St., Meriden, Conn.
Doering, Miss Carrie, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Doering, Mr. and Mrs. George W., Francitas, Texas.
Doering, Mr. and Mrs. Henry, Bethayres, Pa.
Doering, Miss Mary M. (Married John McLellan.)
Doering, Miss Vida, Bethayres, Pa.
Doering, Miss Wilhelmina, 1933 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Downing, Miss Pauline, c/o P. O. Inspector in Charge, Chicago, Ills. (New.)
Eblin, Mr. and Mrs. Austin H., R. F. D., Middleport, O.
Edmonds, Mr. and Mrs. Donald S., Office of Asst. Sec'y., Dept. of Commerce and Labor, Washington, D. C.
Elphick, Miss Olive S., Frederick Lodge, Carshalton Park Rd., Carshalton, England. (New.)
Evens, Mr. and Mrs. John, Randolph, Ont., Can.
Evens, Miss Mary. (Married Henry Hellyer.)
Evens, Mr. Nelson, Benton Station P. O., Alberta, Can.
Farrington, Mrs. Elizabeth, Glenview, Ills.
Farrington, Dr. and Mrs. Harvey, 1235 E. 53d St., Chicago, Ills.
Farrington, Mr. William A., Glenview, Ills.
Faulkner, Mr. Walter H., 701 Filbert St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Faulkner, Mr. Wallace R., Conway, Pa.
Fincke, Mrs. A. M., 78 Truxton St., Brooklyn, N. Y
Fitzpatrick, Mrs. Mabel A., Halethorpe, Md.
Flon, Mr. R., a Beurlay, Charente Inferieure, France.
Frame, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace V., 6809 Kelly St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Frost, Mrs. Sarah Z., 436 Crew St., Atlanta, Ga.
Fuller, Mr. and Mrs. Edmund H. S., Bristol Apts., Clarissa St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Fuller, Mrs. Emma W., 117 Trenton Ave., Wilkinsburg, Pa.
Fuller, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert P., 524 Aspen St., Aspen, Pittsburgh, Pa,
Gill, Mr. William. (Died Feb. 23, 1912.)
Gill, Mr. and Mrs. W Rey, 202 Maiden Rd., Colchester, England.
Gillespie, Mrs. Catherine, 851 Lipan St., Denver, Colo.
Glenn, Miss Creda, Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Gnocchi, Miss Eden, Via Palestro 63, Int. 12, Rome, Italy. (New.)
Gnocchi, Miss Loreta, Via Palestro 63, Int. 12, Pome, Italy. (New.)
Grebe, Mr. and Mrs. Henry, Halethorpe, Md.
Gunther, Mr. and Mrs. Emil P., Halethorpe, Md.
Gunther, Mr. and Mrs, Herman, Halethorpe, Md.
Gyllenhaal, Miss Agnes. (Married Jesse V. Stevens.)
Hager, Miss Elena, 1020 E. Dakota St., Denver, Colo.
Hager, Miss Hilda, 1020 E. Dakota St., Denver, Colo.

645

Haglind, Miss Anna, Omaha, Neb.
Harris, Mr. Emery, 912 Pine St., Philadelphia, Pa. (New.)
Hart, Miss Gwyneth E., 7 Holdenby Road, Croiton Park, London, S. E., England. (New.)
Headsten, Mr. and Mrs. John, 3749 Janssen St., Chicago, Ill. (New.)
Heilman, Dr. and Mrs. Uriah O., Leechburg, Pa.
Hellyer, Mrs. Henry, Lion's Head, Ont., Can.
Henderson, Mrs. R. T. (Died July 25, 1912.)
Hicks, Mr. Curtis K., 92 Franklin Trust Bldg., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Hicks, Miss Ruth. (Married Charles R. Pendleton, Jr.)
Hill, Miss Annie C. (Married John Evens.)
Hilldale, Mrs. John, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Hofmann, Miss Anna, 273 Lincoln Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Homiller, Mr. and Mrs. William F., 2750 N. 28th St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Horigan, Mr. and Mrs. D. E., 329 S. Evaline St., Pittsburgh, Pa
Horigan, Miss M. Jean, 329 S. Evaline St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Howland, Mrs. W. S., 655 Humboldt St., Denver, Colo.
Kowe, Mr. Donald I., 250 Spring St., Atlanta, Ga.
Hunt, Miss Marie L., 602 N. 34th St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Iler, Mr. Wilson. (Resigned.)
Iungerich, Mrs. E. C., Bryn Athyn, Pa. (Instead of Mrs. R.)
Iungerich, Miss Helene, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Jasmer, Mrs. Henry J. (Dropped.)
Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. William C., B. 5, 510 W. 42d St., New York, N.Y. (New.)
Jordan, Rev. Leonard G., 1919 42d Ave., Oakland, Cal.
Junge, Mr. and Mrs. William F., Glenview, Ills.
Keep, Rev. Richard H., 42 W.38th St., New York, N. Y.
Kendig, Miss Dorothy, 92 N. Regent St., Port Chester, N. Y. (New.)
Kendig, Miss Elizabeth, c/o J. J. Kintner, Lock Haven, Pa.
Kendig, Mr. F. Lewis, 1331 S. 10th St., S. Birmingham, Ala.
Kendig, Mr. and Mrs. Julian H., Bristol Apts., Clarissa St., Pittsburgh, Pa. (Mrs. Julian H. Kendig, new.)
Kintner, Mr. and Mrs. J. J., Lock Haven, Pa.
Klein, Miss Anna M., 4319 Schenley Farms Terrace, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Klein, Miss Ida M., Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Kuhl, Mr. J. S., Elmira, Ont., Can.
Kurtz, Rev. Alfred P., 507 Jayne Ave., Irvington, Baltimore, Md.
Labarre, Miss Jeanne Pothin, 3 bis rue Rottembourg, Paris, France.
Labarre, Miss Gabrielle, 3 bis rue Rottembourg, Paris, France.
Langlois, Miss MabelG. (Married N. A. Carter.) (New.)
Lechner, Mr. Herman, 340 5th Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Lee, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney E., The Park, Glenview, Ills.
Leonard, Mr. D. E., 1311 W. Adams St., Chicago, Ills.
Leonard, Mrs. Harriet S., 1311 W. Adams St., Chicago, Ills.
Lesieur, Madame Ernestine, 74 rue du Commerce, Paris, France.

646

Lewis, Mrs. A. M., Hotel Athens, Athens, O.
Lindh, Miss Mabel V. (Dropped.)
Lindsay, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander P., 14 Trenton Ave., Swissvale, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Lindsay, Mr. and Mrs. G. Edgar, 5500 Elmer St., E. E., Bellefonte Apts., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Locke, Mr. and Mrs. Walter William, D'Arcy House, Culver St., Colchester, Eng.
Loomis, Mr. and Mrs. Lyman S.378 Sumner Ave., Springfield, Mass.
Lucas, Ms. Vve. Marie H., 76 rue du Commerce, Paris, France.
Lynn, Mr. William J., 30 Frankish Ave., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Macbeth, Miss Anna. (Married Robert von Moschzisker.)
Macbeth, Mrs. George A. (Died Maygo, 1912.)
McDonald, Mrs. Allan, Brock St., Goderich, Ont., Can.
McGill, Mrs. William, 468 Iva Ave., Youngstown, O.
McLellan, Mrs. John Milverton, Ont., Can.
McQueen, Miss Olive T. (Married Sidney E. Lee.)
Marelius, Miss Amy L., 2125 Augusta St., Chicago, Ills. (New.)
Marelius, Dr. and Mrs. John W., 2125 Augusta St., Chicago, Ills.
Marelius, Miss Leora C., 2125 Augusta St., Chicago, Ills. (New.)
Miller, Mrs. Park, R. F. D. No. 1, North Lima, O.
Morris, Mr. John. (Address unknown.)
Motum, Miss Bertha M., 79 East Hill, Colchester, England. (New.)
Motum, Mr. Norman H, 79 East Hill, Colchester, England. (New.)
Mueller, Frau Anna A., 14 West Main St., Meriden, Conn.
Mueller, Miss Anna A., c/o L. V. Rieistahl, 327 Union St., Blue Island,
Nathans, Miss Gwendolyn, The Sedgley, 45th and Pine Sts., Philadelphia, Pa.
Near, Mrs. Mary H., 155 W. 18th St., Erie, Pa.
Nicholl, Mrs. William W., 2442 Lexington St., Chicago, Ills. (New.)
Nilson, Mr. Eric N., 1521 North St., Philadelphia, Pa. (New.)
Norris, Mrs. Elizabeth, Welton Apts., 335 Melwood St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Norris, Mr. and Mrs. William C., 27 Gorand Ave., Akron, O.
Northgraves, Miss Agnes, Cedar St., N., Berlin, Ont., Can.
Northgraves, Mrs. W., Cedar St., N. Berlin, Ont., Can.
Northgraves, Mr. Walter W., Larder Lake, Ont., Can.
Norton, Mr. A. E. (Died )
Odhner, Mr. Hugo Lj., Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Odhner, Mr. Madefrey A., Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Orchard, Mrs. Charles, 5849 Hobart St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Parker, Mr. and Mrs. Edgar, 5313 Lena St., Germantown, Pa.
Parker, Mr. Ernest F., 55 W. School Lane, Germantown, Pa.
Parker, Mr. and Mrs. William E., 232 W. 14th St., New York, N. Y.
Pendleton, Mr. and Mrs. Charles R., Jr., Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Pollock, Mr. and Mrs. John D., 2029 Cortez St., Chicago, Ills.

647

Pollock, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F., 2029 Cortez St., Chicago, Ills.
Potter, Mr. and Mrs. John, 46 Constantine Road, Colchester, England.
Potter, Miss Winifred A., 46 Constantine Road, Colchester, England. (New.)
Potts, Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph, 65 Marion St., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Powell, Mr. William W., R. F. D. No. 4, Waverly, O. (New.)
Putnam, Mr. Harry N., Hotel Majestic, Portland, Ore. (New.)
Ranch, Miss Eleonore. (Married Wm. F. Junge.) (New.)
Renkenberger, Miss Alice E., 160 Highland Ave., R. F. D. No. 2, Youngstown, O.
Renkenberger, Miss Edna M. (Married William McGill.)
Renkenberger, Miss Laura B., 160 Highland Ave., R. F. D. No. 2, Youngstown, O.
Renkenberger, Mr. Solomon, 160 Highland Ave., R. F. D. No. 2, Youngstown, 0.
Rieistahl, Mr. and Mrs. Louis V., 327 Union St., Blue Island, Ills.
Rine, Mrs. Alice F., 3958 Langley Ave., Chicago, Ills.
Robinson, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest F., Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Roschman, Miss Beata, 375 King St., W. Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Roschman, Miss Evangeline, 385 King St., W., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Roschman, Mr. Eugene L., 375 King St., W., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Rose, Mr. Donald F., Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Rose, Mr. and Mrs. Frank H., 5 Market Parade, Portland Road, S. Norwood, London, Eng.
Rose, Mr. Lionel A., 5 Market Parade, Portland Road, S. Norwood, London, Eng.
Rose, Miss Olive M., 5 Market Parade, Portland Road, S. Norwood, London, Eng.
Rosenqvist, Mr. Bernard. (Resigned.)
Schierholtz, Mr. and Mrs. Emil, 89 Beatty St., Toronto, Ont., Can.
Schneider, Miss Emily, Box 407, Yalesville, Conn.
Scholdz, Mr. Nils 0., 1531 N. 40th St., Chicago, Ills.
Schroder, Mr. and Mrs. S. W. H., 503 Downing St., Denver, Colo.
Schweitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Conrad, 380 King St., W., Berlin, Ont., Can.
Schweitzer, Miss Mary. (Address unknown.)
Schwenk, Mrs. W. Therese, Box 407, Yalesville, Conn.
Schwindt, Mrs. John A., Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Scott, Mr. Archibald, 31 Mary St., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Scott, Miss Grace, 31 Mary St., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Sellner, Mr. Anton A., 338 6th Ave., New York, N. Y.
Sellner, Miss Erna, Bryn Athyn, Pa. (New.)
Simons, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel, 1648 N. 62d St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Smith, Mr. and Mrs. B, Glenn, 607 Forsyth Bldg., Atlanta, Ga.
Smith, Miss Charlotte. (Died May 12, 1912.)
Smith, Miss Marie L., Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Royden H., Bryn Athyn, Pa.

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Smith, Mr. Sobieski C., Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Snow, Mrs. Wilber H., 17 S. Geddes St., Syracuse, N. Y.
Soderberg, Miss Anna E., 836 N. 28th St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Soderberg, Mr. Arthol E., 836 N. 28th St., Philadelphia, Pa. (New.)
Soderberg, Mr. and Mrs. John, 836 N. 28th St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Soneson, Mr. Gustaf, 828 German St., Erie, Pa.
Stebbing, Mrs. Thomas C., 108 Wyatt Park Road, Streatham Hill, S. W., London, England.
Steen, Mr. Alfred H., Box 686, Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Steen, Mr. Fred. W., Box 686, Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Steiger, Mr. Amold, 1011 Arch St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Stevens, Mrs. Ada L., Middleport, O.
Stevens, Mr. and Mrs. Jesse V., Glenview, Ills.
Stidham, Mr. John G. (Died July 3, 1912.)
Stroh, Mr. Fred. E., 21 Willow St., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Thairgen, Mr. Richard. (Died Jan. 5, 1912.)
Thairgen, Mrs. Richard, 78 Truxton St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Tilton, Mrs. Adele E., 249 Quincy St., Brockton, Mass. (New.)
Trautman, Mr. and Mrs. August J., 1830 Ley St., N. S., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Trautman, Mr. George A., 1830 Ley St, N. S., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Trimble, Mr. Rowland, 51 S. Gay St., Baltimore, Md.
Tyler, Mrs. Sylvia E. (Died Nov. 11, 1911.)
VanHorn, Mr. Walter F. (Died Nov. 10, 1911.)
Von Moschzisker, Mrs. Robert. (Abroad.)
Waelchli, Miss India N., W. 34th St., New York, N. Y.
Waelchli, Miss Laura, 508 Lumber St., Allentown, Pa.
Waelchli, Mr. Noah L., 508 Lumber St., Allentown, Pa.
Walker, Mrs. Wm., Coleman P. O., Toronto, Ont.
Ward, Mrs. H. Gertrude, 1437 S. Ringgold St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Waters, Miss Kathleen. (Married William R. Cooper.)
Weaver, Mrs. Elmer C., 927 E.8th St., Erie, Pa.
Webster, Mr. and Mrs. J. S., 399 W. 5th Ave., Columbus, O.
Wiedinger, Mrs. Mary L., 2651 W. 15th St., Chicago, Ills.
Wilks, Miss Lillian C., 149 College St., Toronto, Ont., Can. (New.)
Williams, Mr. Hollis V., Main and 2d Sts., Middleport, O. (New.)
Williams, Mr. Leo C., Wellsville, O.
Williamson, Mrs. H. H., Pomeroy, O. (New.)
Woelfle, Mrs. Amalie, 45 Church St., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Woelfle, Miss Augusta A., 45 Church St., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Woelfle, Miss Elmina, 45 Church St., Berlin, One., Can. (New.)
Woelfle, Mr. Gustav A., 45 Church St., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Woelflel Mr. Oscar M., 1225 Winnemac Ave., Chicago, Ills.
Woelfle, Miss Pauline K., 45 Church St., Berlin, Ont., Can. (New.)
Wunderlin, Mr. Archie C., R. F. D., Columbiana, O.
Wunderlin, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, R. F. D., Columbiana, O.
Yarnall, Mr. Bennet, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Zeppenield, Mr. William E., Audubon, N. J.

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WORD IN THE LETTER: ITS PLACE AND USE 1912

WORD IN THE LETTER: ITS PLACE AND USE Rev. ANDREW CZERNY 1912

NEW CHURCH LIFE
      (Read at the Eleventh Annual British Assembly of the General Church.)

     The Word in the Letter was the only source of instruction in Divine things from the time of Moses to the Lord's Second Advent, when it pleased the Lord to reveal the Divine Truth in another form. This last Divine Revelation thus forms an additional means of salvation.

     These two forms of Divine Revelation differ very much from each other as to form. For the one deals to a great extent with the history of one nation, which affords very little spiritual instruction. And where it treats of other subjects, the language is often obscure, and in some places wholly unintelligible. Whereas the other treats of spiritual and Divine things openly throughout, and presents them in clear and unmistakable language. Now, as the latter is in this respect so superior to the former, it would not be surprising if there were some in the Church who felt inclined to think that there was very little use in reading the Word in the Letter.

     What is more, there are statements in the Writings from which, (if taken by themselves), such an inference might be drawn, in regard to certain portions of the Word, such as the historical parts and the greater part of the prophetical books. Thus in treating of the historical parts, specifically of the history of Abraham, and others of the early patriarchs, there is the following statement: "Every one can see that these relations are such that they may indeed be serviceable to the ecclesiastical history of the time, but they are of little service to spiritual life, which nevertheless is the end which the Word was intended to promote.

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For of what use is it to know who were the sons of Abraham by Keturah; or who the sons of Esau; as also that Esau being weary with hunting desired pottage of pulse; and that Jacob, by the cunning which he employed, for the pottage procured for himself the birth-right, etc." (A. C. 3228.)

     Then it goes on to say that also other chapters, so far as regards the mere historical narrations, there is so little of anything Divine that it can in no wise be said to be the Word of God.

     In regard to the prophetical part, the obscurity that pervades the whole is referred to here and there. Thus, for instance, in explaining the words of the Lord to Moses, where He says, "Behold I come to thee in the thickness of a cloud," (Ex. 19:9), it is stated that the Word in the Letter is nothing else but the density of a cloud concealing the Divine Light within. Especially is this the case with the prophetical part. (A. C. 8781.)

     Thus it may be seen that there are statements in the Writings from which (if taken by themselves) it would seem that very little benefit can be derived from reading the Word in the Letter, especially those portions just referred to. But all these statements merely teach what the quality of the Word is without the Internal Sense. It is like the body without the soul. Without the Internal Sense it is dead, is also stated in several passages.

     Such is the Word from without. Within it is full of Divine Life and contains in its bosom the wisdom of the angels of the three heavens. And this life (concealed within the Letter) affects all those who are in the good of life, even if they are unacquainted with the Internal Sense. With these (we are taught) the Word is not dead, but infilled with life; with each one according to his life of charity and innocence. (A. C. 1776)

     The Word in the Letter must be regarded from its use and not from its appearance if we would have a true idea concerning it. Its chief use is that it serves the Internal Sense as a covering protection and support. It is the means of keeping the interior truths in order and connection. Without that ultimate they would be dissipated. And they are so intimately united that they cannot really be separated from each other.

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Hence we have this wonderful teaching, that to those who are in the good of life and have a holy veneration for the Word, the Internal Sense is imparted while they read the Word in the Letter and is stored up in their interiors. And though they may remain in ignorance of the same (while in the world), they come into the perception and use of what has been stored up in their interiors immediately on their arrival in the other world. And this because the Internal and External of the Word constitutes one. They can never be separated from each other except in the idea of those who are either unreceptive of Divine things, or lack the knowledges or perception to enable them to form a correct idea of the intimate union which exists between them.

     The Word in the Letter is so perfect an ultimate of the Internal Sense that not a word could be changed without disturbing the series treated of in the Internal Sense. Indeed it is the Divine Truth on the ultimate plane. This, its Divine origin, may appear from the teaching that the Lord Himself spoke the Word,-i. e., dictated it to Moses, and the Prophets, and the Evangelists, and that He spoke everywhere in representatives and significatives. And the reason given for this is, that to speak in representatives and significatives is to speak to the world and to heaven, thus to melt and angels at the same time. (A. C. 4867)

     Now it may be asked, how does it then come that there are so many things in the Letter of the Word wholly unworthy of the Divine, if (as just stated) the Lord actually dictated the Word?

     In what may the Word in the Letter took on the form in which we have it can perhaps best be understood from the description of a certain phenomenon which occasionally takes place in the Spiritual Word. A Divine Truth is sent down from heaven in the sight of spirits below heaven, and in its descent it appears gradually to be changed into the opposite. But this is only an appearance. The fact is that it remains unchanged, which can be demonstrated to the sight. All that is necessary is to withdraw it from those in the lower sphere and it is again seen in the form in which it was sent down, thereby illustrating the fact that the Divine Truth is unchangeable, but appears differently to different minds. Now the facts in connection with the giving of the Word are that, although dictated by the Lord, this was done through spirits (H. H. 254), and entered the internal organ of hearing of those to whom "the Word of the Lord came."

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And in passing through these media it took on a form, which was suited to the genius of those to whom it was given, and as it was spoken in representatives and significatives, it could contain the Internal Sense and thus serve as a vehicle of the genuine truths of the Word for all future time.

     This remarkable phenomenon just described also shows how the internal truths are protected by the Letter of the Word (so frequently stated in the Writings to be one of its uses). For the internal truths are not changed, not injured in their descent. They simply take on coverings, so to say, adapted to the state of reception and perception of those in the lower spheres. These forms can be stripped off again and are stripped off when the truth is withdrawn. If the evil were permitted to see Divine Truths in their own light they would do violence to them, but the form in which Divine Truths appear to them protects them. They may even receive them in that form, as the Jews received the Word, in the form it was given to them, which they could never have been induced to do if it had been given in another form. Of its internal nature and quality, they had of course no knowledge or perception. This protected it from violation.

     Concerning the nature and uses of the Word in the Letter there is much teaching. Among other things, there is the statement that "truths last in order are those of the Sense of the Letter, upon which the truths of the Internal Sense rest, like columns upon their pedestals." (A. C. 9163.)

     Here we have described one important use which the Word in the Letter serves the Internal Sense. Elsewhere it says that it is "a covering of the Internal Sense and also of heaven." (A. C. 9427)

     In the light of these statements we can also see what is involved in the statement elsewhere that there must be a Word (such as we have it in the Letter) in which Divine truth is presented in ultimate form, for (as the statement runs) "if the Word in the Letter were also spiritual there would be no basis for it. It would be like a house without a foundation." (A. E. 260.)

     Another use which the Word in its external form serves is described in these words:

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     "When the Word is read on earth the angels are moved to the Holiness that is in the Internal Sense." (A. C. 8615)

     Again we read:

     "When a man of the Church, who is in the good of faith, reads the Word, the angels adjoin themselves to him and are delighted with the man because the wisdom, which is through the Word, flows into them on such occasions from the Lord. Hence there is conjunction of heaven with man, which would not at all be without the Word. For the Word is such that there is not even a tittle, or iota, which does not affect the angers and conjoin them to man." (A. C. 9152.)

     Thus by reading the Word in the Letter man can be of great service to the angels. It is not to be understood, however, that the words which man reads, or the ideas which they convey to him, are perceived by the angels. But as the Word in the Letter is entirely written in correspondences the Internal Sense is immediately presented to their minds, and the correspondence between the natural and spiritual senses effects the conjunction between the man and the angels.

     Another use which the reading of the Word in the Letter serves to man is stated in these words: "The truths of the literal sense of the Word stored up in man's memory form there, as it were, a field for the mental view of the internal man, from which he chooses such things as agree with the good in him. (A. C. 9035) In other words, a conjunction is effected between good and truth on the ultimate plane of his mind, or of good and truth of the ultimate degree.

     Now this is of very great importance. Truths from the Letter of the Word thus confirmed are the most powerful means of defense against the assaults of the evil crew. Besides interior truths terminate in them and are there in their power. For this very reason the Lord Himself, when on earth, repelled the assaults of the devil by truths of this ultimate form; i. e., by truths from the Letter of the Word, as is evident from His replies to the tempter as recorded in the Gospels. There is a passage in the Writings where it is stated that a man who is confirmed in truths from the Letter of the Word (and if only in a few truths) can pass safely through the hells. Such power is in this ultimate form of Divine Truth. Indeed it is plainly declared to be more powerful than truth of the Internal Sense. (A. E. 816.)

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Such is the nature and origin of the Word in the Letter, and such are the uses the reading of the same serves the man who is in faith in the Lord.

In presenting the teaching concerning the Word in the Letter by itself, its true relation to the Internal Sense may not be sufficiently brought out, so that there is some little danger that an impression may be conveyed different from what was intended. But we shall never mistake their relation to each other if we keep in mind that both are the Divine Truth, each on its own plane. The Spiritual Sense is the Divine Truth of an interior plane; the Word in the Letter, the Divine Truth of the lowest or ultimate plane. Both ore the Word of the Lord. But while in the Word in the Letter the Divine Truth is in greater power than in the Internal Sense, in the latter (i. e., in the Internal Sense) the Divine Truth is in light and in greater purity than in the Letter. Again, while on the one hand the Word in the Letter derives all its life and power from the Divine Truth within (nor can its true nature and origin be perceived without the Internal Sense), so on the other the Spiritual Sense depends for its preservation upon the Natural Sense. It would be dissipated without it, is the teaching. (A. E. 597.) There is thus a mutual interdependence between the two. Neither would be anything without the other, so essential is one to the other.
LOVE, THE LIFE OF MAN 1912

LOVE, THE LIFE OF MAN Rev. E. R. CRONLUND 1912

"Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it." (Matth. 16:25)

By life everywhere in the Word is meant love. Consequently by a man's life is meant his love. The life of man's spirit, and also the life of his body, is such as is his love. Indeed, as a man's love is his life, it follows that his love is his spirit or his soul. If a man attributes all things to himself and to nature the love of self becomes the soul; but if he attributes all things to the Lord, love to the Lord becomes the soul; and this love is heavenly, while the other is infernal. (D. P. 199.)

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     The soul of man lives after the death of the material body, and as the soul is the love it follows that man's love remains with him when he leaves this world and enters into eternity. His love remains the same to eternity as it was when he left this world. Man's life follows him after death, not his external life however apart from the internal life. But it is the internal that remains, and the external remains so far only as it has been in agreement and correspondence with the internal. The Word teaches that a man's works follow with him after death. "It is known that the externals which appear before men derive their essence, soul and life from the internals, which do not appear before men, but which do appear before the Lord and before the angels. The latter and the former, or the externals and the internals, taken together, are works; good works, if the internals are in love and faith, and the externals act and speak from them; but evil works if the internals are not in love and faith, and the externals act and speak from them." (A. R. 641.)

     The life that a man has contracted in the world remains with him after death, for his love undergoes no change by death, and he will also live, or will endeavor to live, the same kind of a life externally that he had lived while in the world, for the ruling love of a man or of a spirit is in a continual effort to ultimate itself. And if a man or a spirit is prevented from ultimating his love, his love grieves, his very life suffers.

     Love therefore is life. There is no life where there is no love. The Lord is life itself, for He is love itself. Love is life, for love is active; it is activity itself, nor can there be any activity where there is not some love. The Divine love is active continually; it never sleeps. The Divine love never leaves nor forsakes any one. When the Lord was in the world He said, "I go to prepare a place for you," for the Divine love is in the continual effort to save man, and thus to prepare a place for him in Heaven.

     Such as is a man's love such is his life, such is his soul. Before regeneration man's life is evil, for his love is evil.

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Man must therefore receive new life or a new love from the Lord, for otherwise he cannot live in Heaven after death. After death a man can live in that society only in which his own love reigns, for there only will he find life and delight. If he were to live anywhere else his life would suffer. Therefore an angel cannot live in hell, nor can an evil spirit live in Heaven, for love to the Lord, which reigns in Heaven, is the life of Heaven, and the love of self, which reigns in hell, is the life of hell. This latter life is the life of every one who has not suffered himself to be born again of the Lord. And the unregenerate man believes that there is no other life. Any other life is unknown to him, and what is unknown is believed to be nothing. The unregenerate man finds delight in the loves of self and of the world only, and he thinks that no other loves can furnish any delight. He even believes that it is not possible to love the Lord above all else and the neighbor more than oneself, or even as oneself. He is therefore most unwilling to depart from the love of evil. He desires to remain in this love, and he fights against anything that opposes this love as against one who attacks his very life. But he who desires to remain in the love of self closes Heaven against himself; he is unable to receive that love or that life with which the Lord wills to gift him, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it." He who wills to abide in that life or that love into which he is born, which is the love of self and the love of the world, he will lose eternal life, he will lose the inheritance that the Lord the heavenly Father has provided for His children.

He who desires to remain in a life of evil, which is merely natural life, is said to lose eternal life, for every man is born for Heaven. Every one is born with the faculty of loving the Lord and the neighbor, and every one can as of himself gain Heaven. A man's salvation depends entirely upon his own desire in the matter, upon his own choice, for it is said in the Word, "I call Heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." (Deut. 30:19.) These words are addressed to every one, and they show very clearly that a Heaven has been provided for each man. He, however, who chooses to remain in the love of evil, he loses eternal life, he loses the gift that the Lord in loving kindness wills to bestow upon him.

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     Man is born to be a citizen of Heaven, for he is distinguished above animals by having a rational given him, to the end that every one may will well and do well to others. This is the order into which man has been created, consequently it is love to God and love toward the neighbor that should be man s life, and by which he should be distinguished from brute animals. This is the order of Heaven, and in this order it was intended man should be while he lives in the world, and afterwards in the Lord's kingdom; if he were in this state he would pass into the Lord's kingdom when he had put off the body that had been of service to him upon the earth, and then he would rise into a state in which he would continually advance in heavenly perfection.

