TRUTH AND FREEDOM        W. F. PENDLETON       1928


[Frontispiece: Mr. and Mrs. C. J. Wittington.]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII JANUARY, 1928 No. 1
     (Delivered in the Cathedral, Bryn Athyn, Pa., December 29th, 1926, his last appearance in the pulpit. The sermon, somewhat revised for this occasion, was originally delivered in Chicago fifty years ago.)

     "If ye abide in my Word, ye shall be my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make yore free." (John 8:31, 32.)

     The Lord came into the world to rescue man from the thralldom of infernal spirits. Spiritual freedom had fled from the human race, and even the natural freedom of man was almost gone. Divine power alone could execute the work of deliverance, and restore liberty to men. In order to perform this Divine work, it was necessary that He should Himself naturally come into the world, that He should appear before the eyes of men, that He should talk with them as one man with another, and, in talking, teach them the mode and manner of the deliverance Which He had come to effect, which was to be by the truth of His Word, to be taught by Him; which, when received, would restore liberty to the world. "If ye abide in my Word, ye shall be my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

     The Divine instrumentality of redemption and salvation was to be the Truth. But the truth must be known, and continue to be known, in the thought of the understanding, in the affection of the will, and in the actions of the life. No other power or force under heaven could bring about the desired end. The truth is all sufficient. No other instrumentality was needed. For in the truth brought down from heaven to earth by Him was to be the Divine power of the Lord.

     It has been said that knowledge is power. This is because truth is power. This is because the Word is power. This is because the Lord is power. He who has knowledge, he who has truth, has power, "the power of God unto salvation " (Rom. 1:16), the power of salvation from sin. For the Lord God also said, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin," that is to say, a slave to sin. "And the servant," the slave to sin, "abideth not in the house forever," but the Son, the Son of God, the Divine Truth, "abideth forever." "If the Son of God therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." And ye shall be free forever.

     In the unregenerate state, man does not know what freedom is, because his ignorance is so dense that he does not know what truth is, does not know what freedom is. What a man does not know is to him as something which does not exist. For nothing exists to us except that which we make our own by actual life. We may indeed hear of things that we do not actually make our own, and from that hearing talk about them, but it consists of little more than the use of terms and words; and if we think we possess the thing, it is not the real thing, the real truth, but merely a spurious imitation of it. In the other life, even all knowledge of a thing that we have not made our own by actual life while in the world is taken away, and we know it no more. Hence it remains eternally true, that after death we know nothing of that which we have not learned to believe and love, to will and to do while in the world. All else is wholly forgotten, and no effort we can make will recall it to remembrance.

     So it is with freedom,-the freedom which comes by the truth, the freedom which the Lord brings down from heaven to earth by the truth of His Word, the Word of truth which He came into the world to bring a freedom which no man has except by the worship of the Lord and a life of obedience to His commandments. This is what is meant by the words which the Lord spake to His disciples, the words of Him who spake as never man spake (John 7:45), the words of the God Man, who came into the world to bring spiritual liberty to men: "If ye abide in my Word, ye shall be my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

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He Himself was that truth come down from heaven to redeem and save.

     When the Lord said to His disciples, "If ye abide in my Word," that is, "If ye continue in my Word," He meant the same as when He gave John, on the isle of Patmos, the message to the church in Smyrna, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." (Rev. 2:10.) No man is set free from the slavery of sin, the bondage of death and of hell, but the man who receives the truth, and abides in the truth to the end of life in the world. "Be thou faithful!" Be thou faithful even unto death, and after death thou shalt receive a crown of life. And we are informed that by these words is signified that "then they will receive eternal life, the reward of victory,"-the reward of a continuous conflict with the powers of hell. And we are further told that "it is said that a crown of life shall be given them, such as the martyrs received, who were faithful even unto death; and because the martyrs wished for it, therefore after death crowns were given them, by which was signified the reward of victory." And we are still further informed that they still appear in their crowns in heaven, which, the Revelator says, "it has been permitted me to see." (A. R. 103.)

     Now while slavery continues,-slavery to one's own evils fit is inspired and kept alive by infernal spirits, kept continually blazing and burning by the influx of the breath of hell, holding the mind under the continual phantasy that if man were deprived of what he has, if he were deprived of the delight of evil, he would be deprived of life. For evil has its delight, a delight that gives a kind of freedom, a freedom that looks like freedom, but is as far away from it as the west is from the east, as hell is from heaven. And in this state of slavery, a man is held in the phantasy that if he were deprived of the delights of evil, he would have no life left.

     Hence may be understood the unwillingness of men in this state to come and place themselves under the dominion of the Lord, under whose dominion alone there is freedom. For man, every man, is always under some dominion. If he is not under the dominion of the Lord, he is under some other dominion, and he cannot possibly escape it. Under the Lord's dominion he has freedom, but under every other form of dominion he has only slavery. But man,- the natural man, the unregenerate man,-is unwilling to come out from slavery into the only true freedom, and rebels against it.

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Men cry out, as did the unbelieving Jews, "We will not have this man to reign over us." (Luke 19:14) They rebel, because to come under the dominion of the truth calls for obedience, and they are unwilling to obey the truth. There is nothing they hate so much as the truth. Truth is a Man, and that Man is God, that Man is the Lord God, our Savior Jesus Christ, who says He came into the world to make men free, who says," If ye abide in my Word, ye shall be my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." There is nothing else under heaven that can make men free.

     The truth does indeed require us to give up our own life, the life of our evil loves, the life of our evil delights. And although the truth offers-the Lord in His truth offers-real life, life itself, and with it the indescribable felicities of heaven, yet the natural man will have none of it. The purely natural man does not admit that what the truth says is so, and he remains in dense ignorance that there is any better life than that which he now possesses,-the life which the truth alone can impart to him.

     Some refuse to undertake to do what the truth requires, because they labor under an erroneous idea of what the truth does require. It is a part of the scheme of dominion with the infernal powers, and with their willing agents on earth, in order more completely to obtain control of the souls of men, to assume the garb of religion, and to take possession of the church and construct a false heaven. Their object is not to save souls, but to acquire dominion. To do this, they do not give to men the genuine truth of the Word, but a spurious imitation of it. They do not break to them the true bread of heaven, the "bread which cometh down from heaven to give life unto the world." And hence they do not permit men to see the real evils that are leading their souls to hell. Such they cover up, do not refer to, never speak of. Instead of urging men to come up to the requirements of the truth itself, plainly taught in the Word of God, in particular in the Ten Commandments,-instead of this, they teach that men live by faith only, and require certain things that are non-essential, urging upon their followers the traditions and inventions of men, rather than the plain commands of God.

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Prominent among these non-essentials is the requirement to give up natural pleasures, which are in themselves innocent and not harmful, making this one of the chief elements of a religious life; causing it to be believed that the pleasures of the body in the world are not at all in agreement with the life that leads to heaven, that we must deny ourselves these things if we would live a heavenly life.

     Now this is requiring more than the truth requires, and at the same time less. It requires more than the truth requires, because the truth of Scripture nowhere makes the surrendering and extinction of natural pleasures an essential of religion; it simply regulates those pleasures, puts them into order, and causes the mind to discriminate between pleasures that are really evil and those that are harmless and innocent in character. And it requires less than the truth, because the truth exacts from all men a strict obedience to the letter and the spirit of the Ten Commandments, the precepts of the moral law, as containing the genuine essentials of salvation, without which no man can be saved. But a humanly invented system makes no such requirement, except for the eyes of the world; holding that the Commandments are merely to be kept for the life of the outer world, and contribute nothing to the life of preparation for heaven; that heaven is entered by faith only, and not by the works of the law.

     Every reader of history knows, and all human experience testifies, that nations obtain their liberty through war, that men must fight for liberty, for the sake of the blessings which it brings. And sometimes the war is indefinitely prolonged. It cannot be otherwise for it is the same with all spiritual war. In this, as in all other things, the natural corresponds to the spiritual. When a young man seriously begins the contest for spiritual liberty, he finds himself all at once in the midst of a war that was unexpected, not looked for at first. It is a war against his own delights, and apparently against his own freedom. For it is a remarkable fact, not foreseen, that a true spiritual freedom is established, and a false and spurious freedom banished, by apparently depriving ourselves of freedom at first,-by putting ourselves under bonds. But observe closely; it is only an appearance of bondage, for the bonds are self-imposed. They are the bonds of self-compulsion, bonds that man voluntarily assumes, even as a soldier going to war, that a false freedom may be removed.

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And so, even in this very self-compulsion and self-restraint, there is the highest exercise of freedom. But the sense of freedom is absent. Such a state does not appear to be free.

     A lesson to learn here, by the young people who are about to begin the battle of the regenerate life, is not to be discouraged and desist from the conflict, or retreat from the field of battle, because the experience is hard and bitter in the effort to compel oneself to do what the truth teaches. Remember what the Lord said to His disciples on one occasion: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I am come not to send peace, but a sword." (Matt. 10:34.) Life on earth was to be a constant warfare against all that stands out in opposition to the truth of the Word of God; and all are enlisted for that war who love that truth; and in this world there will be but a few faint glimpses of the peace of heaven. "I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword." Peace will come after the conflict, not on earth, but in heaven.

     In an ancient fable the story is that a certain animal was informed of the exceeding sweetness of nuts. So he snatched a walnut from a tree, and pressed his teeth into it. But being offended by the bitterness of the hull, he threw it away before he reached the inner sweetness, complaining that he had been deceived, that nuts were not sweet, but bitter, and he would make no further trial. Now One who is infallible, and infinite in His knowledge, teaches us of the exceeding sweetness and beatitude of life in heaven. But to reach that life we must, while on earth, pass through many bitter experiences; bitter, because it is necessary to make war against our own evil delights. And so, instead of the sweet, we find the bitter; instead of freedom, constraint, and what appears to be bondage. And we are prone to pause in doubt, even as the people of Israel hesitated on Mount Carmel, standing still, as it were, at the forks of the road, causing the prophet Elijah to call out to them: "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him!" (I Kings 18:21.)

     We are reminded also of the wonderful vision seen in the world of spirits by the prophet of the Second Coming. Some hundreds of people, yea, a multitude of men and women newly arrived from the natural world, were traveling along a great highway, finally reaching the forks of the road where a great stone, over which some stumbled and fell.

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They had at last reached the point of decision; they could no longer halt between two opinions. And we are told that a few took the right road, but many the wrong. (H. H. 534.) We have here a picture of the beginning of manhood, when a decision must be made, and when the Divine law of order, which is inexorable, will brook no further delay; and one would fain return to the fleshpots of Egypt rather than wander through the wilderness of years that intervenes between the starting point and the goal.

     We have quoted the Gospel where the Lord said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I am come not to send peace, but a sword." (Matt. 10:34) If this passage were read, to the exclusion of other passages where peace is spoken of by the Lord, we should receive an erroneous idea of the end, of the purpose, for which the Lord came into the world. This passage in Matthew tells the truth, but it does not, on its surface, tell the whole truth. The Lord did come to bring a sword,-to bring war, combat, temptation, trial, tribulation; yet this does not express the whole truth,-the supreme end: for which He came among men. Nor are we left in doubt. He came to bring a sword, but it was to bring the peace that comes only by the sword. The sword was the truth which was to make men free, which was to bring peace to the world, as is even the case with natural wars among men. Wars are fought that peace may come.

     This truth, as applied to spiritual war, is fully explained by the Lord elsewhere; as, for instance, where, in the Gospel of John, He speaks to His disciples, saying, "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33.) I have overcome the world. He had accomplished redemption by combats with the hells, and so established peace in heaven and also among men. "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

     And the angels sang this song of peace, as heard by the shepherds at Bethlehem: "There were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. . . And suddenly there, was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." (Luke 2:8-14)

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For the truth,-which was to make men free, was in the world. Amen.

     Lessons: Isaiah 58. John 8:28-51. N. J. H. D. 141, 142.
IN MEMORY OF THE BISHOP EMERITUS 1928

IN MEMORY OF THE BISHOP EMERITUS       Rev. GEORGE DE CHARMS       1928

     The following addresses were delivered at the Funeral Service in the Bryn Athyn Cathedral on November 7th, 1927:

     A deeply loved and honored leader, to whose wisdom the Church has looked for counsel for more than half a century, has been gathered to his fathers. He was very dear to all of us, not only because of what be did for the Church in that high office to which he was called, but also because we loved him as a man. He was a genial and sympathetic friend, a broadly cultured gentleman, with whom one felt a spirit of sincerity within the forms of courtesy that made them the embodiment of charity. His mind was keenly alert, even to the last, responsive to every subject of human interest. Tolerant in the extreme, he never obtruded his personal views upon others; yet he ever spoke with a calm assurance and a firm conviction, penetrating the appearance, and bringing to light a deeper truth. All his thought seemed to be born, not only of an intellectual vision of the Lord, derived from the Heavenly Doctrine, but also of a continual sense of His living presence. The realization that the Lord had come seemed to transform his life, and to mold his character.

     From it he derived a deep humility, a sort of childlike simplicity in all he said and did. From it he also derived a quiet strength, an unwavering courage, a calm acquiescence in the dispensations of Providence, the sphere of which deeply affected all who came in contact with him. It enabled him, in a degree seldom achieved by men of forceful character, to preserve in actual practice the freedom of others, both as to speech and action, while at the same time he helped them to feel the power of Divine Law as that to which all men should compel themselves.

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     All these qualities combined to fit him eminently for the task to which the Lord had called him. Keenly perceptive of the Divinity of the Writings, he saw in them the vision of the Son of Man in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. He saw that, only as that vision came to men with profound conviction could an internal church be founded. Standing courageously for this principle, and for all that it involved of loyalty to the Heavenly Doctrine, in thought, in teaching, and in life, he suffered bitter opposition from those whom he was trying to lead toward a higher conception of the New Church than men were as yet prepared to accept. For the sake of that principle he willingly sacrificed every hope of advancement, and suffered poverty and hardship for himself and his family. But in this he was not entirely alone. The small group of kindred spirits, gathering around the strong personality of Bishop Benade, found themselves drawn ever closer by bonds of spiritual friendship. Out of this arose the Academy, fighting its way at last to freedom and independence, that the Doctrine of the Lord's Second Coming in the Writings might gain a foothold in the minds of men, among all who were ready to receive it.

     The high vision was for the most part in advance of the time; and even among those who were ready to accept it as an abstract doctrine, not all were prepared for such an application of it as would make it a forming, creative force in the development of the Church. The conflict was sharp, and the outcome often in doubt. But when at last a favoring Providence brought success, and a small but closely knit organization came into being, free from external restraints, with sufficient means to inaugurate a practical program of internal evangelization, all heaven seemed to inflow with inspiration to fill the hands of these devoted men and women. It was as if they had come out of the desert into a fertile land, where, by earnest cultivation, the soil could be made to produce a plentiful harvest of spiritual fruitage, until it became like the valley of the Jordan,-the garden of the Lord. The exaltation of those days of joyous labor and unstinted sacrifice has loaned its inspiration to every generation following.

     But the conflict was not over. Dark days lay ahead. Difficulties arose which appeared as insurmountable, difficulties arising in the Academy, itself, and seeming to be intrinsic to it.

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The very principles, a perception of which had seemed to open the windows of the soul and impart a glimpse of heaven itself, seemed, when faithfully applied, to be irreconcilable with actual human conditions. They seemed to involve the sacrifice, not only of the things of the world, but of freedom itself, that priceless gift of God, without which there is no possibility of human progress. At last, even strong men reached the limit of their endurance, wavered, and began to break. They seemed to be caught in a cul-de-sac from which there was no escape. Hope gave place to disappointment, and at last to despair.

     Then was our beloved Bishop, now departed, called to take the helm. With firm adherence to the inner vision of the Truth, he yet was able to see the need of an external yielding, an external accommodation to the necessities of human life, that the vital seed might have room and air in which to grow. Providing by counsel and assembly for free thought and speech, he yet held the minds of men fixed steadfastly upon the vision of the living Lord, stirred within them a spirit of charity and mutual toleration, and inspired them with renewed confidence in the future of their cause, with a new faith in the Providence that was directing their destiny. Holding the Church ever true to the deep, sure channel of Revealed Truth, he guided it between hidden rocks and dangerous shoals, which he perceived with keen insight before others guessed their presence. Safely he brought it to a haven where for a time there might be rest, preserving all that was of lasting value in the earlier development, so that upon this, by devoted labor, there might be a further building. His efforts were rewarded beyond all expectations, and to his patient leading we owe in great measure the manifold blessings that we now enjoy. Our debt we can neither express in words nor perhaps completely realize as yet.

     Small wonder, then, that with his passing there comes to all the Church a sense of loss, as of some assurance of security removed. With him passes a state within our Church which no power in heaven or on earth can bring again. The stream of life flows on with irresistible current, carrying us inevitably upon its flood to states untried and dangers that cannot be foreseen.

     If, realizing our bereavement, we are tempted in a moment of human weakness to question the future, let us remember his own unfaltering trust in Providence.

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Our beloved friend has finished his work; he has laid aside that tool we call the body, and entered upon his appointed use in the world of spirits. But the Lord who prepared him for his task, the Lord who gave him strength and wisdom adequate to meet the needs of his day, the Lord Who is the real, the only Builder of His Church, remains as present in His Glorified Human as in days now past. "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." Men are indeed instruments under His hand. Through them He works. To human appearance, the Holy Spirit passes from man to man, and the New Jerusalem seems to descend from heaven by means of great minds, enlightened to teach and inspired to lead. And yet it is the Lord Who provides these minds, the Lord Who raises up these leaders, in every time of need. If we penetrate the appearance and lay bare the reality, we see that the Holy Spirit passes from God through man to man, and that the Lord is immediately present with every man, by afflux from Revelation and by influx from heaven, to build the New Jerusalem in every individual mind. To that presence, clearly seen and spiritually felt, our beloved friend ever pointed as "the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." To that living presence his whole life points, with glad assurance of Divine protection and unceasing care for that Church in whose past we see so many miracles of mercy.

     The same may be said even of his death. For that death brings his resurrection to new health and strength, and the unfolding power of the spirit. That state which he personified must needs pass for us; but in that world to which he now has gone, carrying with him all those spiritual faculties by which the Lord so powerfully worked among us here, all that is vital of it, all that is of eternal value in it, will be preserved forever. Its effects will be profound, both there and here. Heaven is the storehouse of remains for the racial man, even as the inner mind is the storehouse of remains with the individual,-remains that enter into future states to mold and guide them from within. There will his work go on, although the Lord alone can trace its operations, although we neither see him nor realize the source of that inflowing spirit which results from his inner presence with us. None the less it will go on, as a means in the hand of the Lord for the protection, preservation, and establishment of His kingdom on the earth.

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It is out of that heaven to which he has gone that the New Jerusalem descends from God; and to that heaven, and the influx thence, he will add a new quality of strength and increased perfection.

     What of the Academy to which he will now come in the spiritual world? It is the old Academy, yet ever new because of hidden things revealed, because of doubts removed and questions answered by spiritual experience and angelic teaching. Yet the old friends are there,-the friends who labored with him through the troubled days of small beginnings here, and who will now receive him gladly to a deeper fellowship. How happy that meeting will be into this new Academy he will come as to a home, where he will find not only rest after weary wandering, but peace which comes from the fulfillment of hopes long years deferred. And to them he will bring news from the earth,-news of the Church and its advancing states, for which they eagerly await. It is thus that he would have us think of him in this glad moment of awakening, forgetful of our sorrow, with hearts full of thankfulness to the Lord for His mercy, both in granting us to know and remember him as he was on earth, and to know and rejoice with him in those days of new-found life that lie ahead, stretching on even to eternity.

     His memory will long be cherished with us for what he was and for what he did as a faithful shepherd of the sheep, a faithful servant of his Master. May we remain true to that vision of the Divine Human in the Writings which he made so clear. May we draw from his life an inspiration to mutual charity, to kindly tolerance and regard for human freedom, to all those qualities which in him were born of a steadfast faith and an earnest life of spiritual religion, the qualities to which our Doctrines point, and which he in so marked a degree exemplified. Not otherwise can we be worthy of his memory, and true to the love of him that is in our hearts. Not otherwise can his great hope for the Church and its genuine growth among us be realized.

     Only thus can the Lord continue to work through him with us, giving us light and strength to meet the needs of another day, that we also may be granted a humble part, a blessed service, in the great work for which he gave his life,-the work by means of which there will at last arise upon the ruins of a fallen Christianity a heavenly kingdom on the earth of men, wherein, in very truth, the "Lord God Jesus Christ shall reign," to Whom be all glory and dominion now and evermore. Amen.

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IN MEMORY OF THE BISHOP EMERITUS 1928

IN MEMORY OF THE BISHOP EMERITUS        N. D. PENDLETON       1928

     Men are spiritual uses; and as they serve those uses, they are disciplined, and, it may be, become regenerate. The uses which men perform are of the Lord's appointment. They are foreseen from the beginning. The Lord foresees them in the man's creation, and provides for them by all the events which bear upon the man, from the first to the last day of his life. In this way man's use, which is and evermore becomes the man, is pre-determined; and yet, in time, it is in freedom shaped and perfected; for creation is continual, and its continuity is effected by recreations. The creation of man as a spiritual use is a non-ending process. That which we call death is but the ultimate catalysis of the body, whereby release is given for further advance, whereby the life of the use which man is becoming is raised to a higher plane and increased powers, whereby a wider opportunity is given for the extension of the service which is involved in the man's use. To this end, man by death becomes a spirit, and an invisible power,-invisible to men in the world; yet the spirit is a power which has an unconscious extension to men in the world of nature. It is thus that the church on earth is aided, is strengthened, by the passing of its members into the other life, a life which is called "other" only because it is not visible to our eyes. The church there and here is one and indivisible; the fate of the one is bound up in the state of the other; for the relation of the two is like that of mind and body.

     Today we commemorate the passing of a member of our church into the other life. William Frederic Pendleton was gifted with a length of days on earth beyond the ordinary. His service to his Church was of great measure. He was honored in this service, and yet more was he loved; and even as he abides in our love, so will he continue to serve the Church on earth. His release leaves us in possession of his spirit, and of his ideal, in which his spirit dwells, in which it has ever dwelt with peculiar force and effective power.

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     It is not for any one thing that we now remember him, nor will the recitation of many things equal his work. It is the whole that counts,-the whole as one and individual. He impressed us as singular in the unity of his life. It is so we grasp and hold to his spirit,-the spirit of his faith and love. We so think and speak of him, because he was our leader in fact as well as form, in spirit as well as in office. He was our leader in and under seeming defeat. He saw the light when there was darkness. His light was the light of faith in the Writings,-a faith that was bold and direct-bold in deed, but quite apart from self-assertion, and direct with that simplicity and sincerity of thought which ever characterizes those most fit to lead their fellow men. The dubious played little part in his life. His mind was engaged with the certainties of Revelation. To see clearly and to believe implicitly was a part of his temperament, his interior constitution. This made him, in his youth, an ardent soldier, and in his younger manhood a devoted follower and upholder of his spiritual teacher and leader; and when in time the call to general leadership came to him, there was no change in his mode and manner. As he was, so he remained, and this to the end,-a most unassuming man, and yet of fiery quantities and properties in maintaining the truths of his conviction, the certainties of Revelation as he saw them, and the validity of those doctrines which have become associated with the name of the Academy.

     I have no knowledge of a greater devotion to those doctrines than was manifest in him, and I know of no leading that led more directly to the Writings as the source of life and faith. His stand ever was to lose the world and gain the Church, and to this end he willingly sacrificed. His mission first called him to the Church in the wilderness, to gather a scattering of the flock and tend them, to give them, in patience and with zeal, spiritual food for their instruction, their upbuilding. Some of us are of this, his flock, his original flock, and the affection of these for their pastor is entwined with the deepest things of their life. Associated with this, his first leading, are memories that cannot die, not until all who knew him have passed away; and in the life to come such memories only sleep, to be awakened for cause and need.

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     A remarkable affection went out to him because he ministered in sacred things, and because his priesthood was ever held inviolate, and because it was exercised with peculiar power, and with singular consecration. In all this he was later known to the whole Church, and known as its Bishop; but to his first-formed Academy flock, he was ever called by the name of Father, as a nearer and dearer title.

     If you will pardon me, I cannot on this occasion be other than personal, though I fear he would not have it so. But remember, the persons of men are formed for spiritual uses, and if regenerate, they are formed of spiritual uses. And in so far, and by this means, the blessing of the Holy Spirit passes through man to man,-that is, by instruction in those Divine things which become sacred when received. In this, happily, there is a personal qualification. It is unhappy only when, and if, the qualification is of the proprium. In the first instance, the person is but a servant of the use, giving form and color to it. In the second, the person would surmount through proprial passions. This is the distinction between a good and an evil shepherd,-between those who gather and those who scatter the flock.

     But let this be. Today we memorialize a brother who has passed into the life beyond, a leader called away from his people; a man who has gone into the presence of his God, even as we shall all go. And while we cannot count upon this memorial either as an aid or a hindrance to his journey, yet for ourselves it may serve as a guidepost on our way, as one by one the passing years bring us nearer the goal.

     When I was a boy, my brother said to me: "There are three great events in a man's life, his birth, his marriage and his death." He had been speaking of the other life as affording a state in which a man could enter into his use in a way not possible in this world. Almost his last words to me were: "I am interested in my work." He diverted from what I was saying. He wanted to know what, if anything, was being done about his class.

     For a number of years he has been in virtual retirement, but his presence among us has been constantly sustaining. Let us look to see, let us pray, that his released spirit may be more strongly with us in aid of the things for which our Church has stood from its beginning. There is ever the insistence of change; yet the power of continuity resides in that which is unchangeable.

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For this is a Divine attribute. It pertains to the Lord. It is derived into His Word, and from thence into His Church. It is that which gives to the spirit of man its immortality. Amen.
IN MEMORY OF THE BISHOP EMERITUS 1928

IN MEMORY OF THE BISHOP EMERITUS       Rev. HUGO LJ. ODHNER       1928

     AT A MEMORIAL SERVICE IN THE OLIVET CHURCH, TORONTO.

     "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace." (Psalm 37:37.)

     It is common in the world to estimate our fellow beings for their wealth, for their power, their social position, their bodily charm or strength, their intellectual attainments. And when their souls pass on into the spiritual life they seem truly to have departed-to have ceased to be so far as men are concerned. For their activities on earth cease, their offices pass into other hands; they are dead to the world, even though history may claim them, or natural affection restore their image.

     But the real man is something different from all this, and is reserved for relatively few to see and perceive and treasure. In common intercourse the best we can hope from our friends is to see their real personality-see the depths of their being, the depths of their love, of their wisdom, and the strength of their endeavor-revealed in a passing flash now and then. Such moments we treasure up as constituting the glory and loveliness and joy of life, as a promise of the heaven where souls shall walk serene without fear or worldly reserve in inmost communion, giving out the wisdom of their life freely, one to another, sharing their delights with their fellows.

     The Writings of the New Church teach us to look for this real man, rather than to stop after admiring or condemning the hereditary talents or faults which garbed his mind, or the accidental gifts which environment and education added superficially. We are to learn to love each other from the heart, and for the real virtues of the spirit, for the good we see in each other; not for the superficial good only, but for the fundamental things which make the regenerating man to be like an angel of God.

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We are to love men for the good of their real use.

     By their real use we do not mean their outward function in life, even though a man's office is a fulcrum and a plane for this, his inner use. A man's real use is tied up with his attitude and illustration in his function, and few there be who can estimate it aright. Yet in the art of appreciating the uses of others lies the key to all progress toward true charity and wisdom and heavenly order and peace. When we learn to see deeply into the hearts of our friends, we shall find their inward use, the use which the Lord has sent them to express in life. This is their true soul, which is the Lord's own creation.

     The soul of each man is a use, a Divine purpose. It is this which forms its body in the world, feeding and growing as man advances in regeneration amidst adversities and struggles against earthly heredities, groping towards a more perfect expression, and all the while organizing itself into a spiritual form within the mortal body. And when this organization, this forming of the use, has been accomplished, when it is ready, and fits completely to a need in the Gorand Man of heaven, the body is laid aside, in Divine Mercy and according to the universal order of progress. (S. D. 5002, 3.) And the spirit, the real man, the formed use, is then born into another world, born into a freedom it had not before, and into a peace and a delight it had never yet felt.

     Within each human soul there is, as a driving power, a Divine thing which is not a part of man. It is a Divine purpose. Happy the man who is true to that Divine end of his creation, to that mission upon which he is sent from God. We can never wholly and finally judge of our fellow as to whether he consentingly fulfilled the Divine purpose to some extent or not. No man can fulfill his mission except in a small part, even though all eternity be reckoned for the task. Yet some are so evidently of eminent service, because of their patient and selfless labor in the Vineyard of the Lord, that we may see their lives, not so much as persons, but as uses formed by the Lord.

     In the late Bishop Emeritus we see such a use-a Divine mission fulfilled a link in the chain of human uses which subserve the Divine Providence as means.

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Wherever possible, in the course of his long services to the New Church, he blotted out himself. He became the leader of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and we vision him as the foremost figure within the New Church in that period. Yet he held the Church together, not by force of personality, but by principle; held it not to himself, but to the Lord. His use was eminently that of the New Church Priesthood, whose position and freedom of development his efforts assured without detriment to other uses. And after a long life of service and struggle had been crowned by the blessings of peace and progress within the Church, he chose to retire from his many administrative duties, doing this gradually and inconspicuously as age came on, and leaving his work in capable hands. And he felt it as his reward that now he could do some one task more perfectly. It is this (as he modestly said) that gives perfection to angelic life,-that their obligations are limited to the one use for which they are adapted, and for which they feel themselves urged to labor because they see that need as one to be filled.

     And now the rushing urge of the world, with its manifold calls, its turbulent, sudden needs, and the many interruptions and interferences of natural life-all this has passed for our beloved and saintly Bishop. His is now to be the one use which he is henceforth free to do,-a heavenly use connected with that priestly love of saving human souls which dominated him. We cannot but rejoice with him that the limitations of old age, and of a body which ill health has ever pursued, have been laid aside forever. For he has not gone, is not departed, from us. He has only entered more interiorly into the sphere of his use. And his living spirit,-which fought for freedom in his youth, and which, latterly in his age, in a greater spiritual crisis, led our Church to a greater spiritual freedom, is present to reinforce the impulses for every good work in the New Church on earth.

     That the General Church as an organization will survive very largely because of the spiritual leadership and wisdom, and tempered, foreseeing tolerance, of its first Bishop, W. F. Pendleton, will be for history to point out. Those who have sat under his tutelage, and those who have known him as a friend, feel that they have been nearer to angels than is usually the privilege of men, and that his life was charged in every part with a self-discipline which was subordinated to the truth, which made his use paramount, and made him a form of use.

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It is of such men that the Psalmist speaks when he says:

"Mark the perfect man,
And behold the upright;
For the end of that man is peace."

     No man is perfect in any Divine sense. But the word here so translated means whole, entire, "integer," one whose life is integrated and united and organized by one fidelity, one fire, one use. Him should we mark, and emulate, for the end of that man is peace,-unity of mind, completeness of devotion, profundity of happiness. The death, or resurrection, of such is precious in the eyes of the Lord.

     And we can only pray that we may all be given the singleness and sincerity which must be if our lives are to be transformed into greater usefulness, into a means for a fuller outpouring of the Spirit of wisdom and of the fear of the Lord, that the Church even here on earth may become a communion of souls, whose minds will be more and more deeply revealed to each other despite the world's shadows, and whose uses will be at one with those of the Communion of Saints in the heavens. Amen.

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INTERPRETATION OF HEBREW NAMES 1928

INTERPRETATION OF HEBREW NAMES       Rev. L. W. T. DAVID       1928

     (A paper read at the Ontario District Assembly, 1927.)

     The possibilities as to variety and broad scope involved in the signification of the names of the Old Testament first caught my attention in a really lively manner some years ago, while I was composing a sermon. The subject of the sermon was the story of the war of liberation fought by Israel against the Canaanite oppressor, Jabin, and his General, Sisera. (Judges 4 and 5.) It is there told that this General had his headquarters at a town named Harosheth. Now in the Writings it is said of Sisera that he represents "falsity from evil destroying the church" (A. E. 434:18); but nothing is said about the significance of his town, which is not even mentioned. But on consulting the lexicon to find the literal meaning of the name and its root, it was found to fit so beautifully into place, and to be so inclusive, as to be very stimulating to thought and imagination. The conclusion arrived at was that it represented "falsities of every kind," which are serviceable to the controlling falsity and its reigning evil, and which also serve as its ultimate base of operation.

     The word "Harosheth" means "cutting," and is used where it tells of the making of the Tabernacle and says that Bezaleel was filled with wisdom . . . "in cutting stones for setting, and in cutting wood (i.e., carving), and in engraving." (Ex. 31:5; 35:33, 35.) These are the only places where the word occurs as a common noun, and the idea is that of highly skilled workmanship with edge tools. But when we go to the root, and to other derivatives from it, the idea is broadened in various directions. The artisan is sometimes the carpenter, sometimes the mason or stone-cutter, sometimes the smith, and thus often the maker of curious and ingenious devices. The word also means the device itself which has been cunningly shaped and put together, a contrivance, and from this a fabrication, evil and deceptive plans, conspiracies, whispering secrecy, and witchcraft. A wood or forest is also meant, as being the place where timber and faggots are cut, or as a place of concealment for rebels, outlaws, and enemies, and so for plotting evil.

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We may note in passing that when David was an outlaw and fugitive from the authority of King Saul, he and his band of debtors and malcontents hid themselves for a time in a forest named Hareth, which, according to Gesenius, is really the same root as that of the words heresh and Harosheth.

     A forest is also a place of bewilderment and confusion; and the aim of deception, secrecy, witchcraft, and cunning device is to bewilder the victim, and make it easy to carry out the evil purpose. Still other meanings are found for this word, i.e., deafness, dumbness, silence, and, derivatively, keeping still, being secretive and concealing, connecting again with what has been shown already. This meaning arises from the fact that the deaf and dumb are cut off from communication with their fellow men. It describes the spiritual condition of those who are in falsities from evil, that they are incapable of hearing truth M speaking it; they can learn nothing about the Lord except in perversions and denials of truth, and they are incapable of praising Him; hence they are deaf, dumb and silent as to all things of spiritual life. Such a state was also represented in some of the provisions of the Law of Israel. The doing of certain evils was to be punished by "cutting off." The wrongdoer must be "cut off" from Israel. He was excommunicated and exiled from the camp, receiving none of the benefits Or protection afforded by the camp, and having no instruction from the Law. He could not approach the Tabernacle to bring an offering and worship the Lord. For rebelliousness, Miriam was punished in this way for seven days; but in the code given a little later the "cutting off" seems to have been meant as permanent. This legal act in Israel represented that evils and falsities destroy the faculties of receiving and of giving the things of spiritual life. They make man deaf and dumb.

     Again, the root of the name Harosheth means imagination, or the formation of images in the mind. This meaning is from that of artisanship, carving, and engraving; for, like an artisan, the imagination takes up the raw materials of observation and experience, and by cutting and fitting makes out of them forms adapted to the use of thought and purpose; or, like a carver, the imagination devises and makes us see visible forms and representations in things otherwise meaningless. On the other hand, with those who are in falsity from evil, the imagination constructs a world of phantasy and illusion, in whose midst they live.

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     Thus it would seem that the name of the town where Sisera's power was centered stands for every kind of falsity that is available for undermining the spiritual life and destroying the Church-cunning sophistries, ingenious devices, that sorcery which makes falsity seem true and truth seem false, closely reasoned fabrications, endless forests of science in which one may wander deviously until utterly bewildered, and specious applications of fact and truth; in short, whatever can be used to confuse and dull the perceptions.

     In the same story, there is another name that invites attention and well deserves close study. It is the name of the prophetess of Israel who inspired the people to rebel against their oppressors,- Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth. Our curiosity leads us to look up the meaning of this name, and we quickly find it,-a "bee." But here we are struck with a certain incongruity. The idea of this small though industrious insect seems to carry no significance comparable with the inspiring character of the woman or the glorious events of the story. In this respect the name is in noticeable contrast with the others. Sabin, the name of the Canaanite king, has the meaning of intellectual, cunning, crafty, knowing. Barak, the name of the captain of Israel, means lightning or "a glittering sword." These have a fitness and direct application that is stimulating to the imagination and thought. But Deborah, the prophetess, "a bee!" Even the name of the husband, who has no other mention, seems more appropriate; for Lapidoth means torches, lamps or firebrands. For as prophetess she illuminated by giving instruction, and as heroic leader she enkindled the people and inflamed them with the love of liberty, so that the oppressor was destroyed. But she is called "Deborah," and the apparent triviality of meaning awakens a desire to inquire further.

     If we turn to the Writings for the spiritual signification of the bee, we find it given several times, but in an unfavorable sense,-"falsity perverting the reasonings of the mind," "falsity of reasoning," etc. And bees are mentioned, along with flies, as among the hurtful flying creatures of the world of spirits, being produced by the sphere of false thought generated by spirits there. But in A. E. 401:6 an explanation is given: "As the rational obtains everything that belongs to it from the scientifics of the natural man, its reasonings are signified by 'bees,' because bees suck out and obtain their store from flowers, as the rational does from the scientifics of the natural man.

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But here by 'bees' are signified false reasonings, because the rational gathers what belongs to it from scientifics falsely applied." Now when we consider this explanation we find that it applies quite as much to the proper and orderly operation of the normal rationality as to disorderly and perverted reasoning, The genuine natural rational is there described as "obtaining everything that belongs to it from the scientifics of the natural man"; it has the whole held of external knowledge and experience out of which it draws a meaning, a thought, a reason, a philosophy; even as the bee extracts honey from a field of flowers, until it has laid away an abundant store of sweetness.

     But we need to go on another step. For we are told that there is not only a natural rational, but also a spiritual rational, which may be formed within the natural as a matrix, and which operates in a way similar to the natural, though the flowers it seeks are the beauties of written Revelation; and it labors industriously to draw forth from that source the deeper meaning hidden therein, to gather it together into a body of doctrine, and to store it up as a precious possession. Consequently, "honey" stands for "the pleasantness and delight from the affections of knowing and learning goods and truths, celestial and spiritual" (A. C. 56405), also "the delight from the truths of faith." (A. C. 5620.) And so when the prophet and the apostle, having their eyes opened, saw the Lord in vision, and in His hand a written book, and when they had received the book that they might eat it, it tasted to them as honey, because such a delight is given to the spiritual rational mind when it goes to the Word for the sake of becoming intelligent in the doctrine of love and faith. And again, Jonathan, being an hungered in the forest, when he found some wild honey and began to eat it, "his eyes were enlightened." (I Samuel 14:27, 29) And the manna from heaven, which nourished Israel in the wilderness, tasted like cakes made with honey. (Ex. 16:31) Again, the opening of the inner rational, together with its delight in the hidden meaning of the Word, is prophetically ascribed to the Lora in the words of Isaiah (7:15): "Butter and honey shall He eat, that He may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good."

     This labor of gathering the inner significance out of the Word is one of the essential uses of the prophet, since it prepares for and leads up to that other prophetic use,-the teaching and preaching of doctrine from the Word.

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Therefore a, prophet or prophetess, in the abstract sense, stands for "the doctrine of the church from the Word." (A. R. 8, 801, 943; T. C. R. 130, 149; L. 28; A. C. 7268, 9820, 9809, etc.) And this abstract spiritual idea is expressed in an ultimate correspondential way in the name of the prophetess Deborah,-"a bee."

     But let us extend our inquiry into the linguistic derivation of this name. The root is found to be a verb of very frequent use in the Hebrew,-dabhar,-generally with the sense of "speaking" or "to speak," but carrying with it a certain note of dignity as of speech with a weight of meaning, in contrast with colloquial and trivial speech, which is usually expressed by some other word. In our own language, indeed, the expression "to speak" commonly implies more dignity and formality of utterance than the word "to say," and a similar distinction seems to hold in the Hebrew. The source of this dignity is an underlying idea of order in the root, its basic meaning being given as "to arrange in order," and its meaning of speech and discourse being literally "to put words in order," But to put words in order implies at the same time that ideas are put in order, so that discourse may be the speech of reason, intelligence, and the understanding of truth; and when this is the case the spoken words carry an authority that is felt by all hearers.

     In this idea of "authoritative speech," involved in the word dabhar, we are brought to the prophetic function of teaching, of teaching from the understanding of truth, of teaching the doctrine of the church from the Word, of teaching that truth which has been drawn forth from the inner recesses of the Letter. Thus the name "Deborah" contains in its meaning these two correlative uses of the prophet, or prophetess: first, the industrious investigation of the Word with the end of deriving from it the essential truth concealed therein; and secondly, the authoritative proclamation of that truth, so that men may be instructed and led by it. Our Lord, when on earth in the flesh, assumed and fulfilled the office of Prophet, so that from an infinitely perfect understanding of the Scriptures He expounded them to His disciples and preached to the multitudes. And "the people were astonished at His doctrine; for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." (Matt. 7:29.)

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     But the prophetic authority differs in kind and degree from the authority of reason, for it derives from a higher order. The ordered arrangement of truths in the rational human mind does indeed give much weight to the words that embody human thought; yet that order and intelligence are but finite, a shadowy image and distant reflection of Divine Wisdom and Order. When the Lord wishes to reveal Himself-to make Himself known to men that He may come to men, and draw them to Himself-He superinduces His own Divine order upon the thought and words of the prophet, and causes these to flow into such an order and sequence as no man could devise, and containing an infinitude of wisdom which men cannot begin to exhaust, even by assiduous labors. It is the peculiar use of the prophet to set forth this order in words. The thing then spoken, or the discourse then written, has in it the authority of that order which is Divine Authority,-the Authority, not of any man or angel, but of the Lord alone.

     It is in accordance with the notion of authoritative speech that the word dabhar is usually used when the Lord is the subject of the verb. For examples: "The Lord spake unto Moses" at the head of the Ten Commandments, "And God spake all these words, saying," and many similar expressions. Likewise in the phrases, so commonly used in the Prophets: "The word of the Lord came unto me," "the word which the Lord sent, . . ." etc.

     So much for the central meaning of the word from which is formed the name "Deborah." We shall now go very sketchily other some of its derivative meanings, which bring out special values and uses of prophetic utterance.

     "To admonish, to prescribe, a precept, a wise saying, an edict, to command." All these involve superior intelligence and authority such as belong to the prophet. The prophets of Israel reproved and commanded kings.

     "To promise, to threaten." The prophets foretold great glories for a renovated and faithful Israel, and they prophesied troubles even to destruction for the apostate nation. The genuine truth of the Word tells of heaven as the reward of the upright, and of hell as the fate of the wicked.

     "To lead, or guide," as of flocks to pasture. The prophet, by instructing in truth, gives guidance and also provides spiritual food.

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Derivative forms, dobher, midhbar, mean the pasture-lot or the grasslands bordering the desert where flocks were kept.

     "To follow"-the reciprocal of leading which is essential in any kind of order.

     "To bring into order." It is perhaps from this, or from the notion of "leading," that the particular sense of a "bee" is taken, either from the habit of swarming, and so of being led by the queen to a new home and field, or from the highly organized form of government under which they live.

     "To utter judgments." It is said of Deborah that she judged Israel for many years at a tree where she was accustomed to sit. Other prophets, notably Moses and Samuel, were also judges. The power of judgment makes one with the understanding of doctrine from the Word and illustration thence. The Word itself judges men according to their reception of it, separating the good from the evil. Then "to pronounce sentence,"-something always done by truth when good has been separated; the evil always perceive the truth as condemnatory.

     "Destruction, death, pestilence,"-the effect of the judgment among the evil as they are cast into hell.

     "To speak kindly, to console,"-the doctrine of truth from the Word as it is with those in temptation, to mitigate their suffering, and to inspire hope and sustain them to the end.

     "To utter a vow,"-worship of the Lord and prayer, trust in His power and province.

     "To utter a song,"-praise of the Lord from the heart because of deliverance from infestation. "To render or recite," or "give voice,"-an additional word meaning the song itself. Deborah's connection with triumphant poetry and song is so close as almost to justify an explanation of her name as "Songstress." Up to the time of the prolific David, the only other known composers of song were Moses, Hannah, and Miriam. As if to call attention to this relation, there is in the Song of Deborah a word-play balancing the name with the action word. (Judges 5:12.)

     In English:

          "Awake, Awake, Deborah;
          Awake, awake, give voice to sing!"

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     In Hebrew:

          "'Uri, 'uri, Debhorah;
          'Uri, 'uri, dabberi-shir."

     Again, this word from which the name "Deborah" is derived has a special idiomatic use, namely, "to speak" to a woman, or "bespeak" her, that is to ask her in marriage. This usage involves the sense of dignity and formality before noted as attaching to this word; and it points to the spiritual truth that by the Word of the Lord a relation is established between the Lord and man which looks toward and leads into a conjunction or heavenly marriage, and that this is given through the appropriation of the Word of Authority into thought and life, to allow it to "bring order" into the life, to "follow" so that it may "lead" to "green pastures," to see by it the Divine power and providence, so that we "praise" Him from a full heart on account of His merciful deliverance.

     One more item in this long list. Another noun from this root, debhir, was used in a strictly limited sense for the inmost room, recess, or sanctuary of Solomon's temple,-the holy of holies. In our common English version it is always rendered "oracle,"-a very suitable term, as meaning " the place of prayer." For prayers were offered every morning and evening while incense was burned at the golden altar in front of the veil which inclosed the most holy place; and then, once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest went within the veil with incense to offer special prayers and make propitiation for the nation. But the Debhir was also the Place of the Word, and the Place of Speech; for there the Word, in its most holy form, as framed in the Covenant written on tables of stone, was kept sacred and inviolate. There also was the mercy seat, the cover of the ark between the cherubim, of which the Lord had said, "There I will meet with thee," "There I will speak with thee." For the written Word is the Lord's presence with men. When rightly cherished, we meet Him there and see His face. It is the speech of His mouth, and the prophecy and promise of eternal life.

     In all these details we find a general agreement with the idea of a prophet, both as to his use and work, and as to his representative character. And we also find an infilling of that idea with many particulars, so that the name in question, Deborah, is perceived to be adequate in every way to the great deliverance which this woman wrought, and to her exalted place in the midst of Israel.

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And in addition it is seen to have a broad and comprehensive meaning such as to shed illumination upon many varied aspects of the internal sense of this history.

     Now I would like to present a general conclusion that I have reached, one that may be fairly drawn, I think, from the brief study that I have presented. It is this,-that the student should attack the literal or natural meaning of Hebrew names with an inclusive approach, so that, instead of determining from several possibilities that it means this, and not that, he will conclude that it means both this and that. And then, upon this broad and inclusive basis, let him proceed to build up the structure of the internal sense. We are told that the things of the spiritual world, as compared with those of this world, are as a thousand to one. A like ratio holds as between the things of the internal man and the external. And the same thing is true as regards the internal sense of the Word, in comparison with the Letter. Yet these innumerable internal things are really contained in and represented by the single things of the Letter; and something of the immensity of the inner plane is reflected in the diversity and extensiveness of the sense of the Letter.

     We are familiar with the statement that Hebrew words commonly include meanings from opposite to opposite, extending from some very practical physical idea to an exalted good and to a debased evil. But in very many instances the extension of sense is more like the spread of a fan or like the spokes of a wheel; for, from some central basic idea, usually physical, several varieties of meaning go forth along diverse courses, leading to several particular oppositions of good and bad. All of these should be taken together, so that we may have an all-around view of the significance of the word or name under consideration. In pursuing such a study we always find certain liftings of the veil, with glimpses of the internal sense; but the comprehensive grasp of that sense can best be gained as we fit together in order all the varied elements which constitute the sense of that Letter upon which the heavens rest, and by which we are brought into companionship with its angelic societies.

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MISS KELLER'S LATEST BOOK 1928

MISS KELLER'S LATEST BOOK       FRANCES MARGARITA BUELL       1928

     MY RELIGION. By Helen Keller. Foreword by Paul Sperry. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1927. Cloth, illustrated, pp. 208. Price, $2.00.

     Helen Keller's new book is a valuable review of some not all-of the doctrines of the New Church. The title of the book-My Religion-defines her reading of the Writings as that of a strong, individual reader, living her life apart from an organized church, apart even from the idea of an organized church. This, however, makes her book interesting, because her vision of the Writings is vivid, and clear, and individualized.

     When a little girl of ten, Helen Keller wrote to Rev. Phillips Brooks, asking, among other questions, "How did God tell people that His home was in heaven?" "What will He do to teach people to be pitiful and loving? "Please tell me something that you know about God." To her joyous satisfaction she has found the answers to these questions in the Writings.

     The book is divided into eight parts, each part not so much a chapter as an essay; and these eight essays-with the distinction, informality, and human experience of essays-will have a value apart from a natural interest in them as the work of a deaf-blind woman. The first essay is about Swedenborg, his family, education, travel, his work in chemistry, anatomy, geology, philosophy, mathematics, mechanics, mining, statecraft, his first sixty books and pamphlets, and finally his revelation of the realities of the spiritual world. The second essay includes Helen Keller's own experiences in reading the Writings. "When I began Heaven and Hell I was as little aware of the new joy coming into my life as I had been years before when I stood on the piazza steps awaiting my teacher. Impelled only by the curiosity of a young girl who loves to read, I opened that big-book. . . . My heart gave a joyous bound. Here was a faith that emphasized what I felt so keenly-the separateness between soul and body, between a realm I could picture as a whole and the chaos of fragmentary things . . . which my limited physical senses met at every turn."

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     In the third essay, Miss Keller defends her happy acceptance of the Writings by listing and quoting distinguished men and women whose praise of Swedenborg proves to her that her own judgment is not defective because of her physical limitations. It is a needless defense. She speaks of Emerson, Carlyle, Elbert Hubbard, Henry James, Henry Ward Beecher, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Everett Hale, Phillips Brooks, and Whittier. She might have added Howells, Robert Frost, Rachel Lindsay, Howard Pyle, Strindberg, and Yeats. But with the possible exception of some of Lindsay's scattered tributes, her own sequent tribute is finer than any of theirs, in her comparison of Swedenborg with other great men in science, literature, philosophy, and religion.

     The fourth essay is about the symbolism of the Bible, the parables, the dark sayings, the law of correspondences, the universal language, interpreting for her the dim literal sense, revealing God as Man. "Swedenborg gives the same spiritual equivalent for the same natural object throughout the Bible, and the meanings fit wherever they are applied. I know; I have tried this key, and it fits. This is what Swedenborg calls the law of correspondences.

     The fifth essay explains the doctrine of the Lord, of heaven and hell, and the law of use. The sixth-an unusual subject-traces the history of Love as a doctrine from Empedocles, and Plate, through St. Augustine, A Kempis, Boehme, and others, to the Arcana Celestia and Divine Love and Wisdom. The seventh, an informal symposium, includes the subjects of happiness, joys of charity,-joy inseparable from the Doctrines,-noted as strange after the penances of the Middle Ages,-Divine Providence, and the doctrine of remains. The last essay is again related to personal experiences-that she has found the best answers to questions about affliction in the chapters on Faith and Free-will in The True Christian Religion, that she knows there are two planes of life, spiritual and natural, each "with an outside as well as an inside"; that her first revelation, in her seventh year, was when light came with words into her silent, dark life, and then "it was but a step for me from the wonders of nature to the wonders of the spirit" . . . "To one who is deaf and blind, the spiritual world offers no difficulty.

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Nearly everything in the natural world is as vague . . . as spiritual things seem to the minds of most people."

     The book naturally stimulates an interest in the writer. Although occasionally, and with no self-pity, Helen Heller speaks of herself sitting outside the gate of life, or holding out two trembling hands to life in a world without sound or light, she is prevailingly happy, living a more complete life than many who have eyes and who see not, and ears and who hear not. She says: "Our blindness changes not a whit the course of inner realities." "If you wish to be something that you are not, you shut your eyes, and for one dreamy moment you are that which you long to be." When she was a student at Radcliffe, she said: "Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence." When she was a child of eleven, she wrote in a letter: "Yesterday I thought for the first time what a beautiful thing motion was, and it seemed to me that everything was trying to get nearer to God. Does it seem that way to you?" Touch, taste, reverberation, smell, and motion, fragrance and form, words-the wings of the mind-an eager dependence on people and books for the experiences of light and sound, a mind that inherits the balance of all five senses,-these make her life; and she says: "I am conscious of the splendor that binds all things of earth to all things of heaven. . . . I possess the light which shall give me vision a thousandfold when death sets me free."

     Her three books, The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, My Religion, make a trilogy in a study of absorbing interest. Our dependence on the senses and our independence of them is of importance to all of us. There is a serpent in every garden, a sense plane in every life-as there should be. But to see life lifted to a higher plane, as Helen Keller has shown that it may be, explains the world interest in her character and books. At one time she lost temporarily her senses of taste and smell, and was solely dependent on the sense of touch. A materialist would think this remarkable experience a lessening of the faculties of life. A behaviorist would say-what? Helen Keller's experience is, that human wisdom and Divine wisdom can come only through the senses; but she says in her book that the explanation in the Arcana Celestia is, that "it is the interior man that sees and perceives what goes on without him, and from this interior source the sense experience has its life."

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     The book is not an explanation of the New Church. If it were meant to be such an explanation, it would be incomplete. It is what its title indicates-the religion of one thoughtful, sincere reader of the Writings.
FRAGMENTS FROM THE EGYPTIANS 1928

FRAGMENTS FROM THE EGYPTIANS       GERTRUDE NELSON       1928

     AN ANCIENT PROPHECY.

     The chaos and misery of Egypt's feudal period inspired a Joblike literature which rivals modern pessimism. Neferrohn writes of "a land upside down; that happens which never happened before. Men shall take up weapons of war; the land lives in uproar. All good things have departed. Things made are as though they had never been made. The land is minished, its rulers are multiplied." But both he and the famous Ipuwer foretold a savior who should restore peace, and who is thus beautifully described by Ipuwer: "He shall bring cooling to the flame. Men shall say, 'He is the shepherd of all the people; there is no evil in His heart. If His flocks go astray, He will spend the day to search them. The thought of men shall be aflame. Would that He might achieve their rescue!' Verily, He shall smite evil when He raises His arm against it. . . . Where is He this day? Doth He sleep among you?" (See Cambridge Ancient History; Breasted History of Egypt.)

     Here is a ray from the Ancient Church nearly a thousand years before the Messianic prophecies of the Hebrews.

     AN EARLY GLIMPSE OF PALESTINE.

     The tale of Sinuhe, an Egyptian political fugitive, is of special interest to the New Church, giving, as it does, the earliest traveler's view of pre-Israelitish Canaan. Most strikingly his description confirms the testimony of the Writings regarding the remains of a celestial character which lingered with the tribes later represented in the Word by Shechem and his father. (Genesis 34:8-12. A. C. 4447, 4448.)

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     Sinuhe, taking refuge in Palestine, was welcomed by Emuienshi, the chief of the tribe, with the type of cordiality later extended to Jacob: "Happy art thou with me. . . . Behold, thou shalt now abide with me." Sinuhe continues: "He put me at the head of his children, he married me to his eldest daughter, he made me select for myself of his land, of the choicest of that which he had, on his boundary with another land. It was a goodly land, named Yaa. There were figs in it, and vines; copious was its beauty, plenteous its oil; all fruits were upon its trees. Barley and spelt, without end all cattle. Moreover, great was that which came to me, which came for love of me, when he appointed me sheik of the tribe, from the choicest of his land. I portioned the daily bread, and wine for every day, cooked flesh, and fowl in roast; besides the wild goats of the hills, which were trapped for me and brought to me; besides that which my dogs captured for me. There was much made for me, and milk in every sort-of cooked dish;" (Breasted Ancient Records, 494-6.)

     THE IDEA OF USE IN ART.

     The questioned superiority of art for art's sake over utilitarianism comes forcibly to mind in studying the Old Kingdom sculpture of Egypt. There was then no idea of creating a form of beauty, but rather of beautifully translating an object into stone; a pharaoh into diorite. The artist lavished incredible patience and unsurpassed technical skill upon a statue which he sincerely hoped would remain forever buried, its sole purpose being to perpetuate the form of the dead for his practical use hereafter. Thus the utmost of artistry was given with no thought of glory other than to make the dwelling of the soul excellent.

     And what is the evidence of these spirit statues for the nameless hands which fashioned them more than 4000 years ago? We are astonished at their unconscious beauty and almost breathing realism. Too soon this type of expressiveness was lost, and ingenuous art, becoming self aware, blossomed with the Greeks into intentional beauty. But which was Art?

     LITERATURE.

     A faint shadow of the correspondential style is noticeable in the Egyptian passion for simile and metaphor.

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At times their ideas are almost buried in decoration. Here is one fascinating example from the Dialogue of the Man-weary-of-life with his Soul: He says: "Death is before me today like the convalescence of a sick man, like going forth after an illness. Death is before me today like the smell of myrrh, like sitting beneath the sail of the boat on a breezy day. Death is before me today like the longing of a man to see his home when he has spent many years in captivity." (Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. I, p. 345)

     Apropos of literature, I cannot resist adding this charming letter written by Pepi II when a little boy of ten. The border baron Harkuf, returning from a foreign expedition, sent the message ahead that he had captured a dwarf to be the plaything of the young king. He received the following letter, so eloquent of childish delight tempered by the consciousness of a pharaoh's dignity: "...Come northward to the court immediately! Thou shalt bring this dwarf with thee which thou bringest living, prosperous and healthy, from the land of spirits, for the dances of the god, to rejoice and gladden the heart of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt. . . . When he goes down with thee into the vessel, appoint excellent people who shall be beside him on each side of the vessel; take care lest he fall into the water. When he sleeps at night, appoint excellent people who shall sleep beside him in his tent. Inspect him ten times a night. My Majesty desires to see this dwarf more than the gifts of Sinai and of Punt. If thou arrivest at court, this dwarf being with thee alive, prosperous, and healthy, my Majesty will do for thee a greater thing than that which was done for the treasurer of the god Burded in the time of Isesi, according to the heart's desire of my Majesty to see this dwarf." (Breasted Ancient Records, 353).

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WHITTINGTON MUSIC 1928

WHITTINGTON MUSIC       Editor       1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office a Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor                    Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager          Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address and business communications should be sent to the Business Manager.

     TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
In the United States, $3.00 per year; Elsewhere, $3.25 or 14 shillings; payable in advance
Single Copy          30 cents
     "Some African spirits from Abyssinia whose ears were opened heard singing from a Psalm of David in a certain temple in the world, and were affected with such delight that they joined in the singing. But presently their ears were closed, so that they no longer heard the singing, and they were then affected with a still greater delight, because it was spiritual; and they were at the same time filled with intelligence, because that Psalm treated of the Lord, and of Redemption. The cause of the increase of delight was, that communication was given them with that society in heaven which was in conjunction with those in the world who were singing that Psalm, From this it was evident that communication with the universal heaven is given by means of the Word." (Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture 108.)

     As our frontispiece this month we present a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. C. J. Whittington, taken at their Devonshire home in 1920. Mr. Whittington's death last March awakened anew a realization of our great debt to him for the music which has been in use among us for over thirty years. Composed by a New Churchman, imbued with the spirit of the New Church and well acquainted with such things of our Doctrine as we have cited above, we recognize in music a gift of Providence to the New Age, and it is fitting that we should record our grateful acknowledgment.

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Written in and for the New Church, the Whittington music brought a distinctive element into our worship; in addition, it ranks with the finest sacred music.

     It was in the year 1891 that the Rev. E. C. Bostock, on a visit from London, brought with him to Huntingdon Valley some of Mr. Whittington's shorter pieces, including "How good are thy tents, O Jacob" and "The voice of one crying in the wilderness." All were delighted with them, and it was suggested that the composer be asked to write music for the Psalms, which were then being newly translated. Mr. Whittington gladly undertook this work, and in due course the Psalms set to the new music began to arrive, and were made available for use in sheet form. So great was the enthusiasm that for a time three Psalms were sung in a single service. Seldom, if ever, have congregations attempted such elaborate music, usually reserved for trained choirs; but the interest and zeal of the time, and a delight in the music itself, surmounted the difficulties, and the Psalmody has continued in use throughout the General Church to this day.

     Besides the fifty Psalms in the Psalmody, and the many other Scripture selections in the same volume, Mr. Whittington composed music for Psalms LI to LVI, which are printed in a separate booklet. Psalm CL is also included in the Psalmody. In the Liturgy, we find his music to Chants 34 and 55, and to Hymns 25, 26 and 154, the last being the Hymn "Patience," one of the finest things he wrote. He also composed the music for two Sanctuses used in the Offices of the Liturgy. In the Social Song Book we find his music to "Our Glorious Church," "Vivat Nova Ecclesia," "Swedenborg's Birthday" and "The Academy Colors" songs. In addition, he composed the music which appears in A Farm of Divine Service, published in 1896, and used in the Burton Road Church, London, for many years. We shall rejoice to see the day when this rich heritage of distinctive music shall be in use throughout the New Church.

     Mr. Whittington had composed anthems to words from the Scriptures long before he undertook the Psalmody. Indeed, he had written music for the 45th and 45th Psalms in their entirety, without the repetition of the words which had been customary in the oratorios. It is this earlier setting of the 45th Psalm which now appears in the Psalmody.

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His elder brother, who was also musical, had encouraged his bent in this direction, and at the age of ten he composed a double chant which has been printed in various collections, among them the Bristol Tune Book. Music, however, was an avocation with him. Born in Manchester, he went to London at the age of sixteen to become a clerk in a Stock Exchange firm, and thus began a life's career in the field of finance in which he was highly successful. At the time of his death, the London press paid tribute to him in several obituaries, from which we quote the following:

     "By the death of Mr. Charles James Whittington, the London Stock Exchange has lost one of its oldest and most respected members. Mr. Whittington, who had entered his eightieth year, joined the Stock Exchange fifty-one years ago, and set up in business as a dealer in shipping, dock, insurance, gas and water securities. In this financial field he was an acknowledged authority. On retiring from active business about twenty years ago, he became a member of the Stock Exchange Committee, in the work of which he took a lively interest down to 1921. During the war he did useful service as me of the two members of the New Issues Committee established under the auspices of the Treasury. Mr. Whittington had twelve children, nine sons and three daughters, who are all living. Six of his sons served in the war, and all came through safely. Five sons now form the firm founded by their father." (The Times, March 30, 1927.)

     "Few men had played more parts, had done more yeoman work for the Stock Exchange and for the interests of its members, than Mr. Whittington. His name became a synonym for shrewd common sense, unerring judgment, kindly thoughtfulness. Founder of a powerful and greatly respected firm, he still had time to devote to music. As an organist he won distinction, and with his musical compositions, neat, polished and tuneful as they were, he became known throughout the House as a composer. He has left behind a gentle memory that will long be held in veneration." (The Financial Times, March 30, 1927.)

     Mr. Whittington was instructed in the Doctrines of the New Church at an early age. While he was still a boy, his father had accepted the Writings. Cooperating with the Academy movement in England, a pamphlet published in 1891 reveals him in active defense of Academy views.

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In 1912, On the death of Mr. James Speirs, Mr. Whittington bought from his estate the copy of the Brief Exposition upon which Swedenborg wrote the inscription, Hic Liber est Adventus Domini, and presented it to the British Museum for safe-keeping in perpetuity. (See NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1913, P. 597.) In 1926, The New-Church Press, London, published a very well written missionary booklet of 133 pages, which was reviewed in our issue for February, 1927. It was entitled, A Brief Introduction to the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, and its author given as "A Layman." It has since become known that the author was Mr. C. J. Whittington, and that in it he had brought together material such as he had used in imparting a knowledge of the teachings of the New Church to a group of listeners in the vicinity of his home in Devonshire. In this volume we have testimony to his sustained interest in the Heavenly Doctrines, although he was not actively associated with the organized New Church in recent years.

     Mr. Nathaniel Stroh, of Kitchener, Ontario, has written for us the following appreciative comment:

     THE PSALMODY.

     In reviewing the music of The Psalmody for the New Church, the first question that naturally arises in the inquiring mind is: "Wherein lies its intrinsic value or use to the New Church?" After all, music is an expression of affection, so that a description of the music written by Mr. Whittington can at best be only of a very general nature.

     It might be useful to realize that the composer, inspired by the, vision of the New Revelation, wrote this beautiful music for the use of the New Church. Several outstanding features are worthy of special note. The repetition of words, commonly found in the Oratorios of the masters, is carefully avoided, and the translation was made from the original Hebrew in the light of the teachings given in the Writings. In a number of instances, antiphonal music is made use of, the male and female voices alternating in a unique way. And lastly, the accompaniments are intended to be played by orchestral instruments and the organ; in fact, all the instruments of genuine musical value are appropriate.

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     The form used throughout is of a free and ready style, while the rhythmic flow very aptly follows the natural expression of the words. Feelings of exaltation and humiliation are spontaneously expressed. Note the trumpet call, and the stirring, pulsating music written to the words, "All ye peoples, clap with the hand; sing unto God with the voice of song," (Psalm 47), and contrast this with the delightfully quiet theme of "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem." It is interesting to note the extensive variety of themes used by the composer. Most certainly the few musical motives, phrases and even sentences that occasionally recur do not become monotonous, but rather tend to make the various Psalms a coherent whole.

     While the Writings do not say a great deal concerning the use of musical instruments, quite sufficient is said to indicate clearly that they distinctly express various affections, and that they are used in the other world in various forms and combinations according to the affections and genius of the societies of spirits and angels using them.

     At the time the Whittington Psalms were written; a number of orchestras were formed in societies of the General Church, but soon disappeared for various reasons, one of which, no doubt, was the lack of realizing the difficulties to be encountered in mastering the elementary technical requirements in the study of the different instruments. Quite naturally it is more burdensome for adults to overcome the early difficulties in the study of instruments than it is for younger folk; and as most of our pioneer orchestras were composed of adult beginners, they soon lost heart, It seemed an impossibility to eliminate the persistent squeaks of the clarinets and the scratches of the violin bows; so the study was given up, and the wish for orchestral accompaniments to the Psalms was not brought into early fruition.

     While the composer of our Psalmody did not write complete orchestral scores, he was fully inspired with the value of their use, and occasionally enjoyed playing them over with several of his friends who performed upon various instruments. Most likely he realized that it would be some time before they could be effectively played by the instrumentalists of the Church; for he himself did not orchestrate the music for the Psalms found in the Psalmody. Only a few were transcribed for members of his family and friends. But he did intend that orchestral music should be written by musicians for the use of the Church.

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No doubt this will be done; in fact, it is now being done in some societies of the General Church.
     NATHANIEL STROH.
NOTES AND REVIEWS. 1928

NOTES AND REVIEWS.       Editor       1928

     Mr. Arthur Carter has furnished the two interesting items below:

     COLERIDGE ON THE SECOND COMING.

     Writing about the belief in the "return of Jesus in His corporeal individuality," Samuel Taylor Coleridge thus outlined his view:

     "The whole passage in which our Lord describes His coming is so evidently and so intentionally expressed in the diction and images of the Prophets that nothing but the carnal literality common to the Jews at that time, and most strongly marked in the disciples, who were among the least educated of their countrymen, could have prevented the symbolic import and character of the words from being seen. The whole Gospel and the Epistles of John are a virtual confutation of this reigning error; and no less is the Apocalypse. The unhappy effect which St. Paul's incautious language respecting Christ's return produced on the Thessalonians led him to reflect on the subject, and in his second epistle to them he qualified the doctrine, and never afterwards resumed it; on the contrary, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, ch. 15, he substitutes the doctrine of immortality in a celestial state and a spiritual body. On the nature of our Lord's future epiphany or phenomenal person, I am not ashamed to acknowledge that my views approach very nearly to those of Emanuel Swedenborg." (Complete Works of Coleridge, Harper and Brother, 1864, Vol. vii, p. 277)
DEATH MASK OF CHARLES XII. 1928

DEATH MASK OF CHARLES XII.       Editor       1928

     The late Laurence Hutton, at one time literary editor of HARPER'S MONTHLY, was an energetic collector of death masks and casts of skulls. In his beautiful home at Princeton, N. J., his gatherings were kept in a room set aside for the purpose which the English writer, Edmund Gosse, named "the skullery.

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After Hutton's death, his "portraits in plaster," as he called them, passed into the possession of Princeton University, and a recent inquiry has elicited the information that the death mask of Charles XII, of Sweden, one of the only two in existence, now reposes in the Library of that institution. The following account is taken from Hutton's Talks in a Library:

     "About one hundred and fifty years after his death, the body of Charles XII of Sweden was disinterred, although in a reverent and proper manner and to satisfy a curiosity which was perhaps justifiable. Historians had differed as to whether he was shot from before or behind, by the enemy or by one of his own soldiers; and they opened his grave to see that the fatal missile had passed entirely through the King's head from left to right, and in a downward direction. In my cast the indentures are plainly perceptible, especially the larger one on the right temple. There is a much finer copy of this mask of Charles in the British Museum, bequeathed to the nation by Charles Christy, who is said to have bought it in Stockholm at the time of the sale of the effects of a famous Swedish sculptor. The museum authorities and others believe that the cast dates only from the occasion of the long-delayed post mortem examination; but a somewhat rare engraving of it, dated 1823, states that 'it was made four hours after he was shot.'" (P. 155.)

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SIXTEENTH ONTARIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY 1928

SIXTEENTH ONTARIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY       L. W. T. DAVID       1928

     HELD AT TORONTO, OCTOBER 13-16, 1927.

     The Assembly began with, a reception and dance in the social room of the Olivet Church on Thursday evening, October 19th, reported in the church news from Toronto.

     First Session-Friday.

     The Assembly came to order at 10:30 a.m., the Bishop presiding. After the singing of a hymn and the reciting of the Lord's Prayer, the Rev. H. L. Odhner read a lesson from Isaiah.

     The Minutes of the Fifteenth Ontario District Assembly were adopted without reading as printed in NEW CHURCH LIFE, July, 1924, pp. 430-434.

     The Bishop called for a report of the work in the Ontario District, and the Secretary then told briefly of the work of the District Executive Committee, and described more fully the situation in regard to the isolated people of the Church in Ontario. Correspondence has not been successful in establishing contact with them. A personal visit might accomplish something; at least it could be learned whether further efforts would be worth undertaking. This report was discussed at length by a number of speakers.

     Mr. Frank Wilson read his report as Treasurer of the District Executive Committee, showing receipts of $39.84 and expenditures of $38.66, leaving a balance on hand of $1.18.

     The question of the re-election of the Committee was postponed until the following day.

     Mr. Jacob G. Stroh then addressed the Assembly on "The Early History of the New Church in Kitchener. Mr. Stroh spoke extemporaneously, telling of the earliest receivers of the Doctrines in the vicinity of Berlin (now Kitchener) He himself had been identified with the New Church there since the year 1855. The first to be baptized was Mr. Christian Enslin, the second, Mr. Adam Ruby, and the third, Mr. J. J. Lehnen.

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The Rev. F. W. Tuerk arrived in 1857. In illustration of his remarks, Mr. Stroh exhibited some of the first copies of the Writings that came to Berlin, as well as letters and other documents connected with his subject.

     Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner: I feel that we have been greatly privileged in hearing Mr. Stroh tell of his research in the annals of the New Church in this Providence, and should acknowledge it with a vote of thanks, at the same time expressing the hope that these valuable contributions to New Church history may be published. They show so wonderfully the origin of the Church among the early pioneers of Waterloo County, which in turn has contributed a stream of New Church people to various Societies elsewhere.

     The vote of thanks was carried enthusiastically, and acknowledged by Mr. Stroh.

     Assembly Banquet

     On Friday evening a Banquet was held in the social room of the Olivet Church, the occasion being socially delightful and the speeches inspiring. The number in attendance being considerably larger than anticipated, the caterer's resources were put to quite a strain, but a good natural foundation was laid for the spiritual feast which followed.

     The Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner was toastmaster, and introduced the general subject of "The Distinctiveness of the New Church" by saying:

     It may seem at times that New Church distinctiveness rests, or is grounded, upon a merely intellectual difference, namely, upon our belief in the new doctrine; and yet, if that were so, we would indeed be open to grave censure and criticism. That kind of distinctiveness, merely intellectual, could very easily be turned into something else, into a spiritual pride and bigotry that condemns others, and tries to judge of the internal states of others. These things are not to be attributed to those who are truly Mew Church. The teaching is, that differences of opinion need not be the cause, and should not be the cause, of schisms or sects, or of a lack of co-operation among our fellow men, provided only that there be some common love, that common love particularly which we call charity. "It appears," is the teaching in Divine Love and Wisdom, "that wisdom distinguishes one man from another; but the fact is quite different; it is love that unites and distinguishes."

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It is because the world no longer loves to understand truths spiritually, and because men are unwilling to acknowledge Divine Truths as authoritative, that the New Church must be separate from the Old, to the end that the loves of heaven may be reconquered and restored to the New Church. They have been lost, and they must be restored through the endeavors of a New Church life. First of all is our love of the Lord-a spiritual love of the Lord, not as to Person merely, but as to His Body of Divine Good and Divine Truth. And foremost among the loves that bless our natural life, among the distinctive loves that characterize the New Church, stands the love of the Marriage Covenant between the Lamb and His Bride, from which descends love truly conjugial, which is to reorganize the Church on earth and change the basic heredity of man in that new race which will constitute the New Church. That love will reorganize the New Church home, and make it a new and glorious thing, hitherto unknown in the world.

     Various phases of the general subject were then treated by the speakers, as follows: "Distinctive Morals and Customs," Rev. W. B. Caldwell; "Distinctive Uses of New Church Societies," Mr. Rudolph Potts; "Distinctiveness Among the Isolated," Rev. F. E. Waelchli; and " The Distinctive New Church Home," Mr. Percy Izzard. After the regular program, Mr. Frank Wilson proposed a toast to "The Ontario District Assembly," and spoke feelingly of the great value of such Assemblies. Dr. R. W. Schnarr and Mr. Edward Craigie also spoke on "Distinctiveness." The toastmaster wove a silver thread of spiritual teaching throughout the series, but so many excellent things were said that we cannot reproduce them all here. In response to a final toast to "Our Guests," the Bishop touched upon the general theme of the evening, saying in part:

     "It is always a great pleasure to meet you and feel your love for the Church, to note the sacrifices you have made, and will doubtless continue to make, for the Church. Inasmuch as the Church is upheld by the Lord upon your sacrifices, the man who is not willing to give up his own will, his proprial notions, for the good and benefit of the Church, is unworthy of it, and he is not truly of the Church in the highest sense of the word.

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It is only a spirit of self-sacrifice that leads a man to the light, and makes him acceptable to the Lord.

     "Doctrine by itself cannot do anything; it must have life in it, which is charity,-the great need with us always in our Church. We have unique forms, unique customs; we have a kind and quality of life, and a hope in the future. From the beginning we have had these things, and also our distinctive doctrines which mean so much to us. But we also need charity, internal charity, as a matter of love and life. We also need something more than that, if we are to get along well. We need good fellowship. We need to develop a real affection, an instinctive affection, for one another. That is the natural state we need to cultivate, because it is a very good thing to rest in, and serves a great use. We need good fellowship, and lack of Pride and conceit, which stand in the way of our coming closer together and understanding each other. We need love for one another, Primitive Christianity,-as a basis for our living here. Let us aim high, and keep fighting for it to the end."

     Before closing, the toastmaster offered the following Resolution, which was adopted with a rising vote:

     "Resolved, That the Ontario District Assembly send its greetings of affection and good will to the Immanuel Church, Glenview, on its Fiftieth Anniversary. May Heaven bless its future, and keep the enemy from its gates."

     Second Session-Saturday, 10:30 am.

     After the singing of a hymn and the reciting of the Lord's Prayer, the Rev. L. W. T. David read from the 16th Chapter of Matthew.

     The Bishop: A matter of business is before you,-that of the disposition of the Committee appointed some years ago as an Ontario District Assembly Committee, composed of the two ministers and two laymen, one from each of the Societies.

     Rev. H. L. Odhner: I think it would be fitting if the Committee should consist, ex officio, of the Pastors and Treasurers of the Societies; the reason being that sometimes a man will drop out between Assemblies, and that would lead to some confusion. I would, therefore, make a motion to this effect, that these officers shall be elected automatically to the position. Seconded and Carried.

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     THE BISHOP'S ADDRESS.

     Speaking extemporaneously, for the most part, the Bishop now addressed the Assembly on the subject of New Church Education, with special reference to its aims and accomplishments. The following is a brief outline of his remarks:

     Our Church has been interested in Education from the beginning, and we have had time to gauge in a general way the results of the work of our schools, which have been in operation for nearly half a century. A theory of education, like anything else, will, in the long run, be judged by its efficacy, that is, as to whether or not the education that is given produces the results desired.

     Recently I have read a book by Bertrand Russell in which he deals with, this subject. He begins by asking the question: "What results do we desire to achieve?" We should have a conception of the kind of person we want to produce. A certain kind of education, if persisted in, will produce a certain kind of person and character. This, in general, is true, although some children will react so much against their education as to go the other way. But Russell shows that, in all tests, in all times, among all peoples, the result aimed at has been produced by the system of education that has prevailed. He illustrates this by examples, such as the Greeks, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Jesuits, Dr. Arnold's School in England, and the American Public School. Each developed a very distinct kind of education, and they have all been successful in accomplishing the thing they set out to do.

     The education of the Athenian boys consisted in learning Homer by heart, and that produced a very distinct kind of person. The Chinese, on the other hand, had to learn the Confucian classics by heart. Nothing could be wider apart than Homer and the Confucian classics. The one race was fed entirely upon one, the other upon the other, with the result of marked characteristics in their national life. In general war, heroism, and all that goes with it, was the pabulum of the Athenian, while the Chinese classic was peaceful, resigned, non-resistant, and the Chinese character was built upon that. The result was, that the Greeks, with their war-like ideal, in the end destroyed themselves, while the Chinese have remained, exemplifying the saying that "the meek shall inherit the earth." No matter who conquers them, they simply absorb them and make them Chinese.

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They are today as they were centuries ago, with little change. So with other cases cited by Russell to show the results produced by education.

     Now, in the New Church, we have an end and aim-education for heaven. But I think we might define the matter more closely. We may ask: "How am I going to educate my child for heaven?" We may imagine that it is an ideal kind of life where there is no evil, and that we are going to train our children to live there. Even from the Writings we have an imaginary picture of that life, and we hardly know how to set about training our children for it. But I believe we can define it more closely, and bring it right home to ourselves by saying that we shall educate the child for his own individual regeneration, knowing that if the child is regenerated we need have no concern about training him for heaven. Our education is a practical one, therefore, and includes a very definite training of the mind of the child, storing it with remains, etc., concerning which definite laws dealing with that process are revealed to us. And this enables us to take very definite steps in preparation for the process of regeneration.

     The Bishop now treated of the application of revealed teachings to various phases of the training of the child. Incidentally he spoke of the two elements of leading in freedom and the use of compulsion and punishment, and of the effects of a misdirected application of one or the other.

     DISCUSSION.

     Rev. W. B. Caldwell: The Bishop has given us a delightfully refreshing view of our educational work and aims. When he spoke of what Russell says about the Chinese in contrast with the Greeks, it occurred to me that, if we want to establish the New Church in perpetuity upon the earth, we should be like the Chinese. It is a fact that the Writings speak well of the meekness of the Chinese in the other life, and contrasts it with the state of Christians, to the detriment of the latter. But our civilization has come down from the Greeks, with its warlike ideals, and has produced a like state in modern Christendom, where the Writings have been revealed for the sake of the establishment of the New Church. Regeneration cannot be effected without temptation combat. The essence of our education is to prepare children for the life of regeneration, and that is a life of combat, especially of combat against the evils that prevent reception of the truth. We think we begin to see results in the General Church, in the numbers of young people brought up in the Church who are taking hold.

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The mere increase in numbers, however, and getting the children to become members, is not our aim. It is something deeper. The Catholics have built up the most powerful church organization in the world today, but this has been accomplished by placing an external bond of fear upon the children, and not by inspiring them. It is a difficult thing to lead the child in freedom, being careful to use compulsion only when necessary, always looking to the time when it will appropriate the truth by fighting for it in a life of regeneration.

     The New Church elsewhere is losing ground. The first generation is enthusiastic, the second loyal, and the third indifferent. Whole families drift away and are dissipated. But we have tried to check such a decline in the Academy. It has been our principle to maintain the ministry of the Church both to the adult and the children. That principle is correct, and we cannot give up our schools. Only let us be sure that we are preparing the young for the real life and work of the Church.