     That man may pass thus from the earth to Heaven he must become a form recipient of the Lord's love. But that man has perverted himself by rejecting the Lord's love is taught in the Writings in the following words: "The universal Heaven is founded in love, and so is universal nature; for in nature nothing whatever is possible, in which there is any union and conjunction, whether it be animate or inanimate, that does not derive its origin from love. For every natural thing comes into existence from something spiritual, and the spiritual from the celestial. Hence love, or a semblance of love, has been implanted in all things in general and in particular; with man alone there is not love, but the contrary, because man has destroyed in himself the order of nature." (A. C. 1055) When, however, man suffers himself to be regenerated he is then restored again to order, for then he receives love to the Lord and charity toward the neighbor.

     When man shuns and rejects the love of self and of the world he will receive life from the Lord, which is love to Him, for "whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it." A man must rose the life that is merely selfish that he may find the life that is unselfish and heavenly. The life that is his own must die in order that he may rise into heavenly life. By the "dead" also in the internal sense of the Word are signified those who have afflicted their soul, crucified their flesh, and suffered temptations.

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These are meant by the "dead" in these passages: "As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will." (John 5:21.) "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man: and they that hear shall live." (John 5:25.) They who have rejected infernal life, or what is the same, infernal loves, are the dead who have died in the Lord, and these are called blessed in the Word, for it is written: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them." (Rev. 14:13.)

     He who shuns the love of self and of the world, he is in the order of Heaven, he is in the Lord's love, for the Lord said: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13.) To lay down one's life for one's friends is to shun merely selfish and worldly interests, and to perform uses from love to the Lord and to the neighbor. They especially who love the neighbor more than themselves lay down their life for their friends. They who do this are celestial men, and greater love than these have has no man, for these are in the Heaven nearest to the Lord.

     There is but one true life, for there is but one true love, which is love to the Lord. This is a thing that is unknown at the present day, for most people regard natural life as the only life. But the Lord said, "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." (Luke 12:15.) And He also said, "Is not life more than meat?" (Matth. 6:25.) To possess the necessaries of this natural life only, and its luxuries, is not to have true life. A man must have something more than this that he may have life. To a young man who had great possessions the Lord said, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the Commandments." (Matth. 19:17.) To keep the commandments is to live a life of love to the Lord. "The reason is that He is His own commandments, for they are from Him, consequently He is in them, and thus in the man in whose life they are inscribed; and they are inscribed upon man by willing and doing them." (A. R. 556)

     The Lord's commandment is life everlasting. His words are spirit and are life.

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They are spiritual food which give life and sustain life. The Lord's words also are meant by His flesh and His blood. These man must eat and drink that he may have life, for the Lord said: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:53, 54) To eat the Lord's flesh and to drink His blood is to receive His words, not only into the understanding, but also into the will. He who does this has heavenly life, nor can life be received in any other way sustain natural life only,

The things that the earth produces but can impart no life to the spirit. Spiritual things should therefore be loved far more than the things of the earth, and a man should regard the well-being of his Soul far more than the well-being of his body. This is the case with all who are regenerating. These regard the life of the world as of no account in comparison with the life in Heaven, and consequently regard the death of the body as of no account in comparison with the life of the soul, as is evident from those who suffered martyrdom. The reason is that they know that life in the world, which is only for some years, is as nothing compared with the life in Heaven, which is eternal life; in fact, there is no ratio between the time of man's life in the world and the life in Heaven that will continue to eternity. Think if you can whether there can be any ratio between a hundred thousand Years and eternity, and you will find there is none. These and many other things flow in from Heaven with those who are regenerating, and therefore they willingly lose their life that they may find it. (A. E. 750)

Love to the Lord is, as has been said, the only love; this love is the only life. This love is present in all other good loves. It is their soul and life. Every good love is a form of love to the Lord. Any love that does not contain something of love to the Lord is an evil, a selfish love. Love to the Lord is a universal that must enter into all things. From; this it is manifest that love to the Lord must enter into the shunning of evils. Man must shun evil's from love to the Lord. For this reason the Lord says: "Whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it." Man must shun the love of self for the Lord's sake, not for his own sake, not for the sake of appearances, nor for the sake of success in the world.

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A man will find eternal life only if he shuns his evils for the Lord's sake. If he shuns them for some selfish reason he will not find eternal life. If a man shuns evils for the sake of himself he remains in them. The Doctrines teach that if a man shuns evils for any other reason than because they are sins against the Lord, he does not shun them, but only causes them not to appear before the world.

That good may be genuine there must be innocence within it. Charity without innocence is not charity; and still less is love to the Lord possible without innocence. For this reason innocence is the very essential of love and charity, consequently of good. (A. C. 3994.) Innocence consists in a willingness to be led by the Lord and not by self, and in the acknowledgment that man in himself is nothing but evil and that all good is from the Lord. Good that is done for the sake of self lacks innocence, and therefore it is not saving. And he who shuns evils for the sake of himself is without innocence and therefore he does not find eternal life.

Man should see the Lord before him always, no matter what he may be doing. He does this when it is his constant desire to be led and governed by Him, and by His truth. When this is man's desire the Lord will' deliver him from the love of evil and gift him with the love of good, thus with heavenly life, for "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shah find it." Amen.

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SWEDENBORGIANS VERSUS NEWCHURCHMEN 1912

SWEDENBORGIANS VERSUS NEWCHURCHMEN Rev. J. E. BOWERS 1912

Swedenborg became an author two hundred years ago; and he completed his labors as a natural philosopher in 1745, one hundred and sixty-seven years ago. The people, therefore, who have only a general or superficial knowledge of the Writings of Swedenborg naturally suppose that after so long a period of time his science and natural philosophy can surely not be up to date and reliable at this day of the world's intellectual advancement, and consequent enlightenment. And this seems to be the idea of not a few, who are regarded as well informed and quite intelligent Newchurchmen. The idea evidently is that Swedenborg may have been mistaken in may things, and that his philosophy is not necessarily true and to be trusted, nor believed implicitly in all points. And the reason for this reservation, this want of confidence, manifestly is the fact that so many learned authors, such a great number of eminent and popular modern scientists and philosophers, have lived, have written and given to the world an immense literature, so much more recently than the time of Swedenborg. But this is fallacious reasoning.

How absolutely erroneous and contrary to the truth such notions are, can be known to those only who are in the affection of genuine truth, that is, the truth of Divine Revelation; to those only who have devoted to the subject their earnest attention, and by careful study have learned to understand clearly, the relation which Swedenborg's system of natural philosophy bears to the theological Writings. This relation and the knowledge of it, are of prime significance and importance, for without these there can be no spiritual intelligence concerning the things of heaven and the Church. This relation of the Philosophy to the Theology, contained in Swedenborg's works as a whole, is like that of the natural to the spiritual, the external to the internal, and the physical earth to the angelic heaven. But no one except a man who is well instructed in the doctrines of the New Church can understand and appreciate the reasons for this connection.

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     When Swedenborg had reached the age of manhood, in 1710, at the age of twenty-two years, he was introduced by the Lord into the natural sciences. This was done in order that he might be prepared for his then future extraordinary mission. And by the great work he accomplished as a natural philosopher, in the course of thirty-five years, he was fully prepared to become a Theologian. He was a spiritual fisherman from his early youth; that is, an investigator of natural truths. And he gave to the world abundant evidences of this; for in his philosophical works is embodied a system of natural truths which is universal.

     After Swedenborg became a theologian, he was an investigator and a revelator of spiritual truth. He became the Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the supereminent sense of the word. He was called to the most exalted use of being the human instrument through whom the Lord effected His Second Advent. It was effected by means of the man, whom the Lord filled with His Spirit, and thus gifted him with Divine inspiration, to write the Divine truth, which is the Word; to give to men the most excellent Revelation ever made in the history of the Church; in which the Lord has come to dwell with the people of His final and most glorious Church, the New Jerusalem, through the endless ages of the future. And that in the Writings there is a full and perfect manifestation of the Lord in His Glory and Divinity as the Word, a Newchurchman does not doubt in the least. For the evidences that are revealed concerning the sublime event of the Lord's Advent are so luminous and convincing to the spiritual-rational faculty of the mind, that the thing is altogether unquestionable, and that not the shadow of a doubt remains.

     But here we may ask, how is it, on the other hand, with the Swedenborgian? Does not such a decidedly affirmative view of the subject, which is really fundamental to all genuine New Church faith, simply provoke in him a smile of incredulity? Yes; and if he will speak as he thinks he will express a very different opinion. But when the "Son of Man," the Lord as the Divine Truth, comes in a new interpretation of the Word, in the revelation of the internal sense, He does not find faith on the earth. (Luke 18:8.)

     The Christian principles of the truth of faith and the good of charity, had ceased to exist in the former church; and therefore the Lord came to establish the New Church.

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But men who do not get any farther than to be Swedenborgians, are not disposed to accept the distinctive doctrines, and the essential principles, revealed for the New Church. And why not? Evidently because they are still held back by the influx of the sphere of the so-called Christian Church. They have not yet awakened out of the sleep in which man is in his natural state; and therefore are not yet in any affection of truth and good, nor have begun to think spiritually and rationally. They have not experienced the opening of the eyes of their understanding, so as to be enabled to see in the light proceeding from the Sun of heaven, which is the Divine truth. The ears of their internal man are still closed. They have not heard the sound of the trumpet, of the watchman upon the walls of Jerusalem; that is, the spiritual truths of doctrine from the Word, which reveal their internal state, warning them of danger and of the need of turning to the Lord, in humble confession of their evils and imperfections. And they have not renounced the old church and all its works; its falsities of religion, as, for instance, the dogmas of the tripersonality of God, and of salvation by faith alone.

According to the views generally held by Swedenborgians, the New Church is not, in the full sense of the word, a distinctive Church; but is very much the same as, only in some points a little more advanced than some of the other denominations of Christians, yet in some respects not quite equal to them. Thus, some months ago the abnormal thing was once more reported, that in a certain city there had been held union Thanksgiving services in which the congregations of the Universalists, Swedenborgians, Unitarians and Jews took part. And the Swedenborgians, in this case, form one of the larger congregations of the General Convention of the New Jerusalem Church.

Now, in view of what the Lord reveals, and teaches in language that is most profoundly impressive, by reason of the innumerable and very striking particulars mentioned, concerning the spiritual state of the Jews and of the so-called Christian world,-in the Writings,-it does seem impossible for those professing to be of the New Church, to cultivate such associations.

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It is an indication that from false notions of charity, there has been formed in them a spurious conscience.

Swedenborgians can worship with people who deny the Divinity of the Lord God of heaven and earth, and make Him a mere man; with people who, as the doctrines say, have "become as pagans, who have no religion." (A. R.750) But men of the New Church worthy of the name, can never sanction such a pretense, or participate in such a farce. And this is not because New Church men feign to be better than other people, nor because they have a feeling of contempt for those who are not of their faith; for they know that this spirit is from the love of self. But it is not acting contrary to the law of charity, but it is according to the law of the Divine order, for a member of the New Church to refuse to stultify himself, by pretending to engage in Divine worship in the congregations of People who utterly reject the idea, the great truth of the gospel, that the Lord Jesus Christ, in His Divine Human, is the one true and living God, our Father in the heavens. To a Newchurchman of spiritual enlightenment and culture the sphere of an assembly of such people would be so repulsive and profane, as to be quite grievous.

Again, Swedenborgians usually believe in what is designated as the permeation theory. This theory was the cause of spiritual infestations in societies from the very beginning of the New Church. For in all its history, some men became connected with societies, who thus were of the external organization of the Church; men who doubtless were well disposed, but who had not yet acquired knowledge from the Doctrines, as to the distinctiveness of the New Church. They had not yet learned that the teaching is absolutely new, and on all points essentially different from that of any other form of religion. The preconceived notions of their former religious training, the falses of the former church, had not yet been rejected. Consequently the new truths of doctrine could not be received so as to remain. In cases of a merely intellectual reception of the truths, they would not get any farther than the external memory. Thus there could be no interior enlightenment. The understanding could not be formed by means of spiritual truths. The conjunction of truths in the understanding, with principles of good in the will, which is the spiritual formation of the human mind, and is called the heavenly marriage, could not be effected.

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And the disastrous result of all this would inevitably be, that there would not be a true and genuine conscience formed, according to which men could exercise a rational and a just judgment.

Now in such a state of mind, erroneous ideas would naturally be infused into the mind, as to the methods of New Church evangelization; as to the manner in which the Church would be established in the world. The permeation theory certainly is one of the most mischievous fallacies concerning the subject. This theory has gradually been more generally accepted by Swedenborgians, and the idea has, especially in recent times, gained a widespread and a tremendous influence, in the organizations of the New Church, with the exception of those of the General Church of the New Jerusalem. But we will not attempt here to describe the effects which have been produced, by the ultimation of the ideas derived from the aforesaid theory as a cause; for these effects are well known by all who read the periodicals of the Church, and observe the trend of things in the Church, as they are manifested from time to time at the present day.

A general statement, however, shall now be made of what we understand the permeation theory to be. It is the imaginary idea that the new doctrines are spreading fast, and getting into the minds of the people of the old church. Further, that the clergy of the great denominations, especially the most advanced among them, who are leaders of modern thought, while not of course preaching the doctrines openly, are nevertheless giving their people many New Church ideas. And the people, being always interested in new things, such as are out of the ordinary routine, readily absorb the new ideas, and, as it were, become New Church without knowing it. But this is mere sentimentality, without any basis in fact, and without any tangible evidence to prove it. And we need have no hesitation in declaring it to be an infatuation, the product of self-intelligence, and a delusion, originating from the influx of the sphere of certain evil spirits, who are in the insane delight of doing all they can, to confuse the minds of people, and to hinder the promulgation of the Divine truth, and the establishment of the New Church.

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When people who are professedly of the New Church, are either ignorant of, or knowing it have no faith to believe, the Divine teaching in the Writings, concerning the state of the old church, and if this is the case with many members of societies and of the general Body, then what must be the unavoidable consequences? Is it not as certain as that the darkness of night follows the light of day, that serious injury will happen to the Church? In such a state the Church will lose its spiritual vitality and strength. It will decrease in numbers, if its distinctive character of being New Church really, and not only nominally, is not kept in view and vigorously upheld. Some of the members will get discouraged, will tire of belonging to a small and weak society. The question will arise in their minds whether, after all, it was intended that there should be a separate organization for the New Church; and then is also presented the further question, whether it would not be as well to unite with one of the larger churches. They are now quite liberal, and one can hold his own views in any of them without being disturbed. Thus the New Church will gradually be merged with the old church; while some, however, will become indifferent to all organizations of a religious nature. For it is so easy and so agreeable to the natural man, to drift along with the stream of the sphere of the world.

Swedenborgian ministers, many of them, some years ago ceased to preach doctrinal sermons, because the people objected to them; and this evidently for the reason that they did not wish to hear the teaching according to the Heavenly Doctrines. Thus the shepherds ceased to do their sacred duty to feed the sheep,-to instruct those of their flocks in the Divine truths of the Word as revealed by the Lord for the New Church, and by truths to lead them td the good of life. And as for the lambs, not very much was done to give them distinctively spiritual instruction. Several years ago some ministers openly opposed the proposal to adopt a new method for the more thorough and systematic instruction of the children, in societies of the larger of the two general bodies of the New Church in America. And a remarkable fact it is.

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     That there has been too much laxity as to faithfulness to the Doctrines has been acknowledged by some prominent men in the Church; and it is to be devoutly hoped that this has been noted by a goodly number of individuals. For this would be an indication that there is the possibility of a change for the better being effected. But during the past, especially in more recent years, the teaching in the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, n. 245, that it is "the soundness and purity of the doctrine,"-and a life according to the doctrine,-that establishes the Church, has been sadly disregarded and ignored. It gives one a rude jar to see statements in New Church periodicals, and indeed too frequently, that are contrary both to the letter and the spirit of the Writings.

     One essential point in the doctrinal position of the General Church, which is particularly objectionable to those who are in opposition to our body, is that we regard the Writings as the Word of the Lord. But why should this not be acceptable to every member of the New Church? The Divine Truth is the Word; the Writings are Divine Truth, and therefore they are the Word. Swedenborg says:

     "The spiritual sense of the Word was disclosed by the Lord through me; . . . and this sense is the very sanctuary of the Word. . . . Not a single iota in this sense can be opened, except by the Lord alone." (Inv. 44.)

     "The internal sense is the Word itself." (A. C. 1540.)

     The spiritual or internal sense of the Word was disclosed, or revealed, by the Lord through Swedenborg in the Writings. The spiritual or internal sense is the essential, the verimost, the living soul of the Divine Word Itself. And it therefore follows as a logical, rational, and just idea, an indubitable truth, that the Writings of the New Church are the Word of the Lord. But this primary point of the doctrinal position of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, Swedenborgians have persistently contradicted. And it has also been affirmed that the Writings are not really the spiritual sense of the Word; and assertions to this effect have frequently been published. It is, however, a most glaring inconsistency, to say that, nevertheless, the Writings of
Swedenborg are a Revelation of truth.

     To say that the Writings are not the Word of the Lord is openly to call in question the truth of what Swedenborg, as the Servant of the Lord, says on the subject.

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It is to repudiate his emphatic and solemn declarations; as, for example, that he wrote nothing from himself or from any angel, but from the Lord alone; that the Lord filled him with His Spirit; that thus he was inspired, and that he was gifted with a perfect inspiration; that the Books were written by the Lord, through him; and that on all the Books, in the spiritual world, was written: "This Book is the Advent of the Lord." And that the Lord has-in the Writings-revealed arcana which in excellence surpass the arcana revealed from the beginning of the Church.

To doubt the truth of these and many other similar statements made, and the denial of their absolute reasonableness, in the very nature of things, is a grave injustice against Swedenborg personally; not to speak of what is involved, in the attitude negative to the position that the Writings are the Word, concerning the phase of the subject which has reference to the Lord; who is the one only Fountain of all truth, and the Giver of all good; the infinite and eternal Source of all things of heaven and the Church.

The Newchurchman, at the same time that he has a proper regard for the Word in the sense of the letter, makes the Writings the Divine standard of instruction and rational knowledge concerning all things of human life, its uses, duties and responsibilities. He realizes that without this instruction there can be no spiritual intelligence and therefore no adequate idea of the primary end of man's existence, or of his eternal destiny. It seems that without the Lord's Revelation to the New Church, and the hopes and aspirations, the interior joys and the elevating conceptions, which are imparted to the human heart and mind, by the perusal of its sacred pages, life would indeed be hardly worth living. The devout Newchurchman, therefore, feels that he can never be sufficiently thankful to the Lord, for being permitted to enjoy the unspeakable blessing, of a knowledge of the Heavenly Doctrines. And thus of being enabled to know the Lord, as He has manifested Himself in His Divine Human; to have the great privilege to walk and to dwell in the beauteous light of the New and Everlasting Gospel.

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DECLINE OF THE GOLDEN AGE 1912

DECLINE OF THE GOLDEN AGE Rev. C. TH. ODHNER 1912

     THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

     I.

     We have followed the sun of the Golden Age from its first rising in the infancy of mankind to its full zenith of celestial love and faith in the Garden of Eden. We must now follow it also as it begins its downward course amidst gathering clouds, until it sinks beyond the horizon in the terrible night of the universal deluge. The conflict of the Ages is before us. How did it arise?

     On this subject we must, first of all, learn that "Good Is from creation, but not evil; and yet evil in itself regarded is not a nothing, although it is a nothing of good. From creation good existed, and also good in the greatest degree and in, the least degree; when this least of good becomes nothing of good, then evil arises on the other hand. There is, therefore, neither a relation nor a progression of good to evil, but there is a relation of good to greater good and to lesser good, and there is a relation of evil to greater evil and to lesser evil, for good and evil are opposites in all and single respects." (C. L. 444.)

     How, then, could evil arise, since nothing but good existed from creation? In order that anything may exist, it must have an origin. Good cannot be the origin of evil, since evil is the nothing of good, being the privative and the destructive of good. Still, since it exists and can be felt, it is not a nothing, but is something. Whence, then, can this something exist on the other side of the nothing?

     Thus, once upon a time, two angels from the heaven of innocence queried of Swedenborg, and the inspired servant of the Lord answered as follows:

     "This arcanum cannot be opened unless it be known that no one is good but God alone, and that there is not anything good that is good in itself except from God.

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And therefore the man who looks to God and is willing to be led by God, is in good; but he who turns himself away from God and wants to be led by himself, is not in good, for the good which he does is either for the sake of himself or for the sake of the world, and thus it is either meritorious, or simulated, or hypocritical. Hence it is manifest that man himself is the origin of evil,-not that this origin was from creation inherent in man, but that he himself has implanted it in himself by turning from God to himself."

     But the two angels then asked: "How was man able to turn himself away from God and to himself, when yet he is not able to will, think or do anything except from God? Why did God permit this?"

     And Swedenborg answered: "Man was so created that all that he wills, thinks and does, appears to him as if it were in himself and thus from himself. Without this appearance man would not be man, for he could not then receive, retain, and thus, as it were, appropriate to himself anything of good and truth or of love and wisdom. Hence it follows that without this appearance, this, as it were, living appearance, man could have no conjunction with God, and thus could not have eternal life. But if from this appearance he induces upon himself the belief that he wills, thinks, and does what is good, from himself, and not from the Lord-though to all appearance from himself,-he then turns good into evil with himself, and thus in himself he makes the origin of evil. This was the sin of Adam. (C. L. 444)

     With these universal truths in mind, we may now trace the gradual descent of the race from celestial good to actual evil.

     II.

     THE BEGINNING OF THE DECLINE.

     In the sacred history we find the first suggestion as to a change for the worse in the following words:

     "And Jehovah God said, It is not good that man should be done; I will make him a kelp as with him." (Gen. 2:18.)

     It is evident that these words do not refer to the actual creation of woman as the help-mate of man, for she was created simultaneously with man: "Male and female created He them."

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The text, therefore, refers to something, new something new, which is introduced by the words: "It is not good."

     In the literal sense it sounds as if this new thing was created by Jehovah God, but it is so written in accommodation to the belief of fallen man that all his misfortunes come from an angry God. In the internal sense, however, these words describe a growing inclination among some of the Most Ancient Church no longer to dwell alone with God as their only help, but to put their trust instead in their own guidance. In the language of the New Revelation: "they began to desire a proprium,"-a self-life,-and, as the man of this generation was still on the whole well disposed, a "proprium" was granted, but of such a nature that it appeared as it were his own, and therefore it is said a help with him. (A. C. 140.)

     This concession, however, was accompanied with every needed warning and instruction, which are described by Jehovah God's bringing to the man every kind of beast and fowl for the man to name them. By this is meant that man was instructed as to the "name" or quality of every celestial and spiritual affection. Yet, notwithstanding this knowledge, he still inclined to a proprium, and in consequence of this desire the man fell into "a deep sleep," a stupor as to heavenly things.

     Jehovah God then "took one of the man's ribs, and closed up the flesh in the place thereof. But the rib which He had taken from the man He built into a woman, and brought her to the man."
(Gen. 2:21, 22.)

     By "the rib," as a bone close to the heart, is signified that which is the lowest in man's nature, yet dearest to himself. This, with a decadent man, is his "amour propre" or proprium, which, "when viewed from heaven, appears as something that is altogether bony, inanimate, and very ugly, consequently as being in itself dead; yet, when vivified by the Lord, it looks like flesh. For a man's proprium is a mere dead thing, although to him it appears as something,-indeed, as everything Whatever lives in him is from the Lord's life, and if this were withdrawn he would fall down as dead as a stone; for man is only an organ of life and such as is the organ, such is the life's affection." (A. C. 149.)

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     This dead rib, then, this proprium, was "built" into a living "woman" and was brought to the man. To "build" signifies to instruct, to raise up that which has fallen, and a "woman" signifies, and is, a living affection. That generation or posterity of the Most Ancient Church in whom the great change took place, "did not, like their parents, wish to be celestial men, but they wished to be under their own guidance; and therefore, inclining as they did to their proprium, a proprium was granted to them, but still a proprium vivified by the Lord, and therefore called a 'woman,' and afterwards a 'wife.'" (A. C. 151.)

     "It requires but little attention for anyone to discern that woman was not formed out of the rib of a man, and that deeper arcana are here implied than any person has been aware of. But that by the 'woman' is signified man's proprium may be known from the fact that it was the 'woman' who was deceived; for nothing ever deceives man but his proprium, or, what is the same, the love of self and the love of the world." (A. C. 152.)

     By the rib being taken out of the man and built into a woman is meant, therefore, that the Lord, in His mercy, while permitting the man to have and to love a proprium, yet removed it from the man so that he should not love it directly in himself, but in others outside of himself. That is, He permitted the man to turn from the highest good, the love of God, to a good somewhat lower,-the love of the neighbor. This lower good is the "vivified proprium" signified by the "woman."

     What this means may be seen exemplified in the life of every man who is happily married. The "rib" with him is the self-conceit or love of his own intelligence which is actually "taken out of him" when the wife becomes the love of his wisdom. Instead of loving it in himself he then loves it in her, and thus the love of self is turned into conjugial love, which is the most intimate form of the love of the neighbor. Of this transformation, however, the husband is as unconscious as was Adam in his "deep sleep."

     That this first declining posterity of the Most Ancient Church fumed from the purely celestial state of their ancestors, is involved in the words: "Therefore shall a man 'leave' his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife;" but that they were still in the good of innocence is evident from the fact that "they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."

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     For this generation "was not evil, but was still good; and because they desired to live in the external man, or in their proprium, this was permitted them by the Lord, but that which is spiritual-celestial was mercifully insinuated therein." (A. C. 161.) This "insinuation of good" into the human proprium "may be observed in little children, in whom what is evil and false is not merely concealed, but is even pleasing, so long as they love their parents and one another, and their infantile innocence shows itself." (A. C. 164.)

     III.

     CONDITIONS OF THE "FIRST POSTERITY."

     It will be noticed that it is everywhere said in the ARCANA COELESTIA that the decline began with "the first posterity" of the Most Ancient Church, and not with the celestial men of that Church itself. They could not fall or begin to desire a life of self-guidance, for they had reached that Sabbath state of regeneration when doubts or temptations can no longer assail.

     There were, however, six days of creation, six general states preceding the state of perfect peace. The degree of regeneration attainable by any one was a matter of individual choice. Each one was kept in a perfect freedom of choice between lesser goods, higher, goods, and the highest. No one was compelled to "dwell alone" with the Lord as his only love, but was free to choose and remain in lower loves, if he so wished. And some, as is known, preferred the lower, though able to perceive the higher goal and able also to reach it if they had so wished.

     Of this character was this "first posterity" with whom the decline began,-a generation of men endowed with all the good tendencies of celestial ancestors, and fully instructed in all the truths of their fathers, and thus completely responsible for their choice and actions. For such persons to turn from the highest good to a lower good was to enter upon a downward course; it was, indeed, the beginning of evil. To illustrate: a good man loves his family, his community, his country, and his Church, and he knows that in serving the highest uses he, at the same time, serves the best interests of all the lower ones.

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If, then, he were to exclude from his heart the love of the Lord's eternal cause in order to devote his life entirely to the interests of his country, such a choice would be essentially evil, even though the love of the country is in itself a noble love. And it would be the same if he preferred the welfare of the community to the good of the country, or the family to the community. Any deliberate lowering of the highest standard of good is a betrayal of that standard: it is evil for a man to do so, even though the lower degree of good which he chooses to prefer is in itself an actual good.

     Why, then, did this "first posterity" of the Most Ancient Church deliberately choose the lower good of love to the neighbor instead of the highest good of love to the Lord? We may ask in return, Why does any man who knows the better, choose the worse? We may ascribe it to weakness of the flesh, surrounding circumstances and influences, and what not, but within his heart every rational man knows that no one is responsible for his final choice but he himself. As long as he is rational he can at any moment stop his hand from the doing of an evil act, if he wills to stop. Why, then, does he not stop it? The only answer is, Because he does not will to do so! In its final solution this question is not one for intellectual discussion, but for action or non-action, and the power to do or not to do lies in the hand of every one.

     Nevertheless, though this is true beyond any peradventure and as a matter of fact and experience, it is permissible to discuss contributory causes, such as environments, circumstances, and suggestions from without and from within. What, then, were the surrounding conditions that contributed to the fatal choice of our first decadent ancestors?

     We enter, here, upon a field of speculations and suggestions which should be taken for what they may be worth. First, as to influences from within, there were in the spiritual world those simple and ignorant spirits of Preadamites who had passed away in an arrested state of development,-arrested, not by the hand of God, but by their own choice. From the beginning there were those who, with every opportunity to advance, did not care to progress beyond the first threshold of the regenerate life.

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These, though by no means evil, carried with them into the other world the innocent but fallacious appearances of the outer senses, and-chief of all-the appearance that, since man is a free agent, he is able to be his own guide and master.

     From these sensuous spirits, then, there would come suggestions as to the possibility of a life to some degree dependent upon self rather than upon the Lord,-suggestions which might have caused certain doubts with this posterity, doubts which if harbored would produce a state of obscurity like the "deep sleep" into which Adam fell.

     Besides this internal influence from the spiritual world, there may have been also certain seductive influences: from the external world. In its very first infancy the race possessed and required very few externals of life. But as age succeeded age, external delights were added to internal blessings. The fund of external knowledges accumulated from the experiences of successive generations, and with these the inventions of external comforts and pleasures. At first naked as the newborn child, they gradually learned to make garments, erect dwellings, cook their food, tend the herd, till the ground, make ornaments, etc. In all this there was nothing wrong, and as they advanced in regeneration they learned to regard these delightful externals as ever increasing evidences of the tender Mercy of their Heavenly Father toward His beloved children.

     Nevertheless, as externals multiplied their attractions increased, and the younger generations who had not yet reached the celestial state would naturally be in a greater danger of seduction by external delights. This danger, however, was balanced by the wise teachings of the older generation whose interior wisdom was growing in a corresponding ratio. The origin of evil, therefore, cannot be blamed upon any combination of overwhelming circumstances and environments. The responsibility and the blame inmostly rest upon the man himself.

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     IV.

     THE FALL.

     When first born a man is nothing but an immortal soul enclosed in a little lump of flesh furnished with five peep-holes-called the senses-through which the soul looks out into the world. This lump of flesh is his bodily or corporeal degree, within which, through the observations of the senses, there is gradually born a next interior degree called the sensual or sensuous man. Within this, again, as the man begins to put together into new pictures the various sense-images stored in the memory, there is formed still another degree called the interior-sensual or imaginative degree, and within this, finally, there is formed an inmost natural degree which is called the rational,- so called because endowed with the power to judge of the relations between the various sense-images. For instance: the corporeal babe puts his finger into the flame of a candle; the result is a sensual impression which can forever be recalled by the imagination, and the budding rational man concludes that the relation between the finger and the flame should not be too close.

     Now, the sensual, being next to the corporeal, is in itself gross and low and next to the ground, and hence in the figurative language of the ancients it was compared to and even called a "serpent." In the Garden of Eden this serpent was not a poisonous serpent, but a harmless though lowly animal, created by God Himself and gifted with a "subtleness" i. e., circumspection and prudence-beyond all the animals of the field. A man could not live without a sensual degree, and every perfect man should be wise as a serpent and yet innocent as a dove. The Lord Himself possessed such a sensual, which by continual victories in temptation and finally by the passion on the cross, was glorified and made Divine. This Divine Sensual is what was represented by the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness.

     But after the first posterity of the Most Ancient Church had begun to incline to the sensual and listen to its always more or less fallacious suggestions, (for being the lowest it was always the least perfect), instead of listening to the voice of God within their faculty of perception, then the serpent began to be a dangerous beast which infused the first doubt as to the evil of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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This suggestion of a doubt was at first repelled, as is evident from the reply of the woman: "God hath said, Ye shall not eat of in neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die," for there was still with them from instruction and perception an intuition that thus all wisdom and intelligence would perish among them. But still they permitted the doubt to recur: "Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." These words describe "an incipient doubt whether it might not be lawful for them" to investigate spiritual and celestial things from the knowledges of worldly things, and thus from without, a posteriore, instead of the former method of receiving these things from Divine Revelation and perception, and thus from within, a priore, "since thus they would see whether the things they had heard from their forefathers were true, and so their eyes would be opened. At length, in consequence of the ascendency of self-love, they began to think that they could lead themselves, and thus be like the Lord; for such is the nature of the love of self that it is unwilling to submit to the Lord's leading, but prefers to be self-guided, and-being self-guided-to consult the things of the senses and of science as to what is to be believed." (A. C. 205.)

"Who have a stronger belief that their eyes are opened, and that as God they know what is good and evil, then those who love themselves and at the same time excel in worldly learning? And yet who are more blind? Only question them, and it will be seen that they do not even know, much less believe in, the existence of spirit; with the nature of spiritual and celestial life they are utterly unacquainted; they do not acknowledge an eternal life; for they believe that they are like the brutes which perish; neither do they acknowledge the Lord, but worship only themselves and nature. Those among them who wish to be guarded in their expressions say that a certain Supreme Being, (of the nature of whom they are ignorant), rules all things. These are the principles in which they confirm themselves in many ways by the things of the senses and of science, and if they dared they would do the same before the whole world.

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Although such persons desire to be regarded as gods, or as the wisest of men, if they were asked whether they know what it is not to have anything of their own [proprium], they would answer that it is to have no existence, and that if they were deprived of everything that is their own, they would be nothing. If they were asked what it is to live from the Lord, they think it is a phantasy. If asked whether they know what conscience is, they would say it is a mere figment of the imagination which may be of service in keeping the vulgar under restraint. If asked whether they know what perception is, they would merely laugh at it and call it enthusiastic rubbish. Such is their wisdom, such 'open eyes' have they, and such 'gods' are they! Principles like these, which they think clearer than day, they make their starting point, and so they continue, and in this way they reason about the mysteries of faith; and what can be the result but an abyss of darkness? Such persons above all others are the 'serpents' who seduce the world. But this posterity of the Most Ancient Church was not as yet of such a character." (A. C. 206.)

Very soon, however, the woman saw that the tree was "good for food, and pleasant to the eyes and desirable for making one wise, and she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat." The "woman" now signifies the perverted will deliberately choosing evil instead of good, and her husband eating signifies the conscious understanding consenting to the fatal deed. And then "the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked." They knew from a remnant of perception that they were no longer in innocence, as before, but in evil, and therefore they "sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves girdles," that is, they covered their shame with excuses, specious arguments drawn from merely natural good. (For the fig-tree, in the Word, stands for natural good, even as the vine for spiritual good, and the olive for celestial good.) As every fire produces its own light, so every evil love disguises itself in truths falsified, truths of natural but not spiritual good. It always professes to have some good end in view, some altruistic end that "justifies the means."

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     And now the scene changes. The heavenly idyll of the Golden Age passes, through the intermediate stage of melodrama, into the most terrible tragedy this world has ever witnessed.

     V.

     THE CURSE AND THE PROMISE.

     A curse was now pronounced upon the serpent, a universal curse that lasted through the ages until the coming of the "Seed of the Woman." The Father of Mercy, indeed, curses no on, but the race cursed itself by mis-using every Divine blessing. The serpent, or the sensual plane of life, which formerly had not been evil but simply the lowest degree of good with man, now became in itself infernal; the proprium itself becoming the seat of every evil inclination and the origin of every false persuasion. It became that accursed thing which henceforth no mortal man can ever get rid of; he may by regeneration subdue it, trample it under his feet, cage it up in his cellar, but even with an angel this poisonous serpent remains in the cellar as a perpetual reminder that in himself-in the old self or proprium-the angle is nothing but a poor miserable sinner, impure in the sight of God.

     The "woman," who now represents the fallen Church as a whole, was henceforth to bring forth her sons in sorrow; these "sons" are the truths or thoughts which formerly were conceived in joy by the celestial perception; henceforth such conceptions would be attended with the anxiety of doubts and the combats of temptations, for "the Conflict of the Ages" had begun. And no longer was the will to rule, as in the Golden Age itself, but thine obedience shall be to thy man, and he shall rule over thee," (Gen. 3:16), for henceforth the remnant of rational understanding must take the lead in order to restrain the passions of the perverted will.

     And the "man," the rational, which by "hearkening" to the voice of the woman had consented to the choice of evil, was now cursed by its own folly, and with it the whole external man, signified by "the ground."

     "Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In great sorrow thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life." For miserable henceforth would be the state of the man even unto the end of this fallen Church.

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"Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth unto thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field." Evils and falsities alone would flourish in that human soil which once had been the Garden of God, and man would return to the state of the wild beast which eats the herb of the field,-not the gentle and innocent animalism of the Preadamites, but a state of ferocious savagery.

     "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread." This does not, as is commonly supposed, mean that man was now first condemned to the "curse" of having to work instead of enjoying an indolent and useless life in paradise. The men of the Golden Age were busy people, profoundly enjoying the life of usefulness in the service of God and the neighbor. Work is never in itself a curse but a blessing, and a bit of sweat adds only spice to the bread. But the "sweat" to which the perverted descendant of this Church was condemned was the sweat of the criminal in the presence of the Law, the sweat of fear and aversion,-the radical aversion to everything true and good; for "bread" is the universal correspondent of all that is good.

     "For dust thou art, and unto dust theta shalt return." This signifies the death of the Church, and the eternal damnation of those who have damned themselves while on earth.

     Jehovah God now "sent the man forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken." The posterity of the Most Ancient Church was deprived of the celestial intelligence and wisdom which had constructed their paradise, and they turned to the cultivation of a merely external and corporeal life. And at the entrance to the Garden there were placed "cherubim and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." The cherubim were figures of guardian angels, such as were also placed upon the mercy-seat over the ark, to signify the Providence of God protecting His Word. This Word, in its internal sense, is the true Garden of Delights in which all spiritual and celestial blessings lie hidden, but there is a Providence which keeps guard over this internal sense lest anyone enter into it to profane it. The Divine Love, indeed, bids all to come unto Him in His Word, but if a man should approach for an evil purpose, from the love of self and of the world, this evil love would stand in the way like the flame of a sword, so that he cannot perceive the way to the tree of life; his mind, in Divine Mercy, is carried away to the corporeal and earthly things that he loves, and thus he is kept from that deadliest sin, the profanation of what is most holy, the "sin against the Holy Spirit."

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There is but one means of finding the way to the tree of life, and that is-Repentance.

     VI.

     THE HOPE OF THE AGES.

     Thus evil arose in the world, and from this original sin of disobedience, (for it was nothing else), came all that countless brood of varied evils that ever since has cursed the human race. Yet, as in Pandora's box, one blessing remained amidst the swarm of ills, and this blessing was-Hope. Before mankind had totally closed against itself the gates of Paradise, a Promise was given which for thousands of years remained the sole Hope that these gates would again one day be opened. While cursing the serpent, Jehovah God added: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; He shall trample upon thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." (Gen. 3:14.)

     "Every one is aware that this is the first prophecy of the Coming of the Lord into the world; indeed, it appears clearly from the words themselves, and from them and from the prophets even the Jews knew that a Messiah was to come." (A. C. 250.)

     Henceforth there was to be an unrelenting enmity and conflict between the sensual proprium, now infernal, and the "seed of the woman," that is, the remnant of those in the Church who possessed faith in the Lord. But instead of looking back to the memory of that Lord who had revealed Himself as a Man in the lost days of the Golden Age, this remnant was henceforth to look forward to that same Lord who in the fulness of time was to come upon the earth in a Manhood taken from a Virgin only. 'The "seed of the serpent" is the accumulated power of all the hells, and the "seed of the woman," in the supreme incarnation, is "He" who in the human thus assumed from a woman was to overcome all the evil inclinations inherited through her from all the generations of sinful ancestors since the days of Adam.

682

By His victories over all evil tendencies in His human He was to trample upon the head of the serpent, conquer the power of hell, and break the curse that rested upon the fallen race, for if One had conquered and broken a way through the hells, others could, by following in His foot steps. What if the foot was "bruised" in the combat! What if Achilles was shot in the "heel" by the treacherous Trojan? Achilles was killed, but lived again, and his death paved the way for the final victory of the Greeks. The Lord also was vulnerable in His "heel," the lowest natural, for it was into the sensuous degree, inherited from the human mother, that the hells could enter to attack Him, to be met and overcome. He was but "bruised" when this lowest was nailed to the cross, for He arose again on the third day, thenceforth in His visible Divine Human to judge and to rule over the quick and the dead.

This promise of the Coming Redeemer became the pivotal point around which revolved all the religions of the ages succeeding the Golden Age. The tradition of this supreme Hope was handed down from generation to generation in the centuries before the Flood, and was finally written down in a book, after writing was invented, lest it should be lost in the gathering gloom, the impending night of utter infidelity, barbarism and final savagery. This book was hidden and preserved during the finally ensuing cataclysm of the Flood, and was afterwards restored to the Church of the Silver Age. Here the Messianic prophecy was cherished as the most precious inheritance of mankind, and further details as to its fulfillment were added in numerous succeeding revelations. Many details as to the future life of the Messiah, (from His birth in Bethlehem even to His betrayal for thirty pieces of silver), were prophetically revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures, but many more particulars were revealed in that Ancient Word which was lost and is yet to be found. Fragments of that Word, however, have been preserved in all the ancient mythologies and also in all the surviving heathen religions, and in all of them the Messianic Prophecy figures as the final hope.

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JOVIANS 1912

JOVIANS Mrs. M. C. FITZPATRICK 1912

     A STORY

     (Concluded from the October issue.)

     Somewhere, away off, he heard a voice speaking. He forced himself, with a desperate effort, to listen.

     "You will take my own chariot. Furian will go with you to help carry her away. You may tell her that I am a god and will make her my consort. It is not given to every girl to become the consort of a god."

     Still unable to speak, Amyas's mind was busy with the loves of his master. "It was not given to every girl to become the consort of a god." No, not to every girl, but to many. Since he had been with Logoba dainty Mira had vanished, and Zara had been made the slave of the slave Zoga and dwelt in his house. He recalled with a shudder the slender white bones which he had seen Furian push with his foot, saying contemptuously, "Who would think that they had once been such lovely bodies?"

     "What has alarmed you, Anuyas? You will go?"

     "Master," he murmured weakly, "do not command me to go." Kneeling, he raised his clasped hands and pleaded, "You are mighty and merciful to your servants. Spare my sister and I will serve you forever."

     "Spare your sister! Furian, come here. The girl I spoke to you of the day we found Amyas is his sister, and for that reason I am going to send him to bring her here. No doubt but she will come with him."

     Amyas was still kneeling. "Master, my sister will not be happy away from her kindred; do not ask me to make her unhappy."

     "She will be happy after she is here for a time. If you love her you will delight in having her near you. However you need not go if you do not wish to. I am sadly disappointed in you. I thought you were my most devoted servant."

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Then, turning to Furian, who hung expectantly on his words, "But perhaps Furian will prove faithful'" Furian, malevolently eager, came forward.

     "Furian, you are a faithful worshiper and will not fail me. Go to the valley and bring the girl to me, and I will give you what you wish."

     "Master, I dare not approach these people; they are so stupid that they flee into their houses when they see a stranger. We must be cunning and lure her away. I am only a slave and spirits would kill me, but you are a god, they cannot hurt you. Disguise yourself and go."

     "What disguise will be the most potent? You are very subtle and used to devious means; how may a god disguise himself with honor?"

     With a malicious glance at the dejected Amyas he answered, "Master, as you know, I came of stupid, simple people as Amyas did. They permit spirits to teach and punish them. They believe that they do not die, but are heaven-made and become angels, wearing blue robes spotted with stars. Do you have such a one made and put it on; go to the valley, leaving your chariot in the forest nearby; appear before her as suddenly as you can and say, 'Beloved, I am your angel-husband and am come to take you to heaven, where we will live together in happiness to all eternity.' Then she will come with you gladly."

     "Good, my Furian; let us return now and do you see that a robe is fashioned as you say." They rode home in silence, Furian taking Amyas's place beside Logoba. When they entered the courtyard Amyas followed Logoba to the house. He turned on him such a look of displeasure that Amyas felt as if he had been whipped. He stood outside the door for some time; at last he gathered courage to enter. Logoba was there alone. Amyas kneeled, kissing the hem of the yellow robe, and said, "Forgive me, Lord, Logoba, master, but the disguise will not avail; she will see your white hair and know that you are not an angel. If you send any slave he will die, for the Only Lord Protects his own. Let me go; no other hand than mine shall touch Marda."

     Logoba raised him up and kissed his forehead, saying, "You are still faithful, my Amyas.

685

But you are ill, and how pale you look! Go into the little sanctuary and rest, and I will send you meat and wine."

     "Do not send me meat or wine, lord, only let me rest, for I am weary, weary."

     He closed the door of the sanctuary and fastened it. He sat on the goat-skin covered floor, dejected and miserable. If he had only known how dear Marda was to him, he would never have left the valley. He was helpless; he had gone after a strange god, who was a devil. Where should he turn for help? Without the Only Lord or his angels and spirits he was powerless; he could do nothing of himself. The words of a sacred song came to him,

     "A broken and contrite heart are acceptable to the Only Lord." Surely his heart was contrite and nearly broken, perhaps the only Lord would listen. He threw himself face downward on the floor and prayed in his heart,

     "O, Lord! the Only Lord, send thy angels and spirits to me, let them search me, let them torture me, let them kill me and send me to eternal death, only first let them show me how to save my sister Marda from the snares of Logoba."

     The Lord answered his prayer gently, as is His wont with self-tortured souls. Amyas felt the inexpressibly sweet and gentle influx of His angel and then saw the latter standing at his head. He did not dare to rise, so the angel bent over him and said, "The Lord has sent me to help you save Marda; go to her and warn her not to leave the tent."

     "I cannot go, I am afraid, I shall be lost. Do not trust me, for I am all evil and will fail. Those who love not the Only Lord are helpless."

     "Nevertheless you must go, you must conquer fear. If you love her better than your life you will save her."

     "I will go and try to save her. If she is lost, I care not to live. If Logoba does not slay me I will return here, lest I lead my brothers and sisters into the paths of evil. I am evil, all evil."

     "Have you denied the Only Lord?"

     "I have worshiped Logoba and have done evil, so it may be that I have also denied Him."

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     "Outwardly, maybe, but in your heart you still love and worship Him, else I could not have come to you. Sleep until the ninth hour, then I will awake you and send you to your valley. May angels send you heavenly dreams."

     Amyas fell into a deep sleep at once and dreamed of Marda and his home, and that she was safe in the quiet valley. At the appointed time he awoke and found the angel there, robed in a garment of blue, spotted with stars.

     "Amyas," he said, "take my garment and put it on; then go, at once, to Marda."

     Trembling with fear for his sister, he did as the angel told him. He then passed out, accompanied by the angel, into the great hall where Logoba and his body guard lay sleeping on the floor. As Amyas passed the overlord the robe brushed against his face, waking him. He sprang to his feet and grasped Amyas's arm, but just as his hand closed on him! he fell to the floor in convulsions, crying loudly, "I am ill; seize him, seize him!" Ulu and Furian essayed to stop him and fell writhing beside their master. Amyas passed out unharmed.

     Helped by angels and friendly spirits, he passed quickly through the forest. Although he saw strange and savage beasts with glittering eyes, crouching under low-hanging branches, they did not trouble him and he soon reached his valley home. As he neared the tent he heard his father's voice. He stood outside, his heart beating tumultuously. Marda opened the flap and pinned it back. When she saw him she said, "I pray you enter, we are all gathered here waiting. We were told to expect the coming of an angel." He stepped inside and seeing that they all thought him an angel did not speak.

     Suddenly a great noise was heard, the beating of horses' hoofs, the clamorous tongues of many slaves, the monotone of a drum. Amyas attempted to warn them, but his tongue clove to his palate. Looking up he saw the angel beside him. Logoba and his slaves hastily dismounted and rushed towards the tent with blood-curdling shouts. But high above the tumult was heard the impressive voice of the angel, now visible to all but the evil, and standing with upraised arms: "To Logoba and his slaves I denounce death!"

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     Their clamor ceased. They fell, seized with suffocating paroxysms, every feature contorted with agonized amazement, until they no longer resembled human beings. They had met the fate that befalls all those of the earth Jupiter who persist in thinking and teaching falsely concerning the Only Lord, whom we love and worship and know as the Lord Jesus Christ.

     All the family had fallen to their knees, closing their eyes lest they see the dreadful spectacle of punishment and death. The angel said to them gently, "Do not fear, beloved. Marda is safe and the Only Lord is with us. Rise and welcome Amyas."

     Amyas stood trembling as the angel addressed Marda, "Marda, Amyas has saved you; love him, for he will now dwell with you forever." Taking Marda's hand, he placed it in Amyas's, and holding both within his own said, "Amyas, may you be happy with Marda forever."

     Father, mother, brothers and sisters clustered closely about them, the angel still holding Amyas's and Marda's hands; and then they heard the song of the stars, the song of conjugial love, sung by a choir of angels clothed in garments of resplendent blue, spotted with many scintillating stars. A wonderful rainbow appeared from one side of the tent to the other, the seven colors radiantly bright, a heaven-sent sign of betrothal!

     [The end.]

688

NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

     Our correspondents and contributors will confer a favor upon the editor and the readers of the LIFE, if they will use Arabic numerals only, in all references to chapters in the Word.

     We are informed by Mr. A. H. Stroh that the recently discovered portrait of Swedenborg's sister,-which at first was supposed to be that of his elder sister, Anna, the wife of Eric Benzelius, is actually the portrait of his younger sister, Hedwig, who married Governor Lars Benzelstierna. Mr. Stroh describes the face as very similar to that of the mother, Sarah Behm Swedberg, and states that Swedenborg closely resembled both his mother and sister.

     There has been much confusion as to the proper designation of all those works which Swedenborg wrote previously to the inspired Writings. As a rule they have been termed "the Scientific Works," but it has been pointed out that but few of them are strictly "scientific," while most of them are of a distinctly philosophical character. But to call them, as a class, "the Philosophical Works" is to ignore the fact that some are purely scientific and technical', while others are works of poetry, or deal with economics, politics, and all sorts of subjects, and some, again, are decidedly theological. We would therefore suggest that, in order to avoid confusion, all these works be termed "the Preparatory Works," which is an all-inclusive and at the same time descriptive designation, wide enough to cover the whole series, from the first youthful poem to the last volume of the ADVERSARIA.

     Speaking of terms and titles, we feel impelled to enter a protest against the name that has been imposed on Swedenborg's "Dream Book," which is an exceedingly inappropriate, misleading and unworthy title.

689

The work thus libeled was originally published in 1859 by the librarian Klemming, an avowed enemy of the New Church, who issued it under the title "Swedenborg's Dreams, 1744," for the evident purpose of throwing contempt upon its contents. In order still further to prejudice the public the editor affixed to the original edition a photographic copy of what he regarded as the most prurient dream in the manuscript, and to this day the original is exhibited in a show case in the Royal Library in Stockholm, with this particular page open for public inspection!

The Swedish title is bad enough, but the English "Dream Book" is worse, degrading the work to the level of a particularly wretched class of literature. As a matter of fact, Swedenborg gave it no title whatever, and it is simply a DIARY, recording not only his dreams, but also his travels and his natural and spiritual experiences and reflections from July 21,1743, to May 12, 1744 It has never been issued as a separate publication in the English tongue, and the only available translation is contained in Dr. R. L. Tafel's DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG, Vol. II., pp. 134-219, but this version is not only incomplete, but very faulty, as the translator had not mastered the old Swedish idioms. It is to be hoped that a new and complete translation may be published before long, under the natural title of "SWEDENBORG'S DIARY, 1743, 1744."
NINETEENTH OF JUNE SOUVENIR 1912

NINETEENTH OF JUNE SOUVENIR Editor 1912

The NINETEENTH OF JUNE SOUVENIR has again made its annual appearance. This is now the fifth number and it is characterized by the same strong spirit of loyalty to the Heavenly Doctrine that is found in all the preceding numbers.

In a number of articles-many of which are reprinted from the early volumes of the LIFE-the vital doctrines of a distinctive New Church, especially that of the Priesthood, are upheld. A pleasing feature of the present number is some extracts from the novelettes by Mr. E. P. Anshutz, printed in the LIFE during its first decade. We dare not here repeat the tribute which Mr. Morse has given to the NEW CHURCH LIFE and its usefulness.

690

The Editorial Department concerns itself mainly with pointing out the lack of doctrinal instruction in the Australian societies and the results of the lay-preaching which is in vogue there. Mr. Morse also reviews the recent events in the Convention in connection with the actions of the Rev. Arthur Mercer and Col. R. Williams, and the reiteration of the Convention platform on the subject of CONJUGIAL LOVE by the Rev. J. K. Smyth.

The editor also computes from the 1911 census that the number of Newchurchmen throughout the world is about thirty-five thousand, assuming that the same ratio which exists in Australia between the members of societies and isolated receivers also prevails elsewhere. We believe fifteen thousand would be a liberal estimate of the number of professed Newchurchmen in the world.
Title Unspecified 1912

Title Unspecified Editor 1912

Mr. Gerrit Barger has just added to the New Church literature extant in the Dutch language, a translation of the ATHANASIAN CREED, treated of in numbers 1091-1134 of the APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED. It fills 74 pages of a pamphlet of pocket-edition size, bound in paper of a buff color. A brief preface explains that the translator has renumbered the successive paragraphs from 1 consecutively; and an appendix of 6 pages gives a creed of the New Church faith, and a description of the contents of the other New Church works available in the Dutch tongue. These works are said to be obtainable either in The Hague, at 202 Adelheidstraat, or in Brussels at 33 rue Gachard. The various paragraphs of the work proper have been given by the translator appropriate titles expressive of their contents. These headings are also assembled in a table of contents. As far as we are able to judge, the translation is faithful and accurate. The title of the pamphlet is DE GODDELIJKE DRIE-EENHEID VERKLAARD, VOLGENS DE GELOOFSBELIJDENIS VAN ATHANASIUS. (The Divine Trinity Explained, according to the Athanasian Creed.)

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SYSTEM OF QUATRAINS 1912

SYSTEM OF QUATRAINS Editor 1912

One of our correspondents, whose letter, unfortunately, is crowded out of the present issue, claims that "there is no possibility of seeing an agreement between the four atmospheres of the PRINCIPIA and the six atmospheres of the Writings, because 4 does not equal 6," and he asks, "How is it possible to propose and accept a scheme of degrees in the universe, based on the system of quatrains, without first showing its superiority to the system of trines?"

     The alarm of our correspondent, and of a number of other friends, is not surprising, because at first sight there is an appearance of contradiction and revolutionary substitution in the emphasis which has been placed, of late years, upon the "system of quatrains." But our correspondent is entirely mistaken if he thinks that any one of the defenders of the latter system has ever dreamed of denying the system of trines. They only claim that where there are trines there are also quatrains, by the subdivision of one member of the trine into twain.

     Thus every one admits that there are in general three heavens, but every one knows also that the lowest heaven is divided into two,-the celestial-natural and the spiritual-natural, so that there are truly four heavens. Again, there are three atmospheres in the natural world, and three in the spiritual world, but the latter three may also be regarded as one, even as the three heavens constitute one heaven, and thus the universal spiritual atmosphere, together with the three natural, give us a series of four atmospheres. Swedenborg the philosopher was acquainted with the three natural atmospheres, and Swedenborg the Christian was acquainted also with the "aura of a higher and better world," and so he presented his series of four atmospheres. That after the opening of his spiritual eyes he became acquainted with the three spiritual atmospheres does not invalidate the fact that these three make one.

     It would be vain to close our eyes to the profound significance of quatrains, for they meet us everywhere in nature and in life: four quarters of the world, four seasons of the year, four periods of the day, four ages of life, four historic dispensations, four walls of the New Jerusalem; in man, four discrete degrees: the body, the lower mind or animus, the internal mind or mens, and the soul; and in the Word four distinct senses: the literal sense, the internal historical sense, the spiritual sense, and the celestial sense.

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Turn where we will, we find the series of fours, and no amount of "protests" can abolish them.
MARRIAGES AMONG AN UNPERVERTED RACE 1912

MARRIAGES AMONG AN UNPERVERTED RACE E. E. I 1912

The inhabitants of many earths in the universe, similar in genius to the men of the Golden Age of our earth, live grouped and segregated into nations, families, and houses, which have little if any intercourse or intermarriage outside the confines of their smallest groups. As each of these smallest groups or houses is in a just and upright order of life, the harmony of the many can be continually enhanced by accentuating the distinctiveness and individuality of each of the several components. But with a fallen race, as on our earth today, a different kind of life and government must obtain. There must then be intercommunication and a banding together for mutual protection against the enemies of society. They come under the law of order for the hells, that no one shall proceed into a deeper degree of evil than that already committed. The accentuation of individuality is prevented under the operation of this law, by barrenness and racial decay of the families within which marriages among close blood-relations take place, and by the scattering and dispersion of nations and even races among strangers.

But among an upright race which has not fallen, whatever would serve to accentuate the good individual characteristics of each family would be in accordance with heavenly order. Marriages among close blood-relations of similar age, and even between brother and sister, probably occurred frequently in most ancient times and were regarded as more orderly than any others. That marriages between brother and sister occurred is evident from the survival of this custom among the royal lives of Babylonia, Assyria, Persia and Egypt, who had it undoubtedly from a remote tradition of a time when it was the orderly custom. Abram was married to his half-sister, Sarai.

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The strong prohibition to the Jews against this custom, (Leviticus 20:17, 18), was given undoubtedly to set them apart from the surrounding races, and also because the world was evil and needed to come under the operation of the other law. Marriages between brother and sister are probably the orderly custom at this day among the celestial inhabitants of various earths in the universe, to judge from the following account of the planet Saturn:

"I was further informed by spirits of that earth about the inhabitants, as to what their consociations are, besides other matters. They said that they live distinguished into families, one family separate from another; thus a man and wife with their children; and that the latter, when they marry [conjugia jungunt], are separated from the house [note the singular number] of the parents, and have no further concern for it." (E. U. 103.) E. E. I.
WORK ON GENERATION 1912

WORK ON GENERATION E. E. I 1912

The new translation of this physiological forerunner of CONJUGIAL LOVE, a tasty volume of 400 Pages of heavy paper and large type, bound in dark green cloth with gold lettering, appears under the unfamiliar and somewhat confusing title of THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. We learn from the title-page, however, that this is parts 4 and 5 of the ANIMAL KINGDOM, and the preface further explains that such a title is in accordance with Swedenborg's prospectus of the great work which was to have been in four tomes and seventeen parts. It appears from the preface and the various foot notes by the editor and translator of this work, the Rev. Alfred Acton, that it might be possible to group all of Swedenborg's works of the period 1738-44 as parts either of the ECONOMY OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM Or of the ANIMAL KINGDOM.