     Rev. H. L. Odhner: I wish to express my deep appreciation of the Bishop's address. I am glad that he has brought it so strongly before this meeting that the primary aim of New Church Education is the salvation of souls. We are apt to take the means for the end. This is the origin of all decadence in religious matters, the origin of the decadence of the Churches,-that they have taken the tools of their worship for the reality, and the upbuilding of the organization for the upbuilding of the kingdom within. There are those who act as if they were favoring the pastors personally, and the society as an organization, by sending their children to the school, allowing this attitude to prevail over the utter necessity of an education which, from the beginning, lays the basis for a spiritual mind that is to grasp the uses of life in such a way that the adult will be able to gain, not only the riches of this life, but the riches of the kingdom of heaven. The development of the soul, which we call regeneration, is primary. Education in the world is looked upon as the accumulation of so much knowledge. You must learn to read, to multiply, divide, etc., and that is education. That is the appearance in the world, and it puts an external stamp on a man. But the internal story of education is a different thing. It has to do with the great realm of thought, labeled in the world as the "sub-conscious." And it is to establish right connections in the child's mind that New Church education has been developed; because every knowledge laid in the mind enters into association with other ideas, reaches into the spiritual world, and calls forth emotions which originate in heaven or hell, from the fact of being connected either with the soul or with the heredities of the proprium and its infernal delights. The work of the educator of the New Church is to seek to guard the implantation of knowledge in the mind, and to provide that there is some connection with heaven and the Lord.

     No one can read the doctrine about the need of the implantation of remains,-the function and character of remains in infancy and later life,-and have the slightest doubt of the utter need for New Church education. There is no question of it. At times mistakes are made in New Church education. Surprising, is it not? But those very mistakes are useful when they are unintentional.

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Providence is trying to do things which we are not able to do. I am not afraid of mistakes. The little things do not matter. Our children have the very association of belonging to a New Church school, and that has great power in it; not because it makes the pupil think he must belong to the church, but because his affection centers around the New Church, and is not tempted by the other things of life. He will know what the New Church stands for-know that his parents thought so much of it that they sent him to a New Church school. It is the most illogical thing in the world for New Church parents not to reorganize their whole natural life in order to procure the benefits of New Church education.

     Mr. George Schnarr: The address has opened up a wonderful subject to me, and I think there can be a good many discussions of the question. We say that the New Church is a glorious Church. In what way? We have an idea of the other life. We are taught that heaven is a place of usefulness. To be useful, a man must have charity in his heart, and that is the primary thing. From a business standpoint, if you have a lot of good ideas, they are no good unless carried out; and surely there are a lot of ideas in the New Church that are not carried out. It is the things which are carried out that make the difference.

     Rev. L. W. T. David: The Bishop's address is, I feel, a very valuable contribution to the study of education. We know the saying that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." I would recast it in this way, "Eternal vigilance is the price of New Church education." There is a danger which faces every human undertaking, however lofty, namely, that it is accepted as perfect in its beginning, with the belief that it must be perpetuated in just that form, apart from any other consideration. This danger lies in the inability of the spiritual man (such as we are in genius-we are not of the celestial type) to grasp truth as it is in itself, or to get such a vision of truth that it is an infallible view. Even our lofty conclusions drawn from the Writings of the Church have that fallibility in them. The Lord works with us as best He can, using our fallible conceptions so that we may go on further. The vigilance comes in this way, that we receive something new, and it should modify our previous ideas by checking up and correcting or enlarging them; but presently they crystallize into certain definite ideas that we must do this and that, and there we stop; they become static or fossilized. We need to go constantly to the source from which our inspiration comes, to see where we have been in error, where we can do better, where we can follow a truer line of development. The progress of the Church will consist of just such reconstructions as time goes on, that our fallible conceptions may be turned into conceptions less fallible. That is what the Bishop has been doing for us, and I hope that the Church, and educators in the Church, will benefit by these things.

     Mr. Theodore Bellinger; I greatly enjoyed the address. In the light of recent developments in China, I should think they had acquired a little of the Homeric education, as they are fighting among themselves! I would like to ask what the remedy is for misdirected applications of our principles.

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     The Bishop: It is a fact that if you punish a child you can make it obey, within reasonable limits; but misdirection means carrying things too far. I can possibly illustrate by a story, showing how you can misdirect a good idea. A man wanted to make a good mouser of his kitten. He placed a mouse before it, and nothing happened. So he gave it a flogging, and repeated the process many times. But in after life whenever the cat saw a mouse it ran away as fast as it could. He got a result, but it was a case of misdirection. It illustrates how we may overdo it by misdirected punishment of a child. If it is to be effective, it must accomplish what it starts out to do. I cannot tell you how to do it; that is where experience and judgment come in. Legitimate punishing is good; overdoing it or misdirecting it is bad. A principle may be applied in a thousand ways; all we can do is to give one another the benefits of our own experience, but there is no answer that any one can make to the many situations that arise. It is a very important matter,-how to bend the feelings of our children in freedom, in the way we want them to go; for regeneration has its beginnings in this early education.

     Mr. Frank Wilson: Bertrand Russell's point of view appears to be on the whole pretty accurate; his analysis of his subject is keen; but he has not gone far enough, if I have correctly gathered the burden of his criticism. Russell makes the statement that we are losing the British Empire by the very means by which we trained our men to hold it. I don't feel "we" are losing the British Empire. What I feel is taking place is this-that the "Children" or "younger members" of the Empire are seeking to realize their own destiny in the world, and to express themselves in the light of truth as they find it. It pleads and demands for others that liberty and freedom that we desire for ourselves.

     The Bishop said that probably Russell would put us in the same class as the Roman Catholics. This would be a great mistake. And why? In the early days of my connection with the New Church, I felt that there was a danger that the child mind would be so formed that, when it came to adult life, it would not have freedom. There is this vital difference, however, that in the Roman Catholic Church they have no access to the Divine Word. They cannot understand. We have the Word and the Writings of the New Church, and in that Revelation we have all the safeguards necessary to maintain that precious freedom which is the right of every man and woman. And I would like to put it in this way, that, whilst it is true we are seeking to train our children, and hold them for our Church, their access to Divine Revelation for themselves will bring about just the result we see in nature all around us. The Lord does not make all flowers the same in color and form, the reason being that they take unto themselves from their source of nourishment the particular food they need. And so our children, despite their leaning toward the New Church as a result of their early training, will get from their own understanding of Divine Revelation the true color and form that will blend them into the great pattern of life.

     I am glad that Mr. Odhner emphasized the idea that we are not doing our New Church schools a favor by sending our children to them.

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As the years pass, we shall realize, perhaps more fully than now, the very humiliating thought that it was necessary for us to come to the New Church that we might have a fighting chance for regeneration. That being the case, how can we presume, in sending our children to a New Church school, that we are doing it anything of a favor? All that we can do, the most that we can do, is very, very little to render to the Lord for the mercies He has vouchsafed to us.

     Third Session-Saturday, 3:30 p.m.

     The Rev. L. W. T. David read a paper on "The Interpretation of Hebrew Names." [See p. 20.]

     DISCUSSION.

     Rev. H. L. Odhner: I should like to express my appreciation of the very interesting study Mr. David has made, because the tendency in the world today, in the study of the Bible and Biblical writers, is not to use the inclusive interpretative method, but rather a restrictive method. They do not think of the internal sense, but try to find what picture was in the mind of the writer. And so the tendency is to have popular translations of the Bible, saying, "Why should we not have the folklore of the Hebrews in the same language as others?-not knowing that the Hebrew words of the Bible were Chosen by a Divine selection, and are the basis of the ideas of the spiritual sense. When I last looked up the meaning of "Deborah," I was wondering why she had that name, and the authority I consulted did not give the meaning of "Bee," but said that Probably she was married to a rather unknown and insignificant person, who was rather handsome; and the word "Lapidoth" Was interpreted literally, not as "light," but as "bright eyes," and that, of course, may have been the case. It gives a very vivid picture of the man.

     I feel that in the New Church we can make use of both methods. It is beautiful to get at a true, actual, historical picture of the times in which the Lord lived here on earth,-a vivid, actual picture and reconstruction of the habits of the people. We can get wonderful things out of those pictures, and I find it is also interesting to get into the feeling of the people of the time. For instance, Deborah's Song of War-it is one of the most beautiful pieces Of poetry in the Bible-we must study it to make it vitalized. If you write it out, section by section in an antiphonal style, with introduction and grouping of recitatives, you find that it is a big weaving into a climax, all referring to current events in the word-picture given. That method, which has not been used very much in the New Church, and which is all that is left to the Old Church, can be a great stimulation to interpretation. On the other hand, the Writings only now and then refer to that method. It is for the study of the literal rather than the spiritual sense, and there is no guard against error in it.

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All our ignorance about ancient times can be turned to pervert the literal sense, if we go too far. What Mr. David has stressed is what the Writings stress, that the Word is inspired in every syllable.

     Mr. Samuel Roschman: In listening to the paper I was very much impressed by the infinite possibilities that there must be in exposition based on a knowledge of the Hebrew. The study of Hebrew was encouraged in the old days with us, recognizing that there were infinite things in the Hebrew words. We must have an enlightened priesthood to draw from the Word the things which we can understand. How often one comes upon a thing which to the lay mind is a blank wall! This or that character represents a state. The place to which he is going, from which he came, or where he lives, is the quality of that state, and nothing further is said, the inference being that there must be an infinity in that Hebrew name. And a study such as Mr. David has given opens to the imagination the possibility of arriving at a true understanding of the states depicted in the Word.

     Mr. Nathaniel Stroh: When first studying Hebrew, it is hard to understand why a man who attempts some investigation into the subject can see why there were not more prophets than Swedenborg. It makes us wonder why man could not be prepared to understand them so that the revelation would come more readily than it did. It is amazing to learn the meanings of the words, and the study would lead the casual observer into a maze. I will not forget a chat with the late Mr. C. Th. Odhner. Some were urging the teaching of Hebrew at that time, and were in love with the subject. Mr. Odhner said: "That may be all right, but it is better for the average layman to understand the Writings in English before going into Hebrew." However, we can see why our Revelator was prepared by a knowledge of Hebrew to understand these things truly. I think it would be fine if the use of Hebrew songs might return to a little more extensive degree than we have had in the past. Even in our adult worship, the delight of singing a number of them is very substantial, and would provide an increased variety. As children we were taught that they were the words of the angels. The sphere they bring is one that is worth while, and something we do not forget. Some expansion in that work would be useful and of great value.

     Rev. F. E. Waelchli: No one could listen to the exposition which Mr. David has given us without realizing how important to the New Church is the study of the Hebrew language, how essential it is to the opening up of the Word to the revelation of the spiritual sense from the letter. It is because it is so essential that one of the first things that Swedenborg needed to do before entering upon his mission as revelator was to study the Hebrew. And he applied himself very industriously to that study for a number of years. We must really go to the original of the Word, if we are to see in any completeness the shining forth of the spiritual sense from the letter. We realize this when we read some of the explanations in the Writings-for example, that series in the Arcana treating of the birth of the sons of Jacob, one after the other. In each case it is said, "His name was called" so and so, and it then states the reason why that name was given, with sufficient explanation to show what is involved in the name.

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But if you could go to the Hebrew itself, and make a study of the names, you would see still more fully how the spiritual sense is involved in the Hebrew itself.

     We have been saying more or less about the things that we have that are distinctive in the New Church, and of our distinctive education; and one of the things of that distinctive education is the instruction of the children in the Hebrew. That is peculiar to New Church education. I am not at all in harmony with the remark of Mr. C. Th. Odhner quoted by Mr. Stroh. While it is very good to go to the Writings, and study them in English, yet, long before the children have attained an age when they will do that, we instruct them in the Hebrew. And here I will say that a very valuable book has been placed at the disposal of the Church,-Mr. Acton's book on the Study of Hebrew. It is a book that should be in every home, and you need only turn to it and do a little study, and read the book through, and you will see how very easy it is to acquire a considerable knowledge of the Hebrew, and at the same time come into a great state of affection for it. You will find this if you apply yourself to it. It does that especially with children, and it will do so for older ones too. Children delight in the Hebrew. They want it. If you miss it, or forget it, they will mention it themselves. They want to have a Hebrew lesson. As I have gone about, I have given lessons in Hebrew to children of the isolated, and they will say, "You gave us Hebrew last time, won't you do it again this time?" It is because here is the Word exactly in the form in which the Lord dictated it. It is the ultimate of the Word in the sounds of the words and the pictures of the letters. And when the children hear it, and especially when they sing it, the angels who are present can inflow with a fullness of affection into that perfect ultimate. And because of the childlike state of innocence, there is a delight to the children beyond any other delight. It affects them deeply, and we, too, can experience something of it.

     Mr. Thomas Smith now read a paper dealing with the subject of Government by the Priesthood, and referring especially to the teaching that priests are to have honor and dignity on account of their holy functions. We regret that the paper has not been made available for publication. Warm appreciation was expressed in the course of the discussion which followed.

     Sunday Morning.

     The Assembly came to a fitting close and an uplifting climax in the service held on Sunday morning. The chapel was filled, and extra chairs were necessary. The singing of so large a congregation was very inspiring, and this feeling came forth with special power in the 19th Psalm. At the interlude an appropriate selection was very effectively sung by Mrs. Fred Stroh, of Kitchener.

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The sermon by the Bishop was a beautiful, dramatic, and deeply suggestive treatment of the prophetic office as exemplified in Jeremiah. The service closed with the administration of the Holy Supper, the Bishop being assisted by the pastor of the Olivet Church.

     All of the sessions and other meetings of the Assembly were well attended, a delegation of about forty members having come from Kitchener to swell the numbers of the local Society.

     In concluding this report, the Secretary wishes to give due credit to Mrs. Theodore Rothermel for her able assistance in taking stenographic notes of the speeches and typing them. Her hard work, well and cheerfully done, has won our deep gratitude.
     L. W. T. DAVID,
          Secretary.
THIRD VISIT TO NORWAY 1928

THIRD VISIT TO NORWAY       Rev. GUSTAF BAECKSTROM       1928

     (For accounts of Mr. Baeckstrom's previous visits to Norway, see New Church Life for February and June, 1927.)

     During the month of October, I undertook a third journey to Norway. I first visited Kristinehamn and Karlstad in Sweden, where there are interested friends though not members. In the former place there are six persons. I preached for them in a private house, and administered the Holy Supper. In Karlstad, I visited the six or seven there who are interested in the New Church. In both places I also lectured, the average attendance being 50 persons.

     Our little circle in Oslo, Norway, has increased somewhat since my last visit, another Mr. Boyesen, with his wife, having moved to that place and joined our group. On one Sunday we had worship at the Boyesen home, and the Holy Supper was administered to ten persons. The lending library of the circle has been well patronized. I gave three public lectures, the subjects being: "The Birth of Jesus and the Lord's Second Coming"; "The Reality of the Spiritual World"; and "Life after Death." As more people came to the third than the room would hold, I gave this lecture a second time.

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     The Rev. Homer Synnestvedt had given me the addresses of his relatives in Oslo and Bergen and I had written to them about the lectures to be given in those places. In Oslo, two of them introduced themselves to me. I had a pleasant visit with Mr. Frederick Synnestvedt and his fiancee, and supplied him with books. These two attended all the lectures. I introduced them to the Boyesens, and we all went on an excursion together.

     This time the newspapers had not made much mention of my lectures, and the one on the editorial staff who had been so friendly was absent on a trip to France. As I had found it useful, however, to give books, I called upon one of the editors of another paper, a Miss M., to present my latest book to her, and introduced the talk by saying: "I think that Swedenborg has been very little known in Norway." "Yes," she said, "until recently, when a book on Swedenborg published in Sweden has been much read here." "What is the name of that book?" I asked. "Swedenborg's Revelations," she said. "Well, that is my book," I said. She attended the next lecture, and gave a good account of it iii her newspaper.

     In Bergen I gave three lectures, and one on "Swedenborg" was broadcasted there. I met another of Mr. Synnestvedt's relatives here, Mrs. Carl Monssen, and her husband, and spent a day at their hospitable home. Miss Svanoe, an earnest receiver, feels isolated, and was glad to receive a visit from me. Many of her friends have become anthroposophists (a new branch of theosophy), and their supposed belief in the Lord's Divinity, together with their friendly attitude toward Swedenborg, is somewhat alluring. Their Propaganda is very active in Norway at present. Right after my stay in Bergen, one of their men was to give no less than seven lectures in a week.

     Miss Svanoe invited me to her home one evening to meet some of her friends, among whom were some of these anthroposophists. Her object was to have a discussion, and to hear me meet the arguments of her friends. Now I take little pleasure in such discussions, as they may very easily become a fight in which those who are wrong confirm themselves more strongly in their false views. But on this occasion I could not avoid it without seeming to admit that I was unable to meet their arguments. There was one lady in particular who was in a splendid fighting humor-they sometimes are, people say-and I had to tell her that when I was a boy in school I had read a book of Swedish history which told about a sea battle between the Swedes and the Danes, saying, "Darkness separated the combatants, and both claimed the victory."

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I said that I felt a good deal like this, and she said I was right. But the next moment she renewed her attack with a vigor that would make Mr. Dempsey ashamed of himself. The main subject we discussed was their doctrine of reincarnation, which makes their supposed belief in the Lord's Divinity very problematical indeed. The exchange of views had this good result, that Miss Svanoe afterwards declared that now she would hold fast to Swedenborg.

     In Stavanger, we have another New Church friend, Mr. M. Eckhoff, who is making a Norwegian translation of The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine, including the footnotes. He will soon complete this work. Mr. Eckhoff is one of the strongest New Churchmen in Norway, and feels quite lonely. He reads the Writings every day, and needs someone to talk with concerning the doctrines. There are also two ladies in Stavanger who are interested. One of them is old and almost deaf, but though she could not hear a single word she attended my lecture in order to see a New Church minister before her death. So far as I know, it is the first time anyone has paid admission to see what I look like.

     To sum up, I gave 8 lectures in Norway, with an average attendance of 150 persons, and sold boobs to the value of 400 kroner (about $108.00), which may be considered good results at a time when preparation for an election of members of parliament held the chief public interest.

     I may add that I have just published my biography of Swedenborg. Such a work has been greatly needed in Sweden. In a few. days we will bring out a Swedish translation from the Latin of Swedenborg's Divine Wisdom. This work has never appeared in Swedish. We published a Swedish version of Divine Love some years ago.
     GUSTAF BAECKSTROM.

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Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     TORONTO, CANADA.

     The Sixteenth Ontario District Assembly, postponed from the Spring of the year, was held in Toronto, October 13th to 16th inclusive, by invitation of the Olivet Society. Considering the fact that there were no holiday dates during the period of the Assembly, the attendance was surprisingly good. "Counting heads" seems to have been overlooked this time, but we would judge the attendance to have been well up to the standard of former occasions. All told, there were dose to forty visitors from Kitchener. Our Bishop, the Rt. Rev. N. D. Pendleton, was with us, of course, inspiring the Assembly by his presence, his words of wisdom and his able presidency at the meetings. These once-a-year visits from the episcopal head of our Church, are, we believe, an increasingly appreciated boon. In addition, we had the pleasure of welcoming the Rev. W. B. Caldwell back to his old "stamping-ground" after an absence of many years, and also the Rev. F. E. Waelchli who was with us renewing old acquaintances, and meeting old friends of many years of cooperative effort in the Church in this district. A full Report will appear elsewhere, but we may say that, from the Reception and Dance on the opening evening of October 13th, when the guests were well and truly received by a reception committee, consisting of the Bishop, Rev. and Mrs. H. L. Odhner, and Mr. and Mrs. Peter Bellinger, right through to the singing of the recessional hymn at the close of worship on Sunday, the 16th, there was a sphere of happy enjoyment of each other, of the papers, speeches, (both formal and informal), indeed, of every item on the program. The scheduled papers and addresses were all good, and the resultant discussion,-well, you may read most of it for yourselves in the formal report of the meetings.

     But, as Mrs. Theodore Rothermel, the "reporter," was not at the men's meeting, we will mention briefly that the general subject, "A New Church Scrutiny of Modern Morals," was considered under the three headings: "Infancy and Childhood," by the Rev. H. L. Odhner; "Youth," by Mr. John Parker; "Adults," by Mr. E. Craigie; all of whom brought out points of interest and value, adding to our sum of knowledge thereby. A prominent feature of the discussion was the seemingly increasing difficulties that modern conditions present to parents desirous of keeping their children as far, and as long as possible, unspotted from the world. The difficulties were frankly recognized, and the Bishop, in one of his characteristic summations, reminded us that after we have done our best, poor though that best may seem to be, it is for our encouragement to know that a beneficent Providence is watching over this, as over all other matters pertaining to our welfare. Felicitations between the men's and ladies' meetings were duly observed when the men sent a gift of chocolates to the ladies with a suitable expression of their love and affection, which elicited in return a poetic acknowledgment of our "kind thoughtfulness," and-we are not quite sure of this-an assurance that they were doing very nicely, thank you.

     The closing event of the Assembly, as already intimated, was Worship followed by the Administration of the Holy Supper, the Bishop being assisted by the Pastor of the Olivet Society. The sermon by the Bishop was from the text of Jeremiah 8:19-23, and was, as usual, wise in counsel-as drawn from the exposition of the text-and full of instruction in the way of life. We quote to the best of our ability the dosing passage:

     "Creeds have fallen, as they should and must.

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The history of mankind is enlightened by a Divine story which none may deny save the blind. Israel's history embodies this story. In the Messiah we have a Divine Personality. Christianity is its attempted exposition. The New Christianity will penetrate and reveal its deepest secrets. The New Church will open itself to the old Divine story, and fulfill the spirit of the prophets, who spoke without ceasing of the day beyond their time, the day of the coming of the Lord and the final restoration."

     With the singing of the recessional hymn, "Peace be to this congregation," the Assembly was brought to a fitting close in a powerful worshipful sphere, and we can think of no more fitting phrase to epitomize the whole than "A Happy Assembly." Our thanks are due and generously given to all who in any way contributed to the success of our meetings.

     In common with all our brethren in the Church, we mourn the passing from our midst of our late beloved Bishop Emeritus, W. F. Pendleton. We say "mourn," because truly do we grieve that no more may we behold in the flesh, hear the voice or clasp the hand of one who for many years was counselor, teacher, guide, yea, we feel we can say, the friend of New Churchmen everywhere. But whilst this grief is natural, yet it is possible for us to feel with him the joy that comes with the removal of the cramping limitations of the human body and old age, especially when that body has not been of the strongest, but has been subject to frailty and ill-health. We shall cherish through many years the memory of our late Bishop.

     On Wednesday evening, November 9th, at the regular Wednesday evening supper, our pastor gave a resume of the life of the late Bishop, and, along with other speakers, paid grateful and touching tribute to the qualities possessed and displayed throughout his many years as episcopal head of the General Church of the New Jerusalem. At 8.15 p.m., a memorial service was held in the chapel. The lessons were from Psalm 84 and Spiritual Diary 5002-3, and the address was based upon the text: "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace." (Psalm 37:37.) It is not possible for the writer to give even a synopsis of this beautiful testimony of one sincere soul to another, without marring its beauty. It was redolent of the affection of the student for his mentor, the pastor for his leader and guide, and of a people who looked to and loved him in the use of his high calling. But it was not alone to his capacity as man and leader that this tribute was paid, but the speaker also said: "Those who have sat under his tutelage, and known him as a friend, feel that they have been nearer to angels than is usually the privilege of men, and that his life was charged in every part with a self-discipline which subordinated it to the truth-which made his use paramount, and made him a form of use. It is of such men that the Psalmist speaks, when he says,

"Mark the perfect man,
And behold the upright:
For the end of that man is peace." F. W.

     Forward Club.

     We have received an outline of a Study-Course to be undertaken by the Forward Club of the Olivet Church during the present season. "The Human Body, in its Natural and Spiritual Aspects," is the subject to be considered, and the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner is to introduce various phases of this subject in a half-hour lecture at each monthly meeting, this to be followed by a general discussion. As the program reads, "a unique opportunity is thus offered the men of the Society to study the physiology of the body in the light of universal principles. The human body is the ultimate of all order, and the basis of heaven itself. (H. H. 100.) Through a true knowledge of anatomy we would gain an understanding, not only of the body politic, but of the spiritual world itself. (S. D. 1145)"

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The program also lists the "four kingdoms of the human body," and gives extensive references to the Writings for home reading. The whole plan cannot be too highly commended. "The proper study of mankind is man," and to the New Churchman this means the study of the human form on all planes, even to the supreme or Divine Human Form.
     W. B. C.

     REPORT OF THE VISITING PASTOR.

     Services, including the Holy Supper, were held at Columbus, OHIO, on Thursday evening, November 10th, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Wiley. Only members of the family were present. The following evening there was a doctrinal class, at which there were, besides the family, three persons not of the Church. At the request of one of these, the doctrine concerning the Lord was presented, and, during two hours, many questions were asked and answered. On Saturday morning instruction was given to the youngest child of the family.

     On Sunday, the 13th, services were held at MIDDLEPORT, OHIO, with an attendance of fourteen, including two children. The rite of Confession of Faith was administered for Mr. Ellison Boatman. At the Holy Supper there were twelve communicants. After the services a meeting of the Society was held to consider an offer for the purchase of the church property by an Old Church congregation. The offer was turned down decidedly and emphatically. Although, in the course of years, the Society has lost many members by removals and deaths, and another family contemplates moving away in the near future, those who remain are strong in courage to carry on. As of old, there abides an earnest zeal and love for the Church and the Heavenly Doctrines. This was evident from the attendance at our three evening doctrinal classes, this being, respectively, nine, eleven, and ten. One afternoon, instruction was given the children.
     F. E. WAELCHLI.

     SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.

     The first Sunday in August is a notable day to the children of out Sunday School. It is Prize Sunday. This year two boys, Linnie and Sydney Heldon, were given awards for attending every Sunday of the year. And quite a number, of others had good attendances to their credit. There were also prizes presented by the teachers for the memorizing of Scripture verses. Sydney Heldon came top of the school, and his brother Linnie second with a half mark less. Just prior to the presentation of the award books by our Pastor, Mr. G. W. Guthrie addressed the children on the subject of "Prizes."

     Mr. and Mrs. L. Brackett Bishop, of the Kenwood Parish, Chicago, visited Sydney during the last two weeks in October and, on October 15th, gave a dinner in the New Church Hall, Thomas Street, td the New Church people of Sydney. Invitations were also received by the members of our Society. Ten of us were able to be present, and spent a delightful evening.

     After dinner, Mrs. Bishop gave a lecture on "Beads." She has a wonderful collection, the largest in the world, and it was most interesting and instructive to listen to all she could tell us about them. We enjoyed it all so much that we invited Mrs. Bishop to attend a children's concert at Hurstville on the following Thursday and repeat part of her lecture. She gladly consented, and her delightful way of imparting instruction in correspondences and teaching moral and spiritual truths was enjoyed by her audience, which for us was a large one.

     The concert was given by the small children, who had been practicing for several weeks on Saturday afternoons under Miss White's direction. Several items had been prepared by the older ones, but were held over to make room for Mrs. Bishop's lecture. It was an exciting event, especially to the young people, to have with us a New Church visitor from so far away. Mrs. Bishop said the children's concert carried her back to her childhood, when she took part in just such things.

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But she was able to take us all round the world in thought, and everywhere the New Church centers were of greatest interest.

     Already we are making preparation for carrying on without our Pastor while he attends the General Assembly next year. For seven years he has ministered to us without a break. So it will mean that others will have a record to live up to in his absence. We would all like to go in a body to this notable Assembly, but London is rather too far away for us as yet.

     It is hoped to have special Christmas celebration this year, something more ambitious in the musical part. Practice for this is to commence next week under Mr. Taylor's instruction.

     At the time of writing, our Pastor is in correspondence with two men, living far distant, who were attracted by the subjects of his advertized sermons. The correspondence with one commenced in the beginning of March, following the advertized subject, "Bible Proofs that Jesus Christ is God." The correspondent held the belief that "millions now living will never die"; but his persistence and trend of thought give hope that he may receive spiritual rational truths of the New Church. In his last letter he said that he had written to ministers of other churches, but they had "not the stamina" to continue. The other correspondent sought an explanation of the Parable of the Unjust Steward. He writes: "I have been for a long time seeking a more spiritual interpretation of this parable than the last part of the eighth verse reveals. I understand that verse, but whom does the 'lord' symbolize? Why should he commend such deceit? Why should we 'make friends of the unrighteous mammon'? When do we 'fail'? What and where are the 'everlasting habitations' open to us on failing? If you can give me light on this, I shall be much obliged, as I have tried clergy and laity and gained no help."
     M. M. W.

     GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS.

     Our Thanksgiving Day service this year was featured by a stirring address, and the choir sang a special anthem. We recall the first Thanksgiving Day in The Park, thirty-three years ago, which was celebrated by the half-dozen families with the usual feasting and good cheer, a zest for which was furnished by a prolonged chase of the old bus horse, which escaped control and cavorted all over the forty-acre prairie that now forms The Park.

     The atmosphere of Christmas is all about. The households are deeply engrossed in preparations; Prof. Jesse Stevens is rehearsing the chorus and orchestra for a grand musical festival to be held on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas; and the school children are getting ready to take their parts in the Christmas Service.

     Our Pastor is holding a special class for the ladies on Wednesday afternoons for the study of the Arcana Celestia, and a steady attendance is reported. The Church Library is more active than ever, and the teachers report special interest on the part of the pupils, which interest is fostered by them in various ways.

     At a recent Friday Class, Mr. Seymour G. Nelson called our attention to the very valuable assistance rendered by the Rev. Wm. Whitehead in the editing of the book, Early Days of the Immanuel Church. Words of appreciation were voiced by others, and a vote of thanks to Mr. Whitehead was enthusiastically carried.

     Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Cole and family have come from Sandusky, Ohio, to spend the winter in Glenview. Mr. Cole is pursuing some intensive studies in the University of Chicago.     
     J. B. S.

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NEW CHURCH SERMONS 1928

NEW CHURCH SERMONS              1928




     Announcements.



     Expounding the Scriptures in the Light of the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem.

     Selected Discourses by Ministers of the General Church. Suitable for individual reading, and for use in family worship and other services, as well as for missionary purposes.
Title Unspecified 1928

Title Unspecified       Editor       1928

     A PAMPHLET ISSUED MONTHLY FROM OCTOBER TO JUNE INCLUSIVE.
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: 1928

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE:              1928

     Rev. George de Charms. Rev. Wm. Whitehead.

     Sent free of charge to any address on application to Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

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ATTRACTIVE TOURS 1928

ATTRACTIVE TOURS              1928

     In connection with the General Assembly, the Bartlett Tours Company has offered to arrange conducted tours for a minimum of five people. In so doing the Company assumes full responsibility for securing steamship, hotel and railroad accommodations. The route may be specially arranged, and the choice of accommodations may be varied from Third Class to De Lure Suites. The price includes accommodations in London during the Assembly. Among others, the following trips are suggested:

     June 30-August 22: Visiting Sweden, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France. Single Cabin out, and 2d Class Passage back $835.00
Option: The same as above, going to Switzerland instead of Holland and Belgium . . . . $835.00
July 5-September 3: Visit Sweden before the Assembly, and tour England and Scotland for two weeks after the Assembly. First-class Passage both ways, $975.00
Option: Visit France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Holland, before the Assembly, and return immediately after the Assembly. Single Cabin Passage $785.00
Or continue with tour of England and Scotland, as above, after the Assembly $925.00
For full information, apply to Miss Florence Roehner, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     Miss Celia Bellinger has agreed to act as one of the European conductors next Summer for the Temple Tours, Incorporated. The trip is of the Tourist third-class type, leaving June 22, visiting France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England, including 9 days in London during the Assembly. Total cost, $800.00. She invites the young girls of the Church to be the first to join the party, and welcomes this opportunity to fulfill her promise to show them some day the beauties of Europe. For further particulars, address: Miss Celia Bellinger, 7437 Ben Hur Street, Pittsburgh, Pa.

     All Bookings should be made in the near future.

     It is already becoming difficult to obtain just the accommodations desired on vessels sailing during the "rush season. "

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THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928

     THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the General Church of the New Jerusalem will be held in London, England, AUGUST 3D TO AUGUST 12TH, 1928.

     An Historic Occasion on Historic Ground!

Remember that the First Meeting of the Organized New Church was held in the City of London.

Come and Meet your Friends of the General Church in Europe!

     COST OF LODGINGS IN LONDON.
The prices here given include room and breakfast:
Simple boarding house           6/- ($1.50) per day.
Smaller hotels                9/6 ($2.30) per day.
Larger hotels                12/6 ($3.00) up per day.

     The total cost for the ten days of the Assembly, for room and breakfast (bath included if booking covers a week or more), would range from $15.00 to $30.00 for reasonable accommodations situated conveniently near Victoria Hall where the Assembly meeting; will be held. Most places require from six weeks to two months notice for bookings.

     Miss K. M. Dowling, who has kindly furnished the above information, has been appointed to take Charge of accommodations for visitors. On request, she will gladly give further information and assistance to those desiring to make individual arrangements or reservations. Address: Miss K. M. Dowling, 11 Overton Road, Brixton, London, S. W, 9, England.

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ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS 1928

ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS              1928

     BRYN ATHYN, PA., JANUARY 30 TO FEBRUARY 5, 1928.

Monday, January 30.
     3:00 p.m. Consistory.

Tuesday, January 31.
     10:00 a.m. Council of the Clergy.
     3:00 p.m. Council of the Clergy and General Faculty. Address: Mr. Eldric S. Klein. Subject: "The Hittites."

Wednesday, February 1.
     10:00 a.m. Council of the Clergy.
     3:00 p.m. Council of the Clergy and General Faculty. Address: Miss F. M. Buell. Subject: "The Poets and Eternal Justice."

Thursday, February 2.
     10:00 a.m. Council of the Clergy.
     3:00 p.m. Council of the Clergy and General Faculty. Address: Rev. Hugo. Lj. Odhner. Subject: "The Subconscious as a Factor in Education."
     8:00 p.m. Public Session of the Council of the Clergy. Address: Rev. Gilbert H. Smith. Subject: "The Kingdom of Heaven."

Friday, February 3.
     10:00 a.m. Council of the Clergy.
     7:00 p.m. Philadelphia District Assembly. Banquet.

Saturday, February 4.
     10:00 a.m. Joint Council.
     3:00 p.m. Joint Council.

Sunday, February 5.
     11:00 a.m. Divine Worship-Sermon by Rev. W. L. Gladish.
     8:00 p.m. Service of Praise-Sermon by Rev. F. E. Waelchli

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PRAYER 1928

PRAYER       HENDRIK W. BOEF       1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII FEBRUARY, 1928          No. 2
     Prayer, in the widest sense, is man's very life. Man is a vessel receptive of life from the Lord, and therefore his life is a continual supplication for all things natural and spiritual which harmonize with his love. It is a continual longing, both conscious and unconscious, for the things which will satisfy the desires of his heart.

     The nature of man's prayer is necessarily qualified by his state, and by the things for which he prays, and this whether he prays orally or not. In this sense, it may be said that all men pray. The spiritual man prays for spiritual things, the natural man for natural things; and the agnostic, yea, even the atheist, who is averse to oral prayer, still look forward to and desire to obtain those things which are in accordance with their character, though they ascribe the acquisition thereof to their own prudence and efforts. But the prayers which pour forth from the instinctive desires of man for the things which are necessary to his self-preservation are not prayers in the particular sense of the word. Nor does the Lord require man to pray for the mere necessities of life. He provides him with these even before man thinks of asking for them. If man prays for them, however, his prayer has inmostly in it the acknowledgment that all things are from the Lord, and he offers his prayer as a sign of thanksgiving to the Lord for them.

     Since the quality of man's affection determines the object of prayer, so if man is moved by natural and worldly affections, his prayer will be for natural blessings; and if he is inspired by spiritual affections, his prayer will be for spiritual blessings.

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Natural blessings are those things which minister to the natural well-being of man on earth, such as riches, honors, high positions, and release from pains and sorrows; while spiritual blessings may be defined as those things which have regard to the well-being of man as an inhabitant of the spiritual world, and are therefore of eternal value to him. They are: That man may acknowledge and love the Lord, and the neighbor as himself; that he may receive a humble heart, learn truths, and how to shun evils as sins. Man cannot exist without natural blessings; they are useful, but only in so far as they serve the spiritual man in the performance of his use. But if we pray only for natural blessings, for the comfort and pleasure which they give to the physical man, it is a sign that we have set our hearts on the riches of the world. Natural blessings then become a curse to our spiritual man, and a hindrance to the development of our spiritual faculties. In that case, and in His Providence, the Lord does not grant us material and natural wealth more than we can bear, lest our spiritual life be eternally harmed by them.

     There are two kinds of prayer, internal and external,-the prayer of the heart and mind, and that of the body or of the mouth; and rightly so, for man has both a spirit and a body. True prayer must therefore include both; it must come from the spirit, and it must find its ultimation in the external act of kneeling and the repeating of words, which are the vessels that receive the ideas and present man's desires in ultimate form. Internal prayer without external is incomplete; on the other hand, external prayer without the internal is void; it is mostly a mere gesture, performed from habit and for the sake of merit, which is thought to be gained thereby. From which it is clear that prayer like that of Catholics, which consists only of the repetition of a dead formula, is of no avail unless the mind be in it and give it life. For, when man is in adoration and prayer, the Lord regards nothing else than his affections, his interiors, his love and faith. Thus, He sees whether man is in the good of life or in the evils in which his proprium takes delight. He hears not man's oral petitions alone, but looks inmostly into man, and sees his motives, whether they are for the glory of His kingdom or for selfish ends.

     Prayer, to be acceptable before God, must be addressed to Him alone,-to the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is God; for He alone is the Savior, and consequently no one else can hear us.

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He alone is the Teacher of all men, and we should therefore address our prayer to Him from this acknowledgment, to the end that He may teach us how to pray, and that our prayer may become human, and, indeed, speech with the Divine, which is a privilege granted to the human race, that it may receive internal perception, and thus be able to distinguish between what is good and what is evil.

     The use of prayer is evident, for in it there is actual elevation of the mind to God, and hence communication with the heavens. Moreover, by means of it, man can be brought into states of internal humility, in which he can be imbued with true love to the Lord and neighbor, and receive an affection for spiritual and celestial things.

     The Lord Himself, in His states of humiliation, prayed to the Father, and received Divine revelation and was glorified. Nor could He from Himself do miracles, nor speak Divine Truth, but only from the Father, the Divine in Himself, which He saw and obeyed by turning to Him and doing His will. From a comparison of the Lord's glorification with man's regeneration, it is very plain that without prayer no regeneration is possible. For man, of himself, tends to evils and falsities, and is withheld from them only by the Lord, and led to do good if he turns to Him. Man, in his prayer, is to declare before the Lord that he is willing to receive instruction from Him, and to obey accordingly; for nothing is given to man unless he asks for it in freedom. Man must first ask, long for, and pray; the Lord then answers, informs, and does.

     The effect of true prayer is not only that man is thereby brought into the presence of God, but, as a consequence thereof man's state is changed. This is especially evident in the spiritual world, where the consequence of true prayer is the change of environment, and the advancement into new and higher states. The same is true of the spiritual man while still on earth. When he is in states of peace, he perceives internal joy while in prayer; and when he is in states of distress, the elevation of his mind to God gives him comfort and consolation. He receives new hope; for he is then imbued with trust in the Divine, whose guidance is for eternal good.

     The Lord is equally present with all men, for it is His will that all should be eternally happy.

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Because it is the Lord's will that all should be eternally happy, He permits every man to be happy in his own way. But, for the same reason, it also follows that He cannot grant the fulfilment of man's prayer, if it flow forth from love of dominion over others, or from the love of riches for himself alone, which would appropriate to itself even the necessities without which the neighbor is not able to exist. Such prayers are immediately opposed in heaven, since their fulfilment is detrimental to the well-being of the whole human race. By such prayers, man closes his mind to the reception of influx from the Divine, which inflows only according to order; and he thus casts himself into the prison-houses of hell, these being the only means by which he can be kept in bonds. There, in his phantasy, he enjoys the desires of his loves, but is immediately checked if he would practice them in actuality. For the Lord, from His Divine Love, protects others from the injuries which such a man would inflict upon them if he were allowed to go about freely. He is like a wild beast, which must be kept in a cage lest he destroy human beings.

     Since the Lord regards the ends which man cherishes inwardly while in prayer, it may be seen that the prayers just described, as well as those which are directed to idols, saints, or a tripersonal god, are not acceptable to Him, since prayers of this kind are opposed to the truth that He alone is God. Man cannot ascribe all honor, glory, and power to a deity which is monstrous in its form; and when he deprecates his evils before it, still he inwardly does not wish to shun them; from which it follows that in such prayers he is rather confirmed in his evils than released from them.

     Sins are only remitted when man implores the Lord the Savior for light to see them, and for power to remove them to the circumference of his life. Then, when temptation comes, he uses that light which inflows into his mind to see and explore the quality of his evils; and when he has seen their filthiness, he turns from them by the power given him from the Lord, and holds them in aversion. Nor can man's prayer for the forgiveness of sins be effective, except by the actual combat which, is to follow. Therefore, a man who knows that he is nothing but evil, and that from himself he has no perception of truth, will not pray to be spared from the anxieties of temptations; but he accepts temptations when they arise, because they are the means, in the Divine Providence, for his purification.

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He fights courageously, as if of himself, but from the Lord, who leads him and gives him strength; and when he has conquered the assailant, he renders thanks to the Lord, and attributes the victory to Him alone.

     With the fall of the Most Ancient Church, and that of the Ancient, the good of love to the Lord and the truth of faith in Him perished. Man lost the true way in which he should commune with his Creator or pray to Him. In the Jewish Church, only a representative of this remained; and when this also perished, it became necessary for the Most High to descend upon the earth, that He might restore this vital means of communication between Himself and men, without which no conjunction with Him is possible, thus no salvation, or elevation into His heavenly kingdom.

     Let us now contemplate the state of the Christian Church at this day. That Church abandoned its first love to the Lord, a love which it had in its beginning, but which it sacrificed, in order to worship a triune god,-a procreation of its self-intelligence, which permitted the exercise of the love of dominion over others, and arrogated the power of revelation to itself. If we view the present state of that Church, we may see that it is still the spiritual desolation and death into which it fell in the early days of its existence. But especially if we examine ourselves, we may see how necessary it was that the Lord should come again, that He might reveal to us the true way in which we are to approach Him. If the greatest of all visions has been granted to us, in the Divine mercy of the Lord,-namely, to see the Lord in His Second Coming,-then our first prayer to Him should be, that He teach us how to pray, in order that His will may be done, and not ours, so that we may become His servants; also, that we should pray for the establishment of the Lord's New Church in ourselves. For is not this the means by which man learns how to perform uses, and to serve God? Yea, to no other end was the Heavenly Doctrine revealed. In praying thus for the Lord's Church, we pray from charity, if at the same time we obey the Lord's words, "When ye stand praying, forgive." Then we pray according to order, or, what is the same, in the Lord's Name. And the Lord has given us this promise, "Whatsoever ye ask in my Name, that will I do."

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     From all that we have said, it is clear that, when we pray, we should examine our internal desires and motives, and, above all things, that we should know and understand what true prayer is, that our prayer should not be purely emotional. For is it not rightly asked in the Arcana Celestia: "What is prayer of the lips, if the mind is not in it, but mere babbling?"

     At His first Advent, the Lord taught men to pray. He taught them the Lord's Prayer, in which all the possible needs of men are met, if only that Prayer be rightly understood, and repeated in the proper attitude of mind and heart. In the fall of the Christian Church men lost the right interpretation of these sacred words, and perverted their purpose to their own ends. Now, as never before, the true interpretation of the Lord's Prayer-its internal sense-has been given in the Writings. And the Lord restores this to every man who will receive it in truth and from love to Him. But the true meaning of the Lord's Prayer will still be hidden to us, if we have not studied the Writings, and read in their sacred pages the interpretation thereof. Lest our prayer become mere babbling, let us, therefore, investigate from time to time, and pray the Lord for enlightenment.
INTERIOR SENSE OF WORDS 1928

INTERIOR SENSE OF WORDS              1928

     "That to number signifies to order and dispose the goods and truths of faith and love, is because numbering involves examination, and what is examined by the Lord is also ordered and disposed. Moreover, in the original language, the word by which numbering is here expressed signifies to examine, to estimate, to observe, and also to visit, to command, to preside, thus to older and arrange. These are significations of that word, because one involves the other in the spiritual sense; and the spiritual sense if the interior sense of words, which interior sense is very often within the words of languages, especially of the oriental." (A. C. 10217.)

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CAPTURE OF AI 1928

CAPTURE OF AI       Rev. GILBERT H. SMITH       1928

     "And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed. Take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai; see, I have given into thy hand the King of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land. And thou shalt do to Ai and her King as thou didst unto Jericho and her King; only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves" (Joshua 8:1, 2.)

     After the miraculous destruction of the city of Jericho, the Book of Joshua describes the efforts of the Children of Israel to capture the city of Ai. There is Divine Truth in these historical things of the Old Testament, which, when understood, will help men to come into true order, to see falsities, and to behold the wisdom of the Lord. There is something in these historical matters that is for the guidance of the Church.

     Ai was not as easily taken as Jericho. It could not be captured by marching around it with trumpets and shouting. There were two attempts to capture Ai, the first a complete failure, and the second a stratagem that was completely successful. They lured the men out of Ai, surrounded them, and burned their city.

     The first attempt was unsuccessful because a certain man named Achan, of the tribe of Judah, had "trespassed in the accursed thing"-had stolen from the spoils of Jericho a goodly Babylonish garment which he coveted, also two-hundred shekels of silver and wedge of gold. Instead of delivering them to Joshua for the treasury of the Lord, he had hidden them in the midst of his tent. This was why the Israelites were beaten by the men of Ai at first. Although Achan alone had done this, all Israel suffered defeat; and it was not until the guilty man was discovered by lot, and stoned to death in the valley of Acher, that Joshua could proceed to reduce it.

     At the first attack upon Ai, the men whom Joshua had sent out to reconnoiter had persuaded him confidently that two or three thousand men would be sufficient to take the city, and that it was not necessary for all the people to undergo the labor of battle.

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The result was that the men of Ai chased them away from their gates, and slew a number of them; whereupon Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face, complaining to the Lord. But the Lord reproved him for this, saying, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel; thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you.

     What is meant by this accursed thing without the taking away of which the Church cannot stand against her enemies?

     After Achan had been discovered and stoned, the Lord instructed Joshua to lay an ambush against the city behind it, and promised that the city should be treated by him as Jericho had been treated. So Joshua placed two bodies of his men on the north and west of the city behind it, and he himself with, another body lay all night in the valley that was before the city. And in the morning the king of Ai came out, with his men, and Joshua made as if he were beaten, and fled to the wilderness whereupon all the men were called out of Ai to pursue after Joshua. They went out, and left their city open. Joshua, as a signal, then stretched out his spear toward the city, and all the liers in wait arose, and entered the city and burned it. The king of Ai found himself in the midst of the Israelites, and his way of return to the city cut off. And the men who had feigned flight also turned back upon him. The men of Ai were all destroyed, and the king of Ai was hanged, and buried under a heap of stones.

     This is a survey of the story. From the spoil of Jericho, Achan had taken some for himself, and had not given it into the treasury. For this taking of the "accursed thing," Israel was defeated by the men of Ai in their first confident attack. But when Achan had been stoned to death, Ai was taken by the stratagem which has been described. What is the meaning of all this to the Church of the Lord as it is with ourselves?

     First of all, let us remember that Jericho represented a profane life, that is, an evil life, which can only be destroyed by means of the reception of spiritual truths from the Lord, and by a full instruction in those heavenly truths. But we are told that Ai signifies the knowledge of worldly things.

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     Ai is often mentioned together with Bethel. Bethel and Ai, when so spoken of together, mean the knowledge of heavenly things and the knowledge of worldly things. Hence it is said of Abraham that he encamped in a position "between Bethel and Al." (A. C. 1453, 1557.) And in the lesson before us it is said that Joshua camped in the valley between Bethel and Ai. (Ch. 8:9.) So also the preparation for the taking of Jericho signified the instruction in heavenly truths, but the preparation for the taking of Ai signified a similar instruction in worldly things. A state of the Lord Himself during His glorification was signified by Abraham's pitching between Bethel and Ai; and a state of the Church is signified by Israel under Joshua being in the same position, that is, between Bethel and Ai. It is clear, therefore, why Israel was first made victorious over Jericho, and then went up against Ai, namely that a man must have instruction in heavenly things before he can distinguish between the things of heaven and the things of the world. Before he has procured a knowledge of heavenly things, that is, more interior heavenly knowledge, he cannot, as the Writings express it, "disperse worldly things." The taking of Ai means the dispersal of worldly things with the man of the Church. What does this mean,-the dispersal of worldly things?

     To say that worldly things must be dispersed or broken up is a very general statement, the meaning of which is not very definite. We must know what those worldly things are which are meant by Ai. Perhaps we may strike nearer to the thing that is meant by Ai, if we use the phrase "worldly wisdom." This is what must be broken up err dispersed by those who are truly of Israel-the Church. Worldly wisdom is what men make use of to confirm themselves in evils of life. As Jericho, while yet in the hands of the inhabitants of Canaan, represents the life of the profanation of good, Ai signifies the worldly wisdom by which such a life of evil is confirmed, or which men use to justify evils. This city must also be taken and destroyed, as Jericho was; but it is a far more difficult task. It is a task that will never succeed, if it be approached with self-confidence. The scouts whom Joshua sent out beforehand had told him that two or three thousand of his army could easily take the city; but, acting upon that advice, he met bitter disappointment. The first attack of Joshua failed utterly.

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It was necessary, as the Lord then said to him, to destroy the accursed thing which was in the midst of Israel, before they could stand before their enemies. We must know what is meant by this "accursed thing" which Achan had taken to himself,-the Babylonian garment, the shekels of silver, and the wedge of gold.

     Let us have all the facts in the narrative before us. The "accursed thing" was to take anything for themselves from the spoils of the city of Jericho. But of the spoils of Ai it was expressly said that they were to take of them for themselves. The people might enrich themselves from the treasure of cattle which they found in Ai; but it was "accursed" for them to take anything for themselves from the booty of Jericho. Men must not claim for themselves any of the knowledges of heavenly things, but they may claim for themselves the knowledge of worldly things. In fact, the knowledge of worldly things is absolutely necessary to the growth and development of the Church; but that knowledge of worldly things, or that worldly wisdom, which destroys heavenly life must be broken up. So the city of Ai, while still in the possession of the inhabitants of Canaan, is worldly wisdom destructive of heavenly life; but the spoils of that city, when it is overthrown, signify that knowledge of worldly things which is necessary to the life of the Church. Spiritual men must have knowledge of the world, but they must disperse merely worldly wisdom in themselves.

     The accursed thing, or the sin committed by Achan, represents spiritual theft. And spiritual theft is the departure in practice from the heavenly knowledges imparted to us in childhood, and from the interior teachings of the Word after we have grown up, while at the same time we profess to believe them. For thus it is that innocence is destroyed. The knowledge of heavenly things, and the innocent, childlike delight in obeying the heavenly principles which all men are taught, are spiritual riches and possessions. Their abode is in the natural mind. But if, in later life, a man allows these heavenly principles to be infringed, and at length forgets or denies them through the delight of selfishness, then he is stealing what belongs to the Lord.

     For the Lord gives all of us in childhood a sure and active delight in heavenly knowledge and heavenly principles. We love to learn of heavenly things, and we also experience some of the delight of doing them. Take, for example, the delights of generosity. Never was there a normal youth who was not generous.

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Take also the delight of service and labor for the attainment of some high ideal. Never was there a normal youth who had not something of this loyalty to a noble idea. But if the opposite delight of self-gratification,-the delight of acquiring for one's self and of excelling others,-are given a foothold, then they enter into the abode of our natural mind like a thief breaking into a house, while, at the same time, for the sake of reputation or safety from punishment, heavenly ideals are still professed, and the appearance of an unselfish life is maintained.

     This, as well as we can express it, is an illustration of what is meant by the sin of Achan in taking of the accursed thing. This is the profanation that is represented by the inhabitants of Jericho. For thus innocence, which is the child-like belief in heavenly knowledge, is stolen away from the natural mind which it was intended by the Lord to furnish and enrich. Thus the garment of Babylon, the silver, and the wedge of gold, are spiritual riches which men profess to believe in, but which they really steal from the Lord, and use to advance themselves in the world, and as the means to the gratification of delights which are evil. And this is the thing that must first be utterly condemned in the minds of those who are of the true Israel, before that stronghold of the enemy of spiritual life, which is signified by the city of Ai, can be taken.

     The Lord told Joshua to root out this spiritual theft from the midst of Israel; otherwise Ai could not be taken. The innocence of childhood must be restored, and maintained throughout life. "Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of God." Without that childlike belief in the things which the Lord has revealed,-the same kind of eager teachableness which We had when first instructed in heavenly things as children-cannot stand against the enemies of our spiritual life, especially not against the reasonings of worldly wisdom.

     For worldly wisdom is that misuse of the knowledge of worldly things which prompts us to be shrewd, and cunning, and covetous, while at the same time we speak well of heavenly things, and endeavor to appear as upright in all respects. Thus we see that it is a very interior evil, or rather a very subtle false principle, that is meant by Ai.

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And that kind of worldly knowledge cannot be dispersed in us, if we allow ourselves to enjoy delights that infringe upon the plain doctrine of the Church.

     The men of Ai are those who form all their opinions, and all their principles of life, from their knowledge of the world, from their sciences, from appearances of truth. To them, the knowledge of heavenly things is unscientific, the future life is speculation only, right and wrong are only what appears to be beneficial or harmful to the physical health and well-being. To them, the only kind of restraints they must put upon themselves are legal restraints and the fear of the loss of their reputation. Their minds are dosed toward the knowledges of heaven which they may have only from Divine Revelation. Such minds and men are appointed to spiritual destruction. The seeds of heavenly doctrine with them are "choked, and become unfruitful," because of "the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches."

     But just as Joshua withdrew from before Ai, and made as if Israel were fleeing in defeat, so must it always appear to those who are in worldly wisdom that the life of those who restrain themselves for spiritual reasons, or because Divine Revelation so teaches, is a losing fight. To them it is impractical idealism; it runs counter to human inclinations and the ways of the world. A life in child-like obedience to the things we learn in childhood from the Word, and to the things we may learn from the spiritual sense of the Word later, seems to rob a man of some of his chances for worldly success and pleasure. This is why Joshua made as if he were defeated, and so drew the men of Ai out of their stronghold and surrounded them by those that lay in wait. But the spear in Joshua's hand was kept stretched out toward Ai, and then the men who lay in ambush arose and surrounded the men of Ai. The spear of Joshua, like the rod of Moses, is the Divine Truth of Revelation from the Word, and his keeping it pointed towards Ai represents that this Truth is forever directed against that kind of worldly wisdom and science which leaves entirely out of account the laws of spiritual life.

     Remembering that Joshua represents the Lord, it may be seen that the Lord leads men out of worldly wisdom by a kind of Divine stratagem or "lying in wait." He allows men the freedom to fight against heavenly ideals and principles. He allows them to act from worldly and selfish principles.

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Yet all the while He surrounds them with spiritual truths from the Word, which are the Children of Israel lying in wait, until men begin to see the hopelessness of the knowledge of the world alone, and the real power of heavenly knowledges applied to life.

     So the general lesson contained in the account of the combat waged by Joshua for the destruction of Ai is this: That the taking of the accursed thing is to make use of heavenly knowledge as an outward profession, but to live a life that contradicts and belies it, and that this makes it impossible for men to disperse or remove the principle of worldly wisdom, which fights against the Church as the king of Ai fought against Israel.

     But the Lord gives men power over worldly wisdom, expedience, and opportunism, if they put not confidence in themselves, but return to a childlike belief in the all-importance of following the knowledge that comes down from heaven, the all-importance of letting no delight in anything lead them away from keeping the Lord's Commandments, in letter and in spirit. Amen.

     Lessons: Joshua vii. Joshua viii:1-29. A. C. 1557.
REVEALED ESTIMATE OF PHILOSOPHY 1928

REVEALED ESTIMATE OF PHILOSOPHY       Rev. E. E. IUNGERICH       1928

     No man is born today with an innate perception that will unerringly sift the true from the false. Its attainment is gradual, and comes only after plodding loyally in the trails illumined by Revelation. But many challenge leadership in this heavenly direction. They have either never seen this radiance, or else their belated espial of the trail is outweighed by an urge to make after a mirage that had dazzled an earlier fancy.

     The New Church of a century ago was hampered by conditions of divided allegiance among a number of Evangelical clergymen who entered its fold without leaving at the threshold their several teraphim. Today, however, such infusions of the deleterious are no longer on the plane of pure theology. We may say that the arena of the resulting contest between heavenly authorized verities and dogmas from alien sources has now shifted to lower ranges.

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Stated in the language of the Apocalypse, it is today not so directly with the "woman," but with the "remnant of her seed," that the enemy contends.

     One type of attack fastens upon that attitude of mind which, regarding the world as under God's care, then concludes that the introduction or some current theory into our system is likely to be a germane liaison with another forward movement in the van of progress. A still subtler attack comes when it would restrict the message of Revelation to pure theology. The man who holds to this is possibly unaware that he is driving a wedge between this supreme plane and subordinate truths, or that he is favoring the slogan, "Divide and rule." He perhaps thinks he is merely championing the free scope of human reason over these lower planes, and resisting the encroachment of theological authority there. Applied specifically to the Writings of the New Church, such an attitude means that their teachings on philosophy and science need not be considered as less humanly fallible than Swedenborg's earlier teachings, before he was chosen to be a revelator, and must accordingly enter the lists with current profane systems to vindicate any value they may have. If this plea is just, then any one of us may with perfect propriety link on as a substrate to our theology any theory with worldly vogue that seems to recommend itself.

     But I may as well ask whether what the Writings say on these subordinate subjects does not come with greater emphasis than such a plea presumes. Are such statements merely incidental, and not a significant part of their structural unity, or do they come with the sanction of angelic enlightenment, and perhaps as a direct admonition from the Lord? The inquiry should lead to interesting results. In the present case I shall restrict it to what is said in regard to philosophy and philosophers.

     Swedenborg, in the earlier period, when he penned his philosophical works, had an admirable spirit that qualified him in a high degree for research fed by the Lord, as he avers, during these thirty-five years, he constantly stressed the dependence of lower truths upon the truths of theology. In this he therefore differs notably from our moderns who segregate their fields of study from light from above.

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Writing in 1766 he says in regard to this earlier period of his life that the Lord had given him a love of truth for its own sake, and that one who so loves truths "sees them from the Lord, . . . who is the Way and the Truth," whereas whoso loves them "for the sake of honor or gain . . . . Sees them from self, . . . which is equivalent to seeing falsities." (Doc. 232.)

     His attitude toward current views was non-partisan, and affirmative to a presumed content of truth. With regard to Wolff, he learned subsequently that what he had admired in this author's writings had not been meant by him. He disagreed with two of the three fundamental laws of Newton; in fact, characterized one of them as "infantile" (A. K. 2881), but made no formal refutation, allowing his vindication of the truth to stand forth uncontroversially in the system of his Principia. He laid bare the weakness of the metaphysical juggling by which Leibnitz justified the theory of Pre-established Harmony; but elsewhere admits that under proper qualifications it may be true, that is, when restricted to the domain of the pure soul, or if taken to mean that a harmony existing in the soul is thus antecedent or "preestablished" to subsequent harmonies arising when lower planes of life are brought into agreement with the soul. (Rat. Psych. 167.) His elaborate digests of the views of the thinkers of all times, recorded in Ontology, Psychologica, the Philosopher's Note-Book, and elsewhere, evince a calm, fair, and judicial spirit. The following citation is quite characteristic: "Since my intention is to draw conclusions from the connection of things, and from rational considerations supported by experience, I wish merely to make passing mention of opposing doctrines, but not to pave the way for the opinion that follows by any invalidation of other opinions. The very connection and the naked truth is sufficient, for it will defend its own cause. Each (of the others) I will let stand by his own opinion, but let him see for himself whether that opinion be consistent, and in agreement with the laws of nature." (Generation 236.)

     His philosophy differs signally from all others since the time of the Ancient Church as to its upper and lower contacts. For these others in their upper limit face a frankly admitted or thinly disguised blank; whereas on the lower side they depart from common sense and practical experience. Swedenborg, however, as to One side, was convinced that a search for the soul cannot be made without a study of anatomy, nor the mind discovered apart from an analysis of the brain; whereas, as to the upper limit, he held that such secrets would be disclosed to none but God-fearing men.

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In others words, the truth in regard to any subject comes out only by viewing its relations to the Creator and to creation. In fact, the attainment of wisdom in a natural matter depends on: (1) A knowledge of the facts of experience; (1) a perception of the causal relationship of this plane to higher ones, which he calls geometry; and (3) a guiding light from the Lord that gives the faculty of reasoning truly. (Principia, Chap. 1.) Even in regard to the understanding of the Word, this trine of science, philosophy, and religion is required, the three means postulated being called in the Writings (1) a knowledge of the doctrines, (2) a knowledge of the correspondences between discrete planes, and (3) illustration from the Lord. (De Verbo.)

     II.

     But to sharpen the distinction between Swedenborg's philosophy and others, let us take as subjects the spiritual world and the three uncreate degrees in God.

     His mode of approach is non-metaphysical. For instance, he employs no such method as would start with stressing the spacelessness and timelessness of these subjects, and so leave no predicates adequate to either, the mind remaining aghast before a formless blank. To him the spiritual world is a real state of vital, mental experience that is transacted in intimate organic touch with human society and the created universe. So God is not impalpable force, but the Divine Man; and thought of Him is but obscured by the refinements of human phraseology unless His relation to the Gorand Man of humanity and to the cosmos be kept in mind. "To know these matters," he wrote in regard to degrees of altitude, "and not to see them by application to existing things, is only to know abstractions which remain no longer than while analyses from metaphysical things are in the thought, . . . for the mere knowledge of abstractions is like something aerial which flies away; but if abstract matters are applied to such, things as are in the world, they are as that which is beheld on earth by the eyes, and which remains in the memory." (D. L. W. 189; T. C. R. 52; A. C. 4574.)

     To Swedenborg, philosophy was an intermediate that would exhibit the facts of experience as arranged in series under Divine Law, and so bear witness to the truths of religion.

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"Philosophy," he wrote, "if it be truly rational, can never be contrary to revelation, . . . for reason was given to man that he might be able to perceive that there is a God, and know that He is to be worshiped. . . . he very mysteries which are above reason cannot be contrary to reason, even though they cannot be disclosed as to their quality by reason." (Infinite, Introduction.) Again: "These pages of mine are written with a view to those only who never believe anything but what they can receive with the intellect; consequently who boldly invalidate and are fain to deny the existence of all supereminent things sublimer than themselves. . . . For these persons only I am anxious. . . . For them I indite, and to them I dedicate this work. For when I shall have demonstrated truths themselves by the analytical method, I hope that these debasing shadows or material clouds which darken the sacred temple of the mind will be dispersed: and that thus at last, under the favor of God, . . . an access will be opened to faith." (A. K. 22.) Later, in his theological period, he reaffirms the prospect of doing this by means of that "second foundation of truth . . . which is from nature, and for those who are natural and in natural lumen. . . . For these can no more be convinced from the Word, . . . because sciences have shut their understanding. Therefore sciences will also open it, and it is being opened so far as they are in good. . . . But nothing can be founded upon scientifics unless previously founded upon the Word, for this must be first. The other (foundation) is only a confirmation from man's scientifics." (S. D. 5709-5710.) And this matter is finally confirmed by the Word: "'The ears shall hear the Word behind him,' for the sciences which are the Word from the back in the regenerate man, and which then instruct, because the life of faith, or faith, is in them, and applies them; for then they are servile or services." (Index Bib. at Isaiah 30:21.)

     In the Writings, where Swedenborg speaks as Revelator, fully two-thirds of the references to philosophy are devoted exclusively to showing the harm done by human philosophy since the time of the Ancient Church, and to unfolding the low state in the spiritual world of many philosophers and metaphysicians. The same theme appears also in the other references where mention is made of the uses of a true philosophy.

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In this latter third the burden is either an obvious inference to Swedenborg's earlier philosophical labors as constituting a true philosophy, or else to show how, under an overruling Providence, some good has come out of other philosophies, in spite of the havoc they wrought. A brief digest of this favorable testimony may be rendered as follows:

     1. Philosophy is true when it concords with the Word, as an external with its internal. It is then what it should be, and may serve to exhibit the agreement between the things of earth and those of heaven, both of which issued concordantly from the Creator. (I Adv. 912, 914.)

     2. It is then of service to form intellectual faith, to which the human mind will recur for protection whenever doubts assail matters of belief. (I Adv. 914.) Thus it serves to form the understanding with the truly intelligent (H. H. 353), or to perfect the rational (A. C. 4658, S. D. 4578), by confirmations which give a fuller idea of the things taught by the doctrine of faith. (A. C. 2568, 1072.) In this way the ideas of those who believe what the Lord says are illustrated and strengthened, for it is by means of things rational and scientific that a man has light. (A. C. 2588, S. D. Minor 4659)

     3. The series of truths, from Divine ones down to physical ones, are God's Word. But there are other truths, called philosophical, which frame rules, laws, and a phraseology, by which the former truths are explored; as when inquiry is made into the qualities, quantities, accidents, modes, ratios, etc. (I Adv. 937.) Swedenborg defends his own usage of expressions such as "subject, predicate, form, quality " as a means of securing conciseness of diction, and to avoid cumbersome circumlocutions. (S. D. 1603.) For a given term may involve many truths when these have been seen in one's self or from experience in the world. (S. D. 2263.)

     4. Human philosophy indeed possesses many discovered truths, as that an active force makes one with an instrumental force, or that it is a fallacy for the latter to suppose itself to be the force itself. (S. D. 649, 3095.) It knows also that things exterior and composite cannot enter into interiors and simples, but that penetration is in the reverse order. (A. C. 2588.) It should also be able to see that to call a thing universal, and then remove it from jurisdiction among singulars, as in the case of the Divine Providence, annihilates it as much as to say that a whole could exist without its parts.

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"This is philosophically true." (A. C. 1919.)

     5. The normal operation of the mind is philosophical, and is what enables men to receive instruction. (S. D. 226.) A little child can speak more philosophically in a few minutes than Aristotle could describe in volumes (A. C. 4658), and is much more learned in himself than are those men who are called learned from a philosophy which is poor and of no account. (S. D. 226.)

     6. Like the Apocalyptic "leaves of the tree for the healing of the nations," a philosophical way of presenting essential truths is able to reach certain types of mind and carry conviction, even though it do not lead to a repentance of the life. In this manner, even those "who have pierced" the Lord may be brought to see the truth, and, in spite of feeling no interest or delight in the truth itself, may yet be stirred to help its cause with zeal when they see they can thus impress others. (S. D. 3095, 5709-10, 649.)

     7. Swedenborg had been led by the Lord to be a philosopher prior to his becoming a Revelator. For he who had taught natural truths rationally was subsequently to teach spiritual truths in a way to bring about the fullest rational reception of them. Only when spiritual truths are based on rationally understood natural truths can there be a real intelligence. An inkling of this verity seems to exist even in Christian seminaries of theology where students are taught metaphysics prior to dogmatic theology. But as their theology is a tissue of falses laid upon them under the canon that the understanding is to be held under obedience to a blind faith, and as their training in metaphysics is to enable them to make a clever parade of learning, under which they may seem to men to have confirmed these falses logically, it is plain that no real intelligence exists with such, either in theology or philosophy. (Dec. 232; Influx 20-21; T. C. R. 388, 17; A. E. 1103.)

     8. In conversation with spirits, Swedenborg urges that philosophers should apply their reasonings to matters of a practical definiteness, instead of quarreling about terms with regard to subjects of profitless speculation. And here he refers with approval to his researches, as (S. D. 3459) to the presence of animal spirits within the fibers, and (A. C. 6326) to the operations of the mind in the purer substances of the brain.

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I might note here his reference to the Worship and Love of God as being in accord with Revelation (cf. Hist. of Crea.); and his asseveration of having been constantly sustained by the Lord when inspired to undertake the perilous task of exploring things celestial and spiritual by means of studies in the natural sciences. (2 Adv. 1281-2.) In his work, De Sensu Communi, he records a supernatural admonition to use his philosophical Principia, as thus he would be enabled to fly withersoever he would." The benefit to human thought, of thus embodying the Heavenly Doctrine in his prior philosophy, consists in the infilling of the generals of doctrine with particulars and then with singulars, to the greater enrichment of the mind. We are, in fact, told that sciences are not to be rejected; and the reason given is, that by them "spiritual things can be confirmed, . . . and the angels thus come to the knowledge of indefinite and most arcane things therein." (S. D. 3460.)

     III.

     Turning now to the other side of the subject, I am led to adduce the following citations as a typical preface to his findings with regard to the effects of philosophical thinking from the time of the Ancient Church to the present day:

     "Heavenly spirits are much surprised that mortals live in so great blindness, and from their philosophy and erudition alone, as they call it, which leads them into dense ignorance, so that they know not that there are four faculties in man, and know not how to discriminate the human soul from the rational mind, yea, neither from the soul of brutes. And perchance they will come into such blindness, solely from the philosophy of their minds, as scarcely to distinguish it from the soul of the vilest insects, and finally not even from the soul of inanimate things, and of plants, since they see similar productions thence.* Thus one must grieve that today, when men suppose they are living in so great a light as to intellectual matters, they are yet in a shade so dense that nothing can be denser. For as soon as, from it, they consult any philosophy, they fall into nature worship and are turned backwards; and the order itself is so perverted that there is no faith, and the condition is well-nigh irremediable, unless all their philosophy is previously shaken out of their minds." (2 Adv. 1076.)

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"Philosophy itself, or human erudition, judges and concludes about spiritual things from natural ones, and because, since the fall, the natural man is such as to be contrary to the spiritual man, and continually assails him. Hence a philosophy which is from this man, and is drawn from his rational mind, is such as to destroy the things which are drawn from the Divine Word. Therefore, it is not philosophy viewed in itself which is to blame, but the very human mind from which philosophy is drawn, whose state is such since the fall." (Adv. 911.)
     * Swedenborg's strictures on philosophy are wide-sweeping, and not confined, as some have supposed, to a condemnation of the reasonings of medieval scholasticism.

     I may here note that, since the Writings are the Lord in His Second Coming, such an arraignment by them of the philosophy that has arisen since the Ancient Church (2 Adv. 1283) is no more than an ampler expression of the denunciations of human philosophy which He gave at His First Advent. He spoke then of how the Word had been "made of none effect by human traditions," urged His disciples to "beware the leaven of the Pharisees," declared that He had blinded the eyes of those who thought they were wise, and promised that those who would take no thought how to answer their persecutors would be given a direct inspiration when the hour came.

     Those of the Ancient Church who on earth had been delighted with ideas, and had indulged in thoughts "but without philosophy," had, on entering the spiritual world, constituted a society of wisdom which was delighted whenever men on earth in subsequent times thought sanely and wisely, appearing to them as a woman who would stroke their cheeks. This manifestation had occurred to Aristotle and others. (A. C. 4658; S. D. 3949 seq., 4446, 4744.) It was doubtless the reason for the veneration in which Pallas Athene was held by the Athenians. The scientifics of the ancients treated of the correspondences between the spiritual and natural worlds, and led men eruditely to the knowledge of the spiritual and celestial things which constituted their wisdom. The fables about Pegasus, the Pierian Spring, and the Muses were all symbolical of such. (A. C. 4966, C. L. 182.) So, in Egypt, the written characters, called hieroglyphics, were formed for the purpose of permitting interior things to be viewed by their means. (I Adv. 875.) The most ancients in this world had acknowledged no other wisdom than that of life, and this had also been the wisdom of those called the Sophi.

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Subsequently, in the Ancient Church, those arose who acknowledged wisdom of reason as wisdom, and were called Philosophers. "But today even those who only know are called wise." (C. L. 130.)

     Reflecting upon this course of events which has culminated in the philosophy of the present day, Swedenborg was led to make the comment that these early men were better off than moderns, "who have philosophical things, such as the Aristotelian, which rather turn the mind away" from knowing such heavenly things. (A. C. 4966.) Hence it was evident to him how far the human race has departed from the erudition of the ancients (ibid), and that wisdom has fallen from its peak to its valley. (C. L. 130.) Some spirits of the Socratic School, after a discussion with a priest, a politician, and a philosopher of Swedenborg's day, who had explained how little esteem the learned world had for the wisdom revealed through him, concluded that the interiors of human minds had been successively closing, until, in the world of that day, a faith in the false shone as truth, and a fatuous ingenuity appeared as wisdom. They declared that the light of wisdom had lowered itself from the interiors of the brain "into the mouth below the nose, where it appears before the eyes as a splendor of the lip, while the speech of the mouth thence appeared as wisdom." (C. L. 182.) In other words, acclaim is now given to mere oratory, without reference to the sense of what is uttered. Even the internal sense of the Old Testament has this subject as the burden of one of its prophecies. For the little horn on the dragon's head, in which was a "mouth speaking great things" (Dan. 7:8), "is philosophy destroying all more interior things; for a new philosophy has entirely eradicated all the science of the three previous ages, so that they have understood nothing of these, as is quite evident, since they stick in letters only, and cannot or will not understand interior things, and still less the more interior ones." (Schmid. Marg.)

     The Writings indicate the following philosophers as being sane and in heaven; Socrates and the Socratic School, Diogenes and his scholars, Plate, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Des Cartes, Newton, and Leibnitz. Newton, however, had to undergo some vastations before his sanity could be vindicated.

     But the disciples of Aristotle, since they reason and think from the terms he propounded, "are many of them among fools." (A. C. 4658.)

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Wolff appeared enveloped in a dusty, suffocative smoke, because he had placed wisdom, not in the truths of faith, which he had not believed, but in subsidiary studies and in terminology. (S. D. 4744, 4727; E. U. 38.) Numbers of logicians and metaphysicians who had immersed their thoughts in such trivialities now live a lamentable and obscure life with no perception. (S. D. 3947.) The inhabitants of the pit of the abyss, mentioned in the ninth chapter of the Apocalypse, whence issued the locusts it describes, had all been learned in the world. Among them Swedenborg recognized metaphysicians and scholastics who had been esteemed above others. (A. R. 421.) It may be noted that Aristotle agreed with Swedenborg's characterization of modern philosophy, remarking that it is "futile and useless as dust, and is altogether to be rejected." (S. D. 3950.) He is referring to the habitual reasoning from terms to ideas, and the practice of thinking from an artificial, syllogistic system.

     Leibnitz, who had interior judgment (T. C. R. 335), seems to be meant in A. C. 6326 by the "one among the more celebrated and sane philosophers, recently deceased," (though he died fifty years before them), who concurred with Swedenborg in the view that philosophy should be applied to a scrutiny of mental activities within the purer substances of the brain, and "not attend to naked expressions of words, and wrangles over them, and so sweat in the dust."

     IV.

     For convenience of apprehension I may arrange Swedenborg's full arraignment of philosophy since the time of the Ancient Church in the following itemized digest:

     1. It is the fruit of the tendency of the human mind since the fall to judge of higher spiritual things from a low, natural ground. (Adv. 911.)

     2. The endeavor of human philosophy to enter into things spiritual and celestial is contrary to order, since it is the latter which should enter into the former, as was the case with Swedenborg. The result is disastrous, being attended with severe penalties. (Adv. 1282.)

     3. It makes men nature-worshipers, and favorers of things corporeal and natural. (2 Adv. 1283.)

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     4. It causes a doubt about spiritual and celestial things, and finally a denial of them. (Ibid. S. D. 591.)

     5. To attempt to explore the mysteries of faith by scientifics is to attempt the impossible. (A. C. 233.)

     6. It confounds truth with good, and occasions a loss of common sense. (A. C. 1385, 5556.)

     7. Conditions today are worse than with the antediluvians when voluntary good was destroyed, for there is now a philosophy unknown to the ancients by which intellectual light is utterly darkened, and the darkness can hardly be dispelled. Thus intellectual good begins to perish. Men are blinded much more than they were then, and are not only deaf serpents but the most pernicious flying ones. (A. C. 2124, 196; S. D. 767.)

     8. It affects the memory, causing it to appear as a dark callosity when viewed in spiritual light. (A. C. 2492.)

     9. It is an inversion of order, the following of a negative principle, and leads to all folly and insanity. (A. C. 2568, 2588, 4658)

     10. It destroys faith. (S. D. 341.)

     11. It abstracts all things to which human ideas affix themselves, and involves the matter under consideration, which may be simple in itself, in such terms and occult qualities that everything is obscured. The Jovians call those who do this insane and offal. (S. D. 591.)

     12. It causes men not to want to distinguish themselves from beasts. (Ibid.)

     13. It is worthless, declares Swedenborg in a heading. This is confirmed by a spirit, who said he now perceived such studies to be worthless, since they are phantasies which take away all light, and which had prevented him from knowing spiritual things. (S. D. 609.)

     14. Each part of human philosophy has hitherto done nothing else than to darken minds, thereby closing the way to the intuition of interior things and of universals. (S. D. 767.)

     15. For it consists of terms only, and of wrangles over these. (Ibid.)

     16. A philosopher who has indulged much therein is, in the other life, stupid and more unlearned than others. (Ibid; S. D. Minor 4579)

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     Some fifty more references might be cited to the same purport. I shall restrict myself, however, to one more citation, which is especially interesting, in that it states the length of time the human race has been a prey to such an influence.

     "Philosophical things so finite the human mind, that (men) at length can see nothing. Philosophical things, even from the first centuries, have now for several thousand years consisted solely of terms and the syllogism. And because it is only terms that men gape for, as to what is the form, the accidents, the modes, and the like, nothing else can result than that the mind is terminated in mere ideas without life, because without any light. For they do not apply them to rational matters; and the things they do apply are mere terms, and if they wrangle from them, they are then as one who learns the words of a language, not for the sense to be expressed, but only for speech. Thus they stir up and contract the universals of the mind into what has nothing of life in it, namely, into what is merely material; and they form thence a callosity so dark some that no light can pass through it. Syllogistic philosophy likewise so finites the ideas of the mind that there is almost no loophole for light. Therefore, those who are wise in this way are much blinder, yea, much more stupid, in spiritual and celestial things, than a very insignificant person in a mob, or among tillers of the soil." (S. D. 866.)

     The picture of such an incubus preying for a score or so of centuries upon the human mind,-the most precious thing on earth, will arouse concern among those who desire to inaugurate, with the Writings as their guide, a wholesome, heavenly way of living and thinking upon earth. In previous ages, the great mass of the people, thanks to their ignorance, were protected from this canker. Until fifty years ago, woman, the mother of the race, was similarly protected. But now all are bent upon higher education, streaming to secular universities where such a philosophy as Swedenborg arraigns is the keynote of the instruction given, and where Swedenborg, prince of philosophers, does not even appear as a name in their textbooks.

     It is not forbidden us to hope, however, that in time an enlightened sentiment will be aroused among Newchurchmen to make headway against this current by promoting the cause of higher education in New Church theology, philosophy, and science, from which any infusion of alien theories in the world is discouraged.

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A time is coming when more parents will see through the spurious eclat and prestige of modern universities, and decide to stand by their own enterprise in this direction.

     It is no longer possible to protect the things of faith by insisting that they are to be believed simply without any intuition from the rational. Only by forming adequate rational and natural ideas about them can there be a protection against those who reason from the negative about everything. (A. C. 3394, T. C. R. 15.)

     There can be no more harm in studying the history of philosophy than that of the perversions of Christian doctrine, provided the estimate given by the Writings is the guiding light. In fact, many minds need to visualize certain ratiocinations by the names of the characters of those who spun them; and this also causes a private delectation (S. D. 3950), due to the feeling that one is acquiring the basis of a reputation for erudition.

     The pith of New Church philosophical studies will be social philosophy, cosmology, the economy of the brain and body, and the growth and regeneration of the mind in the cortical glands of the brain. Such studies will furnish a fertile soil in which the spiritual truths of the Heavenly Doctrine can draw enriching particulars and singulars. Thus a bounteous harvest will be proffered to mere on earth, and the angels of heaven (S. D, 3460) will thus be enabled to enter into the indefinitely many things therein.

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FRAGMENTS FROM THE EGYPTIANS 1928

FRAGMENTS FROM THE EGYPTIANS       GERTRUDE NELSON       1928

     Significance of Death in Egyptian Life.

     The Great Pyramid: masterpiece of colossal geometry, its shaft set to the North Star; how fittingly it symbolizes Egypt, the land of science! Nor is it merely the angular form of lifeless knowledge. The passageway which strikes deeply beneath the surface leading to the chamber of the dead leads also to the heart of human life in Egypt. Preoccupation with the hereafter shaped the very lives of the common people, and little else is known of them today. Nor was the thought of death less central to the Pharaohs, who lived in palaces of sun-dried brick that they might be entombed in polished stone. Except for these dwellings of the dead, the land of monumental grandeur would be searched in vain for any relic of the human everyday point of view in ancient Egypt. But the tomb walls are eloquent of their self-life, petty pride, and aspirations; and between the lines of hieroglyphics one recognizes the little frailties of human nature, and those persistent traits of character which, after so many centuries, are still almost humorously familiar.

     In the Light of Revelation.

     To a sanguine New Churchman who finds himself for the first time with the Concordance in one hand and a volume of Egyptian mythology in the other, there comes an optimistic impulse to make arbitrary interpretations. The Writings repeatedly declare that Egypt derived her ritual, hieroglyphics, and magical knowledge from the Ancient Church. It would, therefore, seem relatively simple to trace the spiritual meaning beneath the words of those who, more than all other nations, cultivated the science of correspondences. Such a study, already begun, will doubtless lead New Church scholars of the future down into Egypt, there to borrow the silver and the gold of true correspondence. But an amateur is apt to be deceived by the base metal of priestcraft.

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His outstanding difficulties are three: Firstly, the vastness and intricacy of the maze of incongruous beliefs which the Egyptians attempted to reconcile. Secondly, the fact that magic set in at a very early period, and from thenceforward we cannot expect to find true correspondence; for the teaching is, that with the development of magic, truth from the Ancient Church was perverted into its opposite. This would necessitate a negative study of the bulk of Egyptian beliefs. The third difficulty is, that the New Church has only begun to redevelop the knowledge of correspondence. Nevertheless, the subject is so exceptionally fascinating as to tempt pioneer thought, especially along the lines of Egyptian myths regarding life after death, although no such New Church interpretation is ventured in the following paragraphs.

     The Egyptian Resurrection.

     Ancient knowledge of a discrete spiritual body, and of its need for contact with the limbus, took a phantastic form in Egypt. Man was thought to have a khat, or body, a ka, or spirit, and a khu, soul. The khat and ka were born simultaneously, and continued their separate existences throughout life, related by a kind of pre-established harmony. They were by no means inseparable. A man's ka, or double, could leave him during sleep, or was free to live in a flower, tree or fruit, if it became bored with the limitations of its own body. In the Bata legend, a young man's ka was hid in the highest blossom of a magnolia tree, which grew on the enchanted isle. When his faithless sweetheart discovered the secret, and destroyed the flowering tree, her lover's body, in a distant land, sank down lifeless. Not only human beings, but all things of creation had a ka or double; nor was it limited to organic life; for clothing, cosmetics, food and even words had kas. Thus a man's ka dressed in the ka of his garments and ate the ka of his bread.

     Death brought no essential change, for the body continued to be a resting place for the ka, and was thought to retain consciousness thereby. Part of the burial ceremony was the verbal instruction of the corpse in its new duties, and even today the simple folk of Egypt are heard talking down into the graves of their dead. Naturally, every effort was made to preserve the body for eternity, since it still indirectly lived.

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But experience with the inexorable laws of disintegration prompted the further precaution of burying a perfect reproduction of the body as an emergency habitation for the ka. Some of these life-portraits in stone, now excavated, are among the world's most remarkable sculpture for sheer technique and realism. The ka of a man might inhabit any image of himself, for which reason certain Pharaohs placed their statues where they might eternally command a view of passing events which had interested them in their lifetime. The lie might even enter a man's pictured likeness, or be imprisoned in his name.

     Burial customs changed with the developing of the ka conception. At first a man's body was interred with implements, weapons, jars of grain, and the never-forgotten cosmetics, the kas of which would supply the earthly needs of his spirit. There is evidence that some even had their slaves killed and buried with them for future service. Mortuary equipment thus became more and more elaborate as time wore on, including games, literature, and every conceivable need or luxury. These articles were not for use at some distant resurrection, but were in constant demand by the dead, requiring to be replaced from time to time.

     It was the development of magic which gradually simplified the tomb furnishing. The belief in the power of mere symbols rendered genuine objects unnecessary. For instance, instead of storing the mastaba chambers with grain it was considered equally effective to inscribe pictures of wheat in the tomb, from which the grain ka might feed the spirit. In fact, if a man should merely speak the names of any articles of diet, tangible food would gratify the dead man's appetite. For this reason it was customary to inscribe the outside of one's tomb with a plea to the passerby that he utter the names of coveted necessities for the benefit of the ka within, such as: "Thousands of clothing, thousands of geese, thousands of beef, thousands of bread, and thousands of beer." Such requests are preceded by long and very naive lists of the sterling qualities and noble deeds of the inmate; and, as a final argument for the generosity of the living, it is pointed out that such verbal donations will cost the stranger nothing.

     Magical simplification affected the provision of slaves for the dead. Instead of burying real men with him, it came to be enough that statues of slaves be placed in the tomb.

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These curious little stone figures are excavated by the thousands. "Ushebti," they were called; for their duty was to harken. A conspicuous absence of ambition, on the part of the masters, for the performance of use in the after life, is indicated by the inscriptions carved on these slaves: "O thou Ushebti, if thy Master is assigned to do any work that is done in the other world . . . 'Lo, here am I,' thou shalt say." Only the rich could afford the ritual and upkeep necessary to promote the welfare of the deceased, but faith in the magic power of images led some of the very poor to hide pathetically rude figures of their dead in the tombs of great nobles, forlornly hoping thus to rescue those they loved from annihilation.

     Besides his ka, man had a khu, which was a vague concept correlated with the soul by scholars, but more like the New Church idea of the rational mind. Whereas the ka was the double of the body, the khu was double to the intellect, will, or intention, and was significantly depicted as a bird whose name means "the bright one."

     This series must not be confused with another triad which developed in Egypt. It included both the soul and spirit in the ba, the mummy being the sahu and the kahybet, the shadow. The latter was considered a very real part of a man, subject to injury, and able to inflict damage by being cast upon another's person. Of a special interest to New Churchmen is their belief in the power of the ran, or name. It was a part of man's living being, and his spirit was so conjoined with it that any man knowing one's name exercised magical power over him, even after his death. Evil spirits could be cast out if their names were known. Thus it was that the baptism of a child was a most secret ceremony, and no outsider was ever told the true name; "a little" or nickname being provided for common use.

     Out of the baffling intricacies of Egyptian cults modern research has disentangled the three main concepts of life after death: Existence in the tomb, in the kingdom of Osiris, or in the sun-bark of Re. Each is essentially distinct and becomes incongruous when combined with the others. But the Egyptian minds were the last ever to be bothered by the most absurd contradictions, and the priests interwove irreconcilable doctrines with a tenacious conservatism which rivals the Chinese.

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Both the Osirian and the Re cult assume the ka and khu existence of the spirit and its physical need of a natural body, ministered to by the living. But instead of a perpetual and at best gloomy existence in the tomb and vicinity, the Osirian votaries transported the kas of the blessed to the paradise of Osiris, and the Re worshipers to the cosmic boat of the sun-god.

     The Osirian Kingdom of the Dead.

     Of all the Egyptian gods, Osiris had the most permanent appeal, especially to the popular mind. He was the god of vegetation, and, by analogy, of resurrection, thus representing the Divine Human. (See C. T. Odhner's Correspondences of Egypt, pp. 108-121.) To dwell with Osiris in the blessed fields of Yaru was the hope that inspired the pilgrim dead to undertake that frightful journey thither, the terrors of which must have filled his dying hours with gloom and apprehension.

     The soul, leaving his tomb, turned his face westward to the mountain cliffs over which lay the mystic land of the hereafter. The direction of the setting sun was always that of the dead. They were buried on the western bank of the Nile, and in common parlance "to die" or "to go west " were synonymous. Arriving at the rocky border of Egypt, the soul climbed over into a region wherein grew an enormous sycamore tree, beautiful of foliage, and weighted down by clusters of fruit. As from a window, the tree goddess leaned out from its massive trunk, proffering to the newly dead a tray of magic cakes and fruit and a pot of clear fresh water. To eat and drink this supernatural offering rendered one a servant of the gods; to refuse it was fatal, for such an ingrate was sent back to his tomb, there to remain in eternal darkness.

     Many were the perils which next beset the wayfarer in the bleak and water less desert which he now must traverse. Boiling streams gushed past him; serpents, venomous reptiles, and poisonous insects harassed him; and evil spirits tried, by every fierce and magical device, to make him die a second death and cease to be. Some of his enemies had to be overcome by charms; others, as a gigantic tortoise, he needs must day with a lance. Most dreaded of all was Set, the god of evil, and the deadly enemy of Osiris.

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He assumed the horrid form of a, huge red monster with the head of a camel, a hound-like body, and a long forked tail bristling with poison; and he attacked the pilgrim with intent to eat him. This being subdued, the soul could reach the fateful river, ancestor of the Grecian Styx. Here he had great need of the magical formulae which his kinsmen had buried with him on papyrus rolls, or carved upon his coffin. In the complex these mystic utterances form the so-called Book of the Dead, though they were never collected nor compiled during the time of their use in Egypt.

     Examples will show the type of dangers which were dissipated by these spells. One prevented a man from being forced to work, another kept his heart or hati from being taken away from him, or drove away evil snakes. Another formula enabled him to assume any shape he desired; still another saved him from a second death, and so forth. The spirit, standing on the bank of the river, repeated the words which summoned the reluctant ferry boat to take him across, if his magical knowledge proved adequate. This barge was a dark and sinister conveyance, and its ferryman was named Turnface; for his back was eternally turned to the dead who called for him. There was a crew of silent and hostile-seeming divinities who offered no helping hand to the man on the shore. As the boat approached, its parts called to the spirit, each in turn, saying, "Tell me my hidden name!" If the soul's mummy has been properly equipped, his papyrus will prompt him in his mystic replies to each, many of which seem to have no possible connection with the question; bewildering senselessness being thought to enhance the potency of such abracadabraism.

     At last the boat was satisfied; and its dour ferryman, after claiming that the equipment was incomplete, could at last be prevailed upon to accept the passenger. But, this river crossed, our hero's troubles were just beginning. He was now confronted by a building of enormous size, and of a black and threatening appearance. It was the Great Hall of Justice, in which Osiris judged the dead. Only by the god's permission was the bolt drawn from the gate and the soul allowed to approach the monstrous edifice, behind whose silent walls Osiris listened while the pilgrim shouted his salutation:

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"Hail unto thee, great god, thou who art lord of truth!
Lo, I draw nigh to thee now, O my lord, and mine eyes behold thy beauty.
Thee I know, and I know also the two and forty gods assembled with thee in the Hall of Justice.
They observe all the deeds of the wicked;
They devour those who seek to do evil;
They drink the blood of those who are condemned before thee, O just and good king.
Hail, lord of justice! Thee I know;
I come before thee even now to speak what is true;
I will not utter what is false, O Lord of all!"

     Then followed a negative confessional which was a vital part of the ritual:

"I have done no evil against any man;
I have never caused kinsfolk to be put to death;
I have never oppressed a servant with too much work;
I have never been devoid of good works, nor have I acted weakly or with meanness;
I have not stinted the food offered to the gods;
I have not despoiled the dead;
I have not deprived Children of milk;" and so on.

     Many of these sins are those of the Ten Commandments, as these:

"I am not a murderer;
I have never committed adultery;
I have not caused false witnesses to speak in the
Hall of Justice."

     He also denied the various forms of stealing, as lessening corn measure, stealing cattle from meadows, or birds consecrated to gods, fish from holy lakes, or taking away temple offerings. The confession ended by claim of sinlessness quaintly followed by the hope that no untoward fate would overtake him in the hall of judgment. It should not be supposed for a moment that it was necessary that the soul be really innocent of all the evils thus enumerated by him. Not at all. Such was the power of magic that the mere vocal proclamation of purity made one pure.

     As his last words died away in the oppressive stillness, Anubis, the jackal god, "opener of the ways, came to the soul and led him into the hall, where, in the half darkness, beneath a roof of alternating flames and white feathers, sat Osiris upon his throne.

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A crown was on his head, a crook in one hand, and a flail in the other. Before him was the fateful balance on which the heart of the man must be weighed against Maat, goddess of truth, or her emblem,-a feather. Beside the scales crouched a fearsome, monster hippopotamus, partly crocodile and part lion; and around the walls sat forty-two animal gods whose happy duty it would be to tear the man to pieces, should he prove guilty.

     Facing this tribunal, the plaintiff must again raise his voice in the awful silence, repeating his confession, and addressing a different animal for the denial of each sin. Next, his heart was taken by Anubis and placed upon the balance,-a nervous strain which most have tried the most resolute faith in magic. But if the dead had been properly buried, over his heart lay a saving scarab beetle, on whose stone breast was carved the very significant words, "O heart that was mine, do not say, 'Behold the things that he hath done!'" By this aid, the blackest sinner was able to pass through the ordeal successfully, and enter paradise. Any man who was not able to afford such patent sin-destroyers was under the necessity of being good. Unfortunate was he whose sin-burdened heart weighed down the white feather! Be could hope for no mercy from the ferocious animal deities, and never would he roam the joyous fields of Yaru among the grain which grew twelve feet in height beside the heavenly Nile.

     The Cosmic Hereafter.

     Another series of beliefs concerning the fate of man after death developed among the worshippers of the sun god Re (or Ra). (See Odhner Correspondences of Egypt, pp. 78-83) This god was thought to travel across the sky by day in his flaming solar ship. Saintly beings (and, of course, all the Pharaohs) were immediately merged after death with Re himself. The less fortunate dead were able to sail in the boat with him for a longer or shorter part of the day, according to their merit. At evening, having passed through a cycle and become an old man, Re steered his bark down to the western gate of the land of death, or Duat, and all through the night he passed along the underground Nile which finally led him to the East at daybreak.

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     This kingdom of night was a superlatively dismal place, and even the sun-ship was not exempt from the dangerous attacks of evil forces. In fact, the implication is that the god could never pass the powers of darkness, were it not for' the faithful ministrations of his priests on earth, who chanted the seventy-five invocations which overcame the series of obstacles falling regularly in the twelve astronomical hour-divisions of the night.

     As the boat entered Duat, its passengers were Re, Watchman, Steersman, Striker, and unnumbered deities and souls. It would seem that those whose life had not entitled them to a round trip, as it were, were forced to spend a sunless day underground, entering the solar-boat only at night when it passed through and brightened their particular hour-division. The length of their journey was measured by merit or magical knowledge, their only other privilege being that of eating, free of payment.

     The perils of night were many and varied. There was a wall which must be passed through, also flame-spitting serpents, water reptiles, ferocious fishes, and gruesome monsters which made the voyage hideous. In the fifth hour-division, Sokar, in his winged-serpent form with three human heads, attacked the ship. A lurid drowning pool must be passed, in which swam tortured genii with their heads on fire. The terror was increased by vague and mysterious forms which hovered in the offing. But when, at last, the eleventh hour was reached, all the evil spirits were burned in a mighty conflagration whose flames became the sunrise foretelling the triumphant rebirth of Re.

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NEW CATECHISM 1928

NEW CATECHISM       Rev. F. E. WAELCHLI       1928

     FIRST ELEMENTS OF THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. An introductory Catechism for the New Church. Adapted to the Needs of the Schools, Homes and Missions of the General Church of the New Jerusalem. Bryn Athyn, Pa.: The Academy Book Room, 1927. Cloth, 18mo; pp. 84. Price, 50 cents.

     In 1917, the General Church published A Catechism on the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, by the late Rev. C. Th. Odhner. In its preface the author says: "This catechism has not been written for children, but for boys and girls between fourteen and sixteen years of age. It was found easier to write out an extended study than to compose a simpler work for younger children, but it is to be hoped that some one may be able to draw up a smaller catechism." The hope herein expressed is fulfilled in the eighty-page book before us, compiled, as appears from the signature to the preface, by the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner. The work fills a long-felt want throughout the General Church. Mr. Odhner is to be congratulated upon the excellence of his work; and the publishers are to be complimented upon the attractive appearance of the booklet.

     The Catechism opens with an Introduction intended for those who are to be instructed, telling what the New Church is and what is its purpose. This is followed by the Preface. Then come the seven chapters of the work, entitled respectively, The One God, The Word, The Life of Charity, True Faith, The Eternal Life, The Church, Sacraments and Institutions. Each chapter begins with an appropriate Scripture passage. At the end of the work there are twelve pages of Teaching Notes, and Suggestions about the Use of Catechism.

     The seven chapters consist altogether of seventy doctrinal points, each of which is numbered. The points are presented in question and answer form, which has been usual in catechisms for centuries.

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The Rev. C. T. Odhner, in his catechism, avoided this form, although favoring it, "because of the pressure of new-fangled pedagogical notions," as he once said to the writer of this review. We are pleased to see the return to it in the present work. Authority for religious instruction in this manner is to be found in the many questions and answers of the Letter of the Word; also of the Writings, especially in the Memorable Relations. Following the answer to the question are confirming Bible passages,-those of the Word in boldface type, and those not of the Word in ordinary type. The book contains about two hundred and fifty such passages.

     After these passages, reading from the Word is often indicated; and notes in small type are also frequently added. As examples, we would adduce three of the numbers. (Let the division of the answers into paragraphs be noted.)

7. What is the Divine Trinity?

     The Divine Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not three persons or three gods,
     but are three essentials of the One God,
     just as the soul, the body and the operation of man are the three essentials which compose man who is made in the image of God.

     Before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord; and beside Me there is no Savior. Isa. 43:10, 11

     Teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Matt. 28: 19 (Compare Acts 8:16, etc.)
     I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Rev. 22:13
     And God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him. Gen. 1:27
Reading: Matthew 3:13-17.

45. How are the angels employed?

     The angels, from their love and charity, perform all manner of useful services to each other,
     instruct and guide spirits, and guard over men.

     He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. Psalm 91:11.
     Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? Hebr. 1:14
Note. The word "angel" means messenger.

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63. Why should infants be baptized?

     By Baptism an infant is publicly placed under the instruction and protection of the Church on earth and is introduced as to his spirit into the Christian Heaven, where angels are assigned to take care of him and keep him in a state for receiving faith in the Lord.

     When the infant grows up, the angels leave him, and he associates to himself such spirits as make one with his life and faith.

     Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. Mark 10:14, 15

     Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father who is in heaven. Matt. 18:10

     The Preface opens by saying: "The present little work is compiled as a guide book to assist parents, teachers, evangelists and missionaries in the instruction of neophytes and older children or in preparing young people for the rite of Confirmation." Parents are mentioned first, and, among them, those will be especially benefitted who live isolated or in circles without a resident pastor. Together with these parents we may mention, because similarly situated, the teachers in Sunday Schools of isolated circles. The greater the teaching gift of such parent or teacher, the greater the benefit to the pupils in the use of the book. But those who have this gift in but small measure-and of these there are not a few-will nevertheless be able to do excellent work. This is one of the highly commendable qualities of the book.

     Parents and teachers, such as have been mentioned, will desire to know to what age the instruction is adapted. The compiler says it is for "older children," but also that it can be preparatory to the catechism by the Rev. C. T. Odhner, which is designed for the age of fourteen to sixteen. We would venture to say-risking dissent on the part of some of our professional educators-that the book as written can be used for the instruction of children of twelve years of age (seventh grade), with the exception of a few places here and there that may be too advanced.

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Selected portions can also be used for younger children, with whom it may often be well to omit the question and answer, and to draw the doctrinal lesson directly from the Scripture passages. Children beyond the age of twelve, and these later as young people, can be taken through the catechism several times, the instruction being progressively more advanced. For the preparation of more advanced instruction the Teaching Notes will be found very useful.

     It is to be noted that the compiler, in the Suggestions about the Use of the Catechism, warns against too much stress being placed upon the need of learning answers or passages "by heart." But some stress must be placed upon it; and by the time the pupils have gone through the book several times, many of the answers, and especially of the passages, should be thoroughly known.

     The Pastors of our societies and the teachers of religion in our schools will, we are certain, welcome this catechism and make use of it in their work, some more, some less, each according to the methods of instruction which he favors and has developed. To all, the large collection of Scripture passages, and their arrangement, will be of exceedingly great value.

     Mr. Odhner mentions the instruction of neophytes, or new receivers, as one of the purposes of the work. It fills this need admirably. Often such a person asks for some book which may give him a good general idea of the doctrines of the church; and none better than this can be placed in his hands. Possibly the author had in mind also the neophytes in our South African missions, in whose instruction he has had considerable experience; for on the title page he says that the catechism is adapted to the needs of the schools, homes and missions of the General Church. The book is not of a "missionary" character, that is, is not intended for interesting people in the doctrines, yet it might at times well serve this use, and should have a place on the tables of our missionary book rooms.

     The preface gives, as another use, the preparation of young people for the rite of Confirmation. In the chapter on Sacraments and Institutions, it is said that confirmation is to take place at entrance into adult age. We conclude, therefore, that a course of instruction for young people up to that age, using this catechism, is intended.

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The value of such a course, including the committing to memory of a large number of the passages, is inestimable. The doctrines of the church would thus find their foundation on the rock of ultimate truth, to rest firmly thereon. However, it is not only young people who need this. Every member of the church, of whatever age, needs it. And so this book provides for everyone the means of reviewing from time to time the "first elements of the true Christian religion," and of seeing this religion, point by point, as drawn from and confirmed by the Letter of the Word. And the Teaching Notes will furnish the means for more particular study.

     The book is adapted, the title-page tells us, to the needs of the General Church of the New Jerusalem. Throughout, it is written in accordance with General Church principles. The Writings are recognized as the Word of the Lord's Second Advent. The errors of three divine persons and of faith alone are not concealed, but are pointed out, and likewise a number of other errors in the old theology. The chapter on The Church treats, amongst other things, of the consummation of the age and of the need of the Second Advent and the establishment of the New Church, the Crown of Churches for eternity. Teaching concerning betrothal and marriage is also given.

     As features of the work we may mention the inclusion of the opening portion of The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church, given at the beginning of The True Christian Religion, and of Swedenborg's Rules of Life. The well-formulated history of the successive Churches is also worthy of especial mention.

     The hope of the Rev. C. T. Odhner for a simpler catechism than his own, for younger children, is realized in this work. And now may we express the further hope for a catechism still simpler, for children of a yet younger age. There is need for this, especially among the isolated. The church requires many books, of various kinds, for the religious instruction of its children. Gradually they are being supplied. And as they are, in Providence, given, we can with increasing assurance look forward to an ever more interior acknowledgment by the generations following of the words with which the book before us closes: "With Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light shall we see light."
     F. E. WAELCHLI.

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SIMPLE AND THE NATURAL GOOD 1928

SIMPLE AND THE NATURAL GOOD       Editor       1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office a Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor                    Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager          Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address and business communications should be sent to the Business Manager.

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     A correspondent has asked us to say a few words to mark clearly the difference between the "simple" and the "natural good." We assume that the question refers to the meaning of these terms in the Writings. The subject is a large one, and a full treatment would require more than a "few words," but we shall endeavor to set forth the distinction in a brief statement, and follow this with passages from the Writing; by way of illustration and confirmation.

     By "the simple," the "simple in heart," and "the simple good," frequently mentioned in the Writings, are meant those among Christians and gentiles who, in adult age, have remained in states of childlike innocence and faith. For the most part, the term "simple" has reference to their state of intelligence, or their understanding of the truth of Divine Revelation. The simple good among Christians have a childlike faith in the Lord and the Word, and the simple good among gentiles believe in a God under the human form, in a life after death, and in the precepts of their religion, even though many of them are idolaters in practice. Thus the "simple," both within and without the Church, have only a general understanding of spiritual and Divine things, undeveloped by particular and interior truths, in contrast with those who are learned, intelligent and wise in spiritual things.

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     As to their state of life, the "simple" are characterized by innocence, mercifulness, charity and sincerity, and they live in obedience to the truths of their simple faith, on which account they are called "the simple good." This good with them is not interior spiritual good, but a natural good in which there is something of a spiritual quality from religion,-a spiritual-moral good, also called "saving good," because it is receptive of spiritual truth and good after death purely spiritual good is with the regenerate who are also intelligent and wise in spiritual things, and these also have natural good from spiritual; their works of charity and piety, and their civil and moral life, are inspired from within by spiritual charity and faith, which they have received from the Lord in an enlightened understanding of spiritual truth and a life according to it.

     This, in brief, presents the relation of the terms "simple" and "natural good" as used in the Writings.

     As to the term "natural good," it refers especially to that good which a man may have "by nature" or from birth,-a mild and charitable disposition which he may inherit from his parents; also to that good of the civil and moral life in which he is educated, or which he may acquire by his own efforts, and which may include the external good of piety and religion. Before regeneration, however, such good is "merely natural good." With the regenerating man, who receives spiritual good from the Lord, natural good is called "I the good of the natural," to distinguish it from that inherited and acquired natural good which all men, even the evil, may have outwardly. The regenerate are those who have been "born again, of water and the spirit." They have become " sons of God, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12, 13.)

     The following passages from the Writings have been selected from among many to illustrate and confirm the above brief and general statement. They also present definitions which we trust will bring the distinction of terms clearly to view.

Simple Faith.

     "The sense of the letter of the Word is accommodated to the grasp of simple men, in order that they may be introduced into interior truths." (A. C. 8705:2.)

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     "In very many places the Word speaks according to appearances with man, . . . but he who believes the Word in simplicity, or from a simple heart, thinks that it is true because the Lord has thus spoken; and if, from other sayings of the Word, he be instructed how it is to be understood, he then acquiesces, and rejoices in his heart. Yea, it does no harm if one believes from simplicity that the Lord is angry, punishes, repents, grieves, for thus he believes that the Lord sees each and every thing; and when he is in such a belief he is afterwards enlightened in the rest, in the other life, if not before." (A. C. 589.)

     Such is the faith of childhood; and those who do not advance beyond it in adult age are called "the simple." It is, however, the beginning and inner ground of faith with all-namely, a belief in what the Lord teaches in Divine Revelation. For we read:

     "Intellectual truth does not appear, that is, is not acknowledged, until fallacies and appearances have been dispersed, which cannot be done so long as man reasons concerning pure truths from things sensual and scientific; but it then first appears when man believes in simplicity of heart that a thing is true because the Lord has said so; then the shades of fallacies are dispersed, and there is then nothing with him that prevents his apprehending the truth."

     Further definitions of those who are in simple faith are given in the following:

     "The simple are those who think naturally and very little spiritually about the things of the church." (A. R. 878.)

     "For the most part, the angels in the ultimate heaven are simple, because they have not cultivated their understanding by interior truths, but only by exterior truths from the sense of the letter of the Word, according to which they have lived. Hence it is that their spiritual mind, which is the interior mind, has not indeed been closed, but neither has it been opened, as it is with those who have received interior truths in doctrine and life. From this it is that they have become simple as to spiritual things." (A. E. 624.)

     "The simple in heaven are those who have acknowledged the Divine, loved the Word, and lived the spiritual moral life, but have not so much cultivated the interiors of their minds by knowledges and sciences." (H. H. 356.)

     "In order that a man may become intelligent and wise, it behooves him to learn many things, not only those which are of heaven from the Word and the Church, but also those which are of the world from the sciences.

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So far as a man learns these, and applies them to life, he becomes intelligent and wise; for thus the interior sight of his understanding and the interior affection of his will are perfected. The simple of this sort are those with whom the interiors have been opened, but not so much cultivated by spiritual, moral, civil and natural truths. These perceive truths when they hear them, but they do not see them in themselves. But the wise of this class are they with whom the interiors have not only been opened, but also cultivated; these also see truths in themselves, and perceive them." (H. H. 351.)

     "All are received into heaven who have loved truth and good for the sake of truth and good. They, therefore, who have loved much are those who are called the wise; but they who have loved little are those who are called the simple. The wise in heaven are in much light, but the simple in heaven are in less light; everyone according to the degree of the love of good and truth." (H. H. 350.)

     From this we learn that those who are simple in the world remain simple after death, dependent upon wise leaders through whom they receive light from, the Lord.

     "He who has been in wisdom in the world is in wisdom in the other life, which wisdom is appropriated by him; and they who have not been in wisdom in the world, but yet in the good of life, are able to receive wisdom through the former, although it is not appropriated by them. When they recede from those by whom wisdom has been appropriated, they are simple, as before." (S. D. 5188.)

     This teaching is to be borne in mind when we read such passages as the following:

     "He who is in simple good, and simply believes in the Word according to its literal sense, is gifted with the faculty of perceiving truths when he is instructed in the other life by the angels." (A. C. 3436.)     
               
"They who, while living in the world, are in external truths, and at the same time in simple good, receive internal truths, and thence wisdom, in the other life; for from simple good they are in the state and faculty of receiving them." (A. C. 3820.)

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The Simple and the Learned.

     The Writings frequently contrast the superior state of the simple with that of the learned who have not become intelligent and wise, as where we read:

     "In the Christian world, the internal is dosed in the case of those who know the truths of faith from the Word but do not live them. For it is life according to truths from the Word that opens the internal man; otherwise the truths are in the memory of the external man only. But, wonderful to say, the internal is more frequently closed with the intelligent than with the simple. The reason is, that the intelligent, more than the simple, are in the cupidities of becoming eminent and making gain, and thence in the loves of self and the world; they are also in the faculty of confirming evils and falsities more than the simple." (A. C. 10492.)

     "The learned believe less than the simple, and in heavenly things they are less wise; for the simple can view a thing above terms and scientifics, thus above sensual things, but the learned cannot, for they view it from terms and scientifics, inasmuch as their mind is fixed on such things, and is thus bound as in jail or in prison." (A. C. 5089.)

     This state, so common with the learned, accounts for the fact that so few of them receive the Divine Truth revealed by the Lord at His Second Advent; for it was so at His First Advent, as we read:

     "It is a common and known thing that the learned have less belief in a life after death than the simple, and that in general they see Divine Truths less than the simple; the reason is, that they consult scientifics, from the negative, possessing these in greater abundance than others, and thereby they destroy in themselves the intuition from what is higher or interior; and when this is destroyed, they no longer see anything from the light of heaven, but from the light of the world; for scientifics are in the light of the world, and if not illuminated by the light of heaven, they induce darkness, howsoever it appears otherwise to themselves. Hence it was that the simple believed in the Lord, but not the Scribes and Pharisees, who were the learned in the Jewish nation. . . . And so the Lord said, 'I thank thee, O Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and intelligent, but hast revealed them unto babes' (Luke 10:21); 'babes' meaning the simple." (A. C. 4760)

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     Yet the men of the Church, who may be truly learned, truly intelligent and wise, because they enjoy interior light from Divine Revelation, are despised by the learned of the world, who "regard them as simple, vile, and of no account." (A. C. 1844) In heaven, indeed, the wisest of the angels appear like infants, because they are in the innocence of wisdom. "For the most part, they appear simple in external form, although they are wise and prudent in internals. It is these who are meant by the words of the Lord. 'Be ye prudent as serpents, but simple as doves. (H. H. 278, 280.)

     It is the function of the New Church to "make wise the simple,'' so that their first simple faith may be enlarged, enlightened and confirmed by knowledges from heaven and the world, and that their natural good may become spiritual.

Simple Good.

     The "simple" have a good end, good in the will, good at heart; and hence they are called "the simple in heart," the "heart" meaning the will, which is the real man. They are men of good intention toward the neighbor, and live in obedience to civil and Divine laws, however mistakenly they may Bt times carry this out, owing to their limited intelligence. Among both Christians and gentiles, the "simple" are characterized by innocence, mercifulness and charity, as also by sincerity.

     "They who will well and think rationally, and who thence do well and speak rationally, are meant by the 'simple in spirit' in the Word. They are called simple because they are not double." (T. C. R. 443)

     "The simple in heart believe what they say, and have not what is doubtful and negative in their ideas." (S. D. on Simplicity, 2663.)

     It is from simple good in the will that the simple have the general light of common perception or common sense in their understanding, according, to the Lord's words, " If thine eye be single (that is, good), thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness." (Matt. 6:22, 23. See T. C. R. 403) It is on this account that simple-minded Christians perceive the error in the doctrine of faith alone, as we read:

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     "They who are in simple good acknowledge that the Lord's Human is Divine, and also that works of charity ought to be done, in order that man may be saved. They who are in faith separate know this; wherefore they do not insist upon this faith before those who are in simple good, because they dare not oppose common sense . . .far the simple good would say that they are foolish." (A. C. 4754.)

     Because the will is the real man, and not the understanding apart from the will, all the simple good are saved, even though they be ill ignorance, or their minds are clouded by fallacies of appearance and falsities.

     "Very many of those who are in falsities are saved, as in the case of very many of the gentiles, who have lived in natural charity and in mercy, and also Christians who have believed from simplicity of heart. Their very ignorance and simplicity excuses them, because in these innocence can be present." (A. C. 845.)

     We are told, however, that simple good is "not genuine good, because genuine truths have not been implanted in it, although it is of such a character that genuine truths can be conjoined to it, and the Divine can be in it. This is wont to be the case with infant children, before they have received genuine truths; and also with the simple within the Church who know few truths of faith, but still live in charity; and also with upright gentiles, who are in the holy worship of their own gods. By means of such good it is possible for genuine truths and goods to be introduced." (A. C. 3986.)

     From this it is clear that simple good is natural good of a kind that longs for enlightenment and instruction, which is thus receptive of the spiritual truth of Revelation, and through this of genuine spiritual good from the Lord.

Natural Good.

     "They who are in natural good, not spiritual, are mild and upright from heredity; thus they do good from nature, not from religion. It is one thing to do good from nature, and quite another to do good from religion. They cannot be distinguished in the world by man, because he does not know the interiors of others, but in the other life they are manifestly discriminated, where the interior thoughts intentions and ends are made evident as in clear day." Further described. (A. C. 5032.)

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     "There are many who enjoy natural good from what is hereditary, from which they have delight in benefitting others, but they have not been imbued from the Word, or the doctrine of the church, or from religion, with principles as to the doing of good; wherefore they cannot be gifted with any conscience, for this does not come from natural or hereditary good, but from the doctrine of truth and good and a life according to it. . . . When such come into the other life, they wonder that they are not received into heaven." (A. C. 6208.)

     "It is to be known that they who do good from natural goodness alone, and not at the same time from religion, are not accepted after death, because there is only natural good in their charity, and not at the same time spiritual good; and it is the spiritual which conjoins the Lord to man, and not the natural without this. Natural goodness is of the flesh alone, born of the parents, but spiritual goodness is of the spirit born anew from the Lord." (T. C. R. 537.)

     "We must well distinguish between spiritual good and natural good. Spiritual good has its quality from the truths of faith, their abundance and connection, but natural good is inborn, and also comes forth by accidental things, such as misfortunes and diseases. Natural good saves no one, but spiritual good save all." (A. C. 7761.)

     "The good with those who are outside of the Church is called natural good, because it is from birth and heredity, and with some from sickness and imbecility. It is quite different from the good of the Church; for through the good of the Church a conscience is formed with man, which is the plane into which the angels inflow. But no such plane can be formed through natural good. They who are in this good do what is good in the dark from blind instinct, and not in the light of truth from influx out of heaven. . . . In the other life they are led away like chaff before the wind, by the good and the evil alike. . . . They who do good from natural disposition alone cannot be consociated with the angels." (A. C. 8002.)

     "The natural good which is connate with man is in itself nothing but an animal something; for it exists with animals also. But the natural good which is acquired, or which is gifted to man by the Lord, has in it what is spiritual, so that there is spiritual good in the natural good. This good is human natural good itself; whereas the other, which is connate, even though it appear as good, may be not good, and even evil. . . . Such natural good exists with nations of the worst life and faith." (A. C. 3408.)

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     Four kinds of natural good inherited by many Christians at this day, described in A. C. 3469.

Good of the Natural.

     "The good which man derives from his parents is very distinct from the good of the natural which inflows from the Lord. For the sake of distinction, the latter is called the Good of the Natural, and the former Natural Good." How the one may be serviceable in preparing for the other. (A. C. 3518.)

     "By the good of the natural is not meant the good into which man is born, or which he derives from his parents, but the good which is spiritual as to its origin. Into this good no one is born, but a man is led into it by the Lord through the knowledges of good and truth. Wherefore, until man is in this spiritual good, he is not a man of the church, howsoever it may appear from connate good that he is." (A. C. 4231.)

     "Good with man is from a twofold origin, from heredity or from the doctrine of faith and charity. The good and truth from the former is natural good not spiritual, but the good and truth from the latter is spiritual natural good. . . . The two goods have an affinity in external form, but are wholly different in internal form. The natural good from heredity is like that with mild animals, but the natural good which is from, doctrine is proper to the man who acts from reason, and who thence knows how to dispense good variously according to uses. The doctrine of what is just and equal teaches this dispensation, and, in a higher degree, the doctrine of faith and charity teaches it. . . . They who are not spiritual, or who are not regenerate, see good in its external form only, but in the light of heaven the two kinds of natural good are men most distinctly, and also by those who are spiritual or regenerate, because these are in the light of heaven." (A. C. 4988.)

     SUMMARY.

     In the light of the teachings adduced above we trust it will be possible to mark clearly the difference between the "simple" and the "natural good." To summarize:

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     Natural good with the simple has a saving element of humility and religious faith in it; natural good with the more enlightened regenerate man of the Church is essentially spiritual; natural good with those who are internally confirmed in evil and falsity is merely natural and hypocritical; they are "wolves in sheep's clothing."

     The New Churchman, well instructed in the spiritual truths of the Heavenly Doctrine, will discriminate as far as he is able. (See above, A. C. 4988; also C. L. 523; T. C. R. 449) Natural good with the simple he will find pleasing; for their good acts are characterized by a sphere of innocence, charity and sincerity, by simple faith in the Lord and the Word. Natural good with many of the more enlightened will not be so pleasing, having a sphere of the proprium and meritorious self-satisfaction about it; this will manifest itself when their goodness is not approved or praised. "Beware of the wrath of the good-natured man!"

     Finally, let the New Churchman beware that he is not deceived by his own natural good, from which may come the most subtle temptations, even as our Lord was tempted by the angels themselves. (A. C. 4295.) All genuine good is from the Lord alone.
NEW BOOKS 1928

NEW BOOKS       Editor       1928

     SWEDENBORG. A Brief Presentation of his Development from Scientist and Philosopher to Seer, and a Few Outlines of his Doctrines. By Gustaf Beckstrom.

     AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORD EXPLAINED. A Study of the Means by which Swedenborg the Scientist and Philosopher became the Theologian and Revelator. By Alfred Acton, M.A., D.Th. Reviews of these recently published works will appear in our next issue.

     We learn from THE NEW-CHURCH MESSENGER (January 11, 1928) that the first edition of Miss Helen Keller's book, My Religion, reviewed in our January number, has been exhausted, and that a second printing has been made. Translations are being made into French, German, Czechish, Danish and Swedish. An edition in Braille is also being prepared by the Perkins Institute for the Blind, Boston.

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NEW CHURCH AND PHYSICAL HEALING 1928

NEW CHURCH AND PHYSICAL HEALING       LESLIE MARSHALL       1928

To the Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     Your notes in NEW CHURCH LIFE for November, 1927, p. 679, under the heading, "The New Church and Physical Healing," which were largely by way of comment upon my statement in the booklet, "A Sign of the Times," that physical healing ". . . is among the fruits of the New Church," carry forward the consideration of an interesting question which has been discussed pro and con by the Church for nearly a century.

     As far back as 1832, an article appeared in the NEW JERUSALEM MAGAZINE, Vol. 5, P. 169, entitled, "The Healing of Diseases by Faith," and in the succeeding generation or so, nine articles of a similar kind were published in this, the official organ of Convention of that day. In our times, the church periodicals have carried an increasing number of articles, letters, and editorial comments on the subject. In fact, in October last, four of our publications, here and abroad, published some reference or other to "healing."

     Needless to say, this growing presentation in print merely reflects the public mind. We might perhaps say it is a matrix of a growing inquiry in the New-Church mind. Certainly, physical healing by purely spiritual means to-day claims world-wide attention. Even the Church of England, at its Lambeth Conference a few years ago, gave authority for the practice of divine healing, as it was there termed. In America, an Episcopal minister but recently founded a "healing guild," while you doubtlessly recall John Stratton Roach's announcement from his pulpit a few months ago that "healing" was a part of Baptist doctrine.

     Some of the smaller Protestant denominations have included physical healing work in their doctrines as a matter of course, and one does not need to be reminded of the numerous cults, some rather influential, which consider healing work to be practically the crown of their religious beliefs.

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I should not care to assert that all this alone gives either force or authority to the statement that physical healing is to be numbered among the fruits of New Church doctrine, but it surely points to a revival in a work which Gibbon tells us in his Rise and Fall . . . was carried forward by the early Christians as a heritage from the days of the Apostles.

     To proceed a little further from the historical standpoint, we find that the most ancient records in existence make no distinction between physician and priest. The sacred books of India and Egypt show the office as one, and we need scarcely be reminded of the duties in this connection of the Hebrew Levite. That these priestly doctors, or the people of the times, did not, however, always turn to the Lord for relief in time of physical difficulty, and suffered thereby, is strongly hinted at in the case of King Asa who " . . . in his disease (of the feet) resorted not to the Lord but to the physicians,"-and he died. As a matter of fact, the priest-physician in question dealt largely in noxious herbs, bleedings, incantations,-even mesmerism.

     But does not all this point to the same perversion of the office from the physician's standpoint, as in the case of the priestly?

     That is, the present order apparently is not the true one, and unless man makes a real effort, here and now, to approach the true order, making concessions perhaps, but not compromises, he is not leaving much of a heritage to the next generations which are to produce "a healthy race" from the "regenerating New Churchmen" you speak of. Or, to put it another way, some one must start the thing, and we may well begin now. "Now is the accepted time," and unless we begin to teach our children that " God is a present help in time of trouble,"-I read into this no distinction between the spiritual and the natural,-we need hardly expect their children to do so.

     New Churchmen, in considering the question before us from the negative standpoint, frequently emphasize that we are told "miracles are not performed at this day, . . . because they compel." With that I most heartily agree. But I most certainly do not agree that answer to prayer is miraculous, and I venture to say that Swedenborg does not anywhere so teach. Indeed, quite the contrary. There is a suggestive passage in this connection to be found in Tafel's Documents, vol. 1, p. 39. There the banker Robsahm records that Swedenborg, in response to his friend's recommendation of a "common remedy," spoke of his toothache as not caused by a diseased nerve, "but by the influx from hell from hypocrites, which he said he knew would soon stop and leave him."

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Wrote James to the twelve tribes, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you."

     That many New Churchmen, almost from the beginning, adhered to the homeopathic school of medicine points clearly enough to the fact that the grosser methods of other systems did not appeal; and they still do not. If one seeks for a reason, might it not be that homeopathy seems to be closer to the spiritual order? This being the case, let us follow another line of thought in that direction. In his famous Organon der rationellen, Heilkunde, Hahnemann dedares, in part, "A homeopathic dose can scarcely be made so small as to amend, and indeed perfectly heal." (P. 1157.) Attenuation carried to such a degree ceases to be dilution; the potion gives way to a higher order of things.

     What seems to me a very extraordinary article, entitled "Faith Healing," appears in THE NEW-CHURCH HERALD for October, 1927. Its author emphasizes that the human mind always desires u sign. As I see it, the individual who demands the sight of a pill or draught before he can be well, seeks after signs vastly more than does the man who is willing that the drug be attenuated to elimination, or, indeed, will have none of it in the first place.

     A well-known New Churchman and physician, Dr. Charles T. Cutting, of Los Angeles, declares: " . . . I believe that if we follow in His footsteps, as we are commanded to do, all diseases that we now know to be preventable will cease to exist. . . . In the Word, and in the application of Divine Truth, we have the cure for a vast amount of the physical and mental suffering seen all about us." (THE HELPER, April 5, 1922.) That is it, exactly: In the Word, and in its application.

     Healing through prayer is not the property or monopoly of any group or individual. In the Word, as Dr. Cutting further stated, are given ". . . the actual 'prescriptions' for good health, and the happiness and usefulness which inevitably follow." But no real New Churchman, being taken with an illness, will take down the Bible as though it were the pharmacopoeia, hunt up a "formula," automatically repeat it, and expect healing for the state of his spirit, as he may be expecting it for his body.

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We are to remember, "If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it." Again, says James, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss." Asking in the Lord's name begets the attitude of "Not my will but Thine be done."

     When we really try to humble ourselves; when we open the mind in recognition of His Divine care and mercy for us; when we go to Him in gratitude for innumerable gifts already received, surely we approach in some finite degree a realization of what that Divine Name is, and surely something enters into our lives, strengthening purifying, and bringing into order. And yet, this is not to say, and it should not be premeditated, that the answer to one's prayers will necessarily be manifested in an improved physical condition. "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him." But true prayer never leaves us where it finds us. Nevertheless, you do well to emphasize, in your comments, the discreteness-not forgetting the contiguity-between the spiritual body and the natural body, "in order to avoid the pitfall of confusing physical healing with the salvation of the soul." For, as you say elsewhere in your notes, "An evil man may be in good physical health, while a good man may suffer from disease."

     It is that very point which, in a general discussion of our subject, probably is brought up more frequently than any other. For the answer, the teaching is to the effect that the corporeal body as a part of the natural world is subject to the same general influx from the spiritual world. But the body is also subject to other influences outside those reaching it through the mind or spirit. Thus the natural body does not perfectly reveal the state of the spirit. A physical injury does not affect the spirit. Likewise, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

     But whereas a natural remedy, as such, has no effect on either the will or understanding, a spiritual corrective can affect the body. For example, take the disorderly state of fear. The individual afraid of most everything he eats, or the weather, or who is continually discussing disease and other morbid subjects, is not long out of trouble. Soon he will be able to declare with Job, "That which I feared has come upon me."

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But if the individual facing a physical difficulty resists such influx from the hells, opening his mind instead to the inflow from heaven, then, far from being possessed by fear and its evil consequences, he will not only gain a better idea of the Divine Providence, but will improve the state of his natural body as well. I know this to be true because I have experienced it. So have other students of the Heavenly Doctrines of my acquaintance, and I trust there are many New Church people, with whom I may not be acquainted, who can likewise testify.

     Physical disorder is to be recognized as among the temptations the flesh is heir to, and may we not say that it is to be resisted in the same way as we are to resist the temptation to do or think evil? Comes disease from a different source? But as I see it, the resistance must be above the plane of the will of self, and should be based on the realization, "It is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure." I also understand that, whereas evil may be permitted for the end-for we are led for our salvation through states "sometimes glad and sometimes sad" (A. C. 8560)-nevertheless, God doth not behold evil; it has no power in His sight, that is, His presence.

     It is worthy of notice that the healing works done by Paul, as recorded in The Acts, followed his conversion to Christianity. And yet when, as he declares in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, he besought the Lord thrice to remove "a thorn in the flesh," be received answer, "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

     Thus we see that the heavenly qualities are made more and more manifest in us as we humble ourselves to be worthy of His grace, and we perceive also that, whereas the healing of this physical body may be the gift to one, to another the answer to his prayer may be less comprehensible.

     In conclusion, may I say this: We may indeed be glad and grateful that it is the Lord who, in His infinite mercy, provides the curative means, but that there are degrees in this respect may be illustrated, I believe, in this way: Let us take two men, both worldly and unregenerative. The one relies on material means for his cure, and is healed. The other has been pointed to the Word for his help. He studies the Scriptures with sincerity, and changes his course in life. His disease, too, disappears.

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Which of these two men is in an improved spiritual state? Or, neither man having been physically helped, despite their respective course of action, which one is nevertheless nearer to regeneration?     
     LESLIE MARSHALL.
          1602 Pilgrim Street, Akron, Ohio, December 11, 1927

     EDITORIAL COMMENT.

     In the above communication, Mr. Marshall makes a more complete statement of his views than is given in his booklet, A Sign of the Times, briefly reviewed in our September, 1927, issue. He there states that he has found physical healing to be "among the fruits of the New Church." To this we objected, if it means the practice of physical healing as a function of the New Church, or anything more than an indirect or secondary benefit of regeneration, which in course of time will produce a healthy race. (November issue, p. 679.)

     We have read Mr. Marshall's new statement with interest, but we feel that he is pleading for something akin to the Christian Science view, and not sufficiently marking the distinction between the cure of the body and the regeneration of the spirit. In connection with what he says about prayer, we would recall the teaching of our Doctrine that the prayers of those who are in spiritual temptation are little heard, because they pray for release from suffering, not for power to resist evil. (A. C. 8179.) Diseases are listed among those natural temptations which "do nothing whatever to man's spiritual life." (A. C. 8164.) In keeping with this doctrine, our ministers offer this petition: "We Pray Thee, O Lord, to look down in mercy upon all who are afflicted in mind or body; give them patience in suffering, endurance in temptation, firmness of purpose and strength of will, that all their trials and distresses may be overruled in Thy Divine mercy for their eternal good." (Liturgy, p. 359)

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Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     PITTSBURGH, PA.

     Zero weather interfered somewhat with our New Year service, but there was no lack of a happy enjoyment of Christmas. The Children's Festival on Saturday afternoon was especially thrilling. The system of bringing in the tableaux in connection with the service itself has been worked out to a point of entire smoothness, and perhaps merits some special description at this time.

     We used to have the formal service upstairs in our church room, and then march downstairs for the scenes, the giving of gifts, and the lighter Songs. That was when we used the big stage, and had such gifted impresarios as Bobbie Caldwell, Herman Lechner, and such well-trained assistants as Edward Fuller and Julian Kendig, to mention only two. When these were no longer functioning, we ceased using the big stage, which occupied about half of the room, but retained the invaluable combination of appropriate text, invisible music (unaccompanied) and simple but perfectly lighted and posed tableaux.

     Our chief aim has been to produce the sphere of reverent worship, with as little as possible of what is "stagy," or which might detract from direct thought of the Lord and the angels. Later, we had to give up the big stage, since there was no longer room to store it, and then Mr. George Percy Brown, with others, developed a very compact small stage, perfect in its details, which we tried having at the side of our chancel upstairs the miniature representation of the Bethlehem Scene and the Heavenly Host being, as usual, on the other side. The text is read by a priest or priests, the children joining in the parts which they have memorized, adding some verses each year. When each tableau is shown-such as the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Shepherds Watching their Flocks, the Wise Men and the Star or the Flight into Egypt-the appropriate verses are first recited, then the lights go out, the curtain goes up silently, and the "Angel Song" begins. Perhaps the song has much to do with lifting the heart heavenwards. It is not always possible to have the children unaware of the personality of the one who takes the part of Mary or Elizabeth, but the men, having beards, are not known. The Star, which moves forward and glows increasingly, is very effective. Then we continue the service, with enough reading and singing to prepare quickly and silently for the next scene. There is no noise, no irreverence, no obvious stage management. The service is consecutive throughout, and it is as if the tableaux were quite incidental.

     After two trials, however, we have moved the whole service downstairs, and a temporary chancel is erected between the Scene on one side and the Representation on the other. The gifts for the children are neatly arranged at the side of the platform. We always begin with a procession, the children bearing offerings, followed by their elders. This was preceded this year by some carols sung outside, which the children had prepared themselves with the help of Miss Jennie Gaskill. As all the babies are brought to this service, it is limited to an hour. The informality of the giving of gifts to the children under High School age, as we call each name and the recipient comes or is carried forward, does not seem out of character on this occasion.

     The one in charge tries to have some new or original tableau each year. Once it was simply the Opened Word. This year we wove in from the Old Testament the scene of Moses being drawn out of the water. It was beautiful, and connected effectively with the previous scene of the Flight into Egypt.

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Of course, these things entail a good deal of work, but if some one is able to direct and secure competent co-operation, as Mr. Ed. Blair did this time, and as others have done before him, it is not too much, considering the use and the pleasure to the children.

     I might mention other holiday events. The dance on Thursday night was thoroughly enjoyed, as was the previous one at Thanksgiving time. The presence of visitors at such times lends especial interest. Few of our own young people returned this year, but Miss Bertha Farrington and Miss Elsa Synnestvedt, of Bryn Athyn, and Miss Doris Ridgway, of South Africa, were welcome holiday visitors. There has been a regular epidemic of social affairs of lesser size-teas, lunches, card parties, and even some skating and swimming.

     On Friday evening, we had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Chas. R. Pendleton, under the auspices of the Philosophy Club. He explained to us the pros and cons of a new theory of Evolution which is not in conflict with any teaching of the Writings, but which does follow the general principles of series and degrees, as set forth in Swedenborg's philosophy. As an alternative between the Fiat Theory of the religionists, and the Evolutionary Theory of the Agnostics, there has so far been nothing for the New Churchman but the Arboreal Theory of the Worship and Love of God-which some regard as being symbolic, like the later parts of that work. Of course, there is Le Conte's idea of tying on the human line to that of some higher animal by the simple device of supposing a human soul to be miraculously conceived in an animal matrix. This the speaker regarded as an untenable concession to the prevailing thought of those who do not recognize man as other than a higher animal. Dr Pendleton's address called forth a very lively discussion.

     Last month, we raised a goodly subscription toward the purchase of a large lot adjoining the new Frick Park, suitable for the new church edifice which we look forward to having some time. But the discovery of a city plan to cut off part of this lot by a new boulevard made us pause. A committee, composed of Mr. Arthur O. Lechner, Mr. William Blair, and Mr. Samuel Lindsay, Jr., is now engaged in further investigations.     
     H. S.

     CHICAGO, ILL.

     Our Christmas Festival was held on December 24th at 5:30 p. m., children and adults taking part in the worship, singing the familiar Christmas songs from the Hymnal, and the pastor's talk was addressed to the children. After the service, we adjourned to our basement room, where presents were distributed around the Christmas tree; and this was followed by a supper for all. Both on this occasion and at the service on Christmas morning strong sphere of worship and charity prevailed.

     Early in November, the ladies residing at the home of Mrs. John Headsten gave a reception for Mrs. W. B. Caldwell, who had been visiting in Glenview after the Jubilee of the Immanuel Church. We remember her affectionately as the sweet bride of our first pastor of Sharon Church. The reception was a large and happy one, as she has many warm friends in Chicago and Glenview. On the first Saturday in November, the Ladies' Society met at the home of Mrs. Jasmer. As we had just heard of the death of Bishop Emeritus W. F. Pendleton, we postponed our usual study and devoted the meeting to reminiscences. A few of us knew Bishop Pendleton during his early pastorate in Chicago, from 1877 to 1884, and we were able to speak affectionately of his unfailing courtesy, and of the depth of his love for the truths and uses of the Church.

     On November 12, Mr. and Mrs. Gladish went to Wilmington, Ill., to visit Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Cracraft (Grace Wright), and there Mr. Gladish officiated at the baptism of their infant daughter, Nancy Joyce. After the ceremony doctrinal class was held for the adults, and also classes for the older children.

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A lady relative of the family attended the baptism, and was much interested in the truths of the New Church presented, which were wholly new to her.

     Our Annual Bazaar was held on Thursday evening, December 8th. Supper was served in the basement room, and the sale of articles was held on the first floor. There was singing and a jolly good time. The proceeds of about $150.00 were added to the Ladies' building fund. Again, on December 29th, a very enjoyable social was held. There were charades, cards, and other forms of amusement.

     At a meeting of the Philosophy Club on the evening of January 8th, the pastor presented a summary of the Principia doctrine of creation.
     E. V. W.

     GLENVIEW, ILL.

     On Sunday afternoon, December 18th, a Festival of Music was given by our congregation, choir and orchestra, under the direction of Professor Jesse Stevens, and the varied program was very delightful to all. Words of the songs had been distributed, in order that the congregation might sing or follow them.

     A special feature of this occasion was the presentation of a handsomely bound set of the Writings to Mr. Seymour G. Nelson, as a token of our appreciation of his fifty years of faithful service in the church music. But while he has completed his fifty years at the organ, he continues in this use as faithful and reliable as ever. Mr. Nelson, in a few fitting remarks, expressed his deep appreciation of the gift, and of the spirit that prompted it.

     Christmas dawned cold and clear, but snowless. At the service, the children occupied the front pews of the church, and contributed in large part by their united singing and recitations. The choir assisted, and rendered special Christmas music. At the conclusion, the congregation retired to the Assembly Hall, which had been specially prepared, and here continued the service in another form. The stage had been beautifully altered, so that it appeared as the front of a chapel with Gothic windows through which we saw the solemn tableaux representing the scenes surrounding The Nativity,-The Annunciation, The Shepherds, and the Wise Men. Never in our history have these scenes been better done. A sphere of devout attention was on us all, making the picture more than ever real and living. Congregational and choir singing and orchestral music were interspersed, the pastor spoke further to the children, and the service closed with the offering of gifts by the children, and the presentation of gifts and fruit to them all.

     The New Year's Eve celebration was a royal good time, like the many we have had before. The early part of the evening was spent with cards, dancing and musical features. Shortly before midnight we assembled in the school rooms (thrown into one) where a collation was served. At midnight all arose, faced the east, and joined with the pastor in the Lord's Prayer. The exchange of New Year's greetings was then followed by speeches in a jovial vein, winding up with a serious address by Mr. Norman Reuter on the subject of "Our Growth."

     As Recording Secretary, we have just transmitted our yearly report to the headquarters of the General Church. It has been compiled from our accurate records, and the totals may be of interest to our many friends elsewhere. About twenty-five years ago, when we succeeded the shiftless Secretary then functioning, our records showed a membership of 34. We now report a total of 120, all active. Each year has shown a steady growth, with never a backward step.

     Personal news records the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Seymour G. Nelson for points south, and-this time including their Florida residence, Egypt and what not, as also the General Assembly in England next August. The Misses Adah and Emelia Nelson departed with them to spend the winter in St. Petersburg.

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     Mr. and Mrs. William H. Junge have gone to Phoenix, Arizona, for a few weeks to look up their children, Ben and Lenore McQueen and Winfred Junge. We regret to hear that old rheumatics has rendered our steady soldier, Ben, hors de combat, and it may be that the old folks will urge these pioneers, with the little grandchildren, to return to the protecting family wing in Glenview. The doctor, however, recommends the dry desert for Ben.

     Our new subdivision of ten acres abutting The Park on the north, and connecting therewith, comprises nineteen lots, which have all been taken up. Half of the lots have been built upon, and no more lots are to be had for love or money. The lots in the original Park subdivision, purchased at a price of $150.00 per lot, are now valued by real estate men at about ten times the price, and none to be had.
     J. B. S.

     BRYN ATHYN.

     Since our last report, the calendar has been so crowded with interesting events that we can give but an inadequate idea of them here.

     There was a special service in the Cathedral on Thanksgiving Day, November 24th, the Bishop preaching the sermon on the subject of Prayer. The impressive service gave spiritual significance to the home celebrations of the day.

     The Civic and Social Club gave a very successful dance on the evening of November 23d, and on the 25th the long-heralded Community Night provided a unique entertainment for the whole society, being instrumental in raising the sum of $500.00 for the benefit of the Elementary School. Much time and labor had been expended in preparation for this event, especially by those who dressed dolls and did various kinds of fancywork for the Fair, which proved by far the most remunerative part of the undertaking. Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal made a new departure in providing cafeteria supper of excellent quality and reasonable cost. The Bazaar opened at 8 o'clock in the Kindergarten Room, which had become a fairyland of decorated booths, adorned with innumerable colored balloons, while the counters were laden with flowers and growing plants, cakes and candies, toys and novelties, and dolls as many and varied as the army that followed the Pied Piper of Hamlin. On the second floor there were moving pictures and cards, and in the auditorium dancing. There had been a special entertainment for the children in the afternoon. Altogether it was a memorable occasion, eminently successful in its object of providing needed furniture for the School. The society gladly acknowledges a debt of gratitude to those who gave so much time and labor to the cause.

     And soon Christmas was upon us. The general program this year was simplified. On Friday, December 23d, a series of Tableaux was given in the auditorium under the direction of Miss Margaret Bostock, with the assistance of Miss Erna Sellner, who designed the costumes, and Mr. George Fuller, who had charge of the staging. The scenes were: The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, the Wise Men following the Star, and The Nativity. Between the Tableaux there was a short reading from the Word, songs by the children, and instrumental music by the Bryn Athyn Orchestra.

     On Saturday the 24th, there was a Children's Service in the Cathedral, the children entering in procession led by the choir in white vestments and carrying lighted candles. The service was conducted by the Bishop and the Assistant Pastor, the Rev. George de Charms, who delivered an address on the name "Jesus," explaining why it was given to the Lord when He was born. At the close of the service the children marched past a beautiful Representation, which had been prepared under the direction of Miss Constance Pendleton and placed in the north transept. As the children retired from the church, each received a gift of candy and fruit and a toy in the traditional stocking.

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In the evening, the cold, still air rang with children's caroling, and groups went from house to house proclaiming in song the glad message that the Lord had come.

     On Christmas Day there was a service in the Cathedral, and the Bishop delivered a notable sermon on Isaiah 7:1-16, in which he connected the prophecy of the Virgin Birth with the turning back of the shadow ten degrees on the sun dial of Ahaz. Special music by a quartet of wind instruments from the Philadelphia Orchestra was greatly enjoyed.

     A New Year's Dance in the auditorium on December 10th was a delightful occasion at which everyone, old and young, under the influence of the holiday spirit, succumbed to the music of an excellent dance orchestra.

     On the morning of New Year's Day, Sunday, the Sacrament of the Holy Supper was administered by the Bishop, who was assisted by four ministers. In the evening there was a special musical service, with beautiful selections by a string trio. The Rev. George de Charms preached a sermon appropriate to the day, showing that the beginning of the New Year represents entrance upon a new spiritual state, and that every advance to a new state is of the Lord's Mercy and Providence.

     The Academy Schools reopened after vacation, and the routine of school activities was resumed, on January 5th. A week later came Founders' Day, when the Faculty and Corporation of the Academy celebrated the anniversary by spending a pleasant social evening together in the auditorium. Dr. Alfred Acton gave a talk on the "Swedenborgiana" in the Academy Library, including the collection of editions of the Writings, of photolithographs, documents, and the contemporary books of Swedenborg's day. As usual, he made the subject vitally interesting, and painted an encouraging picture of the growth of the Academy, as traced in the development of the Library, which he regarded as perhaps the greatest center in the world for the study of everything connected with Swedenborg and the New Church. Following the address, refreshments were served, and the remainder of the evening was spent in animated conversation.
     G. DE C.

     KITCHENER, ONT.

     It is customary for the school children to present a short entertainment at Christmas time. This year an extra pleasure was given us when a procession of fourteen boys and girls marched upon the stage-it looked so well occupied-a noticeable contrast with the smaller school of preceding years. They sang appropriate Christmas songs, recited, and enacted a playlet, "The Snow Witch," adapted from a Russian legend. Five of the little ones made their debut at "speaking pieces," and it took sharp ears and an alert mind to follow the sense, as each one nervously raced to the end of his verse. But, as always, there was a special charm about these endeavors of little folks; and they were greatly delighted in feeling that they had contributed an important part to the whole. A pretty Christmas Bell Drill was the result of the work of Mrs. George Schnarr and Miss Carita Roschman in teaching dancing to the school. To see the increased number of pupils made every one happy and the entertainment more enjoyable; while Miss Heinrichs was congratulated by many for the success of her efforts in preparing the children.

     We have been glad to welcome back to the Carmel Church Mrs. Alfred Bellinger; who has now made her home in Waterloo. Three of her children are attending the school.

     On Christmas Eve the usual Children's service was held, and happy voices of old and young were lifted in the hymns and anthems so dear to Christmastide. There were two table Representations, one of the Inn with the Manger and Wise Men, another of the Shepherds and the Host of Angels. Near the close each child received a package of good things to eat, and some of the little ones were given small presents, and it was the minister's youngest son who disgraced himself by blowing his mouth organ before the end of the service.

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     On Sunday morning there was a special Christmas service, the Pastor preaching on the text, "Though the Lord be high, yet hath He respect unto the lowly" (Psalm 138:6), treating of the humility of Mary as being necessary for her part in His Advent, and showing that He comes only to the humble heart. There were extra hymns, and the 24th Psalm, which all enjoyed singing, while a special choir, prepared by Mr. Nathaniel Stroh, sang the 48th Psalm very beautifully.

     The following Sunday, New Year's Day, the Holy Supper was administered with a service that continued the thought and spirit of the Advent.

     Monday evening, January 2d, a social was held to celebrate the entrance of the New Year. Cards was the leading feature, and Mr. Archie Scott was kept busy putting up additional tables, showing great ingenuity in fitting fourteen of them into the space we usually fill with seven. But the people would keep on coming, and all were in a very festive spirit. After the cards, Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Stroh gave us a musical treat, flute and piano. Refreshments were served, and the evening dosed with a hearty singing of several of the old favorites from the Social Song Book.

     Arrangements had been made by the Men's Club to have Professor C. R. Pendleton address the Club on Tuesday evening. After the exceptional supper of tasty rabbit, the men felt well prepared for anything Prof. Pendleton might say. Nevertheless, with his paper on "Academy Adaptations to Science," he succeeded in waking us from our philosophic hibernation, so that we listened with intense interest to the problems he presented, of which the origin of man and evolution received extended treatment. Dr. Pendleton was induced to stay with us another day, and on Wednesday evening addressed all of the Society who could attend. He then spoke extemporaneously on the Philosophers of Swedenborg's time and before, and of their relation to Swedenborg's Philosophy, mentioning especially Kepler, Des Cartes, Leibnitz, Berkeley, and Spinoza. This was Dr. Pendleton's first visit to Kitchener, and proved very enjoyable to us, so that we look forward hopefully to future visits.
     L. W. T. D.

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THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928




     Announcements.




     THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the General Church of the New Jerusalem will be held in London, England, August 3d to August 12th, 1928.
GOING TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

GOING TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928

     The Thirteenth General Assembly will be a unique and important occasion. It will be unique in affording an opportunity to meet members of the Church from all parts of the world, and to become acquainted at first hand with the conditions under which the Church is struggling for a foothold in England. It will help, more than anything else could possibly do, to strengthen the bonds of unity in the General Church, and will bring about a degree of mutual understanding that should have a far-reaching effect upon the future development of our movement. It holds out, in addition, an incentive to obtain the cultural advantages of foreign travel, so far as personal means may permit.

     Nor is such a trip nearly as expensive today as it was in past years. Every effort is being made by the steamship companies to reduce the cost of passage, in order to attract a larger volume of American travel. Summarizing what has been printed in previous issues of the LIFE, We may say that, on a very fair estimate, the trip to the Assembly and back from New York City can be made, Second Class for $400.00, and Tourist Third Class for $250.00. By Tourist Third Class is not meant steerage. On many of the lines the present accommodations for this mode of travel are the same as the former Second Class, and the number of interesting people taking advantage of these low rates gives assurance of congenial associations. The figures quoted above include all necessary expenses and the ten-days' stay in London. Passage must be secured in the near future.

     For detailed information and all possible assistance, write to Miss Florence Roehner, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

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BENEDICTION 1928

BENEDICTION       Rev. E. E. IUNGERICH       1928


[Frontispiece: James W. Pryke, Northampton, England.]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII MARCH, 1928           No. 3
     "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." (Revelation 22:21.)

     The words of this blessing, with which the Apocalypse concludes, have come down to us in two forms, one of which we have just heard; and the other reads: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be unto all the saints. Amen." Of these two, the one we have quoted as our text has been regarded by Christian scholars as having the greater weight of authority. It is the one used in the English Authorized Version, and in nearly all translations of the Word into the modern tongues. To a New Churchman it also has a special appeal from the fact that Swedenborg used it in the Apocalypse Revealed: "Gratia Domini nostri Jesu Christi cum omnibus vobis, Amen."-"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." Virtually every New Church liturgy prescribes it as the blessing or benediction to be pronounced by the ministrant at the close of a service of worship.

     Appropriate as is the sentence commonly used at the beginning of worship,-"The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him,"-the blessing of our text surpasses it in frequency of use and in prestige among us. And justly so, inasmuch as its culminating position at the end of the Word to the Christian Church marks it as also looking forward to the Word of the New Church, which has come to fulfill Scripture prophecy, and to complete the great series of dispensational Revelations. It accordingly stands there as a reminder of our Lord's words: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

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Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth." (John 16:12, 13.) As the benediction pronounced before the ceremonial closing of the Word in our service, it fitly expresses the prayer that should then prevail, that the mind may rise above the letter into the spiritual sense, the disclosure of which is the "grace of our Lord" to men of this age.

     The word "grace" is often upon the lips of men, though few know that Divine Truth from the Lord is what is meant. It is generally taken to mean some virtue which the Lord acquired by the crucifixion, and which He miraculously transmits to such as have won His favor, in order that He may blot out their sins and raise them into heaven. It is held that those acquire this benefit who confess that He died for their sins; others contend that such must also lead the type of saintly life that is recommended by the tradition of the Church. Few, therefore, realize that "the grace of our Lord" is the loving communication of His Truth, given to heal troubled minds and lead them into the ways of righteousness, to be attained when evils are shunned and truths are lived. And yet this is the plain import of the following passages, which associate grace with truth, reference being made to the Lord's Coming in the flesh, and to His Second Advent as the Paraclete:

     "And the Word was made flesh, . . . and we beheld His glory, . . . full of grace and truth. . . And of His fulness have we all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. . . ." (John 1:14, 16, 17.) "All bare witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth." (Luke 4:2.) "Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." (John 16:13, 14.) "Grace be unto you, and peace, from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come." (Apoc. 1:4.) It was that they might be ready to receive this gracious boon of Divine Truth in the form of spiritual doctrine, and not some illusory panacea to blot out sins in the twinkling of an eye, that men were urged to '' watch and pray," lest they miss their Lord when He came.

     The other version of our text, with less weighty claim upon our approval, also lacks the close intimacy of the address of one who speaks in the second person to his flock.

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It reads: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be unto all the saints, Amen." You will notice that it has omitted the intimate pronouns "our" and "you" of our text, and is couched in the reserve and greater distance of the third person.

     Now, if we conclude, with Christian scholars, and from Swedenborg's usage, that our text is the true Scripture, then this variant which has grown up beside it might be explained as embodying a further interpretation of the text on the part of the Christian Fathers. For it explains who are meant by the "you all," upon whom the grace of our Lord is to be conferred. And with this interpretation we agree, for it implies that these are not everybody in the universe upon whom the Lord's mercy falls "as rain upon the just and the unjust" alike. As the Fathers understood it, this grace of our Lord reached a much more restricted group, that is, those whom they called the "chosen," the "elect," or, as this interpretive variant has it, "unto all the saints." They meant, in fact, the ecclesiastical body under the care of pastors whose ministrations would aid in procuring them this grace.

     The Writings endorse such a fundamental distinction as this between Divine mercy and grace. The former is associated with good, and is more catholic and wider in range; the latter has relation to truth, and to a closer contact with human striving, cooperation, and achievement. And it is the lower of these two gifts that is invoked in our text, and which the priest who conducts the service habitually asks to have conferred upon his flock. The reason for this will be the subject of more extended comment further on. At present we may note in passing that a similar thing occurs in what is said in the Arcana Celestia with regard to the insinuation of good and of truth, where it is stated that good, the more important, may be insinuated by anyone in the country, but not so truth, the lesser in importance, except by those who are teaching ministers. (A. C. 6822.)

     In regard to mercy, we are taught that it pertains to the celestial, who do not acknowledge anything else, and scarcely know, if at all, what grace is. Being in humiliation from the heart, and acknowledging that the human race is mere dress, and of itself infernal, they bow down in self-abjection before the Lord, and implore His mercy. (A. C. 598, 981, 3118.)

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So when the words of the Psalm, "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile" (32:2), are evolved before those in a heaven lower than theirs, it is found to evoke the thought that "the just are blessed" (P. P.), whereas, when evolved from the Hebrew letters alone, so as to affect the third or celestial heaven, the sense thence elicited is "that the Lord is merciful even to those who do evil." (S. S. 90.) For the celestial recognize, as to their proprium, they have no excellence superior to the proprium of evildoers. In their feeling of unworthiness they dare not ask for any favors other than those which the Lord grants to all the wicked when He withholds them from plunging into deeper evils. And this, their prayer, like the publican's, "God be merciful to me a sinner," is said to be preferred above all others.

     On the other hand, grace pertains to the spiritual, who scarcely acknowledge anything else, and to whom mercy is little more than a name. In prayers, what humiliation they have is from the thought, and but little from the heart; and if they then implore mercy, it is done in a state of temptation, or else with the mouth alone, and not from the heart. For though they may have read that the human race is mere dress and infernal, this is not a matter of acknowledgment with them, inasmuch as they remain in the proprium, and love it, and have no distinct perception of what is the Lord's as different from their own. Their pride makes it difficult for them in worship to do more than slightly bend the head, and they see little value in reciting a general confession of sin, not feeling that they have any proneness to other sins than the few that have come under their observation, and which they are trying to shun.

     For those who are more in the affection of truth than in the affection of good cannot humble themselves to such a point that they acknowledge from the heart that all things are of mercy. And in the degree that anyone loves himself, and tacitly supposes that he can do good from himself, and so can merit salvation, he is less able to implore the Lord's mercy. Instead he asks for grace. And if this be not difficult for him to do, chiefly because the petition for grace has become a customary prayer, there are then only a few things of the Lord, and many things of self, in the grace for which he asks. (A. 6. 981, 2423.) "Each person," significantly adds the Arcana, "can examine this in himself, when he mentions the Lord's grace." (A. C. 981.)

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And since pride, love of the proprium, and the thought of self are so present with the spiritual, it is plain that their prayers are not very different from that of the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not like other men.

     In the sacred languages, the word "grace" has the connotation of seeking favor and patronage, and of rendering thanks for benefits received. The meaning of the name John, writer of the Apocalypse, and therefore of our text, is "the grace of Jehovah." Mercy, however, has the connotation of an appeal for the compassion and pity upon those who are in great wretchedness. The word for mercy in the Greek is the basis of our word eleemosynary or alms. It may be noted at this point that the celestial, who alone are able to make the more heartfelt prayer of the publican for mercy, have no consciousness of having done anything more excellent than what others have done. For with the celestial is being fulfilled that greatness which consists in wishing to be least and the servants of all.

     We may now take up the matter which we have hitherto deferred. Noting the lower estimate that is given to grace and its associates,-the affection of truth, and the prayer from the thought,-as compared with mercy,-the affection of good, and prayer from the heart,-we naturally ask why it is the lower of the two in spiritual value that must be surrounded with the greater safeguards. For it is said that truth is only to be insinuated by teaching ministers, whereas anyone in the country may insinuate good. (A. C. 6822.) Then again, if, as we have already indicated, a prayer like that of our text is one that is made for the Church, and not for humanity at large, why should the lesser favor of grace be asked for it, and not that of mercy, which is higher? Is not the Church the very quintessence of humanity? and should not the very best be wished for it? It may also be a point for wonderment that the blessing most frequently on the lips of the priest should be this request for grace, whereas it is the members of the Church, singly or in chorus, who most often say, "O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy is forever."

     We should note, first of all, that it is a limitation of the finite mind, after it has marked distinctions as to what is higher or lower in the scale of perfections, to be unable to grasp in a universal sweep of view the full interrelationship of all these parts. It therefore tends to slight, or place under a ban, that which in its judgment it deems to be lower.

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Divine safeguards are then provided to protect and restore that which is in danger of being disparaged. In an army, for example, the use of a general is more exalted than that of a common soldier; and so a new recruit might fancy becoming a general right away, without passing through all the ranks. But all the uses of these lower degrees, down to the private, are important, and no one is fitted to have the general oversight of all who has not passed through each, and so learned to give it a permanent value. Again, the use of the celestial angels, who dwell alone to the end that they may better serve the many whom they love, is greater than that of others who live in closer contacts with persons in smaller groups. Yet no one would urge that by avoiding the smaller group-contacts he is thereby better prepared to perform the high celestial use, forasmuch as it is interest and ability to enter into singulars that will qualify the mind for any service that is universal in scope.

     In the Divine economy, there is a circle of life that goes out from God to man, and then returns to Him, with uses to be performed by men and angels in both the outgo and return phases of the circle. Now the outgo phase is in all perfection; for the Lord is in all men, His Divine mercy not being withheld from any. But the case is not the same with the return phase, in which there has been a reflecting back from finite man, with all his imperfections. Though the Lord is in all men, not all men will to be in the Lord; though all are "called," many do not choose to respond.

     The uses of those who are termed "the spiritual" are concerned primarily with this return phase of the circle of life. The grace of their ministration is to assist in providing for a Divine reagency in the human mind, so that the descending influx may find what is its own with the man, and so be reflected back to God. The means at hand for this service are the truths of God's Word when insinuated in a way to be quickened so as to make this superhuman response. Still, their contact with human striving spells infirmity and liability to error, and so the greatest of all safeguards have ever been provided to protect this service from failing totally, even to the descent of God Himself on earth at the time of the greatest crisis. For then He Himself said: "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."

     The spiritual kingdom, which labors in this field, consists of those whose minds have never been opened to the third degree, which is nearest to our Lord.

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They are in the constant need of perfecting the form of their minds by new truths, that their living may be increased. They labor among those who welcome and respond to this service, and out of these they constitute a Church Specific whose faithful members are bound in ties of mutual love and reciprocal service. They are spared the distress of having to labor among the recalcitrants who would spurn their jewels and then turn upon them to rend them. For their conscious service is among those who are in this fellowship of mutual endeavor. Still, the Lord, unconsciously to them, makes use of their organized labor to serve as a quickening pulse-beat and a reinvigorating inhalation to all the heavens of mankind, and to those who will subsequently come into its form. At times, too, their powerful wave-beat is directed toward the hells, whenever a powerful influx is needed to quell turbulence there. They are the Michaels who conquer the dragon; and to them is addressed the words of our text: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all."

     Yet those who have passed through this service by regenerating to the opening of the third degree of the mind, especially if they are also of the celestial genius, which prefers good to truth, are joined to the original ministry of the celestials which was in operation before men fell, when the succenturiate service of the spiritual had to be inaugurated. It is not necessary to spare these the contacts with the rebels of hell, from whom they can suffer no harm, and whose pitiable state does not arouse horror with them, but only compassion. For they are angels of mercy, and fly on the wings of the Lord's love whithersoever a human soul is cramped by a deformed mind which must be lulled if some form of use is to be entered into and afford a measure Of happiness. It is chiefly the celestial angels who assist in the governance of the bells; in their humility they make no distinction between their own propriums and those of its inhabitants, but implore an equal outpour of the Divine mercy to withhold themselves and their charges from plunging into deeper evils.

     It is related of the Lord during His Passion, that, when wrestling with the rebellious powers of hell to the end that He might bring them into order, it became necessary for Him to rebuke these celestial keepers for an excess of compassion which made them willing to forego their own happiness and liberty, if by so doing they might deliver their charges from the penalty to which they were entitled.

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     The Lord came on earth for the sake of the spiritual, who could not have been saved without His coming. And yet, if He had not come, under the conditions which existed, even the celestial would have suffered through a curtailing of their liberties and their chances of service. But since the Lord did come, and by a redemption subjugated the hells, ordered the heavens, and established a church as a footstool on earth, both functions are as a Jacob's ladder, with descending and ascending angels between God in heaven and the Church Specific on earth.

     Actually, the Church Specific is celestial in essence and soul, and spiritual in existence and form. Inwardly, it cherishes peace and goodwill to all men, and a desire to promote their happiness and opportunity for service. Outwardly, it must employ the safeguards of distinctiveness and a close scrutiny as to the quality of those whom it admits within its fold and promotes to positions of trust and responsibility therein.

     To some people this double conditionment may appear incompatible and even two-faced; and some will argue in favor of the one, to the exclusion of the other. We can only pray that such arguments may never prevail. For to lay down all barriers of exclusiveness, such, for instance, as baptism into the Church Specific, and to extend its borders so as to take in as members multitudes who are not in harmony with its real purpose, and who would only be a clog to its vigorous service, would be a serious blow to spiritual living among men; as serious as the harm that would be done to a body in which the heart and lungs were ashamed of their pericardium and pleura, which keep them aloof from the rest of the body, and prayed to have these removed in order to fuse equally with all the other organs. On the other hand, to limit our peace and goodwill to the actual members of the organization would rob the Church Specific of its soul. In that case, it would be disqualified at once as a potentiality for future growth and expanding service.

     So, when the blessing of our text is seen to be addressed to a Church that is prospering in regard to both these conditions, the term "grace" will no longer seem to be a lowly expression, inadequate to be conferred upon what is deserving of the highest gifts.

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For, as this Church worships our Lord Jesus Christ as the Divine Man in ultimates, in whom "dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," so the grace of the same Lord Jesus unto that Church is a suitable ultimate blessing, containing within it all the gifts that will enable the Church to become the temple of His Holiness. Amen.
WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE IMAGINATION 1928

WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE IMAGINATION       J. S. PRYKE       1928

     (A paper read at a meeting of The New Church Club, London, November 18, 1927.)

     Although it is not within our province this evening to present anything in the nature of a critical analysis of the poetry of William Blake, we yet venture to suggest that a careful study of his life and work would, for the New Churchman, prove to be a great deal more than a pleasant intellectual diversion. Remarkable personality he certainly was; and one of his enthusiastic admirers has not hesitated to place him amongst the wonders of the world. He chiefly interests us now, however, for two reasons: the one is, that he probably came into personal contact with Swedenborg, and was influenced by him to no small degree; the other being that his literary posterity claims him as preeminently an imaginative poet; and it is with the structure and function of the Imagination that we are here primarily concerned.