In the arrangement of the present work, the editor has followed Dr. Wilkinson, the translator of the first English edition, in postponing till the end the chapters on the Breasts and the Peritoneum, which, in the original Latin edition, were at the beginning and in reversed order.

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This he regards as the natural sequence of the work, and the arrangement which Swedenborg himself contemplated. The rest of the work he divides into two parts with separate title-pages, viz.: 1. The Male Organs, 2. The Female Organs and the Formation of the Fetus in the Womb. There is an appendix of 5 pages containing Swedenborg's citations from Schurig; valuable indexes of authors and of subjects; ten anatomical plates, one of which is from Vieussens, selected by Dr. F. A. Boericke; and a table of 35 corrections of the published Latin text compiled with the assistance of Mr. A. H. Stroh, who has compared the original manuscript, coder 53. We note, however, two misprints in this table, the ones listed "p. 51, l. 19," and "p. 110, l. 3." Various explanatory notes necessary to an understanding of the text, instead of being put in an appendix according to the prevailing, but inconvenient, custom, are considerately put as foot-notes on the same page with the texts they explain.

The translation is one of great merit. No other work of Swedenborg, in our opinion, has been translated with such faithful rendering of the original, and such insight into the author's meaning, or with a clearer, simpler, and more forceful diction than that which characterizes Mr. Acton's translation. Earring the occasional predilection for the split infinitive, it is a tasteful, scholarly work that is literary in the best sense. The translator has been true to his principle "that a translation should not only give the author's meaning, but, in addition, should give it, so far as possible, in the author's own style and sequence of ideas."

Of even deeper interest and value is the thorough bibliographical study the translator has made. The preface and the various foot-notes interspersed throughout the book supply us not only with critical notes about the meanings of certain anatomic terms or the identity of various writers or works referred to, but also, by a brilliant study of the internal evidence of the text of this and other works of Swedenborg, give us conclusions that are suggestive, illuminating, and really new. As instances in point, we note the following: (1) The lost part of coder 53 that preceded the pages devoted to the work on Generation, is shown to have been the first draft of the published ANIMAL KINGDOM, concluding with a chapter on the Thymus Gland, (p. 10).

695

(2) Transaction V. of the ECONOMY of THE ANIMAL KINGDOM series is shown to have been carried out in the works on the FIBRE, HIEROGLYPHIC KEY, and ONTOLOGY, (p. 35). (3) Transaction VI. of the same series is tentatively identified with the RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY and the two small works the ANIMAL SPIRIT and the SOUL, published in POSTHUMOUS TRACTS (p. 27). (4) By corpus luteum is meant by Swedenborg the Graafian follicle, and not the corpus luteum of modern anatomy, (p. 225); by genitura is meant the mass of the seed, as distinguished from the individual seed, (p. 26).

The translator's careful study of the anatomists cited by Swedenborg has enabled him to enrich the work with many valuable comments, and also to correct some statements in need of a revision which the author did not carry out. As a minor criticism, we question the propriety of referring to the latter as slips and mistakes. They are merely matters of inadvertence due to the haste in which the original draft was penned, and do not denote ignorance or stupidity on the part of the author, as might be construed by some from the use of such expressions. It would be more fitting in our opinion, to confine the comment on a correction to the statement of what Swedenborg obviously had in mind and to state the reasons showing this, without expressing a judgment. The work of a master-mind is entitled to receive all possible nicety of consideration. The manuscripts of the theological works and even the published editions that were revised by Swedenborg, himself, contain similar inadvertencies, such as Parmos for Patmos. There is also the possibility that some of these seeming blemishes may not be inadvertencies, but a matter of deliberate purpose for some reason we have not sensed.

This work on GENERATION deserves the careful study of all in the Church. To parents, especially, it will be a valuable guide as to how to instruct the young in matters basic to the establishment of conjugial love. We wish to voice our thanks to the translator and those assisting him not only for the admirable manner in which this work has been performed, but also for making accessible the important truths it contains. E. E. I.

696

MISSIONARY WORK AMONG THE MOHAMMEDANS 1912

MISSIONARY WORK AMONG THE MOHAMMEDANS Stanwood Cobb 1912

     MISSIONARY WORK AMONG THE MOHAMMEDANS.

     Mr. Stanwood Cobb, in a paper on "Christian Missions in the Orient," in THE OPEN COURT for July, brings to light some startling facts in regard to the utter failure of the Old Christian Church to make any impression upon the Mohammedan world. We quote the following:

     "In the near East the missions have done a wonderful work in uplifting and educating the different subject races of the Turkish empire-Bulgarians, Armenians, Syrians, Copts; and in Persia, the Nestorian Christians. When the first missionaries were started in Constantinople and Smyma, some fifty years ago, efforts were made to convert Mohammedans. The success was not large. I inquired of one missionary who had just finished a service of fifty years in Constantinople, how many Mohammedans had been converted there within his memory. He thought of one. This one later turned out to be a rascal-the missionaries were therefore not inclined to boast of him. When Abdul Hamid came to the throne in 1873, he pledged the missionaries not to attempt to proselyte among the Mohammedan population of his empire. Since that time, therefore, the work of the missionaries has been confined to the Christian sects, Armenian, Bulgarian and Greek. The pictures shown by missionaries of their students in the native schools, sitting cross-legged with red fezzes on, might lead one to thinking them Turks. They are not Turks, in spite of the red fez. All subjects of the Turkish empire may wear the fez, and you find it on the head of Greeks and Armenians, as well as of Turks. This same condition is true in other Mohammedan countries-the mission work is largely confined to the native Christian population. In Persia, the missionaries work mainly among the Nestorian and the Armenian Christians. Very little proselyting among the Mohammedans is attempted, although medical aid is given them. Such a thing as a Mohammedan becoming converted is very rare. In Syria the work is among the Syrian Christians. They need education and social upliftment. In Egypt, it is the Coptic Christians who receive the attention of the missionaries. Although this country has been under French and English rule for some time, and protection has been given the missionaries, very little success has been attained among the Mohammedans.

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     "I was speaking with one of the older missionaries who has been in Egypt for fifty years. 'How many converts from Mohammedanism have been made in Egypt during these fifty years?' I asked.

     "'About one hundred and fifty,' he answered.

     "'In all Egypt?'

     "'Yes, and even then you are not sure.'

     "'What do you mean,' I said, 'that they become Christians for interested motives?'

     "'Yes,' he answered. 'Some do it in order to get aid, or Christian patronage for business.' (I was also told by native Egyptians that such was the case, and that the Mohammedans who became converted to Christianity were men of no character.)

     "'Do you think, then,' I asked, 'that there is any hope of all Mohammedans ever becoming converts to Christianity?'

     "'No,' he said, 'I am afraid not.'

     "This is the verdict of a man who has worked fifty years among Mohammedans under the most favorable conditions. Such opinions, however, do not, as a rule, reach the churches of this country.

     "I asked the same question of a missionary who was born and brought up in Turkey, and whose father was a missionary before him-both men of learning and authority in the missionary world.

     "'Do you believe the Mohammedans will ever be converted to Christianity?' I asked.

     "'No, and there is no need of it.'

     "'You think the Mohammedans have a good religion of their own?'

     "'Certainly.'

     "'You would limit the mission work to trying to correct the faults of Mohammedanism.'

     "'Yes. And even then, have we not faults of our own? Can Christians afford to throw stones? I believe the Mohammedans will reform their own religion, as we did ours.'"

698

SOME UNNOTICED PHASES OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE 1912

SOME UNNOTICED PHASES OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE H. C. SMALL 1912

     Communicated
Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     Of the fact of a universal Providence, or government of the Lord, there can be no reasonable doubt. It is inseparable from the fact of creation itself. He who made the world must, of necessity, continually sustain it, so that every least force, particle and movement are absolutely at the beck and call of the Divine will.

     The universal benevolence of that Providence is likewise removed from the realm of doubt, since it is postulated upon the very nature and character of the Divine will from which it springs. Since the Lord is unfailing love and perfect wisdom, it can but follow that He administers His government in the wisest possible manner, and always to secure some blessed result. Therefore nothing can by any means occur that in its measure does not involve a mercy, all else being fully restrained. In this view the permission of all evil, even hell itself, is a signal instance of Divine mercy, for the Lord is incapable of governing from any other consideration, and nothing can by any means come forth without His consent.

     All things, therefore, are in some sense timely. To deny the timeliness of an event is, indeed, to deny the very existence and benevolence of Providence itself, so inherent is the one in the other.

     To see this timeliness in detail, however, is manifestly impossible to us, and even the recognition of its existence requires a long vision, since it consists in the perfect adaptation of each circumstance to the great work of human salvation throughout an unending future, and involves a complete knowledge of the intricacies of human minds, their relationships and consequent needs and means of supply.

699

     Any failure to see the beautiful timeliness of things will naturally be due to our tendency to interpret it too locally and personally. Timeliness is primarily a social aspect of the Divine Providence, and only secondarily an individual aspect. With respect to a single person solely, neither death nor other things may perfectly meet his needs, for the individual himself is one of the factors that need to be timed to the general progress of the world. But when regard is had to the good of all, particularly their spiritual good, everything will be seen to be timed with the greatest possible precision to secure the greatest possible good.

     Various comments from time to time upon the tragic sinking of the Titanic and the consequent loss of life at all stages of growth and development seem not to be wholly free from this too personal color, often causing them to border on untruth. Indeed, the statement sometimes made that each one's death occurs at the precise moment demanded by his own spiritual advancement alone is wholly untrue, as we shall see presently.

     Part of the confusion may possibly result from not taking sufficiently into account the fact that the benefit which occurs from permitted evils or "evil uses" is by no means the same as that which flows from the Divine order itself. While there is a sense in which everything that happens is for our personal good, the idea may be so interpreted as to teach an untruth. For in another and more vital sense no evil can ever be good for us. Evil and its attendant effect, misfortune, are perversions of Divine order, and so must ever be a natural and spiritual hindrance to man. To say otherwise is to overlook the uses which things were intended to perform for each other. As well say that illness or the removal of one of our bodily members is conducive to physical health.

     From reason and from observed natural facts, therefore, it is evident that evil becomes a good in any sense whatever only when it prevents a worse evil. Thus evil is never really an element of progress, and is said to be a blessing only in comparison with some greater evil which it helps to avert. In strict parlance, therefore, this is not good at all, but only a less hurt.

     From this we must conclude that ignorance, poverty, disease, accident, immoralities, and all social wrongs and natural calamities are only varying forms of spiritual hurt.

700

The original permission of evil was not granted because it was an aid to spiritual living, for it was the curse of curses, but it was a concession to man's free agency, without which there could have been no heaven and no man. Its only mercy or justification, therefore, lay in the fact that something worse was averted thereby, and not in any positive service it rendered.

     In view of this we are bound to say that every death due to disease or accident is abnormal, and consequently a real natural and spiritual injury in its immediate effects upon the person so afflicted. The direct effect is loss not gain, because the Divine order has been interrupted. In a real and true sense such deaths are not timely, and unless this loss were outweighed by a greater advantage in some other direction, it could have no justification.

     But man is not an isolated being, nor are evils unconnected. The permission of one evil involves the permission of others. The pressure of greater evils justifies the permission of the less but does not remove their evil effect. The pressure referred to is the necessity of preserving man's freedom without which no reformation is possible, or that equally pressing demand that evils shall not be kept hidden, but come forth, that they may be seen and shunned. The main use of evil is that it may hasten its own destruction. Its use is negative, not positive, its value is in what worse thing it staves off, not in any constructive power it possesses. Thus it is vain for one to think that his or any one's death necessarily comes at just the "psychological moment" demanded by his own spiritual culture. Doubtless many who die would greatly profit by a continuation of life in so far as they personally are concerned, but the use there may be to others, in another world and in a new way, so far outweighs the personal loss as to necessitate their departure. This requires us to recognize the fact that the permission of some to do evil, requires also the permission of others, perhaps innocent persons, to suffer evil. This we know to be true in natural things; it must be true also in things spiritual.

     This conclusion will be found to accord with certain facts which are unquestionable, but from any other view inexplicable. Take, for instance, the permitted birth of evil men whose destiny is hell.

701

Why does not the Lord confine marriage and the birth of offspring to such as would people heaven? Can we doubt the power of the Lord to do so? Why does He not employ this power? From the standpoint of the man in hell, would it not sometimes seem better "if he had not been born?" But because of his service to humanity, as a whole, he has been allowed to live his life and go his way. We may not see what elements of human freedom or of purification from evils demand this "evil use," as Swedenborg calls it, but the Lord sees, and seeing, permits.

Still more to the point, since they bear directly on the subject of timely and untimely death, are the facts of infant mortality. All infants who pass into the spiritual world in infancy are placed in charge of angels and reared for heaven, to which they eventually come regardless of parentage, station, race or religion. Yet in the face of this beautiful truth some children are permitted to grow up and by a life of confirmed evil eventuate in hell. We cannot say that from a personal standpoint this continuation of life has been a blessing. Had they died in infancy their lot would have been heaven. Consequently the usual concept of a timely death does not here apply.

What then shall we say of this and various other evils that abound? We still can say, all things, all people considered, whatever is best. But we too frequently leave out of our view of the Divine Providence the facts of our relation to humanity as a whole. The Lord sees the human race as one man, and consequently deals with it as if it were one man. And spiritually it is. The individual is an organ therein. Consequently the individual good both naturally and spiritually is subordinated to the good of the whole-or shall we say can only be served through serving the whole? This principle governs all wise and beneficent human dealings; is it not the law of God also? Man has other uses to serve in addition to his own personal progress, and in some instances that personal progress may need to be sacrificed in behalf of the whole forward movement. This accounts for the otherwise unexplained and apparently cruel facts of infant mortality already referred to. Because of the service which they may render to others some children are suffered to grow up to populate the hells.

702

The responsibility for this belongs to them, since the means of salvation are universally provided by the Lord. Yet the permission is from the Lord, for in it He sees an ultimate mercy to a sin-sick race. The necessity for such sacrifices may lessen as humanity advances, but they are a constant reminder that no man can or does live for himself, and if he would find the good which is said to accrue and does always accrue from unnatural deaths and other misfortunes, he must seek it in that stream of the common good out of which the individual is supplied and to whose enrichment individual fortunes are ever subordinated in all the workings of the Divine Providence. H. C. SMALL.

     ANSWER.

     It will be seen that our correspondent reasons from externals to internals: because certain conditions are true or appear to be true in natural things, they must be true also in things spiritual. This is the a posteriore method of reasoning and it leads him to monstrous conclusions respecting "the permitted birth of evil men whose destiny is hell." This sounds as if our correspondent believes that some men are from birth destined to hell, nor is this impression lessened by the following statements: "Had they died in infancy, their lot would have been heaven." "In some instances that personal [spiritual] progress may need to be sacrificed in behalf of the whole forward movement." "The individual good, both natural and spiritual, is subordinated to the good of the whole." "Because of the service which they may render to others, some children are suffered to grow up to populate the hells."

     It would seem that conclusions such as these would but need to be stated in order to be seen as cruel falsities, in no wise different from the ancient doctrine of Predestination, that "fiery flying serpent" which by no means has ceased to infest even members of the New Church. It is bound to assail whenever we reason concerning the Divine Providence from outer appearances instead of internal and universal principles, and the only safety for a Newchurchman is therefore to look steadfastly to the "Tree of Life" in the midst of our city, refusing to eat of that other tree which stands for self-intelligence.

703

     The central truth upon which we must fix our mind in the consideration of these hidden problems of the Divine Providence is the Doctrine of Freedom.

     "The Lord could lead man into good ends by omnipotent force, but this would be to take away his life, and therefore the Divine law is inviolable, that man shall be in freedom, and that good and truth shall be implanted in his freedom, for what is received in a compulsory state does not remain." (A. C. 5854) "In order for man to be saved he must be in freedom, and in freedom be withdrawn from evil and led to good." (A. C. 5982.) "The Lord guards the two faculties of freedom and reason in man unimpaired and sacred, in all the progressions of His Divine Providence. The reasons are that without these two faculties man would not have understanding and will, and so would not be a man; and also that without these two faculties man could not be conjoined with the Lord, and thus could not be reformed and regenerated; and, further, that without these two faculties man would not have immortality and eternal life," (D. P. 96), and "therefore the Lord guards the freedom in man, as man guards the apple of his eye." (D. P. 97) "It is a sacred law of the Divine Providence that internal freedom should not have the LEAST violence done to it, for through this the Lord enters into man, even into the hell where he is, and through if He leads him while there, and, if he is willing to follow, leads him out thence and introduces him into Heaven, more and more closely to Himself." (A. E. 1155.)

     The one supreme care of the Divine Providence is therefore to preserve inviolate that human freedom of choice between good and evil, without which the salvation universally provided for every man cannot be secured. It is known that all children, who die as such, are saved and become angels in heaven. Their salvation is accomplished in freedom, like the salvation of every other human being, for the law of Freedom is universal, applicable to every single unit without any exceptions. Angelic environments and education are contributory causes, but inmostly the freedom of choice remains with the child, for otherwise he would not be an image and likeness of God, but a slave.

     In all the changes and vicissitudes of life the Divine Providence has but one end in view: the salvation of the individual in freedom according to reason. Thus also in the supreme change in life, which is called death.

704

If a person dies in childhood it is evident that the supreme end is to preserve inviolate that freedom which the Lord foresees could not be preserved by any other means. And if he is permitted to grow to adult age on earth it is because the Lord foresees that the inmost freedom of that individual will be preserved long enough to make his final choice between good and evil, and thus with each and every one the responsibility for his final lot depends in the supreme instant upon his own decision alone. Any other conclusion leads inevitably to the idea of predestination, which is a cruel scandal against the Justice and Mercy of the Lord.

Our correspondent seems to forget that the "good of the whole" consists of the good of each individual, and that any evil that happens to an individual is permitted, not provided, by the Lord. Any such evil, therefore, interferes with the common good, even as it interferes with the stream of Providence. If afterwards this evil is over-ruled by Providence so as to serve an ultimate good, it means that this same good would have been provided directly if it had not been for the interference of evil men and spirits.

It is because of this interference of evil that perfect freedom cannot be provided in natural things. But freedom always increases as we ascend towards interior things, and as to the inmost things, upon which eternal salvation depends, freedom is most complete because nearest to Him who is Freedom itself. As to natural things individuals may have to suffer and die for the common good, but the God of Love never required the eternal salvation of a single soul as a sacrifice upon the altar of any "forward movement."-EDITOR.

705

Church News 1912

Church News Editor 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. On Tuesday, Oct. 1st, the lectures of the Theological School began. Seven of the eight students of last year are again enrolled.

     On Friday, October 4th, the weekly supper and doctrinal classes were resumed. Large numbers have been present at the two classes held so far, which augurs for a very successful year in this respect.

     Mr. Synnestvedt left us this month for Denver, where he expects to remain for about a month with Mrs. Synnestvedt, who is now living there, striving to regain her health. Mr. and Mrs. Synnestvedt have lately suffered the loss of their little son, Johnny, from brain fever. The whole of Bryn Athyn had been watching the little fellow's battle for life, powerless to help, yet hoping against hope to the last.

     On Sunday, Oct. 6th, one hundred and twenty-four persons partook of the Holy Supper, which was administered by Bishop Pendleton. We will not have the pleasure of hearing the Bishop preach again very soon, as he has left Bryn Athyn in order to attend the Pittsburgh District Assembly and to officiate at the ordination of the Rev. N. D. Pendleton into the third degree of the priesthood. The Bishop's return is not expected until the first of November.

     We have heard of late several interesting sermons, notable among which were sermons by the Rev. Messrs. Iungerich and Odhner.

     Mr. Pitcairn gave us, on Sept. 20th, a very interesting account of his European tour, telling much news of the New Church from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Holland, Belgium, France and England.

     Among the pupils in the Normal School, this year, we have two students from abroad, Miss May Waters, who for several years has been the assistant of Mr. Czerny in the London school, and Miss Sophie Nordenskold, of Stockholm.

706

     ABINGTON, MASS. The pastor of the circle has been away during the months of July, August and September, visiting relatives in his old home in northwestern Quebec and carrying on an active missionary campaign there. While Mr. Harris was away the pulpit here was filled by Candidate L. W. T. David, who was sent from Bryn Athyn by the Extension Committee, so that the worship and Sunday School might be continued through the summer. Friday Suppers, followed usually by dancing, were held regularly every fortnight. Besides these there was a lawn party on the Fourth of July. Mr. Richard Price, of Lynn, was an occasional visitor during the summer. Master Francis Frost, of Bryn Athyn, was in Abington in July, and Miss Helen Colley, also of Bryn Athyn, was the guest of Miss Bessie Harris for a week in September. Mr. David's work closed on Sept. 22d, and he left the next day to resume his studies in the Theological School. Our pastor has now returned, bringing with him an interesting report of his summer's work in the north land. G. M. L.

     PITTSBURGH, PA. We wrote in our last letter words to the effect that we expected our church life to be greatly stimulated now that we have a building to house all our uses. This time we write to say that our expectations are beginning to materialize. In the past we have been crowded for room and were compelled to slight many uses to further those of a higher order. Now we are free to figuratively "do as we please" and to enjoy ourselves to our hearts' content in whatever pleasures appeal to us most, be they spiritual' or natural.

     Our first supper or housewarming was held Friday evening, October 4. It was more in the nature of a banquet judging from the feast of oratory and other good things to which we were treated. These suppers are to be held every month.

     Doctrinal classes have been started again and are held every Friday evening. Children's services are held Sundays before the regular church services.

707

     The Ladies' Society held their first fall meeting in September. This organization meets once a month in the homes of the members. It is not merely a social affair, but is organized to promote the general welfare of the Church and its uses in many ways. Mrs. S. S. Lindsay is president, Mrs. N. D. Pendleton, secretary, and Mrs. D. E. Horigan, treasurer.

     The Philosophy Club held its annual meeting October 3 and elected as officers Mr. D. E. Horigan, president; Mr. Julian Kendig, vice-president, and Mr. A. J. Trautman, secretary-treasurer. Although it provides social life for the men, the main object of the club is the study of Swedenborg's philosophic and scientific works. Meetings are held twice a month at the homes of the different members. B. P. O. E.

     BERLIN, ONT. The weekly doctrinal classes have been resumed: the general class on Friday evening, after the society supper, and the young people's class on Tuesday evening. The attendance and interest promises well for the coming season.

     On October 8th the wedding of two of our young people, Mr. Calvin Peppier and Miss Katherine Steen, took place in the chapel, which was tastefully and beautifully decorated for the occasion. A wedding supper in the school room followed, at which one hundred and twenty-five persons were present. As usual there were toasts. The first was to the church. The pastor then made an address on conjugial love, and led up to the teaching that "none others come into this love, and are able to be in it, but those who approach the Lord, and love the truths of the church and do its goods." (C. L. 70.) This led to two toasts, one to looking to the Lord for conjugial love, responded to by Dr. Schnarr; the other to loving the truths and doing the goods of the Church for the sake of that love, responded to by Mr. T. S. Kuhl. Then came a toast to "The Happy Couple," in which all took part heartily indeed, and another to "The Parents." Other toasts followed, and also the reading of a telegram from the eight Berlin girls in the Bryn Athyn school. The supper over, dancing was the order of the evening until the couple departed for their home, taking with them the good wishes of all. W.

708

     The work was commenced with a parlor meeting held in Chicago on the 16th of June.

     During the absence of the Rev. W. B. Caldwell in Bryn Athyn I occupied his pulpit in Glenview, preaching on the 23d and 30th of June.

     On July 7th I conducted the regular parlor meeting of Dr. C. V. Urbom's circle in Rockford, Ill. Although I had been requested by the leader to preach for them, neither he nor any of those whom he controls attended, consequently there were only seven at the meeting.

     On the four following Sundays I rented a hall, giving public lectures in Swedish to audiences of from seven to nineteen. During the forenoon of these days I held a class in religious instruction with the children of Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton.

     Leaving Rockford I set out on an extended trip through Wisconsin and Minnesota. I called first on Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ahlstrom in Beloit, Wis. From Beloit I went to Arpin, Wis., to call on Mr. A. Bergsten, to whom I had sold books and corresponded with for some time. With him I spent three days in conversation on matters of the Church and in giving religious instruction to his son. Mr. Bergsten is an intelligent receiver and a great reader of the Doctrines.

     Next I visited Ogema, Wis., where my deaf and dumb friend, Mr. E. F. Johnson, lives. As soon as he learned of my coming he arranged with the school authorities for the use of the school house for public meetings. On Aug. 11th two meetings were held in the school house, one in English and the other in Swedish. The small attendance (thirty-five hearers in all) was rather discouraging to Mr. Johnson, but I informed him that people as a rule are not eager to learn the doctrines of the New Church, and that numerically considered the meeting was a success.

     My next stop was at Iron River, Wis., where I spent one day at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mollenhoff. I called also on Mrs. A. Johnson, the wife of a prominent business man of the town.

     From Iron River I took the train to Duluth, Minn., where I bearded a steamer for Lutzen, in the same State, only thirty-five miles from the Canadian border.

709

Here I stayed two Sundays, the 18th and 25th of August, as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Nelson. Mr. Nelson opened his hall for meetings and at his store I posted notices of them. At the first meeting there were twenty-five, some of whom were residents of Mr. Nelson's summer cottages. At Sunday School there were ten persons present and at the meeting in the evening there was an attendance of twenty-three. Among the latter were some Catholics who were very attentive. Every day excepting Saturday I held classes in religious instruction with four children, three of whom were Nelsons.

     The first Sunday in September I held a meeting in Duluth. It was conducted in Swedish and was probably the first time that the doctrines of the New Church have been publicly preached in that city. About twenty were present at the meeting.

     From Duluth I went to Lake Nabagomon to visit a family that settled there some twenty-five years ago. Hearing that I was a preacher they were eager that I should preach for them in their church. This I consented to do, telling them, however, that I was not a Baptist, for they were of that denomination. A meeting in their church was announced for the following evening, and fully thirty gathered to hear the Ten Commandments explained and what they should be to one who professes Christianity. After the meeting I told my friend of my church, and of course nothing either true or good had they heard about Swedenborg or his followers.

     From this place I went directly to Minneapolis to attend the "first Swedish-American New Church Congress held in America." The invitation to this congress was very broad as well as high sounding. I wrote the Rev. Axel Lundeberg that I would like to come, but as I received no answer it was clear to me that my presence was not desired. However, being so near, I went anyway and attended the main session of the "congress," held in Viking Hall. The less said about this meeting the better! To my astonishment I find that Mr. Lundeberg has published in his paper, "NYTT LIF," a glowing account of the great and unexpected things accomplished at this meeting.

710

     From Minneapolis I returned to my home in Chicago and on the 22d of September again preached in Glenview, Ill. JOHN HEADSTEN.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     AUSTRALIA. From the NINETEENTH OF JUNE SOUVENIR we learn that the society in Sydney, of which Mr. Richard Morse is the leader, is steadily maintaining its work.

     "Services have been held regularly each Sunday as hitherto. Owing to the exorbitant rents which were demanded of the tenants of the Queen's Hall, services at that address were discontinued on the last Sunday in November. All meetings are now held at 12 Botany Road, Alexandria.

     Gradually we seem to have come into more orderly states of worship. The Sunday evening services are more replete with the Word of the Lord. Chants from the Word have replaced the hymns heretofore used, with the exception of one after the sermon. With very few exceptions the sermons are by ministers of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, owing to their affirmative and highly spiritual quality. Among them were the seven on the sons of Jacob, by the Rev. C. Th. Odhner, which were given in consecutive order, thereby enabling their rare value to be better appreciated.

     The 10th vol. of the ARCANA COELESTIA now occupies the Sunday reading meetings, the 9th vol. having been finished early in the year. The Wednesday meetings completed the reading of TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, and, next month, will finish HEAVEN AND HELL, after which the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM will be taken up, being followed by THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE.

     By the purchase of NEW CHURCR LIFE, from 1881 to 1899, the literature of the Church has been greatly enriched. Excepting ten copies, the volumes are now complete to date. For nearly 31 years the LIFE has kept its stormy course upon the seas of falsity within the organized New Church, and remains today the one periodical of the Church in which her Doctrines are promulgated as the Lord's Word at His Second Coming; and, consequently, it is notable for a vigor, and a clearness of vision born of a genuine love for and unflinching fidelity to the truth.

711

It is to be greatly regretted that the many and deeply interesting New Church stories which run through the pages of the early volumes have not been issued in book form, as was done in the case of THE WEDDING GARMENT.

     Responding to the kind invitation of Mr. and Mrs. H. S. Jones services were held at their home in Lithgow (95 miles from Sydney) on Sunday and Monday, Dec. 24-5. Bishop Pendleton's sermon on 'The Great Love' was read on Sunday morning. Nine persons were present. In the evening a reading meeting was held, the book being the 9th vol. of the ARCANA COELESTIA. On Christmas morning at 11 o'clock an appropriate service was held. On the evening of Boxing day a small number met for doctrinal reading at the home of Mrs. Naseby, whose husband had passed quietly and painlessly from this world on Sept. 19th last. The reading was from HEAVEN AND HELL, the subject being the garments and homes of the angels.

     The 19th of June celebration was held on that date, commencing at 6:45 As an introduction to the supper a portion of the ARCANA COELESTIA, 7996, on feasts in ancient times, was read. This interesting number showed how, by feasts (which then were made within the Church), the minds and bodies of these ancient peoples 'were nourished unanimously and correspondently,' whereby they had 'health and long life,' 'intelligence and wisdom,' and also 'communication with angels.'