     Blake was a cockney. He was born at 28 Broad Street, Soho, on the 28th of November, 1757, and died on the 12th of August, 1827, at 3 Fountain Court, just off the Strand, both places being close to this very room. His death passed almost unnoticed save by a small circle of friends, but during the hundred years which have since elapsed there have always been writers of finer perception, who, from time to time, have either published their recollections of the poet and artist or have written short lines of him. This stream of interest has steadily grown in volume and value, and the recent occurrence of the centenary of Blake's death aroused considerable activity in literary circles. It is probable, therefore, that the consequent publication of new biographies and editions of his works will, for some years to come, bring his name still more prominently before reading people.

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     Born and living, as we are told, in an era which was marked by great artists, famous engravers, poets, writers, and some mystics, there is no denying Blake's claim to greatness. As an engraver, his style was too severe to be fashionable in his own day, although even then it was freely admired. His work as an artist, again, won the praise of distinguished admirers, while among those who were appreciative of his lyric poems were men of the caliber of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb. As mystic, he was mainly influenced by Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg; but to this phase of the subject we shall revert later.

     He experienced one unhappy affair of the heart, but almost immediately afterwards he met Catherine Boucher, who proved to be his true love, and whom he married after one year's acquaintance. Their married life lasted some forty-five years, and it is not without pathos to recall that, just before he passed over, Blake, who had finished a final portrait of his beloved helpmeet, affectionately said to her: "Kate, you have ever been an angel to me. Devoted wife she assuredly was, for in addition to being a pattern housewife, she had learned to assist her husband by printing off and tinting his engravings. Just before he died, his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened, and he burst out singing of the things he saw in heaven. In truth he died like a saint, and this was Catherine Blake's opinion of her husband.

     At the early age of fourteen, Blake could write:

     How sweet I roamed from field to field,
     And tasted all the summer's pride,
     Till I the Prince of Love beheld,
     Who in the sunny beams did glide!

     And it is probable that some of the earlier productions will ultimately prove to be the foundation of his fame. Who can hear unmoved such verses as:

     Tiger, tiger, burning bright
     In the forest of the night.
     What immortal hand or eye
     Dared frame thy fearful symmetry?

     Or these:

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     To see a world in a grain of sand,
     And heaven in a wild flower,
     Hold infinity in the palms of your hand,
     Eternity in an hour.

          *     *     *     *

     Seek love in the pity of others' woe,
     In the gentle relief of another's care;
     In the darkness of night and the winter's snow,
     In the naked and outcast, seek Love there.

     Or the oft-quoted:

     Bring me my bow of burning gold,
     Bring me my arrows of desire,
     Bring me my spear-O clouds unfold!
     Bring me my chariot of fire!

     They all are of the very stuff of poetry.

     From his early childhood Blake claimed to have visions and to see angels. On one occasion he ran home and told his mother that he had seen the prophet Ezekiel; on another, that he had seen a tree on Peckham Rye with angels around it; and on a third, he said he had watched some haymakers, and had seen angelic figures walking amongst them. His parents, on becoming aware of the boy's peculiarities, were puzzled at first, but seem to have acted with discretion, and came to believe in some indulgence for him, refusing to send him to school. Having abandoned the rod themselves, and knowing how greatly a blow moved Blake to anger, they did not care to entrust him to strangers who might be less patient than their perplexed selves. Imagination, and the impulsive expression of feeling, were probably the worst faults they had to find with him.

     This fancied penetration into the other world persisted through out Blake's life. On the very day of his death he composed and uttered songs to his Maker. Of these he declared to his wife, "Beloved, they are not mine; no, they are not mine!" And he added that death would not prevent him from taking care of her.

     A critical investigation of the development of Blake's mind, undertaken in the light of the New Church doctrine, would show where he left the path of spiritual order; and it could not fail to produce many valuable lessons, much useful information, and some warnings; although to attempt it would be to digress from our immediate task.

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     There is no question that Swedenborg exercised a marked influence upon Blake, whose father, at any rate, inclined to his teachings. Blake himself heard many conversations concerning the other world, and also about the Last Judgment; and at this early stage of his career he had read the Divine Love and Wisdom. In later life, he referred to Swedenborg as "that Samson shorn by the Churches."

     We must content ourselves with four extracts from the later and so-called mystical works, such as The Everlasting Gospel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, All Religions are One, The Book of Thel, The Song of Los, etc., written when the imagination had taken full charge.

     As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes folded up.

     *     *     *     *

     Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses,-the chief inlets of soul in this age.

     *     *     *     *

     Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsities. He conversed with angels, who are all religious, and conversed not with devils, who all hate religion; for he was incapable through his conceited notions.

     These from The Everlasting Gospel, a poem of great power, but one to be read with careful discrimination. The quality and nature of these productions are sufficiently described and explained by the following penetrating criticism of one of his latest biographers:

     "The early Swedenborgian influence that Blake had imbibed in his boyhood from, his father and his father's friends was now to be enforced by a new work from this transcendental scientist (Jules Lemaitre). Mysticism and visionary insight were so native to Blake that he could not fall without danger into the hands of one who claimed a scientific knowledge of the spiritual world, and included all things in heaven and earth in his system. His undeniable contributions to science, his habit of investigation, made Swedenborg an almost overwhelming influence to all who fell under his spell.

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He was so universal in his range, and so minute in his particulars, that he necessarily imposed an intricate symbolism as the indispensable form for intuitive ideas.

     "Blake was a little recalcitrant to such evident supremacy, and his annotations to the Wisdom of Angels show him anxious to preserve his mental independence. He could never question without desiring to surpass, and the effect on his mind was to project a new cosmogony of his own. He was quite unfitted for the task, for he was not, like Swedenborg, an orderly thinker; and when an opponent of systems determines to create one, we seem to be watching the laborious creation of chaos. I must create my own systems, or be enslaved by another man's, is the pathetic cry of an intelligence that has mistaken its direction. It was on a hint from Lavater that Blake started to annotate. It was in rivalry with Swedenborg that he started systemizing.

     "If Swedenborg had conversed with angels, so had Blake; if Swedenborg had visions, so had he; if Swedenborg had found in the Bible the Divine wisdom, and had received a special commission to be the interpreter of its spiritual meaning, Blake was impelled to the same task. From that day forward, apocalyptic literature was the only literature for this poet, who came to think religion and art interchangeable terms at the very point where art is discarded for a revelation that boasts its independence from immediate beauty. The mystic who claims a direct personal experience of reality, may not need art for himself, but if he would communicate his knowledge, and remain an artist at the same time, he must respect the form that he has chosen. By inventing an arbitrary and unnecessary symbolism for his intuitions, by equally refusing to employ the traditional forms of literature, Blake did not transcend either, but left a chaos of both. When he came at last to repudiate Swedenborg, he deserted all form and all models, and we see another fine mind dethroned in a chaos of its own creating. So long as he followed even the most extravagant of his models, he remains a man of letters."

     So writes Osbert Burdett, who seems to have pared down to the root of the matter in a most striking manner. We seem to picture uncontrolled egotism riding an imagination, teeming but undisciplined; and the resultant wild lucubrations stand in about the same relation to revealed order and beauty as the mutterings of some deluded crystal-gazer do to the living response made by the medium of the Urim and Thummim.

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     But this brings us to our real subject,-The Imagination.

     II.

     There may conceivably be those who feel themselves possessed of latent powers which for one reason or another have had no opportunity to come to maturity. If so, the example of Blake may suggest the need for patience and confidence in Providence. He shows us an imagination of great sweep and fertility, but one acting without restraint and in disregard of an intelligence superior to its own.

     What, then, is the imagination? and what are its functions in the formation of a spiritual rational intellect?

     It may be replied that the imagination is the entire field in which man reacts, or what he makes as for himself of the world around him. In one sense he is but as a grain of dust on the balances of the universe; in another sense, he is of such importance that all the forces of the universe find their direction in him; and his response is made through the instrumentality of the imaginative faculty, the immediate servants of which are memory and thought. Structurally, it is built up by these, and refined by the rational faculty. By instruction, by hearing, by sight, man acquires, according to his measure, knowledges of every conceivable quality and of every conceivable kind. Once taken into the memory, they form a basis for thought or speculation, whence the imagination examines them, marshals them into new order, arranges them into fresh combinations and Series, and so commences the formation of a new world, even as his will may dictate. If wise; he will strive to create that world progressively in consonance with order; if unwise, wilful or self-centered, it will in the end prove to be merely fantastic, and come tumbling down, to be replaced by one formed of external restraints.

     Thus, in one place, the imagination is described as internal speech; the thought passes over to ideas by the medium of formed expressions, and man communes with himself in the privacy of his own soul. Elsewhere it is called interior sight; the man explores the storehouse of the memory, and, with the assistance of the imagination, conceives new ideas from the materials found there, which ideas appear in just the same way as material objects appear before the sight of the bodily eye.

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Again, it is internal hearing, this being the reason why words can so easily be called forth from the memory, and thoughts so easily brought out by means of words and speech. All intellectual activity depends upon the exercise of the imagination, and thought itself has no existence separated from it.

     In a lengthy descriptive passage, to be found in the volume on The Five Senses, the whole process is explained: how the memory of images which enter through the external senses forms as it were a new visible world. Imagination, strictly so called, comes into being when those objects, now become ideas, are reproduced similarly as they had entered. From these new ideas, more simple ones are educed, which, in their turn, are laid before the field of the memory, and this again to other still more distinct and interior ideas, from which the inmost sense takes its objects. It is the office of the imagination to reproduce these when excited by the external senses or the appetites of the body, or by affections for the moral society in which one dwells. Thus, reproductions of the imagination can be stimulated, either by the object of the visible world, or by causes in the body, or by the objects of the social world, or by reflections on one's self. Human imagination is produced not by nature, but by the working of the rational mind through sciences and words into which the man ought to be led. The whole science of imagination is memory; wherefore no cognition of goodness can be ascribed to it as from itself, but from, things either inferior or superior to itself. Hence the imagination has no power of judgment; nor can it examine truths; it can only reproduce them. In other words, it is the mediate faculty in which the rational mind is instructed and by which it determines its will into act.

     From all this we learn that the sequence is: first, the acquisition of knowledges, which is done by the aid of all the senses; next, the impletion of the memory, which takes place more or less independently of volition; then, the excitation of the imaginative, which is started by some affection or group of affections; and, finally, critical examination by the rational faculty.

     Thought and imagination are so intimately related that at first glance they are almost indistinguishable, although really they are most distinct in their origins and in their functions.

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The former is merely the reproduction of what is already in the memory, while the latter rearranges and recombines the contents of the mind, and so actually produces new ideas, which, in their turn, form the ground for further thought, and this indefinitely. All this operates at the dictate of the will, as the effect of the proprium perpetually striving to translate the concepts of the imagination into act. So, as has been said, man fashions a world of his own, which, even in this life, modifies to a limited degree his external surroundings, and in the other is often presented objectively outside of him. A moment's reflection will show the supreme importance of this condition of existence, its responsibilities, its possibilities, and its dangers.

     The natural man often complains of being called into existence unasked, and refuses to acknowledge that he lives from a source beyond his control. Here is the doctrinal answer to his complaint: He may, under order, take a hand in his own fashioning, and we may fix upon the "self-made man;" whatever belongs to his production.

     III.

     So far, however, we have been considering what may be called the mechanism of natural imagination, trying to see in some obscure way how this marvellous piece of work operates. The same principles hold good on the spiritual plane; nay, are true by virtue of their dependence upon the spiritual. Let us, then, turn to the inner side of the teaching, and learn how the spiritual imagination is formed.

     At the outset we may recall a most instructive passage from the Arcana Celestia (3957), enumerating seven things which men might know about the other life, if only they were willing to use their reason. This seems to imply that it would not be improper to define conscience itself as the imagination going forth into act under the governance of good and truth. In short, the passage reads as follows:

     "The Lord is continually operating into good and truth, and if there be not some such recipient as a plane in which the interior man lives after the death of the body, the inflowing good and truth cannot be received.

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Man, on this account, ought to be solicitous to procure to himself such a plane by thinking what is good in regard to his neighbor, by willing what is good to him, and thence doing good to him, thereby acquiring to himself a living delight in such things. This plane is acquired by charity, and its plane is called conscience. Into this plane good and truth from the Lord can flow and be received, but not where there is no charity and consequently no conscience. In this case the influent truth and good become transfluent." (A. C. 3957)

     The point for us is, that this comes about on man's part by thought, imagination and will, although it may be noted that the passage incidentally, if that term be permissible, throws a strong light upon the statement that the wicked have no conscience. Conscience is the human mental plane resulting from charitable thought and act, but as the wicked Will have none of these they can have no conscience. Moreover, the inflowing good and truth are in such case perverted into evil and falsity.

     The first ardent states of the novitiate New Churchman, when, overjoyed by a sense of the pricelessness of the treasure he has discovered, he longs to communicate it to others, when, in imagination, he sees humanity waiting for the water of life, and the imminent and universal descent of the New Jerusalem, are closely analogous to the waking of the imaginative faculty of children in the first state of adolescence, which, as we are instructed, is then especially vigorous. In the beginning, when ideas are few, the imagination is obscure, but as knowledges increase and ideas multiply, so the thought is clarified, and the imagination excited until dl things seem possible. For the child, and for the child in spiritual things alike, the need is so to guard that only true knowledges are imbibed, that nothing contrary to heaven's order and beauty are permitted to lodge in the mind, and, while retaining all the fire and enthusiasm, so to refine them that fallacies and phantasies may be discarded, and the imagination directed to enlightened ends.

     For, again, man's imagination consists solely of such forms and species of things as have been admitted by bodily vision, wonderfully varied and modified; but his interior imagination consists solely of forms and species of such things as have been admitted by the man's vision, still more wonderfully varied and modified, which things, although in themselves inanimate, become living by life flowing in from the Lord.

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     This calls into question man's whole attitude towards revealed doctrine, and ultimately decides his eternal state and use. Exactly the same as is the case naturally, so on the spiritual plane he has to learn the wonders of existence, store them in his memory, conceive ideas from them, combine these into new series, and use them as if they were his very own. In other words, he decides what he would do with himself and the universe if left in uncontrolled freedom. In sober truth, he must become as a little child, before he can enter the kingdom. And as he proceeds along the regenerative path, he enters that wonderful state of wisdom allied to childish innocence which can imagine nothing more delightful than to cooperate with the Divine will. When this is the quality of his reaction, then indeed it may be said that heaven lies about him in his infancy, that infancy which endures to all eternity. The field of knowledge is limitless, the well of truth inexhaustible; and as the infinite treasure is drawn up by wisdom, and brought into use by charity, so angelic man enters a life of felicity beyond the powers of human description.

     This exalted imagination is mentioned in the Spiritual Diary (679), which teaches the existence of imaginations of the inmost heavens, these not being like the sensitive of sight but like the sensitive of the understanding, and goes on to say that for the sake of distinction the word imagination may serve for interior things, speculation for more interior things, and thought for inmost things. This seems to indicate that thought only reaches its real office when it is engaged upon inmost matters.

     At some convenient opportunity we might employ our imagination upon the phenomenon of the modern perverted use of the word "speculation." Originally intended to denote interior mental sight, it has fallen to indicate almost exclusively a more or less intelligent anticipation of the state of the "market." It would prove extremely useful if some research could be made along the lines of discovering to what extent debased or inverted forms of speech follow a deterioration in the quality of common thought. Dare we recommend this study to the younger members of the Church, whose imaginations, as we have seen, are more especially virile and active?

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     IV.

     Thus far on what may be called the positive or real side of the imaginative function. There is, however, an opposite sense, one which more closely corresponds with the meaning attached to the word by natural thinkers, and suggests something without foundation or actual existence, something fantastic and fallacious. This results when the imagination confines itself to earthly matters. For it is Divinely written that "by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made"; and thought which is not derived from that truth, and ultimately rests there, is, in its final analysis, but a mental figment devoid of reality.

     Spiritual Diary 2037 recounts how angels assisted in various ways a certain one lately deceased, giving him everything that entered into the range of his thoughts and desires, altogether as if lie possessed them in the world. For, the number significantly continues, "the possession of goods in the world is nothing else than what is imaginative." That is, the idea of actual personal possession is imaginative, while one may be allowed their use for a longer or shorter period under the Lord's good pleasure.

     All who long for heaven are introduced into the joys of their imagination, we are taught, and it will be seen at once that only those who have known and thought the truth can remain there, since otherwise the sphere of their imagination would collide with the heavenly life-sphere around them. They must, therefore, be remitted to a state where they can learn the truth, and desire to live according to it, or alternatively, form imaginary heavens after the fashion of their own conceits which will eventually be dispersed.

     On the other hand, (D. P. 300), those who are in hell are nothing but the lusts of evil and the derivative imaginations of falsity; and, wonderful to relate, these are arranged directly opposite to the corresponding affections of good and thoughts of truth in heaven. The succeeding number explains that those in hell are there because they are in the love of self and of their own intelligence, and "all the imaginations of falsity are from proprial intelligence." (D. P. 301.)

     As a commentary upon the quality of the present-day imagination, and indeed of our own, too, so far as we are affected by the thought around us, we may point to the further teaching that reasonings about faith alone are purely imaginary and visionary.

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Those that sit on horses signify such as are intelligent from the Word, in this connection those who are invaded by imaginary and visionary reasonings about faith alone; for faith without charity is merely imaginative-a specter.

     As might be anticipated, there is a wealth of information on the subject of the imagination to be found in the Spiritual Diary, but one mention (1752) will suffice here, viz., on seeing visions, as- to which certain persons on the earth boast of their experience. Spirits, we read, can hold the mind, and thus the imagination, in the representation of some particular object, whether of an animal, an infant, or some monstrosity; and as long as the imagination is so confined, man is persuaded that he actually sees such things. In this way, many visions are declared to have taken place, though they were nothing else than illusions. This not only opens up the question of the communication with the other world through the medium of human memory, thought and imagination, but also points to a grave warning against allowing the mind to become ridden by a fixed idea.

     V.

     Enough has now been adduced to show that a right use of the imaginative faculty is inseparable from mental and spiritual growth, and that if it is to conduce to these its ideation must ever be based upon truth. It must be recombining the materials furnished by Revelation, and arranging them into new order directed to use. The field for the play of the imagination is wide; it is no less than the sum total of our individual sensations and experiences, mental, moral and spiritual.

     Let us take one or two examples of how this great power may be used.

     First, the imaginative of Worship. To image forth all that is known of the Lord, His attributes and laws. It will speedily be recognized that unless this proceeds along the lines of Revelation, fantastic pictures will fill the thought, and we shall realize what is meant by the psalmic portrayal of a god fashioned after human conceits. But let the imagination rest upon the many and various means adopted to teach man about God, or range through the heavenly societies which are themselves celebrating worship, or picture the Lord waiting to pardon and to bless, or recall the purpose for which the building was set apart, or visualize a fresh the inner meaning of the priestly office, or think of the gathering together of fellow New Churchmen, having similar needs and ends, and our worship will attain a richness and completeness never before imagined.

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     Second. The imaginative of Charity. Let it cultivate a truer conception of our neighbor's difficulties and aspirations; of his longing to help and be helped, and there will be born a truer vision of what can be done towards spreading the Doctrines. Set the imagination working in this direction, and it may even reach the point of inquiry whether, in fact, the chance visitor at our services, or even the regular visitor, is welcomed in the wisest and most hospitable manner. Perhaps there might even be discovered golden mean between the effusive hand and that frigid stare which could hardly be bestowed with charity upon the most blatant intruder. A right use of the imaginative in this respect might possibly lead to the reflection that, before complaint is made of the fewness of the newcomers which the Lord sends us, investigation of our fitness to receive them might profitably be made.

     Third, the imaginative of Humanity. To think of man as the focus and correspondent of the Gorand Man, with its myriads of societies, each with its particular function based upon some human organ; of man's power for use on all planes to those around him, and to creation at large; of the joy which comes from linking the daily work with spiritual use.

     Fourth, the imaginative of domesticity; of the joys of the family circle, and of the thousands of forces which combine to give it shelter, food and clothing.

     Then there is the imaginative of the arts and sciences. In these domains are treasures without end, all of which must be made to live in the service of the Church. The Church waits for the man who, being steeped to the finger tips in the facts of history, can so re-tell the story as to make the dry bones live, and to proclaim that, in its entirety, it is always the story of man's leading by His Creator. It waits for the man who can dissect and amalgamate number, and show its power over material things by virtue of its association with spiritual things; for him whose imagination can open new avenues to the business world, conceived of use and capable of bringing tribute to the New Jerusalem.

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It waits for him who shall be skilled in the exact use of words, whose trained imagination will enable him to draw upon heavenly things and mirror them forth for the delight of earth-dwellers.

     There is at least one example of the imaginative novel planned on those lines-The Wedding Garment-which has helped more than one reader over difficult places. Again, the almost virgin field of poetry is calling out for cultivation, and how may that not be made to enrich and inspire church life! Here the imagination may soar unchecked almost over the universe and even to the fanciful, and yet be guided by truth.

     "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
     Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven."

     And the entrancing imagery of two worlds is waiting to serve.

     So, too, with regard to science: all the splendid discoveries of patient investigation may be brought to the Assay of Truth, and its true metal be woven into the fabric of the Palace of Wisdom. Such examples might be multiplied a hundredfold; for there is no limit to the flight of the imagination. But the object of the paper will have been gained if you agree with it that "all things new" means, firstly, a new perception of the quality and use of existing things.

     We are commanded to press forward, to possess the promised land, and not be deterred either by the stature of its inhabitants or the size of its fruits. But in speaking thus we would recall what was said earlier as to the imagination being under the lordship of the rational; and this, if in order, looks both outwards to the world and upwards to heaven.

     The lesson of William Blake's poetical life seems to be just that. Vivid, active, fertile in imagination, he undoubtedly was; but he was also self-centered, with all that that word implies. In bondage to the fixed idea that he must surpass all other men, his imagination was permitted to outrun his intelligence. Knowing, as we do, that Divine help never fails, that he was in contact with the Master of spiritual imagery, Blake's cry, "I must create a system or be enslaved by another's," may be ranked as one of the most tragic to be found in English literature.

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What monuments in verse and line might Blake have left behind, what beneficent influence might he be exerting even now, had he accepted the new knowledge that was within his grasp!

     If, as New Churchmen, we are ever to attain the measure of full-grown men, there must be no hesitation in the use of this marvelous instrument which has been shaped for us-the Imagination. Yet that use should always be tempered with the humility which teaches us to offer, with growing fulness of perception, the petition: "Store in our minds, O Lord, true images of Thyself!"
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORD EXPLAINED 1928

INTRODUCTION TO THE WORD EXPLAINED       Rev. GEORGE DE CHARMS       1928

     AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORD EXPLAINED, by Alfred Acton, M.A., D.Th. Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa., 1927. Cloth, 164 pages. Price, $2.00.

     Dr. Acton has for some time been engaged in the task of translating the work commonly known as the Adversaria. This work was written by Emanuel Swedenborg during a period of his life that was intermediate between his career as a natural philosopher and his entrance upon the office of Revelator. It was a period of final and direct preparation for his complete illumination. He had already been introduced into the spiritual world, and had received the Divine call. In obedience to that call, he had abandoned all his personal plans and ambitions, dropped work on those philosophical studies which he had outlined for himself, halted his writing of the Worship and Love of God in the middle of a sentence, and devoted himself thereafter entirely to the study of the Word and of theology. His first work was to prepare an alphabetical index of the Old Testament. Having completed such an index, he began to search for the internal sense of the Word, writing first a little essay on "The History of Creation," and then entering upon an exposition of the books of the Old Testament. Having completed a treatment of the historical books, he began an Index of Proper Names, and about the same time entered upon a serious study of the Hebrew language.

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With the index completed, he returned to the task of exposition, treating of the Prophetical Word. Interspersed in this work he recounted, in indented paragraphs, his experiences in the spiritual world, and so began the work which later developed into what has been called the Spiritual Diary.

     The works here outlined occupied a period of about three and a half years, during which time Swedenborg did not publish anything. The unpublished manuscripts, however, were preserved, and, on the death of their author, were turned over to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. There they lay, neglected and unknown, until 1839, when Dr. Achatius Kahl, of Lund, an ardent admirer of the Writings, undertook to investigate them. He considered the expositions of the Old Testament to be of great value, and, desiring to have them appear in print, communicated with Dr. Immanuel Tafel (who at the time was engaged in editing a Latin reprint of the Arcana Celestial, highly praising the work, and recommending that it be published. Dr. Tafel received the suggestion with interest, and although he had not seen the manuscript itself, secured a transcript of a small portion of it, and this, as soon as the necessary means could be obtained, he Proceeded to prepare for the press. Supposing that it consisted of notes made in the course of preparing the Arcana Celestia (and a continuation of that work intended to cover the other books of the Word) he gave it the title of "Adversaria" or "Notes." The work of publishing the whole manuscript was delayed by lack of funds and other circumstances, and it was not until 1854 that the fourth and last volume appeared.

     The real character of the work was not discovered until recent years, when the fact was established that it had never been intended by the author as a collection of notes made in preparation for the Arcana Celestia, but was a serious attempt to expound the books of the Old Testament, without regard to any work which was to follow. It is now seen to represent the fruits of Swedenborg's concentrated study of the Word during this period, and it is clear that it should be accorded an independent place. For this reason, Dr. Acton has adopted for his translation the title given to it by Swedenborg himself, namely, The Word of the Old Testament Explained. When the first volume of this translation was completed, and ready for publication, the translator undertook to prepare an introduction to it, to contain a brief analysis of the relation of this work to the Writings, and of its contribution to Swedenborg's own preparation for his mission.

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With this intention, he began an investigation of Swedenborg's life, bringing to light a mass of new historical material, the effect of which was to challenge the traditional interpretation of the mode by which Swedenborg was Divinely inspired, and to call for the formulation of a different theory, more nearly in accord with the evidence. In attempting to present this new theory, together with the cardinal facts on which it is based, Dr. Acton found his proposed introduction necessarily expanded beyond the limits of a single chapter, and he therefore decided to publish it as a separate volume.

     Such is the history of the book now before us for review. It contains a history of The Word Explained in manuscript, in Latin text, and in previous translations, together with an account of Swedenborg's preparation for his Divine commission from early infancy, and an appraisal of the significance to be attached to that intermediate period to which the original manuscript belongs. It seeks to demonstrate the unbroken continuity in the method of study, and in the degree of individual effort and labor, between the periods before and after he became the instrument of a Divine Revelation. And it sets forth with forceful logic the theory, to which the author was led by his investigations, of how Swedenborg was Divinely guided in the writing of the Heavenly Doctrine itself. To all this the author ha; appended an answer to certain objections which might be raised against his theory, arising from the use by Swedenborg in his earlier works of the theological terms characteristic of his own day. And lastly Dr. Acton has appended a very brief summary of his conclusions.

     The book is the product of profound scholarship. Its author has for many years been immersed in the study of Swedenborg's life, and in a most careful examination of original manuscripts. More recently, his interest was particularly aroused by a study of the Journal of Dreams, the character of which seems so different from all the other writings of Swedenborg as to constitute a stumbling-block to his followers, and to afford a central point of attack for his enemies. Being a private document, never intended for publication, and revealing most intimate thoughts, this book is difficult for the casual reader to understand. It seems to reveal an abnormal state of mind, at times an extreme depression even to despair.

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It has been taken to indicate a disturbed and somewhat unbalanced condition; and such a conclusion is fully warranted by a perusal of the book without reference to the circumstances under which it was written. For this reason, those seeking to discredit the astounding claims of its author have seized upon this Journal as prima facie evidence of an approaching insanity, such as might reasonably account for those unprecedented hallucinations by which Swedenborg was himself convinced that he actually lived in the spiritual world, and was able to relate the conditions that obtain after death. Scholars have labored to identify the exact nature of this supposed insanity with some known form of mental pathology.

     Even New Churchmen, who, because they see the Divine character of the Writings, regard any charge of insanity launched against Swedenborg as vile calumny, have been unable to explain the Journal of Dreams, and have been compelled to treat it rather warily. Dr. Acton, however, in seeking to discover what was the actual significance of these dreams, conceived the idea of studying the book in connection with the literary and philosophical studies upon which Swedenborg was engaged while it was being written. The book itself is a sort of diary in which the author noted down those dreams which seemed to make an extraordinary impression upon him. It contains dates and other entries which fix these experiences in relation to his daily life. The result, when the two are compared, is amazing, and serves to demonstrate, beyond all possibility of dispute, that Swedenborg during this period, was not in an abnormal mental state. That is, he was not morbidly disturbed in any such sense as the contents of the Journal of Dreams, taken by itself, might seem to imply. At the time, he was accomplishing Herculean tasks, solving deep philosophical problems, making minute investigations, producing an unbelievable amount of written manuscript in which he shows profound penetration, and gives evidence of a calm, deliberate judgment. He was copying, correcting, editing, and publishing, with a care, precision, and application altogether inconsonant with the idea of a man in a serious pathological condition. By this comparison it is shown that the Journal of Dreams, while recounting a series of deep spiritual temptations on the plane of the rational mind, cannot possibly indicate any such disturbance of the animus as is characteristic of all insanity. In the midst of these temptations, Swedenborg was in the full possession of his faculties, and displayed all the coordinated mental powers of a remarkably clear and balanced thinker.

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And this fact having become established, it is evident that the experiences recorded in the Journal of Dreams formed an important and necessary part of Swedenborg's preparation. They have a profound spiritual significance. The preservation of the manuscript is most certainly of Divine Providence, since the right understanding of its contents is found to be the key by which we are enabled to unlock the mystery of Swedenborg's illumination.

     The solution of this mystery is the pivotal point of Dr. Acton's book. The traditional idea in the Church has been that the Theological Writings were immediately revealed to Swedenborg by means of some sort of viva voce dictation, such as is apparently implied in the famous statement by the inspired author that he was not "allowed to take anything from the mouth of any spirit, nor from the mouth of any angel, but from the mouth of the Lord alone." (De Verbo 13e.) Dr. Acton holds, however, that such a mode of Divine leading would be inconsistent with the requirements of a rational revelation. The character of his revelation demands that Swedenborg should have been led from within, by enlightenment through the soul, rather than from without by a dictating voice, even though it be the voice of the Lord. Dictation from without might be given to a simple, untutored mind. Rut for internal leading by means of enlightenment through the soul, there was necessary a long period of preparation, arduous labor, study, investigation, and deeply philosophical thought.

     It is this conception of revelation by internal enlightenment that alone gives significance to that unique preparation by which Swedenborg is so markedly distinguished from every previous human medium of transmitting the Divine Word to men. Under the theory of external dictation, the necessity for this is far from obvious. But if Swedenborg, unlike other Revelators, was to be illumined through the soul, then must the Divine light fall on suitable objects gathered into this mind from the world of nature, and later from the spiritual world,-gathered as a result of his own labors, and ordered, as to all outward appearance, by his own powers of deduction. That this was true of any Divine Light or guidance which he may have received during his earlier life, Prior to his call, is readily admitted. But in what sense was this labor, this gathering of material, this concentrated study, a preparation, unless the same were, in a higher degree, to be true of that period when he was writing the Heavenly Doctrine itself?

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     That it must have been true of this also, is the central contention of Dr. Acton's book; and all the evidence that he has so carefully collected points in that direction. It is plainly shown that Swedenborg did not, from the date of his Divine call, cease from his labors, and merely transmit as an amanuensis the dictations of a Divine voice. He continued to work with the same energy and application. He studied to establish the internal sense of the Word with that same painstaking method and thoroughgoing scholarship by which he had previously studied to discover the inner secrets of nature. This is particularly true of the intermediate period; but it is also true of his later life. For the doctrines of the Writings themselves are developed logically, step by step, each advance being placed firmly on a foundation already laid, and buttressed by illustrations drawn from the wealth of learning and experience previously acquired.

     Certainly it may be said of the intermediate period, that the difference between this and what had been done before the sharp break caused by the Divine call does not lie in an entirely different mode of Divine leading, but in the opening of the spiritual world, the admission of Swedenborg into a universe of spiritual experience and investigation previously closed to him, and in the direction of his mind rather to the exposition of the Word than to the unveiling of nature. There was, indeed, a conscious realization of the Lord's presence, and a recognition of the fact that he was being prepared for a high and unique office. This had not been possible before. But it did not inhibit his own efforts. It did not take away the appearance that he must attain to this new wisdom by reason of his own arduous labors. It merely opened his mind to the reception of a higher light, and held before him a more exalted goal. And even of the period of full illumination, it can be shown, on the basis of indisputable evidence, that the Revelator continued to work, and to study, as of himself, receiving, apparently as the reward of his labors, a Divine Light, by which he was led by the Lord immediately, but from within.

     The hypothesis is a bold one, and Dr. Acton is well aware of the danger attendant upon it.

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The danger, as we see it, lies in two directions. It lies, on the one hand; in placing so great an emphasis upon the human side of Revelation that the sense of its real Divinity is blurred. And it lies, on the other hand, in magnifying the importance of the preparatory period, until the distinction between the Philosophical and the Theological works is broken down. To become entrapped in either of these pitfalls would bring the Church to ruin.

     Those who are unwilling to acknowledge the Writings as in the highest and most perfect sense Divine, while yet fully prepared to accept them as a human philosophy of surpassing wisdom, will find in the book material which can readily be twisted to confirm their view. Against this possibility the author has sought to provide by a studied statement of his case, and by an unqualified acknowledgment of the full Divinity of the Writings. But the necessity of distorting his argument will not necessarily prove a deterrent to such as do not see in the Heavenly Doctrine the Second Coming of the Lord.

     It is equally assured that the theory that there was no essential change in the mode of Swedenborg's Divine leading before and after his full illumination can be mistakenly understood to place the Philosophical Works on a plane of Divine Authority no whit lower than that of the Theological Works. This would be so to bind the conscience of the Church in matters of philosophical speculation as to hamper and restrict its growth.

     Neither of these extremes is contemplated by Dr. Acton; nor are they the logical consequents of his position. He holds the Writings to be Divinely inspired and the veritable Word of God. And he regards the Philosophical Works as a Divinely provided but none the less subsidiary aid to the understanding of that Revelation, to be interpreted and understood wholly in the light of Revealed Truth.

     For our own part, we regard his book as highly valuable in strengthening an affirmative attitude of mind toward the essential truth of Swedenborg's philosophical system; and we consider it a definite contribution to the thought of the Church with regard to the nature of Swedenborg's Divine inspiration. The evidence adduced makes the idea of guidance by an external, viva voce dictation an untenable conception; yet it does not for that reason impair the idea that through the Heavenly Doctrine there has been given to the world a body of Divine Truth which is absolute and infinite in character.

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     Why, after all, should such truth necessarily be given by external dictation? Why cannot the Word of God be imparted through a human instrument by an internal illumination through the soul? To say that this is done, does not per force imply, either that it is the product of a man's own intellectual powers, or that, in rationally understanding it, he must perceive all its infinite possibilities. To admit the former would be to make of it a purely human thing, limited, liable to error, and subject to the imperfections of mortal man. To admit the latter would be to postulate a finite mind capable of an infinite understanding (which is an obvious contradiction), or to require that the revelator himself be Divine.

     The third possibility, and the one which seems to be the truth, is that Swedenborg received the revelation of the Writings understandingly, and to all appearance as the result of his own labors, but that none the less he was in this respect Divinely guided, namely, that the form into which he was unknowingly led to couch those Writings was such that they might contain within them, enfolded as in a protecting body, a soul of Infinite and Eternal Truth, unrealized by Swedenborg, indeed, and yet present for the everlasting instruction of men, bringing the Lord Himself immediately present in His Divine and Glorified Human. At any rate, however inadequate our present understanding of the problem, the book before us opens an engaging avenue of thought, and suggests an interpretation of how the Lord has made His Second Coming through Emanuel Swedenborg that is worthy of careful consideration.

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NEW BOOK ON SWEDENBORG 1928

NEW BOOK ON SWEDENBORG       Rev. E. R. CRONLUND       1928

     SWEDENBORG. A Brief Presentation of his Development from Scientist and Philosopher to Seer, and a Few Outlines of his Doctrines. By Gustaf Baeckstrom. Appelviken, Stockholm: Bokforlaget Nova Ecclesia, 1927. Paper, 12mo, pp. 152. Price, Kr. 2.50.

     In this tastefully printed booklet, Mr. Baeckstrom has met a distinct need. While much about Swedenborg has appeared in the literature of his native land during recent years, nothing like this introduction to a knowledge of his life and teachings has been available to the missionary. To meet his own requirements in this field, the author has at the same time supplied a volume that will be of use among readers of the Swedish language everywhere. The scope of the work is shown by the subjects of the thirteen chapters, as follows:

     I. Swedenborg's parental home and his youth, and also something about his personality and development.
     II. Studies and work. His thoughts concerning creation.
     III. Search for the soul and its connection with the body.
     IV. A few words concerning the significance of Swedenborg's preparation by means of the scientific studies.
     V. The "religious crisis."
     VI. Swedenborg was not a spiritist.
     VII. The most essential thing in Swedenborg's work,-the revealing of a spiritual content in the Sacred Scripture.
     VIII. The Second Coming of the Lord.
     IX. The absolute unity in God.
     X. The unity of mankind from the unity in God.
     XI. The conjunction of charity and faith.
     XII. The conjunction of husband and wife.
     XIII. The great Ages.

     The book opens with the statement: "There is probably no Swede who has been the subject of so much discussion as Swedenborg. He is one of the riddles of the world.

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His books have been spread in many languages, and his doctrines have been received with interest by men in almost all parts of the world, by persons of such different bent and culture as Europeans and Americans of all classes, Indian philosophers, Japanese students, Basuto negroes and other natives in South Africa, and have called forth a more abundant literature concerning him than concerning any Other Swede."

     The author speaks of the universality of the doctrines of the New Church, and of the fact that they are suited and accommodated to all peoples and to all times. Yet it was because of his religious claims that Swedenborg, the great scientist and philosopher, had been neglected and forgotten in his own country. "When foreigners, especially the English, had dug Swedenborg's greatness from the grave, than he was also acknowledged by his native land."

     Concerning the difference as to form of mind between Swedenborg and his father, he says, quoting from Lamm: "He cannot, like his father, wander about unconcernedly in the great fairyland of wonders, rejoicing in every new manifestation as a sign of the power and goodness of God. His heart cannot find rest until he has had an explanation, until he has been enabled to see clearly the connection in the effect." Further he quotes Liljedahl: "One does not read his (Swedenborg's) many letters to Benzelius without perceiving the breath of a spirit that is free from selfish calculations and personal ambition. Truth was everything to this devoted investigator." Mr. Baeckstrom then goes on to say: "What especially distinguished Swedenborg was his practical turn of mind.

     The effort to explain the riddles of existence went hand in hand with the effort to make use of his insight for practical purposes.

     Thus he was not a dreamer, visionary, or fantast, but an intensely active, capable man. . . . For example, when he speaks of the wonders of nature, he displays the hidden treasures of minerals in the mountains, but does not depict the majesty of the high rocks or the grandeur of the forests. When describing his sea voyages, he never speaks of the play of the waves or the glitter of the billows. His thoughts are occupied more with the origin of things, and with the use they perform, than with their outer appearance." (P. 17.)

     He was praised and extolled on account of his great learning and brilliant intellect.

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"No wonder, then, that in his youth he seems to have possessed a certain self-assurance, and is seized with the love of scientific fame, which, during the time of his religious crisis, he comes to regard as his worst evil, against which he fights, and prays to God, asking for 'the grace to be Thine, and that I be not left to myself'; asks to be delivered from his own selfhood, and to become 'an instrument with which God does according to His pleasure.'" (P. 20.)

     "He made journeys during the whole of his life. Nevertheless, he always remains the warm patriot who thinks of sending home rare books and instruments that are needed for the scientific work in Sweden. In spite of all the success in foreign lands, he always longs to return to his poor native land. He is always a Swede." (P. 22.)

     In pleading with his readers to make themselves acquainted with the teachings of the Writings before passing judgment upon them, Mr. Baeckstrom refers to the case of Dean Ekebom of Gothenburg, who confessed that he had never read or seen any of the Writings, that he knew nothing of their teachings, and yet publicly declared them to be "seductive, heretical, and offensive, and in the highest degree to be condemned."

     The book ably shows how Swedenborg was prepared from his childhood for the work he was to do. It clearly and fearlessly declares the doctrine of the Divine Authority of the Writings. Speaking of the fact that it was God Himself who came into the world, the author says: " Love did not send another, or did not let some one else go in its place. Love Itself came. If He who came was not God, then He who came and gave His life for His friends would have had greater love than God. For 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'"

     Mr. Baeckstrom writes in a clear, concise style, which is very readable, and the book is evidently the result of much careful study and investigation. The Church in Sweden is certainly to be congratulated upon this valuable addition to its literature.

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NOTES AND REVIEWS. 1928

NOTES AND REVIEWS.       Editor       1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office a Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor                    Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager          Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address and business communications should be sent to the Business Manager.

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     DID BLAKE MEET SWEDENBORG?

     In the paper on "William Blake and the Imagination," which appears elsewhere in our present issue, Mr. Pryke suggests that Blake "probably came into personal contact with Swedenborg, and was influenced by him to no small degree." We do not know Mr. Pryke's authority for the supposition that Blake met Swedenborg, but it may be that he refers to William Allingham's suggestion, cited below. As they were for a time contemporary residents in London, the meeting of the two men may be regarded as possible; but as Blake (born in 1757) was under fifteen years of age when Swedenborg died (1772), it could hardly be said that the youth, if they did meet, was personally "influenced by him to no small degree," although he later came under the influence of the teachings of the New Church. The following, from The Life of William Blake, by Alexander Gilchrist, seems to be an eminently fair statement of the case:

     Another still more memorable figure, and a genius singularly germane to Blake's own order of mind, the "singular boy of fourteen," during the commencement of his apprenticeship, may "any day have met unwittingly in London streets, or walked beside, a placid, venerable, thin man of eighty-four, of erect figure, and abstracted air, wearing a full-bottomed wig, a pair of long ruffles, and a curious-hilted sword, and carrying a gold-headed cane,-no Vision, still flesh and blood, but himself the greatest of modern Vision Seers,-Emanuel Swedenborg by name; who came from Amsterdam to London in August, 1771, and died at No. 26, Great Bath Street, Coldbath Fields, on the 29th of March, 1772."

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This Mr. Ailingham pleasantly suggests in a note to his delightful collection of lyrical poems, Nightingale Valley (1860), in which (at last) occur a specimen or two of Blake's verse. The coincidence is not a trivial one. Of all modern men the engraver's apprentice was to grow up the likest to Emanuel Swedenborg; already by constitutional temperament and endowment was so; in faculty for theosophic dreaming, for the seeing of visions while broad awake, and in a matter-of-fact hold of spiritual things, To savant and to artist alike, while yet on earth, the Heavens were opened. By Swedenborg's theologic writings, the first English editions of some of which appeared during Blake's manhood, the latter was considerably influenced; but in no slavish spirit. These writings, in common with those of Jacob Boehme, and of the other select mystics of the world, had natural affinities to Blake's mind, and were eagerly assimilated. But he hardly became a proselyte or "Swedenborgian" proper; though his friend Flaxman did. In another twenty years we shall find him freely and-as true believers may think-heretically criticizing the Swedish seer from the spiritualist, not the rationalist, point of view; as being a Divine Teacher, whose truths however were "not new," and whose falsehoods were "all old." (The Life of William Blake, by Alexander Gilchrist.)

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STATEMENT BY THE BISHOP 1928

STATEMENT BY THE BISHOP       N. D. PENDLETON       1928

     THE ORDINATION OF A MINISTER INTO THE THIRD DEGREE.

To the Council of the Clergy and
Executive Committee in Joint Session.
Gentlemen:
     It does not fall within my province to determine or materially influence the choice of my successor in the office of Bishop of the General Church; yet it is my duty to see to it that the ordaining degree of our priesthood is perpetuated, and that steps be taken, in case of need, to provide for Episcopal assistance. With this in mind, I sent to the Ministers, the members of the Executive Committee, and to the Treasurer of the Academy, the following letter:

"Dear Sir:
     The death of the Bishop Emeritus has made advisable the ordination of a minister into the third degree of the priesthood, without undue delay; this, in addition to the pending ordination of the Rev. Robert James Tilson into that degree.

     While all ordinations pertain to the Episcopal office, yet it is my earnest desire that this proposed ordination should meet with the approval of the Church. With this in view, I ask your advice, which I trust you will freely give, as to any and every phase of the subject. Especially do I wish to know which of our ministers you and the Church as you know it would desire to see raised to the highest grade of our priesthood.

     Unless otherwise instructed, I shall regard your answer as confidential.
     As ever yours,
          (SIGNED) N. D. PENDLETON."

     Of the sixty-one persons addressed, fifty-nine have to date replied.

     I desire to express my gratitude to these gentlemen.

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They responded freely, giving not only valued advice but also evidence of deep interest in the subject. The two entwined factors, namely, the perpetuation of the third degree and the need of Episcopal assistance, were fully discussed. Other phases of the subject were also touched upon. On the whole I feel that I have before me a fair representation of the complex mind of the Church on this important subject.

     In addition to my request for individual advice, I now bring the subject up in a more formal way. This joint body is the acknowledged representative of the General Assembly. It is competent to speak for the Church. I ask, therefore, whether in your judgment, the Church is willing and desirous to proceed with the proposed ordination; and if so, is it your pleasure that I should name the candidate at this time.

     Please give this your serious consideration. To aid you, I will, in so far as I can with propriety, answer any question you may ask.
     (SIGNED) N. D. PENDLETON.

     The above communication was read by the Bishop to the Joint Council on the morning of February fourth. The members of the Council, having no certain knowledge of the one whom the Bishop had in mind to name, spoke to the question. At the beginning there were some tentative suggestions as to the advisability of delay, but as speaker after speaker arose it became evident that the desire for immediate procedure would prevail, and at the last this desire became a powerful emotion, expressive of the feeling of the Church.

     The Bishop then arose and said: "This meeting has convinced me that the Church desires to proceed in this matter without delay, and the letters received have convinced me that I shall have with me the heart and mind of the Church in ordaining the Rev. George de Charms into the third degree of the priesthood."

     This announcement was received, not only with applause, but with other signs of deep feeling.

     Subsequent to the meeting it was decided to ordain the Rev. George de Charms on the 11th day of March, 1928.
     (SIGNED) N. D. PENDLETON.

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REPLY TO A REVIEW 1928

REPLY TO A REVIEW       Rev. HUGO. LJ. ODHNER       1928

Editor, NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     It may not be usual for an author to reply to a review, but since it is also an unusual experience to be charged with inculcating "heresy" and "priestcraft"-as I am in THE NEW-CHURCH HERALD of November 19th, 1927, in the course of a review of my First Elements of the True Christian Religion-I shall ask you for the space which I surmise would not be so willingly afforded me in the HERALD. The review is by "S. J. C. G.," and reads as follows:

     The plan of the little work is quite admirable, and the sequence of questions develops each theme in a simple manner. With the larger part of the teaching we can cordially concur. But on certain points, we affirm that the dogmatic statements made are based on false assumptions, and do not state the true doctrine as taught by Swedenborg. A note at the end of the chapter on The Word refers to "the inspired theological writings of Swedenborg," and a further note on question 13 (P. 67) runs: "Divine revelation, to be the Lord's Word, must proceed from His mouth. That the writings of Swedenborg are from the mouth of the Lord alone is taught in De Verbo xiii, in the little work called Ecclesiastical History, in Coronis 18, in Invitation 38, in Apoc. Explained 1183, in the Preface to Apoc. Revealed (at the end), and throughout the writings." This is, of course, the fundamental heresy of the General Church. Swedenborg states, and we are sure he states truly, "that from the first day of that call I have not received anything whatever pertaining to the doctrines of that church from any angel, but from the Lord alone while I have read the Word." (T. C. R. 779.) But nowhere does he state that he wrote under divine inspiration, or that his writings were verbally dictated. A few passages from works Swedenborg did not publish are quoted to support the statement, "That the writings of Swedenborg are from the mouth of the Lord alone"; but such passages are violently strained to confirm an assumption that has no warrant from the works Swedenborg saw through the press.

     Again, it is a gross misrepresentation of what Swedenborg has written in The True Christian Religion to state: "The institution of the New Church in the Spiritual World on the 19th day of June, 1770, is noted in T. C. R. 791, 108." (p 72.) The chapter VII, " Sacraments and Institutions," opens with the question: What are the Sacraments? and it is rightly stated, "The Sacraments, which are two, and are called Baptism and the Holy Supper, are holy acts of worship ordained by the Lord Jesus Christ" (p. 56). But in between the questions dealing with these are questions regarding "the rite of confirmation," and following the questions relative to the Holy Supper, is a question concerning "the sacred rite of Betrothal"; and the answer affirms, "It is according to divine order . . . " (p. 62).

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The "neophyte "may easily be misled to suppose that the institutions devised by the General Church have the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, as have the two Sacraments.

     This little work is issued on behalf of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and it is frankly stated that "application for membership must be made to the Bishop of the Church, who grants a certificate of membership. After a person has thus become a member of the General Church, he is eligible to join some society". . . (p. 74). This sectarianism with its attendant priestcraft is inculcated throughout; and there is no reference to the Church Universal.

     Some answers define terms by first stating what they do not mean, and should be recast (e.g., pp. 40, 41). With ample space to spare, it is a pity that the Lord's Prayer has not been printed in full (p. 22).
     S. J. C. G.

     The reviewer is quite appreciative of the merits of our little catechism; but just as he reaches the point where he might be expected to recommend it to his reader, he instead breaks the sad news that really "on certain points" it does "not state the true doctrine as taught by Swedenborg," but voices "the fundamental heresy of the General Church,"-the heresy that the Writings are "the inspired theological writings of Swedenborg," and that, being inspired into Swedenborg, they were expired from the mouth of the Lord. And, toward the end, having cited our frank and bold admission that, for joining the General Church, application for membership must be made to the Bishop of the Church, who grants a certificate of membership, and thus makes the applicant eligible to membership in one of the Societies, the HERALD reviewer triumphantly points out that herein lies hidden papacy and perdition!

     "This sectarianism, with its attendant priestcraft, is inculcated throughout (the book)," writes the reviewer. Come now, S. J. C. G., surely this pompous announcement needs to be backed by some definite evidence. Whose souls have we damned, or what minds have we swayed persuasively? Whose spiritual freedom have we threatened? If there be a spiritually progressive religious society more free than ours from the rule of human authority, and from the bigotry of superstition, and from sectarian ill-will; whose laity and priesthood are more free to cooperate in their respective fields of uses within the Church without encroaching upon each others' freedom, and thus without hampering the illustration and development of spiritual life; let us by all means know!

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For from such would we learn, as modest pupils, since it is such a state of mutual freedom and perfect reaction that is enjoined in the Writings, and is our aim to obtain; even if, being human, we cannot boast a full achievement. The sole reason for our episcopal mode of government is the teaching of the Writings on the subject: "In the church there must be a mitred prelate, parish priests, and under them curates." (Coronis 17.) Such is the recommended order, since "in order that anything may be perfect, there must be a trine in just order, one under another, and communication between them." (Ibid.)

     S. J. C. G. also seems to be afraid that we will imitate Rome in multiplying sacraments! And this because of our explaining the ideas underlying Confirmation and Betrothal, with references to the Writings. In regard to the sacred rite (not "sacrament") of Betrothal, the Catechism states: "It is according to divine order. . . " This reply is constructed from C. L. 301 et seq. and no. 21 (at the end), where it is shown that a priest should be present at the solemn betrothal. But the phrase, "it is according to divine order," causes the reviewer to comment: "The 'neophyte' may easily be misled to suppose that the institutions devised by the General Church have the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ as have the two Sacraments"(!)

     What does S. J. C. G. mean? "Consent," we read in C. L. 301, "is to be strengthened and confirmed by a solemn betrothal." "Conjugial love, precipitated without order and its modes, burns out the marrows (i.e., the interiors of the mind and of the body) and is consumed." "If a man and woman precipitate marriage without order, not looking to the Lord, nor consulting reason, throwing aside betrothal and yielding only to the flesh, from the burning heat of which, if that love commences, it becomes external and not internal, and thus not conjugial. . . ." (C. L. 312.) "By betrothal the mind of each is prepared for conjugial love." (C. L. 302.)

     Why, then, should the NEW-CHURCH HERALD suggest that betrothal is an institution "devised by the General Church"? The state of betrothal is not a sacrament, for it has respect to a human relationship-that of man and woman. But it is the outward guarantee of conjugial love and its ideals, and is given to us in the body of our Revelation for the use of the New Church, and for a protection against that very sphere of animality which at this day is threatening to engulf the world, destroy marriage, and dull the perceptions of men to any of the finer shades of good or ill.

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Certainly it is "of divine order" that betrothal should precede marriage. Divine order is the order revealed by the Lord. If we should accept the suggestion of our critic, that only the two sacraments have "the authority of Jesus Christ," then the orderliness of marriages and ordinations Would also be questioned, despite the teachings of the Word and the Writings.

     But the real trouble with S. J. C. G. seems to be that he shares the philosophy of those doctors and learned men, from clergy and laity, who are spoken of in C. L. 5331 who, when the truths revealed by the Lord were sent down to them, murmured, What is this? . . .What matters it whether we know these things or not? Are they anything more than the progeny of the brain?" This is more than S. J. C. G. would say openly. He would probably say that he "believes" in Swedenborg, but only in what Swedenborg published, not what he wrote in manuscript with a view to publication, or wrote to his friends! When, for instance, we quote De Verbo xii, Eccl. Hist., Core. Is, Inv. 38, Apoc. Exp. 1183, in support of the teaching that the Writings are "divinely inspired, and from the mouth of the Lord alone," S. J. C. G. tries to belittle the authority of these MS works written by Swedenborg. "This," he writes, "is the fundamental heresy of the General Church." And he goes so far as to declare that Swedenborg "nowhere states that he wrote under divine inspiration, or that his writings were verbally dictated. A few passages from works Swedenborg did not publish are quoted to support the statement, "That the writings of Swedenborg are from the mouth of the Lord alone, but such passages are violently strained to confirm an assumption that has no warrant from the works Swedenborg saw through the press."

     The insidious implication of the reviewer that Swedenborg wrote one thing in private, and published a different thing, is so intolerable as to merit instant rebuke. Swedenborg taught one doctrine at all times. When the posthumous Apocalypse Explained states, "It has been granted to me to . . . perceive distinctly what came from the Lord, and what came from the angels; that which came from the Lard has been written, and that which came from the angels has not been written" (1183), it is a statement of the same fact as is spoken of in the Preface of the Apocalypse Revealed, published by himself, where Swedenborg claims "singular enlightenment, and thus revelation," and adds, "Do not believe, therefore, that I have taken anything there from myself, or from any angel, but from the Lord alone" which is again explained further in Spiritual Diary 1647 and 4034, and restated in T. C. R. 779, where the heading also states that the Lord's Second Coming was affected by a man whom the Lord "filled with His Spirit" (i.e., inspired) "to teach the doctrines of the New Church through the Word from Him."

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     But what earthly use is it for S. J. C. G. to ask us for any doctrinal "warrants from the works Swedenborg saw through the press," if he does not believe even these works to be Divinely inspired? We note here as a matter of interest that it is the teaching of A. C. 6597, published by Swedenborg himself, that the expositions of the spiritual sense, there to be found, were "dictated to me (Swedenborg) from heaven"! The precise meaning of "dictated" can only be judged from other passages, especially in the posthumous Writings. It was not a viva voce dictation, such as the prophets enjoyed, but a dictate of perception. "Verbal" dictation, therefore, implies a different state than Swedenborg's.

     Is it not peculiar and puzzling that New Churchmen should be called to task for "heresy" because they value and believe the revelation upon which the New Church is founded,-the revelation without which the New Church would not exist, which gives the laws of order and progress to the New Church, which restores for the New Church the means of her regeneration,-the understanding of the Word!

     Why can not New Churchmen go back to their "first love," stop quibbling about terms, and work for the increase rather than for the decrease of their common faith? Why haggle? Why call Swedenborg inspired, yet not his Writings? Why try to introduce a specious distinction between the Doctrine as given to Swedenborg from the mouth of the Lord, and the Doctrine published by Swedenborg upon the Lord's own command? How could the Lord command him to publish these doctrines if they were not worthy to bear the Divine imprimatur, or be worthy of the name of Divine Revelation? But all this evasion is mere sophistry. The reviewer should admit from T. C. R. 779 that the Doctrine of the New Church in the abstract is "continuous truths, laid open by the Lord through the Word" (T. C. R. 508), and is a Revelation from God, not from any angel, and that, in itself, it is the Second Advent of the Lord.

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     In the Apocalypse Revealed (published by Swedenborg himself) the statement is definite that the male child in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse "signifies the doctrine of the New Church. . . . The Doctrine which is here meant is the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem (London, 1758), also the Doctrines concerning the Lord, the Sacred Scripture, and concerning Life according to the Precepts of the Decalogue (Amst. 1763)." Swedenborg then relates how the Dragonist Spirits stood threateningly about him while these books were being written. (A. R. 543) Only if we see that these works were the Doctrine, Divinely organized from inspiration, can we understand how Swedenborg could have written in the Diary (6102) that those in the spiritual world who had insulted "the five works concerning Heaven and Hell, and the rest" had been told "that they are not my works, but the Lord's, who desired to reveal the nature of heaven and hell and the duality of the life after death, etc.," . . . "This revelation is the male child whom the woman brought forth and the dragon wished to devour."

     Who can fail to See that unless the Writings were inspired, and "from the mouth of the Lord alone" (as is said in De Verbo 13), it would be impossible for Swedenborg to write about "the books which were written by the Lord by means of me" (Eccl. Hist.), or to receive a Divine command to inscribe, "This book is the Advent of the Lord," on two copies. And further, what student can fail to see that the unpublished MSS always teach the same doctrine as the parallel published works, although at times they may give some different details in the development? If Swedenborg was not inspired in his writing, his whole doctrine is only so much worthless speculation,-a grand structure of guess-work; and he would then be culpable of obvious insincerity and of impertinent presumption in speaking in the name of the Lord. But if Swedenborg was the revelator of that marvelous four-square city of Heavenly Doctrine, whose truth so fills our minds with beauty and adoration that we see therein the Lord in His Second Advent, returned in glory to feed the nations with a rod of iron, there it is the critics, like S. J. C. G., who must learn to constrain their ready self-intelligence, and see to it, like good shepherds, that they lead not their flocks too far afield; see to it also, like true watchmen, that they discern the real dimensions of the Divinely lighted Jerusalem, and not walk off into the empty air, chasing some vision of their own!

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     Yours truly,
          HUGO LJ. ODHNER.

     P. S. In connection with the subject of "The New Church and Physical Healing," treated recently in your pages, I suggest the following as a contribution to the discussion:

     PRAYERS FOR HEALTH.

     Prayers for health, wealth, and other external things, whether for ourselves or for others, "savour not of the things that be of God, but the things that be of men" (Matt. xvi, 23). Should an adult instructed New Churchman approach the Lord with such a request? He can indeed ask the Lord for aid and means to do his duty, in such a held and with such powers as Providence may indicate; but his prayer for health must be qualified by the question whether his sickness has as yet accomplished its use to his soul; even as the prayers of those who are in temptation must be qualified by a similar thought. In the face of the greater issues of spiritual life, however, health seems a paltry thing to ask the Lord for. "Take no thought for your life, or for your body. . . 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 his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you."

     The whole of Providence, with its spiritual and natural laws, is continually working for eternal, not temporal, ends. Shall we presume to suggest a deviation from this ruling? If the Lord's purpose is aided by a recovery, His Providence will effect a cure through natural means diligently sought; especially when man has faith in the Lord's power so to heal, and therefore cooperates with the laws of health. The spirit should pray for spiritual things; and if it desires power for good uses, it naturally trains its body to act in orderly ways, rather than making the spirit serve as the voice for natural affections.

     If these qualifications are felt as essential, no man can pray for a definite natural boon "believing that he will receive it." "He who is in faith from the Lord asks for nothing but what contributes to the Lord's kingdom and to himself for salvation. . . . It is impossible for the angels of heaven to wish and so to ask for anything else, and if they do so they could have no faith that they would receive it." (A. E. 815:10.)
      H. L. ODHNER.

     [South African New Church Open Letter, August, 1922.]

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ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS 1928

ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS       Various       1928

     BRYN ATHYN, PA., JANUARY 31 TO FEBRUARY 4, 1928.

     COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY.

     The Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the Council of the Clergy was held in the Council Hall of the Cathedral at Bryn Athyn, January 31 to February 3, Bishop N. D. Pendleton presiding. There were 20 pastors and I minister in attendance 4 authorized candidates were also present by invitation.

     The meetings included four regular morning sessions, one public session, and a special afternoon session devoted to the particular problems of active pastors. At the latter part of each morning's session, a paper was read, followed by more or less extended discussion.

     On Tuesday morning, January 31, the Rev. Homer Synnestvedt presented a spicy and practical paper on "Authoritarianism," plea for more perceptive adjustment, in these difficult times, of the respective spheres of authority and individual freedom. On Wednesday morning, the Rev. Theodore Pitcairn read a brilliant and highly interesting analysis of "The Ultimate Source of Philosophic Ideas." This paper aroused much discussion; and it was generally agreed that the Academy of the New Church was fortunate in having the benefit of Mr. Pitcairn's course in "The History of Philosophy." On Thursday morning, the Rev. L. W. T. David read a profound study on "The Word and the Divine Human." A group of new ideas embodied in this paper aroused a good deal of favorable comment; and it was felt that the speaker had made a distinctly valuable contribution to the already extensive literature on this subject. On Friday morning, the Rev. E. E. Iungerich contributed a scholarly review of "Swedenborg's Concept of the Universal Mathesis," in which several striking pieces of hitherto unknown material were brought to light and analyzed.

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     The regular Public Session of the Council was held in the Auditorium of De Charms Hall on Thursday evening, February 2d, when a considerable audience listened to an address by the Rev. Gilbert B. Smith on "The Kingdom of Heaven." A lively discussion of various points in the Address followed.

     On Friday afternoon, February 3, a special session was devoted to the problems of the active pastors of societies, who were thus enabled to have special conference with the Bishop on the particular needs arising out of actual pastoral activities.

     At one of the regular sessions of the Council, the Rev. George de Charms presented the following Resolution, which was unanimously passed by a rising vote:

     WHEREAS Bishop Emeritus William Frederic Pendleton, for many years our revered and trusted leader, has in the fulness of days been gathered to his fathers, therefore

     BE IT RESOLVED that we, the Council of the Clergy, record our deep affection for him, and express our gratitude for the distinguished service to the Church which he, under Providence, performed. Because of the wise counsel whereby he brought our body safely through a most critical period, giving it enduring form and organization; because our present prosperity and the rich promise for the future which we now enjoy are, in large measure, the result of his labor and devotion; and because we had learned to find strength continually in his personality and friendship;-his removal to the spiritual world leaves us with a profound sense of loss. Yet we acknowledge the mercy of the Lord in his resurrection to new life and joy and higher service. For his memory, which will long abide with us an inspiration, we are deeply thankful. The story of his life remains with us a token of the Lord's Divine protection of His Church,-a token from which we draw courage to meet the problems of the future in the same spirit of trust and quiet confidence which he so markedly exemplified. May the principles for which he fought become ever more fully established with us, that in them he may be spiritually present still, to aid the work to which his life on earth was so completely given. Then will our seeming loss be, in the sight of the Lord, only the means to a more interior blessing, both of our departed friend and of the Church he loved.

     At another session, the Rev. E. E. Iungerich moved the following resolution, which also was passed unanimously:

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     RESOLVED: That in commemorating the departure of our brother, Ernst Deltenre, to his new field of uses in the spiritual world, we, his associates of the Council of the Clergy, feel a deep concern for the widow and orphans who are now deprived of his care and guidance, and for his native land now bereft of one who had labored for fifteen years to bring to it the light of the Lord in His Second Advent. Both, however, are in the Lord's hand; and we trust that the work so happily begun there will not fail entirely for the lack of another standard-bearer. With our brother, though we may grieve at the severance of the earthly ties that joined, still we cannot but rejoice. Surely one, whose last weeks on earth were devoted to seeing that his daily work should be completed faithfully, must enter into the spiritual world with the vigorous desire to continue there his earnest labors for the Lord's Kingdom. Our affection goes with him.
COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY AND GENERAL FACULTY. 1928

COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY AND GENERAL FACULTY.       Editor       1928

     The 1928 joint meetings of the Council of the Clergy and the General Faculty, held on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons, were unusually inspirational, both to ministers and educators. Besides the members of the Academy General Faculty and Corporation, and all of the ministers, two teachers were present from Glenview, one from Toronto, and one from Kitchener. The average attendance at the meetings was 57.

     The first paper, by Mr. Eldric S. Klein, illustrated the re-discovery of the civilizations of the lands of the Ancient Church, by a study of the history of the Hittites. After reviewing the archaeological discoveries in this field, and the literature of the subject, the speaker presented an outline of the chronological history of this long-forgotten people. He concluded that great opportunities awaited the New Church scholar equipped with the knowledge of a Divinely revealed science of correspondences. In late years, the Hittites had emerged from the almost total obscurity of twenty-five hundred years; but we of the New Church possessed the spiritual history of the race, and the key to their religious life.

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We also knew that heaven is from the human race, and that the life of the men of the other world has its ultimate resting-place in the minds of the men of this world; and that, as they of the other world entered into our thoughts and speech, they came, as it were, into a fuller life.

     Miss F. M. Buell's paper on "The Poets and Eternal Justice" was a keen and powerful analysis, cast into epigrammatic forms, of the varying concepts of the Divine Justice held by poets. The speaker emphasized the need that our justice should exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees-whether ancient or modern-in evaluating the poets. The relation of poetry to ethics was usually debated by people who were preoccupied with morals to the exclusion of religion. Justice was spiritual, moral, and civil; but putting moral justice in the first place, and spiritual justice in the second place, excluded a higher judgment of literature. The aim should be, to know a poet's attitude toward eternal justice-whether he believed that there was anything eternal, or in eternal injustice, fate, caprice, or providence. Few poets (or other men), however, saw life sanely, or as a whole. The, description of life and Providence in the Spiritual Diary, no. 4393, typified the situation of many of the poets. The Book of Job, Aeschylus, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dante, and many modern writers, called forth enlightening comments. Miss Buell's very enjoyable address was followed by a general and very discursive discussion, which ranged all the way from the personal literary preferences of the speakers to the undying question as to what was best for little children.

     At the final joint meeting of ministers and educators, on Thursday afternoon, the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner read a stimulating paper on "The Sub-Conscious as a Factor in Education." Beginning with a critical and sometimes playful review of the new "science" of psycho-analysis, he contrasted certain of its outpourings and excesses with the New Church teacher's authoritative knowledge of the sub-conscious depths of the child's mind and nature. He pointed out that, however suggestive the data provided by modern teachers, it was highly necessary to relate them to the true scheme of the mind as unfolded in the Doctrines. Particularly must we stress that the mind is itself a vessel,-the vessel of personality; and not a mere assortment of impersonal processes. Furthermore, the mind possesses faculties which, spiritually construed, empower and define it as human, including Will, Understanding, Freedom, Rationality, Imagination, and Memory.

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We must not be tempted into following modern psychology in discarding the terms which represent actual ultimates of spiritual order.

     A brisk, general discussion followed the paper, as was, indeed, the case at all of the sessions. In fact, the intellectual vigor and content of these 1928 meetings surpassed, perhaps, any of our previous sessions. We Understand that the papers presented at all three sessions will appear in an early number of the Academy's JOURNAL OF EDUCATION,

     At the close of the formal Sessions, a committee of the ladies of the Bryn Athyn Society Served light refreshments. The growth of the social sphere at these occasions brings nearer the ideal of genuine professional brotherhood in the field of New Church education.
PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ASSEMBLY. 1928

PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ASSEMBLY.       Editor       1928

     The Philadelphia District Assembly took the form, as by custom in late years, of a Banquet in the Auditorium, on Friday evening, February 3, with an attendance of about 350. An astonishingly ample supper was provided, for an astonishingly small price, by Mr. Otho W. Heilman and his staff of able and willing helpers.

     Mr. Phillip C. Pendleton, as toastmaster, laconically and wittily introduced us to a series of three speeches on the rather breathtaking subject of "The Origin of Man." However, our personal determination to slumber quietly whilst this question was being settled by the Philadelphia District Assembly was rudely shaken by the fact that all the speakers were vigorous, witty, worthwhile, and not at all in mutual agreement. Mr. Randolph W. Childs introduced the question with a rather keen appraisal of the various schools of thought on the Subject,-a lucid inventory which lost nothing, under the circumstances, by a more than legal percentage of sparkling humor. The Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner delighted his hearers with a literary review of scientific reptiles and reptilian Scientists. Dr. Charles R. Pendleton threw down the gauntlet, or something almost warlike, at the feet of those who believe they understand Swedenborg's Worship and Love of God; and Dr. Alfred Acton made a powerful and (from a New Churchman's point of view) entirely unanswerable arraignment of the natural evolutionary school of thought and its hold on contemporary religious thought.

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Although general discussion was limited by the lateness of the hour, it was clear that great interest was generated in the topic of the evening. As we understand that there is a possibility that these speeches will appear shortly in the pages of NEW CHURCH LIFE, in the form of a "symposium" of opinion, we refrain from any analysis at this time.

     On Saturday evening, February 4, the local Civic and Social Club presented a comedy entitled "The Fatsy," in which some of our gifted young players did more than justice to the entertaining "plot" involved.
SUNDAY WORSHIP. 1928

SUNDAY WORSHIP.       Editor       1928

     Three services were held on Sunday, the first being a Children's Service at 9:30 o'clock. The Rev. Alan Gill delivered the address, speaking on the familiar relation as to the garments of children in heaven.

     At 11 o'clock, the regular service, followed by the monthly administration of the Holy Supper, was conducted by Bishop N. D. Pendleton, the Revs. George de Charms and W. L. Gladish assisting. Mr. Gladish preached a most acceptable sermon on the subject of "Creation" (Genesis 1:1).

     In the evening at 8 o'clock, a musical service was conducted by the Revs. George de Charms and F. E. Waelchli, the latter preaching a profound and stirring sermon on "Spiritual Elevation" (John 5:8). The choral work, the participation of the School Orchestra under the leading of Mr. Frank Bostock, and selections by the Bryn Athyn String Quartet, were noteworthy features of a delightful service.
     WILLIAM WHITEHEAD,
          Secretary.

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JOINT COUNCIL. 1928

JOINT COUNCIL.       Various       1928

     BRYN ATHYN, PA., FEBRUARY 4, 1928.

     First Session 10:00 a.m.

     1. The Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Joint Council opened with worship conducted by the Bishop.

     2. There were present:

     COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY:

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton, presiding; Revs. Alfred Acton, H. R. Alden, W. H. Alden, R. W. Brown, W. B. Caldwell, R. G. Cranch, L. W. T. David, George de Charms, C. E. Doering, Alan Gill, W. L. Gladish, E. E. Iungerich, H. L. Odhner, Theodore Pitcairn, Enoch S. Price, Gilbert H. Smith, Homer Synnestvedt, F. E. Waelchli and William Whitehead (Secretary). Total, 20.

     EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:

     Dr. F. E. Boericke; Messrs. E. C. Bostock, Paul Carpenter, G. S. Childs (Secretary), R. W. Childs, H. Hyatt (Treasurer), A. P. Lindsay, S. S. Lindsay, C. G. Merrell, A. E. Nelson, H. F. Pitcairn, Raymond Pitcairn (Vice President), and Paul Synnestvedt. Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal (Treasurer of the Academy) present by invitation. Total, 14.

     3. The Secretary read the Minutes of the Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting, which, on motion, were approved as read.

     4. The Bishop announced that the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner had been appointed a member of his Consistory.

     5. Rev. George de Charms read the Report of the Secretary of the General Church (see p. 182), which, on motion, was received and filed.

     6. Rev. William Whitehead read the Report of the Council of the Clergy (see p. 184), which, on motion, was received and filed.

     7. Mr. G. S. Childs read the following Report of the Executive Committee, which, on motion, was received and filed:

     REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

     During the past fiscal year, the Executive Committee has held five meetings, with an average attendance of nine members. Three new members have been added to the Committee, under the authority that was given to increase its membership by a total of seven. These new members are: Mr. Colley Pryke, of England; Mr. J. Henry Ridgway, of Durban, South Africa; and Mr. Nils E. Loven of Stockholm, Sweden.

180




     The passing of the Bishop Emeritus, and of the Rev. Dr. Deltenre, enabled the Committee to express to the widows, through pensions, something of the Church's appreciation of the work of these men.

     Aside from the adoption of the annual budget, and the disposition of numerous routine financial matters, the Committee has spent considerable time on matters pertaining to the Assembly in England this summer.
     Respectfully submitted,
          G. S. CHILDS,
               Secretary.

     8. Mr. H. Hyatt formally presented the last printed Report of the Treasurer of the General Church, with oral explanations and comments. After a brief discussion, the report, on motion, was accepted and filed.

     9. The Secretary read a summary of the Report of the Treasurer of the Orphanage Fund (Mr. W. C. Childs), which was accepted and filed (see p. 189).

     10. Bishop Pendleton announced that invitations had been received from the Bryn Athyn and Toronto Societies for the Fourteenth General Assembly. He further stated that a widespread feeling existed that this Assembly should be held within two years from the Assembly in London, England, as the proportion of those unable to be present in England would be relatively great enough to make the intermission of five years between Assemblies held in America seem something of a hardship. After some discussion of the time and place of the next Assembly, the following resolutions were passed unanimously:

     11. Resolved: That the Fourteenth General Assembly be held two years after the forthcoming Assembly in London, England.

     12. Resolved: That the invitation of the Bryn Athyn Society, to hold the Fourteenth General Assembly in Bryn Athyn, be accepted.

     13. Resolved: That this body deeply appreciates the invitation from the Olivet Church, Toronto, and looks forward with pleasure to a General Assembly there at an early date.

     14. After a brief intermission, the Bishop read a statement relative to the need to perpetuate the ordaining degree of the Priesthood, and to provide for Episcopal assistance. (See p. 164.)

181


After an extended discussion, the Bishop announced the early ordination of the Rev. George de Charms into the Third Degree of the Priesthood.

     15. The session adjourned at 12:45 o'clock.

     Second Session-3:15 p.m.

     16. On motion, it was voted to consider "The Program of the Thirteenth General Assembly." Copies of a suggested program were then distributed by the Secretary of the General Church. Various explanations were made by him as to the arrangement of the events, etc.

     17. On motion, it was voted to refer the question of the particular mode of reporting the Assembly proceedings to the Executive Committee.

     18. Bishop Pendleton drew attention to the placing on the docket of the General Assembly of the following subject: "Reading the Writings; and the provision of a calendar of readings for the members of the Church." This had already been actively discussed by the Council of the Clergy, which had agreed to refer it to the General Assembly. It was generally agreed that a place should be found on the program for its adequate discussion.

     19. On motion, it was unanimously agreed to print the official Assembly reports ahead of time, in pamphlet form, in order to facilitate discussion.

     20. On motion, it was agreed that the official Assembly reports would be taken up at the Third Session, on Monday, August 6, at 10 a.m.

     21. On motion, it was unanimously agreed that the important subject of the renewal of the habit of reading the Writings should be given a prominent place in the Assembly program, decision as to the time to be left to the Bishop and his Consistory.

     22. On motion, it was unanimously Resolved: That the Joint Council desires to convey to the ladies of the Bryn Athyn Society its heartfelt appreciation of their efforts in providing such delightful refreshments at the close of the afternoon meetings.

     23. The Joint Council also expressed its thanks to the donors of the flowers that graced the tables.

     24. On motion, the meeting adjourned at 4:30 o'clock.
     WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, Secretary.

182




     REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH.

     During the year 1927, 73 new members were received. Deducting 26 deaths, the net increase for the year was 47. As the total membership at the end of 1926 was 1865, this increase of 47 brings the total at the end of 1927 to 1912 members. No resignations.

     Geographically, the 13 new members received during the past year were distributed as follows:

United States           42
Canada          3     
England          7
France               7
Sweden           6
Holland          2
South Africa           4
Australia           2
               73

     These figures do not include the membership of the South African Native Missions. According to the report of the Missions to December 31, 1927, there is a total of approximately 636 native members in various parts of South Africa.     

     NEW MEMBERS.          

     January 1, 1927 to January 1, 1928.

     A. IN THE UNITED STATES.

     Ontario, California.
Miss Ruth Elizabeth Stroh

Denver, Colorado.
Miss Angella Louise Bergstrom

     Washington, D. C.
Miss Lois Eileen Stebbing

     Chicago, Illinois.
Miss Elma Cronwall
Miss Ida Cronwall
Miss Beatrice Aitken Farrington
Mr. Theodore Gladish
Miss Helen Geraldine Heimgaertner
Mr. Charles Marelius Lindrooth
Miss Christine Pearson

     Glenview, Illinois.
Mr. Werner Wolfgang Hager
Mr. Donal Clement Hicks

     Baker, Oregon.
Miss Dorothy Jane Blake

     Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Edreth Parry Acton
Miss Carola Julie Marie Carpenter
Miss Elizabeth Doering
Mr. Theodore Doering
Miss Virginia May Glebe
Miss Dorothea Homiller
Miss Doris Klein
Miss Elizabeth Park Meisel
Mr. Francis Adams Meisel
Miss Gertrude Price
Mrs. Viola Wolcott Rennels
Mr. Bertrand Louis Smith
Mrs. Bertrand Louis Smith
Mr. Gilbert Morris Smith
Mr. Homer Stuart Synnestvedt

     Fox Chase, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Smith Gilroy
Mrs. Smith Gilroy

     Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Donald Raber Coffin
Mr. Ronald Webster
Mrs. Ronald Webster

     Landsdowne, Pennsylvania.
Mr. George Charles Smith

183




     Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Miss Eliza Henrietta Broadbridge

     Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Miss Elizabeth Claire Glenn
Miss Sylvia Synnestvedt

     Woodmont, Pennsylvania.
Miss France Marcelle Vinet
Miss Lucienne Vinet

     Ocean City, New Jersey.
Miss Jean Moir

     Wadesboro, North Carolina.
Mr. Addison Franklin Lyman, Sr.
Mrs. Addison Franklin Lyman, Sr.

     B. IN CANADA.

     Kitchener, Ontario.
Mr. John Ernest Kuhl

     Toronto, Ontario.
Mrs. Charlotte Dawson
Mr. Stanley Douglas Jesseman

     C. IN ENGLAND.

     Bath.
Mr. Rupert Samuel Lewin

     Bristol.
Mr. Ivor Dawson

     London.
Miss Kate Madeline Dowling
Miss Una May Patrick
Miss Joan Gwynedd Stebbing

     Seven Kings, Essex.
Mr. Alfred Godfrey
Mrs. Alfred Godfrey

     D. IN FRANCE.

     Grez sur Loing.
Mrs. Anton Zelling

     Paris.
Mr. Henri Eustache Curpault
Mrs. Marie Louise Delhotal
Mr. Rene Hussenet
Mrs. Rene Hussenet

     Versailles.
Mr. Victor Raguenet
Mrs. Victor Raguenet

     E. IN SWEDEN.

     Stockholm.
Mr. Arne Torvald Fritjof Boyesen
Mr. Carl Ragnar Boyesen
Miss Margit Karoline Boyesen
Mr. Erik Sandstrom
Mr. Oscar Teodor Svensson
Miss Anna Henny Helena Widerstrom

     F. IN HOLLAND.

     The Hague.
Mr. Pieter Hendrik Jacob Rutger Wellenberg
Mrs. Pieter Hendrik Jricob Rutger Wellenberg

     G. IN SOUTH AFRICA.

     Durban.
Miss Denise Ruth Cockerell
Mr. Hugh Scott Forfar
Miss Audrey Iris Edith Fraser
Mr. Melville William Ivan Ridgway

     H. IN AUSTRALIA.

     Sydney.
Mr. Thomas Richard Taylor
Mrs. Thomas Richard Taylor

     DEATHS.
December 31, 1926 to December 31, 1927.
Mrs. Martha J. Powell, Middleport, Ohio, December 17, 1926.
Mr. James G. Blair, Pittsburgh, Pa., December 23, 1926.
Miss Doris Marie Bellinger, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, January 10, 1927.
Madame Regina Evelyn de St. Fern, Lausanne, Switzerland, January 16, 1927.
Mr. Ezekiel William Misson, London, England, February 16, 1927.
Rev. Ernst Deltenre, Brussels, Belgium, March 14, 1927.
Mr. Henry Hamm, Bryn Athyn, Pa., April 15, 1927.

184



Mrs. Nancy Evans, Erie, Pa., May 9, 1927.
Mr. William George Lynn, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 17, 1927.
Mr. Emil Schierholtz, Detroit, Mich., June 16, 1927.
Mr. Thomas Stigen, Seattle, Wash., July 5, 1927.
Mrs. Elizabeth Keppler Hicks, Ten Mile Run, N. J., July 5, 1927.
Mr. Jacob Ebert, Huntingdon Valley, Pa., July 7, 1928.
Mr. Hugh Bourne, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, July 28, 1927.
Mrs. Provida Hilldale, Wyoming, Ohio, August 3, 1927.
Mr. Frederick Pfleuger, Philadelphia, Pa., August 21, 1927.
Mrs. Mary A. Fincke, New York, N. Y., August 28, 1927.
Mrs. Emma Merrifield Stebbing, London, England, September 3, 1921.
Mr. Gustave Rauch, Glenview, IIl., September 15, 1927.
Mrs. Cora Rott Schoenberger, Pittsburgh, Pa., October 1, 1927.
Mr. Ferry Armstrong Thomas, Gallipolis, Ohio, October 15, 1927.
Mr. Alfred G. Bellinger, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, October 21, 1927.
Bishop Emeritus William Frederic Pendleton, Bryn Athyn, Pa., November 5, 1927.
Mrs. Luise Dexter, Meriden, Conn., December 4, 1927.
Mr. Joseph W. Vance, Los Angeles, Cal., December 14, 1927.
Mrs. John A. Wells, Bryn Athyn, Pa., December 16, 1927.

          GEORGE DE CHARMS,
               Secretary.
REPORT OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY. 1928

REPORT OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY.       WILLIAM WHITEHEAD       1928

     The present list of the Clergy of the General Church includes forty-two names. Of these, in addition to the Bishop, thirty-three are Pastors, two are Pastors pending ordination, two are Ministers, and four are Authorized Candidates.

     Since the last report, the Church has suffered the loss through death, of Bishop Emeritus William Frederic Pendleton, and of the Rev. Ernst Deltenre.

     As compared with last year, the total number on the roll of the clergy is notwithstanding deaths and other changes-virtually the same.

     During the year, the following changes transpired:

     1. On September 1st., the Rev. W. B. Caldwell gave up the duties of Secretary of the General Church, which duties were assumed pro tem. by the Rev. George de Charms, by appointment of the Bishop. As Mr. de Charms relinquished the duties of Secretary of the Council of Clergy, these were assumed in similar manner by the Rev. W. Whitehead.

     2. After the Annual Meeting of the Carmel Church, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, the Rev. L. W. T. David offered to the Bishop his resignation as Pastor. This was accepted at a special meeting of the Society held on October 18th. Since that time, he has been acting under appointment, conducting the uses of the society as usual, until new arrangements can be made.

     From the list of forty-two Pastors and Ministers, the Bishop has received reports from thirty-two, as follows: The Revs. Alfred Acton, K. R. Alden,

185


W. H. Alden, Baeckstrom, Brickman, Brown, Caldwell, Cranch, Cronlund, David, De Charms, Doering, Elphick, Gill, Gladish, Harris, Heinrichs, Hussenet, Iungerich, Lima, Morse, Odhner, Pfeiffer, Pitcairn, Price, Rosenqvist, Smith, Starkey, Synnestvedt, Tilson, Waelchli, and Whitehead.

     These reports show that the Rites and Sacraments of the Church have been performed as follows: Baptisms 90 (South African natives 123 in addition); Confessions of Faith 25; Betrothals 18; Marriages 24; Funerals 27; Holy Supper 191 to societies and circles, and 29 to private individuals.

     From the reports of individual members of the clergy, the following facts of general interest have been collated:

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton presided at District Assemblies held in Bryn Athyn, February 4-7, in Toronto, October 13-16, in Glenview, October 21-23,-the latter taking the form of a Jubilee celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Immanuel Church,-and in Pittsburgh, October 28-30. He also presided at Local Assemblies in New York, May 7-8, and in Washington and Arbutus, May 14-15. He Preached in Bryn Athyn sixteen times, and once each in New York, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Glenview; conducting services regularly in Bryn Athyn, except when absent.

     Rev. Alfred Acton reports that the Washington Society has witnessed some changes since last year. Not only has one of its leading members removed to Bryn Athyn, but in consequence of the removal of three others to Laurel, Maryland (which is situated half-way between Washington and Baltimore), it has been found feasible to have doctrinal class, and sometimes services, at Laurel as well as at Washington.

     Mr. Acton adds: "What the future holds in store for us we do not know, but we have already experienced the benefit and delight of being able to meet socially as well as in doctrinal class with our friends in Arbutus. The occasion was the dedication of a home, conducted by the Rev. T. S. Harris. Members of both societies attended, and the doctrinal class was afterwards conducted by me. We look forward to other joint meetings like this one which proved so very delightful."

     Rev. K. R. Alden during the summer conducted eleven missionary services in the Cathedral at Bryn Athyn, on Sunday afternoons. He states that: . . . "The work was especially gratifying this year because of the number of persons who became personally interested, and repeated many times. It is not too much to say that there are at least twenty persons reading the Writings, directly or indirectly as a result of these services." He also preached three times at the regular services in Bryn Athyn, once in New York, and once in Chicago.

     Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom, in addition to the usual pastoral duties, has done missionary work and visited isolated members and friends of the society in different parts of Sweden and Norway. He delivered 11 public lectures in Stockholm-attended by an average of 48 persons; 4 lectures in other places in Sweden, with an average attendance of 66 persons; and 15 lectures in Norway, with an average attendance of 173 persons. He has written a biography of Swedenborg which has been published in Stockholm.

186


New Church literature to the extent of Kr. 2,150 ($580.00) has been sold during the year. Two lectures on Swedenborg have been broadcast in Norway.

     Rev. W. E. Brickman reports that, in addition to rendering some assistance to the pastor of the Pittsburgh society, he gave an address in November (by invitation) to the Young People's League of the North Side Convention Society, on "The Law of Correspondences."

     Rev. W. B. Caldwell preached once, and assisted three times in the administration of the Holy Supper, at Bryn Athyn. In reporting that his resignation as Secretary of the General Church, and as a member of the New Church Sermons Committee, was accepted by the Bishop, as from September 1st, 1927, he adds: "It was with regret that I gave up these duties which it was a pleasure to perform for some years; but it became necessary for me to seek relief from a combination of uses which entailed continuous application throughout the year, without a needed respite during the summer.

     Rev. L. W. T. David reports that, in general, the activities of the Carmel Church have been similar to those of past years: Sunday morning worship; Friday Doctrinal Classes, with suppers every two weeks; Day School; Sunday School; Young People's Class on Sunday evenings, every two weeks; classes on Education with the Women's Guild; Men's Club, with lectures on special subjects; and general socials about once a month. For about three weeks in May and June all activities were suspended because of small-pox; none of the cases were very serious, and fortunately the outbreak was limited. He speaks appreciatively of lectures given in the society by the Revs. C. E. Doering and W. Whitehead; also of occasional visits by the Revs. Waelchli and Odhner. For the summer vacation season, Mr. Victor Gladish preached very acceptably to the society. The services of Miss Anna Heinrichs had been secured for the local school which now has a roll of fourteen pupils.

     Rev. George de Charms reports that he preached nine times in Bryn Athyn; conducted the weekly doctrinal class, in the Spring, on the subject of "The Tabernacle of Israel," and in the Fall, on "The Doctrine of Degrees. Also two group classes for young people held in alternate weeks. He also conducted the Children's Service from January to Easter, and from November 13th to Christmas. Regular meetings had been held of the Chancel Guild, the Ushers, the young ladies in charge of the children at Children's Services; and he had presided, in the absence of the Bishop, at meetings of the Pastor's Council. He taught Religion to the Seventh and Eighth grades of the Elementary School; and had charge of Religious Instruction throughout the grades. He also taught Hebrew to the Seventh grade boys, and had given several classes in Education to the Normal students of the College.

     Rev. C. E. Doening, in April, visited the Local Schools in Pittsburgh, Glenview, Toronto and Kitchener, by appointment of the Bishop and at the request of the societies. He also preached in Kitchener, Pittsburgh and Toronto; and twice assisted in the administration of the Holy Supper at Bryn Athyn.

     Rev. Frederick W. Elphick, as Superintendent of the General Church Mission in South Africa, reports that he has baptized 123 natives during the year. The Holy Supper has been administered in ten various centers in Basutoland, Transvaal, Natal, and Orange Free State.

187


The estimated number of baptized members throughout South Africa, at the end of 1927, was 636. The number of leaders in the Mission is 14; Candidates, 2; School Teachers, 14. There are eight Day Schools and four Night Schools. The local "Circle" at Alpha numbers 7. Three of these are not yet members of the General Church; but regular Sunday worship has been maintained by Mr. Elphick as pastor, throughout the year; also a weekly Doctrinal Class was commenced in September last.

     Rev. Alan Gill reports that, despite the loss of several members by removal, there has been an appreciable increase in the number of those attending services and doctrinal classes. This year it is expected to re-open the Sunday School which had to be temporarily discontinued on account of losing children to another society. He also reports a steadily increasing interest in the Men's Meetings; and speaks appreciatively of a recent visit by the Rev. K. R. Alden, when it was decided that efforts be made to have ministers or teachers come from other societies to address the men periodically.

     Rev. W. L. Gladish reports that the Sharon Church, Chicago, has had a happy and peaceful year. The full support of the pastor, which was begun last year as an experiment, seems assured of success. Six accessions were gained during the year; but four were lost by transfer to other societies. Services were conducted four Sundays in Linden Hills, Michigan; and other visits to isolated members elsewhere were made. Attendance and interest at worship and doctrinal classes have been good. The "Principles of the Academy" have been taken up at the Doctrinal Class, with good results.

     Rev. T. S. Harris reports that during the period in which he has been pastor of the Baltimore society, about twenty members of the congregation have moved to Bryn Athyn. For this and other natural reasons, the average attendance at public worship has decreased; but there is no apparent lack of interest on the part of those who attend. The financial support has not diminished, and recent prospects are more hopeful than in past years.

     Rev. Henry Heinrichs states that, in addition to the regular pastoral duties of the Denver Society, he now has a class in the Sunday School composed of first and second year High School pupils who have graduated from the purely historical and moral teaching and are now receiving doctrinal instruction, the work on The Last Judgment being the text. The class is attended also by several of the adult members. During the summer he made a trip to the North-West, visiting two places in Oregon, one in Washington, and eight in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Holy Supper was administered seven times during this journey, a detailed report of which appeared in the December issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE.

     Rev. Eldred E. Iungerich preached twice in Bryn Athyn during the year. He reports various preparations made to visit Valencia, Spain, during the coming summer.

     Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner reports that the District Assembly, held in Toronto last October, opened the new season in a spirit of zeal and genuine interest. In addition to reporting the successful progress of the usual Church activities, he says that "an unusual thing this year is the relatively many new faces we see in the congregation; a number of these newcomers are making their first acquaintance with the New Church teachings."

188


During the summer, Mr. Norman Reuter, an authorized candidate, preached seven times; and Mr. Victor Gladish, another candidate, preached once. Mr. Reuter's work was much appreciated by the society, and gave a needed relief to the Pastor. During the year, the Pastor preached in Bryn Athyn, Kitchener and Pittsburgh.

     Rev. Gilbert H. Smith reports that a noteworthy event in the life of the Glenview society was the fiftieth anniversary or Jubilee celebration, on October 21-23, at which the mortgage on the Church property was retired by Messrs. S. G. and A. E. Nelson, leaving the Society free of indebtedness. Also noteworthy was the publication of the book, The Early Days of the Immanuel Church, compiled by Mr. S. G. Nelson for the Society. This gave the first authentic printed record of our Chicago Academy foundations. The Society had benefitted by two musical festivals under the direction of Mr. J. V. Stevens. These had been of a predominantly religious nature, and had constituted major community projects, with returns of musical, cultural and social value.

     Rev. Homer Synnestvedt reports that, during the past year, the younger members of the Pittsburgh Society had been taking hold of the Church work with zeal and energy. The school, while smaller in numbers, had been maintained at a high standard of efficiency. Obstacles caused by threatened city road developments have temporarily postponed the purchase of a new and larger lot for a church building.

     Rev. Robert James Tilson, after reporting visits to various New Church people in Jersey, Cotchester, Bristol, York, and Somersetshire, reports that he presided, at the request of the Bishop, over the Twenty-first British Assembly, held at Colchester in August last; and acted as Celebrant when the Holy Supper was administered to 71 communicants. Before the Local School was discontinued in July last, he gave instruction in Religion and Hebrew.

     Rev. F. E. Waelchli reports that, in the Middle West, he had visited Middleport four times during the year; Windsor, Ont., Detroit and Erie each twice; and Columbus, Cleveland and Niles each once. In the South, visits were made to Knoxville, Tenn.; and Jacksonville, Oak Hill, Miami, and St, Petersburg, Fla. During five weeks in Los Angeles, California, the average attendance at services was 26, including children; at Sunday School 9; and at doctrinal class 17. On the Sunday of his one visit to Ontario, California, the entire circle visited there, the attendance being 36, including children. The total number of places visited during the year was 16. At Cincinnati he officiated at 29 Sunday services.
     Respectfully submitted,
          WILLIAM WHITEHEAD,
               Secretary.

189


ORPHANAGE FUND. 1928

ORPHANAGE FUND.       WALTER C. CHILDS       1928

     Statement from January 1 to December 31, 1927.

     RECEIPTS.

Cash Balance, December 31, 1926                          $ 409.71
Interest on Investments                               220.83
                                                             $630.54

     CONTRIBUTIONS.

Orphanage Boxes                          $969.47
Bryn Athyn Cathedral Boxes                243.70
Denver Society, Children's Christmas Offering      2.50
Kitchener Society, Christmas Offering           22.21
Bryn Athyn, Children's Play                     32.81
Cincinnati Society, Christmas Offering           25.00
Philadelphia Society                         25.00
Philadelphia Society, Women's Guild           11.40
New York Society, Christmas Offering           23.31
Pittsburgh Society, Christmas Offering           50.00
Mr. Harold F. Pitcairn                    360.00
Mrs. Cara S. Glenn                          100.00
Mrs. Raymond Pitcairn and Family                225.00
Mrs. Raymond Pitcairn                     600.00
Mr. Colley Pryke and Family                36.13
Mrs. W. S. Howland                     12.00
Mrs. Alice B. Harrold, Leetonia, Ohio           50.00
Mr. Alexander P. Lindsay                     5.00
Mr. Louis B. Pendleton                     20.00
Mrs. F. O. Breitstein                          10.00
Mr. D. Edwin Leonard                     3.00
Miss Josephine Sellner                     10.00
Dr. Felix A. Boericke                     50.00
Mrs. M. C. Axten                         1.00
Mr. Walter C. Childs                          25.00
Mrs. Regina Iungerich                     10.00
                                   $2,922.53
Total Receipts                                   $3,553.07

     

     DISBURSEMENTS.

Assistance to Sundry Persons                $2,640.00
Printing and Postage                          19.75
Sundries                               7.54           $2,667.29
Cash Balance, December 31, 1927                          $ 885.78

     WALTER C. CHILDS,
          Treasurer.

190


Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     GLENVIEW, ILL.

     On Friday, February 3d, Mr. William F. Junge, an active member of the Immanuel Church, passed into the spiritual world. We recognize the Providence which overrules such events for good, but his death was a great shock to this community, as he had been known to us as a healthy man in the prime of life, and had been ill but a week. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Eleanor Rauch Junge, and three boys. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Junge, returned hurriedly from Phoenix, Arizona, where they had been visiting; his absent sisters also came,-Mrs. Elise Brown from Pittsburgh, and Miss Frieda Junge from Bryn Athyn. The funeral service took place on Monday, February 6th, with an appropriate address by our Pastor, the Rev. Gilbert H. Smith, who had been recalled from Bryn Athyn, where he had been attending the Annual Council Meetings.

     Two of the teachers in our School, Miss Gladys Blackman, and Miss Helen Maynard, also attended the meetings in Bryn Athyn, part of the expenses being defrayed by the local chapter of the Sons of the Academy, in the interests of New Church education.

     The celebration of Swedenborg's Birthday was held on Friday evening, January 17th, the banquet taking the place of the usual supper. After an introduction by our Pastor, there were three speeches on the program, as follows: Dr. G. G. Starkey spoke about and from the Rational Psychology; Mr. G. A. McQueen from the Economy of the Animal Kingdom; and Mr. Louis S. Cole read from an American periodical an article quoted from a London paper, wherein a prominent physician of the time-about 1820-expressed his appreciation of Swedenborg's vast learning and advance in science, and his amazement that the world at large appeared to be ignorant of Swedenborg.

     Messrs. Fred and Donald Merrell, of Cincinnati, Ohio, were welcome visitors at the Swedenborg's Birthday banquet. Miss Susan Scalbom has returned from her visit to the Bryn Athyn Schools and her many friends there. Her little pupils of the Kindergarten welcome her return.

     A Chicago newspaper, on February 8th, contained the following item under the caption, "65 Years Ago Today": John A. Baldwin and Miss Annie E. Hall, were married on Feb. 5 at the New Church Temple by the Rev. John R. Hibbard.
     J. B. S.

     ACADEMY SCHOOLS.

     With the opening of another school year next September, the Rev. Homer Synnestvedt will be welcomed to Bryn Athyn as a member of the Faculty of the Academy of the New Church. He has recently resigned as Pastor of the Pittsburgh Society, and will discontinue his duties there on September 1st. Mr. Synnestvedt has been active in the pastoral and educational fields of the ministry for a period of thirty-seven years, and so brings the ripe fruits of experience into his new sphere of use in the Academy.

191


ADDENDUM TO DIRECTORY OF THE CLERGY 1928

ADDENDUM TO DIRECTORY OF THE CLERGY              1928




     Announcements.




     In the list of the pastors of the General Church, appearing in New Church Life for December, 1927, p. 752, it should have been stated that the Rev. Robert James Tilson was ordained into the First Degree of the Priesthood on August 23d, 1882. While Mr. Tilson's name has appeared annually in this Directory since 1919, our attention has only now been called to the fact that he was ordained by the Rev. Dr. Bayley in 1882, ten years prior to his ordination into the Second Degree of the Priesthood by Bishop Benade.

192


THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928

     of the

     General Church of the New Jerusalem

     will be held in

     London, England,

     August 3d to August 12th, 1928.

     GOING TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

     The Thirteenth General Assembly will be a unique and important occasion. It will be unique in affording an opportunity to meet members of the Church from all parts of the world, and to become acquainted at first hand with the conditions under which the Church is struggling for a foothold in England. It will help, more than anything else could possibly do, to strengthen the bonds of unity in the General Church, and will bring about a degree of mutual understanding that should have a far-reaching effect upon the future development of our movement. It holds out, in addition, an incentive to obtain the cultural advantages of foreign travel, so far as personal means may permit.     

     Nor is such trip nearly as expensive today as it was in past years. Every effort is being made by the steamship companies to reduce the cost of passage, in order to attract a larger volume of American travel. Summarizing what has been printed in previous issues of the LIFE, we may say that, on a very fair estimate, the trip to the Assembly and back from New York City can be made, Second Class for $400.00, and Tourist Third Class for $250.00. By Tourist Third Class is not meant steerege. On many of the lines the of travel are the same as the present accommodations for this mode former Second Class, and the number of interesting people taking advantage of these low rates gives assurance of congenial associations. The figures quoted above include all necessary expenses and the ten-days' stay in London. Passage must be secured in the near future.

     For detailed information and all possible assistance, write to Miss Florence Roehner, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

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WORD AND THE HUMAN FORM 1928

WORD AND THE HUMAN FORM       Rev. L. W. T. DAVID       1928


[Frontispiece: George de Charms.]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII APRIL, 1928           No. 4
     It is essential to heavenly life that the Word be seen in interior light in some degree, that is, that it be seen to be a living thing, and that its life is Divine. For the most part, this quality of the Word is seen more obviously by the simple in whom there is faith, for they see in the letter the Divine zeal, and still more do they feel the sphere of it as it touches their affections; but a larger development of the natural rational obscures the thought and dulls the sensibility with those who, in the manner of the world, are more intelligent.

     But the perception of the living quality of the Word, from seeing and feeling the zeal of the Divine Love in the letter, is still a very general and obscure perception of it, and needs to be supported by doctrinal truths, and. also perfected and elevated by them into higher and clearer light, if it is to stand against the forces of sensuous rationalism that are so powerful at this day.

     We may note here, in passing, the very well-known and lamentable fact that people have ceased to read the Word. A great change has been observed in the space of not so many years. The forefathers read the Word very dutifully, and also loved it, finding delight and inspiration, counsel and consolation, in reading it. Especially was this true of the simple, with whom the theological mysteries of the clergy passed overhead as an empty wind. Although false theology had removed, ages before, any possibility that people would see the Divinity of the Word with clear intelligence, there had Persisted among the simple the general perception which has been mentioned, and a consequent honor and faithful use of the Word.

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This could not stand alone, however, as intelligence from the light of nature became widespread. It was rapidly undermined by science and criticism, and fell of itself from lack of the internal supports which the church itself had already destroyed.

     And so, at the present day, it is more necessary than ever before that the eye of the rational intelligence be opened to see in spiritual light the things that come before it, if anything of the Divinity of the Word is to be perceived by men, and any idea of its holiness is to be preserved. Faith in the Word has been destroyed by the natural activity of the reason. It can be restored and perpetuated only by the opening of the rational faculty to spiritual activity, and thereby the establishing of an interior faith to give strength and life to the exterior faith. This is to have the "eye opened to see visions of God," and the vision that is seen by the opened reason will progress through a series, or unfold itself, so that one thing after another is seen more interiorly, even to the inmosts. Thus an intelligent faith, from its first formation, will be continually enlarged and strengthened.

     This, which is rationally true of every man who is looking toward heaven, is presented to us in a picture by the prophet Ezekiel, who saw it in vision: "And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself; and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the appearance of coals in the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man." (Ezekiel 1:4-5.)

     In the work on the Prophets and Psalms, a title is given the Book of Ezekiel, and particularly for the first chapters, "A Prophecy concerning the Lord as to the Word"; then, to explain the verses just read, "The Divine external sphere of the Word," and, "A representative of it as a man." To these last statements I would especially call your attention, as being initial to the discussion to be set before you. The same brief statements are also to be found in the work on the Sacred Scripture, no. 97.

     In a summary, the thing seen by Ezekiel is a representation of the letter of the Word, as it is apprehended by a mind that is progressively opened to a more interior sight. Such a mind is meant by the one whose "eyes are opened."

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First, the immediate sense of the letter is seen as a dark storm-cloud, terrifying, threatening to destroy. Then the active fire is seen with its brightness; for what at first appeared as Divine wrath is perceived to be the zeal of the Divine Love, acting vigorously to save. Then, by an opening of the perception-"in the midst thereof'-the Divine Love is seen, not as an obvious, vehement activity, but as the steady, abiding source of spiritual vitality and zeal. If the Word is the Fountain of Living Water, it is also the glowing ember taken from the altar that sets the prophet on fire, so that in his speech the Divine Love bursts forth in zeal;-"His ministers are a flaming fire." Yet again from the midst appeared the creatures who had the likeness of a man. By a further opening of the internal sight the Word is perceived as Human,-as the Divine Human with men. The four living creatures represent celestia and spiritual things which are in the sense of the letter, and are conjoined there; and being conjoined, they constitute a unity. And so it is said in the singular, that the Word is "represented as a man."

     II.

     When the first opening of the interior sight gives a simple and general perception of the real quality of the Word in the sense of the letter, there is insinuated a certain feeling and idea of it as living, and this has daily confirmation as long as the heart holds its simplicity. Herein has been the power of the Word in the world at large. With this as a secure foundation, the idea of it as a living form can and should be developed, until, in spiritual light, it is seen why it is living and is represented as a man-because, spiritually considered, it is a man.

     The vague perception of the living quality of the Word must first be given form, or be defined, to adapt it to the uses of the rational mind, to cause it to catch the rays of spiritual light, and to be illuminated by them. This is done by the teaching that there is an internal and an external, the internal being living and imparting life, while the external sets forth that life to view: "The Word of the Lord is like a body in which there is a living soul. The things of the soul do not appear while the mind so coheres in corporeal things that it scarcely believes in the existence of the human soul, still less that it will live after death.

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But as soon as the mind withdraws from corporeal things, the things of the soul and life become manifest. . . . It is the same with the Word of the Lord." (A. C. 1408.)

     With this distinction in our minds, it can be seen with less confusion that the Word is a man. For unless we distinguish between what is internal and what is external, between what is of the soul and what is of the body, external and internal ideas will be confounded, and the whole will be obscure. But having made the distinction, it can be seen that the Divine in the Word is the internal, and that the ardor of the Word and its power to affect are from this, while the words which present all these things are the external.

     It is then to be observed that in the Word throughout there is a sphere of things intermediate between the inmost Divine and the outmost letter. This is the realm of ideas resting upon and conveyed by the words, and is called, broadly, the "sense of the letter." Relatively to the Divine, it is to be called external; yet it is not the most external, but is within and above the words, which are the very ultimate. Hence we distinguish between the Inmost, the Intermediates, and the Ultimate. These three spheres of the Word are pointed out to us in the very beginning of Revelation, first in time and place: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Gen. 1:1.) The creating Divine, or God, is the Lord as to the Word; the heavens are the intermediate realms of ideas; and the earth is the letter. Thus this verse is an epitome of the whole Word.

     It is really much more than an epitome of the Word. It is the whole Word in its primary form, or in its seed. All things of the Word, both internal and external, are contained in this seed, though they do not appear manifestly to the understanding, just as all things of a tree, its trunk, bark, leaves, flower, and fruit, and also its vital principle, are contained in its seed. They are not visible, because they have not yet been separated from one another, unfolded, and developed, but they are there in potency. Or it is like a living ovum in which are contained all the members and organs of a human body, all the faculties of a human mind, and a living soul, though not as separate things, because the distinctions have not yet been made, and the functions have not yet been specialized. Yet its growth into the adult man and angel may be described as simply making distinct and active in specific ways the infinitude of potencies in the seemingly simple ovum.

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     It could well be said that an ovum or primitive man is represented in the first verse of Genesis, with its three primary planes or spheres: the Divine presence giving life; the intermediate receiving, tempering and carrying down that life; the ultimate reactively reciprocating. Out of that primitive ultimate grows the whole body, with all its least parts; out of the primitive intermediate grows the whole complicated mental structure within, upon, and by means of the body; while life itself from the Divine continues universally active in both.

     The same is the case with the Word, which, too, has grown from its seed. In its initiament were the three primary planes: the Divine Spirit; a truth perceived in a human mind; and a spoken word that was afterwards reduced to writing. From the primitive ultimate has grown the whole letter, which is the body of the Word and the foundation of truth. From the primitive intermediate, and along with the ultimate letter, has developed the entire plane or sphere of ideas, perceptions and knowledges of truth in human and angelic minds,-the sense of the Word, greatly variegated according to states of illustration. Inmostly the Divine Sphere had operated from the beginning to form the Word ever more completely into an image of Itself, that is, into a man.

     Since the externals and intermediates of the Word are derived entirely from men and their states, or from the church and its states (therefore being called a "cloud" and a "dark cloud"), the condition of men and the church constantly appears. Or, to follow out the thought presented before, the externals and intermediates of the Word, as they progress from their first seed to their maturity, grow into a human form like that of another man, filled with most external sensuous knowledges, facts and fallacies; having some remains of infantile innocence and peace, opposed by many and strong cupidities. There is a large store of truths, natural, moral, and spiritual, and thence conscience, obedience, disobedience, doubt, temptation, despair, prayer, victory, thanksgiving, and every other kind of thought and affection. There is imagination in parable and allegory, and experience of the spiritual world in vision. And so, when the Lord speaks to us in the sense of the letter, He speaks to us as man to man, from a knowledge of our own states and weaknesses, and in terms of our own understanding.

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It is with the Word as it was with .the human that the Lord took from the virgin, into which was gathered all the evil heredity of the race, and by which He spoke with men as one of themselves, and from a knowledge of their own states.

     A man is not called a man from his body, its figure and organization, but because the body is the habitation of a mind with human faculties of thought and affection, love and wisdom, freedom and rationality. Neither is the Word called a man from the letter,-its figure, style, and outward organization,-but from the human things that are within. The human body and the letter of the Word can be called "man" and "human" only derivatively, because they are the perfect forms for expressing those qualities which are human. The qualities that are human-that make a man-are freedom and rationality, love and wisdom, and the eternal goods and truths of heaven which he lays hold of and makes his own. It is heavenly truth that makes him wise and rational; it is the love and delight of heavenly things that set him free, and kindle a flame in his heart that will endure unto everlasting life. And these are the more human things of the Word,-truths of wisdom and rational intelligence, the good of love and of use, wholly free and active as of itself, for the most part deeply hidden within the letter, but now made abundantly manifest in the Writings. In the Revelation given for the New Church, the essential humanity of the Word appears. There it comes forth, and speaks to the spiritual mind in terms comprehensible to reasoning thought, that all who hear may heed, and be made more truly men.

     But neither are these more interior things, in and of themselves, to be called "man." They are a man solely by virtue of being recipients of the Divine of the Lord, who is the One Only True Man. In this function of being a recipient, the Word is a most perfect man, for from its beginning in its seed it contains the universal truth,-"God created the heavens and the earth." And as that seed grows, the idea of God grows, and is diversified and elaborated with many particulars, until it fills the whole Word in its three Covenants. It not only forms and sets forth the idea of God, but it is the idea of God, according to which every man finds his final abode.

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Thus it is a more perfect man, a more perfect recipient of the Divine Love, than any angel, or than the whole of heaven; it is the pattern according to which heaven is being formed. For we read in the Heavenly Doctrine: "The Word is presented before the Lord as the image of a man, in which and by which heaven is represented in its whole complex, not as it is, but as the Lord wishes it to be, namely, an image of Him." (A. C. 1871.)

     III.

     It might be well now to remind ourselves that by the Word is meant all revelation of the Divine, and, that any interior truth applies equally to every revelation; as, that "The Word is like a body in which is a living soul." (A. C. 1408.) This applies to Divine Revelation in all three of its written forms,- the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings. In each there is inmostly the Divine as a soul going forth and creating an external form and covering for itself. Each has an ultimate or body which is its letter, consisting of words arranged in an appropriate order; and this, taken by itself, is natural, earthly, and lifeless. And each has its intermediate or plane of ideas which is the sense of the letter.

     The Letter and its sense are the external form and figure of the Word, which bring down the qualities of the inmost Divine Soul into the natural states of men, and terminate them in what is corporeal, sensuous, moral, and rational. All these things are in the letter of the Word, and are its sense in all Revelation, though not equally apparent. The obvious sense, which is drawn proximately from the words, is the Sense of the Letter strictly, and is sometimes corporeal, sometimes moral, sometimes rational. Yet within this proximate sense there are always other senses so intimately bound up with it as to be inseparable from it, and called interior, spiritual, celestial, inmost, supreme, and Divine; and these also are the Sense of the Letter, for they are contained in the letter, and express themselves by it. In fact, they cannot at all be expressed to any human comprehension except in a letter. Hence, broadly, the Sense of the Letter means all the sense that is in the letter, whether apparent or arcane.

     It is the same as it is with a man. His body consists of earthly things, arranged suitably to be the dwelling place of the soul.

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Contained in this body are innumerable interior things, natural, sensuous, moral, and rational, all so intimately related to the body that they cannot be expressed, or cannot exist, except in states and motions of the body; while, conversely, the states of the body express innumerable interior things, which we understand according to our intelligence. A ruddy flush on the cheek may be read in its proximate sense as showing that the nerves have opened the capillaries of the skin so that the blood has rushed to that region with unusual activity. Who, however, but a physiologist will interpret it so literally? Do we not, rather, understand immediately an affection or passion of anger or of love, as the case may be? And then, if we can, we perceive an affection of good or of truth in vigorous activity within. It might spring from loyalty to a spiritual doctrine, or it might be an incipient state of the heavenly conjugial, and yet all this is the sense expressed and read in the state of the body.

     So with the letter of Revelation. Who but a scientific critic, or one whose understanding has been closed, will understand the letter only in its proximate sense? Will not men rather see in the letter more interior senses and more vital truths and goods, according to the opening of the sight of the understanding?

     In a natural way a man's intelligence is measured by his ability to see and comprehend the interiors of his fellow men, and to appropriate them to his own ends and uses. In a spiritual way, or in the sight of heaven, a man's intelligence is measured by his ability to see, appropriate, and use the interior things of the Word, and this because the Word also is a man.

     The Word is not a man by virtue of the letter, or even by virtue of the sense of the letter, so far as that sense is natural. It is a man by virtue of the spiritual and celestial things that are within, which sometimes are seen manifestly in the letter, but interiorly are universally present. These are celestial and spiritual truths,-truths concerning heaven and the church, and concerning the regeneration of man, truths concerning the Lord, redemption by Him, and the glorification of His Human. These things make the Word to be a man, for these are things receiving and transmitting the light of the Sun of heaven, which is infinite Divine Truth. This is why, in the vision of Ezekiel, we first read of a cloud, and of a fire with a brightness round about, and then that "out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures; and this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man." (Ezekiel 1:5.)

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These creatures, we are told, represent celestial and spiritual things in the exterior sphere of the Word, which are conjoined there, and are called a man. In fact, the conjunction of spiritual and celestial things in the natural is the condition of life that is properly to be called "man." Wherefore, we read in N. J. H. D. 246: "Truths conjoined from good present the image of a man." Truths conjoined from good constitute wisdom; hence, also, a "man" signifies wisdom and intelligence, and even the Word as to wisdom and intelligence. (A. R. 609.)

     The human faculty which makes anything to be a man is the faculty of receiving Divine Truth from the Lord. "When the Divine order is presented in a form, it appears as a man for the Lord, who is the source of it, is the Only Man. And in proportion as angels, spirits, and men have from Him, . . . thus in proportion as they are in Divine Order, in the same proportion they are men." (A. C. 4839:2.)

     This is still more true, or the Divine order is more perfectly presented as a man, in the entire congregate of angels, spirits, and men, which is the Gorand Man. And again, in still greater perfection, the Divine order presents itself in the Word, which thence is a man. It so appears as there is entrance into the interiors of the Word, or ascent into the celestial and spiritual things there, and then above these into the Divine of the Word, which can be viewed by the Lord alone; for it is said that it so appears to Him.

     "In the literal sense of the Word, especially in the propheticals, hardly anything appears but an inordinate something; but when it is read by man, especially by little infant boys and girls, it becomes more beautiful and pleasant by degrees as it ascends, and at last is presented before the Lord as the image of a man, in which and by which heaven in its complex is represented, not as it is, but as the Lord wishes it to be, namely, that it be an image of Him." (A. C. 1871.) Thus the Word is shown to be the most perfect image of the Lord, or the most perfect man. The same conclusion may be drawn from the following quotation from the work on the White Horse: ". . . In this respect the Word is a kind of heaven. The Word in its whole complex is an image of heaven; for the Word is Divine Truth, and Divine Truth makes heaven, and heaven is like one man; and, therefore, in this respect the Word is, as it were, an image of man." (W. H. 11)

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Here, too, we are shown that the Word is as an ideal human form, into whose image heaven and every angel is made.

     As a comparison, we may imagine a wondrous concept of living and expressive beauty in the eye of the sculptor, who, as he chisels the stone, is ever seeking to shape it into a form of just such beauty and life. Yet with all his skill the vision is more perfect and living than the stone, and the stone must always be cold and dead, even though it almost appears to live. Such are the human imperfections of men, compared with the Human perfection of the Word. For a man, in and of himself, is indeed spiritually dead, and he is brought into a state of life only as something of Revelation is adjoined to him by the Lord, in such a way as to seem to be his own.

     This leads us to see that it is very inadequate to compare the Word with man such as he is on earth, or even as he is in heaven. Such a comparison is one of outward appearances. In externals, indeed, the Word appears as an earthly man, with all his passions and fallacies, but in internals the Word is altogether different. Such perfection of form and order as is ascribed to the Word, and lifts it not only into heaven but above heaven, belongs only to the Lord in His Divine Human; and therefore it is with Him that the Word is really to be compared. And so, in many places, the Writings tell us that the Word, even in its externals, is the Lord: "It is from Him, and is Himself." And, according to the same principle, the Writings declare themselves to be the Lord in His Second Advent.

     IV.

     It is well known that, in general, the Old Testament was a prophecy of the Advent of the Lord, for He so instructed the Disciples; but the irruption of falsities imposed many obscurities and limitations upon this knowledge. But now, from the Writings, we can see clearly that the whole Hebrew Word, from beginning to end, and in every jot and tittle, was a prophetic description, by representations, of the Lord's advent and glorification.

     This means, and should be so understood, that the Lord made a representative advent in ancient revelation, before He made His advent in the flesh.

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And by this representative advent He put on a representative human in which He was seen and known by men. This was not His Own Human, but a representative of it borrowed from angels, spirits, and men. Consequently, all the Ancient Churches were representative Churches, and are said to have worshiped an invisible God; as we read in the True Christian Religion: "God's Divine Love had no other end, when He created the world, than to conjoin man with Himself, and Himself with man, and so to dwell with man. That the former Churches were not in the truth, is because the Most Ancient Church, which was before the Flood, worshiped an invisible God, with whom no conjunction is possible. The Ancient Church, which was after the Flood, likewise. The Israelitish Church worshiped Jehovah, who in Himself is the invisible God, but under a human form, which Jehovah God took on through an angel, in which He was seen by Moses, Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Gideon, Joshua, and some of the prophets; which human form was representative of the Lord to come; and because it was a representative, each and every thing of those churches was made representative." (T. C. R. 786.) Yet, on account of this representative human, the ancients always thought of the Divine as in a human form: ". . . . The Ancient Church had this from the Most Ancient; and also from this, that Jehovah was seen by them in a human form. Wherefore, when they thought about Jehovah, they did not think as of a universal Ens, of which they had no idea, but as of a Human Divine, into which they could determine their thought. . . . That in ancient times they adored Jehovah under a Human Divine, is very manifest from the angels seen by Abraham in human form, also afterwards by Lot, and by Joshua, Gideon, and Manoah, which angels were called Jehovah, and were adored as the God of the universe." (A. C. 6876.)

     The Human Divine is not the Divine Human, but is a finite representative of it, taken on by the Divine for purposes of finite manifestation, but taken from angels and men. Angels, we are told, when serving the Divine purpose thus, were so filled with the Divine Presence that they knew no otherwise than that they were Jehovah Himself, and all that they said was the Word of the Lord. Likewise with the Prophets While they were writing or speaking from the Divine afflatus, they said, "Thus saith the Lord," for the prophet was then the Divine Human.

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These appearances were occasional and temporary; nevertheless they were the instrumentalities through which the Divine of the Lord gradually gathered about Itself human words and ideas in documentary form as a definite, concrete, and Permanent representation of Itself,-a written embodiment of the Divine Spirit, which was also the Human Divine.

     Such was the Ancient Word to the Silver Age. Such was the Torah to early Israel, and the Histories, Prophecies and Psalms to the later period. In the vision of Ezekiel, it is this, the external sphere of the Word, that is called the "likeness of a man." Specifically, it was the likenesses of the Human which the Lord would take on in the world by the incarnation, and it was nothing else than a prophetic representation of that Human, and of the works of redemption and glorification to be wrought in it. Like that Human, it was conceived of the Lord alone, and born of the human race. It was conceived by the descent of the Divine Spirit into the interiors of the men of the church, overshadowing them with its power, so that they no longer cared for any earthly concerns, but labored only to bring forth the Word of the Lord. But it was born of man, for the generating Divine took to Itself a body from men,-the Letter and the Sense of the Letter. And thus all the heritage of the church, all the fallacy and falsity, all the evil and idolatry, were collected into the body of this Human Divine, and as well what remains of good there were,-the analogue of the hereditary good in the Infant born at Bethlehem.

     By the incarnation, the Power of the Highest took upon Itself another kind of human ultimate, one in which the Divine Human foreseen and foretold from the beginning could be assumed actually by the accomplishment of all things according to the pattern that had represented it; or, as it is often said, He did a thing "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet." By the Lord's action and experience in this human, He drew into Himself, or put on, the entire representative Human, and united it with His inmost Divine, making it also Divine Human. Hence the Word, now, even as to the letter, is the Lord Himself; it is no longer a remote representation of Him, but the very embodiment of Him. "It is from Him, and is Himself." Instead of being sensuous, corporeal, moral, spiritual, and celestial, as the heavens and the church are, It is Divine Celestial, Divine Spiritual, Divine Rational and Natural, Divine Sensuous and Corporeal-more ultimate than any angel or spirit, more perfect than the whole of heaven, the Type or Pattern according to which the Divine Love wills to make every man a man, and heaven a Gorand Man.

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     V.

     A further thought to be suggested very briefly,-that because of the relation just described, and by means of it, the Lord has made His Second Advent; that it is by opening the internal sense of the Word, and thus revealing Himself therein. It would seem that the Divine Human could not, at this day, be revealed in any other way or embodiment.

     We read in many places that the Lord will come "in the clouds of heaven." (Matt. 24:30, 28:64; Mark 24:62; Luke 21:27; Rev. 1:7, 14:14; Daniel 7:13; also Matt. 17:5; Luke 9:34, 35.) But hitherto no one has known what is meant by the "clouds of heaven." They have believed that He is to appear in them in Person. But that by the "clouds of heaven" the Word in the sense of the letter is meant, and by the "glory" and "power" in which also He is then to come, the spiritual sense of the Word is meant, has hitherto been concealed, because hitherto no one, even by conjecture, has reached the conclusion that there is a spiritual sense in the Word such as this sense is in itself. "Now, because the Lord has opened to me the spiritual sense of the Word, and it has been granted me to be with angels and spirits in the spiritual world as one of them, it has been disclosed that by the clouds of heaven is meant the Word in the natural sense, and by the power the Lord's power through the Word." (T. C. R. 776.)

     The Word is the Lord. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." (John 1:1, 14.) And the Word is Divine Truth, because, for a Christian Church, Divine Truth is to be had from no other source than the Word and its sense. This is the fountain from which all the churches named from Christ draw living waters, each in its own capacity and according to its own doctrine, though a church in which the sense of the Word is natural is in a cloud, while one in which is the spiritual and celestial sense is in glory and power. (T. C. R. 777.)

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     It has been shown how the Word is a Man, even in its external sphere. And that this Human form, especially prepared by the Divine of the Lord before the incarnation, was taken on in the incarnation and united to the inmost Divine, being resurrected from the death which it had suffered at the hands of the Jews, and being made "sevenfold" more glorious and living than before; so that from being a Human representative of the Divine of the Lord, it is now altogether one with the Glorified Human.

     This is why, in His Second Coming, the Lord appears in the Word, and is to be found there, and nowhere else, by all who seek Him. "He is not to appear in Person, because since He ascended into heaven He is in the glorified Human, and in this He cannot appear to any man unless He first open the eyes of his spirit, and this cannot be done with anyone who is in evils and thence in falsities." But the Divine Human is seen rationally by those whose eyes are opened to see Him in the Word, "to see visions of God." "It is therefore vain to believe that the Lord will appear in a cloud of heaven in Person. But He will appear in the Word, which is from Him and thus is Himself." (T. C. R. 777.)

     Since the Lord cannot manifest Himself in Person, and nevertheless has come to found a New Church which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He must do this by disclosing the spiritual sense of His Word, in which the Divine Truth is in its light, and in this light He is continually present. In this sense are the celestial and spiritual things represented by the four animals whose likeness was that of a man; for only by these celestial and spiritual things can the Lord be seen in His Divine Human. His presence in the Word comes forth only by the spiritual sense, and through the light of this He passes into the shade in which is the sense of the letter, as it is with the light of the sun in the daytime passing through a cloud that is interposed. (T. C. R. 719, 780.)

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GOD THE CREATOR 1928

GOD THE CREATOR       Rev. W. L. GLADISH       1928

     "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1).

     It is important that the New Churchman have a clear idea of God the Creator, lest his mind be corrupted and debauched by the insane notion, prevalent in the learned world, that nature created herself. For he is taught on every page of the Writings that all man's love, all his wisdom, all his life, continually inflow from the Lord, Who alone has Life, Love, Wisdom in Himself as His own. Man, of himself, is wholly without life, is merely a form to receive life, to be animated by Him Who is Life Itself. Conjoined with God by faith and love, he comes into the Divine image and likeness, enters into the joy of his Lord, lives in God and God in him. If separated from God by supreme love of himself, he still exists, indeed, but turns the inflowing life into death, God's wisdom into insanity, His love into hatred.

     But bow can a man really in heart continue to believe this central truth of religion, which carries with it the possibility of a happiness greater than that of the Golden Age? How can he believe that God is his All-in-all, in Whom he lives and moves and has his being, and yet think, according to modern science, that Nature labored blindly through millions of years to bring the earth to its present state, and that external things,-chance, accident, and environment,-are responsible for the final form which plants and animals and the earth itself have taken?

     At the heart of all this sane thought of creation must be the idea of God the Creator as a Divine Man, Who had a supreme end in view, namely, a heaven of angels from the human race, of beings who could receive His Love and His Wisdom freely and rationally, and so could love Him and be conjoined with Him, beings whom He could as it were draw up into His bosom, and to whom He could impart all manner of delights and blessings.

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     But how shall God be thought of as a man,-a man of a certain size and cast of countenance, going about from place to place and creating as a common, finite man would, or by fiat speaking something into existence out of nothing? No; God is infinite and eternal, without beginning or end. Therefore, He has in Himself no finite limits of any kind whatever. Yet He is Man, and indeed the only Man, because He has in Himself as His own that which, when received from Him, makes us men, namely, love and wisdom. Man has the ability to think, to reason, to understand, to be wise, and to love others and rejoice in their happiness. These are the human qualities; these are what make man. These God has, and therefore He is Man; has them infinitely, and therefore is infinite Man, Divine Man.

     Whence does God derive substance out of which to make suns and worlds and all things upon them? Not out of nothing, for from nothing comes, but from His own substance, derived from Himself. For God is substance itself and form itself, because He is the origin of all created substance and form. This, many wise men have seen, but have been afraid to say, lest they seem to make nature Divine and a part of God. But we are saved from that fear by the revelation of how God provided substance from His own substance, yet withdrew the life from it, so that it had no life in it as its own. Thus He provided from Himself-the only Source from whence all things must come-substances outside of Himself, as it were, from which He could mould forms to be animated by life from Him.

     The angelic idea of creation by God is derived from the sphere about every man. There is about every man a sphere of substances put off from himself, of substances that were once a part of himself. This sphere flows forth from all his parts and organs, and is both in him and around him. This sphere is moved by his heart beats and his breathing; it carries forth the activities of his thoughts, so that they are imparted to the finer atmospheres and carried to others. A man is known to others by this sphere, which is a likeness of him outside of himself. But this sphere is not the man; it is no organic part of him; it consists of substances thrown off from his body, from which his life had been withdrawn, yet fit to respond to the activities of his life, because they have once been an organic part of him.

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     So with the Lord God. The sphere is around every man-yes, around every plant and shrub and animal, and even about the inanimate things of the mineral kingdom-because there is such a sphere constantly going forth from God. (D. L. W. 291, 282.) This sphere from the Lord forms the sun of the spiritual world, the first created substantial, from which all created things are formed.

     This sun-the sun of the spiritual world, radiant from immediate contact with the infinite, uncreate Divine, yet in itself not Divine, but finite and created, no longer an organic part of God,-this becomes the center from which creation descends by discrete degrees, becoming in its descent ever more inert and dead until, in the earths, it ends in matters wholly inert, devoid of motion, angular in shape-in a word, the materials of the mineral kingdom.

     This sun is called "living"; its substance is the Divine Love, its form the Divine Wisdom; its activities are not merely mechanical, but are living and human. From this sun there go forth radiant zones, and finally, by compoundings, the atmospheres, substances and forms of the spiritual world. These substances are all called "living," because they are able to respond to the activities of mind, of love and wisdom, of will and understanding. But of these same substances God is able to form matters that are not living, matters whose activity is merely mechanical, and therefore dead. Such are the suns of this world, whose activity, instead of pure love, is pure fire.

     The change from living substance to dead matter is brought about at the surface of each sun of the natural world, by the active forces of the sun and the passive forces of the encompassing atmosphere. Between these two forces, as of hammer on anvil, the substances of the living atmosphere are crushed together, so that they can no longer be moved by life from within, but only by forces outside and around them. This provides matter,-the beginning of nature,-even as the sun of the spiritual world provided living substances for the forms and activities of that world.

     These matters of the natural sun, while dead, are not inert, but are in most intense and active motion. They are called "dead," because their action is purely mechanical; in it there is nothing of love, nothing of wisdom.

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Out of this matter, by further compoundings and conglobations, the original chaos is formed, which at first surrounds the sun, and at length is thrown off and formed into planets and satellites.

     Now we have two suns,-a sun of the spiritual world, which is living, and a sun of the natural world, which is dead. The living sun is active, the dead sun only reactive or passive. From each sun proceed atmospheres and earths, until their activities finally cease in substances and matters at rest; and of these substances and matters all created forms are composed. The difference between the two worlds is, that the substances of the spiritual world are interiorly active, and respond immediately to the activities of the mind, of love and wisdom; while the matters of the natural world respond only to the dead mechanical forces of this world. The spiritual world is the soul, the natural the body; the spiritual, the world of causes; the natural, the world of effects.

     But it must ever be remembered that, in relation to God Himself, all creation is dead. It has no life in itself as its own. Apart from Him it would perish like a soap bubble. All created things must be continually sustained by Him Who created them. He alone is life; all created things must be moved by the currents of His life. All creation is from the Divine and in the Divine. He not only sustains it by life inflowing from above, or within, thus through the spiritual sun, but also by immediate influx into each degree of both worlds. And He also supports it from below, or without, or around about; for He is the Last as well as the First, the End as well as the Beginning. (A. C. 7004) He holds in being that which He has created, and moves it at His good pleasure. There is in it no life but His life, no power but His power. Thus does the Divine provide for Himself substances and matters as the material for creation.

     And now in the ultimates, where all things are in fulness, He creates forms of life,-that is, the forms of the vegetable kingdom,-out of the dead matters of the mineral kingdom, and through these He creates the sensitive forms of the animal kingdom. Thus all nature is clothed with beauty and with life. Universal spring reigns, and everywhere are flowers and living creatures; the waters are full of fish, and the air of birds. And all these are expressions of the infinite things which are in God.

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For the only powers and forces in nature are the forms of the activities of His Love and Wisdom; and all nature is most plastic to the activities of His will.

     Yet creation is incomplete,-a vast wilderness in which no man lives. The spiritual world is wholly unoccupied. There is no being to whom God can reveal Himself, none capable of knowing God, of believing in Him and loving Him, and so of being conjoined to Him by faith and love.

     So God creates man in His own image, after His likeness, and gathers into him all the planes of creation, spiritual as well as natural, so that his soul is in immediate contact with God Himself; he is made a little world or microcosm, epitomizing all things of the macrocosm.

     And to man, as His crowning gift, He gives freewill and rationality, the ability to choose for himself what he shall love and what he shall call true. For this is the image and likeness of God, Who loves and is wise in and from Himself, and not from another.

     To the first man God revealed Himself in form adapted to his comprehension, and taught him. It could not but be so, for this was the end in view in creation, both in the whole and in all its parts. Nor could the first men, in their successive generations, do other than love the Lord. He was their whole life; they knew no other; nor did they desire any proprium or sense of self-ownership. There was as yet nothing to prevent the full reception of His inflowing life, so far as their faculties were opened. Nor was there anything to separate His wisdom from His love in them. Love and wisdom from Him flowed into them as one, and turned them to Him from whom they came, so that they lacked nothing of wisdom. So far as love or desire awoke, so far also had they wisdom adequate to all the uses of life.

     And now the heavens began to be peopled with angels from the human race. And the created universe, which went forth from God, was bound back to God through man. Man, living in the ultimates of creation, yet conjoined to God by love and faith, was the means by which the created universe was bound back to God.

     The universe began to be infilled with a new soul, or rather a mind, formed by the reception of the Divine Love and Wisdom by finite beings, primarily by the reception of the Lord God in the celestial heavens.

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This, in the Writings, is called the "Divine Human," sometimes the "Divine Human from eternity," which is one with the Divine Word or the Divine Proceeding. It is the Divine Truth, which is from God, and is God, as it is received by angels and men. This is the Spirit of God, which organizes the heavens in His image and likeness. And so, passing through the heavens, there is as it were a Divine Man reproduced, which is the Divine Human.

     If man had remained in his integrity, this would have been sufficient. As human life developed, an idea of God as Man would have been presented in ever-increasing perfection, and so the infinite God would have dwelt in His creation in ever greater fulness. But when man turned from God to self, and from heaven to the world; when he closed the upper door, and lived only in the mists and shadows of the senses, when he lost all love of God and all belief in God; then this bond binding creation back to the Creator was broken, and unless it could be restored, all creation was threatened with destruction.

     Then the Lord God Himself came into His creation. He bowed the heavens, and came down for our salvation. He, the Infinite and Eternal, the Word which was with God and was God, by influx through the heavens clothed Himself with all degrees of angelic life, and by conception in the womb of a virgin mother, and by birth of her, clothed Himself with all degrees of the life of man in the world. Having no human father, His inmost Soul was God Himself.

     He lived in the world as a man, opening the senses of His body and developing His mind, even as another man would do, only more fully and more perfectly, because the Divine dwelt in Him without finite limit.

     Hereditary life from the mother woke in Him, with its love of self and the world, so that He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. For in every case He acted not until He was able to see through the clouds of appearances to the genuine truth. Then He rejected the lusts of the body for the love which came from the Father within.

     Thus He glorified the natural degree of life,-the life of man in the world,-with the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. He made His assumed Human Divine, and united it with the Divine from eternity, so that they were one.

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Thus in Himself He restored the bond broken by man's fall, restored it in full Divine power, so that He lives in lasts as in firsts, the Lord God omnipotent.

     Creation was not complete and fully finished till this was done. Now God lives in His creation, and creation lives in Him, beyond the power of hell to spoil. He is in the world, not in an image and likeness, in the measure determined by angelic reception of Him merely, but fully and Divinely, in His own Divine Human, which has no finite limits, but is altogether one with the Divine from which it came.

     The infinite Divine indeed transcends the finite creation; it is both above it and below it, within it and around it; yet through the Divine Human the Divine dwells in its own unclothed glory in the world. The veils have been removed, and we can see the very glory of God Himself, so far as our eyes are opened.

     This God, even our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in the beginning created the heavens and the earth; and, when they were threatened with destruction as the result of man's fall, Himself came into the world which He had made, and redeemed it, and drew it back into His own bosom, beyond the power of man or of devil ever to snatch away. Amen.

     Lessons: Genesis 1. John 1:1-18. H. H. 137-140.
CHURCH AND RELIGION 1928

CHURCH AND RELIGION              1928

     "We speak of the truth, of the church and the good of religion, because the church is one thing and religion another. The church is called the church from doctrine, and religion is called religion from a life according to doctrine. Everything of doctrine is called truth; and its good is also truth, because it only teaches good; but everything of a life according to those things which doctrine teaches is called good; also, to do the truths of doctrine is good. This is the distinction between the church and religion. But still, where there is doctrine, and not life, there it cannot be said that there is either the church or religion; because doctrine regards life as one with itself, just like truth and good, faith and charity, wisdom and love, and like the understanding and the will. And therefore, where there is doctrine, and not life, there is no church." (Apocalypse Revealed 923.)

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WHY I AM A SWEDENBORGIAN 1928

WHY I AM A SWEDENBORGIAN       DONALD F. ROSE       1928

     The question as to why and in what degree I am a "Swedenborgian" is primarily, of course, my own business, and its answer vastly more important to myself than to anybody else. It occurs, however, with regular frequency in the course of varied contacts with those to whom Swedenborg is a name vaguely familiar as an incident to the stock-in-trade of the well-informed mind, but who know little or nothing of the organized existence of the New Church or of its doctrinal system. As it comes from such sources, the question involves some obscurely complimentary connotations. Why, it implies, is this apparently educated and reasonably well-informed person an avowed believer in a sectarian theology and a member of an obscure and probably freakish church communion?

     The question is embarrassing by its difficulty, even when asked in sincerity rather than curiosity, because the answer cannot be brief. There are obvious answers that will not serve. To refer the questioner to the Writings may be sound ethics, but is not likely to be sound psychology, since he will in all probability not go there without better inducement than my own recommendation. To quote the good example of leading thinkers and public figures carries little weight with the modern individualist, and also tends to overvalue the actual importance of their allegiance to or interest in the Doctrines. The text of literal Scripture carries small authority to the modern and slightly cynical disputant who is definitely outside of the walls of the Old Church creeds. The question must be answered in colloquial terms, if the answer is to arouse favorable interest and further curiosity. It must give plausible explanation to the anomalies involved in the interrogation; the phenomenon of a modern mind acceding to the ancient habit of faith, the reasonable reconciliation of established science and theological dogma, and the distinction of Swedenborgianism from discredited doctrines and practice.

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     A careful answer may perhaps arouse respect for the doctrines of the New Church, and on occasion stimulate an affirmative curiosity. This is about as far as private and personal "missionary work" can go. Its fruits, if any, are a matter beyond the province and even beyond the speculation of the individual New Church apologist. He is under a spiritual obligation to answer the question as best he may, but the consequences must be left to better hands.

     II.

     The question as to why I am a Swedenborgian, however unimportant to the unbelieving world, is my own familiar companion. There is no casual answer. Birth and education and a predisposition born of several generations of ancestry are principally accidents to the matter, accidents which create circumstances under which the problem becomes acute. The fact that I was born and raised a Swedenborgian merely sharpens for me the ultimate necessity of determining whether I am to remain one.

     If Swedenborgianism were a conventional type of religious persuasion, there would be no serious problem, certainly no daily problem. I should either be inevitably committed to it by native obstinacy or molded to it by parental and priestly authority, or I should be out of it by the normal process of revolt. In either case I should not be much concerned about it. Nor would there be serious difficulty if I might accept the emasculated "religions" of social service and moral uplift which have lately risen on the ashes of old creeds. Either of these alternatives involves the segregation of religion in an isolated section of the mind, where it is supposed to have little or nothing to do with other cerebral activities. But Swedenborgianism takes in the entire territory. It not only embraces a theological system and a canon of law, but also contemplates with a catholic interest the wide world of human thought, the abstractions of philosophy, the stern realities of pure science, the laws shadowed in human history, and the delicate speculations of metaphysics. Neither cosmology nor chemistry, nor anatomy nor biology, are outside of its regard. It imposes no fenced finality of legitimate inquiry; there are no forbidden lands, no Index Expurgatorius of hazardous matters that must be ignored since they cannot be safely considered.

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It is, in fact, a system of thought and life whose final authority to the individual depends upon its ability to satisfy not only the needs of faith but also the demands of reason and the necessities of experience. Its doctrines are a challenge to the rational mind, and their scope and power are adequate to the needs of the full stature of intelligent humanity.

     The question as to why I am a Swedenborgian is therefore not only a logical but a recurrent apparition, and one that will not down. It refuses to leave me long in peace, and probably never will during the changes and chances of terrestrial existence, so long, at least, as I preserve the unfortunate habit of listening to what other people, other philosophies, and other evidence have to say. The question is in fact sufficiently vital to be one of the answers to itself, for a religion which is an issue in every mental experience is far from being dead load in the burden of individual life. It is not a stone to be pushed daily and laboriously back to a precarious hilltop; it is not a cross to be borne; it is not a dead monument from the past, exacting painful toll for maintenance and repairs. It is a live companion, and it breathes of its vitality into much that might otherwise be dry bones of discussion and debate.

     III.

     The cataclysm of modernity, which had its birthday in the eighteenth century, split Christianity into a hundred sects, and disintegrated its kingdoms and royalties. Prior to that shock, the classic and monumental religious systems were founded principally on an ungodly trinity of human weaknesses. First of these was simple faith, which has been more unkindly labeled as superstitious credulity; second, was an appalling obstinacy and pigheadedness, with cruel intolerance to match; third, was a mass unanimity in trivial doctrines which permitted a complete business organization. With these, by favor of modern chaos, I have little to do. One characteristic, however, I share with medieval monk and early martyr; with Greek and Hebrew; with the Druid and the worshiper at Karnak. I must believe in something. "We are born believing," said Emerson. "A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples." Pure skepticism is not possible to the human mind; the phrase is a contradiction in terms. Human nature abhors a vacuum of conviction; and the attempt to achieve the ideal independence of perception, prejudice and point of view, approximates not to a scientific clarity of vision but to a lifeless and blank inanity.

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Such a reward is certainly not worthy of the effort it demands, and is never impressive, as Bacon showed in his classic essay on Atheism, and as modern disputants, such as Aldous Huxley and his ilk, display in every line they write. The necessity to believe links the racial history, and the modern world does not escape it, either by dictum and manifesto or by way of the test-tube and microscope.

     So Swedenborgianism, like all creeds and most codes, begins with the belief in God. God is not a demonstrable fact, except to myself. I cannot convey one iota of my conviction of His reality; my arguments are effective only so far as they find an echo in perception or personal experience. If you throw the burden of proof upon me, I throw up the argument. Yet this much is demonstrable, that in every human mind whose fabric has not been forcibly twisted to justify an appetite or a weakness, there is a profound disposition to believe in a supreme law and order and purpose. You may label this as you please,-as a deification of the fear of nature, as an inheritance from countless generations of God-worshippers, as self-glorification by the creation of omnipotence in the image of man,-but it remains a fact. Moreover, it is a fact through recorded history and back into shadowy legend, and even to the undiscovered territory where speculation may take undisputed liberties. This for me is an argument rooted in human evidence; and when a formula is offered to explain it away, I am suspicious chiefly of the formula. God made us, and left His ineradicable mark upon His handiwork. This is a simple fact; it is not much disturbed by complex metaphysics.

     IV.

     The second essential of religious faith, and the crux of the difficulty between systematic theology and skepticism, concerns the nature of God. It is inconceivable to many that God should concern Himself with me and mine, with the ant inhabitants of this and countless worlds, with personal conscience and joy and anguish. I confess the difficulty, and its importance is overwhelming. Creeds are based on supposed revelations of Divine will; codes of spiritual and moral behavior presuppose a personal responsibility to a God who is personally interested.

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Without a Divine purpose, comprehensible to man and revealed to him, religion is a farce and a puppet-show. Yet the sense of proportion shrinks a little from making of God little more than a kindly or meddlesome next-door neighbor. Part of this distaste for the doctrine of a personal God arises out of prejudice, a prejudice grown from centuries of Nonconformist arrogance of personal acquaintance with the Deity. The babble of the revival and the experience meeting, the exaltation of mild hysteria into monumental spiritual experience, the prayers and boastings and cant phrases of maudlin minds obsessed by an unfamiliar emotion, have soured the stomach of the thinking world. Modern sects have done no better than their barbaric ancestors in fashioning a God in their own image, and the results are sufficiently unimpressive and unappetizing to make it difficult to restore to the theme its due dignity.

     Swedenborgianism postulates a God of infinite love and wisdom,-attributes not bestowed with a patronizing concession of the kinship of God and man, but acknowledged as infinite realities of which human love and wisdom are distant and fragmentary echoes. Of love we know that it demands satisfaction in a reception outside of itself, and a return which is free and personal. Such love as an attribute of God is the occasion in Swedenborgian Philosophy for the creation of the universe, by a sequence of causes that are infinite wisdom and the source of order and law, to a final end in the apparently independent and self-sufficient human being. Freedom of thought and will, in this final evolution of the creative purpose, permit the completion of the cycle from God to man and from man to God.

     This is the skeleton outline of a system that satisfies the fundamental need for a starting point. Broad as it is, it has no place for fiat creation, predestination, instantaneous salvation, infant damnation, and other raucous particularities. But this, I submit, is no great loss. It has, of course, infinite difficulties and details, which is as it should be, for any system that explains infinity in a sentence arouses my suspicions of infinity. It clarifies but does not simplify the approach to God, which has by Protestantism been too much simplified. Neither omnipotence, omnipresence, nor eternity can be predicated of a God who can be "found" and delineated in the emotional moment of a revival meeting, and many of the elect rest too easily and familiarly in the bosom of their Creator for me to trust their judgment or envy their confidence.

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It is true that a child may comprehend that there is one God who has created the race of men to love Him, yet all that scholar and philosopher can learn may not exhaust the theme.

     Granted a purpose in creation, God will make His will known. This is the substantial necessity that has given authority to numerous pretensions to revelation. Swedenborgianism assumes a further essential,-that revelation is designed to the time and race it is to serve. This is not a justification for numerous occasional pronouncements; it concerns only those universal conditions of the human race which transpire out of centuries of slow change and reach an intolerable climax of ignorance or sin. Neither is the message confined to a chosen people with exclusive patent on the saving truth, even though the instrumentality may be local and even personal. Under these conditions it is surprising that Swedenborgianism accepts the Scriptural canon, with certain minor exceptions. This obviously cannot be a literal acceptance, including casual creation of the world, sundry magical operations, and the spiritual supremacy of the abysmal and bloody Hebrew of the Testament. It involves an interpretation, a comprehension of conditions, and the purpose of the message and its effective means. The Biblical narrative must be translatable out of its colloquialism if it has eternal importance.

     Such an interpretation is not foreign to our treatment of secular authors and their theme and treatment; it is made difficult in our study of the Scripture principally by the centuries of proprietary literalism that have preceded us. Yet I must consider its possibility and plausibility. The endurance and integrity of the Scriptures, and their history of power over the souls of men, is no accident; and if, through Swedenborg's exegesis, this power is explained, and the Biblical story becomes a continuous, intelligible, and pregnant treatment of spiritual realities, then a prime difficulty of Christianity is on the way to my personal solution.

     Swedenborgianism further claims a new revelation to the modern world in the terms of the modern world, as a logical and inevitable conclusion to human history and Divine purpose.

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This revelation is dated at the pivotal point in modern history,-the late eighteenth century. It takes the form of books of doctrine, description, and exegesis, logical in form, dispassionate in tone, and comprehensive in theme. These were written by Emanuel Swedenborg, a learned and honored member of the Swedish House of Nobles, and published by him as his sole contribution to the founding of a church or sect. Swedenborgians accept them as the containant of the truth of God regarding Swedenborg as instrument and interpreter only.

     What is the authority of this system, spread through scores of volumes, touching every interest of humanity, involving a complete philosophy of life and conduct, and yet apparently balanced dangerously on an extraordinary personal claim to Divine appointment? Just this much authority,-that it endures the test that it invites. The Swedenborgian gives you a simple answer, which is no answer at all. The thing is true so far as he comprehends it; when comprehension is inadequate or information incomplete, the thing is still true by virtue of its record. There is, of course and necessity, a point at which faith is born, faith which is "the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen." The argument becomes more impressive, the evidence more comprehensive, the truth more unmistakable, until it transcends human origin. This is the only Swedenborgian equivalent of "getting religion" or "seeing the light," or any other catch-phrase by which you identify the moment at which human intelligence surrenders to guidance. Such surrender is, by the enduring evidence of experience, fully proper to the habit of human wisdom, and of far greater dignity than the obstinacy of skepticism and the meticulous narrowness of materialism, of "unfaith clamoring to be coined to faith by proof."

     VI.

     A typical experience in Swedenborgianism concerns life after death. Here, as in regard to the existence of God and His nature, there is a point of faith. Evidence on such matters is entirely subjective; it comes from the individual heart where it is out of reach of ordinary skepticism. It is also beyond proof, and largely indifferent to the crude experiments of scientists and spiritists. Belief in immortality has little bearing on the question as to why I am a Swedenborgian; it might equally serve for initiation to a score of sects and creeds.

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But granted the fact of personal immortality, its nature and purpose and provision for it become matters on which I am open to conviction. Swedenborg's narrative presents a case for immortality that is reasonable and attractive, which is more than can be said for the hell-fire-and-damnation, harp-halo-and-hallelujah, of conventional religion. It promises the immortality of that which I know to be my essential self. It offers no rewards for casual merit; it threatens no punishments extrinsic to myself. Heaven is no compensation for the inferiority complex of earth; hell is no ghastly atonement for carelessness or ignorance. Both are the logical outcome and continuance of my personal preference, whether it be for freedom in accordance with law or for an impotent and unsatisfied revolt. Further in exposition of the panorama of eternity there are offered me numerous pictures of life after death. Of these I can only say that to me they are essentially probable and true, and that I know of no better.

     Such pictures of a spiritual world, which are written into the Swedenborgian thesis with an obvious indifference to the shock of their pretensions, are perhaps the accessories of the doctrine. Its prime faith is the unity of God and the Divinity of Christ. Of the first little need be said today, since the triplicated deity of an over-cautious church council has been deposed, but the Divinity of Jesus is touchstone to the Christianity of our times. Arius grows stronger, and his disciples more numerous and more candid in their declaration of Christ's brotherhood with man. On the other hand, fundamentalists pontificate in the thunderous phraseology of dead creeds. Swedenborgianism teaches without qualification the Divinity of Christ, and the personal advent of God into the world, for a purpose in harmony with the nature of God and man.

     There is in this doctrine, of course, a mystery, though little of mystical jargon or obscure metaphysics; a greater mystery than the human mysteries of birth and life and death,-not yet unveiled, but not denied to be realities. Concerning the mystery, its solution for me is no less nor more than my capacity for comprehension. I cannot solve it to finality, since infinity is involved; neither have I yet proved myself superior to its solution nor able to dismiss it as insoluble or a matter of indifference. In this, as in other matters of importance, I find no equal substitute for faith,-faith that since what is known is adequate, what is unknown will not play upon me a jest.

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     VII.

     There are other and lesser reasons why I am a Swedenborgian. I am a Swedenborgian, for instance, because its doctrine not only permits but insists that I be honest with myself. It dismisses all such subterfuges as vicarious atonement, salvation by faith alone, indulgence, deathbed repentance, and the prodigal power of prayer, and hands over to me the responsibility that is the measure of a man. It gives point and purpose to most of the interesting absurdities of life. It puts no ban on intelligent studies, and even invites them, and equips me to meet evolutionist and biologist and psychologist without inviting a rout. It diminishes to proper proportion the crank-handled propaganda of social service, prohibition, and other meddlesome occupations of churches that have lost their real job. It teaches humility in the presence of truth, rather than arrogance in the possession of dogma. It declares a brotherhood of man that is spiritual rather than sentimental.

     The fact that Swedenborgians are few and far between, save in their special communities and families, does not particularly concern me. Magnitude has never guaranteed integrity of morals or doctrines, and the magnificence of Christian churches has principally been measured in terms of magnificent crimes. I do not miss the social distinction of membership in a popular church, with its political advantages, nor do I yearn much after the missionary fervor of orthodox evangelical sects. And I am not appalled by history or geography that dwarf all sects into insignificance. Humanity, with such help as is given it, can and does muddle its way to salvation as to everything else. "An Englishman," said Voltaire, "goes to heaven by the road which pleases him;" But Bacon looked across three centuries to the special crisis of the modern world. "A religion," said he, "that is jealous of the variety of learning, discourse, opinions, and sects, as misdoubting it may shake the foundations, or that cherisheth devotion upon simplicity and ignorance, is adverse to knowledge." Swedenborgian doctrine, by its own testimony, was given to the modern world in the fulness of time for the salvation of the modern man, who has rashly taken all knowledge for his province.

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Its power to the individual does not depend upon the drama or magnitude of its claims, nor on their specious appeal to human weaknesses, but alone on their fundamental truth, and their efficacy for human enlightenment, guidance and assurance. As its message is to the individual soul, so is the conviction of its truth and Divine authority.

     VIII.

     In answer, then, to the ironic curiosity of the modernist, I am a Swedenborgian, first of all because of what appears to me a singularly fortunate interposition of Providence, which has equipped me with the special advantage of faith, in a world that cries out for faith. Secondly, because the doctrines of this church preserve entire the religious inheritance of the world, and yet survive the searching scrutiny of the times, which questioning habit I necessarily share as a part and product of the times. Thirdly, because there is daily promise in Swedenborgian doctrine and practice that enlightenment and conviction will be increased-a notable comfort when contrasted with the cumulative doubts and confusion of current secular philosophies. And fourth, because, in last analysis, I can do no other, nor escape the searching intimacy of this doctrine, its revelation of myself, its proffered hope of personal salvation, its condemnation and consolation.

     Therefore, I am not likely to loose hold on it in deference to minor doubts or attacks, nor set up against it the crude idol of a synthetic intellectualism. Nor, considering the evidence, can I justify myself in neglecting its message, its mysteries and its majesty, to pursue the arrogant conceits and artful anaesthesia of the neo-philosophies of the day. For these, by their own boast, are the works of men's hands, but the Truth is given of God alone.

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DEATHBED REPENTANCE 1928

DEATHBED REPENTANCE              1928

     The extract from The Word Explained ("Adversaria") printed below contains an interesting treatment of the subject of last-minute repentance, or of what is known as "deathbed repentance. And the passage closes with the statement concerning Judas (no. 1479), to which occasional reference is made by New Church writers when treating of the fate of Judas after death. As this portion of The Word Explained is not yet available in English, we think it will be useful to put the entire context before our readers; and the Rev. Alfred Acton has kindly placed his translation at our disposal for this purpose.-EDITOR.
WORD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT EXPLAINED 1928

WORD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT EXPLAINED       EMANUEL SWEDENBORG       1928

     EXTRACT FROM VOLUME II, NOS. 1476-1479. TREATING OF THE WORDS OF JOSEPH TO HIS BRETHREN. GENESIS 50:20.

     1476. As for you, ye designed evil against me; God designed it unto good, that he might do as at this day, to make a great people alive (vs. 20). These are Divine words, and thus are so full that they cannot be explained, unless we run through such numbers of particulars that they would fill many pages; for they extend to the whole world, and to the whole of heaven, and also of hell.

     1477. First, as concerns man, the figments* of whose heart are evil from the very seed. His thoughts are evil as soon as he begins to think, or to be a man in the genuine sense; for it is his interiors and his thought that make him to be a man. In infancy, such is the power of thinking that he can think nothing except in an evil way, since he thinks nothing but what concerns himself and the world. In themselves, indeed, these thoughts are not evil, when reflection is made from them to God Messiah; for there is nothing in the whole world which does not testify that God Messiah is, and that the Kingdom of God Messiah is to come. All that is beautiful, and all that is pleasing and delightful, signifies a harmonic conjunction, and this can never be possible without conjunction by Divine Love.

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All things that are beautiful, pleasing and delightful how from Divine Love, just as ugly, unpleasing and undelightful things, each and all, flow from the devil. So likewise in things spiritual; for these must be the beginnings of things. Without things spiritual, nature is nothing. Thus God Messiah is now disjoined from man, from his very birth, man thinking nothing but what separates him from God; for he worships himself, and adores the world.
     * In the autograph, this and the following passages are emphasized by "N. B." written in the margin at almost every other line.

     1478. So likewise in the present case, with those who are sons of Jacob, and also with those who are sons of Israel. Therefore man must be regenerated; that is to say, he must be reborn, in order that he may be able to enter the heavenly kingdom; and thus, that things worldly and terrestrial may be rejected below and beyond those that are spiritual, and may occupy not a single place above them or below. In other words, the order that has been perverted must be restored; for without the restoration of order, things inferior are in the place of heaven, and things superior in the place of hell; for in the man who is not regenerated, it is the superiors and thus the interiors that foster those loves which are the enemies of love toward God Messiah. When this order is inverted, the loves of the world do indeed remain, but in such way that they are entirely dead in respect to love toward God Messiah. Then they constitute the body, as it were, of all and single things,-a body which lives not in the least from itself, but from the soul, the latter inducing the appearance as though the body itself were living. As long as the loves of self and the world actuate the soul, so long is the man entirely dead; and spiritual things do not then actuate his body. Man is cast into the densest shade in regard to things spiritual and celestial; for if he then wished to form a body, as it were, from things spiritual, and to reject the latter below and beyond his own love, he would never be capable of reformation. Shade, therefore, that is, ignorance, is what is induced by God Messiah, and indeed by means of the devil, in order that it may be possible for man to be reformed and excused. So long, therefore, as man is ruled in this way, he designs nothing but what is evil, but God Messiah then designs this unto good.

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Thus God Messiah permits the devil to introduce man into temptations, captivities, servitude, diseases and the like. The devil then thinks that the man is held bound and subjugated to himself, or that he is entirely lost; but it is then that God Messiah is most active, and reforms the man; for He then slays and extinguishes the loves of the world and self, and afterwards infuses a remembrance of Himself, and gives faith to each one according to the measure in which he can receive it; and he does this again and again, according to the man's character, which is to be reformed.

     Those who believe that they need repent only at the last moment, like the thief on the Cross, and like the laborers who came to the vineyard at the eleventh hour, and who received the same hire as those who had come at the fifth or seventh hour, do not understand these arcana. As concerns the thief, he could by no means have repented [merely] at that moment, but by the Divine mercy of God Messiah he had been prepared during his captivity, and had been led to the knowledge of God Messiah; thus he could then acknowledge the Messiah. How otherwise could he have asked Him, and this in such a way that the words came from his heart and mind, that God might remember him when He came into His kingdom? As concerns the workers in the vineyard, they are those who came at the eleventh hour, i.e., on the sixth day, immediately before the last day, and who receive the same hire, although they did not live in ancient times; for the ancients give themselves the prerogative by reason of mere age, and because they have therefore been celebrated by their posterity-not to speak of other particulars which, by the Divine mercy of God Messiah, shall be mentioned when we come to this passage. To this it must be added that some are indeed reformed more quickly, and even at the moment of death; in this case, however, they are such as had been prepared previously in a marvelous manner of which they themselves are ignorant; otherwise, if saved by the mere mercy of God Messiah, then they must undergo infernal torments.

     1479. This was told me in respect to Judas, the betrayer. Yet there is said to be hope for him, because he was one of the elect who were given to God Messiah by Jehovah the Father, as declared by God Messiah Himself.

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ULTIMATE SOURCE OF PHILOSOPHIC IDEAS 1928

ULTIMATE SOURCE OF PHILOSOPHIC IDEAS       Rev. THEODORE PITCAIRN       1928

     (A paper read at the Council of the Clergy, 1928.)

     It is the nature of the uncritical form of mind to mistake words for ideas. What we can name we are apt to imagine that we know without first seeking to realize the way the ideas have been formed which finally are crystallized in words. Take such a phrase as "spiritual substance," the nature of which we have so frequently discussed. How easy it is to argue this way and that without first calling into question the manner by which we have arrived at the idea denoted by the two words "spiritual" and "substance."

     Modern philosophy is considered by many to have commenced with the statement of Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." Descartes' ambition was to build up a mathematically correct philosophy, every phase of which was a necessary conclusion from the preceding premises. The first necessity of such a philosophic system was to find some premise which could not be doubted. Every idea which he entertained in his mind be believed was open to the possibility of a doubt, until it dawned upon him that the idea of "I think, therefore I am," was an expression that was not open to this possibility; the reason being that the opposite statement, "I am not, therefore I think," involved a contradiction of itself, and really confirmed the original proposition.

     There are still well-known philosophers, such as Calkins, who agree that in this statement of Descartes was laid the foundation of a positive philosophy. We maintain that it was not, for the reason that Descartes did not examine into the origin of the idea "I," or the idea involved in the word "am." Neither of these words expresses a primary concept of the human mind. Both of them are arrived at by the process of something like reasoning.

     A child knows many objects before it comes to recognize itself as an object; and when it first arrives at the idea of "me," it is probably due to the following train of thought: The child has recognized its parents, nurses, and playmates as individuals or units; the unintelligent complex of sensations that come from mother and father have taken on a unity in its mind.

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It finally comes to recognize that the word "me" implies a similar unity; this unity is first conceived of in terms of the body. A child knows its fingers, hands, eyes, head, etc., long before it knows that it has a mind. The idea of "I" as something which thinks, as understood by Descartes, is, therefore, the culmination of a long process of reasoning. We are not here considering the infantile perception that accompanies the upbuilding of the mind.

     If Descartes accepts his conclusion, "I think, therefore I am," legitimately, it means that he must accept the truth of the method by which the human mind has arrived at this conclusion, which seems to lead to a very different basis of philosophy than the one maintained by Descartes.

     As Hume later on pointed out, no one has seen or known the ego as such. All we know are certain internal sensations of thought, love, etc., which seem to presuppose something as their subject. This thing we call the mind, the " I."

     When, therefore, I say that "I am," what I mean is that I consider myself an object of thought, having certain similarity to the other objects that I know. If I deny the existence of other objects, apart from my ego, I deny the validity of the origin of the very idea of my ego. In other words, "I am" becomes a meaningless expression. In opposition to Hume, we maintain that we are aware of a certain unity of personality, a consciousness of a self, but scarcely in the sense of a subject of which thoughts and loves are attributes. All we are conscious of is a unity or relationship of our thoughts and loves, and this unity or relationship is what we are conscious of as bur ego. All of which may sound like dialectical hair-splitting; but we maintain that it is not so.