     The subsequent service, which partook more of the nature of worship, commenced with the chanting of Psalm 133, and the repeating of the Lord's Prayer. A sermon by Bishop Pendleton on 'The Slow Growth of the New Church,' from NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1899, was read. The readings afterwards given by several all showed remarkable appreciation of the great Event celebrated, and showed, also, the good effect of constant study of the Truth of the New Revelation."

712

Special Notices 1912

Special Notices Editor 1912

     Announcements.

     The Ontario Assembly of the General Church will be held at the Carmel Church, Berlin, Ontario, December 30th to January 1st, inclusive, opening with a banquet at 7 P. M., December 30th.

     Members and friends who desire to attend will please notify Mr. Harold Kuhl, 285 King street, West, Berlin, Ontario, Canada, who will provide for their entertainment.
     E. R. CRONLUND,
          Secretary.
PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ASSEMBLY 1912

PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ASSEMBLY HOMER SYNNESTVEDT 1912

     The Seventh Annual Meeting of the Philadelphia District Assembly will be held at Bryn Athyn on Friday and Saturday evening, the 29th and 30th of November. The Supper on Friday will begin at 6:30 P. M. The Bishop's Address will be read on Saturday evening and the Holy Supper administered on Sunday.

     All members and friends are cordially invited. Entertainment will be provided for visitors if they will kindly send their names to the Rev. Gilbert H. Smith, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
     HOMER SYNNESTVEDT,
          Secretary.
Help Wanted 1912

Help Wanted Mrs. SAMUEL SIMONS 1912

     A helper is needed in a New Church family with three children. No washing. For particulars, address.
     MRS. SAMUEL SIMONS,
          1648 N. 62d St.,
               Philadelphia, Pa.

713

DIVINE GENEALOGIES 1912

DIVINE GENEALOGIES Rev. C. TH. ODHNER 1912

     The genealogies presented in the first chapter of Matthew and in the third chapter of Luke have presented many difficulties to Biblical students. In the New Church it has been a cause of surprise and regret that Swedenborg was not permitted to explain the arcana involved in these lists of names, but we really have no reason to murmur against the Divine Providence in this matter, for if we search diligently we shall find that enough has been revealed in the various parts of the New Revelation to throw at least a general light,-as much as is necessary for us to know,- even upon these enigmatical portions of the New Testament.

     THE USE OF THE GENEALOGIES.

     The general use and importance of these genealogies of Jesus Christ are self-evident. They were absolutely necessary in a revelation addressed to Israelites. To the Jews themselves their carefully preserved family trees were merely a source of aristocratic pride and ecclesiastical arrogance. This vanity, however, could be utilized by the Lord for eternal purposes, not only in order to put on record the successions of goods and truths and the changes of state in the genuine spiritual Church which the Israelitish dispensation represented and prefigured, but also in order to prepare the way, by means of prophecy, for the coming of the Lord.

     Throughout the representative Churches, ever since the great fall of man, it was essential that the advent of a new revelation should be heralded by distinct prophecies in the preceding revelation, for the miraculous fulfillment of such prophecies was necessary as proof, when men could no longer perceive genuine truth in its own rational light.

714

Supreme among these prophecies were hose which foretold the coming of the Messiah as the Savior of the world, and among these Messianic prophecies there was a series of distinct announcements as to the descent of His human nature through a certain race, a certain nation, a certain tribe, and a certain house. It had been prophesied that He would be of the seed of the woman, and of the race of Abraham; of the posterity of Isaac; of the sons of Jacob; of the tribe of Judah; and of the house of David.

     It was strictly enjoined upon the whole Israelitish nation to keep up and preserve their families and family trees, and this in order to represent the Divine care that none of the distinct goods and truths should ever perish from the genuine Church. Hence, if a married man died without offspring, the brother of the deceased was bound to marry the widow; and their offspring, if male, was accounted as the son-not of the actual father,-but of the dead uncle. Hence, also, ii a man died without male offspring, but leaving a daughter only, the husband of that daughter was accounted as of the family of his wife, and her family tree was kept up through him. Such, then, was the care which the Israelitish nation in general bestowed upon their genealogical records, which for ages were preserved in the national archives deposited in the Temple at Jerusalem.

     We may be sure, then, that of all the houses in Israel, the family of David, from which the Messiah was to come, was recorded in all its branches with the most scrupulous care by the priests and scribes in Jerusalem; and it is known that these records were treasured in secret chambers in the Temple, until the city was captured by the Romans after the terrible siege of the year 70 A. D.

     Then, with the Temple, the national archives perished in the flames, and ever since that time no Jew has dared to lay claim to an unbroken descent from David; for though oral traditions may have been handed down from generation to generation, no documentary evidence has been preserved. This fact alone has been pointed out as incontrovertible evidence that the promised Messiah has come, and that He must have come before the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, since no later Messiah could possibly prove his descent from David and thus the fulfillment of prophecy in him.

715

     But in the wonderful Providence of the Lord there is One Person, whose human pedigree from David and Abraham was preserved from destruction, and this not only in one but in two family trees, carefully copied from the archives in Jerusalem some time before the fall of the city. These genealogies do present the proofs of the complete and literal fulfillment of the ancestral prophecies in the one and sole person of Jesus Christ,-proofs which no hostile Jew ever attempted to overthrow during the life of the Savior Himself, nor for centuries afterwards.

     His direct descent from David was a fact accepted without question during His life in the world, and this not only by His friends but also by His enemies and by the populace generally, as is evident from their salutations at His triumphal entry into Jerusalem: "Hosannah to the Son of David." Pharisees and Sadducees alike acknowledged Him as the Son of David, and they hated Him only because He refused to arise in worldly might like a new Alexander, to smite the foreign yoke from off their necks, and establish a universal empire of the Jews.

     But though the Jewish nation as a whole was consumed by this disappointed ambition, there were a few simple-hearted persons who finally grasped His teaching that His Kingdom was not to be of the transitory glory of this world. To them, as Jews, the new revelation was first addressed, and in the new Gospel it was first of all necessary to convince them that the Christ was, indeed, the promised Messiah, by adducing documentary proofs that in Him all the ancient prophecies were fulfilled. Hence we have the two genealogies in the New Testament. To the hostile Jews the Gospel of Matthew proved that Jesus, as the apparent son of JOSEPH, was also the son of David. To the friendly Jews the Gospel of Luke proved that He was truly the son of MARY, and thus also the son of David. And to all people, of all ages, the two genealogies stand as two independent witnesses, each testifying that all the prophecies of the Old Testament have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ,-representatively through the table in Matthew and actually through the table in Luke.

716

     APPARENT DISCREPANCIES IN THE TWO LISTS.

     Against this bulwark of faith, skeptics of every description,-Pagans, Jews, and Christians,-have turned their battering rams by pointing out that in a number of particulars the two genealogies agree neither with one another nor with the original family trees in the Old Testament. We will not weary our hearers by recounting all the particular objections that have been raised against the authenticity of these genealogies, for they have been very satisfactorily answered by affirmative scholars, but we will mention only a few of the more salient criticisms.

     First and foremost comes the fact that MATTHEW derives the ancestry of Joseph from Solomon, while LUKE derives it from Nathan, the elder brother of Solomon. The two separate lines descending from these two brothers meet again in Salathiel and his son Zorobabel, but MATTHEW mentions Jechonias as the father of Salathiel, while LUKE speaks of Salathiel as being "of Neri." Again, Matthew gives a line of descendants from Zerobabel ending in a Jacob as the father of Joseph, while Luke gives a totally different list of names from Zorobabel down to Joseph, who, moreover, is there mentioned as being "of Eli," as his immediate ancestor. Both lists, finally, end in Joseph, who, in both, is most distinctly disclaimed as the actual father of Jesus, and the prophecies, therefore,-according to the critics,-have not been fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.

     To these various objections the affirmative scholars have replied 1) that the authenticity of the genealogies were never called into question at the time when the documentary evidence still existed in Jerusalem, and when persons still lived who from their own knowledge might have disputed the testimony of the evangelists. 2) That the genealogical lists were manifestly copied from documents in the Temple archives and this with such care and honesty as to include even the apparent discrepancies. 3) That the critics have taken into account neither the Divine inspiration of the Gospels, nor the common sense of the evangelists, who would not and could not have presented two different paternal ancestries for the same individual descendant-Joseph. 4) That these same critics have paid no attention to the manners and customs of the Jews in tracing their family trees.

717

     It is an undisputed fact, known not only from the Old Testament, but also from Josephus and the Talmud, that the Jews under no circumstances would permit the name of a woman to appear in their genealogies as transmitting a line of descent. If a family became extinct in a woman as the only surviving member, her name was not allowed to appear, but if she married and had male offspring, her husband's name was inserted as the head of the now surviving family, and this evidently for the original correspondential reason that goods or affections are not to appear openly as such, but must always be presented under the external form of their own corresponding truths.

     If, with this fact in view, we examine the genealogy in Luke, we find that the words "begat" or "son of" are not used there, but we read instead that one person was "of" another,-as for instance that "Joseph was of Heli," and Heli "of Matthat," and so on, until we come to Adam, "who was of God." In King James' Version, indeed, we find the words "the son of" throughout the list, but the words "the son" are printed in italics to show that they do not occur in the original Greek. This table, therefore, does not present the paternal ancestry either of Joseph or of Jesus, but in reality gives the paternal ancestry of MARY, who was the daughter of Heli and betrothed wife of Joseph, and Joseph, therefore, is spoken of as being "of Heli." And by the same well established Jewish custom, Salathiel, though begotten of Jeconias, is spoken of as being "of Neri," because he married the daughter of Neri. Thus in Zorobabel,-the offspring of Salzthiel and Neri's daughter,-the lines of Solomon and Nathan coalesce; Joseph and Mary, therefore, are of the same tribe and family; both of them are descendants of David in the line of Solomon, while in both of them, at the same time, there runs the blood of Nathan, the son of David. Zorobabel, again, had two sons, of whom Abiud is the ancestor of Joseph, and Rhesa the ancestor of Mary. The genealogies in Matthew and in Luke are both of them integral parts of one perfect whole, and each of them is essential to the explanation of the other.

     In the Jewish traditions, moreover, Mary is called "Bath, Eli," the daughter of Eli,-a name which in Greek appears as "Heli,"-while the early Christian writers state that she was the daughter of a man named "Joakim" and his wife "Anna," (St. Anne).

718

While this might seem to contradict the Jewish tradition, it does so only in appearance; in reality it confirms it, for the Jews did not like to pronounce any part of the name "Jehovah," but used, instead, the word "Adonai," lord, or "El," God. Thus the name "Jehoiakim" or loakim became interchangeable with "Eliakim," and Eliakim was shortened into "Eli," or "Hell" as the Greeks pronounced it.

Another objection that has often been raised is the fact the genealogy in Matthew omits a number of names or generations which are mentioned in Luke and in corresponding tables of the Old Testament. This, however, is again in keeping with the Hebrew custom, for even in the Old Testament we find such omissions, the grandson or great-grandson sometimes being spoken of as the immediate son of a certain individual, and this evidently for representative reasons, the series of things being different in various connections, (compare Ruth 4 and 1 Chron. 1, 2, 3;and Gen. 19:5, where Laban is called the son of Nahor, when, in fact, he was the son of Bethuel, who was the son of Nahor). In Matthew it was necessary to bring forth emphatically the significative numbers of three times fourteen generations, and this for an important spiritual and Divine reason, but no violence is done to historic truth when the well known genealogical descent still remains unbroken.

Thus all the supposed discrepancies have been fully explained, from an historical and philological point of view, by a long series of eminent Christian scholars and interpreters, but there remains one single name which even the affirmative critics agree upon as an error or interpolation. This occurs in the genealogy in Luke, (3:36), where CAINAN is mentioned as being "of Arphaxad, who was of Sem, who was of Noe." Now, in the Old Testament texts,-both the Hebrew and the Samaritan codices,-Salah is mentioned as the son of Arphaxad, without any "Cainan" between him and Eber, and the name Cainan occurs there only in the list of the ten patriarchs, Cainan being the son of Enosh, the son of Seth and grandson of Adam. The name Cainan, as a son of Arphaxad, is found only in some late MS. copies of the Septuagint,-the ancient Graeco-Egyptian version of the Old Testament,-and it is, therefore, supposed that Luke copied his genealogy from some document in the Temple archives, which, again, was copied from the Septuagint.

719

     However this may be, it is of deep interest to a Newchurchman to note that the presence of the name Cainan in this series by no means interferes with the sequence of the internal historical sense, but rather adds to its force. For Noah stands for the Ancient Church in its early dawn; his son, Shem, stands for this same Church in its full spiritual glory, while Arphaxad, the third son of Shem, represents the decline of the Ancient Church, "when there was scarcely any charity left," (A. C. 1337), because faith alone and the science of the memory had begun to usurp the chief place. This state is very fitly expressed by the name Cainan as "of Arphaxad," for by Cainan, as by Cain, is signified a state of faith alone. It is not said in Luke that Cainan was the sort of Arphaxad, but that he was of Arphaxad," and it is certain that a state of faith alone, a Cainan state, at this time came upon the Ancient Church, which called for a reformation of that Church, a Second Ancient Church, represented by Eber. Thus the one remaining seeming discrepancy in the table of Luke is seen to be no error at all, when viewed from the internal sense.

     THE TWO GENEALOGIES TREAT OF DIFFERENT SUBJECTS.

     After this somewhat lengthy but necessary introduction of a scientific nature, we may now turn our attention to the spiritual contents of the two genealogies. On this subject no distinct teaching has been found in the Writings, and many different theories have been presented by various expositors in the New Church, but the most luminous suggestion that we have seen is the one set forth by Dr. Gabriel A. Beyer, the intimate friend of Swedenborg, who, next to the revelator himself, was the first actual Newchurchman in this world.

     In a letter to Augustus Nordenskold, dated August 23d, 1776, Dr. Beyer writes: "The history contained in the Gospels is of the same kind as the true Biblical history; that is, it is not for the sake of history related in the natural sense, but for the sake of the Lord and His kingdom, which in a continuous series is treated of in the spiritual sense; different in one Gospel from what it is in another; for the series of spiritual things are manifold and innumerable, as appears among other things from the difference in the genealogical records in many places, and also in the genealogical accounts furnished by Matthew and Luke; for by the names in the former is described the Lord's assumption of the human and His birth in the world; and in the latter His second birth, or the glorification of His human." (Doc. II. p. 428.)

720

     It may well be that Dr. Beyer possessed this information, which he sets forth in perfect confidence, from some personal conversation with the revelator himself. At any rate we can bear testimony that a careful study brings nothing but confirmation of the view presented by him.

     The genealogy in Matthew is introduced by these words, as found in our common English Bible: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ," and some New Church interpreters, neglecting the Greek original, immediately explained the word "generation" as meaning the re-generation, i. e., the Glorification, of the Lord in His human. But while it is true that the Word everywhere in a universal sense treats of the Glorification of the Lord, the genealogy in Matthew does not specifically deal with this subject, for in such a case the subsequent names in the descending genealogy would represent states more and more fully glorified, until Joseph, next to Jesus Himself, would represent the human almost fully glorified. But, as will be seen, the lowly carpenter did not represent any such exalted state, but he really represents the last remnant of truth in a devastated church, and the mistaken interpretation has arisen from translating the word "genesis" by "generation," when it should be rendered "origin," which will set our feet on the correct path of interpretation.

     Other interpreters in the New Church have represented the genealogy in Matthew as describing the hereditary descent of the infirm human of the Lord, derived through Mary, while the genealogy in Luke describes the ascent of the human that was being glorified. The latter part of this suggestion is undoubtedly correct, but it is manifestly wrong to interpret the table in Matthew as representing the hereditary descent of the infirm human, for this table describes the ancestry of Joseph, not of Mary through whom the Lord assumed the maternal human, in which alone resided the burden of human infirmity.

721

     It is clearly evident that the genealogy in Matthew, being a descending one and manifestly treating of the incarnation of the ford, represents the descent of the Lord, as the Word, through the heavens, into the body of the virgin, while the ascending genealogy in Luke,-commencing, as it does, with the words: "And Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years of age,"-deals more specifically with the story of the implantation of remains in the human of the Lord, preparatory to His full glorification and His work of Redemption. For we are taught in A. C. 5335 that the number "thirty" in the Word "signifies something of combat, and it also signifies fullness of remains. The reason why it has this two-fold signification, is that it is composed of the numbers five and six multiplied together, and also of three and ten so multiplied." Now, both five and ten signify remains, while six signifies combat, and three what is full. And the teaching continues: "From all this it is now plain why the Lord did not manifest Himself until He was thirty years of age, (Luke 3:23), for He was then in the fulness of remains. But the remains which the Lord had, He Himself had procured for Himself, and they were of the Divine; and by means of them He united the human essence to the Divine essence, and made the human essence Divine. From Him, then, it is that 'thirty years' signify a full state as to remains."

     Then follows, in Luke, an ascending series of names, each of which represents remains of a more and more internal quality, until we come to Adam, "who was of God," that is, celestial remains from the Divine itself. But as this table treats of a more recondite subject than can possibly be explained to our natural comprehension, we may now turn our attention to the somewhat more explicable genealogy in Matthew.

     THE DESCENT OF THE WORD.

     This table, forming as it does the very introduction to a new Divine Revelation, presents, in the form of a genealogy from Abraham to Joseph, a brief summary of the entire history of the Israelitish Church, and thus of the whole Old Testament, just as the opening chapters of the Hebrew revelation present in a summary the history of the Most Ancient Church and the Ancient Church.

722

Thus the whole Word of the Lord is one connected and continuous unit in the letter as well as in the internal sense.

     But the special subject in the genealogy in Matthew is the descent of the Divine Truth,-the Divine Human from eternity, the Word which was in the beginning with God, and which was God,-through the heavens of the Ancient Churches, into the Church on earth, as there represented by the household of Joseph and Mary. This descent is described, as to its universals, in the opening verse of the chapter: "The book of the origin of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." JESUS CHRIST is the Divine Natural, while DAVID represents the Divine Spiritual, and ABRAHAM the Divine Celestial,-showing that the Divine in the human of the Lord at His birth, was the Divine Spiritual from the Divine Celestial, the Divine Truth of the Divine Good.

     Then follows the Divine genealogy, divided into three distinct series of names, each series including fourteen generations. The number seven signifies what is holy and complete, (A. C. 7842); an entire period from beginning to end, (8400); and thus fourteen, being twice seven, signifies what is holy and complete, both as to good and as to truth.

     The first series, from Abraham to David, represents the whole extent of what is celestial even to the spiritual, and stands for the whole celestial Heaven, from the Most Ancient Church, in and through which the Divine Truth in its descent assumed the form of the Divine Celestial,-the Divine Word accommodated to celestial angels in all fulness and holiness, both as to good and as to truth.

     The second series,-beginning with David and ending in Jechonias who was carried away into the Babylonian captivity, thus including the whole royal line,-represents the whole extent of what is spiritual even to the natural, and stands for the whole spiritual heaven from the Ancient Church, in and through which the Divine Celestial Word in its further descent assumed the form of the Divine Spiritual,-the Divine Truth accommodated to spiritual angels in all fulness and holiness, both as to good and as to truth.

723

     The third series,-commencing with Salathiel, the royal prince who returned from Babylon and re-established the worship of Jehovah in Jerusalem, and ending in Joseph, the betrothed husband of Mary,-represents the whole extent of what is natural from the celestial and the spiritual, thus the whole natural heaven as then constituted from the simple good of the Israelitish Church, in and through which the Divine Word celestial and spiritual in its still further descent assumed the form of the Divine Natural,-natural in potency but not yet in actuality, until finally ultimated in the human assumed from the virgin.

     For though there was not as yet any natural heaven as a whole, actually distinct from the ancient heavens, there was a natural heaven in potency,-a natural heaven associated with the celestial and spiritual heavens, composed of simple good spirits from the Ancient Churches as well as from the Israelitish Church. The Divine Word accommodated to them, was ultimated on earth in the Old Testament, but it was still a Divine Natural in potency only, until fully incarnated in the actual human assumed by birth in the world. (Read D. L. W. 233 and NINE QUESTIONS 4.)

     In each of the series spoken of above, the internal sense treats not only of the heavenly reception of the Divine Truth thus descending into and through the heavens, but also at the same time of the reception and state of the Divine Truth in the Church on earth. In the time of the Hebrew patriarchs and during the government of the Judges, the Israelitish Church represented the celestial church; during the reign of the kings it represented the spiritual Church which gradually declined until a judgment fell upon it in the Babylonish captivity. After the return from Babylon there was an external reformation, but as to its internal quality the Church was now altogether natural (though with remnants of both celestial and spiritual qualities). But the ancient spirit of prophecy had died out. Pharisees and Sadducees had made the Word of God of none effect by their traditions, and the nation as a whole had become a generation of hypocrites and vipers. Nevertheless there still lingered among them a remnant of people in simple good and simple truth, a steadily declining number of remains, among whom the infant Church of Christ could find a first foothold. It is this remnant as a whole that is represented by Joseph and Mary.

724

     THE BIRTH OF THE WORD.

     JOSEPH, the carpenter of Nazareth, the descendant of patriarchs and kings, represents the understanding of truth among these simple people. Once honored and cherished by the wise and the mighty in the Church, the Divine Truth of the Word had now been rejected by them, to find a last refuge among the most humble and lowly. This last Joseph, on account of his name, represents in general' the same as that first Joseph who also was "the son of Jacob," that is, the celestial of the spiritual, the spiritual man who by means of truth has reached the good of life,- for this state can be attained by the lowly, as well as by the great. And from his occupation as a carpenter the husband of Mary again corresponds to that same "good of truth," that is, one who by the tools of truth fashions natural good for actual use,-thus one "who is in the good of life according to the truth of doctrine." (A. E. 448:11; ATH. CREED, 98.)

     MARY, the virgin, betrothed but not yet married to Joseph, represents the affection of truth with the remnant of simple good in the devastated Church. This affection is the purest and holiest thing, the inmost spark of life, with the man of the spiritual genius, and it is this affection alone that can perceive and conceive the seed of Divine Truth in a new Divine Revelation.

     "Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise: When as His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit." For Jesus Christ is always born "in this wise," whenever in His Divine Truth He comes to man. Before the understanding and the affection of truth can "come together," there must be a perception of the new Divine Truth within the quick womb of the affection,-a flash of light meeting the hunger for light, an inmost and instantaneous intuition that this doctrine is, indeed, of the Holy Spirit of Divine Truth. But at first it is only a perception, not as yet a full and rational conviction.

     "Then Joseph, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily." For the poor human understanding, obscured by the prejudices of the old religion, at first examines the new idea with distrust.

725

He finds that it is certainly not of his own begetting, but whether it is of God or not or from some spurious human notion, remains to be seen. Still, "being a just man," possessing the remnant of that fairness, which carefully weighs all things, the understanding, though doubtful, is not willing to reject the affection utterly, as an evil affection, until further reflection.

"But while he thought on these things, behold, art angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream." And this "angel" was none other than the PROPHECY distinctly foretold in the former revelation: "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name IMMANUEL, which being interpreted, is, God with us." For it is the fulfillment of prophecy, the complete agreement of the new truth with the old, of the internal sense with the letter of the Word, that brings conviction to the doubtful mind. It is then seen that the affection which had perceived the new truth, must be a virgin affection, since no human mind could of its own power produce a new system of doctrine so completely, so miraculously, fulfilling and corresponding with every teaching and promise in the Word of God. The more it is examined, the more super-human it is seen to be, until the mind, awakened out of its sleep, realizes that the new Revelation is, indeed: Immanuel, God with us, the Lord Himself in His Advent, come to save His people from their sins.

It is seen now that the Heavenly Doctrine, begotten of the Holy Spirit of Divine Truth, and received by the pure affection of Truth, inmostly hears but one name-JESUS-which, being interpreted is "Jehovah shall save." Jesus is none other than Jehovah Himself, (Jeho-shua), come to save His people. And the Heavenly Doctrine is none other than Jesus Himself, Jehovah Himself as God Man, come again to remain with His people as their Savior to all eternity. This His Second Coming is the supreme fulfillment of all prophecy, the crowning Revelation of God to man, for even as the Old Testament, as a whole and in every word, is nothing but a prophecy of the coming of the Lord in the flesh, so the New Testament, as a whole and in every teaching, is nothing but a prophecy of the Lord in His Second Advent in the Writings of the New Church. If we bear this one and central truth in mind, we shall possess the key to the universal internal sense of the whole Word of the Lord. Amen.

726

IN THY IMAGE 1912

IN THY IMAGE ANGELUS SILESIUS* 1912

God as a child is born
In stillest, darkest night,
Whereby He has restored
What's lost by Adam's plight.

Thus in a creature dark,
Here in thy soul so still,
God is becoming man
And that will mend all ill.

Golgotha's cross from sin
Can never ransom thee,
Unless in thine own soul
It should erected be.

I say it speeds thee not
That Christ rose from the grave,
So long as thou art still
To death and sill a slave.

The resurrection is
In spirit done in thee,
As soon as thou from all
Thy sins hast set thee free.

Thou must above thee rise
All else leave to God's grace:
Then Christ's ascension will
Within thy soul take place.

* A German poet and mystic philosopher, 1624-1677. Acknowledgments to THE
OPEN COURT.

727

ART OF PREACHING FROM A LAYMAN'S STANDPOINT 1912

ART OF PREACHING FROM A LAYMAN'S STANDPOINT J. B. S. KING 1912

     Preaching is the act of publicly proclaiming or publishing the Gospel or of delivering a public discourse upon a religious subject, usually upon a text of Scripture. The art of preaching is the art of clearly and forcibly delivering such a message to the people, and is, therefore, an important branch of the more general art of public speaking.

     In order to be effective it is most important that the preacher should be heard and heard easily. If it is a constant effort to catch the words or the sentence, if the hearer must be on a strain or be uneasy lest he miss the words, the full effect of the sermon is lost. The mind instead of being in an easy, receptive state, is engaged in an effort to catch the word, and the attention under these circumstances is soon relaxed, and either indifference or somnolence ensues. In every audience there is an uncertain percentage of people whose acuteness of hearing falls below the average. In every congregation there is some amount of distracting, slight noises that interfere with attention. The words of the preacher should be loud enough to overcome these drawbacks and to enter easily and without effort into the ears of the congregation.

     Audibility is greatly favored by distinct articulation. Of two voices equally loud, that one will be heard the most easily that has the best articulation. If the consonants are distinctly pronounced,-neither exaggerated nor slurred,-the vowels will pretty generally take care of themselves.

     The following incident in the experience of the writer strikingly illustrates this fact: in a large hall capable of holding two thousand people, a young lady read a paper. She had not been trained; she spoke without apparent effort; every word that she said was heard easily by those in the back seats. Immediately after, a trained elocutionist spoke in a much louder voice and yet scarcely one word in twenty could be heard in the back seats.

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Why was this? It was simply that the young lady was gifted with a peculiarly clear and distinct articulation, while the elocutionist had been improperly trained to bring out his vowels strongly as in singing, without paying much attention to the consonants; his loud mouthings lacked articulation, and, therefore, he could not be understood in the same seats where the slight girl's voice was easily intelligible. It was a striking lesson and proved conclusively that one of the greatest drawbacks to easy hearing is a slovenly, indistinct or careless articulation.

     Another indispensable requirement of effective preaching is that the speaker should not be a slave to his manuscript; in other words, in order to attain the highest degree of effectiveness the sermon must be preached and not read. It is universally conceded that a sermon that is spoken or preached, instead of being read, holds the attention more strongly, more deeply interests the audience, and hence is more effective than when read from a manuscript. In medical colleges where the instruction is mainly in the form of didactic lectures, the professors are almost instinctively and unconsciously classified into two groups,-those who read their lectures and those who speak them. Those who read are willingly missed and are held in slight esteem by the students, who universally feel that they might as well stay in their rooms and read the text-books themselves. Somnolent and inattentive or disorderly classes are the lot of those who read their lectures in medical or scientific colleges.

     By reading, the free, spontaneous delivery of the thought is inevitably missed, the direct conversational tone is lost as well as the eye to eye communication of the speaker and audience. The read sermon is also apt to have a too right onward movement and savors of the essay.

     It should be clearly understood that by free preaching in place of reading is not meant extemporaneous preaching. Except with a very few highly gifted individuals, extemporaneous preaching is apt to be a very poor affair, hazy, indefinite and valueless. True preaching requires preparation far more than reading. What we are claiming is that the sermon should be carefully prepared, and written out if necessary, but that it must be preached rather than read. On this point Cardinal Newman says: "While, then, a preacher may find it becoming and advisable to put into writing any important discourse beforehand, he will find it equally a point of propriety and expedience not to read it in the pulpit.

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I am not, of course, denying his right to use a manuscript if he wishes, but he will do well to conceal it so far as he can, unless, which is the most effectual concealment, he prefers mainly, not verbally, to get it by heart." He also remarks later that there is a strong popular testimony to the fact that preaching is not reading and reading is not preaching.

     We have heard it advanced several times against extemporaneous preaching in the New Church that the doctrines of the Church are very definite and precise and full of particulars, and that, therefore, the New Church minister should not indulge in loose extemporaneous preaching as is done in the doctrinally weak and wabbling sermons of the Old Church. With this we agree, but it is not of extemporaneous preaching that we are speaking. What the Church needs is carefully prepared, powerful sermons, definite as may be in doctrine, delivered according to the art of public speech instead of the slavish reading of a manuscript.