     All thought and all knowledge are based upon sensation. Sensation is of two kinds, external and internal. External sensation is the sensation of the bodily senses; internal sensation is awareness or consciousness of mental activity. We feel that we think, we love, we imagine. All thought is built up from these two types of sensation.

     As we mentioned previously, all thought, up to a certain point in mental development, is based upon external sensation. This is true of most, if not all, of the life of childhood.

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External sensations reveal to us a world composed of objects or rather subjects, having motion and activity. The idealistic philosophers do indeed deny the reality of the existence of external objects as such; and modern science, like Swedenborg's science, reduces the material world to the product of motion. But we will not turn aside to consider such hypotheses here. We are investigating the origin of ideas from sensation; acid, as we have said, external sensation reveals to us fixed objects in space having certain activity or attributes, including local motion. We must never forget that it is this external sensation, such as we know it, that formed our first ideas. We can never get away from these ideas; nor will they cease to be the bases of our thought, no matter how abstract our form of mind may become. Remove the habits of thought that are based upon external sensation, and we can think nothing.

     Let us now turn to internal sensation, and see what that reveals to us. At a certain point in the development of the human race, a primitive philosopher noted that certain activities of mankind were distinct from the activities Of the body. Now it is the very nature of the human mind, due to its experience, to presuppose a subject or substance when there is an activity. When we consider the properties of light, we assume that there must be a subject,-the ether of which light is a predicate.

     No one has seen the mind as such; no one has seen the mind as organic. We may know the laws and activities of the mind or spirit, but no philosopher besides Swedenborg has been able to approach the nature of the mind or spirit, except as a form of activity. There was but one possible approach, and this approach no one but Swedenborg has found.

     Let us illustrate the difficulty of the approach by an example: Suppose a piano was being played in the next room, and no one of us had ever seen a piano. If, on hearing the music emanating from the locked room, we were asked to describe the piano, what could we tell of its nature? If we were musicians, and were familiar with other stringed instruments, we might make some fairly good guesses. But let us suppose we had never seen a musical instrument of any kind, and were not familiar with anything that even made a noise. If we were physicists, we might be able to invent instruments for measuring the wave-lengths, and thus might have some faint bases for speculation; but supposing, in the very nature of things, such instruments were impossible, what then could we know and learn?

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By careful listening we might learn to distinguish high and low notes, melody, harmony, and rhythm, but as to the nature of the thing from which these sounds emanated, we could have not the least conception. We might argue until doomsday whether a piano was structural or non-structural; but as to the nature of the piano we could not have the least idea.

     This is the problem which the philosophers have been confronted with when considering the human mind. By internal sensation they are conscious of an activity of love, thought, and imagination, etc.; and they can express the laws governing these activities but they cannot with any reason say whether the mind or spirit is structural or non-structural; and still less can they even imagine what is the nature of the mind. In fact, they cannot prove that there is such a thing as the human mind, except in the sense of activity following established laws. It could not even be shown that the word "activity" would be an appropriate one. For the thought connected with the word "activity" is derived from the external senses, and implies a subject and predicate; while it has not as yet been proved that there is such a thing as a spiritual subject. In reference to the mind, there is no evidence of anything but internal sensation; and it has not as yet been proved that the same law which applies to external experience, namely, that of subject and predicate, necessarily applies to internal sensation.

     It might be answered that common sense shows that there must be such a thing as a spiritual subject of which thoughts and desires, etc., are predicated. "Common sense" is nothing but common experience; but what we usually think of as common experience is the experience that comes through the external senses. Common sense would not necessarily demonstrate that the laws of external sensation can be transferred to internal sensation, and still be valid.

     Even on the plane of external sensation, common sense or common experience may have to be revised from time to time. To illustrate: Experience taught men that an ax must be sharp on the entering edge, but that the opposite side of the ax must be flat. The same law applies to all other cutting and piercing tools, such as nails, spikes, and needles. In the human mind this law tended to become a universal law.

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Wherefore, the first airship builders thought that it was common sense to make the front or piercing end of an airship more pointed than the back end. It has been proved that this law does not work in the higher medium of the air. But the reverse of this law of solid objects is true, namely, that a well-constructed airship must be more acutely pointed on the rear end.

     When we consider the vast difference between the external senses and the internal sensation of thought, love, etc., we cannot say, a priori, that the same law of subject and attribute which applies in the external world necessarily applies to internal sensation,-the sensation of what we call the mind,-and consider it proved. In other words, the philosophers cannot say whether the mind is a material substance, a spiritual substance, or no substance at all. Still less can they describe its nature.

     Kant showed that the human intellect could define the modes of the functioning of the will, understanding, and sensation, etc.; but, according to the methods pursued by philosophers, it could do nothing else. It could not prove intellectually that there is Divine substance, spiritual substance, or even material substance. Philosophers since Kant's day have been like men seated listening to an instrument in a locked room, and vainly speculating as to its nature, until they have wearied of the impossible, and, for the most part, have given up in despair.

     In the meantime, Swedenborg had approached philosophy from a new angle. Swedenborg saw, in the first place, that if one doubted the existence of the material world, one undermined the foundations upon which the human mind had been built, and that, with the undermining of the foundations of the human mind, all rational philosophy became impossible. He, therefore, did not consider this alternative.

     He also saw that there could be no direct approach to the soul as a substantial existence; for we cannot by means of the internal sense come to know the soul as organic, or even as a substance. If, therefore, any progress was to be made, a new means of approach had to be found. Swedenborg, in his studies, came upon certain laws with which we are all familiar, such as the laws of series, degrees, correspondence, and the similarity of things greatest and least. These laws, one might maintain, have not been proved beyond a doubt.

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We would answer, in behalf of our philosophy, that there is abundant illustration of these laws in the plane of nature; and if these laws are not true, then all philosophy is vanity. Without them no system of philosophy worthy of the name is possible. If, then, we accept these laws, as Swedenborg did, an approach to the nature of the human mind and spiritual substance becomes possible.

     But before considering Swedenborg's manner of approach, let us first give another illustration of the difficulties that lay in the way. Imagine an intelligent man who had been living entirely apart from other human beings, and who had had a peculiar loss of memory. This loss of memory applied particularly to the nature of the human body. Suppose he was unable to touch his eyes or see his own reflection. What could he find out about himself? He would soon find out the nature of hands, feet, and trunk, with their respective functions. He could discover considerable knowledge about his head. Probably the last thing that he would note would be that he had such a thing as sight. After discovering this sensation, he might speculate as to how it functioned. The more he speculated, the more impossible it would be for him to come to a conclusion as to the nature of the eye. He could tell nothing of its shape, form, or structure. In fact, he might arrive at the conclusion that it was a purely spiritual, human attribute, having no organic structure.

     When Swedenborg commenced his search for the soul, he was fully aware of the difficulties lying in his path. He saw that it was as hopeless to try to find out the nature of the substance and structure of the soul, from reasoning based merely upon the observation of thought or internal sensation, as it would be for the man in the above illustration to discover the organic form of the eye from the sensation of sight. If there was to be any progress in philosophy, there had to be an analogy between the world revealed by external sensation and that revealed by internal sensation; there had to be a correspondence between the soul and the body, between the natural world and the spiritual world. But this correspondence was not the only thing requisite. By itself, it would be insufficient, if he was to arrive at a rational conception of the internal human organic. The doctrine of series and degrees was the additional necessary link.

     Swedenborg had noted that there were series and discrete degrees in the world of external experience.

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There was scientific evidence pointing to the fact that the series and degrees of the external world ascended to a plane above the five bodily senses. Swedenborg realized that, if the series to which external objects belonged could be imagined to ascend to higher and higher planes, as by steps, as illustrated in his series of atmospheres, until the place was reached where these planes became the subject of which the internal sensation of thought and will were the attribute, then a rational philosophy became a possibility. By this means, external and internal sensation might be brought into a relationship, without which metaphysics was mere phantastic speculation.

     In other words, if we could, in our thought, abstract the grosser elements of the material world as we ascended degree by degree, until we arrived in this series at a place where we could find a plane or substance of which thought and love were the attributes, we could arrive at a substantial idea of the mind.

     Swedenborg first traced this series in the atmosphere, then in the human body. If there is a similarity between greatests and leasts, then, by the study of the human brain, some knowledge of the human mind as organic may be obtained. If there is a correspondence between the soul and the body, then, by studying the human body, some knowledge of the soul is possible.

     It is not the object of this paper to trace the manner by which Swedenborg advanced along these lines. What we wish to emphasize here is, that all such ideas as subject, substance, body, structure, and atmosphere, are ideas derived from and based upon external sensation. While the ideas expressed in the words "love," "will," "thought," and "imagination," are based upon internal sensation, this was true with Swedenborg as with every other man.

     Let us here turn for a moment to the word "spiritual." In spite of the fact that in many languages this word means breath of air, yet, in the meaning we attach to it, it is not derived from external sensation, but from the internal sensation of the operations of the human mind. When, therefore, we used the words "spiritual substance," we combine reasoning based upon two distinct types of sensation. In our imagination, we have ascended the series which culminates in matter, and which is known by our external senses, until we have arrived on a plane that is directly known, as to its activity, by the internal sensation that we call consciousness of thought and feeling.

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     New Churchmen have sometimes striven to conceive of a purely spiritual organic. By this we mean an idea of a spiritual organic based upon internal sensation, and not upon external sensation. We have tried to show that this is a vain delusion. In fact, we doubt whether the mind, built up as it is, can rationally conceive such a thing. But, supposing there were such a form as a purely spiritual organic, its nature could not be expressed in words, for all words signifying organic are based upon external sensation. All ideas of organic have the same basis. The mind, therefore, has no structural bases for conceiving such ideas. To try to imagine a purely spiritual organic, in the sense that we have been describing, would be like attempting to imagine a color entirely distinct from any that we have seen, or to imagine a new, distinct sense of the body, as different from our bodily senses as hearing is from sight. There is no structural basis in our mind for such concepts. And the same is true of a purely spiritual organic, that is, an organic, the ideas of which are derived from the internal sense, and not from the external senses.

     Why, then, does it say in the Writings that love is substance? Love, as we know it, is nothing but an internal sensation. By scrutinizing and analyzing the operations of our mind, we cannot discover love to be substance. Our idea of substance is based upon external sensation. To our mind, substance seems something like a higher, purer and living form of that which ultimates itself before our external senses as matter.

     In the Writings, it frequently speaks as if spiritual substance were atmosphere or a human organic of which love and wisdom were attributes. Love and wisdom are treated of as the attributes or activity of spiritual atmospheres, which are received in the organic forms of angel and man. In other passages, it speaks as if love was the subject or substance itself. The reason for these latter statements is, we believe, to prevent us from forming a material idea of the spiritual world. If we speak of atmospheres, even though we call them spiritual, our ideas are based upon external sensation; it is, therefore, impossible, owing to the way in which our mind has been built up, to get away from a somewhat material idea of atmosphere.

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No matter how much we refine and purify our conceptions, our idea of atmosphere is still based upon that of matter. Wherefore, if we think of love as atmosphere in activity, we think more or less materially. Though we have ascended, as by a ladder, far above the material world, still the first round of the ladder is matter, and we see the higher rounds only in our imagination. This ascent is a proper one; but, by itself, it is inadequate; by itself it is materialism.

     When we say that love is spiritual substance, we make a direct approach to the spiritual; we approach by the way of internal sensation. And we must never forget that this approach, although it is also inadequate in certain ways, nevertheless reveals to us more accurately the true nature of the spiritual than does the other approach. Let us illustrate this point: If I tell a simple person that light is a wave motion of the particles that compose the ether, this idea, by itself, would be far less true than if I said that light was the medium of sensation by which I am able to see the objects about me. Again, if I say that life consists of various particles of matter in a certain kind of motion, this statement, by itself, gives a less true idea of heat than if I say that it is the activity which causes a feeling of warmth.

     When the Writings say that love is substance, what is meant is that love is reality, and that the nearest and most direct approach to reality is through the internal sensation,-the sensation by which I am conscious of love,-and not through the external sensations of the body and reasonings based thereon.

     We will close this paper with a brief statement of the position of our philosophy in the usual classifications of philosophic systems. Philosophies are divided into groups under three general headings. The first of these is dualism, namely, the belief in two totally different types of substance,-spiritual substance and matter. Descartes' philosophy is representative of this group. The second group is monistic, acknowledging but one kind of substance, namely, matter. Hobbes's philosophy is an example of this type. The third group is also monistic, but maintains that spiritual substance is the only reality. This philosophy is idealistic. And the chief representative of this group is Berkeley.

     Swedenborg has usually been classed as a Dualist and a Cartesian.

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It is our opinion that this is a misclassification. We believe that Swedenborg's philosophy differs fundamentally from each of these classes, while it agrees in certain aspects with all three.

     Swedenborg agrees with Descartes in maintaining that there are two kinds of substances, which are distinct, namely, spiritual substance and matter. He differs from Descartes' teaching that there is no finite ratio between these two types of substance, and insists that, as to substance, these two belong to one series, the upper half of which is living and the lower half dead.

     Swedenborg agrees with the idealists in their belief that spiritual substance, being nearer to its source than matter, is in a sense more real than matter. He differs from them in maintaining that matter has a reality of its own.

     Finally, Swedenborg agrees with the materialists that our basic concepts of structure, organism, body, etc., are derived through the outer senses, and so are based upon matter. He differs from them in insisting that nevertheless matter is not the only reality, nor indeed the chief reality. Swedenborg's philosophy cannot, therefore, be grouped under any of these headings.

     The object of this paper is to invite your careful consideration of the way in which the ideas of the mind have been formed. If we are not careful to consider this process, our philosophic discussions are apt to degenerate into words, the ideas connected with which are obscure.
MYTHS AND THEIR MEANING 1928

MYTHS AND THEIR MEANING       Rev. ARTHUR E. BEILBY       1928

REPRINTED FROM THE NEW-CHURCH HERALD, OCT. 22, 1927. THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. By Carl Theophilus Odhner. Bryn Athyn, Pa.: The Academy Book Room, 1927.

     Considering that the Science of Correspondences is the brightest jewel in our crown, it is astonishing how little we make of it. Its facets reflect the light whichever way they turn, and reveal the secret nature of things more surely than a thousand experiments could ever lay bare. But we handle the tiara clumsily, hold it in a bad light, and its brilliancy is dimmed.

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We trumpet forth our "doctrines" insistently; but the inward essence of this outward show, its symbolism, its correspondence, which alone illuminates those doctrines and interprets them, we treat as a side issue, a sort of Appendix to the book, valuable for including semi-extraneous matters for which there is no room in the text. "Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history," says Plato. This precious apprehension of a parabolic universe, now restored to the Church after ages of exile, this mysterious relationship between things and thoughts,-does it not supply the poetic "tang," the vivid splash of color in new-age philosophy? Unless we are cursed with a roving eye, a wandering and unpenetrating gaze, unless, like Nebuchadnezzar, we are absorbed in eating grass like an ox,-we must be conscious of the strange unity between things visible and invisible, and that some prodigious Idea stands behind the apparent. "The Times are the masquerade of the Eternities," says Emerson. "They are to be studied as omens, as sacred leaves, whereon a weighty sense is inscribed, if we have the wit and the love to search it out."

     Not many, even in the inner circle of New Church students, have plucked up either the wit or the love to pursue such a quest with the constancy of a Columbus. Spite of Swedenborg's bounteous hints and unfoldings, the Science of Correspondence remains, to a very large extent, a virgin field, an unworked mine. This is as true of the sacred symbols of the Word as it is of the pages of nature, and of antique legend and myth. The truths therein concealed, like the Sleeping Princess, await the approach of the Awakener and the sound of his magic horn. But the horn must be sounded, or the princess will sleep on. The awakener must not only be equipped with the "science" of Correspondences; for this adventure he will need imagination, a delicate fancy, without which he will hardly get past the guards that keep the palace.

     Still, we honor an intrepid adventurer, and wish him bon voyage, whether he finds the Golden Fleece or not. Such an adventurer is the late Rev. C. T. Odhner, of Bryn Athyn, U. S. A. Exactly how widely his name is known I am not aware, but it is co-extensive, at any rate, with the organized New Church. And it is a name of solid repute. Mr. Odhner has done things; and several works, involving considerable industry, learning and ingenuity, have proceeded from his pen.

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They are all valuable contributions to the literature of the New Age, not the least so being his Correspondences of Canaan. But, indeed, his excursions in esoteric studies have carried him far beyond that limit. The volume now before me-apparently a posthumous production-is a further illustration of that fact.

     Greek myths are a vast area of buried treasure, and here at my hand is a determined attempt to excavate among the ruins and bring to light some of those spiritual truths known to be entombed there. The attempt was certainly overdue. And its success in this instance is, I think, unquestionable. I know of no other equally careful and comprehensive survey of the situation. Whether Mr. Odhner has quite the imagination for the task might possibly be challenged. If not, he is certainly well equipped with other compensating qualities. He is thoroughly acquainted with the technical side of his subject, an expert in the very involved "science" of Correspondences; but, in addition, he is daring, ingenious, and keenly perceptive of relationships between apparently unrelated things. Without such qualifications in some degree it would be useless to set out on a quest of this kind. The mine is rich, but demands a skillful miner. All is not treasure-trove in the world's myths, Greek or otherwise. A prodigious deal of quartz, not to say slag, confronts the explorer. The quartz may even be beautiful in itself, a circumstance, however, which must not be allowed to have a distracting influence. It is not allowed in this case. Mr. Odhner keeps a very level head. He assumes from the outset that the religion of the Greeks and Romans, and other western peoples of the Mediterranean, was originally an off-shoot, doubtless externalized, of the Ancient Church, that therefore their legends and apologues enshrine profound truths, and are "all glorious within." He boldly declares:

     "The Religion of the ancients is one with the Religion of the New Church, teaching the same Divine Truths, inculcating the same lessons of moral and spiritual good, and leading the mind to the worship of the same and only supreme God, the God of the Ancient Church, who is the Lord of the New Church. . .. In the presence of Mythology we stand before a noble classical temple, the home of the Muses, the cradle of all art, poetry and culture; to us alone has been given the key, and if we enter into the inner recesses we shall find ourselves in a sacred adytum which strangely resembles the interior of a temple of the New Jerusalem."

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     He is emphatic in claiming the science of Correspondences as the Key, the only "Open Sesame" for passing the portal. It is the "exclusive prerogative of the men of the New Church." Something more, surely, is required-insight, vision; nor does he fail to supply them. I am impressed, indeed, with the almost uncanny facility with which he conjures the latent Idea out of figures and fables seemingly too grotesque to contain any. Examples need not be multiplied here, nor can the scope of the work be more than indicated in outline.

     The author treats first of the elder race of gods, headed by Ouranos, who flourished before the popular hierarchy of divinities most familiar to the Greek imagination. He sees in Ouranos a personification of the Most Ancient or Celestial Church; in the Titans who sprang from him a deteriorated, yet comparatively innocent, posterity of that Church, and in the Cyclopean and other monstrous descendants a representation of the diabolic perversions of the original Adamic or Celestial strain. The entry on the scene of Zeus, or Jupiter, and his Court signifies the installation of the Ancient or Noetic Church among the nations of the East. The Golden Age gave place to the Silvern. He perceives that the many cruel and scandalous stories that gather round these Olympians are an obvious indication of the gradual corruption of that ancient dispensation once so widely established. Thus Hera (June), the spouse of Zeus, is a noble matron in the earlier versions, but a jealous and vindictive wife in the later. None the less, the many infidelities attributed to Zeus, sinister though they be on the surface, yet symbolize-so Mr. Odhner considers-the Lord's influx into various Gentile peoples able to receive Him in simplicity. June's rage thereat is the resentment of the fallen, yet official, Church at any recognition of worthiness in the heathen! Well, it is an ingenious and plausible postulate, and worth pondering upon.

     Several of the supreme deity's frivolous escapades are passed under review, and it must be admitted that, as treated by Mr. Odhner, they "suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange." He is an alchemist, and transmutes dress into gold! He examines most of the leading figures, male and female, in the religious systems of Greece and Rome. Particularly pleasing are his reflections on Phoebus Apollo, the glorious symbol of the Lord as the Divine Man and the Sun of heaven.

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Very convincing also is the chapter on the winged Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the gods and the supreme Cloud deity-representative of the Word as the medium of communication between heaven and earth. Pretty and appealing, too, is his interpretation of the Hope that lay at the bottom of Pandora's box, after all else had flown away, as being the promise of a. Redeemer made to the posterity of the Edenic people, fulfilled in the fulness of time. Personally, I should have been still more pleased with the work if the author, instead of thinking mainly in terms of "Churches and Dispensations," had seen in the mirror of these myths the reflection of our own spiritual experiences.

     Always Mr. Odhner uses his Key, producing it with the lofty confidence of a magician in possession of the talismanic word. Often, when one fears for the efficiency of the key in the case of some particularly complicated lock,-lo! it slides smoothly into the wards, and the portal opens!

     However, I am not lecturing on the book or on its theme, but only performing an introduction. I commend this stimulating study to the New Church public, and to all interested in the esoteric side of things.
     ARTHUR E. BEILBY.
DUTCH VERSION OF THE ARCANA COELESTIA 1928

DUTCH VERSION OF THE ARCANA COELESTIA              1928

     HEMELSCHE VERBORGENHEDEN (Arcana Coelestia). By Emanuel Swedenborg. Volume II, nos. 1114-2134, Genesis x-xvii. The Hague: Swedenborg Genootschap (Society), 1927. Cloth, 640 pages. Price, 6.50 florins.

     We take pleasure in congratulating the Swedenborg Society at The Hague upon the publication of this second volume of the Arcana Coelestia, which has just come to hand. As noted in our review of the first volume (March, 1927, P. 161), the translation from the original Latin is the work of Mr. Anton Zelling, with whom the Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer is cooperating. While adhering accurately to the meaning of the Latin, the style is fluent and readable in the Dutch, a combination not always attained in English versions of the Writings, but which can be attained if the literary effort is made.

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AUTHORITY 1928

AUTHORITY       Various       1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office a Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor                    Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager          Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address and business communications should be sent to the Business Manager.

     TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
In the United States, $3.00 per year; Elsewhere, $3.25 or 14 shillings; payable in advance
Single Copy          30 cents
     The old, but ever new, question as to whether the New Churchman forfeits his intellectual and spiritual freedom by placing himself under the authority of the Writings is the burden of recent correspondence appearing in THE NEW-CHURCH HERALD. The contrasting views on this subject are well exemplified by the two letters reprinted below from the HERALD of January 28, 1928:

     AUTHORITY.

To the Editor of the NEW-CHURCH HERALD.

Dear Sir:
     There is apparently a section of New-Church men to whom the word "authority" is a sort of Bogey. One cannot help wondering into what sort of delusions some of us would fall if we had not in the Writings an authority by which all ideas and theories must ultimately be tested. I had the honor of being Secretary to the Theological and Philosophical Society for some eight years. During that time I listened to numerous papers by leading New-Churchmen of diverse characters and views, and to discussions on them, and can testify that the one real question in regard to them was whether they were in accord with the authority of the Writings.

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Nothing was accepted or approved that did not stand that test. Now we are solemnly told that this is a sad state of affairs and destructive of freedom. What sort of freedom do we want? Does not every Christian aspire to be a servant of the Lord, and what is that but submission to authority, and is not true freedom attained by such submission? But we have those among us who, while professing to accept the Writings as Divine Revelation, just pick and choose what they will accept. That is their idea of freedom, and it is the weakness of the Church. It is the reason why so many are attracted by fanciful ideas and beliefs wholly incompatible with New-Church teaching. If only we were all alive to the immense blessing of having an authority by which all ideas may be tested, how many would be saved from falling into gross errors; what unity we should have in the Church, and what strength.
     Yours faithfully,
          H. P. BALY.

     AUTHORITY.

To the Editor of the NEW-CHURCH HERALD.
Dear Sir:
     May I, as a veteran of the New Church, suggest that discussion of this subject is futile. I have always found that argument is fruitless, save that it invariably ends in confirmation of the opinions of the opposing parties. No one is converted: The opposing types of mind do not "mix." This "authority" question crops up periodically, and has always ended where it began. What is rather vaguely known as the "authority" position involves great issues, not the least among them being the literal inerrancy of the Writings. Any candid student will admit that as New-Churchmen grant that the letter of the Holy Word is not literally, historically, or scientifically inerrant, they cannot grant inerrancy to all literal expressions in the Writings. As you, Sir, have often said, the Writings of Swedenborg are "a good gift from the Lord," but it does not follow that the Spirit of Truth revealed to Swedenborg's perception is perfectly articulated in his words. The Light is from the Lord, but the expression of the truth is surely Swedenborg's own. I cannot think that we are expected to submit our intelligence and judgment to any book. It occurs to me that the only "Authority" to which any man can submit, if he is to retain his freedom, is that of the voice of the Lord in his own soul.

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In the end, the attribution of authority to any institution or document is an act of private judgment. As a learned writer has said, "There is one conception of revelation which I think must be repudiated, that, namely, which assigns to it what may be called an oracular authority, and regards it as taking the form of a miraculous communication from heaven of INFORMATION, infallibly guaranteed, about matters of history or of theological truth, ready-made, and expressed in precise theological form."

     Let all take the truth given as it can be intellectually received, and, above all, remember that practical submission to the inner dictates of the Lord in the living soul is the thing that matters. Academic discussions hardly advance the Kingdom of God. I am tempted to write at great length on this matter, but experience tells me that it is wiser for me to refrain.
     Yours for common sense,
          SENEX.

     In the above letters, the contrast is clearly drawn between submission to the authority of the Writings as Divine Revelation, on the one hand, and man's recognizing only, the authority of the "voice of the Lord in his own soul," on the other. Granting that the individual, in his freedom, must first choose whether he will accept the Writings as a Divine Revelation, thus as the "voice of the Lord " speaking to His New Church, we must hold, with Mr. Baly, that the way of true freedom lies in the acceptance of the Writings as such a Revelation, and in the voluntary submission to their authority, even while effort is made to see and understand the truth of their teachings. This position is well supported by the fact that the intellect is not opened to receive enlightenment from the Lord, except by a primary acknowledgment of the truth revealed by the Lord. The fact is thus set forth: "Intellectual truth first becomes evident, or is acknowledged, . . . when man believes in simplicity of heart that a thing is true because the Lord has said so; then the shades of fallacies are dispersed, and there is then nothing with him that prevents his apprehending the truth."

     As at the First Advent, so at the Second, He speaks as one "having authority, and not as the scribes."

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LA NOUVELLE JERUSALEM 1928

LA NOUVELLE JERUSALEM       Rev. E. E. IUNGERICH       1928

     In memory of the late Rev. Ernst Deltenre, Pastor of the General Church Society at Brussels, Belgium, and Editor of LA NOUVELLE JERUSALEM, a special number of that periodical, with an excellent photographic likeness of Dr. Deltenre, was issued in November, 1927. Its twelve pages contain a French translation of the Obituary by the Rev. E. E. Iungerich, which appeared in NEW CHURCH LIFE for May, 1927, and a Note by the Translator, Mr. Henry de Geymuller, who not only expresses his warm regard for Dr. Deltenre, but also brings to light evidence of his artistic talents which is new to us.

     "It was with emotion," Mr. de Geymuller says, "that I transcribed the obituary in French. I had not the good fortune to be personally acquainted with him whose departure has left such a void among the French pioneers of the New Church, but this has not prevented my appreciating his qualities of heart and soul, or feeling a friendship which, though from afar, was none the less real and productive. To judge from old letters addressed to our friend by numerous artists and literary men, and which Mme. Deltenre has kindly placed at my disposal, he whom we mourn was already in his youth one of those attractive personalities who are instinctively beloved as soon as known, because of the charm they irradiate and the interest they arouse.

     "One writer said: 'Mr. Deltenre had one of those warm artistic natures which thrill at the contact with all that is beautiful and human. That is why he could translate admirably into music the beautiful thoughts and verses of those whom he admired.' Another speaks of the 'exquisite and joyous music' to which he had set his song, and exclaims, 'Long live the musician who understands poets!'"

     Competent and impartial musical critics also wrote in glowing terms of his compositions, as cited by Mr. de Geymhtller, who concludes:

     "One can easily comprehend how much it must have grieved Pastor Deltenre when he later found himself misunderstood by so many intellectual friends. And doubtless it was partly the regret at not having succeeded in getting them to understand, and to have their share in the new light of the Heavenly Doctrine which flooded his soul, that inspired the reflections, tinged with a note of disappointment, with regard to the futility of evangelizing intellectual centers, which were expressed in his 'letter to a young friend in the New Church,' quoted by Mr. Iungerich in his obituary.

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It has seemed to me that an article consecrated to the memory of our venerated friend would be incomplete without a mention of the artistic interests which had such a prominent place in his life."
     E. E. I.
LACK OF CONVERTS 1928

LACK OF CONVERTS              1928

     The following is quoted from THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE of February 7, 1928:

     "Confronted with statistics showing that approximately 60,000 of the 200,000 Protestant churches in the United States failed to gain a convert last year, representative ministers, laymen, and officials of the principal Protestant churches yesterday began an inquiry into the reasons for this lack of growth. They were meeting at a luncheon of the Men's Church League at the Madison Square Hotel.

     "Dr. J. Campbell White, general secretary of the league, said that 3,268 of the 9,299 Presbyterian churches in the United States did not add any converts on profession of their faith. Of 8,715 Baptist churches, 3,474 obtained no converts, and of the 16,581 Methodist churches, 4,652 had none. A total, therefore, of 11,394 churches out of 34,575 in these three denominations won no converts, and several thousand reported only one or two each, he said.

     "Various churchmen suggested what was the matter with the churches. Lack of leadership, lack of co-operation between denominations, neglect of personal evangelism, satisfaction with conditions as they are, spiritual laziness, failure of leaders to 'keep their eyes on Jesus,' were all mentioned.

     "Dr. C. H. Fenn, of Princeton, N. J., a missionary to China, now home on furlough, presented the view that churches were afflicted with 'fatty degeneration of the heart (wealth, luxury and ease), pernicious anaemia (lack of blood in its theology and in the fight with sin), cerebro-spinal meningitis (destruction of back-bone and brain center), cancer (unbelief in the supernatural), and neuritis (supersensitiveness to ridicule or criticism).'"

     To which we may add general debility (permeation failing to permeate).

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ORDINATION OF THE REV. GEORGE DE CHARMS 1928

ORDINATION OF THE REV. GEORGE DE CHARMS              1928

     The service in the Bryn Athyn Cathedral on Sunday, March 11th, became a notable occasion in our history when Bishop Pendleton inaugurated the Rev. George de Charms into the Third Degree of the Priesthood of the New Church, and received him as a Bishop in the General Church of the New Jerusalem. A congregation numbering nearly five hundred persons was deeply impressed by the Rite as performed according to the modes of our Liturgy. As the Officiating Bishop concluded the readings from the Scripture and the Heavenly Doctrine, Mr. De Charms made the following Declaration:

     CONFESSION OF FAITH AND DECLARATION OF PURPOSE.

     I believe in the one only living and true God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in Whom is the Divine Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

     I believe in the Sacred Scripture as the very Word of God, Divinely inspired and holy in every syllable.

     I believe in the Heavenly Doctrine as Divine Truth continuous from the Lord, revealing for the upbuilding of the New Church the internal sense of the Word and the glorified Human of our Savior, as He comes in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

     I believe in the New Christian Church, formed of all who in heart, and faith, and life take up their cross to follow the Lord in His Second Advent, as the Holy City New Jerusalem now descending from God out of heaven.

     I believe in the Divine institution of the Priesthood as a human instrument under God for the salvation of men, as an ordered medium whereby the Holy Spirit may pass from the Lord through man to man, and as a sacred office for the administration of the Divine Law and Worship.

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     And now, believing that, in the Divine Providence and according to the acknowledged order of the Church, I have been called to enter more fully into the use of the Priesthood, I come before the Lord solemnly to dedicate my life to His service, declaring that it is my purpose to hold my office as a trust inviolate, to resist every impulse of self and the world, to seek guidance from Him alone, and with singleness of heart to labor in His vineyard in the Spirit of Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.

     This Declaration was followed by the Prayers, all kneeling. Then, with the congregation standing, came the imposition of hands by the Bishop and the words of Ordination into the Third Degree, closing with, "Receive the Holy Spirit!" The blessing was then pronounced, the red stole placed, and the newly consecrated Bishop took his seat in the inner chancel, as the congregation sang "Great and wonderful are Thy works, O Lord!"

     The Rev. Theodore Pitcairn read the Lessons for the day: Numbers XXIII: 5-26 and Arcana Coelestia 2015:10. The Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner delivered the Sermon,-a powerful and moving treatment of the subject of "Influx and Order," expounding the text of Balaam's blessing of the Tribes of Israel in the plains of Moab: "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, thy tabernacles, O Israel!" (Numbers 24:5.) These words were shown to depict the heavenly order of the spiritual church, an order into which the New Church is to come by following the Heavenly Doctrine as the Divine Law, and an order which alone prepares the Church for the reception of the Divine influx, inspiration and blessing. The thought of the discourse then fittingly turned upon the uses of the priestly order and administration, as sanctioned in our Revelation,-the way and medium of Divine influx, illustration and protection in that Church which is to be characterized by restored mutual love under the government of the Lord alone.
OUR "APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION." 1928

OUR "APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION."              1928

     There have been but four inaugurations like the one just described, since the title of Bishop was adopted in 1883 and conferred upon the Rev. William H. Benade, as will be seen from the following:

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     OUR "APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION."

     The lineal descent from the first ordination in America, through the Rev. Richard de Charms, Sr., to the present time, is shown in the following statement summarized from an article in NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1891 (p. 189):

     The first priest of the New Church ordained in America was the REV. JOHN HARGROVE, Of Baltimore, who, in the year 1798, was inaugurated into the Priesthood by the imposition of the hands of the representatives of the Baltimore Society, then the only organized New Church in this country. Mr. Ralph Mather, a preacher licensed through the Rev. Robert Hindmarsh, of London, took part in the ceremony, having previously baptized Mr. Hargrove into the faith of the New Church. When, in the year 1817, the General Convention of the New Jerusalem, in the United States was formed, Mr. Hargrove was acknowledged by that body as an ordaining minister, and the ordinations previously performed by him were declared valid.

     The first person ordained by Mr. Hargrove was a Virginia gentleman by the name of Hugh White. The second was ADAM HURDUS, one of the original members of the Manchester Society, who afterwards became the pioneer of the New Church in the West, and the founder of the Cincinnati Society, to which he ministered for thirty-two years. He was ordained in Baltimore in the year 1816, ordaining powers being at once conferred upon him.

     The first person ordained by Mr. Hurdus was RICHARD DE CHARMS, SR., of Philadelphia, who will ever be remembered as probably the first champion in this country of the Divine Authority of the Writings, and as the zealous advocate of the trinal order of the Priesthood of the Church. After he had graduated at Yale in 1826, he received his theological training in London, under the tutorship of that eminent New Church minister, the Rev. Samuel Noble, and, on his returning to this country, was ordained in Cincinnati, in the year 1833. He was subsequently consecrated an ordaining minister of the Western Convention in the year 1838, and in, the year 1840 became one of the founders and the ordaining minister of the Central Convention.

     The first person ordained by Mr. De Charms was WILLIAM HENRY BENADE, this taking place in 1847, under the auspices of the Central Convention.

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In 1852, Mr. Benade associated himself with the General Convention, was consecrated an ordaining minister in the year 1873, and in the same year became the President of the Pennsylvania Association. When this body, on March 17, 1883, adopted a new Instrument of Organization, changing its name to the "General Church of Pennsylvania," a provision was also made that "the third or highest office of the Priesthood in this Church is the Office of General Pastor or Bishop of this General Church." Mr. Benade thus received the title and office of Bishop. (See NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1883, PP. 62, 66.)

     The first person ordained by Mr. Benade was WILLIAM FREDERIC PENDLETON. This took place in the year 1873, and in 1888 he was consecrated Bishop of the Church of the Academy by Bishop Benade. Bishop Pendleton ordained the Rev. E. C. Bostock into the Episcopal Degree in the year 1903, and the Rev. N. Dandridge Pendleton in 1912.

     From this outline it will be seen that Mr. De Charms is but the fifth upon whom, the title of Bishop has been conferred in the General Church. The sixth is in prospect, and will become a reality with the ordination of the Rev. R. J. Tilson at the General Assembly in London next August.

     The steps recently taken by Bishop Pendleton, looking to the choice of a Minister for introduction into the Third Degree of the Priesthood, were outlined by him in the Statement printed in our last issue (p. 164). The career of the Rev. George de Charms in the ministry has brought evidence of personal qualities which have endeared him to the members of the Church, and have established him in their confidence as a spiritual teacher and leader. They have recognized his loyal and enthusiastic avowal of Academy principles and traditions, and his clear and forceful interpretations of the Heavenly Doctrine, abundant testimony of which they have found in his sermons and public addresses, his class instruction and published writings. And the heartfelt good wishes of the whole Church go with him into the higher field of priestly use now opening before him.
BIOGRAPHICAL 1928

BIOGRAPHICAL       W. B. C       1928

     The Rev. Richard de Charms, Senior, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1796, and died there in 1863.

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The youngest of his six children was the Rev. Richard de Charms II, who was born in Philadelphia in 1841. In 1885, he married Miss Marie Jung, who was of French descent, born in the Island of Martinique, W. I. Mr. De Charms was ordained by Bishop Benade, and it was during his pastorate at Denver, Colorado, that two sons were born, Richard in 1888, and George on August 24th, 1889. The boys received their education from their parents at home until the year 1902, when the family removed to Bryn Athyn, and they entered the Academy Schools. George did not complete his High School courses, leaving in the Junior year to attend Pennsylvania State College, from which he returned in 1909, entering the College of the Academy in 1910 and the Theological School in 1911. He received the Degree of Bachelor of Theology in June, 1914, and was then ordained. He was Minister of the Advent Church, Philadelphia, from 1914 to 1917, becoming Pastor in 1916, when he was ordained into the Second Degree of the Priesthood. In 1915, he was married to Miss Fidelia Asplundh. In 1917, he was called to become Assistant Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church.
     W. B. C.
TRINE IN THE PRIESTHOOD 1928

TRINE IN THE PRIESTHOOD              1928

     "It is known that, in order that anything may be perfect, there must be a trine in just order, one under another, and an intercedent communication, and that this trine must make a one; no otherwise than a pillar, over which is the capital, under this the smooth shaft, and under this again the pedestal. Such a trine is man; his supreme part is the head, his middle part is the body, and his lowest part the feet and the soles of the feet. Every kingdom, in this respect, is like a man. In it there must be a king as the head; also magistrates and officers, as the body; and yeomanry, with servants, as the feet and soles of the feet. In like manner in the Church, there must be a mitred prelate, parish priests, and curates under them." (Coronis 17)

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Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     REPORT OF THE VISITING PASTOR.

     On the way home from the annual meetings at Bryn Athyn, a visit was made to MIDDLEPORT, OHIO. I found that our circle had suffered the loss of another family, that of Mr. and Mrs. H. M. DeMaine, numbering six persons, who have now made their home at Pittsburgh; but I found also, as in the case of the many previous losses of this kind, that those remaining have closed their ranks and are going bravely forward, with an earnest determination to preserve and promote the life and work of the church. Services were held on Sunday, February 12th, with sixteen persons present. Included in these were four children, whose mother passed to the other world a few years ago, and who have recently been legally adopted by their grandmother Mrs. Harvey Skinner, this principally in order that they may be brought up in the church, to which end they were baptized at this Sunday service. At the Holy Supper there were ten communicants. Doctrinal classes were held on Sunday Monday and Tuesday evenings, with an attendance of ten, seven and eight respectively. On Tuesday, Mrs. Amanda Bradbury Johnson, member of the New Church, living near Middleport, passed to the other world, and I remained to conduct the funeral on Thursday. Mrs. Johnson was born in the church, and the fact that she died at the age of ninety-four years leads to a realization of how long the church has been established in this community. Although, for a number of years past, circumstances had not permitted her to be active in the church, her love for it remained constant, and it was a great happiness to her that the baptism of the children-her great-grandchildren-should take place on the Sunday before she was called away. The funeral service was held in our church building at Middleport, and about two hundred persons heard a presentation of the New Church doctrine concerning the future life and the preparation for it.
     F. E. WAELCHLI.

     TORONTO, CANADA.

     Our 1927 Christmas celebration followed pretty much the lines of other years. The Children's Festival, perhaps the outstanding event of this season, was held on December 23d, following the usual program of recent years. The children, in full force, and carrying lighted candles, marched in procession from their assembling place down to the lecture hall where we all listened to a beautifully appropriate address on the celebrating of birthdays and particularly this birthday of the Lord, leading up to three tableaux in the following order: (1) "The Annunciation," represented by the angel making the annunciation as in Luke 1:26-38, with Mary bowing almost prostrate; (2) "The Wise Men of the East," in two poses, (a) searching their Scriptures for some sign of the Lord's coming, (b) the appearance and finding of the star, at which they are seen to be gazing through the window, in an attitude of wonder and awe; (3) "The Nativity," also in two parts, (a) Mary with the Holy Babe in the manger, (b) the wise men bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and presenting them in prostrate adoration. With an improved system of lighting and the added artistic stage effects we were able to have this year, the tableaux were beautifully put on and went very smoothly, due to the painstaking efforts of the committee in charge, who, in collaboration with the Pastor, wrought wonders with the material and accommodation at their command.

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Particularly were we indebted to Mr. Arnold Thompson for his good work in staging them.

     Sunday, Christmas Day, we had a service as usual, with everything appropriate to the occasion. And, like all other people elsewhere, we paid and received calls in the time-honored fashion for the remainder of the day.

     On Monday, January 1st, we had the pleasure of our first visit from Prof. C. R. Pendleton, who came to us under the auspices of the Forward Club and gave his lecture on "Academy Adaptations to Science," treating specifically on the subject of a theory of creation. We understand that this thesis is to be published, and as most members in the Bryn Athyn, Kitchener, and Pittsburgh Societies have heard the lecture, we need not expatiate on it here, further than to say that, probably in common with others, we recognized something of a new contribution to the subject, which probably may be regarded as somewhat in the nature of a concreting of thought, opinion, speech and writing. Certainly the lecture evoked the close attention, and interest of the large gathering that came to hear it, and considerable discussion took place afterwards, both in the meeting and around the tables later when refreshments were served. We appreciated Dr. Pendleton's visit, and can see nothing but good accruing from the presentation and discussion of such topics, provided always that the theories propounded are measured and weighed by the touchstone of Divine authority.

     On January 18th the Society had the pleasure-all too rare-of a wedding in its chapel, when Miss Pearl Hickman and Mr. Wilfred Schnarr were united in the holy bonds of matrimony. Being a mere man, we cannot give that soul-satisfying wealth of detail that would delight the hearts of the gentler sex. We will, therefore, content ourselves with saying that it was a very pretty wedding and a delightfully enjoyable occasion, both at the ceremony itself and the reception which followed, when the bride and groom were the recipients of heartfelt wishes for their future happiness.

     Swedenborg's Birthday falling on Sunday this year, local conditions did not lend themselves to a celebration of the usual kind, so we had an illustrated lecture on Swedenborg by our Pastor, which was made possible by the loaning of slides from Bryn Athyn, and which we gratefully acknowledge. The slides were exceedingly interesting, as was the story woven around them by the speaker.

     During the absence of the Pastor at the meetings of the Council of the Clergy in Bryn Athyn our activities were for the most part suspended. We did, however, have a very interesting evening on Wednesday, February 1st, when Mr. R. Faber gave a "Travelogue through Switzerland," illustrated by beautiful lantern slides. During the intervals, Mrs. Richardson rendered several delightful piano solos, and a male quintette from the ranks of the Forward Club made its initial bow to an "admiring public," giving a couple of numbers which were encouragingly appreciated.

     On Friday, February 8th, the Pastor gave us a very full account of the Council Meetings in Bryn Athyn, from which we gathered that the General Church as a whole is making good progress and is fully alive to its opportunities and responsibilities. Particularly were we interested in the announcement that the Rev. George de Charms is to be elevated to the Third Degree of the Priesthood in the near future. Thus is fulfilled the promise of use, namely, the introduction into the responsibility and opportunity of greater use. The announcement was well received, and we sincerely congratulate the recipient of this high honor, and would say, to quote from Tennyson (slightly altered to the occasion):

We give you welcome to this high office;
     Not without redound of use and glory,
To yourself and to our glorious church.     
     F. W.

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     LONDON, MICHAEL CHURCH.

     On Sunday, January 29th, the character of the service was appropriate to the fact that the day was the anniversary of the birth of Emanuel Swedenborg, "Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ." In the morning, the lessons were from Malachi iii, John iv:1-38, and Invitation 38, 39, 44; and the Pastor preached a most instructive discourse, taking as his text Matt. x:24, 25,-"The disciple is not above his master," etc. In the afternoon, a special tea was provided in honor of the occasion, and Mr. W. D. Pike read a paper giving a comprehensive outline of Swedenborg's life, which was listened to with much interest. It is surely useful, especially for our young people, that they should become familiar with the salient facts in the life of him whom the Lord chose to be His instrument in the latest revelation of His Divine Word; nor can it harm the older ones of us to hear those facts repeated. The reading of the paper was followed by some useful remarks from our Pastor and one or two others, and the singing of the "Ode" completed this pleasant and profitable celebration of Swedenborg's Birthday. The text of the evening sermon was John iv:17, 38,-"One soweth and another reapeth," etc., again giving point to the central idea of the day. We see Swedenborg as a man; we think of him as a use. The one is as necessary as the other. Thus do the angels.

     The usual Monthly Social Tea on February 12th, also proved a very interesting occasion. The Pastor tool; the opportunity of calling the attention of those present to the recent work by Dr. Alfred Acton, entitled An Introduction to the Word Explained, reading copious extracts from it, and interpolating his own appreciative remarks. Both the matter and the manner of the book appear most attractive, and we feel grateful to Dr. Acton for its production. We had the additional pleasure on this occasion of the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Torsten Sigstedt, who were on their way from Sweden to Bryn Athyn; and Mrs. Sigstedt was kind enough to accede to an urgent request for a "speech," by addressing the gathering in her particularly happy and attractive style. Referring to Dr. Acton, she "visualized" him for us, busy at all hours, and always at work. It was most interesting. No less so were some items in connection with her own research work, of which Mrs. Sigstedt has done much. We were delighted to meet her again and to make the acquaintance of her husband.

     Our Pastor then referred in feeling terms to the departure from this life of our old friend, Mr. David Denny, whom some of us have known for nearly fifty years. On Sunday, February 19th, a Memorial Service was held for Mr. Denny, the chancel being decorated with most beautiful flowers presented by his widow, and the whole service being a most uplifting and impressive one.

     On this Sunday, too, Michael Church received the news of the coming elevation of the Rev. George de Charms into the Third Degree of the Priesthood. No choice could have given greater satisfaction in England, nor have supplied a more spiritual stimulus to the Church here. We do indeed regard this latest act of our Bishop as we hear it is regarded across the Atlantic,-"a wonderful augury for the future." By the time these words are in print, the ordination will probably have taken place. May the Divine blessing rest upon it in fullest measure!
     K. M. D.

     KITCHENER, ONTARIO.

     The outstanding event of the New Year so far has been the celebration of Swedenborg's Birthday. The Society gathered on Friday, January 17th, for a supper and social evening. A hot dinner was served, after which we listened to a series of very interesting speeches. Some of the speakers, in treating of phases of Swedenborg's preparation, had used as reference material Dr. Acton's book, The Introduction to the Word Explained, thus creating a live interest in this fascinating work.

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Mr. Rudolph Roschman spoke on the subject "Swedenborg's preparation for the Use of Revelator." Mr. Nathaniel Stroh spoke on "Swedenborg's State of Faith during the Preparatory Period," and Mr. Harold Kuhl on "Swedenborg's Introduction to the Use of Revelator." Mr. David acted as toastmaster. Several musical numbers and cards concluded the evening.

     The following noonday witnessed the gathering of about forty gaily clad children who might have come directly from some Swedish village, but who were in reality our own sons and daughters celebrating in fitting style the birthday of our great Seer. The children also enjoyed a delicious hot meal, after which all the older ones read compositions. One was about Emanuel Swedenborg, giving a short account of his life. The others discussed in turn the seven imaginary heavens visited by the novitiate spirits, as described in the Memorable Relations at the beginning of Conjugial Love. Mr. David, following the ideas described in the compositions, pointed out how true heavenly happiness cannot come from one external act, but that it is contained in a balanced life, with use as the internal of these acts. We sang "Our Glorious Church" and Swedenborg's Birthday songs with much enjoyment. The afternoon ended in playing games.
     G. R. D.

     OBITUARY.

     Mrs. Frederick Urwick, who died in London, England, on November 14, 1927, was a devoted New Church woman, and a diligent reader of the Doctrines. In the early days, she acted as Agent of New Church Life. She was a sister of Mrs. W. H. Benade, and thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the intimate acquaintance of the beloved Bishop Benade.

     Mr. David Denney who died at Norbury, London, England, on February 12th, 1928, was a member of Michael Church, where a Memorial Service was held for him on February 19th. He was brought into the New Church by the means of a Theological Class conducted by a Mr. Skelton in connection with the Flodden Road Society, then having Mr. Edward Austin as its Leader. Mr. Denney became a Reader in the services of that Society, and was representative of the Society at the fateful General Conference of 1890.

     He was one of the early members of the Academy of the New Church, and throughout his life a firm supporter of the Divine Authority of the Writings. In the first volume of New Church Life (October, 1881, p. 6), we find a letter from him signed "Auxiliary, and closing with the words, " Receive from us, therefore, a brotherly hearty, British and New Church Godspeed."

     The following year, commenting upon and supporting the efforts of the Rev. Thomas Child to persuade the Conference to place the Ministers of the Church in their rightful position in relation to their societies, Mr. Denney wrote: "It is strange to find among New Churchmen so much fondness for the deductions of unaided human reason, and so much dislike of the Divine guidance in intellectual and doctrinal matters. In 1890, Mr. Denney, with fifty-eight others, left the Flodden Road Church under the leadership and ministrations of the Rev. R. T. Tilson.

     Mr. Denney was well-known by all the members of the General Church in England, and took an active part in many of the British Assemblies. For some time he worshiped under the ministry of the Rev. Andrew Czerny, but eventually led returned to Burton Road. During the last two years he was prevented by ill health from attending services, but loved to read the Writings every day, and to have reports of the sermons which he could not come to hear. He was twice married, and leaves a widow who has most selflessly devoted her all to him, and with whom for upwards of twenty at years he enjoyed the happiest of married life. He was a wise counselor, a genuine friend, and a man greatly beloved.
     R. J. TILSON.

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     GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS.

     On Sunday March 4th, we had a special Lenten Song Service, in which there was short address by the Pastor, several songs by the choir, and instrumental music. The occasion was very enjoyable, and will shortly be repeated.

     Preceding the regular service on March 11th, a special service was held for the purpose of marking the ordination of the Rev. George de Charms into the Third Degree of the Priesthood. The Pastor read portions of the Rite of Ordination which enabled us to visualize the ceremony performed at the same hour in Bryn Athyn.

     Our Friday suppers and classes have been running along as successfully as ever, and have assumed the proportions of banquets. The members attend in large numbers, leaving the smaller children at home in charge Of the older children, and everyone enjoys this gather together at table. While we are still seated, the Pastor gives instruction in a talk lasting about twenty-five minutes.

     Our Pastor has recently paid two visits to Joliet, Illinois, to see Mr. Charles Sifferlen, member of the General Church formerly residing in Bryn Athyn, where he was one of the staff of workers on the Cathedral. Mr. Sifferlen has been in the hospital for many months, and is slowly recovering from the effects of an operation.

     We have recently received additions to our membership from those formerly affiliated with Sharon Church, Chicago: Mr. and Mrs. Louis V. Riefstahl and family; Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Headsten.
     J. B. S.

     GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

     Hotel Accommodations.

     The first part of the month of August is a crowded season for London hotels. To insure satisfactory accommodations, reservations should be made in advance. In the immediate vicinity of Victoria Hall, where the Assembly will meet, August 3d to 12th, are to be found a number of hotels ranging in size from 100 to 506 rooms, the rates being $2.00 to $2.50 per day for room and breakfast. Of these, Cranston's Ivanhoe Hotel (300 rooms), in Bloomsbury Street, is particularly recommended by several New Church people who have stayed there. The rates are 10 shillings or $2.50 per day for room and breakfast. Rooms with private bath cannot be obtained at any of the smaller hotels.

     Reservations may be made direct, or through Miss Florence Roehner, Bryn Athyn, Pa., or Miss R. M. Dowling, 11 Overton Road, Brixton, London, S. W. 9, England.

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CORRECTION 1928

CORRECTION              1928




     Announcements.



     In the Report on page 183, of the March issue of New Church Life, under "Deaths," the second name should be Mr., not Mrs., James G. Blair.

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JOHN FLAXMAN SCULPTOR, ARTIST AND NEW CHURCHMAN 1928

JOHN FLAXMAN SCULPTOR, ARTIST AND NEW CHURCHMAN       ARTHUR CARTER       1928


[Frontispiece: John Flaxman and his art; above - Jasper Vase (Wedewood) in British Museum, subject: "Apotheosis of Homer"]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII      MAY, 1928           No. 5
     In the realm of the Fine Arts some interest has been manifested in the centenary of John Flaxman, who departed this life in December, 1826, at the age of seventy-one. A superb draftsman, as well as England's greatest sculptor, his native land possesses many evidences of his wonderful and varied craftsmanship. His statues and reliefs are scattered throughout the British Isles in cathedrals, galleries, and other public places of importance; his beautiful cameo designs for Wedgwood ware marked an era in ceramic art; and for generations his outline illustrations for the Iliad and the Odyssey have been a familiar decoration for unnumbered editions of those classics. He is celebrated, moreover, in the world of letters as the friend and associate of William Blake, whose centenary was observed during the past year. But John Flaxman's claim upon our interest is due chiefly to the fact of his association with the earliest beginnings of the New Church in England. Because of this, the man and his career will be gratefully recalled by New Churchmen when his earthly fame has dimmed or has even passed away.

     The future sculptor was born in York, July 6th, 1755. Six months after this event, the family moved to London, where the father, a molder of plaster figures by trade, commenced business on his own account at the sign of the Golden Head, New Street, Covent Garden. Flaxman was a sickly, misshapen child, suffering from curvature of the spine, and little hope was entertained that he would survive to maturity. Unable to move about save on crutches, he was debarred from boyish sports, the pleasures of the countryside, and the companionship of those of his own age.

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But, blessed with a cheerful if serious disposition, child though he was, he turned his handicaps to good account. "In a little stuffed chair, raised so high that he could just see over the counter, he usually sat during the day, with his books around him, and paper and pencils before him, reading one hour and making drawings in black chalk another."

     The superior casts made by the elder Flaxman attained a high reputation in their day, and were wistfully remembered. The cultured art-loving customers who were attracted to his shop did not fail to interest themselves in the industrious little invalid. They assisted him in his solitary studies, and appraised or commended as he drew or modeled in clay. But the occasional visits of the great Romney he never forgot. It was noted at the time that this unusual child had not confined his efforts to sketching the objects around him. Forecasting the work of his maturity, he had dipped into Homer, and had attempted to picture scenes and incidents from the pages of the classic.

     After his tenth year, Flaxman rapidly gained in health and strength. The crutches were permanently laid aside, and the long valetudinary period was ended. More assiduously than ever he now occupied himself with the task of self-education-as an instance of which he became a conspicuous example. Save for a brief term under a harsh instructor, Flaxman attended neither school nor college, but mastered what he wished to learn by application and methods devised by his own genius. Other changes occurred at this particular juncture of his life. His mother died, and a new mistress was introduced into the home. She proved to be kindly and efficient, however, and Flaxman referred to her always in terms of affection and gratitude. His father's affairs, which had heretofore been straitened, now commenced to improve slightly, and a greater degree of comfort obtained in the household.

     The Rev. Henry Mathew and his cultured wife are usually credited with having been the discoverers and fosterers of Flaxman's artistic genius. The kindly Anglican divine first met him as a boy ten years of age, and has described the incident in the following words: "I went to the shop of old Flaxman to have a figure repaired, and whilst I was standing there I heard a child cough behind the counter. I looked over, and there I saw a little boy seated on a small chair with a large chair before him, on which lay a book he was reading.

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His fine eyes and beautiful forehead interested me, and I said, 'What book is that?' He raised himself on his crutches, bowed, and said, Sir, it is a Latin book, and I am trying to learn it.' 'Aye, indeed! I answered, 'You are a fine boy; but this is not a proper book. I'll bring you one tomorrow.' I did as I promised, and the acquaintance thus casually begun ripened into one of the best friendships of my life."

     Located in the genteel neighborhood of Rathbone Place, the residence of the Mathews was resorted to by numbers of literary, fashionable, and noted people of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The hostess, "the celebrated Mrs. Mathew," as she was called, and one of the distinguished blue-stockings of her day, delighted in entertaining youthful and promising geniuses, especially poets, artists, and musicians. Amongst the intimate friends and companions who gathered at her soirees and reunions might be seen such exemplars of female propriety and intellectual attainment as the unreadable Mrs. Chapone; the sensible, didactic Mrs. Barbauld; "the learned and awful Mrs. Carter, a female Great Cham of literature"; and the sprightly Mrs. Montague, champion of Shakespeare against the rude assaults of Voltaire. The humor that may arise out of the contemplation of this prim, quasi-aristocratic salon must be tempered with the recollection that its privileges were at one time enjoyed by three young men who were subsequently to become illustrious,-Stothard, Flaxman, and Blake, the two latter of special interest to New Churchmen.

     At the age of eleven, after discarding his crutches, Flaxman was invited to the home that he constantly visited, and in which he was ever welcome for many years to come. Exquisite and highly educated, Mrs. Mathew would read Homer in the original, translating as she went, while the future sculptor sat by her side, sketching any passages that impressed his fancy. In this manner he was familiarized with Greek, and inspired thereafter to acquire some knowledge of the language for himself. The Mathews interested themselves on behalf of their prot?g? in many helpful ways, not the least of which being his introduction to opulent friends and patrons of art. His first commission was obtained through their influence from Mr. Crutchley of Sunning Hill Park. Six drawings were ordered, classical in subject, twenty-four inches in height, and done in black crayon. Grateful for many favors, when Flaxman became skilled in his art, he decorated the library or back parlor of the Mathew's house "with models in putty and sand, of figures in niches in the Gothic manner."

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     Flaxman was a precocious exhibitor and prize-winner for three years before attending the Royal Academy as a student in 1770. At the end of the initial term, he gained the silver medal with ease, and it was expected by himself and his friends that he would be equally successful in the competition for the gold one in the ensuing year. Unfairly, it is thought, Sir Joshua Reynolds awarded the coveted prize to a young man named Englehart. As Englehart was never again heard of, reasonable grounds seem to have existed for the dissatisfaction of Flaxman's admirers. Friendly observers were beginning to dub him "coxcomb," and undeserved failure may have been a salutary check to overconfidence. It so happened that the disappointment fixed his determination to persevere in his chosen field; but for the time being ambition was forced to yield to the more immediate problem of earning a livelihood. His father's affairs were not prosperous, and it was idle to expect his support through the unremunerative period of toil which the aspiring sculptor is foredoomed to endure. Laying Homer aside, he turned to the humble occupation of making plaster casts in his father's shop, sketching and modeling for any who would employ him, and, at the same time, continuing his favorite studies with interest unabated. Flaxman performed this drudgery for years, assisting to keep the wolf from the door and hold the family together. It accustomed him to steady work, and if the discipline was hard, it was none the less wholesome.

     At fifteen, Flaxman exhibited a statue of Neptune at the Royal Academy, and in the four succeeding years contributed not more than nine pieces to the various displays of that institution. These pieces were done in wax or plaster of Paris; he was unable to afford marble or the expense of getting it carved. The exhibits of his most arduous years, though few, attracted critical interest in an unsuspected quarter. When Josiah Wedgwood's attention was directed to the artistic skill displayed by young Flaxman, he was already familiar with the name through business relations with the father. Four years were to elapse ere his observations bore fruit, and unfounded prejudices imbibed at the time were to be dissipated on closer acquaintance. In 1771, Flaxman being sixteen, Wedgwood wrote Thomas Bentley, his partner, as follows: "He (a Mr. Freeman) is a great admirer of young Flaxman, and had advised his father to send him to Rome, which he had promised to do.

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Mr. Freeman says he knows young Flaxman is a coxcomb, but does not think him a bit the worse for it, or less likely to be a great artist."

     The Wedgwoods, an old Unitarian family, have been master potters for over three hundred years. From small beginnings the house rose to prosperity and distinction under the management of Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), a man of marked ability and a lover of his craft. At his death he had extended the business to great dimensions, accumulated a fortune of over half a million pounds, and profoundly influenced the development of ceramic art. His first success was the invention of an exquisite cream-colored ware, much admired by Queen Charlotte of England. A complete service was ordered for the royal household, and to this day it is sold under the name of "Queensware." After endless experiments he produced a handsome black fabric called basaltes, then his famous jasper. This ware, fine in texture, is made in various colors, the most popular of which is blue. It is decorated with white cameo reliefs, usually classic in design. It was when preparing his new wares for the market that Josiah Wedgwood sought out Flaxman, then a young man of twenty.

     About this time the Flaxman business was moved, and it was probably the new shop on the Strand that Josiah Wedgwood abruptly entered, and, accosting the future sculptor, broke out, "Well, my lad, I have heard you are a good draftsman and clever designer; I am a manufacturer of pots, named Wedgwood. Now I want you to design some models for me, nothing fantastic, but simple, tasteful, and correct in drawing. I'll pay you well. You don't think the work beneath you?" "By no means, sir," replied Flaxman; "indeed the work is quite to my taste. Give me a few days, and call again, and you will see what I can do." "That's right; work away. Mind, I am in want of them now. They are for pots of all kinds,-teapots, jugs, teacups and saucers. But especially I want designs for a table service. Begin with that. I mean to supply one for the royal table. Now, think of that young man! What you design is for the eyes of royalty!" "I will do my best, I assure you." And Wedgwood bustled out as unceremoniously as he had come in.

     Flaxman retained his connection with Wedgwood for twenty years, and his subsequent fame as one of the greatest modern sculptors imparted a luster to the house, rare in a commercial enterprise. In accord with the taste of the age, his ceramic designs were usually classic in motif.

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The study of Etruscan vases in the London museums suggested many of the little groups, friezes, and mythological figures so exquisitely wrought in his low reliefs; and Stuart's Antiquities of Athens, then appearing, provided him with the purest shapes of Greek utensils. Perhaps the most popular examples of his ceramic art have been "The Muses" and "The Dancing Hours." Josiah Wedgwood, however, regarded "The Apotheosis of Homer" a vase deposited in the British Museum-as the chef d'oeuvre. In addition to tableware and vases, Flaxman worked at placques, medallions, busts, etc., and among other things, a set of chessmen, the most beautiful objects of the kind ever produced. We have recently been informed by a member of the time-honored pottery establishment that Flaxman designs are still made in basaltes and jasper wares, and that some of the original wax models are on exhibition in the factory museum at headquarters. By the employment of competent artists, Wedgwood elevated the potter's craft, and it is only fair to state that others beside Flaxman contributed to that end.

     Amiable, kindly and generous, biographers friendly to Flaxman admit a certain amount of dogmatism and self-sufficiency in his character. Some knowledge of the latter traits, often conspicuous in youth, must have prompted Wedgwood to use an epithet in 1775 which he would not have repeated in 1776 writing to Bentley, he said: "I am, glad you have met with a modeler, and that Flaxman is so valuable an artist. It is but a few years since he was a most supreme coxcomb, but a little more experience may have cured him of that foible." A year after these words were written, the "coxcomb" had designed "The Apotheosis of Homer," a vase described by Wedgwood as "the finest and most Perfect I have ever made." And on a later occasion he referred to the same "coxcomb" as "the genius of sculpture." Flaxman had lived his reputation down.

     The assurance of an income derived from commercial art was a step ahead for Flaxman, though he still had far to travel before reaching the goal of his ambition. Every hour he could snatch from his regular work he devoted to the study and practice of sculpture. But at this stage of his career commissions in plastic design were difficult to obtain; up to the time of his departure for Rome at the age of thirty-two, three were all that-he had been able to procure. These were: the memorial to Chatterton in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol; that of Rev. Thomas and Mrs. Ball, in Chichester Cathedral; and Mrs. Morley, in Gloucester Cathedral.

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     His friendship with Stothard and Blake, which began in early manhood, is an important phase in Flaxman's life. If the prevailing estimate of Blake continues undiminished, Flaxman's association with that strange character may eventually become his chief title to fame in the future. Through the years, and at the commencement of their acquaintance, Flaxman went out of his way to render kindly services to Blake, for which the latter gave little evidence of gratitude; and the inadequate recognition of this fact on the part of Blake's biographers is irritating to contemplate.

     With Stothard, the painter and illustrator, accredited with 3000 engraved designs, the sculptor's relations were uniformly cordial. But the ebullient Blake, though age may have tamed him, was difficult to get along with; and after the middle years, intervals of coolness were followed by fading intimacy. Blake and Stothard permanently severed their friendship about 1807. In the tangle arising out of designs for "The Canterbury Pilgrims," a celebrated engraving, Flaxman exonerated the illustrator from the accusations of Blake.

     Stothard introduced Blake to Flaxman, who, of his own accord, had sought the acquaintance of the illustrator out of admiration for his graceful prints. Of nearly equal ages, the three young artists frequently availed themselves of the hospitality of the Mathews, at 27 Rathbone Place. Before the precise and fashionable audiences which assembled at Mrs. Mathew's soirees, Blake first sang and recited his earliest poems. It is stated by one who was present, that "he was listened to by the company with profound silence, and allowed by most of the visitors to possess original and extraordinary merit."

     Deeply impressed by the effusions of the bard, the accomplished hostess persuaded her husband to join the sculptor in. issuing the poems in printed form; Flaxman, out of his limited means, generously assuming a moiety of the expense. The little volume of seventy-four pages appeared in 1783, and bore the title, Poeticae Sketches; by W. B. Uneducated, and never amenable to correction, Blake has been the despair of his editors. In the present instance the suggestion by his friends, that he should put his MS. in order, only stirred him to anger.

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Consequently, the Poetical Sketches swarmed with errors,-errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation, and bears no evidence even of revision by a proofreader. Smarting under the offence that he had endured in being asked to correct the Poetical Sketches, he wrote, "Improvement makes straight roads, but crooked roads without improvement are the roads of genius."

     Blake was presented with the entire edition to sell or distribute among his friends as he saw fit. Apparently he did nothing of the kind, but sulked over an imaginary affront. Surfeited with soirees, or for other reasons easily imagined, he gradually withdrew from the social entourage of Rathbone Place. Says "Rainy Day" Smith, a chronicler of those days, "It happened unfortunately, soon after this period (1784), that in consequence of his unbending deportment, or what his adherents are pleased to call his manly firmness of opinion, which certainly was not at all times considered pleasing by every one, his visits were not so frequent."

     In the early years of their acquaintance, Flaxman and Blake worked together in the preparation of Wedgwood's illustrated catalogues, the latter engraving the cuts. Here may be discerned an example of one of the many good turns the sculptor did for his erratic confrere. Think, gentle reader, of a catalogue prepared by Flaxman and Blake!

     Of Flaxman as a young man it is said "that his personal appearance was singular, for though his frame had acquired a wiry tenacity which enabled him to bear much fatigue, yet he looked feeble, and was high shouldered almost to deformity, with ahead somewhat too large for his body, and a sidelong gait in walking. His mouth and set of jaw had something of Plebeian stubbornness, corresponding to his inflexible rigidity of opinion on certain subjects; but the eyes were fine and full of enthusiasm, the forehead noble, the smile quaint and winning, and in youth long brown hair curled to his shoulders."

     Such was Flaxman when he won the affections of Ann Denman, daughter of a gun-stock maker, a cheery, intellectual young woman about his own age. The couple were married in 1782. And when they had settled in the small house and studio in Wardour Street, the sculptor was elected to the position of collector of the watch rate for the Parish of St. Anne. The wedded life of the Flaxmans was singularly happy; no differences ever seemed to arise between them, and thirty-eight years of companionship only strengthened their mutual esteem.

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They were of similar tastes, content to live within their means, and not ambitious for social eminence, preferring the retirement of their home and the company of a few intimate friends.

     Sir Joshua Reynolds, himself a bachelor, met Flaxman one day when he had not long enjoyed his newly-found felicity, and reproachfully broke out, "So, Flaxman, I am told that you are married. If so, sir, I tell you, you are ruined for an artist." Flaxman went straight home, sat down beside his wife, took her hand in his, and said: "Ann, I am ruined for an artist." "How so, John? How has it happened, and who has done it?" "It happened," he replied, "in the church, and Ann Denman has done it." He then told her of Sir Joshua's remark. His opinion was well known, and had often been expressed,-that if students would excel, they must bring the whole powers of their mind to bear upon their art, from the moment they rose until they went to bed; and also, that no man could be a great artist unless he had studied the great works of Raphael, Michelangelo and others, at Pome and Florence. "And I," said Flaxman to his wife, drawing up his little figure to its full height, "I would be a great artist." "And a great artist you shall be," she replied, "and visit Rome, too, if that be really necessary to make you great." "But how?" asked Flaxman. "Work and economize," rejoined the brave wife; " I will never have it said that Ann Denman ruined John Flaxman for an artist."

     And so it was determined by the pair that the journey to Rome was to be made when their means would permit. "I will go to Rome," said Flaxman, "and show the President that wedlock is for a man's good rather than his harm; and you, Ann, shall accompany me." Patiently and happily the affectionate couple plodded on during five years in their humble little home in Wardour Street, always with the long journey to Rome before them. It was never lost sight of for a moment, and not a penny was uselessly spent that could be saved toward the necessary expenses. They said no word to any one about their project, solicited no aid from the Academy, but trusted only to their own patient labor and love to pursue and achieve their object. (Self-help, by Smiles.) It is one of the ironies of fate that the superb statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, now standing in St. Paul's Cathedral, should have been executed by Flaxman, whom he had thwarted as a youth and taunted in his manhood.

     Shortly after his marriage, Flaxman was introduced by Romney to the wealthy Sussex squire, William Hayley, Cowper's biographer.

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This maudlin poet and genial man conceived a warm attachment for Flaxman and his wife. For several years the young couple spent their summer holidays at his magnificent home in Eartham, and his patronage was of great use to the sculptor in procuring him commissions for monumental work in the neighboring Cathedral of Chichester. When Flaxman had returned from, his residence abroad, a son of Hayley's who showed some taste for art, was placed with him as a student, but within a few years he died of a decline. During his son's illness the Sussex squire rented his fine estate at Eartham, and built a seaside cottage at Felpham, six miles distant, in which he lived for the remainder of his days. Assuming the task of writing Cowper's biography, as a nepenthe for his bereavement, on Flaxman's recommendation, Blake was employed to engrave the illustrations of the projected quarto. It was likewise decided that the artist should live at Felpham, so that, during the progress of the book, he might be near the author, who thought to push Blake's fortunes by introducing him, to his numerous and well-connected friends. After four years amidst the rural charms of little Felpham, the restless spirit of the artist grew bored, and when he parted from his generous patron it was outwardly upon good terms. Hayley, the valued friend of Gibbon in one generation, and of Cowper in the next, was not deserving of the malignant remarks which Blake recorded in his notebook. These aspersions upon former benefactors, deliberately thought out and set down, reveal an unpleasant aspect of Blake's character. "The visions were angry with me at Felpham," he would afterwards say. Following the severance of his relations with Hayley and the serious rupture with Stothard, Flaxman's friendship waned.

     (To be Continued.)

     [Mr. Carter's sketch of the career of John Flaxman will be published in three installments. The next, treating of Flaxman's reception of the Heavenly Doctrines, and f his relations with William Blake, will appear in the June number.-EDITOR]

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ORDER AND INFLUX 1928

ORDER AND INFLUX       Rev. HUGO LJ. ODHNER       1928

     "How good are thy tents, O Jacob; thy tabernacles, O Israel!" (Numbers 24:5.)

     Israel was marching towards its promised land. But their migration was unique in history. It is true that they had become a militant nation in the pursuit of the usual human goals of liberty and happiness. But they were led on by a Divine Vision, were obedient to a Divine Voice. To them God had descended to speak His commands in audible manner. They were a "kingdom of priests and an holy nation"-picturing on earth the kingdom of God in a representative way, serving as His Specific Church, and destined to be the tool of judgment in His hands, a scourge to idolatrous Canaan, but withal a blessing to all the nations of the earth, responsible for carrying the burdens of Revelation and preparing the way of the Lord.

     Only very vaguely did Israel sense the holiness or recognize the universality of their mission. Their conscious service was merely external; their loyalty was pledged to traditions of race, and their worship was rendered to the God of their fathers; whom they viewed as a tribal deity whose interest they monopolized. They were unaware of the presence of angelic hosts as they performed the commands of their God. They were, for the most part, too gross to read the spiritual laws of charity and mutual love which were contained within their everyday customs and rituals, or to discern the arcana of heavenly truths which were embodied in their Tabernacle, with its trine of parts. And when-as is implied in our text-the Israelites were encamped upon the plains of Moab, every man by his own standard, with the ensign of their father's houses, each tribe by itself in definite relations around the Tabernacle of the Congregation (Numbers 2:2, 34), they saw in this only a worldly precaution, the prudent care of their God for their protection against external foes, and against internal dissensions and confusions. This external strength of Israel-the power of order and thorough organization-was the result of nearly forty years of desert-life.

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Israel had learned the value of discipline, had seen the futility of murmuring and rebellion. No longer were they a rabble of slaves. They were now-their period of Reformation over-a nation bred upon hardships, united by firm discipline, fired by the prospect of conquests.

     This strength of Israel was recognized by their foes. And in the events that lead up to our text we find how the Ring of Moab calls to his aid a noted enchanter, a Syrian prophet, that he might undermine the strength of Israel by secret arts. And Balaam, the prophet, sought to curse Israel on the Ring's behalf. From all the hilltops around the plain did he try his power; but everywhere the Lord turned his curses into blessings. The prophet's eyes, open to the spiritual world, perceived the heavenly powers allied with Israel-and knew that he could not defy whom the Lord had not defied. "Surely," he cried, "there is no enchantment against Jacob, nor is there any divination against Israel." And as he lifted up his eyes, and saw Israel abiding in his tents according to his tribes, the Spirit of God seized him, and he exclaimed, "How good are thy tents, O Jacob, thy tabernacles, O Israel; as the valleys are they planted, as gardens by the river, as sandal trees which the Lord hath planted, as cedar trees beside the waters."

     Israel, in their orderly encampment, represented the spiritual church. The church is indeed called "the Camp of the Saints." Each tribe in Israel signified some universal essential of the church, and their encampment represented the arrangement of the angelic societies in the heavens, and thus the church in the whole complex. This ordination of the societies of heaven is effected with the purpose "that all may be kept in connection by influx." (A. E. 410.) There is a "coordination" and a "subordination" throughout the whole spiritual world, that the influx of life and power may be distributed to all; and although the disposition of individuals, and the mutual relation of societies, are affected by the process of growth, and are especially changed at times of a final judgment, yet the general form of the heaven does not alter, and the order of influx is not essentially changed. (A. E. 702.) Life inflows from the Lord according to a Divine and eternal order-inflows through the celestial into the spiritual, and thence into the natural, and never the reverse; although there is also an immediate Divine influx into every successive heaven, and into each discrete degree.

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Only where there is order can this influx be received; and according to the perfection of the order, there is also perfection of reception, of uses, of wisdom, and of love.

     It was because Balaam saw in the encampment of Israel the order of heaven, that he recognized his inability to harm them by enchantments, or by surrounding them with evil spirits. For despite the gross evils of the Israelites as individuals, "Israel" as a people or a church were under the protection of Omnipotent God so long as they were willing to be led, and to have their lives organized by the Lord's will.

     The order of heaven is from the Lord alone. He as the Divine Human is the Life of heaven, the disposing influx of which makes heaven. He is Order Itself. Wherever He is present, there order is; and where order is, there He is present. (A. C. 5703:5.) It is true on earth as it is in heaven, that where two or three are gathered in His Name, or in accord with His Divine Order, there He is in the midst. It was not peculiar to Israel that the Lord's presence with them and His protection over them depended upon the order of their institutional life, but it is a universal law that influx is according to form, and that influx is received where there is order, and there alone. Thus it is true of the New Church, which the Lord in His Second Advent is now seeking to establish on earth, that the Lord is present so far as there is a disposition to recognize the order towards which He leads us by the Heavenly Doctrine. The progress of the Church is actual just so far as there is a growing perception of heavenly order, and a willing endeavor to build our uses according to its form. Then the Church will become a Camp of Jehovah, and an image of heaven; and though it may yet for a season have to dwell in the wilderness, and be cherished among a few, yet no enchantment and no divination shall avail against it.

     Through the Revelation of the Writings we may now look down upon the camp of Israel with prophetic eyes, and discern therein the order of heaven which the church should emulate. Order implies government. Yet, in the center of the camp, we should look in vain for the tent of Moses, or even his judgment-seat. There, instead, we find the holy tabernacle, with its ascending pillar of smoke, wherein the Lord, the Ruler of Israel, dwells between the cherubims, on the ark of the Covenant, the Word, the Divine Law.

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The Lord, as a living presence, is the center of the Church. From Him comes all influx of life and government, and all instruction.

     But immediately around the Tabernacle dwell the Levites, divided as to families and functions. And Moses, Aaron, and the priests dwell in the East, at the very gate of the sacred enclosure. It is stated that Israel was to be "a kingdom of priests," which spiritually signified that all in the church are to live in spiritual good-the good which comes from spiritual truth; and thus would become "a holy nation" by truths which spring from such charity. But in order that there may be a kingdom, there must be the office of King, which office is represented by the monarch or executive, and by those who are instrumental in the government; so also a kingdom of priests implies the need of a priestly office, to administer and interpret the Divine Law and Worship. The priesthood is thus "the first of the Church " (A. E. 229), the means of inaugurating it, the means of perpetuating it, by providing that what is Divine may be among men, and by maintaining order in ecclesiastical things.

     The priesthood thus in a manner mediates the influx of the Divine Truth among men, without preventing the presence of the Lord by immediate influx into each and all. The teaching is given us that "influx from the Lord advances through continual mediations and thus successions" (A. C. 5920:2), and the instance is given that the three heavens mediate in such a way. "For all the influx of Divine Truth," the doctrine informs us, "is effected through heaven: immediate influx cannot be received by anyone." (A. C. 4809:2.)

     That the priesthood performs a mediating function in teaching and leading the church, is clear. In a normal state of the church it is seldom questioned, although the teaching and the government is then not obtrusive. For where order rules, the Lord Himself is present, and it is felt that it is He who rules, He who leads and teaches. The nearer the Lord is to man, the freer is man. The priest as to his office becomes, then, but a representative of the Lord, and personality falls away from the thought. But where there is disorder in the church, the responsibility of the priesthood in mediating the influx of truth becomes doubly manifest. For it then often appears that the priesthood has obstructed the influx of truth, instead of mediating and transmitting it. Or that they, like Aaron, on one occasion, did hearken to the popular demand, "Up, make us gods which shall go before us!"

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Thus forsaking their holy office of leading and teaching.

     It is a consequence of such abuses that the desirability of a priestly government within the churches has been questioned from time to time, and a congregational government of ecclesiastical affairs has been introduced, among Protestants, and to lesser extent even among New Church societies. The ostensible object in this has been to avoid the mediation on the part of others. But it is clear from observation, as well as from the Writings, that mediation cannot be avoided; that there is no influx possible except through others; that human society is so constituted that no one can think from himself, but all are influenced by those who-in any single field of thought or use-are pre-eminent, or at least most productive or conspicuous. And the duty of the church is therefore to place the function of mediating the truth, and leading thereby to the good of life, in the hands of those who are amply prepared and responsible for that ministry.

     In civil affairs, government is founded largely upon mutual suspicion, and is therefore furnished with a series of checks, with a view of making abuses impossible. But in the New Church the endeavor is to seek an order into which the blessings of illustration and of purer influx may make possible the nearer presence of the Lord and His kingdom of mutual love and charity. No safeguards are of any avail which prevent abuses and make the use impossible or imperfect. Nor can the human mind devise a government which shall fulfill these loftiest of all requirements-of holding and reflecting the light of heaven.

     No. We must go to the ark of God-to the Word displayed as to spiritual meaning-for such instruction. We must look upon the Camp of Jehovah with the eyes of angels, to see the truth that the strength of heaven lies in the order revealed by the Lord. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." (Zech. 4:6.) A priestly government of three degrees in due subordination is shown in the Heavenly Doctrine to be requisite for the maintenance of order in the things which appertain to heaven among men, that the Holy Spirit, with its special virtues of Illustration and Instruction, may pass freely into the church. The Holy Spirit is the Word, and affects all who approach the Lord there; indeed, it inheres in no man; but it passes through man to man,-in enlightening visions of truth and responding affections.

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Still, "if according to order,"-the Canon states-it flows into the clergy, and through them into the Laity. Where the Priesthood does not lead in the perception of the holy truths of Revelation, the order of the church is disturbed. Yet the meaning is that the priesthood as a whole must so lead, in order that the uses of the church may be adequately performed.

     Apparent government may be established by prudence, or even by force. But real government is exercised only by influx. In heaven, we are told, the subordination among the angels is not that of command; none wishes to be master over another, but he rather longs to serve and help him. Thought, however, is communicated freely, and when such thought is joined with a wish that something be done, there in an influx of this thought into others. And if it meets with conviction gladly, the thing is done. It is a government by the perception of uses to be done, a government by conscience-an inflowing of the Holy Spirit in its perpetual passing through the heavens. But influx, in heaven, does not proceed from below, but always from above; that is what makes heaven a heaven. All life is continual influx from above, and the higher degree presents an image of itself in lower degrees. (A. C. 3691:2.) The higher wisdom, the deeper love, always governs.

     Heaven may at times seem very far from the earth. Yet it is from heaven that the Holy Jerusalem, the Camp of the Saints and the beloved City, is to descend, to fashion the New Church and to order our lives. It is so that we shall receive a finite share in Divine Omnipotence. For man is in power against evil and falsity in proportion as he lives according to the Divine Order; so far he dwells in the sphere of the Divine protection which guards the church.

     Much is taught in the Writings about the power that is latent in orderly ultimates. It is said, for an instance, that although man as to his mind's life is not in order, and must therefore be governed by particular spirits, yet his body, being in order, can be governed by a general influx from heaven. This general influx is defined as "a continuous impulse from the Lord through the whole heaven into everything pertaining to the life of man." (A. C. 6211.) The same applies to the body of the church, so long as it is founded upon the order prescribed in its Revelations.

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It is then under the general government and influx of heaven, as to institutional life. Its teaching, its ritual, its sacraments, its ordinations, betrothals, and marriages, belong then, not to this world alone, but are also the media of heavenly gifts, bringing heaven and the church into intimate communion and conjunction. Such sacred uses as are shaped from revealed principles, and accepted as of Divine order, are beyond man's caprice to disturb. It is the highway that is called "The Way of holiness; wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein; but the redeemed, the ransomed of the Lord, shall return by it and come to Zion with songs, and with everlasting joy upon their heads." (Isa. 35:8-10.)

     But even as the body can be ravished by diseases, so the ultimates of institutional order in the church can become gradually corrupted. The Divine order which invites heavenly influx into the church comes not merely from forms, nor even only from truths. Truth, seen in the light of authority, can establish a temporary state of order. But even as the most just laws become impotent unless an appreciative public opinion calls for them to be carried out (that is, unless there be a love of law in the land), so order can be made permanent in the church only by the prevalence of the good of spiritual love. The loves of the natural man, and especially the love of self, are inclined to create confusion and chaos, and are destructive of all that tends to unanimity, consociation, and order; because self-interest thrives best where disorder prevails. (A. C. 2957, 2219.) No order, no use, is satisfactory to such a love.

     The order that will endure the stress of spiritual temptation is an order that is loved, an order that springs and flows from the love of heavenly uses. The Writings, therefore, teach that when man arrives at the state when he begins to act no longer from truth only, or from mere obedience, but acts from good-from a love of the end, the use-acts in willing subordination and cooperation; then, and not until then, are the truths within his mind brought into an orderly arrangement. Internal order, conducive to internal progress and to the internal fruitfulness of our uses, is only possible where a spiritual charity and a celestial affirmation of truths and uses anoint the mechanism of institutional life with the oil of mutual love, and thus remove the frictions, and the grind, and the wear, which otherwise tend to break down order and make progress spasmodic and irreliable.

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     Thus, with both clergy and laity, it is the charity of spiritual love that environs the uses of the church with a supporting, affirming sphere; which fills the forms of the church with meaning and with prophetic power; which indeed builds the spirit of the church within its body, and thus receives the mediated influx of truth consciously and in freedom.

     Unless that good of spiritual love is present to sustain the church, it will perish by degrees. For over against the Camp of Israel stands Balaam upon the mountains of Moab. His incantations are of no avail against those within the camp. But still he can marshal the alluring daughters of Moab and Midian to entice the errant sons of Israel; and by this, his cunning, come the temptations to which the church is subjected when overconfidence in external strength causes an obscurity which blinds men to the character of the natural good, which beckons them aside from the Way of Holiness.

     The plagues of temptation are indeed an unavoidable experience for those who would become of the true Israel. It is the nearness of spiritual dangers that will open our eyes to appreciate the beauties of the Camp of Jehovah, and move us unitedly to pledge our feeble lives to the cause of spiritual order, to the conquest of the nations, the subjugation of pride and self-will and the love of worldly honors and gain; and thus cause us, too, to exclaim gratefully and reverently, "How good are thy tents, O Jacob, thy tabernacles, O Israel!" Amen.

     Lessons: Numbers 23:5-26. Revelation 20:4 to 21:3. A. C. 2015:10 to end.

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ORIGIN OF MAN 1928

ORIGIN OF MAN       RANDOLPH W. CHILDS       1928

      [EDITORIAL NOTE: Four Addresses are printed below in the order in which they were delivered at the Banquet of the Philadelphia District Assembly, held in Bryn Athyn on Friday evening, February 3d, 1928. They proved to be a very stimulating expression of views upon the problem of the mode of man's first creation upon the earth.]

     THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

     Method of Approach.

     I was recently privileged to attend a General Faculty meeting of the Academy where the subject under discussion was the Origin of Man, and I can bear witness to the manner with which it was approached.

     Doctor Pendleton, in his paper on the subject, reviewed four theories which had occupied the attention of the Church: the Fiat Theory, the Arboreal Theory, the Animal Hominine Theory, and a recently announced theory, termed by Doctor Pendleton the Microcosmic Theory. The Fiat Theory involved the immediate creation of man. The Arboreal Theory involved the implantation of a human soul in a vegetable form. The Animal Hominine Theory involved the placing of a human soul in an animal form. The Microcosmic Theory involved the placing of a soul in a cell, and the gradual development of that cell, from generation to generation, in ever-increasing complex forms, but all these forms having a human soul, although not an individual human soul, until the full human form was attained. Doctor Pendleton held that this theory was consistent with Revelation and with scientific evidence.

     The discussion which ensued was most interesting. All speakers disclaimed the Fiat Theory. Some speakers endorsed the Arboreal Theory, although holding that the account of the origin of men given in the Worship and Love of God is not to be taken literally. There was no support for the Animal Hominine Theory.

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The controversy, which was zealous, and yet entirely friendly, waged over the point as to whether it was reasonable to suppose that a form with a human soul, a form which had sensation and breathed, would not be a complete human being.

     There was a certain tone about the whole discussion which impressed me as possibly evidencing a new state of thought in the Academy. It was not that the speakers invoked the Writings, for we have always done this. It was not that they were affirmative to Swedenborg's Scientific Works, for so we have ever been. But there was a recognition of the fact that in the application of doctrines drawn from the Writings, and of principles derived from the Scientific Works, to matters of science, the evidence of science has its place, and is not to be ignored or explained away.

     What shall we say of this method? We might call it the balanced method, the one which avoids the two extremes of the purely scientific method and of the dogmatic method. Indeed, the value of this balanced method may be seen by contrast with the purely scientific method and the dogmatic method.

     The scientific method is obviously impotent to solve the problem of the origin or destiny of man. Its only criteria are the senses. Its eyes are closed to the shining light of Revelation, and its ears are deaf to the still, small voice of spiritual affections. Vain imaginations and arrogance are its fruits. Its philosophy draws its life from, and can but return to, the dust.

     The antithesis of the scientific method is the dogmatic method, and perhaps we have given less thought to the dangers of this method. Its characteristic is its rigid and literal application of passages from Revelation to any or all subjects, without a full understanding of these subjects; and its tendency is to demand for its applications the sanction of Revelation itself. As we review the history of the New Church, we shall see many examples of this tendency. There has been a tendency to be dogmatic on such subjects as the healing of diseases, architecture, clothing, diet, and even on economic and political problems. This tendency was but natural in a new organization, possessed of a Divine Revelation, and burning with the zeal of a great cause. But as the thought of the Church matures, we arrive at a seeming paradox. More and more we see how the Divine Revelation makes all things new, and yet less and less can we dogmatically assert that our own application of the Divine Revelation is absolutely true.

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There is a certain sophistication which accompanies maturity, a sophistication which is characteristic of the men of our race, which rebels against a too positive and too quick application of doctrines to the problems which surround us. As Aristotle said: "They who take only a few points into account find it easy to pronounce judgment."

     The balanced method will shun the extremes of the scientific method and the dogmatic method. It will make progress slowly. As a speaker said in one of the papers read at the recent joint meeting of the Council of the Clergy and General Faculty, we seek today to reach, and at the same time to compass, the fields of science. We have our distinctive marriage and social life, and yet we are a part of modern civilization and in contact with the modern mind. We seek to apply the light of Revelation, not only to our experiences as isolated individuals, but also to those sciences which come to our minds from the wide world without. In every paper read at the recent meetings, there was a wealth of scientific information, a digest of that information, and a view of that information in the light of New Church doctrine. Let us say that today we are not concerned so much with the enunciation of general principles as with their application; and in this task of application I believe that this generation has found itself.

     The problem of the origin of man may not be finally solved tonight, this year, or this century. The problem is a very old one. Saint Augustine suggested that the original creation was of "the seeds of things." It is my understanding that that is the teaching of the Writings. Just how those seeds developed is a profound problem. Obviously, science cannot explain the causes which made those seeds develop, even if it can produce evidence of the forms through which those seeds developed. Religion, on the other hand, though it know the causes of the development of those seeds, will hardly attain any complete understanding of the origin of man if it ignores the evidence of science as to the forms through which those seeds developed. The problem therefore becomes one that is not for the priest alone or the scientist alone, but for both working together.

     The balanced method is needed because of the universality and finality of the Revelation accorded to that New Church which is to "rule all nations with a rod of iron."

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The medieval spirit, in which "dogma, definite and defined, was cast like a shell over the adolescent mind of medieval Europe," is not to burden the crown of all Churches. The Sun of Heaven which shines in the pages of the Writings will so quicken the dust of science that the "wilderness shall blossom as the rose."

     But it may be asked: Why this controversy over the origin of man-a controversy that will not change the fact that man is on the earth, however he may have come there, and a controversy that may never be settled to the satisfaction of all New Church minds? There are many answers to these questions, some of which are obvious.

     Experience teaches that the current theory of education tends to unsettle the faith of youth. Youth is curious as to the nature of man's creation, and many of the learned suggest that Divine interposition is not necessarily involved in that creation, and that such intervention should not be believed unless it be scientifically demonstrated-obviously an impossibility. If, however, our New Church theologians and scientists suggest a theory of the origin of man which is consistent with the scientific evidence, our students are strengthened in their struggle with naturalism. In fact, a consideration of the teachings of Revelation, and the disclaimer by eminent modern scientists of any knowledge of the motivating cause of evolution, will protect our youth against the delusion that there is any real conflict between Revelation and science. As to how far it is necessary to consider this scientific evidence in the schools, this is a matter for determination by teachers. We may not, however, lose sight of the maxim that to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

     As to whether a theory of the origin of man can be propounded that will satisfy all New Church minds, the problem may not be so hopeless as at first sight appears. The experience of the Academy shows a striking tendency toward unanimity of thought. The general adherence to Bishop William F. Pendleton's statement of the Principles of the Academy is an example of this unanimity. In respect to the very subject we are discussing there is already unanimity on the authority of the Writings, on the value of the Scientific Works, on the doctrine of order, on the fact of the Divine working in every stage of the creation of the universe, on the doctrine of degrees, and on spiritual influx.

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Where, outside of the New Church, would you find such agreement on the fundamentals of this great problem?

     We hold these banquets, not as gladiatorial combats, but as feasts of charity, and we rejoice in the perception of our agreement on fundamentals and interior doctrines, and not in. observing our variations in the application of these fundamental and interior principles. A divergence of views may give space to a banquet, but it cannot make its food. When the "doctors disagree," let us of the laity realize that their agreement is on many things, and their disagreement on a few, and that our keen interest is rather in their harmony than in their apparent discord. We relish original thought, we abhor the standardized mind,-the mind compelled to uniformity by external pressure,-but we hope that out of the free interchange of opinion may come that harmony of thought and will which forever abides in the choirs of heaven.
WAS SWEDENBORG AN EVOLUTIONIST? 1928

WAS SWEDENBORG AN EVOLUTIONIST?       Rev. HUGO LJ. ODHNER       1928

     An educational writer recently observed that a man is known by the kind of dilemmas he keeps. Certainly we all have them. If not, our minds must be at a standstill. But the writer goes on to say that the characteristic of the educated mind is that it can restate its dilemmas in terms which give promise of a solution. This, I feel, we should be doing tonight with regard to the question of the Origin of Man. For it is a truth that most of our dilemmas are of our own making, since we have a tendency to surround our opinions with a shell of bias, wedging us in so that there is no return. And then, to give up that opinion seems like giving up the universe.

     I shall, of course, not attempt to outline my inclinations of belief in respect to the first derivations of the race we call Man, in the compass of a ten-minute speech; because that would only give me about-say-fifteen minutes in which to do it. And I have a long belief-it stretches all the way down to Paleozoic times. For I do not think there was ever a time when the Lord's hands were not preparing the matrix of the human race. But I am glad that the subject is relegated to the sphere of individual opinion; for I do not think that anything of our treasured faith in revealed doctrine is endangered thereby, but quite the opposite.

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The details of creation, the Writings intimate, "do not properly enter into such a system of theology" as it is the purpose of the New Church to teach,-does not enter in, i.e., "as a lemma or argument." (T. C. R. 75e.)

     Yet we need, and our imagination craves, an ultimate and definite mental picture of creation, and of the origin of man, as a reflecting surface. Such a picture, filling out what the Writings give us to know on the subject, we enjoyed when the scientific works and Principia of Emanuel Swedenborg became popularized about twenty years ago. Reflected against a background of diagrams of finites and bullae, we saw certain brilliant truths, so brilliant that for a while we saw no others. That is all that any science or any one view of science can do. Revelation exhibits its truths in constantly new aspects which cannot be crammed down into any one individual viewpoint or any one scientific epoch. Frankly, in my humble but considered judgment, the correlation theory as conceived here twenty years ago has served its purpose. What we need today-and it has already begun-is a new study of the preparatory works of Swedenborg which shall show the development of his mind, the gradual shifts which-under Divine guidance-finally culminated in the rational philosophy that underlies the Doctrine of the New Church.

     The mind of Swedenborg was subject to an evolution; and this, I think, is illustrated in the view he held about the Origin of Man. In his early manhood, he turned his growing scientific knowledge whole-heartedly to the defense of the literal teaching of Genesis about the universal flood and Noah's mechanical salvation therefrom, about the ages of the Patriarchs-and doubtless he held similar ideas about the first men, Adam and Eve in paradise, such as are most readily drawn from the literal account. In this ultimate picture of God forming man dust of the ground and breathing into him the breath of life is contained every truth that will ever be known about creation. It is the touchstone of truth still. But this does not mean that a mind like Swedenborg's could be satisfied to give no more thought to the subject. The right hand of God worked, he knew, from above and within, directing the life-currents from the soul. But the left hand of God was preparing and molding the dust of the ground; and Swedenborg, the scientist and philosopher, whose life was a thirst for the knowledge of God's operations within the universe, could scarcely be expected to refrain from reflecting upon this first miracle of the finger of God, and from putting its wonders in some relation with the other more constant miracles which the world displays.

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In his Worship and Love of God, therefore, he introduces the story of the first pair, and in his poetic fancy he sees the trees of life bearing the choice things of the dust into an egg or fruit wherein the right hand of God forms the infant man or woman who were to be the parents of our race.

     To my mind, this evolution of Swedenborg's views was inevitable, but far from final. It represented one of the first attempts that a scientific man had ever made to understand how God prepared for the creation of man. The 18th century accepted officially a far more childlike view, and believed that God had created the man adult and full grown on the sixth day immediately from the soil; and Swedenborg was risking the charge of heresy and worse by his bold theory. Certainly he did not mean either to break anyone's faith in the letter nor to bind his own thought or that of his posterity to his theory. In the Word Explained he later notes: "Whether man was formed immediately from the earth, and thus without passing through his periods from infancy to manhood, or whether he was formed mediately from an egg and so forth, may be left to the faith of the reader. Since, however, a single day signifies an entire space of time or a lapse of many years, he might also have been born from an egg, and the egg been produced, not immediately from the earth's ground, but mediately by means of the fibers of some vegetable object or tree, whereby the essences that were to pass over into his blood might be rectified. If this be the case, he was nevertheless formed of the dust of the earth; for everything that passes through the roots or fibres of vegetables is from, the earth. The fact that all things were brought forth according to ends, even intermediate ends, which were foreseen and provided for-and thus were brought forth mediately and in their order-derogates nothing from the Divine omnipotence." (W. E. 14)

     Our faith, therefore, is free; and the only question is now whether his own views were finally fixed. Should we be well advised to adopt the Arboreal Theory, or did Swedenborg rather point the way to a future investigation of the subject,-an investigation into the means whereby God's left hand gathered the materials for the final creation of man as an immortal being, denizen of heaven, as well as crown and heir of creation?

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     Certainly, in the inspired Writings, we find no further discussion of the methods of man's creation. But a change in Swedenborg's views is apparent, for beginning with the Arcana he no longer regarded Adam and Eve as the first men, or indeed as individuals at all. Since I655, when Le Peyrere published his work, called Preadanaites, many (as Swedenborg notes in T. C. R. 466) had come to believe that Adam and Eve were not the first created men. But Swedenborg showed that the so-called first pair were the symbols of the first church of real men, of truly equipped, celestial men. And so we see that the direction of investigation must be redrawn somewhat. There were men before the church Adam, and these Preadamites were not perfect men in the full sense of that word; indeed, we are taught, they "lived as wild animals" (A. C. 286), and although of celestial genius, were born natural, and in their gradual regeneration became spiritual; they were at first in darkness, their minds empty and void; in certain respects, they resembled the animal creation; they were born into the order of their life; they were led by inborn instincts, they had no articulate speech. (See also D. P. 216, E. U. 55)

     Indeed, shall we not go further in the argument which Swedenborg has started, and say that there was a time when these early denizens of the world had not yet experienced the beginning of the humanizing process which commences when God says, "Let there be light." We would save ourselves a great deal of unnecessary anxiety, if we could bravely and wisely draw a line between our real knowledge and the realm of surmise; if we could say, "Thus far the Doctrine guides us-what is beyond this is speculation or interpretation."

     Swedenborg was too wise a man to go beyond his facts, and draw theories which, however true, were illegitimate for him to hold. But I am inclined to speculate that had Swedenborg been confronted with the array of new data in Geology and Biology which have been discovered since his time, he would not have become possessed with any panic at the suggestion that there might have been some sort of an organic evolution of species, and even of Preadamite Man.

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     If we lay prejudice and unreasoned feeling aside, and think calmly from the principles of thought laid down in the Writings, we will not find anything there directly opposed to the idea, of an evolution Divinely directed, an evolution totally different, of course, from the theory of evolution which the Godless have pounced upon, and which they love to parade before the gaping world as an argument against the very existence of God! No New Churchman can consider that blind force created the wonderful theater of use-the earth. Natural selection, and blind forces and accidents, are not really creative in any sense.

     I think, also, that we must all agree that any evolution theory that does not account for the discrete degree between man and beast is equally sterile of interest for the New Churchman. And there are other equally important conditions which our eventual theory must fulfill. I think that man was created good,-good for its intended uses, favorable for the hastening of the sixth day. Nor, as Dr. Wilkinson pointed out, was early man a plaything of Ichthyosaurus or Plesiosaurus. The race did not spend its hearts' babyhood,-its infancy or its nursery days,-among cave-bears and hairy rhinoceroses. This may indeed apply to a later man; but because many a geologist tends to create a Frankenstein out of every Paleolithic man, it need not make us do so. Their interpretations are not ours; their reconstructions and plastercasts are not things we may borrow with impunity-but only their facts. The facts of biology and geology are a No Man's Land; their theories they may keep. Everyone looks to history for what he would like to see there. He can see Providence there, if he so desires, or he can make a materialistic interpretation of history which sees only the appearance. We cannot accept another's reading of the Record of the Rocks. We are obliged to read them ourselves. But before we have read them, let us not shut our eyes, and say they are not there. Nor, after a glance at the first sand-pile, say that we have seen all the Rocks, and be satisfied with the first explanation.

     No. This is no off-hand matter, to be settled in an after-dinner speech. For the record of the Rocks uncovers Holy Ground. He who does not "take off his shoes from off his feet," and tread gently, has no right to enter its precincts. For God is present there-creating, forming.

     We must perhaps gaze in upon an embryonic world, which no other than calm and reverent eyes should justly, or could with equanimity, behold.

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We see the clumsy forms of primal life creeping out of the fecund waters of a preparadisal earth; we may not deny them; they were there. We see timid prototypes of noble animals, see giant-lizards and monsters whose size was their undoing. We may not call them evil, despite their ugliness, despite they fed on one another, as do the innocent fishes of the sea, and have done since the day of their creation, lest they fill the waters totally; and as does the babe upon the mother's breast. Evil they need not have been, but rude and elemental expressions of the natural loves and untutored instincts of a humanity which perhaps was not yet, and perhaps already existed as a race of beings in an embryonic infancy, not yet matured into real self-consciousness-not yet born into its destined immortality; whose immortal God-offered souls had not yet been accepted as their personal possession; whose will and understanding were involuntary tools of God, even as those of the unborn babe-and thus returned to God when their bodies died.

     The Lord has spread a veil before His primeval workshop. Let us not intrude, except so far as He Himself, in His Providence, invites and lets the finished product review its past.

     I wish we had the time to gather together what the Writings really say about first creation. All creation at the first was instantaneous as, indeed, it is today. It is an immediate creation of a seed. This creation was not confined to time; the idea of time-long or short-six days, for instance, makes comprehension of creation impossible. The mineral kingdom was the basis of the vegetable kingdom, and that for the animal which includes man as to his body. Yet man's body is from a discretely higher origin, from a soul which, if organically appropriated, can be a source of immortal life to the human spirit or mind.

     Much has been said about so-called spontaneous creation. The Writings do not teach "spontaneous" creation out of nothing, or out of physical things. That is rather the position the materialists are pushed into, to account for the first amoeba. The Writings suggest, instead, that in the beginning insects and low forms of life took their initiaments directly by the creation of seeds or germs without any eggs or oviform matters. They suggest this, because there is an influx from the spiritual world which, when received in corresponding and suitable effluvia and substances in the earth, can mold matter into bodies for such forms of life.

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But Swedenborg, who, in the Worship and Love of God, hesitated to follow Milton's description of creation, also refrains from suggesting, in the Writings, that baby elephants rise from the earth at once! His silence, to me, is eloquent. The elephants may once have been more humbly dimensioned, more simply formed. Each species may have had a history of its own. Changes of species from natural causes alone are impossible. Evolutionists admit that no natural explanation suffices to account for variation and mutations in species. But, granting a spiritual cause, we have a large range of possibilities that would account for changes within the forms of life. Reception according to form (C. L. 86, T. C. R. 35e) makes species stable, so long as the form is unchanged. But how can we assume that no other law may enter in, which, from a spiritual cause, changes the form from within and without together? Use, the Arcana says, creates the form; use commands the form. (A. C. 4223, S. D. 3472, 2510.)

     And the Spirit of God "brooding upon the face of the waters"-the Divine of Use-the plastic force of the spiritual world, in its manifold, indefinite manifestations, inflows into universal nature, filling it with a conatus toward more perfect forms that look to the human image. This conatus is not self-conscious, not realized, until the human mind is illumined with the Divine Words, "Let there be light!"

     But even so, we are kin with the dust; and as the celestial men of old humbly took their name "Adam" from the red soil, so we should not be too proud to own that only by the mercy of the Lord are we Man.

     We do not know our individual past, still less the origin of man; though we may know that our soul and manhood is from God's immediate presence in us. Let us, then, be bold in this our ignorance, and patient in the knowledge and steady light of doctrine that we may have. For impatience is barren of any spiritual offspring, unless we count the cheap conceits of knowing all there is to know-a dangerous assumption, fostering fantasy and fatal to progress-a bubble of an idea, liable to be pricked at any time by the passing breeze.

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APPRAISAL OF THE ARBOREAL THEORY 1928

APPRAISAL OF THE ARBOREAL THEORY       CHARLES R. PENDLETON       1928

     It is not my purpose to expound, nor to present, the Microcosmic Theory referred to by the first speaker, but rather to attempt to appraise as accurately as possible the validity of the Arboreal Theory as it is usually interpreted,-the theory drawn from one of Swedenborg's works, The Worship and Love of God.

     First, I want to call your attention to the great usefulness and importance of Swedenborg's philosophical works in general. There are many things which, may be said on this subject, but I assume that most of you are acquainted with these works. I want merely to point out that the Worship and Love of God is one of these books, and that its usefulness and value should be appraised as a part of the whole. Specifically, the Worship and Love of God has a peculiar value, and possibly an even greater value than Swedenborg's other philosophical works, because Swedenborg said several things about this book that have laid a special emphasis upon it. It was the last of his series of philosophical works. It was written before his eyes were opened into the spiritual world, but was published by Swedenborg himself after his eyes were opened into the spiritual world, after he had begun to write the Arcana Coelestia. This puts a strong stamp of approval upon this work. There are several other things of a like nature which may be said, but owing to the shortness of the time I will not speak of them here. Suffice it to say, that, in my opinion, anyone who challenges the direct teachings of the Worship and Love of God has the burden of proof placed upon him. He must prove his case. Now, I propose to show you some reasons for doubting the literal meaning of the Worship and Love of God. I take upon myself the burden of proof. I propose to show you some reasons for doubting whether Swedenborg himself taught or meant to teach the Arboreal Theory.

     In the first section of the first chapter of the Worship and Love of God, Swedenborg gives a very beautiful summary of the Principia. I do not know of any clearer or more direct philosophical teaching anywhere in Swedenborg's works than is to be found in this summary of the Principia.

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It does not add anything particularly to the Principia, but it gives us a very clear outline of his earliest complete philosophical treatment of cosmology. With this, the doctrine of the Principia, I find that the Writings concur. And I have found, after a careful survey of the Writings, that there are a great many difficult and apparently contradictory passages in regard to the nature of the spiritual atmospheres which can be explained by no hypothesis except the one which is furnished by the Principia itself. There are from twenty to twenty-five such sets of contradictory passages, but the Principia interpretation of cosmology seems to offer a beautiful explanation of them all.

     Now it is the doctrine of the Principia which, as I have said, is reviewed in a clear and terse way in the first section of the first chapter of the Worship and Love of God. But, on turning to the latter part of the Worship and Love of God, we find quite a different type of teaching. We find a most remarkable prose poem, in highly flowery and picturesque language. My point is, that when Swedenborg turns from his cosmological introduction to the real body of his work, he uses a different style; that he uses a form of language needing a kind of interpretation. It does not mean what it seems to teach on the surface; one has to look below this to find what Swedenborg really means. I can give you a very good example of this. In the major part of the Worship and Love of God, Swedenborg deals with the creation of the first man and his wife, the most perfect human beings the world knows anything about. We know, however, that this was not the way the human race was created. The Writings are quite clear in stating that the first created human beings were very simple and childlike, not much better than animals, as far as their natural minds were concerned, though they had human souls. From this group of Preadamites several churches developed, until finally we have the Most Ancient Church. Now Swedenborg, in the Worship and Love of God, is describing the man of the Most Ancient Church, whom he calls Adam, and whom he says is the first man created. I take it we here need an interpretation. We must either say that Swedenborg was wholly wrong in the Worship and Love of God, because he teaches that the first man was most complete, while the Writings say the first man was most simple; or, we must say the Worship and Love of God needs interpretation. And I think you will agree, on reading the book, that interpretation is the proper course, because Swedenborg not only says that the first man was most perfect, but also uses other forms of speech which we have to interpret.

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For example, Adam is shown talking with intelligences, obviously representing certain activities of the mind of man in its natural, perfect state before the fall.

     So now, in the first section of the first chapter of the Worship and Love of God, we have, I believe, a clear philosophical summary of the Principia; in the greater bulk of the work, on the other hand, we have this prose poem, which certainly needs interpretation. But, in between the first section of the first chapter and the great bulk of the work, we have a small part which treats of what is called the Arboreal Theory of the Creation of Man and Animals. This is the third section of chapter one on the Creation of Animals, and the first section of chapter two on the Creation of Man.

     The question I raise is this: Does this intermediate part belong to the first group or to the last group? Are they strictly philosophical and scientific in the nature of their presentation, or are they a part of this prose poem which needs to be interpreted! Frankly, I cannot say. It is beyond me to give any final answer. We may look at it one way, and say it seems to belong to the first part of the book, or in another way, and say it seems to belong to the second part of the book, that it is a part of the prose poem. I have read them over carefully, and think that the language is about in between, showing signs of the flowery type, but not having as much of this as is found in the latter part of the work. And so the best judgment I can make on this point is that it is fifty-fifty between the two possibilities, about as strong for believing that the middle part of the Worship and Love of God belongs to the first style, as for believing that it belongs to the major or latter part. Therefore, I have found it a necessary expedient to turn in another direction for evidence is the hope of further light on the subject of the Arboreal Theory. I mean, further evidence as to the nature of the means which the Divine used in the creation of successive organic forms.

     The Theory, called the Microcosmic, attempts an explanation of the origin of man along lines somewhat different from those of the Arboreal Theory. It uses the essentials of the Arboreal Theory,-the vital forces of the spiritual atmospheres and the reactive forces of inert nature,-and combines them with certain grand teachings of the Writings, notably the doctrine of the Gorand Man.

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I have presented this Theory in another place, so that there is no need to repeat it here; nor is there sufficient time at my disposal. Here, I wish to consider another type of evidence,-the scientific,-to show you how there is none whatsoever to support the Arboreal Theory.

     I have, for many years, been interested in the question of whether there is any scientific evidence to support the Arboreal Theory, that is, any scientific evidence to support the idea that man and animals were created from plants. Shortly after graduating from the Theological School, I started out, with great affection for the Arboreal Theory, to find evidence in support of it. To date, however, I have found almost nothing of a scientific character that can be said to support this theory. I think that it is foolish to expect to find any support from the ordinary textbooks on Evolution, because facts that would be out of consonance with the theory defended by the writer would not be presented in the book. It is still more foolish to expect the opponents of modern evolution to bring evidence in support of the Arboreal Theory, because they are all endeavoring to prove the literal account of the Flood. Therefore, I have endeavored to go to the facts of nature themselves, and to study things as they are. A word as to what sort of evidence we might find. Swedenborg, in the Principia, makes what to me has always been a remarkable statement. He says that the atmospheres have left their footprints on the forms of the mind. I believe that this is a general principle; and in line with this I expected to find some footprints on the sands of time whereby evidence for the Arboreal Theory might be obtained. I have looked for such evidence as to the nature of the process of creation, but I have found almost nothing.

     On one occasion I thought I had found a certain bit of evidence for the theory that animals are produced from plants. I will tell you about it. There is a certain animal known as the polyp. You would think it a plant, and I one time mistook it for a plant in a very funny way. I once went to the seashore to get some specimens of this animal for the Academy biological laboratories. I spent my whole time hunting for this form without success; finally, in despair, I filled my kit with sea weeds of several kinds, and came home. Imagine my surprise to find in my laboratory that one of these sea weeds was the polyp. The curious thing about this form is that it puts out from itself a little bud, and this bud develops into a jelly fish.

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So that it looks as if we have an animal developing from a plant, a jellyfish from a seaweed. But the polyp is no seaweed, nor a plant of any kind. It is a sedentary animal, like the oyster or barnacle. It feeds like animals; it cannot live on inorganic material as plants can, but must live on other organisms. Its body is not composed of the same stuff as that of plants. Plants have a supporting structure made of cellulose; the polyps have a totally different kind of supporting structure. Finally, we find that the jellyfish lays eggs which develop into polyps, so that if the polyp were a plant we would have plants developing from animals, as well as animals developing from plants.

     The polyp and the jellyfish is the only evidence I have found anywhere for the Arboreal Theory,-evidence that animals and men were created from plants, or, to put it in another way, evidence that plants served as a matrix for the creation of animals. On the other hand, all the evidence which we can gather at the present time, from the records which are left on the rocks and other sources, points to what we may call one of the transmutation theories. Every indication is that animals have slowly changed from one form to another. This evidence is so overwhelming that there have been very few, if any, who have taken the trouble to examine the evidence itself, who have not come to the conclusion that some form of transmutation is the method by which plants and animals were created. Of course, there are some who seem to believe the contrary. You will find a certain small group of men who call themselves scientists who have taken up a position contrary to the doctrine of the evolutionists, because they have tried to prove the literal sense of the Bible. It is the opinion of such men that the record of the rocks is a record of the Flood. But no one who understands the science of geology has any faith in such, interpretation.

     However, to my mind, the biggest arguments from science in favor of one of these theories are what are known as the laws of biology. They are not facts, not simple isolated facts, but generalizations based on facts which, like the laws of gravity, are so certain that they may be put in the form of law. When we have laws of this kind, worked out to such precision that scientists can tell ahead of time the nature of what is found, then we have something that is rather authentic.

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It is because of laws of this kind that the modern doctrine of evolution has been derived. We are not obliged to accept the modern doctrine of evolution, and I do not argue for it myself, but laws of this kind cannot be escaped, and they all point to some form of transmutation, some development in the series of animals from the lower to the highest.

     Finally, I would say that, since the evidence from the Worship and Love of God is, as I have said, equally for and against; and since the evidence from the study of nature is so strongly in favor of some form of transmutation theory; I would conclude by saying that my appraisal of the Arboreal Theory is that the evidence stands about seventy-five per cent. against it, and twenty-five per cent. in favor of it.
FOUR PRINCIPLES OF REVEALED TRUTH 1928

FOUR PRINCIPLES OF REVEALED TRUTH       Rev. ALFRED ACTON       1928

     When I was invited to speak this evening, I at first declined, on the ground that feasts of charity ought to be feasts of charity, and not polemics. I afterwards came to the conclusion, however, that there is no reason why we should not have feasts of charity and at the same time bear witness to the fact that, though there is not unanimity of opinion, there can be unanimity of love and affection. Now I have felt that this meeting, as a feast of charity which is intended to draw men closer together, performed its use, so far as I am concerned, when Dr. Pendleton made his speech, because I realized that, while we differed in opinions, we have the same standards. And so long as those standards are maintained,-belief in the Divinity of the Writings, belief in the principles which are enunciated in the Writings and unknown in the world,-so long as these are maintained, by whatever paths men may travel, those principles will be used for the production of something that will be for the upbuilding of the New Church. No one mind and no one man can ever produce the multitudinous and infinitesimal things that will be required to adorn the crown of the New Church.

     I feel that we are on a very difficult subject-The Origin of Man. And I am reminded of a remark made to me some time ago by Mr. Sellner of New York.

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He said to me: "We are created, and God created us, and I am satisfied that I do not know how, and you do not either. No one knows." I wonder how it would be if we asked ourselves the question, in the absence of all knowledge of anatomy and embryology: "How did we come into the world?" I think we would find it a very great mystery. And so, when it comes to the problem of the first creation of man, it is no wonder that men find themselves in obscurity. However, there are certain principles-great, broad general principles-from which we ought to think; that is, general principles from which we can test any theory or any speculation that we may make; and it is on those principles, or some of them, that I wish to speak to you tonight.

     The facts that have been discovered by evolutionists, or by scientists, are not disputed. It would be ridiculous to dispute a fact. But let me here say that evolution is not a fact, and is not put forward as a fact by the leading men, but is put forward as their appraisal of an immense multitude of facts, as being a theory which accounts for all the facts, or so large a number of them that they have accepted it without a doubt. And it is a very remarkable thing that this theory, which was opposed tooth and nail by the Christian Church, and which is still opposed by the Catholic Church, but to which many in the Christian Church have capitulated-it is a remarkable fact that this theory has made headway with such great rapidity, so that we may say that practically the whole of the educated opinion of the Christian World believes in the theory of evolution. There are considerable variations, of course, but there is practical unanimity with regard to the truth of the theory that there was a descent of man, or of higher forms of life from lower.

     The reason why this doctrine of evolution was so quickly and so universally accepted was because it explained a doctrine more or less of tradition and ignorance, maintained because it was stated, or seemed to be stated, in a few words in the first chapter of Genesis, and they could not offer any other explanation of them. Shortly before evolution was accepted, there was very little reflection by the scientific mind or by exact observers of fact-very little attention was paid to the question as to whether the beliefs in authority or the traditions of the church were in harmony with the facts of science. And so, when this evolution theory was first brought up, it was opposed by the Christian Church.

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But the Church has come slowly, more and more, to accept it, until we have recently, in England, one of the most prominent bishops of the Anglican Church coming out openly in his pulpit and stating that he accepted the doctrine of the descent of man, otherwise known as evolution; and he added that the Bible must largely be regarded as a collection of folklore.

     Now, the reason why, despite all this opposition by the Church, evolution has been so largely accepted, and finally has won the day, is because it accounts for creation by methods which are wholly acceptable to the natural mind, without any acknowledgment of discrete degrees, of Divine Love and Wisdom, of God Man. And the Church has opposed it in vain, because it has not opposed it with the real truth. It is satisfactory to the natural man to account for creation on lines which he can comprehend with his natural mind, and it is more or less abhorrent to the natural man to think of God, as a Man of Divine Love and Wisdom, acting in the way, though infinitely, that you and I act, that is, with design, and end, and purpose. That is the real interior reason why the Christian World is unanimous in spirit with the theory of evolution. The facts have been examined, and the theory has been hatched out to account for them. But how have they been examined?

     This leads me to the first general principle which, I think, ought to be borne in mind by all New Churchmen in thinking on this subject; that is, the statement in Divine Love and Wisdom, that "thought from the understanding opens the eye, and thought from the eye closes the understanding"; in other words that wisdom consists in thinking from causes concerning facts, that is, from spiritual causes; and that unwisdom consists of thinking of causes, or concerning causes, from effects. (D. L. W. 46.) The world has not thought from causes. The thought of the scientists has not been from the kingdom of God in the universe. I do not say that many scientists do not think from God; I simply make the assertion that what has led to the theory of evolution has not been dominated or influenced by the acknowledgment of God, by the acknowledgment of the end of creation as being a heaven from the human race, or by the acknowledgment of the immortality of the soul. And you can see the fruits of this in the real extent of the acceptance of evolution.

     Most people confine evolution to biology, but it is a far more universal doctrine than that.

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It is the application of the law, the thoughts, and the methods of natural men to the whole universe. We have the evolution of marriage, for instance, not from heaven, but from the love of the sex gradually curbed by experience, and from the common sense of man. We have the evolution of worship; the evolution of the idea of God; the evolution of the idea of the spiritual world; and so on. When we see evolution in these forms, we see the real spirit of it,-that it is the viewing of causes from effects and in the light of effects, and not the viewing of effects from causes, still less from spiritual causes. Many Christians, however, have been reconciled to the doctrine of evolution by Saying that this method of evolution was God's method of creation. The Christian Church has long been holding on to the skirts of science, and dragging it back as much as it could, bringing it into ridicule, and so on. But now it comes down and says, "We accept this doctrine, but it is not what you say it is; it is God's method of creation." To my mind, such a statement implies, morally, a surrender to the doctrine, and a trying to tack on to it something that does not belong to it, and which can never be made to fit into it,-namely, the idea that God's method was by creating a protoplasm and drawing from this a man.

     This leads me to the second principle of the New Church that should guide our thought, namely, that all influx is according to reception, or that an active can produce nothing without a passive, and that the quality of its product is according to the form of the passive. (T. C. R. 366, etc.) All influx is according to form or to reception. God inflows into all our minds, but how different the thought, how different the loves, that each one of us brings forth into the world! God inflows into all the flowers that adorn the garden, but how different the beauty, how different the colors and the odors! If influx is according to reception, then it cannot be God's method of creation that He should evolve the higher from the lower; for if influx is into a form, influx can produce nothing except according to that form. The influx into a flower can produce nothing but a flower; the influx into an animal can produce nothing but an animal. We cannot produce a musical sound by blowing into the air; but if you put a comet into my mouth, you would hear one sound, and if you put a trumpet you would hear another.

     The question then arises, in the light of this doctrine that influx is according to reception: How then is any progress made?

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How can a form be changed? It seems clearly indicated in the Doctrines of the New Church that influx is according to reception, and that no vessel whatever in all organic creation, except man alone, can change its form intrinsically. Man can become a brute or an angel, but an animal or flower must forever remain such; and this, because of this great doctrine, that influx is according to reception. How, then, are forms changed? How shall we say that another flower is to be created, if there is no power in the flower of a lower order to change its form?

     And this brings me to the third great doctrine of the New Church for the guidance of our thoughts. We read in the Divine Love and Wisdom, that the uses of all created things ascend by degrees to man, and through man to God. (D. L. W. 65.) Mark, that it is the uses that ascend into the forms. Forms do not ascend, but uses do. We can see that in civil society. We have men who dig coal, and by this certain uses are produced; but the coal-diggers still remain coal-diggers. Their use in life is what contributes to the development of new forms of creation in the world. Each one of us represents some use; all our uses together make a form, building higher forms by which the Divine of the Lord, flowing into the mind, creates more perfect images of the kingdom of heaven. There is a conatus in every created thing, but not a conatus to produce uses other than its own,-a conatus to produce its uses; and these uses are the means by which God is going to produce use after use, to ascend, until finally we reach man, and in man the worship of God Man. And so we find an intrinsic activity in all things of creation,-a conatus; and this conatus is the use. The flower that gives its odor to the atmospheres is but performing a use; the delight it gives to man, both to his sight and to his smell, are significative of the flower, that it may perform these humble services in the great kingdom of uses.

     So everything in nature performs its uses; and when it does so, it actually manufactures something new. The use that a thing performs is actually the production of a new substance, as the sphere of every individual man is the creation of something new in the world, being a contribution of spiritual riches to mankind, or of the poisons that infest mankind; and this contribution is used by the Lord as a material by which new and higher uses will be revealed for man's enjoyment.

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The same thing applies from the lowest to the highest in the ascent of creation. It is all by uses, not by forms. When a form is created, influx flows in according to its form, and it cannot intrinsically change that form; otherwise such a form would possess human freedom; but it can produce uses, and this is the materia by which the Lord can create new forms, new forms which receive influx in some higher way for the production of some higher forms of use. And so we have man, who was created on the last day, after all creation had been perfected, because for his creation there was required the uses of all things; just as now, for our sustenance, as we realize the dreams of civilization and the future, we need the use of every single thing that is upon the earth. And we know that the more uses we discover in the secrets of nature, the higher and more perfect our life is, both naturally and spiritually. We see this illustrated in education, in society. Every man, every society, every animal, every flower, is performing uses, and these are the means by which there is ascent.

     Finally, I come to the fourth general consideration, That the Divine is the same in greatests and in leasts; or, that the Divine, and the Divine operation, is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and in the microscopic things as in the greatest things of the universe. (D. L. W. 77) Any theory, any thought, which we may have about the creation of man, must be dominated by this doctrine,-that the Lord's operation in the creation of man is the same as is the operation now in the sustentation of man. And we see that doctrine in the fact that all the uses of the universe rise up, in order that they may be of service to us, so that in us the Lord's kingdom may be established. To man, however, because he is the jewel and very end of creation, there is given a power which no other organic thing has; that is, the power to change his form intrinsically-not to change it so intrinsically that he will cease to be a man, but to change it so intrinsically that he may become a man-angel or a man-devil. It is in this power that man is created in the image of God; for as God can create things, so man can, as it were, create things. As God created animals of all kinds, and a paradise, so man, as it were, can, of himself, create a paradise or a dreadful marsh, spiritually considered. Herein man is superior to all creation, and herein we have the supreme exemplification of the law, that man alone can change his form intrinsically.

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     This I consider to be the essence of the theory as given by Swedenborg in the Worship and Love of God. And let me interpolate this thought. We are tempted to underestimate Swedenborg, even the best of us, even those who would wish most highly to praise him. I was impressed by this idea in my studies last summer, when I read his Book of Dreams. The thought came to me: Who was this man who was writing these dreams; who was this man who has delivered the grandest truths, the most far-reaching speculations (though having the very imprint of truth upon them) in his Economy of the Animal Kingdom and in his Animal Kingdom? He was an extremely learned man, but a man who was exceedingly humble, a man who was well-informed; and when I thought of that, I paused and said, Such a man, when he wrote this apparently trivial account of a dream, did not think of it as you and I think of it; but to him there was something in it that we, perhaps, cannot see.

     And so I say, when we read Swedenborg's Worship and Love of God, and think that he there thought this or that; when we think that Swedenborg believes that a simple man and woman were created,-the first human beings,-I am tempted to say: Pause a moment, and see if you cannot enter more deeply into Swedenborg's thoughts, and find there an intrinsic agreement with the great doctrines of the New Church. When you consider that the mind that wrote these words was a great mind, illumined by the light of heaven, and filled with the humility of heaven, the essential thing is, not what is called the Arboreal Theory,-(I have a great objection to having that Theory called the Arboreal Theory, just as much as the evolutionists would object to have their theory called the Ape Theory)-the essential thing is not what is called the Arboreal Theory, but the theory that the process of creation was made possible by the provision of new materia from the uses of a lower order of creation.

     Swedenborg sees a great agreement between his Worship end Love of God and the History of Creation as given in the little work of that name; but he sees this agreement in the fact that creation, as described in Genesis, begins with the very lowest thing and goes up step by step; and his theory,-the very quintessence and soul of the theory set forth in the Worship and Love of God-is, that this was actually the case, and that God created the lowest things that they might breathe into the atmospheres, into the waters, and into the lands, by their spheres forming new materia,-the living forms of their use,-that this new materia might be taken hold of by the hand of God to form new vessels by which new and higher uses might be formed on the earth.

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And finally, when creation was completed, that materia was brought into the world, or created, by the complexity of all the uses of creation,-materia from which man could be born. That is the essence of the theory of the Worship and Love of God. And what is called the Arboreal Theory is merely one application of it.

     Moreover, I am inclined to think that Dr. Pendleton has some reason in saying what he does, that the Worship and Love of God is capable of being understood in a different way from that in which it is ordinarily understood. But let us stick to the real theory, which is, that uses ascend until they have contributed to the world the means by which God can create a man. In the History of Creation, Swedenborg gives two alternatives. He says it is not a matter of faith whether we believe man was formed immediately from the dust of the ground, and thus without passing through his periods from infancy to manhood, or whether he was formed mediately from an egg. That is to say, it is not a matter of faith to believe that creation was the creation of a seed from the gifts that had been given by the world, or that creation was simply the raising up in some miraculous manner of a full-grown man, with flesh, bones and blood, and soul and mind. There is the choice, whether you believe the one or the other.

     Now Swedenborg undoubtedly believed in the former; that is to say, that man was created by the creation of seed. He had no doubt about it, and that, it seems to me, is the doctrine that is most in agreement with the principles of the Writings of the New Church. How this seed was created,-that is the question. As I have already stated, if we study this question, perhaps we shall receive new light upon it, to guide us more clearly in the particulars of creation. But the one thing I wish to emphasize is, that Swedenborg's theory, viewed in the aspect I have presented, is in agreement with the great principles of the Writings: First, with the principles of thinking from causes, and not from effects-for Swedenborg certainly brought forth this theory by thinking from spiritual causes. Secondly, it is in agreement with the doctrine that influx is according to reception.

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Thirdly, it is in agreement with the doctrine that uses ascend by uses to man, and from man to God. And lastly, it is in agreement with the doctrine that creation is the same in greatests and leasts; for the mode by which we are created is the mode by which we are sustained. I cannot settle this question. I cannot tell you how man was created. But I can remain firm in opposition to all theories that are brought forward by the world, the fruits of which I see are not Christian. And I can remain in opposition to all theories which are not in agreement with the great truths that are given us in the Writings of the New Church. The Writings do not give us science. In a sense, they do not give us theology. They give us great principles from which we are to form, our science and theology, great principles which are to dominate our minds, and which are so to mold our minds that we are enabled to see when a thing is in harmony with these principles and when it is not. That is the statement of my belief with regard to the doctrine of evolution, and with regard to Swedenborg's theory as presented in the Worship and Love of God.
WAYSIDE NOTES 1928

WAYSIDE NOTES       G. A. MCQUEEN       1928

     X.

     Hints to New Church Tourists in England.

     The General Assembly of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, to be held in London this year, will be attended by many visitors from America and other countries. In addition to the supreme aim of this New Church pilgrimage,-the taking part in what will be an epoch-making event in the history of the General Church in Great Britain, the opportunity will be provided for seeing the sights of London and other parts of England. As good members of the General Church, some will visit Colchester, "the earliest historic town in England," and the home of the Colchester Society. And there they will, of course, visit the Castle with its Museum of Roman Antiquities, usually referred to in the guide books; but the curious-minded may be inclined to take an hour's walk to see some of the other places mentioned in these notes.

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     Angel Hotel, High Street, Corner West Stockwell St. or Angel Lane.

     Here it was that Hindmarsh, in the year 1816, gave a lecture in reply to an attack made upon the doctrines of the New Church in a pamphlet entitled "Dialogue between Captain Condescension and Jack Honesty." Some friends of the cause had secured the use of the Town Hall for this lecture, but owing to the opposition of the local clergy and others, the Mayor revoked his permission at the eleventh hour, and the Town Crier was sent round to proclaim the fact. A room at the Angel Hotel was therefore engaged, and Mr. Hindmarsh had a crowded audience, most of whom seemed to appreciate the lecture; but so much disturbance was caused by the opponents of the teachings that he promptly closed the proceedings and advised the people to go home and reflect upon what they had heard.

     St. Helen's Lane.

     It was here that the doctrines of the New Church were first preached in Public worship in Colchester. The Lane was named after the daughter of King Coel, who, according to the legend, became the wife of Constantius, the father of Constantine the Great. Before the Norman Conquest, a chapel was dedicated to St. Helen, and still stands, after being restored from its ruins of many centuries. Nearby is the site of St. Helen's Lane Chapel, a meeting place built for the use of various denominations of Dissenters. In 1816, it was occupied by a Unitarian congregation, the leader of which became a receiver of the Heavenly Doctrine. This was Mr. B. W. Mattacks, father of the late U. B. Mattacks, who was a supporter of the present Colchester Society in its early days.

     Shaftesbury Hall, St. Nicholas Passage and Culver St.

     After a series of public lecture; by the late Rev. Joseph Deans, regular public worship of the Colchester Society was started in a small room on the ground floor of this Hall. Dr. Becker, who had become acquainted with the doctrines through Mr. U. B. Mattacks, conducted the services on Sunday evenings. This was in the year 1882.

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Very soon it became necessary to secure the Hall upstairs, where, during a number of years, the society continued to meet for worship every Sunday without exception. Here it passed through many and varied states which ultimately led to withdrawal from the General Conference and uniting with the General Church. It was not until the year 1890, that the society had a pastor of its own, in the person of the late beloved Rev. E. C. Bostock.

     The Rev. T. F. Robinson, formerly of Northampton, after studying at the Academy Theological School in Philadelphia, succeeded Mr. Bostock, and was pastor of the Society for about three years.

     Osborne Street.

     In this street a small hall was rented which had formerly been used for an infant school. The Colchester Society, under the guidance of the Rev. W. H. Acton, endeavored to carry on a New Church day school, and many useful meetings were held during the brief use of this building by the Society. Our historical knowledge of the origin of the name of the street is quite meager. The only thing we can think of is that "Osborne's Brewery" was formerly situated in that locality, but this, of course, would be of little interest to our New Church tourists.

     Priory Street.

     Here the society met for many years under the true and faithful pastorate of the late Rev. Andrew Czerny, in a modest building which had been made suitable for worship and, social meetings. In front of this meeting place are the famous ruins of St. Botolph's Priory, at one time a massive structure erected about the year 1109, for the Order of Regular Canons of St. Augustine. The back of the hall is only a few yards from the Roman Wall which formerly surrounded the whole town. What a contrast is brought to mind when thinking of our little New Church congregation meeting in such an insignificant place of worship! On the one hand, they looked upon the remains which tell of the mighty Roman Empire, and, on the other, the ruins which represent the death of institutions which at one time controlled the lives and destinies of all Christendom. Yet, amid such surroundings, our people could confidently worship in the light of the New Church.

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     The Studios, Sir Isaac's Walk and Head Street.

     "The meeting was held at the studio." This for years was a very common expression in the reports of doings of the Colchester Society. It referred to the Photographic Studios of the late earnest member of the church, Mr. William Gill, who so generously gave the use of his rooms for social and other church meetings. In fact, some of the most important meetings in the life of the church were held therein. Unlike the Priory St. meeting place, which was situated at the foot of the Roman Wall, the Sir Isaac's Walk Studio was built on the top of the wall. Here it was that those widely known photographs of numerous New Church ministers and laymen were taken by Mr. Gill, who was a pioneer in artistic photography.

     New Jerusalem Church, Maidan Road.

     Here the pastor of the church is the Rev. Frederick Gyllenhaal. It is owing to his wise counsel and assistance in the work, and the hearty cooperation of the members, that the New Church in Colchester at last has a place of worship of its own. To reach that church, visitors must turn their backs upon the scenes mentioned in former notes, and, leaving the old wailed town behind them, with all its medieval associations, proceed in the direction of the open country to the place where former things may be forgotten by entering a temple dedicated to the worship of the one God of heaven and earth, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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NOTES AND REVIEWS. 1928

NOTES AND REVIEWS.              1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office a Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor                    Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager          Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address and business communications should be sent to the Business Manager.

     TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
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Single Copy          30 cents
     AN ANTIPODAL CONCLUSION.

     In the February, 1928, issue of THE NEW AGE (Australia) the Editor reviews the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner's First Elements of the True Christian Religion, and is of the opinion that the new Catechism should be used in all the societies of the New Church. Incidentally, however, he comes to the conclusion that Mr. Odhner, in his answer to the question, "What is meant by the Word of God?" has "abandoned" the "extreme and irrational position" of the Academy as to the Writings of Swedenborg being the Word of God,-a conclusion unwarranted if the whole of Mr. Odhner's answer to that question be considered, as we shall note below. Thus our Australian friend is in striking contrast with "S. J. C. G.," who reviewed the Catechism for THE NEW-CHURCH HERALD, and who, while concurring with the larger part of the teaching in the book, finds objection to its holding to the "fundamental heresy of the General Church,"-that the "writings of Swedenborg are from the mouth of the Lord alone." (See Mr. Odhner's reply to this review in our March, 1928, number, p. 166.)

     The review in THE NEW AGE reads as follows:

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     "From the Academy Book Room, Bryn Athyn, we have received First Elements of the True Christian Religion. This excellent production is intended to serve as an introductory catechism for the New Church. We have read it through critically, and we are satisfied it could profitably be used in all societies of the New Church. We were delighted to find the eminently sane answer given to the question: 'What is meant by the Word of God?'-'By the Word of God is meant those books of the Bible which were given by divine inspiration through prophets and evangelists.'

     "Exactly so! And this is what we endeavored to say in an editorial not so very long ago; but we were quite severely corrected from Bryn Athyn. [NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1926, P. 607.] It was unequivocally declared that the writings of Swedenborg are the Word of God even as are the books of the Bible-the one being the Word in its literal sense, and the other the Word in its spiritual sense. Some of our critics at the time even stated that the Writings are more fully the Word of God than are the books of the Bible.

     "We are delighted to see that such an extreme and irrational position is, in the booklet before us, abandoned.-R. H. T."



     In answering the question, "What is meant by the Word of God?" the Catechism first gives the general answer quoted by THE NEW AGE, namely: "By the Word of God are meant those books of the Bible which were given by divine inspiration through prophets and evangelists." But this general statement is followed by a more detailed one: "In a wider sense, the 'Word of God' means every divine revelation, including also the celestial revelation of perception which the people of the Most Ancient Church enjoyed instead of a written Word; the doctrinal Word of the Ancient Church which is now lost; and the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem written through Swedenborg for the New Church." (P. 13. See also page 16.)

     And so we must hold Mr. Odhner absolved of the charge of "abandoning" the position that the Writings are the Word.


     In the March issue of THE NEW AGE We find a letter from the Rev. Richard Morse, entitled "Revelation with us is the Word. (A. E. 963)" and calling the attention of the Editor to Mr. Odhner's further definition of the "Word of God," as we have done above.

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In closing, Mr. Morse says:

     "I have just read the editorial in NEW CHURCH LIFE in which you 'were quite severely corrected,' and fail to find the unequivocal declaration and the severity you mention. Instead, I read a calm, clear, and in every way worthy reply to your editorial of June, 1092, which is published with the reply. And if you will publish the reply I will gladly pay the cost. It is hardly fair to criticize that which your readers have no opportunity of seeing.

     "It appears to me that no professing member of the New Church, after a careful and unbiassed reading of T. C. R. 779, should have any doubt that the Lord, Who is the Word, came fully into the world through the mind of the man whom He had fully prepared."

     Mr. Teed then comments as follows:

     "We assure Mr. Morse that we did not fail to read [Mr. Odhner's] 'Note' to which he calls attention in this letter. We are, however, as we indicated in our editorial of June, 1926, quite prepared to accept the Writings as being the Word of God ' in a wider sense,' even as is my sermon or Mr. Morse's. Certainly, if we are faithful then, the Word we utter is not our own.-Editor."
WORK ON MYTHOLOGY. 1928

WORK ON MYTHOLOGY.              1928

     A writer in THE NEW-CHURCH REVIEW, January, 1928, expresses the belief that The Mythology of the Greeks and Romans will render an "inestimable service to the Church and all students of the subject." We quote in part:

     "The best evidence of the value of a lecture, sermon, or book is that it moves the listener or reader to some righteous, beneficent action. Hence a wise, old professor of homiletics in our Theological School, after listening to an elaborate sermon by a student, would put it to the acid test by asking the question: 'What good does it do?' Put to the same test, the book here under review surely gives a good account of itself. For it seems as if no thoughtful, truly Christian reader of its pages can take in its full purport without feeling moved immediately to go out and buy at least two or three statuettes, copies of the wondrously beautiful marbles shown in full-page plates (twenty-five reproductions of The University Prints, Boston, Mass.).

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Nor will the reader of these pages, so moved to action, desire these fine examples of Greek sculpture from any mere love of possession, or for decorative purposes only. He will want them to adorn his home, and for all to look upon, because they are exquisite material symbols or representations of the loftiest spiritual qualities of character, Divine as well as human. . . .

     "Prof. Odhner has rendered the Church and all students of this subject an inestimable service by giving us this systematic treatment of the ancient mythologies. He has made the Grecian marble, sublime as they are in beauty of form, speak to us in a new and higher language of spiritual significance. A particularly satisfying feature of the book is its clear identification of many of the gods of different nations that bear widely different names, but are in reality the same gods, having a similar spiritual meaning; as, for example, the identification of the Greek sun-god Phoebus with Baal or Bel, worshipped among Babylonians, Assyrians and Syrians. Illuminating also is the author's treatment of the often startling, and, from the average Christian's point of view, immoral actions of the gods. Thus the amours of Zeus or Jove are revealed as so many examples of God's adaptation of His love to His Church, manifesting Himself in various forms to meet the needs of mankind in different stages of development."-CHAUNCEY G. HUBBELL.
PROHIBITION AND CHRISTIANITY. 1928

PROHIBITION AND CHRISTIANITY.              1928

     VOLUNTARY SELF-CONTROL THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL.

     Writing in the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE (Feb. 5, 1928), John Erskine, the well-known author, argues dispassionately that Prohibition and Christianity are "based on contradictory ideas, and that if a large number of earnest Christians in this land sincerely believe in prohibition, it must be that unconsciously the doctrines of Christianity have been shifting, so that what goes under the name of that religion is a new thing, a departure from the ancient religion." He then calls attention to the fact that the Lord not only did not condemn the use of wine, but was Himself reproved by men for drinking it.

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Going to the root of the matter, he shows that the essential ideal of Christian doctrine was that of free choice, self-control, and thus of temperance; and as this ideal receives abundant confirmation in the philosophy of the New Church, wherein free will and voluntary repentance are held vital to a spiritual regeneration, we are moved to reprint the following paragraphs from Mr. Erskine's treatment of the subject:

     "There must still be many Christians in the world who look confidently to the words of Christ as to an authoritative and divine source of wisdom. To those Christians two episodes in the life of the Master, and a large number of His remarks, stand as embarrassing obstacles to prohibition. According to the record, He began His public career by turning water into wine, and in the last hours before the Crucifixion He instituted the Eucharist and commanded the faithful to celebrate it with bread and wine.

     "He used the image of bread and of wine as metaphors of health and inspiration, as symbols of the Divine part of His own nature, and He called attention to the fact that He Himself, unlike John the Baptist and others of His own day, was not an abstainer from strong meat and strong drink.

     "Yet we have the spectacle in more than one American parish of ministers who still read to their congregations these episodes from the New Testament, and who still celebrate the Eucharist, but who also preach the doctrine of prohibition. Whether they know it or not, the contradiction which they have set up has undermined the authority of the doctrine which they thought they were carrying on, and it is hardly to be doubted that with time they will feel the need of consistency and will abandon altogether that part of the tradition which their prohibition theory now contradicts.

     "Christ taught that the true government, the Kingdom of God, should come from within. In the presence of temptation, where the choice is between good and evil, or between two possible goods, we should be guided by temperance-that is, by such self-control as would bring us to the state of virtue and happiness it is our destiny and obligation to reach. In such a doctrine there was an answer to the evil of drunkenness. There was also an answer to the evil of gluttony or of any other sin. Temperance was to be a positive virtue inspired by the love of God, by the love of ideal goodness, revealed in the lives of heroic and holy men, principally, of course, in the life of the Master Himself.

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     "But if good conduct were imposed upon us, we should deserve no credit for it, as in a parallel way, if we were compelled to do evil we might plead the excuse that our own will was not involved.

     "The perfection that Christ urged on those who followed His philosophy was the free and intelligent virtue of God Himself; not the perfection of slaves or of prisoners, but the goodness of children who love and imitate their father. Some attempt has been made to obscure this point by asserting that the wine Christ used in the Sacrament was not really wine. But there were people who thought that it should not be drunk-the prohibitionists of the moment. They criticized Him for drinking it. The spirit of His philosophy is valid today unless you prefer some other; it still teaches that life is dangerous in all directions unless we exercise self-control, and that a man must decide for himself in the circumstances in which he is placed, with reference to all those whom he does or does not influence, just what he can enjoy and what he must forego of the thousand opportunities life offers to him. For this choice he will be held responsible, and the man who prevents him from making it is no true friend.

     "But the prohibitionist retorts by asking how we are to train people to have self-control. This question is most significant when it comes from a Christian minister. He has forgotten temporarily that his religion was instituted as an answer. If Christianity does not apply us with a way of life, it is a complete failure. Perhaps the church is conscious of at least a partial failure. For decades it has been preaching temperance, organizing temperance societies, denouncing drink. If it had done its work it would not have felt obliged to call in the police to enforce its ideals.

     "Its true mission was, and still is, to plant in society, not simply an ideal, but a positive, aggressive love of it, an active love of the goodness which will inevitably result in sound conduct. It is a pitiful surrender of this noble mission to suggest that we first compel people to be good in the hope that afterward they will goon being good through sheer momentum."

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LITERAL SENSE OF THE WRITINGS 1928

LITERAL SENSE OF THE WRITINGS       F. C. FRAZEE       1928

Editor, NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     The paper by the Rev. Albert Bjorck, entitled "The Visible God of the Heavens," in the December issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE, I found extremely interesting and illuminating. One point in the paper, however, though I am a layman, I question. That is, the wisdom of his use and idea of the "literal sense of the Writings." This has always seemed confusing, in former articles by Mr. Bjorck, as in those of one or two other writers of recent years. I feel certain that the General Church ministry as a whole does not hold with this usage; and it might prove helpful to others, as to me, if we could have other expressions of opinion from ministers on this subject.

     It has always seemed evident to me from the statements of the Writings where the terms "literal sense" or "sense of the letter" are used, that the references are made to the Word of the Old and New Testaments, and that the Word of the Writings constitutes the spiritual or internal sense, as distinguished from the external or literal sense, of the former Scriptures.

     Nothing that Mr. Bjorck or others have put forward on this subject has been able to banish this impression from my mind, although I have made an effort to see their reasons for advancing the idea. The best I have done in that direction is the realization that an individual may derive a relatively external understanding of the doctrine of the New Church from the Writings which constitute that doctrine; and that that doctrine is spiritual, with no natural sense, even though natural language is the means of conveying it to the mind of man. That is, it has no natural sense other than the literal sense of the former Scriptures, of which it is a spiritual exposition.

     If one derives a natural sense from the Writings, it seems to me that this is due to the state of the particular individual reading them.

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Whereas I take it that the sense intended to be given us throughout is spiritual, Unlike the former Scriptures, which, for the sake of reaching all planes of the mind, were intended to provide a natural sense, as well as spiritual and celestial senses.

     I may express my difference of view by slightly altering part of one of Mr. Bjorck's sentences, in paragraph two, page 113, the change being put in italics: "Differences in the understanding of particular doctrines, as they are there stated, should therefore stimulate reflection upon statements in the Writings," for a relatively external and inadequate understanding of them, gives rise to these differences. Mr. Bjorck has it: "whose literal sense gives rise to these differences."

     Because of this difference of view, it seems sufficient for me to consider that the statement that "all doctrine should be drawn from the letter of the Word " (S. S. 50) means that all statements of the Writings (constituting the spiritual doctrine of the New Church) should be (as they are) drawn and confirmed from the letter of the former Scriptures.

     With the spiritual doctrine of the Word now provided, interiorly understood (as I take it they are intended to be understood), one should, I think, consider that the former Scriptures have been presented as new to those who are and will be of the New Church. Taken with the Writings as their revealed soul, they are the new Word to the New Church.

     Therefore, I would add to Mr. Bjorck's final paragraph the words in italics below. The paragraph reads: "No finite being, man or angel, can ever behold the infinite God-Man, the Lord in His glorified Human, nor the whole truth proceeding from Him, which also is infinite, like Himself. But men's vision of His Human, and their perception of His Love and Wisdom, can become ever clearer, though always finite and subject to imperfection, as they understand that the Word which 'in the beginning was God, and was with God'-the Word that was 'made flesh' in the Lord's life on earth-is the inmost of the Word with men, their Spiritual Sun, the Lord Himself with them, and that His Truth comes down into and shines through the very letter of the Word to His New Church"-the letter of the former Scriptures, when the spiritual sun of that Word as now revealed in and by the Writings of Swedenborg is seen in a spiritual-rational manner.
     F. C. FRAZEE.

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BLAKE AND SWEDENBORG 1928

BLAKE AND SWEDENBORG       J. S. PRYKE       1928

Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:
     The sentence which you quote on page 162 of NEW CHURCH LIFE for March, 1928, is, I confess, constructed somewhat clumsily. What I intended to convey by it was that Blake probably came into personal contact with Swedenborg, and certainly was influenced by his writings to a remarkable extent. As to the continuance of this influence throughout Blake's life, there appears to be a sufficiency of evidence.

     Whether Blake did actually meet Swedenborg is admittedly more doubtful, although the doubt may not unreasonably be affirmative. In addition to the passage from the biography by Gilchrist which you cite, I had in mind a passage from a more recent work, William Blake, by Osbert Burdett. (Macmillan and Co., London, 1926.) On page 3, Mr. Burdett says: "James Blake (the father) was a dissenter inclined to Swedenborgianism." And on page 21: "The shop of Basire (to whom Blake wad apprenticed) . . . was frequented by all sorts of people, including, one day, Oliver Goldsmith; . . . and another visitor may have been Emanuel Swedenborg, who was then living in London, where he remained until his death in 1772." There are no fewer than fifteen references to Swedenborg in this interesting little study.

     While the fact of a meeting between two such famous men is of considerable interest to New Churchmen, the more important point for the paper in question was the power which Swedenborg's writings exercised upon the imagination of Blake, and the failure of the latter to bring his imagination under the guidance of an enlightened rationality.

     I am sorry that I have no opportunity to consult any other works, but perhaps one of your readers may feel able to unravel the question still further.
     Yours faithfully,
          J. S. PRYKE.
27 BROADWAY, NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND,
     March 16, 1928.

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Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     THE SOUTH AFRICAN MISSION.

     Since our last report the work of the Mission has been going on much the same as usual. The outstanding event was the Annual Meeting, which took place at Alpha from January 20th to 29th, 1928. With the exception of one Leader who unfortunately met with a serious accident, all were present, totaling fifteen. The Leaders met in the mornings, and in six sessions covered a good number of items which were contributed to the Agenda. Many of these referred to local conditions and matters; but there was a decided effort to view native custom and tradition in the light of the Doctrines of, the New Church, which gave rise to some very useful discussions. One important move was made in the government of the Mission. This was based upon an application of the Statement of the Order and Organization of the General Church, as outlined by Bishop N. D. Pendleton in New Church Life for March, 1925. The proposed move was accepted with entire unanimity, the result being that a Native Council of six Leaders was elected to co-operate with the Superintendent.

     As instituted last year, the Leaders and Teachers met together in the afternoons and discussed educational matters relating to the whole of the Mission. In time, it is hoped, advancement will be made in the direction of the giving of original papers and addresses on Education in the light of the New Church, and as applied to the conditions in Africa. Fifteen Leaders and five Teachers signed the attendance roll.

     On Saturday evening, January 28th, a meeting of a social nature was held in the Hostel at Alpha. This was a fitting climax to the conference, and coincident with the celebration of Swedenborg's Birthday. A gathering of about forty sat down to dinner. This included all the visiting Leaders and Teachers, and the Native Mission Staff at Alpha with their wives, together with the Superintendent, the Rev. E. C. Acton and Mr. Ed. Waters. Four Leaders were asked to make speeches suitable to the occasion. This resulted in the following interesting series: "Swedenborg's Early Life," by John Jiyana; "Swedenborg's Travels," by Berry Maqelepo; "The Opening of Swedenborg's Spiritual Sight," by Moffat Mcanyana; and " Swedenborg's Spiritual Travels," by Jonas Motsi. At intervals a quintette gave vocal selections which were much appreciated, and the addresses given brought some very good impromptu speeches from many of the Leaders, all pointing to the establishment of the New Church among the Africans.

     On Sunday, January 29th, Divine Service was held at the Alpha Native Church. Over 220 natives attended, this number being made up principally of visitors from other Mission Stations. The Rev. E. C. Acton officiated at eleven Baptisms, including that of Mr. Twentyman Mofokeng, and the Communion was celebrated. Mr. Acton gave the discourse.     Early in February the Alpha Elementary School commenced its first term for the new year; as also the trade department, such as it is in its present nuclear form. The Alpha Theological Class has also resumed work, with three students. The native teaching staff, however, is less by one, since Mr. George Mokoena resigned his duties in the Mission on December 31st last.

     The "Alpha Circle" has been holding its regular Sunday evening services, and a doctrinal class on Thursday evenings. Bishop W. F. Pendleton's studies on "Ritual" have been considered. These meetings, moreover, have been improved by the addition of music.

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The Circle has invested in a small organ, Mr. Waters officiating as organist, and so we are now able to use the Psalmody and the offices in the Liturgy.

     During January, the Rev. and Mrs. E. C. Acton and their daughter Sharon joined us for their summer holidays. During their stay it was our pleasure to have Mr. Acton officiate at three services and two doctrinal classes. At this time Mr. J. H. Ridgway also made a business trip to Alpha, in order to attend the half-yearly meeting of the Mission Committee.

     On January 15th, the Sacrament of Baptism was administered to Mrs. F. Parker. This was a very happy event for the Alpha community. We may also add the very latest happening, namely, the arrival of a son to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Parker on February 11th.

     During the last few months our isolated friends, Mr. and Mrs. Richards, who live at their farm "Ealing," about seventy miles from Alpha, have been brought into closer touch with us. During December the writer had the pleasure of spending a weekend with them, and during January he and Mr. P. D. Ridgway made a hurried call. Mr. Acton also spent a day with the Richards during his visit to Alpha.
     F. W. E.
Alpha,
     Ladybrand, O. F. S.,
          February 14th, 1928.

     SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.

     One remarkable and pleasing thing in connection with our work here is the continued increase in the numbers attending the Sunday School. It is becoming a problem to find sufficient teachers for all the scholars. The Pastor has introduced a new order for lessons. He, or some teacher, tells the Bible story for the day to the whole school, and gives the correspondence of a prominent word in the story. The name of the story, and also the correspondence, ale written on a blackboard in view of all the children, this to aid them in memorizing. Each Sunday the school is questioned concerning the previous week's lesson before commencing the new one. The two classes of the younger children then build the story sand trays, while the older ones receive further instruction in class.

     Miss Amena Pendleton's Golden Heart is still enjoyed among us. Mr. Morse reads it to the school about once every six months, one story each Sunday. Those who have heard them before are the most eager to hear them again.

     Our Christmas celebrations were very similar to last year. One new feature was the children's song service on the afternoon of December 18th. Our Pastor conducted the service from the chancel in his robes, telling the story of the Lord's Advent in short readings from the Word, these being interspersed with the singing of solos, duets, and choruses by the children. Mr. Taylor trained the children in the singing, and they acquitted themselves very well.

     A tableau showing the Manger Scene, followed by a Christmas Tree, was held on December 17th, with a very good attendance of children and parents. Mr. Morse spoke on the Advent, and Mr. Guthrie on gifts and their signification previous to the children's receiving theirs. And towards the end of the gathering he spoke especially to the parents, who are not members of our Church, telling some simple facts about its teachings, and inviting those interested to come oftener.

     We now have our piano! It came sooner than expected. The proceeds of the children's concerts and sundry contributions, together with a loan from a friend, enabled us to make the purchase. As we have an energetic treasurer for this fund in Master Ossian Heldon, we hope soon to have all the money collected.

     The Sunday School picnic, held at Como on February 4th, proved a great success. Though it rained for an hour, our spirits were not dampened, and as we had shelter sheds, none suffered physical harm.

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Sixty persons attended, forty of whom were children.

     If every thing develops as is anticipated, we shall soon have a day school, as Miss Taylor is sending the writer to Bryn Athyn to study during two semesters of 1928-9. The journey to America will be made via England during the time of the Assembly in London, so that Australia will have two representatives on that historic occasion.

     We had the pleasure of a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Williams of the Melbourne Society at the morning service on February 5th.
     M. M. W.

     REPORT OF THE VISITING PASTOR.

     On March 1st I started out on my annual southern trip, and the same day arrived at KNOXVILLE, TENN. A doctrinal class was held that evening in the family circle of Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson and their daughter Ethel Rae, an Academy ex-pupil. The next day I called on Mrs. Remington, who was a member of the Advent Church ago, and we conversed about old-time friends. That evening she and another New Church member, and one person besides, joined with the Hutchinson family in a service, including the Holy Supper, which was greatly enjoyed by all.

     Saturday, the 4th, I traveled to ATLANTA, where I made my stay at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Crockett, at which Place also all meetings were held. Sunday morning, and also during the week following, instruction was given to four children. In the afternoon we had services, with an attendance of fourteen persons, most of them members of the New Church. The occasion was the more impressive because of an adult baptism, received by one who had had New Church instruction in childhood, and with whom the remains then implanted have in recent years led to an awakening of interest in the Doctrines and of love for the church. At the dose of the service the Holy Supper was administered to eleven communicants. Among those present was Mr. Sterling Smith, of Bryn Athyn, now living at Atlanta. He very soon found himself at home in the group of young people associated with the Circle, and was helpful to their realizing how much the New Church can mean to young people. O, Tuesday evening a doctrinal class was held, at which twelve persons were present, and at which a strong sphere of the affection of truth was manifest, to the delight of all. Wednesday evening, Mr. Fraser-well known to all who attend General Assemblies-and spent with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Barnitz, conversing on interior subjects of doctrine. Thursday evening there was another doctrinal class, to which several of the members brought friends, and we had an attendance of twenty. So missionary talk was given on the doctrine of the Lord. After both our doctrinal classes there was an enjoyable social time. The entire visit to Atlanta was delightful and encouraging, and we hope that the way may open for more frequent visits.

     On Sunday, the 11th, services were held at JACKSONVILLE the Circle here, which is of the General Convention, is under the pastoral care of the Rev. J. B. Spiers, who visits frequently. I might mention that several of the southern circles, having members of both of the general bodies of the Church, welcome both Mr. Spiers and my ministrations. At our services there was an attendance of eleven, and at doctrinal class in the evening six. Both occasions were enjoyable. For the day I was the guest of the delightful New Church home of the Misses Warriner, who also arranged that during the afternoon we had an automobile outing to the historic city of St. Augustine, this being made possible by the kindness of Mr. Means, one of the members.

     On Monday I went to OAK HILL, in FLA., Where two days were spent with of Mrs. John Hilldale and Mr. Harry Hilldale. On Tuesday evening we had services, including the Holy Supper: a small gathering, yet having the wondrous spirit of the Lord's New Church; for where two or three are gathered together in the Lord's Name, as now revealed, there He, in His Second Coming, is in the midst of them.

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     On Wednesday Mr. Joachim Fritz called for me and took me by automobile to his country home near APOPKA, in the interior of the State. Here he has a large estate, called Miami Springs,-although more than 250 miles from the city of Miami. Its central feature is a large sulphur spring with its bathing pool. Surrounding it are beautiful woods; and orchards, gardens and flower-beds are being planted. Beyond these, and bordering a river of considerable size, is a great forest and jungle. Mr. Fritz's ambition is that in time the place shall become a resort for New Church people, and especially for New Church ministers, where they may for a period find rest and quiet and renewal of strength. With him we hope for the realization of his plans. In the evening of my second day here, a talk was given to nine persons, engaged in work on the place, on the purpose of our being. On Friday we made an automobile trip to MIAMI. Here, on Sunday the 18th, services were held in the hotel apartments of Mr. and Mrs. L. Brackett Bishop, at which ten persons were present. In the evening a missionary address was given at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Fritz; attendance eleven. On Tuesday we returned to the Springs, and from there Mr. Fritz conveyed me to Jacksonville, where I took train for home. St. Petersburg was not visited this year, as Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Nelson, who usually spend the winter there, are travelling abroad.
     F. E. WAELCHLI.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA.

     At the Joint Council Meeting last February, the Bryn Athyn Church extended to the General Church a cordial invitation to hold the Fourteenth General Assembly in Bryn Athyn. The invitation was accepted, and the time of the Assembly was fixed for 1930. Subsequently there was an active discussion in the Pastor's Council relative to necessary preparations for this event, and it was agreed that the first requisite would be a building adequate to accommodate the general meetings, the banquet, and the social occasions of the Assembly. A committee was appointed to investigate the matter, and plans have been underway since for the erection of such a building. Considerable interest in the project was aroused among the younger members of the Society, and a considerable number of the young men have applied themselves energetically to the task of raising the necessary funds. It is hoped that we shall be able to erect a building that will be of permanent use, both to the Academy Schools for gymnasium and social purposes, and to the Society, the present Auditorium being insufficient to meet our steadily growing needs.

     On March 19th, the Young People held a Banquet, at which there were discussed the problems of participation in the uses of the Society by the rising generation. Indicative of our growth is the fact that 239 invitations were sent out for this occasion, all to young people between High-school age and 15 years. There were 175 present. Following a series of prepared speeches, giving evidence of keen interest in the things of the Church, there was a lively discussion centering around the question of the proposed Assembly Building. The Banquet was under the auspices of the two Young People's classes which have been conducted throughout the year by the Rt. Rev. George de Charms. It was a unique occasion, and was eminently successful. It may mark the development of a very useful element in our society life.

     On Sunday, April 8th, the Bryn Athyn String Quartet favored us with a very delightful concert in the Auditorium. An interesting feature of the program was a "Suite in the Olden Style" specially composed for the Bryn Athyn String Quartet by Mr. H. Waldo Warner, who plays the viola in the London String Quartet.

     The Bryn Athyn Orchestra, which includes a number of promising young musicians, has been making very commendable progress under the direction of Mr. Frank Bostock.