     This may be difficult, but difficulty should not be an obstacle to one who loves his use, and, therefore, loves the means by which it is most efficiently performed.

     The application of this is that while the ministers of our beloved General Church are men well read in doctrine, they almost universally fail in the external means, graces and arts by which preaching is rendered of the highest power and effectiveness. Sermons are universally read in our branch of the Church and almost never preached.

730

REV. O. L. BARLER AND THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION 1912

REV. O. L. BARLER AND THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION Various 1912

     The following documents, which sufficiently explain themselves, are published in the interests of New Church History.

     I.

     MR. HAY TO MR. BARLER.

Dear Mr. Barler:
     The Committee of the Council of Ministers with whom you conferred during the recent session at Baltimore and Washington agreed upon the following report, but action was not taken upon it and it was left in the hands of the Committee. It indicates that you need give no further thought to the matter, I believe. It is as follows:

     In view of the fact that our brother, Barer, who is now one of the most aged of our Ministers, in appearing before this Council has given evidence of a state of bodily feebleness, which forbids the further consideration of his case; and in view of the assurance given by him that he will publish no further literature of the character which gave rise to the appointment of this committee; it is recommended that the matter be dropped and the committee discharged.

     As you yourself observed, nothing but cordial feeling of good will for you exists among the members of the Council.

     Personally, I wish to express my pleasure in meeting you, and the hope that you suffered no harm from the long journey at your time of life.
     Sincerely yours,
          H. CLINTON HAY, Secretary,
Boston, Massachusetts, May 23, 1912.

     II.

     MR. BARLER TO MR. HAY.

Dear Mr. Hay:
     Your letter of May 23d, forwarded from Beatrice, Neb., was received a few days ago, and contents noted.

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It is true, as you say, that "nothing but cordial feelings of good will" were extended to me by the ministers of the Council, which I fully appreciated and reciprocated.

     But you speak of "assurances given by him," etc.-referring to me. You must have forgotten, or misunderstood what I said. I, therefore, send you herein a typewritten copy,-an exact copy,-of what I read to the Council, that you may see that I gave no "assurance" such as you mention. I trust that no occasion will arise for further "literature" on this subject, on my part.

     You permitted the MESSENGER to print that I had "committed a serious offence against the peace and harmony of the Church." You will, therefore, see that justice requires that you give to the MESSENGER my reply to the above charge.

     For your personal good wishes I am truly grateful. As ever, I am
     Sincerely your friend,
          O. L. BARLER.
Chicago, Ill., June 3, 1912.

     III.

     MR. BARLER TO THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS.*
     * Read before the Council of Ministers in Baltimore, Md., May 9, 1912.

Dear Brethren:
     On the way to Delhi, I met an hundred men, and they were all my brothers." I quote, as you know, from an old Indian proverb.

     It is to be assumed that "In the Church's widening circle, all are brethren,-friends, indeed,-each one giving and receiving loving help, in time of need."

     Nevertheless,-nevertheless,-I find myself in an awkward position. I am charged with disturbing the peace of the Church,-a thing unthinkable, in view of all the facts.

     After a fellowship of a full third of a century you have found cause, in your judgment, in these last days, to censure me for a single act,-for I have spoken but once. This is not the "manner" of one who would "disturb" the peace and harmony of the Church.

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     You say, in your letter to me, of two years ago:

     "A serious offense has been committed against the peace and harmony of the Church by the publication and circulation of your recent pamphlet, entitled A DECLARATION, BY O. L. BARLER. . . . We regard this act as disloyal to Convention, and entirely inconsistent with your position as a minister of that body."

     I do not see this matter, as here set forth: that I, who have loved the New Church and its doctrines for so long, with a love that grows with growth, and strengthens with the years, should do what you say. A brief response will suffice.

     I offer the following ten propositions for your consideration:

     1st Proposition. The act, for which you censure me, was born of honest convictions. It was an act of conscience. Such acts have no standing in Court or Council. A "majority vote" does not settle a matter of religious conviction like this.

     2nd Proposition. The act for which you condemn me was a wholly charitable act; an act done with good "intent" and honest purpose, as one who reads may plainly see.

     3rd Proposition. The little book printed and distributed, of which you complain, was in the interest of whatsoever things are true and just and good. I wish in my inmost heart there had been no need to do it. I did not want to do it. I waited long for some excuse to desist. And twice it was given up. But some dire "need" would arise, and the thing revived. It had to be; it was, and is, and ever will be. It has been of use.

     4th Proposition. I did do two things. I defended the Doctrines of the Church, and did protest against "organized" hostility towards the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and saw no evil, but good, therein. Sure, such "hostility" has no right to exist. The common law of charity forbids.

     5th Proposition. "Loyalty" to the Heavenly Doctrines was my whole concern,-involving regard for the "Golden Rule" quality of conduct among brethren.

     6th Proposition. The two things done were proper, timely, and of use,-the testimony of many Newchurchmen, inside and outside of Convention's organization, bearing witness.

     7th Proposition. No ill-will weighs between us,-between you ministers and myself,-with rare exception.

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Only two ministers, in all Convention, have treated me "harshly,"-two preachers, and two laymen.

     8th Proposition. Hostility towards brethren is the parent "disturber." Hurt done to Doctrine is the parent "offense." Under the head of these two evil's five specific acts "muster," and fully account for all the bitter strife,-so uncalled for.

(a) Petition to withdraw fraternal relations.
(b) The Kramph Will case.
(c) The Brockton Declaration.
(d) "Academy Doctrine Examined and Condemned."
(e) Persistent Advertising of the Book, in the MESSENGER.

     (These specific acts are here enumerated for record, not for reading in Council of Ministers.)

     10th and Last Proposition. I hereby proffer you all I am, to help you remove all elements that disturb the peace and prosperity of the Church. You must see that I am not the "disturber" of the peace and harmony of the Church.

     11. I have now said all I have to say, in my own defense, and am at your service. What can I do for you?

     12. We have a sane and safe body of Divine Doctrinals from God, "out of Heaven," given for the establishment of the New Church in the world. To establish that Church in ourselves, we must faithfully abide in the Doctrines of that Church.

     13. I had a good letter, a while ago, from a loyal brother in Convention,-an intelligent layman,-which bore on its wings these words: "Convention needs a call' to the study of New Church Doctrines."

     "Sure enough," said I to myself,-talking to myself, as wont to do when alone. And why may I not, helpfully, address you upon this subject?

     14. We do not half appreciate the grand Revelations we have. As a body of New Church people, we little read the Writings of the Church.

     15. Some thirty years ago, the Rev. James Reed pointed out this fact, and commented upon it. He said:

     "There is no longer, in the General Convention, the interest in the Doctrines of the Church that there once was."

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And he lamented the fact, in words not a few.

     16. At the General Meeting in Cincinnati, not long ago, the Rev. Wm. L. Worcester said: "Unless the men and women in the Church will go to the fountain head of Revelation for doctrine, and the things of life, religion will become more and more diluted, until its power is gone."

     17. The same lament extends to the English Conference. In a letter addressed to the Convention, the Conference letter says:

     "'Inadequate education of our young people in the Doctrines of the Church accounts in large part for our failure as an organization. We seem more external, and less loyal to the Doctrines than were our forefathers. We do not study the Doctrines as they did; nor are we guided by them, as they were. We have left our first love."

     18. Some of our ministers seem impatient with the Doctrines. At a meeting of Convention, a little way back, one preacher made this astounding statement: "Old Church ministers seem to have an advantage over us New Church preachers, in that they are not burdened with correspondences, and are thus able to go direct to the letter of the Word."

     He had forgotten the teaching, else had never learned, that "No one is allowed, in the natural world, or in the spiritual world, to investigate the spiritual sense of the Word from the sense of the letter, unless he be wholly in the doctrine of the Divine truth, and in illustration from it." (DE VERBO XXI.)

     19. At the same meeting, another New Church preacher made a kindred speech. He said: "Preaching of late years has been revolutionized,-not, indeed, by the New Church, but by sociology."

     20. And still a third preacher said: "The outside world was forcing upon the New Church an appreciation of the Doctrine of the Gorand Man of Heaven, such as the New Church had not attained for itself."

     21. The Rev. Mr. Taylor voiced the fact that: "We are afraid to preach the distinctive doctrines of the Church." But he frankly admitted: "We have never met with real success, except from the straight-from-the-shoulder preaching."

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     22. Another thing contributes to our weakness: that we are still questioning the Doctrines of the Church: "Are they of God, or man?" This question should have been settled for all who are of New Church families, from infancy, before birth, even. It is a question that should never have entered into our lives.

     23. The Rev. J. B. Spiers said, recently, in the MESSENGER: "The Writings of Swedenborg are Divine Revelations, in the fulfillment of the prophecy of the second Coming of the Lord."

     24. Could we go forth, as one man, in the faith and strength of these words, victory would rest upon our banners. There would be "the shout of a King" with us. The Lord would he King,-"from Him we would not move."

     25. And why should we not be strong? Here is a man, come from God. A man, before whom the Lord manifested Himself, and whom he filled with His spirit, to teach from Him the Doctrines of the New Church, by means of the Word. The Lord spoke through him, effected His Second Coming by means of him. He fitted him from his youth up for his mission, and sent him to this office of Revelator.

     26. He intromitted him into the spiritual world. He granted him to see the heavens and the hells; to speak with spirits and angels, and to be as one with them. Poets see angels in their imaginations. Bounarroti saw them in blocks of marble. Swedenborg saw them truly-in their heavenly homes. He had his abode with them, continuously, for many years. And at the same time, he faithfully performed the duties of his office in this world.

     27. Whenever there was any representation, vision, or speech, he held himself interiorly in it, in reflection upon it, as to what was useful and good from it. He was thus instructed by the Lord alone.

     28. In the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION he is more explicit. He says:

     "From the first day of my call to this office, I have never received anything relating to the Doctrines of the Church from any angel, but from the Lord alone, while reading the Word."' (779.)

     29. That these Revelations are incomparable is affirmed, in these words:

736

     "This (Revelation) surpasses all Revelations that have hitherto been made since the creation of the world." (Inv. 44.)

     "Through these Revelations, communication and conjunction 'between earth and heaven are accomplished."

     What can Revelation do more?

     30. Swedenborg had in him forms, or vessels, to receive what he had of spiritual gifts, and qualifications for his mission. He had what has not been given to any other man. His intellectual faculty was delivered from the bonds of space and time. His sight, hearing, and understanding, were wide open to scenes and sounds and to whatever belongs to the spiritual world.

     31. Swedenborg says, in speaking of certain extraordinary things given him:

     "This has not been granted to any one, as has been granted to me." (Inv. 52.) "It was given me to know the spiritual sense of the Word,-things which have never before come to any one's knowledge; and which could never be known, unless the nature of the things of the spiritual world be made known." (A. 67.)

     32. These Revelations tell us all that we, truly, know of God, and of the spiritual world. They tell us all that we know of man, as a spiritual being. They, especially, tell us all that we know of the state of man after death.

     33. We vastly need the "Heavenly Doctrines," as a light for our feet. "They who read the Word without Doctrine are like those who go in the dark without a lamp." (H. 221.) "Those who read without Doctrine, are in obscurity with respect to all truth. Their mind is vague and uncertain. They are prone to errors, and given to heresies, which are embraced when favor prompts, and reputation is not endangered." (T. 260.)

     34. We have in the letter of the Word of the Lord itself the most eloquent expression and brilliant representation of what the "'Heavenly Doctrines" of the New Jerusalem are:

     35. "And I, John, saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. . . ."

     The Church is here described representatively, as a city, from doctrine, and from life according to doctrine. The Church is described spiritually as an espoused virgin.

737

The one idea is in the other.

     36. "And there came unto me one of the seven angels and spoke with me, saying, Come hither, and I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.

     "And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me that great city, the Holy Jerusalem, descending out of Heaven from God, and her light was like a stone, clear as crystal. And had a wall, great and high; and had twelve gates-three on every side. And every gate a single pearl.

     "The wall had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.

     "And he that spoke with me had a golden reed to measure the city-twelve thousand furlongs. And the city lieth four square. The length of it was as large as the breadth.

     "And the building of the wall was of jasper. And the city was pure gold.

     "And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.

     "And the city had no need of the sun; and no need of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it.

     "And the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it. And the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all, by day; for there shall be no night there.

     "And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie-but they who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life."

     What a marvelous picture and description, defining and describing the quality of the "Heavenly Doctrines" of the New Church! Nothing like it in all the world; nor has been, since the foundations of the earth were laid.

     "Glorious things of thee are spoken, O, City of our God." (Ps. 100:4.)

     The Church is called "Holy City," from the Divine Doctrinals that are in it-from the Lord's Word.

     The Revelations, Divinely given to this Age, are not, indeed, the Old and New Testament Word,-in like form. But they are Doctrinals, from that form.

738

They are of it, and are inseparable from it.

     They are a Word of God, to the man of the New Church, in the sense that they are "Revelations" from God. And in the further sense, that "every Revelation from God is Word of God" to the Church or Dispensation to which it comes.

     See A. C. 1175, 2884, 5272; A. E. 948; 963; and elsewhere.

     The "Heavenly Doctrines" are Word, or Voice, of God, to me. This is not a question to be disputed.

     If we, as an organization, are living in the denial of this teaching, that is, of itself, a great source of weakness. It paralyzes effort; blocks progress. It threatens life, even.

     Let us flee to the mountains, from whence cometh our help.

"God is in His temple,
Let us fall before Him,
And with reverence adore Him.
"Lo! our God is present,
Hushed all earthly feeling,
Every heart to Him be kneeling.
"To His own God is known;
Gaze with eyes adoring,
Self to God restoring." O. L. BARLER.

739

NOTES AND REVIEWS 1912

NOTES AND REVIEWS Editor 1912

     Editorial Department.
     THE NEW AGE, of Sydney, N. S. W., in an appreciative notice of the Academy's JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, remarks: "We are not aware of any other institution which provides so carefully and elaborately for the instruction of children of the New Church from tender infancy to adult manhood."

     From the compiler, Mr. J. Howard Spalding, of London, we have received a charming booklet of 96 pages, entitled GOLDEN THOUGHTS FROM SWEDENBORG, being a series of carefully selected and freely translated extracts from the Writings, dealing in systematic sequence, though without subheadings, with the leading Doctrines of the Church. It is a handy little book for the vest pocket, to muse over while traveling or to hand to an inquirer.

     From MORNING LIGHT We COPY the following interesting advertisement which appeared in a recent issue of T. P.'s WEEKLY: "Young lady, (27), jolly, idealist, wishes a correspondent interested in Swedenborgian ideas. Discussion preferably from a masculine standpoint. State age." Our facetious contemporary, (who, unfortunately, neglects to quote the address of the advertiser), remarks that "there will probably be quite a number of replies, and we should like to hear how the discussion prospers. If it becomes jolly, idealistic, Swedenborgian and masculine, all at one and the same time, it will, perhaps, ultimately become 'domestic.'"

     A new oil portrait of Swedenborg was discovered quite recently in Sweden. It closely resembles the so-called "blue coat" portrait, but was evidently painted at a different sitting. On the back of the canvas there are written the words "Assessor Swedenborg,"-as is supposed, in Swedenborg's own handwriting, and there is also the signature of the portrait painter, Boman.

740

If the latter signature is authentic, this portrait is the only original painting of Swedenborg bearing the signature of its painter. The canvas was discovered in an attic, covered with old newspapers, and partly spoiled by a border of black paint. It is now in the possession of the "Northern Museum" in Stockholm, and is undergoing restoration.

Referring to our interpretation (in the June number, p. 369) of the passage concerning the smiting of "the Babylonian little ones against the rock," in A. E. 411, the NEW CHURCH QUARTERLY for October remarks: "The way in which the editor, in replying to Mr. A. E. Friend's letter, endeavors to get out of the difficulty into which he got himself in a former number, by stating-evidently out of his own head, as so many have done before him,-that 'Rock' in Ps. 137:9 signifies 'Divine Truth,' whereas the Writings, in their exposition of the passage, expressly state that it signifies 'the ruling falsity of evil,' strikes us as lacking in candor, and quite unworthy of a representative of the Academy." As Mr. Buss does not vouchsafe any reasons for this ipse dixit, we would esteem it a personal favor if any one of our readers would point out in what respect the interpretation referred to is lacking in sincerity.

Messrs. J. M. Dent and Sons, of London, have published, as part of their famous "Everyman's Library," a new edition of the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, revised by Mr. F. Bayley, of London, and furnished with an Introduction by Sir Oliver Lodge, the celebrated scientist who was converted to Spiritualism through his investigations in connection with the "Psychical Research Society." Being intended purely for "popular consumption" this edition will be of very little interest to the readers of the LIFE, as it has been issued "with the special view of removing-so far as is consistent with fidelity to the text-the difficulties arising from the use of terms by Swedenborg in a more or less technical sense, and of modernizing the language."

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Nor will our readers care for the ridiculous Introduction by Sir Oliver Lodge, whose knowledge of Swedenborg is clearly derived from second or third hand. While the learned essayist recommends Swedenborg with a sort of good-natured tolerance, he has not the faintest conception of the Divine character of the work upon which he has been asked or hired to bestow his distinguished patronage. Swedenborg is described as "an eclectic expositor." "To suppose that there is any infallibility about his teachings would be preposterous. That they reach a high level of imaginative exaltation, and sometimes of reasonable cogency, is plain. That they are immixed with fancy and inchoate dreaming is likely," etc. Of Swedenborg's scientific principles we have the following "intelligent" appreciation: "In his physiological and medical [sic!] treatises, he spoke of the brain rather as one of the excretory organs, putting the lungs also in the same category. . . . In this view of Swedenborg about the brain may be traced a not altogether fanciful resemblance to one part of the doctrine of Bergson, viz., that the brain is an inhibiting instrument, eliminating needless experience and memory rather than secreting it; 'the brain is what you forget with,' as a recent examination candidate feelingly expressed it."

And this drivel is placed as the introduction to a work of Divine Philosophy, to influence the possible thousands who will purchase the cheap volume. And our New Church reviewers fawn upon "Sir Oliver" for every kind and condescending word!

742

CALENDAR 1912

CALENDAR Editor 1912

FOR THIS DAILY READING OF THE WORD AND THE WRITINGS.

     With the present year the assignment in the Annual Calendar for the consecutive reading of the Writings, begun in the year 1-888, has come a conclusion with the final volume of the APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED. Those who have followed the reading during these fifteen years have read in course approximately all the theological writings of Swedenborg which have been translated into the English tongue. During the same period the Word in the Old and New Testaments has been read eight times; the ninth reading was begun with the beginning of the present year.

     With the Calendar for the year 1913 the reading of the Writings will again begin with the ARCANA COELESTIA. For the year the readings will cover Vol. I. of the Library Edition.

     It is fitting to recall at this time the words of Bishop Benade touching the use of reading the Word and the Writings in course, and of the several members of the Church reading them together. At the Annual Meeting of the General Church in November, 1887, in urging the publication of a Calendar of readings by the General Church which should cover consecutively from beginning to end the Word and the Writings, Bishop Benade said:

     "The Word of the Lord,-and when I speak of the Word, I mean the spiritual sense as well as the literal sense-the Word of the Lord is the means of communication between heaven and earth. When we read it, believing it to be the Lord's Word, and that it has a Divine meaning, and desiring that we may be led into the ways of life, then angels are present and are filled with delight in the spiritual and celestial things of the Word, and communicate their delight to us.

     "It is one of the Doctrines of the New Church that when the minds of men are fixed upon one common thing, with one common thought and affection, they come into consociation one with the other, and when the one common thought and affection is directed to the Divine things of the Lord's Word, all the parts and members of the angelic heavens are united with us by common ends, common uses and common thoughts-in a common human form in communion with the Lord.

743

     "The Lord has given us His Word in two general forms, the literal sense and the internal sense. He has caused the Word to be written in Divine series from beginning to end so that it is connected as a whole. There is nothing disjointed, nor are there in it matters which are to be omitted in reading. We may well believe that this Divine Truth, in the order in which it has been revealed to us, was given to meet the needs of young and old and that in its whole series from beginning to end it is Divinely perfect. If we follow that series we shall follow the Lord as He came down to us. We have with us the Divine Truth in the Divine Order of the Divine Man, and if we follow that we shall follow the Lord and see Him as He presents Himself to us from head to foot. We shall behold Him as He manifested Himself in transfigured form on the mountain, glorious as the sun, His garments bright as the light itself."

     "We cannot err, then, if we read the Writings in their chronological order; we cannot err if we read the Scripture as it is given to us. Read it through from beginning to end. Omit not a syllable in the whole.

     "Let the Calendar be so arranged that after our rising in the morning, in the clear light of early day, when the mind is supposed to be open, before the things of business come upon us, that we may then read the Word in the spiritual form as given in the Writings of the Church. From the morning state of intelligence we pass into the state when business interests affect our minds, and thus pass from what is spiritual to the natural. Then in the evening when the day has passed from early light through the lapse of hours to dark, let us read the Divine truth as it has been clothed by the Lord in ultimate natural forms in the letter of the Word."

     The Calendar is printed in card form and sold at the nominal price of Ten Cents. The Calendar for 1913 will be ready early in December and may be obtained from the Book Room or from any of the Agents of the Academy Book Room, at the several centers of the General Church.

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SPIRITUAL DIARY 1912

SPIRITUAL DIARY Editor 1912

NO. 222     In a number of recent communications reference has been made to the perplexing statements in no. 222 of the SPIRITUAL DIARY. For the convenience of our readers, and also in order to call for possible solutions of the problem involved, we subjoin a literal translation of the whole passage.

     "THAT THREE SOLAR ATMOSPHERES OPERATE IN THE NATURAL MIND, BUT NOT IN THE MORE INTERNAL, BUT THAT GOD MESSIAH IS THE SUN IN THE MORE INTERNAL AND THE INMOST.

     "There are four natural spheres originating from the sun; the atmosphere which effects the hearing is known; a purer atmosphere, separate from the aerial one, is what produces sight, or visual things, by means of the reflections of the shade of all objects; how far this atmosphere penetrates into the natural mind, and whether it presents material ideas, as they are called, or phantasies and imaginations, cannot as yet be so clearly proved, but from many things it appears very likely. This, then, must be the first atmosphere that reigns in the natural mind. Another atmosphere is a still purer ether, and is that which produces the forces of the magnets which reign not only about the magnet in special, but also about the whole world, which, however, it is not necessary to describe; it produces the Position therein of the whole terraqueous globe in relation to the poles of the world, and also many things which are known to the world respecting magnetic elevations and inclinations. This atmosphere appears to produce reasonings in the natural mind, together with which, however, the spiritual must be present in order that they may live, as it must be with the sight and all the other senses, in order that they may perceive. The purest etherial sphere is that universal sphere in the whole world [in universo mundo], which is presented about the reasonings of the same mind. Hence that mind is called the natural mind, and its interior operations, when they are perverted, are called ratiocinations, but when they are according to order they are simply called reason, and it is a species of thoughts, on account of spiritual influx. These spheres are of the sun, and may be called solar, and thus natural.

745

But in regard to the more internal mind, there is in it nothing of that kind, or what is natural, but it is spiritual, [and] in the inmost mind it is celestial, which are produced by God Messiah alone, and they are living; thus they are to be called spiritual and celestial spheres. Concerning these things an angel was speaking with me this morning, and thus I was confirmed Oct. 27, 1747."

     To the above should be added the sentence found in the INDEX TO THE DIARY, where this passage is entered under "Atmosphere:"

     "I spoke with an intelligent spirit concerning the atmospheres of the world, which govern the hearing, the sight, the exteriors and interiors of the natural mind; and also concerning the spiritual and celestial spheres, in which there is nothing natural, which are of the Lord alone, n. 222."

     The difficulty in this teaching is that it postulates a fourth natural atmosphere, in addition to the air, the ether, and the magnetic aura, beneath the sun of nature and originating from it. This, on the surface, does not appear to be in harmony either with the series of three spiritual and three natural atmospheres, as described in the theological works, or with the series of the PRINCIPIA and the other preparatory works, which mention one spiritual and three natural atmospheres (For there is no use denying that the first element or aura existed before the third finites, which constitute the first or inner crust surrounding the primitive solar space; nor is there any use denying that this first element or aura is a spiritual atmosphere, since Swedenborg distinctly so describes it.)

     While we are not prepared to enter upon an exhaustive study of this passage, we may be allowed to offer a suggestion for the consideration of other students. In the PRINCIPIA, (chapter ix:5), we read: "The first and second elementary particles may concordantly flow in one volume, sphere and vortex. Although they differ in size, and although the second are larger than the first, nevertheless, since they are perfectly similar in form, elasticity, axillary motion and effort towards local motion, there is nothing to prevent them simultaneously flowing in the same volume, and by a simultaneous motion forming the same gyre and vortex."

746

     It seems to us, therefore, that we may conceive of the first element or aura in two aspects; first, as it is in itself, prior and superior to the natural sun, filling the universal spiritual world, in each of the three heavens accommodated to the angels there, thus constituting three spiritual atmospheres; and, second, as it exists beneath the natural sun, flowing concordantly with the second or magnetic aura in one volume, sphere and solar vortex, filling the interstices of the magnetic aura and being in this aspect and connection a natural and solar atmosphere.

     Something similar is suggested by the statement in the posthumous work on the LAST JUDGMENT, n. 312: "The three spiritual atmospheres originating from the Sun of heaven are those in which are the angels of the three'heavens: in the two higher ones are the angels of the Lord's Celestial Kingdom; in the third, and in the first natural one, which is the pure ether, are the angels of the Lord's Spiritual Kingdom; in the two following atmospheres, which are the middle ether and the ultimate air, are men while they are in the natural world."

     And in n. 313 of the same work we read: "But it is to be known that the atmospheres originating from the Sun of heaven, which is the Lord, properly speaking, are not three but six: three above the sun of the world, and three below the sun of the world. The three below the sun of the world continually and immediately follow the three natural atmospheres and cause man in the natural world to be able to think and to feel."

747

DEVELOPMENTS IN SWEDEN 1912

DEVELOPMENTS IN SWEDEN Editor 1912

     From month to month, of late years, we have had occasion to notice the growing hostility towards the Academy which has found expression in our Swedish contemporary, the NYA KYRKANS TIDNING. The editor, the Rev. C. J. N. Manby, whose work as translator and editor we have honored often and highly, used to treat the Academy in a friendly spirit, but this began to change during the Kramph Trial, and especially after a minister of the General Church, during a visit to Stockholm in the summer of 1910, administered the sacrament of Baptism to two members of the New Church in that city.

     This action led to Mr. Manby's attack on New Church Baptism and the subsequent discussion of that subject in the Swedish organ, which was described in the LIFE for October, 1911. Dissatisfied with Mr. Manby's attitude on this and other issues, and with the quality of his instruction and leadership in general, a few of our friends in Stockholm formed a little reading circle, with Mr. Alfred H. Stroh as leader, for the deeper study of the Heavenly Doctrine, and this circle gradually increased in numbers as the hostile attitude of Mr. Manby and his society became more and more pronounced,-not only towards New Church Baptism, but also towards the distinctive Communion of the New Church, its distinctive social life, its distinctive education, etc.

     The relations of friendship were not increased when Mr. Manby, in an interview, published in AFTONBLADET of June 19th, 1911, under the caption "Did Swedenborg defend the doctrine of Polygamy?" permitted the impression to go forth that polygamy was defended by a "minority party" in America, which had "grossly misinterpreted" Swedenborg's work on CONJUGIAL LOVE. Mr. Stroh immediately called upon Mr. Manby, demanding that this public misrepresentation be corrected, but the pastor, while declaring that "the interviewer has misunderstood his meaning," nevertheless "did not have time" to make a public denial of the falsehood. Mr. Stroh then published a vigorous protest in the APTONBLADET, of June 30, together with an account of the decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in the Kramph Will Case.

748

     In June of the present year the Rev. S. C. Bronnicke, of Copenhagen, issued the first number of his new Scandinavian New Church paper, the NORDISK NYKIRKELIGT TIDSKRIFT, in the second number of which he came out as a champion of the distinctive Baptism of the New Church. This was met by an angry notice in Mr. Manby's papers to which Mr. Bronnicke returned a calm and conciliatory answer in the September issue of the Danish journal. The same issue contains also a letter in Swedish, from Miss Nancy Liden, of Stockholm, in which the writer very fully and frankly describes the situation in Sweden and the intolerable conditions which have forced Mr Stroh's reading circle into a wider sphere of activity.

     The October number of NYA KYRKANS TIDNING contains Mr. Manby's reply to Mr. Bronnicke and Miss Liden, and from it we learn that it was not lack of time that prevented Mr. Manby from correcting the public accusation that a certain group of New Church people defended the doctrine of polygamy. Abandoning the fair weapons of argument, he now takes refuge behind insinuations and tries to stir up prejudice by appealing to patriotic feelings. The tocsin of alarm is rung in the question whether "we are to remain free Swedish New Church people or pass beneath a foreign, i. e., 'academical' yoke." The freedom to be baptized into the New Church is a foreign "yoke," but the servitude under the Pastor who forbids New Church Baptism is Swedish freedom!

     Mr. Manby then explains the reasons for his opposition to the Academy and especially its "interpretation" of CONJUGIAL LOVE. We have seen exemplified, even long ago, in more than one person, whither that interpretation may lead." "This interpretation carries with it a great danger to young and old, as we know well enough through confidences imparted to name polygamy, of course, is not approved [by the Academy], but something which comes Perilously near to it, in a practical way." "A misinterpretation of the doctrine, in any respect whatever, may have serious Practical consequences, even though the Academy's fidelity to the doctrine as a whole must be gratefully acknowledged." "But we cannot defend the Academy as fully as we could wish. This is the reason for our apparent indifference in regard to the interview of June 19th, 1911."'

749

(The italics are Mr. Manby's.)

We have great respect for an honest opponent, but Mr. Manby's recent course has not been worthy of honor. He is perfectly well aware that the whole purpose of the doctrine concerning the "intermediates" in CONJUGIAL LOVE, and consequently the whole purpose of the Academy, is to combat every tendency towards promiscuousness both within and without the marriage relation. Our opponent knows this, and yet he deliberately spreads abroad the false testimony that we teach the doctrine of practical though not nominal polygamy, and he unblushingly proclaims himself "indifferent" to the fair name of those whose "fidelity to the doctrine as a whole" he "gratefully" acknowledges! And now, having been taken to task for this perversion, he tries to shield himself behind references to whispered "confidences," involving unknown scandals which cannot be published without breach of confidence, nor then disproved without legal processes.

When will the odium theologicum desist from this foul method of warfare? Is it not known that there is a Divine Commandment "which means, moreover, not to bring any deadly evil upon the name and reputation of the neighbor, because with many reputation and life go hand in hand." (T. C. R. 309.)
CHRISTMAS OFFERING FOR THE ORPHANAGE FUND 1912

CHRISTMAS OFFERING FOR THE ORPHANAGE FUND Editor 1912

It has been the pleasant custom for some of the Societies of the General Church to make a Christmas Offering to the Orphanage Fund. We would call especial attention to this matter, in the hope that the offerings which are made at the coming Christmas season may be liberal and that they may be made from a wider circle of Societies and individuals.

The uses of the Orphanage Fund have steadily increased during its twelve years of existence, while the contributions made to its support have not equaled the demand made upon it. The result is that while the Fund began with a goodly amount to its credit, it is now practically exhausted, and unless it receives increased support, it must curtail the aid which it has undertaken to give in response to urgent calls.

750

About Six Hundred Dollars will be needed during the coming year, even if no additional calls are made upon the Fund.

It has been the custom with some to contribute regularly each month a small sum. If this method could be generally adopted, the whole sum needed could be easily raised, and without burdening anyone. Such contributions can be made through the Collectors or Treasurers of the several centers of the General Church or may be sent directly to the Treasurer of the Orphanage Fund,
Mr. W. C. Childs, 56 Pine St., New York, N. Y.
SALVATION ARMY 1912

SALVATION ARMY F. A. GARDINER 1912

     Communicated
Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:-As you have been kind enough to answer a question of one "subscriber" as to the Salvation Army from the New Church point of view, I feel emboldened to submit yet another.

     Do you not think that an organization which-albeit deprived of the light of the New Church and therefore working in darkness-is a power for good in the world, when it is the means of turning men from impure to pure lives, from drunkenness to sobriety, from misery to joy, from despair to hope, from the love of self and the world to the love of others and of heaven, and that it is of the Divine Providence that countless thousands who are beyond the reach of the New Church, but within the reach of the Salvation Army, are by that means uplifted when they would otherwise sink into the lowest depths?

     Do you not think that their demonstrations associated with the passing away of "General" Booth formed an object lesson for which even the New Church can be thankful? They held no "funeral" or "burial" service; theirs was in reality what could be better described as a "resurrection" service. They did not mourn the loss of their chief; instead of donning black they put on white, they sang hymns of exaltation and poems of praise as they followed their chief in thought to a higher life, and they rejoiced with the angels at his new birth.

751

Surely this is marvelous in our eyes. F. A. GARDINER. West Heath Avenue, London, England.

ANSWER.

The first question of our correspondent is impossible to answer, for the reason that his sentence is not completed. As to the second, we think that our friend's description is very pleasant, but does not alter the fact that no genuine repentance, reformation or regeneration, no genuine turning of men "from the love of self and of the we-rid to the love of others and of heaven," can possibly follow from the preaching-however vociferous of the doctrine of instantaneous salvation from immediate mercy through faith alone. This was, is, and will remain "the fiery flying serpent" by which Religion is abolished, a false security of life induced, and damnation attributed to the Lord. Read the whole of the closing teaching in the work on the DIVINE PROVIDENCE, which we believe to have been placed as a special guard for the New Church against any sentimental sympathy with the natural goodness but spiritual badness of "movements" of enthusiastic spirits, such as Methodism, Salvation Army, Christian Science, etc.-EDITOR.
SPECIAL NOTICE 1912

SPECIAL NOTICE E. R. CRONLUND 1912

     ONTARIO ASSEMBLY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH.

     The Ontario Assembly of the General Church will be held at the Carmel Church, Berlin, Ont., December 30 to January 1, inclusive.

     PROGRAM.

     Monday, December 30, 1912, 7 p. m., Banquet.

     Tuesday, December 31, 10 a. m., Executive Committee; 3 p. m., Session; 8 p. m., Session.

     Wednesday, January 1, 1913, 11 a. m., Worship; 3 p. m., Session; 8 p. m., Men's Meeting, Ladies' Meeting.

     Members and friends who desire to attend will please notify Mr. Harold Kuhl, 285 King St., W., Berlin, Ont., who will provide for their entertainment.
     E. R. CRONLUND, Secretary.

752

INTERPRETATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF DEGREES 1912

INTERPRETATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF DEGREES ALFRED H. STROH 1912

Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     By accepting the Writings of the New Church as Divine Revelation and by acknowledging that they are the Second Coming of the Lord the minds of those who seek to enter into the mysteries of faith come into a state of orderly affirmation. The mind being in an affirmative state with respect to Divine and spiritual things, all things of science and philosophy will tend to confirm. With this standpoint every genuine Newchurchman will agree, and our custom is to accept the Writings and the Letter of the Word as direct authority.

     There is, however, no truth which those who are in a negative state will not seek to pervert, making the commandments of God of none effect by the teachings of men, and so there are even professing Newchurchmen who refuse to accept the Writings as of Divine authority. The other extreme is represented by those who push the authority position too far, extending it even to matters of science and philosophy. To this state in the Church I have referred briefly in a recent contribution on "The Atmospheres, Natural Mind and Limbus," (LIFE, May, p. 312), to which certain editorial questions and objections have been attached in the form of footnotes. The present article will be confined to replies to the editor's footnotes and to a further elaboration of certain positions advanced in the former contribution.

     REPLY TO CERTAIN EDITORIAL QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIONS.

     All of the questions and objections concern the positions of the paper with regard to the atmospheres and the degrees of mind and body, with the exception of the second question, on page 314, which calls for the sources of my statement that Swedenborg's earlier works have by some been "elevated into a position of well-nigh infallible authority," and that some have maintained that Swedenborg, while being prepared by the sciences, "made no mistakes nor changed his position from time to time." This subject I propose to discuss in my next article, but all the other questions and objections will now be replied to.

753

In my first proposition it is maintained that "The teaching of the WRITINGS with regard to discrete degrees should be followed in all New Church discussions of theological, philosophical and scientific questions, and not necessarily the teachings of Swedenborg's scientific and philosophical works, which sometimes disagree with one another and with the Writings." The footnote asks "Will the writer point out wherein the doctrine of Degrees and Series, as first published in the Economy of the Animal Kingdom disagrees with the doctrine as revealed in the Writings?" Passing by for the present the particular points in which the doctrine of the Economy, and I may add of the PRINCIPIA, CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY IN BRIEF, SPIRITUAL DIARY, n. 222, in short, the whole doctrine prior to the Writings proper,-disagrees with the degrees of the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, the most striking general difference is that of the number and quality of the atmospheres in the two series of works.

It has been repeatedly pointed out by myself and others that there is a remarkable agreement between the Economy, Worship and Love of God, and others of the earlier works, with the Writings in so far as the doctrine of the Divine and of the Spiritual Sun is concerned. That I conceive to be one of the most remarkable features of the scientific works. But when we come to the atmospheres the case is quite different. In the early works the doctrine of a single series of four atmospheres, the aura, the magnetic aura, the ether and the air, is everywhere found, even as late as in the early part of the SPIRITUAL DIARY. But in the Writings we are taught that there are three natural atmospheres, the aura, the ether and the air, and likewise three spiritual atmospheres with the same names, thus altogether six atmospheres, the natural corresponding to the spiritual.

In my former article I stated (p. 315) that "There is no possibility of seeing an agreement between the four atmospheres of the PRINCIPIA and the six atmospheres of the Writings because 4 does not equal 6." I still think that this conclusion is correct, although the footnote asks: "Is it not rather unsafe to make so sweeping an assertion? The writer can only speak for himself. It is not the PRINCIPIA alone that teaches the doctrine of four atmospheres, but the SPIRITUAL DIARY likewise (n. 222).

754

If there are six atmospheres there certainly also are four. Why not look for agreements rather than disagreements?" To this I reply that I do not think the assertion to be unsafe; that I am, of course, not presuming to speak for any other student of these questions; that the SPIRITUAL DIARY, n. 222, does not agree with the Writings proper, but with the PRINCIPIA; that I am willing to agree to the statement that "If there are six atmospheres, there certainly also are four," provided that 4 + 2 = 6 is meant; and that I am always looking for agreements rather than disagreements, but refuse to say that there are agreements when disagreements are evidently present. I should add that in so far as the early part of the SPIRITUAL DIARY is concerned-I refer to the question of its relation to the Writings and to the general question of Swedenborg's preparation after his spiritual eyes were opened-I find myself in general agreement with the views elaborated by Dr. R. L. Tafel in the DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG, rather than with those of the editor. (See the May LIFE, p. 297.) Of course, I heartily agree with the editor's defense of the existence of the spiritual bodies of the departed, but not with his position concerning the DIARY.

In this connection I must acknowledge my hearty agreement with the statement of Mr. Arthur B. Wells in the June LIFE, pp. 370-371, that "If you will study number 222 of the SPIRITUAL DIARY carefully you will notice that the first aura is spoken of as originating from the sun of the natural world and that it, together with the other three atmospheres, is called natural." To this statement the editor makes no reply. I would point out that either the four "natural" atmospheres of the DIARY, n. 222, correspond to four spiritual atmospheres, making in all eight atmospheres instead of six,-or it must be admitted, if the four atmospheres in question are supposed to agree with the four PRINCIPIA atmospheres, that the first aura of the PRINCIPIA is "natural," not "spiritual," as interpreted by recent writers! I suggest that the position of the DIARY, n. 222, is intermediate between the PRINCIPIA and the Writings, having been written so soon after Swedenborg's spiritual eyes were opened.

755

Turning now to the Rev. L. P. Mercer's interpretation of the PRINCIPIA, in which he placed the first aura prior to the natural sun, (NEW CHURCH REVIEW, Oct., 1903), the editor remarks, (p. 316), "Why not? The spiritual Sun was created from the Infinite Itself, which is the most real and substantial of all atmospheres,-the atmosphere which alone holds the universe together from within and from without,-the atmosphere in which we all live and move and have our being." With this view of the creation of the spiritual Sun from the Infinite Itself I heartily agree. That is the constant teaching of the Writings, but I object to the supposition that either Mr. Mercer or I were discussing such an atmosphere, that is, the Infinite! It is, on the contrary, quite clear from my criticism of Mr. Mercer's position (LIFE, March, 1904), and from my subsequent discussions with Mr. Mercer, that we were discussing finite atmospheres. The point was that the PRINCIPIA aura, above the natural sun, would necessarily correspond, not to an atmosphere below the spiritual sun, as Mr. Mercer had supposed, but to a spiritual atmosphere (not Divine) above the spiritual sun. Mr. Mercer admitted this difficulty in my subsequent oral discussions with him, but he never replied to my article in the LIFE. As in 1904, I still object to the interpretation that the first aura of the PRINCIPIA is Prior to the sun, since the internal evidence of the work itself, Part I., Chap. X., clearly proves that the first aura was created after the sun. But the interpretation of Mr. Mercer has been abandoned by his former disciples, and they have substituted a new scheme, which is even more objectionable than Mr. Mercer's misinterpretation, as will appear later on in this article.

Under the third proposition of my article, (p. 316), I hold that "The great and striking difference between the degrees of the universe and mind as presented in the early works and in the Writings is that in the former the degrees of substance and activity are altogether mechanical and geometrical, the whole creation being in space, time and motion, while in the Writings the sharpest distinction is constantly made between the natural universe,-which is geometrical, mechanical and fixed, and in the creation of which times and spaces arose,-and the spiritual universe, which is above space and time." To this an editorial footnote is attached: "But not above motion." To this footnote I object.

756

The spiritual universe is above space and time, and also above motion, for in the spiritual universe there is not motion, but activity. There may be those who will object that this is a distinction without a difference, but let them search the Writings and acknowledge that there is a difference.

     With regard to the question, page 317, "Will the writer define what he means by the three degrees of the Spiritual Mind?" I agree with Dr. Burnham's interpretation that in one series the spiritual mind includes the three degrees of the mind corresponding to the three spiritual atmospheres; in another series the spiritual mind means the degree of the mind corresponding to the second spiritual atmosphere. This subject I propose to take up in detail in an article on the degrees of the mind and body.

     Under proposition VI, I say that "the outmost of the natural mind is the limbus, but that part of the natural mind does not think because it is composed of the substances of nature." To this statement is attached the following footnote: "Is it not rather difficult to conceive of a degree of the mind that does not think?" To this I reply that of course the limbus, being the highest degree of the body, does not think, but in the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, n. 2571 which I had before me when writing the article, the outermost substances of the natural mind, which after death constitute the limbus, are said not to possess thought, so it is perfectly proper to say that "that part of the natural mind does not think." The passage reads:

     "The natural mind of man consists of spiritual substance, and at the same time of natural substances; from its spiritual substances there is thought, but not from its natural substances."

     SIX ATMOSPHERES OR FOUR?

     It has already been pointed out that Mr. Mercer's position with regard to the atmospheres, especially the PRINCIPIA aura, was quite different from those now received. With him it was not a question of 4 atmospheres, but of S, that is of 4 in each world. In formulating his position he confused the radiant belts of the spiritual sun with the atmospheres. In my next article I shall go into details, but need only point out here that although ten years ago there was either great opposition on the part of present writers in America to the PRINCIPIA, philosophy, or an acceptance of Mr. Mercer's general position that the first aura of the PRINCIPIA is prior to the sun, still there were a few students who, while accepting much of the PRINCIPIA philosophy, consistently opposed the loose interpretations of its statements which were even then coming into vogue, and which have since then been enormously extended, indeed, to such a degree that the PRINCIPIA doctrine of four atmospheres in the created universe is now quite commonly referred to as if it were the actual teaching of the Writings!

757

In the name of New Church scholarship I must solemnly protest against this treatment not only of the Writings, but also of the PRINCIPIA. After much experience during the past ten years with the original sources I desire most seriously to call into question the reliability of the "correlations" and "identifications" proposed by the Rev. L. P. Mercer, by Miss Lillian Beekman, and by other writers.

It is, first of all, an extraordinary fact that the doctrine of four atmospheres is referred to in the Writings in the early part of the SPIRITUAL DIARY only, but on that basis and on the PRINCIPIA and connected work's the theory of fourfold degrees in the universe and man has been exclusively based. At the same time the carefully elaborated views of the learned Dr. N. C. Burnham, in his monumental interpretative work, DISCRETE DEGREES, Philadelphia, 1587, have been almost completely disregarded, although his work was largely accepted up to within the last ten years and considered to be in general a faithful reflection of the Writings as to the number and order of degrees. How is it possible to propose and accept a scheme of degrees in the universe, based on the system of quatrains, without first showing its superiority to the system of trines, which Dr. Burnham drew from the Writings? The doctrine of trines is not only the universal teaching of the Writings, as Dr. Burnham so clearly points out, but it is incredible that any student of the Writings should accept the system of four atmospheres, when the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, our great textbook on degrees and creation, uniformly refers to the series of three atmospheres in both worlds. I challenge the defenders of the four atmosphere theory to prove the contrary by quotations from the book in question or from any others of the Writings.

758

The endeavor to do so will at once show that the theory of four atmospheres is not derived from the Writings, but from the PRINCIPIA and connected works.

     A study of New Church history during the past ten years makes it quite clear that the position which maintains that there are four atmospheres in the created universe is the result gained by pushing too far the "correlation" of the early works of Swedenborg with the Writings. Certain "correlations" and "identifications" are no doubt correct, although I should prefer to speak of the "relationship" of the science and philosophy of Swedenborg to the Writings, and to their agreement or disagreement, but there is an attitude which holds the "correlation" of the early works and the Writings to be not only possible, but necessary. No matter what dilemmas are encountered, only "correlate," and sooner or later the solution will be found! This attitude is, of course, based upon the dogma that since Swedenborg, on his own testimony, was prepared by the sciences, his early works must perforce agree with the Writings, which they complement on the planes of philosophy and science. This is the source of the custom which has become so prevalent in our literature of referring indiscriminately now to the Writings, now to the early works, as authority. This habit is fraught with danger, for it tends to break down the distinction between the two series of works.

     AN OLD DISCUSSION, UNSATISFACTORILY CLOSED.

     In the next paper I shall furnish the evidence upon which I based the statement that the science and philosophy of Swedenborg, or Swedenborg's earlier works, "have been by some elevated into a position of well nigh infallible authority." There is plenty of printed and manuscript evidence showing this to be the case, but I shall here, before closing the present article, explain my own connection with that movement which has led to the extreme view referred to above.

     Over ten years ago there arose in the "Principia Club" of Bryn Athyn a remarkable discussion concerning the reliability of Swedenborg's early works, or concerning Swedenborg's science and philosophy.

759

Together with other writers I defended the reliability of those works in question against the critical assaults of the Rev. J. F. Potts and of Professor C. Vinet. Even at that time I had critical theories of my own about the scientific works, but they were not those advanced by Messrs. Potts and Vinet. After spending years in Swedenborg's native land, with the geological evidence of the country continually before me, I have come S the conclusion that the above-named gentlemen were largely in the right when they criticized and opposed Swedenborg's universal flood and diluvial theory, as applied to evidence which every geologist now explains by the action of ice, according to the glacial theory. I sometimes reflect that if the general spirit of the discussion which followed the dissolution of the "Principia Club" soon after the controversy had been tempered by some such critical views as were advanced in connection with Swedenborg's geological works, much misunderstanding might have been avoided. But when a position has once been taken, it is very human to push it too far.

We began with a general acknowledgment of the value and credibility of Swedenborg's early works, but later their positions have been confirmed even although they sometimes flatly contradict the Writings, reason, and experience. I would suggest that the students of these scientific questions retrace their steps back to the discussion of ten years ago and reconsider especially the question of the diluvial and glacial theories. Such reconsideration on my part of this and other questions has gradually led me into a position which is quite different from any of the former standpoints. Accepting the Writings as the sole authority, I find a wonderful agreement of all other certain knowledge, with their Divine Teachings. Swedenborg's early works being the record of his preparation by the sciences, I find therein a wonderful body of confirmatory evidence. But this does not lead me to accept all their theories or observations. Swedenborg was not only prepared by the truths of the sciences, but he was also prepared by being drawn away gradually from fallacious positions into which he had come by following appearances. Swedenborg did not confirm himself in such things, nor should we.

760

In view of the above position it follows that we should adopt a discriminating attitude towards the statements of Swedenborg's early works, either accepting them or laying them aside as they agree or disagree with Revelation, reason and experience. I would suggest that excellent examples of such agreement and disagreement may be found in Swedenborg's works on astronomy, geology and cosmology, with regard to the duration and habitability of the planets, ages of the patriarchs, Noah's Flood and Last Judgment, concerning which Swedenborg completely reverses his positions from time to time. See further his doctrine of the degrees and composition of the blood, some parts of which are wonderfully true, while others are far removed from true experience. In short, we can adopt but one general position: a critical, comparative, historical position, which is prepared to discriminate rationally in various cases as they arise. Nor should this attitude be confined to the plane of experiment and observation; it is of even greater importance when applied, for instance, to the doctrine of degrees. A detailed examination and comparative study shows on the one hand that Swedenborg, during his early period, understood the origin, existence and composition of degrees in the universe, but that, on the other hand, he did not understand, until after his spiritual eyes were opened, the doctrine of the number of degrees in both worlds, nor their correspondence with one another. But more of this subject in our next article in "The Degrees of the PRINCIPIA and those of the Writings." ALFRED H. STROH. Stockholm, August, 1912.

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TWO FOUNDATIONS OF TRUTH 1912

TWO FOUNDATIONS OF TRUTH E. E. IUNGERICH 1912

     A succinct statement of Mr. Stroh's position, as set forth in his communication, is as follows:

     1. "Swedenborg was not only prepared by the truths of the sciences, but he was also prepared by being drawn away gradually from fallacious positions into which he had come by following appearances. Swedenborg did not confirm himself in such things, nor should we.
2. "Swedenborg's early works sometimes flatly contradict the Writings, reason, and experience.

     3. "The ECONOMY, PRINCIPIA, CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY and SPIRITUAL DIARY, n. 222," disagree with the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM as to the number and quality of the atmospheres. "There is no possibility of seeing an agreement between them" on this point.

     4. To assume that a correlation between them is "not only possible but necessary," as when the four atmosphere system of the PRINCIPIA is declared to be the adequate expression of the DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM is a serious error, threatening to break down the distinction between the two series of works.

     5. There are, today, Newchurchmen who "push the authority question too far," extending it even to matters of science and philosophy: "who, in our literature, refer indiscriminately now to the Writings, now to the early works as authority;" and who disregard all sorts of dilemmas under the plea that a solution and correlation are possible. "This attitude is, of course, based upon the dogma that since Swedenborg on his own testimony was prepared by the sciences, his early works must perforce agree with the Writings, which they complement on the plane of philosophy and science."

     We herewith offer the following defense of Swedenborg, his works, and his sympathetic followers:

     First.-It cannot be gainsaid that Swedenborg, wisest and most religious of philosophers, did not possess at the beginning of his career the same clarity of thought and lucidity of expression that came later. The general and relatively obscure conceptions of an earlier age were undoubtedly enriched and infilled by the remarkable variety of subordinate particulars, acquired during his subsequent natural and spiritual experience.

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We know also, from his own testimony, that he was occasionally for some length of time severely tried by infestations to favor dangerous intellectual falsities, such as the idea of infinite space and the inquiry as to what the Lord was doing before creation. (S. D. 3476-84.)

     The real point at issue here, as Mr. Stroh will agree, is not Swedenborg's personal state, but whether his works suffered from the falsities by which he was infested. Did Swedenborg succumb in these temptations? Did he incorporate the infesting falsities in the works he published? We know he was convinced of the truth of these works, and that he never in all the brilliance of his subsequent illumination retracted or warned his readers against them. Dr. Beyer took for granted that Swedenborg, who was not less honest than other men, would have retracted any falsities in his earlier works, had such occurred.

     There is evidence, on the other hand, that Swedenborg continued to value his earlier works. One of his earliest works, ON THE LONGITUDES, was republished many years after the date when n. 222 of the SPIRITUAL DIARY was penned. In the HISTORY OF CREATION he states that the WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD, which contains the PRINCIPIA theory, was written according to the thread of reason, and therefore needs to be compared with Revelation before it can be accepted; but he then adds the significant remark that after he had made the comparison he was struck with the agreement. But this conclusion does not rest on his own deduction alone, for in the DREAM BOOK, the WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD is declared to be "Liber Divinus," (a Divine Book).

     Returning for a moment to the consideration of the falsities by which he was occasionally infested, note the following account of his deliverance from them: "I was also held by them in that phantasy, but remembered that this [had happened] also before, but I had been delivered thence by the Lord, by the fact that I thought of infinite space as not space outside the universe, which is without end. . . . Afterwards also I was led by the Lord into some perception of forms, the notion of which far exceeds. . . the notions received from geometry." (S. D. 3482.)

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Thus, though Swedenborg was tempted, he yet was saved by the Lord, and in addition received what in all probability,-to judge from the context of this and succeeding numbers,-was his wonderful Doctrine of Forms that is set forth in various of his philosophical works and which, as Mr. Stroh will agree, is intimately associated and bound up with the four atmosphere theory of the universe.

Is it surprising, in view of this and similar testimony which the LIFE has published during the last six years, that many Newchurchmen have concluded that Swedenborg, (as he declares in his letter of 1766 to Oetinger), was really led by the Lord into the sciences during 1710-17441,and really inspired with a love of truth for its own sake? Are the works written during this period to be regarded more as a memorial of the stupidity and falsities of the spirits who infested Swedenborg than as a testimonial of the guiding hand of the Lord into all truth? Notice the following statements in the ADVERSARIA: "Since therefore these things are so perilous, namely, to scrutinize and explore spiritual and celestial things by the natural sciences, it was given me by the Divine mercy of God Messiah to dare to do these things, not from my own daring, but from the inspiration of God Messiah, as you may see above; but yet I must confess
that as often as I wished to consult the understanding in those matters which are celestial that I seemed to myself to fall backward, so clearly, and this on innumerable occasions, that I would quickly have fallen backwards, unless by the Divine mercy of God Messiah I had instantly been led back into the way." (2 ADVERSARIA 1281, 1282.)

Second. We will agree that there are appearances of contradictions between the early works and the Writings and certain types of reason and experience. But we wish also to point out that there are appearances of contradictions within portions of the Writings written subsequent to S. D. 222, as witness what is said about seven heavens, four heavens, three heavens, etc. The statement in D. L. W. that sight from the "eye closes the understanding" is not in strict agreement with the canon of modern reason which forbids the understanding to believe what the eye has not seen.

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There are many statements in the Writings, such as the raising of plants from their ashes, one sex in plants, and spontaneous generation, that are as much opposed to modern experience as any statements in the early works.

     Appearances of conflict between a DIVINE REVELATION and what is opposed to it are likened in the ARCANA to the struggle between a Hebrew and the Egyptian whom Moses killed; but appearances of conflict between truths of the same DIVINE REVELATION are a much more difficult matter to settle, and are likened to the struggle between the two Hebrews, which Moses was unable to quiet.

     By excluding testimony from any writings or scientific works penned earlier than n. 223 of the SPIRITUAL DIARY, Mr. Stroh would make it impossible to perceive any agreement between them. The combat between two Hebrews is not to be decided by killing one of the contenders, as in the combat between the Hebrew and the Egyptian.

     Third.-In the CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY We read "There are four auras of the world, following one another in succession. . . .     From these, by determination, are generated the fluids called spirituous: 1. The human spirituous fluid from the first aura. 2. The animal spirituous fluid from the second aura. 3. One formed from the ether, whence insects. These things are true because I have the sign."

     Will Mr. Stroh ask us to follow him in his conclusion that these things we not true because they teach the four atmosphere theory, rather than adhere to Swedenborg, who solemnly assures us they are true because he has the sign?

     As Newchurchmen, are we not now obliged to acknowledge both the four-atmosphere theory and that which says there are three corresponding atmospheres in both worlds? They may appear to conflict, but is it unscholarly to wait and hope for a reconciliation, or to receive with pleasure such suggestions as promise to throw light on some phases of the subject?

     Let us consider one suggestive theory that accepts the four-atmosphere system, and seeks to explain the two series of three correspondents, on the basis that the spiritual atmosphere to which each natural atmosphere corresponds is the active center within the bulla of the latter.

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This finds support in the HISTORY OF CREATION, where it treats of the creation of the firmament on the second day, "Heaven, properly, is where Spirits, Angels, and the souls of the Blessed live, and in every sort of place, even close to the earth, in the atmosphere, in whose inferior or purer parts heavenly life is carried on; for superior things are also interior, and inferior things are also exterior; on which account we inhabit heaven with our minds, although we dwell on earth with our bodies."

     While others are perhaps "searching the Writings" to see whether the visiting of planets by a spirit is less a matter of motion than of activity, we would recommend to Mr. Stroh the value of himself attempting to correlate this suggestive theory with S. D. 222 and with the passage in L. J. POST., which treats of three spiritual atmospheres below the natural sun, and of angels of the spiritual kingdom who live in the lowest spiritual aura and the highest natural.

     With regard to the statements in the CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY that the human spirituous fluid is from the first aura, this has been taken by some to mean that Swedenborg had a gross, material, idea of the soul, and derived it from a source not above the natural sun; but if they will take the various definitions of the first aura, as that it is "the aura of a purer and better world,"
(PRINC., PART III., p. 231) that it is a "spiritual aura," (SENSE IN GENERAL); and join them to the various predicates given the spirituous fluid, they will not accuse Swedenborg of such stupidity.

     Fourth and Fifth.-We do not feel much alarm at the possibility of breaking down the distinction between the two sets of works. There always will be a use in making a distinction between the period when the apostle of the Second Coming was led from posterior to prior things "without falling backwards," and that period when he received infinite light upon prior things and the power to descend securely the ladder to derivative posterior things. There are, we are told in S. D. 5709, "two foundations of truth," one from the Word and one from nature. Both of these can now be seen to be in accord, since Swedenborg was led into both.     E. E. IUNGERICH.

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REV. T. S. HARRIS IN CANADA 1912

REV. T. S. HARRIS IN CANADA Editor 1912

     Reports.
     A brief paragraph appeared in the October LIFE conveying a suggestion only of a very encouraging summer's work. The following fuller account is from a private letter:

     I have five sisters and two brothers, all of whom are more or less familiar with the leading doctrines of the New Church. My lather and mother were both receivers of the Doctrines and died in the faith. They possessed some of the books of Swedenborg and these have been circulating among the members of the family. One sister has become a member of the General Church, also her daughter.

     My brothers and one brother-in-law have become interested to such an extent that they sent me an invitation to visit them for the purpose of expounding the faith which they saw but dimly. It was for this that I went home. I am satisfied that these three men are done with the Old Church and its teachings. They appear to be vastated of the old faith, and seem ready to accept the new.

     Three of my sisters are married to men who are strong Old Church members.

     Among these seven families I spent most of my time reading the doctrines to them and teaching the children. Each Sunday I gathered a little circle. Every day I met some one and talked New Church. Three times I talked to a gathering of about sixty people. I visited about forty homes outside of my own family. I met seven ministers, to three of whom I talked theology; the others did not seem disposed to enter into conversation on any religious subject. By means of public address and private interview I was able to read over three hundred different individuals. I found the latter method much more satisfactory than the former. The opposing sphere was much stronger when I faced a crowd. Some of the personal interviews were fierce, but when the fight was over you could feel that the head of the dragon was under your heel.

767

     Another reason why we had so few public meetings was the difficulty we had in procuring a hall. This was the first indication of opposing spirits. The I. O. of G. T. Society was asked for the use of its hall. A meeting of the members was called to act upon the matter; the result was a tie vote. The chair refused to cast the deciding vote. The reasons brought into the discussion why the hall should not be given me were as follows: "He is a spiritualist." "He does away with Jesus Christ." "His doctrines turn people away from the Church." "They, as good members of the Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Episcopal denominations, had no right to encourage the introduction of another into the community; they had more than enough now, why start another?" But the climax was reached when someone said that in reading the papers they had seen something about the Swedenborgians being an immoral people. Those who voted "Yea" did so because they wanted me to have an opportunity to defend myself publicly against these statements. The vote, when taken, resulted in a tie, every woman in the meeting voting against my having the use of the hall.

     When the chair refused to break the tie, a committee of three was appointed to decide the matter; and this committee, consisting of a Baptist minister and two Presbyterian elders, offered me the hall. The first night that I lectured, a Baptist deacon stood on a corner and warned the people against going to the meeting. I had thought to spend a quiet, peaceful summer among people far beyond the din of war, but I was doomed to disappointment, I am convinced that wherever the Doctrines of the New Church go, there will be found the Dragon with the flood of water flowing out of his mouth. Those who did not want to be convinced were of the same opinion as those who objected to my having the hall; but some who heard me were willing that I should call on them, and invited me to do so. In the quiet of the home sphere I had a better opportunity to talk with them.

     We held but three public meetings, at which I discoursed on "The Lord," "Redemption," and "The New Church and its Relation to the Old Church."

     The commotion relative to the hall seems to have been providential. It was a good advertisement. Every day brought its opportunity to talk with people about what the New Church believed.

768

Very seldom did I spend five minutes with an old acquaintance without the question being asked: "What does the New Church believe '" Then I would begin by teaching him the doctrine concerning the Lord. Some seemed glad to have the mystery of the Trinity so clearly explained; others strongly opposed the teaching because it did away with the "Advocate with the Father." One individual exclaimed, "Why! if I accepted that teaching, I would have to give up everything I have ever learned." I thought that there was hope that some time he might see the truth.

     One day a loud-mouthed Methodist lay preacher met me, at an Exhibition, and after the usual greetings, began to exhort me to leave my delusions and come back to the good old way from which I had strayed. His loud voice, earnest manner, and the nature of his remarks attracted the attention of the crowd. There was so getting away from him. "I was following a great delusion. He loved me because of the many souls I had been the means of saving while in the Methodist Church. Come back and preach as you did once and many will bless you. Leave your delusions and come back to the good old way and be saved."

     I asked him what were the delusions to which he referred. "Oh," he answered, "you know what they are." I replied that I did not know of any delusions worse than those I had left when I gave up the doctrines of the Methodist Church. "What delusions?" he demanded. I answered, "That of three persons in the one God." "Oh, that is a mystery and not a delusion. It is a mystery which no man can explain." I replied that the New Church doctrine of the Lord explained it. His answer was that he would believe no other doctrine concerning the Trinity than that which he had already received; no, not if an angel of heaven were to declare it unto him. If that doctrine of the Trinity was a delusion what was to become of all those who had died in that faith? My reply was, "Ii they are not confirmed in the delusion the angels who meet them may be able to lead them out of it. Perhaps they are not all like you."

     He was bright enough to see the point and retracted his former assertion so far as to say that he would have to be pretty sure that the messenger sent to dissuade him was really an angel.

769

This was a good one on me. But he was not yet done with me. "Do you know what I think of you," he went on, "you are a hair splitter." To this I rejoined that I would rather be a hair splitter than a God splitter. At this fearful expression he was horrified and turned from me as a hopeless case. I visited him at his home the following day, when we had a long talk. The result was much more satisfactory. His remark at parting was: "Well, the New Church teachings are not half so bad as I thought they were. I don't see why a man cannot be saved, even if he does believe as you do."

     I met Bishop Horner, head of the Holiness movement in Canada. We were schoolmates during boyhood, and were ordained into the Methodist Church together. He seemed much concerned about my salvation, as he had heard that I had "done away with Christ." His first question was, "What is Jesus Christ to you now?" I replied, "He is Everything to me now. This seemed to satisfy him.

     Many of my friends who love me for what I was to them once are in great fear lest I be lost because of what I now believe. One dear fellow came to me in great distress. "You were the means of my conversion," said he, "I know I am saved; I have never doubted it since that moment when you led me to Christ. It pains me very much that you have gone back on the good old Methodist Church and become a Swedenborgian." You call imagine how I felt. I knew that if I used the same power of persuasion which I had brought to bear on this man when I was the means of his conversion, that I could before long bring him into the New Church. I told him that I feared that his conversion through faith alone would not save him. He thought it very wrong in me to try and shake his faith in what I had once taught him to be the truth. But I had to do it in self defense.

     My last Sunday was spent at the homestead. The brothers and sisters, with their wives and husbands, took dinner together. With the children of my brother's family, there were twenty-two in all. We held a short service and had a heart to heart talk. It was a fitting climax to my summer's work. I am satisfied that a good work has been begun among them. I used no persuasion, but left them in perfect freedom.

770

It takes people, who have been preached at and prayed at all their lives, some time to understand being left in freedom.

     I presented the doctrine of distinct separation from the Old Church and that of New Church baptism.

     I have written many letters since my return to Abington and am receiving good reports. There are thirty-five children who are very much interested in what their uncle taught them about God, heaven and the angels. Six of them have been baptized into the New Church faith.

     This movement did not spring into existence in a day. The source of it is in the spiritual world into which my father and mother have entered, leaving behind them the influence of their teachings and a considerable number of New Church books.
IMPRESSIONS OF THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT ASSEMBLY 1912

IMPRESSIONS OF THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT ASSEMBLY HOMER SYNNESTVEDT 1912

     The ordination of a new Bishop in the General Church is so rare an occurrence, and withal so important to the whole body, that it would seem desirable that something more than the mere chronicle should find place in the pages of NEW CHURCH LIFE. I, therefore, offer some impressions of this event, and of the meeting, which formed its setting. Realizing the interest that the ministers especially feel in such an ordination, the Pittsburgh Society very kindly sent out an invitation to all our ministers to attend. Seven of us were there, and held several meetings in the pastor's charming new study.

     It may not be known to all that this society has just completed a second enlargement of their church building by raising the entire structure, inserting one complete floor beneath the hall of worship, and adding school rooms at the rear. This gives then much needed facilities for social and educational uses, and provides for all their activities for a decade or so to come. However, the attendance at this Assembly filled the place nearly to its capacity. There were nineteen visitors, and the attendance on Sunday was 120.

     On Thursday evening preceding the Assembly there was a meeting of the Philosophy Club, held at the residence of one of the members.

771

The Rev. Alfred Acton was the guest of honor, and gave a lecture on "Substance and Matter," entering into distinctions and relations hitherto little known. At the supper following there was the usual rapid-fire of mirth and song, and the usual grilling of the uninitiated. Later, in more serious vein, there were happy reminiscences, and a loyal toast to Father Czerny, who taught many of the men of this society in their younger days.

     On Friday there was a luncheon given at the Pittsburgh Athletic Club to the visiting ministers, where it was intended to further discuss the subject of the evening before, but some one started the subject of politics, and all agreed that we enjoyed a unique experience in hearing such an able discussion of live issues by Newchurchmen, all thinking from the general principles of the Writing, yet about evenly divided in their application to existing conditions.

     On Friday evening was held the banquet or supper in the new social hall, which opened the Assembly proper. The atmosphere of happy expectancy, of the something-very-good-is-happening-and-we-are-in-it feeling, is hard to describe. The Bishop here read a paper on "Law, Obedience and Organization," showing how we rise to higher powers of efficiency and perfection, so far as we enter into larger forms, through organization, and that this is effected so far as we lay the basis in ultimates, by obedience to the Law which went forth for this purpose from God. The discussion was animated, but mainly confined to the ministers.

     On Saturday, as it is difficult for many to attend regular sessions in the daytime, it was arranged to hold an informal session in the afternoon. A dozen or so were present, but were well rewarded, as Mr. Gladish's paper on the story of the Hebrew Patriarchs and what it contains for us of educational significance, was considered by some to have been about the most interesting of the series. In the evening there were minutes and reports from the ministers residing in the district, followed by a paper by the undersigned upon the subject of "Appreciation," and the importance of developing it, in order to incline the will to the reception of matter important to be learned.

772

     Sunday was a beautiful day, and the church was easily filled, not only with members and friends, but, as one could at once feel, with a most powerful presence,-and a host, no doubt, of those unseen ones whom Elisha showed to his young man. As Mr. Acton read the lessons one could feel it in his full tones, and there was a resonance in the tones of the venerable Bishop, as he read the service, and of the candidate, as he read His Declaration, (published herewith), that electrified the audience. Everyone who has not done so ought to read through the service of Ordination in our Hymnal, to refresh his knowledge of the Heavenly Doctrine upon this subject. Of course, the climax came when the Bishop laid his hands upon Mr. Dandridge Pendleton's head, and applied the touch through which, as we all felt, the Lord Himself could effect the communication and transference of those celestial and Divine spheres which carry with them the promise of receiving and mediating to men all the blessings of sacerdotal ministration.

     Mr. Acton's sermon, which followed, was full of wisdom as to the Lord's work of establishing His Church upon earth, and was well delivered.

     In the afternoon the Holy Supper was administered to some ninety communicants.

     Of the social on Monday evening, which closed the meetings, little need be said except that it furnished an opportunity to express and to carry down into the plane of external delight, our sense of contentment with our lot,-as if it were indeed well with the Church, and as if a certain undefined lack had been relieved. May we receive with loyal hearts the benefits so graciously placed within our reach. HOMER SYNNESTVEDT.

773

CONFESSION OF FAITH AND DECLARATION OF PURPOSE 1912

CONFESSION OF FAITH AND DECLARATION OF PURPOSE Rev. N. D. PENDLETON 1912

     I believe in the one only living and true God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who as God incarnate did come into the world by birth from a Virgin Mother, and take upon Himself our fallen nature; who in the flesh did endure temptations even to the passion of the cross, and overcame all evil, subduing the hells and reducing the heavens to order, and who on the third day after His crucifixion did rise from the tomb in Divine Majesty and glory, in an ever-living- life-giving Body, and in this Human glorified did ascend on high, taking to Himself all power in heaven and on earth, to reign supreme and alone the God over all creation.

     I believe in the Word of God which was in the beginning with God and was God, even the Divine Truth which before Creation was in Jehovah and after creation from Him. This Truth, descending through the heavens, was, by inspiration from Almighty God, received and delivered to the world, by chosen seers and prophets, and inscribed in the books now known as the Old Testament. These books are, therefore, the literal Word of God, of Divine origin and miraculous formation. They contain an internal sense which is one with the Divine Truth as it is in the heavens, and inmostly within this angelic truth Divine is the very Life presence of the Lord Himself. For this reason these books are said to be Divine and fully inspired.

     Moreover, this Divine Truth in ancient days descending from Jehovah God, and given to the world as the Law and the Prophets, was that which, in the fullness of time, when the heavens were ready and the earth prepared, did come into the world as individual man, by Divine conception and virgin birth. This truth, as the seed of woman, was thus made flesh and dwelt among us in the Person of the Savior Jesus Christ. And He, our Lord, in the Human thus put on did embody every Law and fulfil all Prophecy. The inspired record of this Divine and Redemptive transaction is known as the New Testament; the Word of which, being the Evangel of His mouth and written by the hands of His disciples, is of Divine origin and providential formation.

774

Hence, the four Gospels and the Apocalypse contain an internal sense which accords with the understanding of the angels, and inmostly within this angelic sense is the Lord Himself in His Glorified Human.

Furthermore I believe that the Divine Truth, the Word, which was in the beginning with God and in time made flesh and glorified, did again become manifest in the latter days by means of revelation of the internal sense of the Word, which sense treats of things celestial and Divine, and exposes to view the Glorified Human of God. This latter-day revelation therefore constitutes the Second Coming of the Lord,-His Coming in power and glory to establish His crowning Church, the New Jerusalem. This was not therefore, as the former, a coming in Person, but in the open Word, by a revealing of the Truths of Divine Wisdom in which is the Divine Love. And this is nothing more nor less than the manifestation of the mind of God. The Second coming was thus His essential, His final Advent, and it was effected by means of a man, even His Servant, Emanuel Swedenborg, before whom He appeared in Person, and whom He filled with His Spirit and commissioned to teach the doctrines of His New Church. Having opened the internal sight of this man, the Lord introduced him into the spiritual world, so that he might behold the heavens and the hells, converse with angels and spirits, and describe the things there seen and heard. Being filled with the spirit and divinely commissioned, Swedenborg received and delivered the Doctrines of the New Church pure and undefiled. These Doctrines are therefore in no part from his proprial mind, nor were they received by him from any spirit or angel, but were from the Lord alone by immediate Divine inspiration.

Therefore the works written by Swedenborg, called the Writings of the New Church, are in each and every part the Lord's works. They are the very Truth, and Divine throughout, the Word of the Lord in its internal sense addressed and adapted to the rational minds of men in the world. Being the very Truth, and the internal sense of the Word, they contain and manifest the Lord in His Glorified Human as One with the Infinite Father-as the Supreme and only God of heaven and earth.

775

For this reason these writings are of Divine authority in the Church, altogether to be believed and in no part rejected.

     On the ground of this faith in the nature of the Revelation given to the Church, I believe the priesthood to be of Divine appointment, according to the Doctrine thereof as delivered;-that the sacerdotal is holy and from the Lord;-that priests are His representatives in the work of saving souls;-that the priesthood is given for the administration of the Divine Law and Worship, for the maintenance of order in ecclesiastical affairs, without which the Church cannot be justly established. To this end the priesthood itself must be in order, that is, formed into orders and sub-orders according to the doctrine of degrees as revealed, for thus alone can its use and function become efficient within the Church.

     And now, in response to the request of my brethren, the priests of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, I have presented myself for ordination into the third or episcopal degree of the priesthood at your hands. I therefore declare it to be my purpose to hold the powers conferred as a sacred trust from the Lord, to be kept free from all proprial violation, and, when call is made, to be administered in the fear of the Lord, for the benefit and upbuilding of His Church. It is also my intention to devote the remaining years of my life to this sacred service.

     I pray that the Lord may uphold me in these resolutions, and lead me in the way I should go.

776

Church News 1912

Church News Various 1912

     FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA. During the past month the Civic and Social Club has displayed considerable activity. The annual meeting has been held, which was followed by the exhibition of a series of amusing lantern slides showing some phases of Bryn Athyn life, accredited to the versatile genius of Mr. Whitehead until they were discovered in the current number of the Strand Magazine. In addition the social committee of the club; has convened a meeting of the young people to discuss the social possibilities of the coming season. The first social event on the program was the successful dance which was given on the evening of Hallowe'en, at which a good number attended,-considerably more than turned out for the annual meeting.

     A public debate was organized by a number of the leading: politicians of the settlement, and took place on the evening of Saturday, November 2nd. The proximity of the Presidential elections caused interest in politics to run high, and nearly four hundred people gathered to hear the representatives of the three parties make their spirited and convincing appeal to the local voters. Messrs. Raymond Pitcairn and Ezra Hyde Alden represented the Republican party, Messrs. Randolph Childs and Raymond Cranch the Washington party, and Mr. Otho Heilman and the Rev. Gilbert Smith the Democrats. The Roosevelt advocates seem to have made the most impression if we are to judge by the straw vote which was taken after the meeting. The Younger Generation has also been influenced by the political atmosphere and has held several gatherings at which politics were the chief subject of discussion.

     The Bryn Athyn chapter of the Theta Alpha gave a tea at Glenhurst on the afternoon of October 19th, at which mutual acquaintance was made with the school girls. Another exclusively feminine occasion was a "shower" on Nov. 3 to one of the Bryn Athyn girls who is preparing for a wedding.

777

     The school organizations have been active in many ways. The Academy Athletic Association and the Phi Alpha Fraternity have held their annual meetings and elected their officers for the year. The theological class is holding a monthly meeting at which a particularly delectable feast of reason and other more mundane viands is offered to the initiated.

     The school held its first regular social on the evening following Hallowe'en. Owing to the Friday supper having first claim on the Auditorium, the dance was held in the old gymnasium and it was found that the historic hall had not lost its power to foster the festive sphere, though the school socials may have grown too big for their old home. Within the school there is undisturbed harmony and progress. An interesting feature of the school work: has been the presentation of a series of illustrated lectures on Music by Mrs. Royden Smith.
The season allotted to foot ball,-the Academy game par excellence,-is over; the early part of the season was not very successful and the team has a record of two victories, one tie game and three defeats, but all was forgiven with the winning of the most important game of the year with our old friendly rivals, the Radnor High School, by the score of 13-9. Now comes a period of rest before basket ball starts. The society has recently held its annual meeting. Friday suppers continue to be well attended and the doctrinal classes have been very interesting. Mr. Gilbert Smith-soon, alas, to forsake us for the benefit of Chicago,-has been giving a series on practical subjects such as Friendship and Self-Examination, and recently the Bishop has resumed his presentation of the Doctrine of the Word. One Friday evening was devoted to hearing from the Bishop and Mr. Synnestvedt of their visits to the district assemblies in Glenview and Pittsburgh.
     D. R.

     TORONTO, ONT. The histrionic ability latent in our society blossoms at intervals; and, as though in promise of a New Year of activity, it bloomed delightfully at our social on the 19th of June. Four of the Parkdale Players, Mr. Hubert Hyatt, Mr. Theodore Rothermel, Miss Lillian Wilkes, and Miss Vera Bellinger, gave some clever caricature sketches of different members of the society.

778

Miss Wilkes recited a prologue, begging none to take offense, and apparently none was taken, even when hilarious laughter greeted the recognition of the originals.

     With the advent of our English friends we have found our seating accommodations insufficient at church services, so we have had to open the doors between the church and school rooms in order to place the additional chairs required. The partition between those rooms was made movable before our last Assembly in order to accommodate the attendance then and looking forward to the time when we would require extra room for church services. We have only a nucleus of a building fund, but we already have visions of a proper church building for divine worship.

     Our annual Thanksgiving social was held on the evening of the 25th of October. We all assembled for supper at 7 o'clock and, while still at the table, Mr. Cronlund read a splendid paper, in which he brought out the idea that our Thanksgiving should take the form of "contentment" with our lot. Whether our lot has placed us in positions prominent or humble, in circumstances rich or poor, our lives are under the guidance of Divine Providence. The Doctrines teach that contentment makes us receptive of the influx of Divine Blessing, hence of happiness.

     The subject of study at our Wednesday evening classes this year is "Correspondence," and on alternate Monday evenings Swedenborg's Philosophy is being studied. B. S.

     STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN. The twenty-seventh of October, this year, was a memorable day in the little Academy circle in Stockholm, when the Rev. S. C. Bronnicke, of Copenhagen, conducted services for us, and administered the Sacraments. The services were held in Mrs. Svaneskog's parlor, which had quite an ecclesiastical appearance, even if it was not a cathedral. The reading desk, the altar rail, and the red velvet cushions were all made for the occasion by members of the Circle. We had music, too,-six of the shorter pieces in the Psalmody,-translated into Swedish, and copies made, and so every corner of the room was full of music.

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Mr. Bronnicke's sermon was full' of interior truths on the subject of Baptism, from every point of view. There is no mistake as to where he stands in respect to the Writings and the state of the Christian world. The sacrament of Baptism was administered to three persons, Mrs. Svaneskog, Mrs. Gustaf Boeckstrom, and Mrs. Ljungberg (the sister of the Rev. C. Th. Odhner). This was followed by the administration of the Holy Supper, for which we felt a great need, as it had become impossible for us to worship any longer with the old society, where the difference between the New Church and the Old is seen so indistinctly. There was a blissful feeling of interior harmony in our simple services.

In the afternoon, at 5 p. m., we sat down to the first banquet of the independent Circle, exactly twelve persons being present. Mr. Stroh, as toastmaster, introduced the Program with a toast to "The New Church, New, and not to be mixed with the Old." Pastor Bronnicke spoke of "the New Church in the Northlands," Mr. Boeckstrom on "the present and future of our union in faith." His speech was a surprise to us all, with its brilliant oratory, evident deep sincerity and great fervor. This was followed by a poem of greeting "to Bryn Athyn," by Mrs. Ljungberg, and a very entertaining speech by Mr. Bertram Liden, describing a future "New Church island, in the neighborhood of Stockholm,"-his model of the ideal New Church settlement being Glenview. Miss Liden also read a lovely poem composed for the occasion. There is great poetical talent among us Swedes, but you Americans will have to take this on faith. Four of the old Academy songs have been translated into Swedish,-"Our Glorious Church," "What Name Resounds," and two shorter ones, and the versions almost surpass the originals in beauty.

In the evening, after we had dispersed, we received the October number of the N. K. TIDNING. It was certainly an anticlimax, in its bitter attack upon our beloved Academy, but the aspersions there openly cast upon it are not the only ones abroad, nor the bitterest. The ancient drawn, which you folks in America have been so valiantly fighting, does not seem quite dead yet, for, in spite of various olive branches, the tail of him is still waving here in the North.

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But Hope still lives, blind-folded, bending over her broken harp.

     FROM OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

     GREAT BRITAIN. The second lecture of the interesting series arranged by the Literary and Recreation Society at Flodden Road, Camberwell, London, was given on October 15, when Mr. G. E. Holman took for his subject, "What is the real character of the Writings?"

     The Rev. W. E. Hurt presided and there was a very good attendance.

     In the course of the lecture attention was drawn to the fact that Swedenborg repeatedly warned his readers that the Writings were not his, but were from the Lord alone, and that this applied to all classes of the Writings, the descriptions of "things heard and seen" in the spiritual world, the expository works and those portions of the Writings which were purely doctrinal. The Writings, therefore, said the lecturer, came to us with every whit as much authority as the inspired books of the Old and New Testaments.

     Every epoch in the history of the human race had been inaugurated by a divine revelation, or Word, specially adapted to the needs and capacity of that epoch, and there had been a progression of revelation, from that suited to the state of wisdom of the Most Ancient Church to that suited to the gross ignorance of the Jewish Church; and now a progression was going on upwards from that state of gross ignorance to wisdom again.

     Quotations were read from the Writings describing the difference in the manner in which the revelation was given to the Hebrew Prophets from the manner in which the revelation was given to Swedenborg.

     The necessity for the several classes of teachings in the Writings was considered, and special emphasis was laid upon the fact that no one could enter further into Divine Truth than the Lord, through the Writings, took him. The endeavor to "work out" the spiritual sense by applying a knowledge of correspondences, although it might afford confirmations of the internal sense given in the Writings, could never lead one step beyond the teachings contained therein.

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     The conclusion arrived at by the lecturer was that, although the Writings were not the spiritual sense of the Word, that being in its purity incomprehensible to earthly minds, they were an expression of the spiritual sense on the rational plane, and they were therefore justly called the "Word," because all divine revelation was the Word. They did not, however, reach to such low states of mind as did the literal sense of the Old and New Testaments, and the use of the latter was not to be understood as in any sense abrogated by the Writings. The letter of the inspired books of the Bible was the necessary foundation on which the Writings (like the Word in the heavens) rested, and because it was the lowest and least living expression of truth, it was the most powerfully reactive.

     The Writings, Mr. Holman held, were not verbally inspired, but because they were from the Lord, they were necessarily correspondential, although the correspondence reached down only to the ideas conveyed by the Writings, the words being Swedenborg's own.

     In conclusion, the lecturer expressed the opinion that New Church Societies were guilty of a grave neglect of duty when they omitted, as so many of them did, to include readings from the Writings in their public church services.

     Several friends took part in the discussion which followed the lecture and the question was asked why a portion of the Writings were not read as part of the service at Camberwell.

     The chairman pointed out that while he agreed with Mr. Holman that the doctrines of the church were divine truth, yet it was because the Writings were not verbally inspired that they were not read as lessons in the church. He dissented from Mr. Holman's contention that the Writings were the Word. The Word was in its fulness and power in the letter which was its ultimate and continent, and the Writings which conveyed the spiritual sense was not the Word in fulness. He held that a Newchurchman was not bound to accept every illustration which Swedenborg gave-these were not divine as the revealed truths were. The revelation was made to Swedenborg's internal perception and he used his own words and illustrations to place these great truths before men.

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     Mr. Holman briefly replied to the questions which were put and the chairman congratulated the meeting on the friendly character of the discussion. Everyone, including the Academy friends who were present, expressed satisfaction with the paper and the harmonious spirit which prevailed in spite of differences of opinion.

     The next lecture of the series will be given on Monday, November 11th, when Mr. F. Hodson Rose will open a discussion on "Worship in the New Church: Its spirit and its expression." (From MORNING LIGHT, NOV. 3.)

     INDIA. The NEW CHURCH YOUNG PEOPLE'S MAGAZINE for October, 1912, brings the first news of an interesting group of Hindu receivers of the Heavenly Doctrine. Mr. H. N. Morris, an English Newchurchman, while on a business visit to India, received a call from Professor Manishankar Ratnajee Bhatt, a distinguished authority on education in the Bombay Presidency, and now Secretary to the Prime Minister of Bhavgar, (or Bhaunagar), Gujerat. The professor is not only a Newchurchman of long and well-known standing, but has also translated into the Gujeratee language two volumes of extracts, one from HEAVEN AND HELL and one from CONJUGIAL LOVE.

     Mr. Bhatt had several very interesting conversations with Mr. Morris, who was deeply impressed by his earnestness, his insight and devotion. He told him also of some of his converts and other acknowledged receivers of the Doctrines, and it was finally decided that a religious service should be held in Mr. Morris' room at a hotel in Bombay. "Accordingly, on Sunday, August 18th, seventeen friends met there. Mr. Morris conducted the service and preached a sermon from Psalm 24.8-10. Though the others present were natives, all but two of them understood English perfectly, nine of them were thoughtful and intelligent university students at the great College of Poona, which Mr. Morris afterwards visited. From conversations he had after the service with all present, and from letters received since, Mr. Morris that confident that the service made a deep impression on them all, and Prof. Bhatt is of the opinion that it was the virtual founding of the first New Church society in our Great Dependency."

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To the above we must add a letter from Prof. Bhatt, published in the NEW CHURCH MAGAZINE for October, giving a further account of the service: "I have much pleasure in telling you that I saw Mr. H. N. Morris, of Manchester, at Bombay. On Sunday, the I8th of August, an event happened which I consider the greatest in the history of India. Mr. Morris conducted a Divine service in his room at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. We were sixteen souls in all. A pupil of mine, with his wife and child, two other pupils, myself, and nine students from a college at Poona, who are pupils of a pupil of mine. It was marvelous. It was the Second Coming of Christ to India, both in spirit and in power. The liturgy used once belonged to Mr. Sutton, the poet, and is now with me. The New Church Liturgy is a glorious work. Though I had read Swedenborg's works, I had never before seen the New Church Liturgy."

To the members of the New Church, with their eyes fixed in longing expectation upon the Gentiles, this piece of news will be of interest, indeed. News of sporadic New Church movements in India have come at long intervals since the year 1824, but they have always ended in the clouds. The most hopeful was the movement of John McGowan, a Eurasian of Allahabad, who was ordained "Bishop of the New Church in India" by the late Rev. Samuel Dike in 1891, and who for a time published an interesting little INDIAN NEW CHURCH MESSENGER. But Mr. McGowan died in 1893, and though his son continued his work for a few years, nothing has been heard of the movement for a decade or more. It is to be hoped that the present movement will be more permanent. From the Rev. Mr. Fercken, of Mauritius, we learn that the "city congregation" in Port Louis, in that island, consists chiefly of Hindus, and that they are to be classed with the most devoted and doctrinally interested among his people. The Lord speed the day of the Gentiles!

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Correction 1912

Correction Editor 1912

Announcements.

The notice of the death of John H. Synnestvedt, in November LIFE, should have read "in his tenth year" instead of "in his thirteenth year." [Corrected in the electronic text.]