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Its rendering of two numbers at the special service held in the Cathedral on Friday, April 6th, was much enjoyed by the congregation.

     The Easter program included the usual three services. At the evening service in preparation for Easter, on April 6th, Bishop N. D. Pendleton preached a thought-provoking sermon on the text, Revelation 1:18, treating of Death and the Lord's Glorification. On Easter morning, at 9:30 o'clock, a large congregation gathered in the Cathedral for the Children's Easter Service. The ladies of the Choir in white vestments, bearing lilies, led the procession, followed by the children bearing an offering of flowering plants, which were tastefully arranged at the entrance to the Chancel. The Easter songs expressing the joy of the Lord's Resurrection, the Hebrew singing and recitation by the children, and the address of the Assistant Pastor on the Hope of Eternal Life, and dealing with the revelation of the wonders of the spiritual world which the Glorification of the Lord made possible, combined to rouse a spirit of rejoicing because "the Lord had taken to Him His great power, and had entered upon the Kingdom." This occasion brought to an appropriate conclusion the series of Children's services for the year. On April 15th, the Rev. Theodore Pitcairn began a series of afternoon services which it is hoped can be continued throughout the summer.

     At 11 o'clock on Easter Morning, the Holy Supper was administered to 225 communicants. Bishop N. D. Pendleton officiated, being assisted by Rev. C. E. Doering, Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Rev. E. E. Iungerich, and Rev. Theodore Pitcairn. We enjoyed the presence on this occasion of a number of visitors from other centers of the New Church.

     On April 5th, Miss Eliza Mitchell, of Yonkers, New York, passed into the spiritual world at the age of 87. Memorial services were conducted in the Cathedral at Bryn Athyn by the Rt. Rev. George de Charms. Miss Mitchell had been a member of the Academy since 1877, and was one of the original members of the General Church when that body came into being in 1897. For many years she had lived with the family of Mr. Walter C. Childs, the only surviving Founder of the Academy movement, caring for his children after the death of their mother. She was a devoted member of the Church, deeply interested in the truths of the Heavenly Doctrine, and will be remembered with strong affection by all who knew her. She will receive a glad welcome from the many intimate friends who had preceded her into the other world.
     G. de C.

     STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN.

     It is rather late to tell you about our celebration of Christmas, and I will only state that our Young People's Club, as usual, arranged an entertainment for the children, with a Christmas Tree, games, Santa Claus and presents. Some of the younger children also acted part of a play called "The Guardian Angel," which was much appreciated, especially by parents, brothers and sisters.

     Swedenborg's Birthday was observed in the customary manner. After the service (the day being Sunday) we sat down to a dinner, and speeches were made by the pastor, Mr. Smart and Mrs. Torsten Sigstedt, nee Sigrid C. Odhner. We were especially interested in what Mrs. Sigstedt had to say about Swedenborg, the Assessor in the College of Mines, according to her own researches in the archives of that department of the Government.

     I have just made a fourth missionary trip to Norway, where I visited Oslo and Drammen, the latter a city of 30,000 inhabitants located near Oslo. This time I permitted to lecture in the University at Oslo, a privilege denied me on a previous visit, as there was objection to any "propaganda" in favor of Swedenborg. The subject of the first lecture was: "What are our departed friends doing now in the other life?"

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About 300 persons were present, with many standing and some unable to get in. The second lecture was on the subject of "Conjugial Love," and the attendance was 200.

     In Drammen the interest seemed to be still greater. The hall, with accommodations for 350, was overcrowded. Even a seldom used gallery had been opened for the occasion, and I was told by an usher that there had not been so many people in the hall for a long time.

     At the three lectures delivered on this trip, books to the value of 200 kroner ($53.60) were sold.

     In Mr. Alfred Holm, Glenview, Ill., we now have a representative of our Book Room in America who has obtained very good results by advertising our Swedish books in the leading Swedish-American newspaper. In a letter dated January 31st, 1928, Mr. Holm writes:

     "The books have been sold long before they have arrived from Sweden. I have sent out catalogues, and have received orders for more books than I have in stock, and so it will be necessary to carry a larger stock. Almost every day five or ten orders come in, and many questions are asked. Some of these questions come from the priests of different sects, and it is keeping me busy answering all kinds of questions concerning the New Church. I have answered about 150 letters, and have about 90 on hand which have not yet been answered. All the States and Canada are represented in this response to our advertisements.

     "It seems as if the fear of the New Church has diminished, and that people are beginning to think for themselves. One old lady wrote me: 'I am hungry for the New Church. I have been a member of a society of the Mission for thirty years, but as I could not believe in salvation by faith alone I was expelled. Send me Swedenborg's writings. I have read Heaven and Hell, and it is a true word of God.' I have received many letters like this. Some want the Writings in Swedish, and some in English. As a whole I can say that our undertaking is a success.-Alfred Holm."
     GUSTAF BAECKSTROM

     MINISTERIAL CHANGES.

     The Rev. Eldred E. Iungerich has accepted a call to the pastorate of the Pittsburgh Society, entering upon his duties there in September.

     The Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner has resigned the pastorate of the Olivet Church, Toronto, Ontario, and will become a member of the Faculty of the Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa.,

     The Rev. Alan Gill, of New York, has accepted a call to become Pastor of the Carmel Church, Kitchener, Ontario, and will enter upon his duties there in September.

     GENERAL CONVENTION.

     The 107th Session of the General Convention will convene at Washington, D. C. on Saturday, May 12th, 1928, being preceded by the meetings of the Council of Ministers on May 8th. The Rev. H. Gordon Drummond, President of the British Conference will attend as representative of that body.

     The Rev. William R. Reese, Pastor of the Portland, Oregon, Society, has accepted a call to become Minister of the Brisbane, Australia, Society, and will leave America on July 1st.
ONTARIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY 1928

ONTARIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY       Rev. L. W. T. DAVID       1928

     The Seventeenth Ontario District Assembly will be held at the Carmel Church, Kitchener, Ont., May 24th to 27th, 1928. All members and friends of the General Church are cordially invited to attend. Accommodation will be provided for all visitors. Kindly notify the undersigned of your intention to be present.
     REV. L. W. T. DAVID,
          Secretary,
20 Willow Street,
     Kitchener, Ont.

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THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928




     Announcements.



     Preliminary Program.

     London, England, August 3-12, 1928.

     Friday, August 3.
10:00 a.m. - Council of the Clergy.
1:00 p.m. - Luncheon for the Council.

     Saturday, August 4.
7:30 p.m. - First Session of the General Assembly. Address by the Bishop of the General Church.

     Sunday, August 5.
11:00 a.m. - Divine Worship. Ordination.
          - Sermon by the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner
7:00 p.m. - Divine Worship. Ordinations.
- Sermon by the Rev. R. J. Tilson.

     Monday, August 6.
10:00 a.m. - Second Session of the General Assembly. Subject: "The Calendar Reading of the Writings."
11:00 a.m. - Address by the Rev. Dr. Alfred Acton. Subject: To be announced later.
3:00 p.m. - Third Session of the General Assembly.
          - Address by the Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer. Subject: "The New Church in Holland."
7:30 p.m. - Reception and Assembly Social.

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     Tuesday, August 7.
10:00 a.m. - Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m. - Address by the Rev. Albert Bjorck.
7:30 p.m. - Fourth Session of the General Assembly. General Discussion.
          - Subject: "Church Extension."

     Wednesday, August 8.
10:00 a.m. - Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m. - Address by the Rev. Richard Morse
3:00 p.m. - Meeting of the Corporation of the General Church.
7:30 p.m. - Fifth Session of the General Assembly. General Discussion. - Subject: "Society Building."

     Friday, August 10.
10:00 a.m. - Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m. - Address by the Rev. William Whitehead. Subject: "The New Church and the Modern State."
3:00 p.m. - Meeting of the Executive Committee of the General Church.
7:30 p.m. - "New Church Club" Men's Dinner.
          - Ladies' Dinner under the Auspices of Theta Alpha.

     Saturday, August 11.
3:00 p.m. - Sixth Session of the General Assembly.
          - Address by Mr. J. S. Pryke. Subject: "The Church and the World."

     Sunday, August 12.
11:00 a.m. - Divine Worship. Holy Supper.
          - Sermon by the Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom.
7:00 p.m. - Open Meeting of the Sons of the Academy.
          - Address by the Rt. Rev. George de Charms. Subject: "The Development of New Church Education."

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DIVINE AUTHORITY 1928

DIVINE AUTHORITY       Rev. G. A. SEXTON       1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII JUNE, 1928           No. 6
     THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE REVELATIONS GIVEN THROUGH SWEDENBORG.

     There are various degrees of acceptance, or non-acceptance, of the teachings contained in the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and it is quite common to hear the advocates of some particular view condemning any other opinion than their own as a bogey that should be shunned; but usually, when we examine the statements of such persons, we find that the bogey which they call illogical, and which they are warning the Church against, is not what other people think at all, but is a purely imaginary conception of what they think other people believe, too illogical for any reasonable man to accept. We ought to realize that, even if there be many complete fools in the world, the leaders of thought in every phase of opinion are rational men, and, therefore, that each theory must be based upon some sort of logical argument from certain facts. In short, it is safe to say that every shade of opinion held by any body of rational men is what the truth would be if the data from which they have deduced their theory were the truth, and the whole truth, about the matter.

     It will be useful, therefore, if we review the facts upon which the belief in the doctrines of the New Church is based, with a view to seeing what is the nearest to the whole truth that we can arrive at with the data that we have to argue from, and the degree of logical rationality with which we are endowed, We shall find that most of the several degrees of acceptance are but stages in the natural and orderly progress of study, and in the growth of enlightenment. Even those of us who were born within the Church must come into the first knowledge of the things that it teaches by the orderly method of education.

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Some may have been started on their way with a predisposition to accept as true whatever they find in these wonderful books; but all must have read the books for themselves for the first time, and as rational minds must have asked themselves the question: "Is this true? How do I know that it is true? and, If it be true, what is the full significance of it?"

     Most young persons, coming to the Writings of Swedenborg, read Heaven and Hell first. It is a good book to begin with, because upon its acceptance or rejection everything that follows must depend; since if one cannot believe that Swedenborg was permitted to have these revelations, which he claimed, it is impossible to accept any of his teaching. Picture a young man, with a neutral but receptive mind, having read Heaven and Hell. If he be not one of those who cannot believe in anything spiritual, and so must reject the whole from the beginning, he must at least accept that which is in it as a beautiful description of what the other world might be like. He tells himself (as I have indeed heard many people express), that it is certainly beautiful, and that if it be true, it is the most glorious revelation of the other world that has ever been given upon earth. But the problem is to prove whether it be truth or fiction.

     To the mature student of Swedenborg this is no problem, because, when the whole of the revelation is grasped, it is so wonderful that in itself it is proof of its own supermundane origin; but that is not the case with the student who reads it for the first time. He has then reached the first stage of acceptance, namely, that of acknowledgment that it is a beautiful conception of the other world, worthy of being accepted as our idea of it, though possibly only an ordinary, human, poetical, imaginary, description.

     That, it should be noted, is the ultimate degree of acceptance that can be placed in the teachings of any ordinary religious teacher, who claims no Divine revelation. If Swedenborg had not had any special vision, or revelation, that is all the acceptance that could be granted his teaching; and consequently, this first stage is the logical position for any man who has read and admired his works, but has not yet discovered the proofs of the reality of Swedenborg's experiences.

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     Even so, it should be pointed out that allegiance to a Church which is founded to teach what Swedenborg taught would involve that, so long as one remain in that Church, one should teach that, and nothing contrary to it, even though it be but a man's philosophy; and that funds given for that purpose should be used for that teaching only.

     But that is not the whole truth. The student, having read a few of Swedenborg's works, must inevitably inquire for the proofs of the reality of the things which Swedenborg claimed; and, as he makes researches into the records of the life of Swedenborg, he will find evidence there that Swedenborg was in actual communication with persons who had lived upon earth and passed death. It is not our province, here and now, to deduce that evidence; but when the student has once found it, and been convinced by it, he reaches the second state of belief. He realizes that what Swedenborg has written is a true record of things heard and seen. It is then no matter of thinking that it is a very beautiful poetical imagination, but it is accepted as an actual description of the other world as it is. To one in this stage, Swedenborg's works are a reliable record of the conditions of life after death, as actually revealed to Swedenborg; and it must be admitted, therefore, that Swedenborg was in a much better position to explain the philosophy of Creation than we are, being able to see both worlds at once, and, as he says, "from the one to explore the other," while our vision is limited to this world only. But still, to one in this stage, Swedenborg's conclusions remain his own explanations, even if based upon that wider experience, and may be modified as science throws more light upon the facts of nature.

     In this stage of acceptance, Swedenborg's teaching, though acknowledged as a true doctrine of the other world, is only on the same basis as the evidence of spiritualism, so far as the authority of its teaching is concerned; and it is indeed, to one in this stage of acceptance, a sort of superspiritualism.

     The next, or third stage, is when the student realizes that such a revelation as that given to Swedenborg is a quite unique thing, and that it could not be given except under a very special Divine dispensation. And so it seems impossible that the Creator should give a man such a wonderful experience, not for his own entertainment, but for the purpose of instructing the world, and should not at the same time so guide that man as to prevent any serious, or misleading, error from getting into the records from his own proprium, thereby nullifying the whole value of the revelation, and rendering it a source of dangerous misleading.

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     When this state is reached, Swedenborg's Writings begin to stand forth with an authority, not only as to the things heard and seen, but as to the explanations of these things, or the philosophy, which is included in it. That is to say, the fundamental doctrine is accepted as true, though even yet the details of illustration, and the expressions, may be taken merely s, the illustrations drawn from Swedenborg's own mind. This does not mean that one believes what one does not understand, but that one accepts what is stated as an explanation for our understanding, and that, if in this stage one come upon some statement that he cannot understand, he must simply admit that he does not understand it, just as a student of mathematics must do if he turn to problems at the end of his book which he has not yet worked up to.

     But this is rather an unstable state of mind, because the student has not studied all that Swedenborg has written; nor yet does be know all science; so that there must be things that he does not harmonize. And there is apt to be constant uneasiness, lest he should find some statement in the Writings that may appear absolutely to contradict scientific discoveries, and so destroy his faith. Many, therefore, dread this stage. They see it as the logical position in front of them, and yet they are afraid to trust themselves to it. So their faith wavers. As they read, they constantly find statements that they do not know how to interpret, and are in continual dread lest, if they admit such authority, they should find something which would completely destroy their faith.

     There is another state, however, to which those may come who have the privilege of scientific education, and at the same time are gifted with a deep perception of spiritual things, besides having the time for very extensive study of what Swedenborg has written. As we study, we find that the things which seemed to be difficulties while we were in the earlier stages now become the only possible clear explanation. We find that the anticipated difficulties do not arise, but that the more we understand, the more the problems of our earlier reading are cleared away. We see scientific men laboring with slow steps to reach new facts, but when each new discovery is announced to the world, we find that the essential of it is implied in what Swedenborg has already explained to us.

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We find that, in some cases, Swedenborg's explanations enable us to look ahead of scientific discovery, and to form a perception of some things, such as gravity, for instance, which science has not yet touched. We see that many statements in which we once imagined there were divergencies between Swedenborg's teaching and science are really agreements, and that the apparent differences were due to difference in the language, Swedenborg actually saying the same thing, only using completely different words, and explaining from a different point of view, many passages being obscured by the translation, not only translation into English, but translation into modern scientific terms. When this stage is reached, the idea of expecting incomprehensible difficulties that will destroy our faith if we once accept the authority of the Writings vanishes, for we find that we only get further and further confirmation the further we go, both in science and in Swedenborg. And we realize that, as Swedenborg lived more than a hundred and fifty years ago, that all this perception was not of his own personal knowledge, but that it could only come through his being led by the guiding hand of Providence in his philosophy and explanation; for only from the Source of all knowledge could such foresight come.

     As this, which we may call the scientific position, matures, we realize further that Swedenborg could not have been in that position of receiving such guidance without himself being able to perceive in what relation he stood to the revealing Providence, and that he himself has declared that he was so led. We realize that he spoke the truth when he declared that he had been guided by the Lord alone. When we reach this assurance we can only bow before this revelation as a message given from the Lord to the world; not a reliable record only, with a man's philosophy based upon it, but a Divinely given explanation of the facts of being.

     This is the scientific position, beginning from first principles, and logically followed out through the study of Swedenborg's Writings, and of the world as we know it. And although it is not everyone who has the privileges that enable one to confirm this state by personal study and reasoning, still those who have not that opportunity, but who have reached the previous stage of recognizing that there must be a Divine intention in these revelations, when they see that greater knowledge does not bring the expected difficulties, but rather dispels the very fear of their occurring, may also lose the doubts that at first disturbed their confidence, and accept the authority of that which has been revealed, with full assurance.

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     There is yet another degree of perception that may be reached, when, by entering fully into the understanding of spiritual influences, we realize that there is a Divine plan in everything; that the law of correspondences is not merely a key to interpret some parables, but the basis of the laws of Creation, and that the Word of God contains the inner senses, because a history of the progress of true religion in the world must be the natural counterpart of the spiritual things that have to do with the progress of religion in the human soul, and in the heavens; consequently that, as Swedenborg's works are a true and Divinely guided description of man's position on the earth in relation to his understanding of spiritual things, and in the relationships of man to man in charity, they must, of the very necessity of things, by the universal law of correspondence, describe at the same time the corresponding relationships between man and the angels, and between man and his God. For whatever is absolute truth on our plane of thought must, of the very necessity of things, express also spiritual and celestial realities by the same words.
PROTECTION OF REVEALED TRUTH 1928

PROTECTION OF REVEALED TRUTH              1928

     "Divine Truth can in nowise be profaned, except by those who have first acknowledged it; for such have first entered into truth by acknowledgment and belief, and thus have been initiated into it; and when they afterwards recede from it, a vestige of it continually remains inwardly impressed, and is recalled whenever what is false and evil is recalled; and hence the truth, because it adheres to them, is profaned. It is on this account that it is most especially provided by the Lord that Divine Good and Truth may not be profaned; and it is provided chiefly by this means, that a man who is of such a nature that he cannot help profaning is withheld as far as possible from the acknowledgment and belief of what is true and good. This was the reason why internal truths were not disclosed to the Israelites and Jews, and why the Lord did not come into the world, and reveal the internal things of the Word, until there was not any good remaining with them. It is for the same reason that the arcana of the internal sense of the Word are now revealed, because at this day there is scarcely any faith, because there is not any charity; and when this is the case, these arcana can be revealed without danger of profanation, because they are not interiorly acknowledged." (A. C. 3398)

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TELL NO MAN! 1928

TELL NO MAN!       Rev. F. E. GYLLENHAAL       1928

     THE LORD KNOWN ONLY AFTER THE LAST JUDGMENT.

     "See thou tell no man." (Matthew 8:4.)

     On several occasions, after performing a miracle, the Lord commanded that what He had done and spoken should not be made known. Having cleansed a leper, the Lord said to him, "See thou tell no man." After opening the eyes of two blind men, "Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it." (Matthew 9:30.) And it is written that "Unclean spirits, when they saw Him, fell down before Him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And He straitly charged them that they should not make Him known." (Mark 3:11, 12.)

     Yet in every instance the Lord performed His miracles before multitudes, and spoke in their hearing. Evidently, therefore, the words, as well as the miracles, were known to many. And it is related that " the more He charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it." (Mark 7:36.) Of the leper, whom the Lord cleansed, it is written, "But he went out and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in the desert places; and they came to Him from every quarter." (Mark 1:45.) And of the two blind men, whose eyes He opened, we read, "But they, when they were departed, spread abroad His fame in all that country." (Matthew 9:31.)

     We are told that the Lord Himself "went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people." (Matthew 9:35.) And when John the Baptist, from his prison, Sent two of his disciples to the Lord to ask Him, "Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another? Jesus answered and said unto them, Go, and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them.

328


And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." (Matthew 11:2-6.)

     We have also the following account which shows how plainly the Lord at times declared Himself to be Him of whom the Scriptures of the Old Testament had repeatedly prophesied: "And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Isaiah 61:1.) And He closed the book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all bear witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?" (Luke 4:16-22.)

     Note, also, that when the Lord entered Jerusalem riding upon an ass, and "the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord; peace in heaven, and glory in the highest"; it is related that "some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto Him, Master, rebuke Thy disciples. And He answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out." (Luke 19:38-40.)

     It is clearly established by these and other passages that the Lord Himself, by traveling about preaching, teaching and doing miracles, spread abroad the very things which, seemingly, He commanded certain ones not to make known. It has been shown, also, that they who were commanded to tell no man, and not to make Him known, always disobeyed Him and so much the more published the matter.

329


This is not true of the disciples in every case, for when the Lord asked them, "Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?" Peter replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. . . . Then charged He His disciples that they should tell no man that He was Jesus the Christ." (Matthew 16:13-20.) And it is not recorded anywhere that they disobeyed Him in this instance. Again, when He was transfigured before Peter, James and John, after the vision had disappeared, as they descended the mountain, He charged them, "Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead." (Matthew 17:1-9.) And it is recorded in Mark that "they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean." (9:10.) And in Luke the statement is even more definite, namely, that "they kept it close, and told no man in those days any of those things which they had seen." (9:36.)

     But the disciples did not understand what they had seen, nor what the Lord had said; for it is written that after His resurrection He appeared to them, and then said, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken; ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself." (Luke 24:25-27.) Again it is written, "He said to them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me." (Luke 24: 44.)

     It would seem, therefore, that there is a mystery in the words, "See thou tell no man." There is, indeed, a hidden, spiritual meaning, which is quite apart from the natural or literal meaning. This is not surprising, however, as it is plainly stated in Matthew (13:34) and the Writings (A. C. 302; S. D. 3357) that the Lord spake almost altogether in parables.

     The words of the text are not explained in the Writings; nor are words to the same effect in any other passages. Yet it is possible to know their spiritual meaning from comparison with a passage not yet quoted, as shall be shown shortly. Even the natural meaning of the text is not quite clear; that is, it is not quite clear what were the natural reasons for giving such a command, when it was not obeyed, and when the Lord Himself seemingly acted contrary to the spirit of it.

330


The disobedience of the Jews excites no surprise, as they were notoriously disobedient throughout their history. They were compelled by miracles to obey; but when the miracles became too common, they lost their power to compel.

     By Divine miracles, the Jews, or some of them, were compelled to believe, or to have a miraculous faith, in Jesus Christ; but this faith was short-lived with them, particularly when the miracles became common. The multitudes sought the Lord, not from any religious motives, nor for the sake of salvation, nor from any faith in His Divinity, nor from any love for Him, nor even because of the miracles; but because of the healing, restoring and feeding of their bodies. As it is written, "Jesus answered and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the leaves and were filled." (John 6:26.) In this we perceive a reason for the command that no man should be told about the miracle and the words, namely, because there could be nothing spiritual adjoined to men who acted from a merely corporeal motive, and because men so corporeal and utterly selfish could not in the least acknowledge the Divinity of Jesus Christ. Note, also, that no man was ever saved by miracles, nor taught anything spiritual by them, except in the same may as one is taught by a parable.

     Another natural reason for the Lord's prohibition of reports about His miracles and sayings is given in the following statement: "Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force, to make Him a king, He departed again into a mountain Himself alone." (John 6:14, 15.) Any attempt on the part of the Jews to make Him an earthly king would have interfered with the purpose for which He had come into the world; therefore, at times, the Lord manifested an apparent prudence in avoiding the issue and escaping from an awkward situation by disappearing. And it was for a similar reason, considering the words only in their natural meaning, that He commanded certain ones, as well as His disciples, to "tell no man," and "that they should not make Him known."

331


The omnipotent Divine was working in the world among men, and therefore in accommodation to the states of men; and the seeming limitations of Jesus Christ were entirely those of men apart from Him, and not in any sense limitations of the Divine Itself. Such appearances are recorded in the account of the first miracle, when the water was turned into wine at the marriage in Cana of Galilee; for on that occasion, it is related, the Lord replied to Mary, who had told Him that there was no wine, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." (John 2:1-11.) The work of subjugating the hells and of glorifying the human assumed was a successive and, seemingly, a slow work, simply owing to the limitations of men, and not to any lack of Divine power. And, we may be sure, the Lord's command to "tell no man," and "that they should not make Him known," was given for the protection of men, even for the sake of their salvation, and not owing to any danger threatening the Lord.

     The spiritual meaning of the text is unlocked by the internal sense of the following passage from the Izth chapter of Matthew: "Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against Him, how they might destroy Him. But when Jesus knew it, He withdrew Himself from thence: and great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all, and charged them that they should not make Him known; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon Him, and He shall show judgment to the gentiles. He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth judgment unto victory. And in His name shall the gentiles trust."

     Here it is stated that the Lord charged the multitudes not to make Him known, in order that a certain prophecy by Isaiah might be fulfilled. The prophecy is partly explained by the Lord's quotation and application of it to Himself. In it the time is foretold when He will be made known, namely, when He sends forth judgment unto victory, which is after the Last Judgment. " Jesus . . . charged them that they should not make Him known; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias, . . . saying, Behold my servant, whom I have chosen. . . A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, until He send forth judgment unto victory."

332




     The spiritual meaning of the prophecy concerns the Lord's advent and New Church; and that He will gently lead and teach. (P. P.) Here the Lord testifies that He is Divine, is God Almighty, and teaches that He will preserve a little of good and truth with the gentiles outside the church, and with the simple and children who are gentiles in the church, until they can come into intelligence, or until He can bring forth intelligence in them; or again, He will preserve the church with them until He can bring forth intelligence in the church. "Sending forth judgment unto victory" also means the triumph of the Divine Truth after the Last Judgment, a triumph which was shown in His resurrection and glorification. This also is the meaning of His charge to the disciples at the vision of the transfiguration, when He plainly declared that "He was Jesus the Christ," that they were to tell no man until He had "risen again from the dead." For the passion of the cross was the last and severest temptation-combat by which the judgment then was completed, and prefigured the Last Judgment of 1757, when the Lord sent forth " judgment unto victory,"-unto final and crowning victory over the bells, when His Divine Human was fully revealed in the Heavenly Doctrine.

     "A bruised reed shall He not break," means that He will not hurt Divine Truth sensual in the simple and children. "Smoking flax shall He not quench," signifies that He will not destroy the Divine Truth that is beginning to live from a very little good of love in the simple and children, "flax" meaning truth, and "smoking," its being alive from some little love. And because both the reed and flax signify truth, it is said that the Lord "will bring forth truth in judgment," which means that He will bring forth in them intelligence, "judgment" signifying intelligence. (A. E. 627:7.) In Matthew 12:20, it is said, "till He send forth judgment unto victory," which means the same as "bring forth judgment unto truth," and also means the Last Judgment and the final victory of truth.

     Divine Truth sensual, which is signified by the "bruised reed," is the truth of the letter of the Word and outmost of Divine Truth natural. In this truth, or in the letter of the Word, and in some love of it, men were to be preserved until they could be brought into intelligence, or into the three higher degrees of Divine Truth.

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In other words, the Heavenly Doctrine, which in its entirety is the three higher degrees of Divine Truth. (A. E. 627:5, 6), could not be revealed then, nor until after the Last Judgment of 1757. And this is the meaning of the words, "See thou tell no man." For the Heavenly Doctrine alone gives the enlightenment wherein a man may truly see the Lord Jesus Christ to be the one God Almighty. The Heavenly Doctrine alone reveals this supreme doctrine in rational form to the intelligence of a man prepared by it for its reception. This is the "new doctrine" referred to in the Doctrine of the Lord, no. 65,-a new doctrine which did not exist in the former Church, which did not exist in any former Church. And this supreme doctrine was not given to the Christian Church immediately after the First Advent, because the Lord perceived that it would not be received, and that if it had been received, it would have been profaned. The whole subject of profanation is introduced by the fact that the man cleansed was a leper, to whom the Lord said, "See thou tell no man."

     The Lord added to His command the words, "But go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony unto them." In other words, Go to the law of Moses, obey it, be guided by the letter of the Word, which you have made a "bruised reed" and have broken (the Jewish and Christian Churches made it such, and broke it); but I will not break it, I will preserve it with you, and by it I will preserve you." Be guided by the letter of the Word until such time as you can receive, without danger of profanation, the spiritual sense, the new doctrine, the supreme doctrine that God is one in Person and Essence, and the Lord Jesus Christ is that God.

     Because of the state of men, thus for their sakes, for the sake of their salvation, the Lord kept the human race in ignorance of the fact that He was God. It is true that He proclaimed the fact when He was on earth, but, for the most part, He proclaimed it in parable. It was a truth that could not be seen continuously and rationally until the spiritual sense of the Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments had been revealed; and this revelation could not be given until after the Last Judgment of 1757 and the Second Advent of the Lord made then.

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The Second Advent fulfilled the Lord's promise that "the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." (John 14:26.) Amen.

     Lessons: Isaiah 42:1-16; Matthew 8:1-13; A. E. 627: 5, 6)
JOHN FLAXMAN SCULPTOR, ARTIST AND NEW CHURCHMAN 1928

JOHN FLAXMAN SCULPTOR, ARTIST AND NEW CHURCHMAN       ARTHUR CARTER       1928

     (Continued from p. 266 of the May issue.)

     In 1782, a young London printer named Robert Hindmarsh journeyed to Canterbury on a visit to his father, a Wesleyan Methodist clergyman. In one of their conversations Swedenborg was casually mentioned, and the young man learned that Mr. George Keen, a Quaker gentleman of the town, possessed some of the translated works of the seer. Impelled by curiosity, he called on the Quaker gentleman, who graciously loaned him copies of Heaven and Hell and The intercourse Between the Soul and the Body. Hindmarsh perused these volumes with avidity and delight, "instantly perceiving their contents to be of heavenly origin," he said. During an entire year after his reception of the Writings, he found only three or four individuals with whom he could maintain a friendly discussion on the subjects which they treated of. In 1783, he invited these few to hold regular meetings for reading and conversation in his house in Clerkenwell Close, not far from the spot where Swedenborg died. The little circle of three, and subsequently four, assembled every Sunday morning. Says Hindmarsh: "I was possessed of all the Writings in Latin, and these were constantly on the table before us while we read in them those illustrations of the Holy Word, and those extraordinary relations in reference to the state of things in another life."

     Continuing in this manner for a time, a public meeting was decided on, to which all in London friendly toward the Writings were invited.

335


Five responded to the call on December 5th, 1783, and foregathered in the Queen's Arms Tavern, where they had a room to themselves and drank tea. The newly-formed organization, after a few meetings held in the Inner Temple, removed to more convenient quarters in New Court, Middle Temple. Early in January, 1784, they assumed the name of "The Theosophical Society, instituted for the Purpose of promoting the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem, by translating, printing, and publishing the Theological Writings of the honorable Emanuel Swedenborg." The Society continued in the Middle Temple for several years, slowly increasing in numbers. Convening once or twice weekly, usually under the leadership of Hindmarsh, its meetings were conducted in a similar manner to that of the familiar New Church doctrinal class.

     About the beginning of 1787, an energetic group of members proposed that steps be taken to establish a ministry and acquire a place of worship. A resolution to this effect, submitted to the Society, met with defeat by a small majority, on the ground that the time had not arrived for definitely separating from the Old Church. The minority, however, thought otherwise. They united among themselves for the purpose of discussing ways and means, yet without discontinuing the usual meetings with the rest of their brethren. It was about this time that the Rev. John Clowes, Rector of St. John's, Manchester, hearing of the design to establish public worship on a purely New Church basis, came to London for the purpose of dissuading the proponents from the contemplated move. It is needless to record that he failed to convince, though listened to with the utmost deference.

     The first meeting of the new organization, as a separate body from the Old Church, was held on May 7th, 1787; and on November 5th the Middle Temple was relinquished for the new place of worship in Great East Cheap, which had been rented for ?90 per annum. Happily the problem of securing a pastor presented no difficulties. The right man was available for the emergency. It was none other than James Hindmarsh, the father of Robert, "formerly writing master at the Methodist seminary, called Kingswood School, near Bristol, and afterwards an itinerant preacher in Mr. Wesley's connection."

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James Hindmarsh had been slower to accept the Writings than his son, but became an avowed receiver in 1785. Probably the first in the world to minister to a New Church congregation, "he continued in his office for several years, obtaining no other reward for his labors than the respect and thanks of his congregation." After a form of worship had been prepared, the chapel in Great East Cheap was formally opened on Sunday, January 27th, 1788. And here, on June 1st of that year, James Hindmarsh and Samuel Smith were ordained as the first Ministers of the New Church, the ceremony being performed by Robert Hindmarsh, who was later recognized by the General Conference as "virtually ordained by the Divine Auspices of Heaven," and whose name thereafter appeared first on the list of New Church ministers.

     Flaxman was associated with the New Church at its very inception. In 1784, when the Theosophical Society commenced to meet in the Middle Temple, he is numbered by Robert Hindmarsh among "the gentlemen of respectability who found their way to our meetings and cordially united with us in the objects of the Society." Though not again mentioned by this author, it is fair to presume that his interest continued up to the time of his departure for Italy, in 1787. Separated from New Church intercourse by seven years' residence abroad, no definite knowledge is available as to his religious opinions during the interval. That they remained unchanged, may be supported by Allan Cunningham's statement that the influence of Swedenborg can be detected in the illustrations to Dante's Paradise. Additional confirmation is furnished by the fact that during the Flaxmans' stay in Italy, and while Mr. and Mrs. John Augustus Tulk were with them, an extremely beautiful cameo of the head of Emanuel Swedenborg was cut in sardonyx in very full relief by Caputi of Rome. The work was done for Mr. Tulk under the direction of Flaxman, he and Caputi being great friends. After the death of Mr. Charles Augustus Tulk, in 1849, the cameo, along with other relies, was bought by his daughter, Mrs. Ley, of Florence; and after her decease it descended to her daughter Beatrice, in whose possession it was in the year 1890.

     Flaxman had seen the New Church begin as a mere reading circle, without a ministry or form of public worship. On his return to England, he found it an established ecclesiastical organization, and as such he united with it.

337




     In the absence of any information as to how Flaxman became acquainted with the Writings, only conjecture is possible. It is more than probable, in the opinion of the writer, that the explanation is to be found in his early intimacy with William Blake. From childhood Blake was environed by a New Church atmosphere, his father being a reader of Swedenborg, and James, his brother,-a New Churchman.* When he first met Flaxman, in 1782-83, he must have possessed a fair knowledge of the Writings. Ever bold in his expressions of opinion, it is not easy to imagine Blake's close association with the sculptor without some allusion to the religious beliefs to which, at the time, he and his family were at least favorably disposed. It seems obvious that there is some connection between Flaxman's first appearance in New Church circles, in 1784, and his introduction to Blake a year or two previous. Both men were profoundly influenced by their study of the Writings-Blake, unwittingly, even in his state of rejection; and Flaxman, not only in his life, but also in his art.
     * Blake's father is termed a "dissenter" by Gilchrist; but Symons, Ellis, and Yeats aver that he was a reader of the Writings. This is disputed by the Romish Gardner, on the ground that during his lifetime Swedenborg's works were untranslated. This objection is mere ignorance. Swedenborg himself published an English version of the second volume of the Arcana Coelestia seven years before William Blake was born; in 1763, the Doctrine of Life, and in 1769 the Brief Exposition, were printed in English.

     After a fashion, Blake may be looked upon as a follower of Swedenborg until past the age of thirty. About the year 1788, he studied and copiously annotated a copy of Divine Love and Wisdom. These marginalia, which have frequently been reprinted, it is only necessary to read, says Dr. Spurgeon,* "to realize, in the first place, that he sometimes misunderstands Swedenborg's position, and secondly, that when he did understand it, he was thoroughly in agreement with it." Perhaps he had arrived at a more affirmative attitude when, in 1789, he and his wife attended the First General Conference of the New Church, held-in the Great East Cheap place of worship, April 13th to 17th of that year. None were admitted to its deliberations without first signing the following declaration:
     * Mysticism in English Literature.

     "We whose Names are hereunto superscribed do each of us approve of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, believing that the Doctrines contained therein are genuine truths revealed from heaven, and that the New Jerusalem Church ought to be established distinct and separate from the Old Church."

338




     Among those recorded as subscribers to the above statement were "W.(illiam) Blake, C.(atherine) Blake," as the curious may see if they turn to page xx of the "Minutes of the first seven sessions of the General Conference of the New Church, London: James Speirs, 1885."

     In 1790, Blake read and annotated the work on Divine Providence. By 1793, his acquiescence in the Writings had turned to hostility, openly proclaimed in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.* That strange production marked a crucial point in his intellectual development. A travesty as well as a diatribe against Swedenborg and his doctrines, the author for the first time assumes the role of prophet and seer. But even in his state of rejection, Blake was never able to divest himself of Swedenborg's influence. Unconsciously he appropriated or carried over doctrines inculcated by his former guide, and the New Church student can detect many suggestions of the Writings in little twists and turns, phrases and inversions. For example, the very title, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, has a Swedenborgian tang. Blake had read of the heavenly marriage of the good and the true, and of the infernal marriage of the evil and the false. Determined to outdo the master whom he had forsaken, he propounded the grand idea of uniting opposites rather than complementaries, and quite appropriately terminates the extraordinary work with a somewhat unsavory passage of rhetorical fustian:
     * Nonesuch Edition says "etched 1793." Ellis assigns it to 1790 on reasonable grounds, viz., that after the "argument," Blake commences, "As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent," etc., referring, of course, to 1757, which would make the date of writing, 1790. Says Max Plowman, Everyman Edition: " The dale of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is uncertain, but there can be little doubt that it was written after the Songs of Experience, for The Marriage represents a synthesis certainly not achieved when Blake was writing most of the Songs." If the Songs of Experience were written before The Marriage (which is not generally admitted), then his future standing as a poet will rest upon what was composed while he was yet a follower of Swedenborg, viz., Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

     "Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer with hoarse note, curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren, whom, tyrant, he calls free, lay the bound or build the roof.

339


Nor pale religious lechery call that Virginity that wishes but acts not!

     "For everything that lives is Holy."

     The Marriage is divided into small chapters, consisting for the most part of clever and exceedingly aphorious aphorisms. Appended to each chapter, obviously in travesty of the Writings, is a "Memorable Fancy," narrating an imaginary incident. "Proverbs of Hell" are set down to the number of seventy, and the world is promised The Bible of Hell, "whether they will or not." A title-page for the projected work, as we have somewhere read, has actually been found.* But the spirit of mockery could hardly go farther than the following: "Note. This angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense, which the world shall have if they behave well."
     * "That Blake actually planned such a work, and perhaps even executed it, we know from a draft of a title-page sketched at the back of one of his uncolored designs, reading 'The Bible of Hell, in Nocturnal Visions Collected. Vol. 1, Lambeth.' W. M. Rossetti dates this design 'circa 1791 (?),' but the title on the verse cannot, of course, be earlier than 1793, the year of Blake's removal to Lambeth. No. ms. or engraved copy exists of the Bible of Hell which may possibly have formed part of Tatham's holocaust." (Samson's Bibliographical Introduction to Oxford Edition of the Works.) This refers to the wholesale destruction of Blake's manuscripts after the death of his wife by Tatham, a fanatical Irvingite.

     Blake's renunciation of Swedenborg is somewhat notorious, but when quoted, only a few selected sentences are almost invariably utilized. If read in its entirety, the passage loses in force, and the impression conveyed is vastly different. For if its intent is humourist it is without point; if serious, it is pure dementia. But the Marriage of Heaven and Hell is no more intelligible than the rest of what are known as the "prophetical works," which scores of brilliant students have vainly endeavored to elucidate.* Here is the enunciation in its complete form:
     * As brain exercises, the reader is recommended to try two of Blake's shorter poems, "The Mental Traveller" and "Long John Brown and Little Mary Bell."

     "I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning. Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new, tho' it is only the Contents or Index of already published books.

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A man carried a monkey about for a shew, and, because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceived himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg: he shews the folly of churches, and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious, and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net. Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods. And now hear the reason: He conversed with Angels who are all religious, and conversed not with Devils who hate all religion, for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions. Thus Swedenborg's writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further. Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may, from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behnren, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's, and from those of Dante or Shakespeare an infinite number."

     Many years after Blake had written the above words, he told Charles Augustus Tulk that he had two different states, one in which he liked Swedenborg's Writings, and one in which he disliked them. (Mysticism in English Literature, p. 30.)

     After five years of married life, Flaxman determined to start upon the journey to Rome, on which his heart had been set ever since the taunt of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He had accumulated a modest sum of money, and Wedgwood helped him, both with recommendations and with funds advanced for services to be rendered in superintending the work of designers and modelers employed by the firm in Italy. The young couple set out in August, 1787, and took up quarters at Rome in Via Felice. They intended staying abroad two years, but remained seven.

     Shortly after his arrival in Rome, Flaxman was fortunate in making the acquaintance of Canova. The studio of the great Italian was frequented by wealthy and aristocratic visitors from the British Isles. Recognizing Flaxman's abilities, and devoid of professional jealousy, Canova encouraged and befriended his confrere on every occasion. Often he advised those who pressed on him more commissions than he could execute that they should go and see Flaxman. He was astonished that they so little noticed their own countryman. "You Englishmen," he said on one occasion, "I believe, see with your ears."

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A few years later, when Cambridge wanted a statue of some great man to adorn one of the University buildings, and a committee was formed to decide what was to be done, the chairman declared that there was only one man fit to do the work, and that was Canova in Italy. Canova was consulted, but declined, saying that he was too busy, and besides they had the right man in England. They wrote again, asking who he was, and Canova replied that he was sorry that they had a Flaxman in England and did not know it.

     Flaxman soon attracted the attention of the resident and traveling English dilettanti, and as long as he remained in Italy he never lacked commissions in important sculptural work. But what gained for him a general European fame at this period was not his skill in plastic art, but those outline drawings of the poets, "in which he showed not only to what purpose he had made his own the principles of ancient design in vase painting and bas-reliefs, but also by what a natural affinity, better than all mere learning, he was bound to the ancients and belonged to them." He obtained from Mrs. Hare Naylor (mother of the distinguished brothers, Francis, Augustus and Julius Hare) a commission for seventy-three designs illustrating the Iliad and the Odyssey. The price paid was moderate-only 15 Shillings each-but Flaxman worked for art as well as money. These drawings aroused the greatest enthusiasm when shown about in the artistic circles of Rome. Mr. Hope followed with a commission for similar designs to Dante, and Lady Spencer for a set of Aeschylus subjects, at one guinea apiece.

     Piroli, an Italian artist, successively engraved the four series of compositions from the Greek poets. An edition of each was printed in Rome (1793), before sending the plates to England for home publication. Those of the Odyssey having been lost on the voyage, Blake was employed--at the instance of Flaxman, no doubt-to reengrave others in their stead. Piroli's name, however, was still retained on the title-page (also dated 1793), possibly because that of Blake had no standing with the public. The engraved versions of the designs fall far short of the originals, neither Blake nor Piroli having succeeded in reproducing the delicacy and expressiveness of Flaxman's pen work. Gilchrist makes the following interesting comparison: "Blake's engravings are much less telling, at the first glance, than Piroli's.

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Instead of hard, bold, decisive lines, me have softer, lighter ones. But on looking into them we find more of the artist in the one-as in the beautiful Aphrodite, for instance, a very fine and delicate engraving-more uniform mechanical effect in the other. Blake's work is like a drawing, with traces as of a pen; Piroli's the orthodox copperplate style. Blake, in fact, at that time, etched a good deal more than do ordinary engravers."

     In a critical estimate which appeared in a recent issue of the London TIMES, the writer described Flaxman "as a peculiarly sensitive interpreter of that sedate fairyland, the Greece of eighteenth century scholarship; a T-squared world of white-marble buildings inhabited by marble-white men and women exchanging lofty sentiments in heroic couplets." All of this sounds very clever, oracular and slightly contemptuous. But the famous designs which the world has so long admired are not to be dismissed in this airy fashion. Flaxman's drawings are based upon a lifetime of intensive and independent study of Greek art and literature. As a child he played in his father's shop surrounded by choice examples of classic statuary. He pored over the Greek poets as soon as he could read. And the best years of his manhood were devoted to the minute examination of Greek and Etruscan vases and other originals of ancient art. How scrupulously he strove for fidelity of representation may be judged from what is stated by Allan Cunningham:

     "It is said by one who was frequently in Flaxman's company during the making of the Homeric designs, that his diffidence was at first so great that he transcribed the subject from the Greek vases, adapting them to his purpose; but that he soon became more confident-ventured to forsake those venerable models, and trusted to the resources of his own imagination."

     For the benefit of any who may fear that it is old-fashioned to admire Flaxman's graceful compositions, it will be appropriate to quote the eminently qualified scholar and critic, John Addington Symonds:

     "Nature, so prodigal to the English race in men of genius untutored, singular and solitary, has given us but few seers who, in the quality of prolific invention, can be compared with Flaxman. For pure conceptive faculty, controlled by unerring sense of beauty, we have to think of Pheidias or Raphael before we find his equal." (Studies of the Greek Poets, I, 177.)

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     The Flaxmans varied their residence in Rome with summer excursions to other parts of Italy, the records of which are preserved in the sculptor's journals and sketch books. These prove him to have been an enthusiastic student, not only of the remains of classic art, to which he naturally inclined, but also of the works of the Gothic and Renaissance ages in Italy. Traveling southward on one of his occasional trips, through Virgil's country, Paestum, Pompeii and Herculaneum, his friend Canova introduced him to the eccentric Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. The cleric prevailed on him to accept a commission for a work on a great scale, the "Fury of Athamas," from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," which detained him in Rome two and a half years longer than was his intention. The price agreed upon was L600, but the installments were irregularly paid, the work prolonged, and when completed left him considerably out of pocket. The group now stands in Ickworth, Bury St. Edmunds.

     He executed a similar commission, "Cephalus and Aurora," for the munificent Thomas Hope, of Deepdene, and spent much time on his own account in an attempt to restore and complete as a group the famous fragment at the Vatican known as the Belvedere torso. The result was unsatisfactory, and "Hercuies and Omphale," as the cast was called, he in later life destroyed. While yet at Rome he sent home several models for sepulchral monuments, including one in relief for the poet Collins in Chichester, and another in the round for the celebrated memorial for Lord Mansfield, for which he received L2500. Erected, shortly after his return, in the north transept of Westminster Abbey, "it stands there in majestic grandeur, a monument to the genius of Flaxman himself-calm, simple, severe. No wonder that Banks, the sculptor, then in the heyday of his fame, exclaimed when he saw it, 'The little man cuts us all out!'"

     In recognition of his merit, before he left Italy, Flaxman was elected a member of the Academies of Florence and Carrara. His last occupation in that country was the packing and shipping of the collection of casts from the antique which Romney had requested him to form, intending to place it for the use of students in his great studio at Hampstead. The sculptor and his wife bade farewell to Italy in the summer of 1794, arriving in England in December of the same year. The journey was accomplished without any such molestation as they apprehended, owing to the disturbed condition of the Continent.

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     On his return to London, where his fame had preceded him, Flaxman leased a modest house in Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square. He erected shops and studios, arranged his models and marbles, and soon found abundant employment. Henceforth the story of his life is "an uneventful record of private affection and contentment, and of happy and tenacious industry, with rewards not brilliant, but sufficient, and repute not loud, but loudest in the mouths of those worth having."

     Now that Flaxmlan had attained a reputation as signal as it was extensive, it dawned upon the Royal Academy that the man who had failed to gain their medal, and whom their late president had declared ruined by wedlock, might, nevertheless, be an acquisition to the institution, were he numbered among its members. No small amount of entreaty was necessary before he allowed his name to be included in the candidates' list for associates, and his immediate election amply demonstrated the pleasure they felt in his having forgiven what must undoubtedly be considered as unjust treatment. Three years later (1800) he was made a full member, and in 1810 the Royal Academy appointed him to the newly created post of Professor of Sculpture, which he held until his death. His fame as an artist, as well as his diligence and popularity as a teacher, especially qualified him for the position. In this connection, a story is related of the rough, profane, old Fuseli, who, breaking away from a convivial gathering of associates, exclaimed: "Farewell friends-farewell wine-farewell wit-I must leave you all, and hear sermon the first preached by the Rev. John Flaxman."

     Flaxman renewed his intimacy with Blake on his return to England in 1I794, and during the next six years, according to Tatham, used to visit the poet at Hercules Buildings, "and sit drinking tea in the garden."

     In the year 1800, a number of patriotic citizens formed a committee to consider the erection of a great naval pillar in honor of British arms. In opposition, Flaxman urged the construction of a colossal statue of Britannia triumphant, to be placed on Greenwich hill; and in support of his scheme he issued a pamphlet, addressed to the committee, which was illustrated with the sculptor's designs engraved by his friend Blake.

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Nothing came of the project. At this time, it is conjectured, Blake gave Flaxman a set of drawings to illustrate Gray's poems, which remained unpublished until 1912.

     In the same year (1800), by an arrangement effected by Flaxman, Blake went down to Felpham, on the Sussex coast, to work under the auspices of William Hayley, the sculptor's friend. Returned to London in 1804, Blake wrote to Hayley of "our good friend Flaxman's good help," of "Flaxman"s advice, which he gives with all the warmth of friendship both to you and to me," and of Flaxman's standing, after the death of Banks," without a competitor in sculpture." From London, a year later, Flaxman wrote to Hayley: "You will be glad to hear that Blake has his hands full of work for a considerable time to come, and if he will only condescend to give that attention to his worldly concerns which every one does that prefers living to starving, he is now in a way to do well." At the top of his profession, and an Academician, Flaxman had succeeded by sheer perseverance and a vast amount of drudgery. He could not understand why Blake, with all his natural endowments, had not bettered his position.

     "At present I have no intercourse with Mr. Blake," wrote Flaxman in 1808, when the quarrel between Stothard and the poet was at its height. An unscrupulous publisher, named Cromek, called on Blake, and seeing a pencil drawing he had made of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, gave him a commission to execute the design. The publisher intended to secure the finished sketch, and employ some one else to engrave it. Negotiations on that basis having failed, Cromek went to Stothard and suggested the same subject, an oil painting for 60 guineas to be engraved by Bromley. Knowing nothing of the previous overtures to Blake, Stothard accepted. While the latter was engaged upon the picture, Blake called upon his friend and saw it, little suspecting-that it was to supersede his own, and that slippery Cromek was double-crossing him. When Blake came to know how the case really stood, his indignation against Cromek was unbounded, and he was at no pains to conceal his feelings toward Stothard, whom he accused of acting in collusion with the publisher. To the end of his life he would, to strangers, abuse his former companion with torrential vehemence. With friends and sympathizers, he was silent on the topic.

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The breach was never healed. Years afterwards Blake met Stothard at a gathering of artists, and held out his hand for reconciliation, but the latter refused it. He also called to see Stothard when he was ill, but admittance was denied him. Flaxman believed that Stothard was not a willful culprit in this matter; and that, in all probability, explains the vicious outbursts against the sculptor written by Blake in epigrammatic verse and otherwise.

     Just how wild and absurd Blake could be at times, is aptly illustrated by the following anecdote from Gilchrist: "The completion of the 'Pilgrimage' was attended by adverse influences of the supernatural kind-as Blake construed them. He had hung his original design over a door in his sitting-room, where it remained for perhaps a year. When, on the appearance of Stothard's picture, he went to take down his drawing, he found it nearly effaced; the result of some malignant spell of Stothard's, he would, in telling the story, assure his friends. But as one of them (Flaxman) mildly expostulated, 'Why! my dear sir! as if, after having left a pencil drawing so long exposed to air and dust, you could have expected otherwise!"

     Still wishing to serve as of old, Flaxman secured the services of Blake to engrave his outlines to Hesiod, which was issued in 1817. Blake, it is said, somewhat resented the favor, believing that he should have been recommended to the publishers as a designer. Many consider Flaxman's Hesiod series to be his finest compositions for the Greek poets; and Blake not only surpassed his work on the Odyssey, but also that of Piroli on the Iliad, Aeschylus and Dante. During this period, Flaxman wrote articles on Armor and Sculpture in Bees' Encyclopedia, Blake engraving the illustrations.

     On May 12th, 1826, Flaxman and Blake took tea with a mutual friend who reported that "the evening went off tolerably," but "I doubt whether Flaxman sufficiently tolerates Blake. But Blake appreciates Flaxman as he ought." So far as anything is recorded, this was the last time that the poet and the sculptor met, ere the latter passed to the great hereafter. Flaxman had had his differences with Blake, and on occasions uttered caustic remarks concerning him, but he never permitted anyone else the same liberty of expression in his presence. " Once in these or later years," says Gilchrist, "Cary (translator of Dante) was talking with his friend Flaxman of the few Englishmen who followed historical painting, enumerating Stothard, Howard, and others.

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Flaxman mentioned a few more, and among them Blake. 'But Blake is a wild enthusiast, isn't he?' Ever loyal to his friend, the sculptor drew himself up, half offended, saying, 'Some think me an enthusiast.'" And Flaxman was in the habit of declaring with unwonted emphasis that "the time would come" when Blake's designs "would be as much sought after and treasured in the portfolios" of men discerning in art "as those of Michelangelo now." "And ah, sir," he would sometimes add, to an admirer of the designs, "his poems are as grand as his pictures."

     When Flaxman went to Italy in the summer of 1787, the embryo New Church actually consisted of little more than a number of Swedenborg reading circles. On his return, seven years later, he found it an established ecclesiastical organization. The energetic minority of the Theosophical Society had gone ahead with their preparations, and acquired a place of worship in Great East Cheap, the formal opening of which occurred on January 27th, 1788. A crowded audience listened to the inaugural sermon of the Rev. James Hindmarsh; Isaac Hawkins read the prayers of the day, and Robert Brant preached at another service held in the afternoon. In May of the same year, a resolution was adopted to change the name of the organization from the Theosophical Society to "The New Church, signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation."

     Hindmarsh informs us that not a dissentient voice was heard in the first three English New Church Conferences (1789, 1790, 1791). The fourth, however (1792), was vastly different. Disagreements arose over the hoary question of church government-whether it should be episcopalian or congregational in character. Recruited mostly from the ranks of dissenters, the majority thought it proper to adopt a mode of ecclesiastical government in which all questions were to be decided by the votes of the members at large. Immediately after the conclusion of the conference, the London Society, which had hitherto been united as one body, divided into two societies. The majority of its members, who favored the congregational form of government, chose for their pastor the Rev. Manoah Sibly, and removed to Store Street, Tottenham Court Road, where a temporary place of worship was engaged.

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     The Chapel in Great East Cheap now being given up, the remnant of the society that occupied it to the last kept themselves together by meeting at their individual homes until the year 1796, when ground was purchased for the erection of a new place of worship in Cross Street, Hatton Garden. The building was finished in the summer of 1797, and on Sunday, July 30th, was opened for public worship, and solemnly consecrated by the Rev. Joseph Proud, who had previously been engaged as the regular pastor of the congregation. Mrs. Shearsmith, it is curious to note, who had waited upon Swedenborg in his last illness, was employed as janitress of the newly erected edifice. Proud's abilities as a popular preacher attracted overflowing congregations, and it was about this time that Flaxman identified himself with the Cross Street Temple, as it was called. For a time the sculptor was an active member, serving on the church committee for two years. But, says the Rev. Samuel Noble in the Intellectual Repository, "among the circumstances of Mr. Proud's removal to York Street were some, we regret to say, which gave a wound to the tender feelings of Mr. Flaxman, and occasioned his withdrawal."

     Beyond the fact of Flaxman's wounded susceptibilities, information concerning this incident is not available. It is conjectured on the part of the writer that the sculptor's lacerated feelings were as much the result of his own sensitive disposition as of any extraneous circumstances, however unfortunate. His intimate friend, Crabb Robinson, found him "an uncomfortable opponent," prone to fixed ideas. "I so much fear to offend him," he said, "that I have a difficulty in being sincere." Other quotations, equally apposite, might be furnished, revealing a degree of touchiness incompatible with amicable relations in a mixed assemblage, such as a church organization is certain to be.

     Flaxman stood aloof until 1810, when he joined the newly instituted Swedenborg Printing Society, continuing as a member until his death, sixteen years later. Three times he served on the committee; each year he subscribed to the funds to the amount of L2 or L2 2S. In 1816, the Minutes of the Society record that, "The health of the absent President, C. A. Tulk, Esq., was proposed by J. Flaxman, Esq., in a neat and appropriate speech, in the course of which he took occasion very forcibly and feelingly to expatiate upon the objects of the Society, and the importance of the New Dispensation, as considered in connection with the purposes of science, and on its tendency to advance the best interests of mankind."

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     In the Report of the Swedenborg Society for 1827, the year after Flaxman's death, we read the following statement respecting him:

     "Your Committee have also, with the Society in general, to lament the loss of another most amiable and excellent friend of the church,-Mr. John Flaxman, Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy, who was known to the world as one of the first sculptors of the age. Your Committee cannot speak of him here as an artist, his merit in that respect being too well established; but as a member of the New Church, your Committee feel themselves entitled to expatiate on his character and deportment. In the Reports of all the several Committees of this Society, his name is found as a contributor to its funds, and as a cordial promoter of the cause. Of late years, however, he was seldom present at these meetings, through bodily infirmity; but on the last time, in 1817, when Mr. Flaxman was appointed one of the Committee, he interested the Society by an affectionate and impressive address in furtherance of our great object. Be was a man of amiable manners, and was beloved and respected by all who knew him; and we confidently assert that any church would have been proud of him as a disciple. The public journals of the day could do no otherwise than notice the decease of so celebrated an individual, which they did in the most distinguished manner. Some of them had the candor to make known his having been a receiver of the doctrines of the New Church, and it is sincerely to be hoped that this announcement, combined with the knowledge of the truly estimable character of the deceased, may have had the effect on the minds of those who read the paragraphs alluded to, of inducing them to examine into those writings and doctrines, the vital regard to which drew forth the high encomiums he in consequence so justly merited."

     (To be continued.)

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WHAT CONSTITUTES HERESY IN THE NEW CHURCH? 1928

WHAT CONSTITUTES HERESY IN THE NEW CHURCH?       Rev. F. W. ELPHICK       1928

     It could reasonably be claimed that the study of Heresy-its origin and growth-is identical with the study of Ecclesiastical History. According to the view of the Jews, Christ Himself was "heretic"; according to the Roman Emperors, in the early days Christianity, the Christians were heretics. When Christianity became accepted throughout Europe in the Middle and Dark Ages-though in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church-those opposed to its teachings were heretics. The Roman Church regarded the Greek Church as heretical, and the Greek Church held the same opinion of the Roman Church. When the time came for the Reformation, the Reformers, were, of course, regarded as heretics; while the Reformers aimed at the heresies of the Roman Catholic Religion. At the dawn of a scientific age, the advocates of science and reason regarded religious views as more or less heretical; while those trusting to "faith" regarded the scientist as a heretic.

     In the seventeenth century, Swedenborg covered the fields of Science, Philosophy and Theology; but in following his Divine call to devote himself to writing and publishing the Doctrines of the New Church, which were revealed to him, the majority of his day, and from then to the present day, regarded, and regard him, as a heretic. Again, those who study his teachings, and discern within them the final Revelation of Divine Authority, are held as heretics; while those who rely on the Revelation so given feel fully justified in diagnosing, not only the heresies of bygone ages, but also the heresies of the present day-heresies in religion, heresies in science, heresies in philosophy, and even heresies in the various schools of thought which have characterized the New Church.

     From such historical comparisons it may be said that the heretic of to-day is the reformer of tomorrow, while the heresy of one age becomes the orthodox faith of the next. Yet, aside from such a conclusion, it has also to be remembered that history-particularly church history-reveals the condition of the continual struggle of truth against falsity, and of good against evil.

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By such means the Divine Providence prepares the human race, throughout its various states of development, for the reception of a final and rational Revelation. When the past schisms and controversies are viewed in such light, then it can be seen that heresies are governed by the laws of permission of the Divine Providence. (T. C. R. 479. D. P. 259.)

     What then is heresy? Augustine, in his day, stated that "it was impossible, or at any rate most difficult, to define heresy." If it was difficult for him, it is still more difficult now to give a satisfactory definition, especially when applied to the New Church. When the Christian Church attempted to formulate and define theological truth, or doctrine, and to make rigid applications of what was to be believed, it was on the road to decline. Councils were devised to counteract heresy, and yet the epoch-making councils have perpetrated the greatest heresies. Hence the New Church, in matters of doctrine, is admonished by the Revelation given her to beware of Councils, "to put faith in no council, but in the Lord's Word, which is above councils." (T. C. R. 489.) Moreover, the New Church has new concepts of "freedom," "charity," and "unity." It also possesses a distinct, revealed Theology which teaches the true use of Science and Philosophy and their orderly relationship to a rational faith. Consequently, with such equipment, combined with the fact that the New Church, in its essence, is based upon more universal principles than have ever before been revealed, any answer to the question, "What constitutes heresy in the New Church?" must necessarily seek for a far wider vision than is found in the theologies of previous and contemporary religions. But although New Church truth has within it the possibilities of leading to an extensive view of the matter, yet it is equally necessary and equally vital to keep well in mind the fundamental and distinctive principles upon which the New Church is founded.

     At this juncture, however, it will be useful to consider for a moment the ordinary definitions of the term heresy.

     Originally, heresy implied a choice-a taking. It arose with Greek Philosophy, in which each several opinion was called a heresy. It implied a private opinion without reference to either truth or falsehood, and was not used in the contemptuous sense in which it is now used. Webster defines it thus: "Religious opinion opposed to the authorized doctrinal standards of any particular church, especially when held by a person holding the same general faith, and tending to promote schism or separation."

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Another definition reads: "Heresy is a doctrine, principle, or set of principles at variance with established or generally received principles. Opinions contrary to the established religious faith." (Annandale.)

     The term is clearly used in direct connection with religious views. Although, as will be dealt with later, the New Church will embrace many individual opinions and interpretations of doctrine, it can hardly be said that the word "heresy" will be used in its original meaning of "choice." It will possess its contemptuous interpretation, and will, no doubt, be employed to characterize decided errors and false deductions.

     Before attempting to consider briefly what errors and false deductions may be rightly described as heresies, both in the Christian Church and the New Church, it is of fundamental importance to know what caused heresy. To determine this, attention should be directed to the statements made in the Doctrines of the New Church. From a series of numbers which directly refer to heresy the following numbers are cited or quoted:

     The separation of charity from faith, as described in the spiritual sense of Genesis IV-treating of Cain and Abel-is noted as the first heresy. (A. C. 324, 337.)

     "Wherever there is any church, there arise heresies, because while men are intent on some particular article of faith they make that the principal thing; for such is the nature of man's thought, that while intent on some one thing, he sets it before any other, especially when his phantasy claims it as a discovery of his own." (A. C. 362)

     As charity declined, evils succeeded, together with falsities. " Hence came 'schisms and heresies. . . . If charity were alive and reigning, then they would not call schism schism, nor heresy, but a doctrinal matter in accordance with each one's opinion." (A. C. 1834. Note that this passage somewhat coincides with the original meaning of the word "heresy.")

     "They who lay stress on the sense of the letter of the Word alone, and neither have, nor procure for themselves from the Word, doctrine that is in agreement with its internal sense, can be drawn into any heresies whatever. It is from this that the Word is called the Book of Heresies." (A. C. 10276:8, T. C. R. 798:8.)

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     Concerning a belief in three Divine Persons, each of whom singly is God: "This is the source, and the only source, from which have sprung the monstrous heresies concerning God; and thus the division of the Trinity into persons has introduced into the church, not night alone, but death as well." (T. C. R. 23.)

     From the Writings it is also gathered that mention is made of ideas which are described as actual heresies, namely:

     "That only those born within the church are saved, is an insane heresy." (D. P. 330 Sec. 5.)

     "That any of the human race are damned by predestination, is a cruel heresy."(D. P. 330 Sec. 8.)

     It is also stated in the third Memorable Relation (T. C. R. 112) that, in the spiritual world, the work entitled The Brief Exposition was held to be heretical; while in T. C. R. 378 a long list of heretical sects of the early and middle ages is given.

     In addition to the teaching given in the passages just quoted, it is useful to contrast the following:

     THE THREE ESSENTIALS OF THE CHURCH.

     Acknowledgment of the Divine of the Lord.
     Acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word.
     The life which is called charity.     (D. P. 259)

     THE THREE SOURCES OF FALSITY.

     The doctrine of the Church.
     The fallacies of the senses.
     The life of cupidities.               (A. C. 4729.)

     With these principles in mind it is possible to determine, in some measure, the real nature of heresy, and by such means to review the heresies which have beset the Christian Church, as well as the New Church.

     As an illustrative example the following brief analysis of a few of the heresies which infested the early Christian Church may be of interest. It is to be noted in passing that T. C. R. 378 cites nearly forty different sects, from the early days of Christianity to the time of the Reformation.

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     HERESY.          CHARACTERISTIC DOCTRINES AND APPLICATIONS.

Ebionites.          Denied the Lord's Divinity.
               Rejected part of and sometimes all the Five Books of Moses.
               Acknowledged the Gospel of Matthew only.
               Denied the sanctity of marriage. Encouraged immoralities.

Simonians.          Followers of Simon Magus (mentioned in Acts, Chapter 8).
               Denied the Lord's Divinity.
               The Crucifixion considered as "an appearance."
               Material concept of creation.
               Encouraged immoralities.

Nicolaitans.     Followers of Nicolas (mentioned in Acts 6; Rev. 2:6, 15).
               A licentious sect.
               Maintained the dangerous doctrine, that evil must be indulged in before it can be mastered.

Cerinthians.     Denied the Lord's Divinity.
               Considered the Christ a mere man.
               Rejected the Gospels, except parts of Matthew.
               Endeavored to combine doctrines of Christianity with those of Jews and Gnostics.

Quakers.          Belief in one Eternal God, and in Christ His Son.
               Title of Word of God given to Christ, and not to the Scriptures.
               Scriptures held in esteem in subordination to the Spirit.

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               Baptism with water recognized.
               The Holy Supper not an external performance, but a participation of Divine Nature through faith,-referring to Rev. 19:9.

     With a view to contraction and precis, only a few heresies of Christendom have been cited; but the principle may be applied in the review of all the various sects or religions which are based upon the letter of the Word or passages from it. When this is done, it can be seen how history confirms what happens when "men are intent upon some particular article of faith" (A. C. 362) or lead a "life of cupidities." (A. C. 4729) The analysis, moreover, is useful in this, that as far as the early heresies of the Christian Church were concerned, it points to the fact that it required several ages for the acceptance of the New Testament as a Revelation. But before making further reflections it will be useful to list some of the heresies which have been, and are, associated with the New Church.

     HERESY.     CHARACTERISTIC DOCTRINE AND APPLICATION.

Tulkism.          Denial of the Lord's Divine Human.
               The doctrine of "appearances" mis-applied.
               The doctrine of "ultimates" not realized.

Christian Science.     Denial of the existence of evil.
               The doctrine that evil is nothing in the sight of the Lord misunderstood.

Claims to Spiritual Inspiration          Denial that the Revelation to the like Swedenborg's.
               New Church is "final"-"crowning" Revelation.

Thomas Lake Harris.     Misapplication of the doctrine of "inspiration."

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The "Internal" and "External Church      Such divisions exist but the Internal Church cannot be localized or identified. It is known only to the Lord.

Non-fermented wine in the Holy Supper.      Non-recognition of the doctrine of correspondence and the doctrine of "use."

     The worst heresies are clearly evils of life or "cupidities." In the case of the First Christian Church, history affirms how serious this has been; but as a result of the Last Judgment and the institution of a New Church, which is essentially a spiritual Church, a new order has been established. Men, if they will, can now prevent evil by the shunning of evil, as of themselves, on the plane of conscience, and shunning evil as sin against God. If it should happen that actual evils of life are practiced, they soon bring reproach, and by common opinion are held to be against the teaching of the Church and the order of society in general.

     There appears to be only one movement in the New Church which, according to record, might be classed under this last mentioned heading; namely, that infatuation inaugurated by Thomas Lake Harris. In addition to the intellectual heresy of claiming that the Celestial Sense of the Word had been revealed to him, and that he wrote in poetry which, according to him, was a celestial form, he developed certain immoralities. There can be no doubt that such things were direful heresies.

     In noting the heresies which have come with the growth of the New Church, it can be seen that if they be tested in the light of A. C. 362, one doctrine of the New Church has been either undervalued or exaggerated, with the result that a proper balance was not maintained. Throughout the history of mankind, particularly since the fall, intellectual difficulties have centered around the relations of God and the world, spirit and nature, idea and phenomenon. These three groups clearly refer to the relationship between spiritual laws and natural laws, the spiritual world and the natural world, and the modus operandi between the soul and body of man. In short, the problems presented cover the story of Gnosticism in the early Christian Church, Religion versus Science in the eighteenth century and to the present day, and finally to the correlating of Philosophy and Theology in the New Church.

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They also embody the contest between the fallacy of the senses and the dictates of reason founded on Revelation.

     Now, confining attention entirely to the distinctive sphere of the New Church, it is the solving of these problems which will engage the scholars of the Church. The New Church indeed possesses the key, but it has to learn how to use that key. Granting that the members of the Church are regenerating, thus avoiding the heresies which come from cupidities; granting that they have faith in the distinctive doctrines of the Church; then, if there be differences of opinion in the solution of these problems, there should be no cause for suspecting heresy. Unity does not imply unity of thought on every particular or derivative doctrine of the New Church, but it does imply unity of thought on the fundamentals of the Church, such fundamentals being absolutely qualified by the distinct theology revealed to the New Church.

     To sum up: The theme here presented has been based upon a consideration of: (1) The quotations from the Writings on the nature and cause of heresy. (2) The three essentials of the Church, as given in D. P. 259. (3) The three sources of falsity, as given in A. C. 4729. From these findings the conclusion as to what constitutes heresy in the New Church seems to fall in a line of thought indicated as follows:

     1. The life of evil is heresy.

     2. Any decided departure from the essentials of the Church is a heresy.

     3. Any doctrine of the Church exaggerated, or placed out of its relation to other doctrines, is a heresy.

     4. Differences of view in the study of Philosophy and its relation to Theology, or differences of perception in the understanding of doctrines, are not heresies. Where charity reigns, and where the three essentials of the Church are understood and acknowledged at heart, dissensions are as light which varies the color of beautiful objects, and as various diadems which give beauty in the crown of a king. (D. P. 259.)

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NEW AGE AND THE NEW CHURCH 1928

NEW AGE AND THE NEW CHURCH       Rev. LEWIS F. HITE       1928

     (An Editorial in The New-Church Review, January, 1928.)

     Swedenborg said that one chief result of the Second Coming of the Lord would be greater freedom. Since then the American revolution and the French revolution have taken place, and more recently the Russian and German revolutions. The political changes in Japan, China, and Turkey seem to be the working of democratic ideals and forces in the direction of political and personal freedom. In view of these facts, we are justified in believing that there has been an immense extension of freedom the world over.

     When we reflect that freedom and rationality are the characteristic endowments of man, evidences of greater freedom are of peculiar significance as features of the New Age. Accordingly, we may expect that with the growth and extension of the New Church, higher degrees of freedom and rationality will be attained. In fact, as we look around we do seem to see advancement in freedom and rationality in various directions. Freedom of opinion, freedom of speech and action, freedom of the press, are generally recognized principles of government and public sentiments. Back of all these forms of freedom is the primal freedom of thought, the freedom to see in the light of one's own mind, and to choose according to one's real interest. The advancement of science and philosophy, and of historical method, certainly permit a high development of freedom and rationality. Historical and critical methods have sifted tradition, and broadened the field of positive knowledge in the realms of history and literature, so that the mind moves more freely in these fields. On the whole, there is no doubt that conditions for the exercise of freedom and rationality have immensely improved in modern times; and they belong properly to the New Age.

     How far these conditions are the result of the Lord's Second Coming, and how far they are the natural development of scientific and historical interest, are critical questions. Without doubt, the doctrinal enlightenment of the New Church has cleared the field of many traditional and natural obstructions; and no doubt New-Church influence through acquaintance with Swedenborg's teachings has to some extent modified and enlightened the minds of a considerable number of the leaders of public opinion.

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To what precise degree this enlightenment has affected the leaders or the public, it is hard to Bay. Unquestionably, some of the false doctrines of traditional orthodoxy have been abandoned, and positions more in agreement with the New Church have been taken. For example, the doctrines of predestination, vicarious atonement, infant damnation, a hell of literal fire and brimstone, instantaneous salvation, the trinity of persons, and others, have been either greatly modified or wholly abandoned. Then, too, there has been a growing tendency away from Paul's theology to the teaching of the Gospels, and from doctrines of any kind to greater emphasis upon life.

     These circumstances are favorable for the spread of the New Church, and they may be partly the result of New-Church influence. But if we look more closely into the history of modern religious changes, we shall see that they are proper features of the naturalistic and rationalistic development of the age. These changes are largely destructive; they are specifically negations. The constructive impulse is effective in little more than vague anticipations of the future. Even the best thinking of the day, whether philosophical or religious, is seriously hampered and misdirected by habits acquired under the prepossessions of a falsely narrowed scientific and historical method. These habits are greatly strengthened by the evolutionistic philosophy of the day.

     The doctrine of evolution has taken a firm hold on the schools and on the public mind. Some earnest and high-minded people seem to accept the doctrine second-hand without being aware of its naturalistic ground and trend. From a point of view quite foreign to evolutionistic thought, and with the prepossessions of Christianity, they undertake to incorporate the doctrine of evolution in their view of the world under the formula "Evolution is God's method of Creation." This lack of proper discrimination gives rise to a serious situation for the religious thinking of the day, and especially for the ready acceptance of the New-Church doctrines. It binds people to the enormous prepossessions of present-day naturalism and rationalism.

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     The development of natural science, and of biology in particular, has freed the modern mind for more effective thinking in the field of nature; and it has furnished a broader basis for understanding some of the problems of human life. But it has also served to divert attention from the importance of a distinctly religious and spiritual point of view, and from the importance of spiritual realities in general. It has developed the habit and the method of studying all subjects in the light of natural history; all explanation of present conditions must be sought in this direction. The resulting situation is that naturalistic presuppositions control the thinking of the present day in every department of human interest. Not only in science, but in history, philosophy and religion, the demands of naturalism must be met first of all, and the light of naturalism must lead. This trend has usually come into sharp contrast and opposition to religion, and has forced the alternative of dismissing religion altogether or turning it over to natural history and psychology. Accordingly, we have a new science,-comparative religion.

     The study of comparative religion directs attention to the common characters of religion, and to the natural history of all religions. So religion comes to be viewed as a natural growth of human experience and knowledge; and in this respect all religions stand on the same footing. The principle of the natural history method removes religion from, the sphere of revelation, and transfers it to natural history and to an evolutionary process. Revelation itself is universalized, so that the Christian revelation comes to be considered as one of a general class. This point of view is summarized in the formula: "Religious experience produced the Bible; the Bible did not produce religious experience." The result is that religion is taken up into the philosophy of naturalism, and is defined as an attitude towards the universe of reality in general, or to some special feature of the universe. This kind of universalism takes the form in some religious minds of thinking of God as a universal influence which descends upon mankind indifferently; and this is God's presence with men. Some, actuated by the evidences of intensified spiritual conditions, think of the Lord's new presence in this way, and look for the New Age as the outcome.

     At this point, the New Church offers its definite teaching about the Lord's presence and about the Second Coming.

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According to the doctrines of the New Church, the Lord is universally present with men as Creator, Preserver, and Savior. But this presence is not a mechanical or spatial presence; it is a spiritual presence, and operates according to spiritual laws; and it operates as love, wisdom, and power in proper recipients. The Lord is present throughout the universe, not only with men, but also with animals and plants. He is Creator and Preserver of all things. He is present to men also in a specific way adapted to man's capacity of reception; so likewise He is present to all animals; but in the case of man He is present and operates in man's faculties of freedom and rationality. This involves free and rational acceptance of the Lord's presence and operation, not to speak of the abuse of these. In other words, man's acceptance of the Lord's presence above the animal level involves knowledge. At this point, the need of revelation appears, and this need is exhibited in the fact that all races and stages of mankind, so far as is known, have some idea of God, some knowledge of God; and it is through this knowledge that the Divine presence is actualized at higher levels than the animal. To express the need of revelation in another way, man can no more rise to a knowledge of God through his own experience than can any other animal. But given a knowledge of God through revelation, then man can refer certain qualities of his experience to God. The question of revelation is a large and complicated one, which very much needs special treatment in the light of the New Church. There are in fact many kinds, degrees, and modes of revelation. God came to Joseph in a dream. "The Word of the Lord came unto me saying," is the announcement of the prophets. "God said unto Abraham," "God said unto Moses,"--these are the forms of revelation through which the Bible was given. As soon as we begin to make natural history of the Bible, we deprive it of the character of revelation. We may very properly recognize that the Bible has a natural history, and we may be interested to learn all we can about its history; but we cannot properly attempt to explain the Bible as mere natural history.

     The New Church is not the outcome of the Lord's universal presence alone, however intensified. It is the product of a specific form of presence and a specific revelation. If the Lord could have saved the world by His universal presence at the time of His First Coming, there would have been no occasion for Him to reveal Himself specifically and individually in the Person of Jesus Christ.

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So at the time of His Second Coming, if He could have lifted man to the plane of the spiritual sense of His Word by His universal presence, He would have needed no such special instrument as Swedenborg and the doctrines revealed through him. It is the Lord's presence in the spiritual sense of His Word, as made known in and by Swedenborg's Writings, that constitutes the New Church. The Christian Church from the beginning has had glimpses of the spiritual meaning of the Bible, but no knowledge of the spiritual meaning as a whole, distinct from the letter, and no knowledge of the law of correspondence by which the spiritual meaning was given in and through the letter. The knowledge and acceptance of the Lord in and through the spiritual sense of the Word is the New Church in the minds and lives of men. The New Church in heaven is this body of knowledge as possessed by the angels; the New Church on earth is this same body of doctrine as possessed by men on the earth. In other words, those who know and believe and live the truth contained in the body of Swedenborg's doctrines, and in the spiritual sense of the Bible learned through these doctrines, are members of the New Church to the degree of their knowledge, faith, and life.

     It is not required, of course, that every New-Churchman, or the whole body of New-Churchmen, should thoroughly master the system of doctrine or the body of spiritual truth contained in the spiritual sense, to be enrolled in the membership of the Church. But a knowledge that there is such a system of doctrine and such a body of spiritual meaning, together with a firm belief that the doctrine is true and that the spiritual meaning is there, is essential to membership in the Church. Among the truths contained in the system of doctrine and in the spiritual sense is, that the Lord has fulfilled His promise of the Second Coming. This, too, is to be known and believed, and understood as far as one is able. Those who believe some of the doctrines but not others,-for example, those who believe the doctrine of life but not the doctrine of the Second Coming, or the doctrine of heaven but not the doctrine of hell, or the doctrine of the Lord but not the doctrine of the spiritual sense,--all such put themselves above and outside the Church, and become critics rather than worshipers. But when those who do believe that the doctrines are true, and in particular that the Bible has a spiritual meaning, and that the Second Coming of the Lord has actually taken place, organize on the basis of this common faith for common worship and for common action generally, they constitute the organized body of the New Church.

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     We should bear in mind that Swedenborg uses the word "Church," now in a broader, and now in a more restricted sense. He says that the individual man is the Church in the least form when he has a knowledge and understanding of the Word and lives from it. But the man who knows and believes Swedenborg's doctrines, and through them learns and lives the spiritual truth of the Word, will combine with others of the same belief for common worship and for common effort to live the life of the common faith. He will do this in accordance with the fundamental law of love to the Lord and to the neighbor. The man who professes to be a New-Churchman, and lives apart from and in opposition to other members of the Church, is mistaking the meaning of New-Churchmanship, and is violating the first law of Church life, the law of love.

     On the other hand, Swedenborg speaks of the universal Church in contrast with the Church specific. The universal Church is comprised of all who acknowledge the Lord and live in obedience to His commandments; that is, all who worship and obey Him. But there are various levels of such knowledge and obedience. The specific Church is constituted by a definite form of knowledge and obedience. For example, the Jewish Church was constituted by one form of knowledge and obedience, the Christian Church by another. The New Church is constituted by the definite form of knowledge and obedience which is raised to the level of the truth contained in the spiritual sense of the Word. Through this truth the Lord is making His Second Coming; and His Second Coming is to those who have this knowledge, and live in accordance with it. No doubt there are many good and high-minded Christians outside the New Church, either in the general or in the specific sense; just as there were many good and high-minded people outside the Christian Church at its beginning, and there have been such all through its history; but this did not make them Christians. We may go even further back, and recall that Socrates, four hundred years before the Christian Era, was pre-eminently religious and moral; and yet he was certainly not a Christian.

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Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Boethius, and others might be cited among those whose ideas coincided with many Christian ideas; but they were not on this account Christians, for the simple reason that they had not the Christian faith. So now it is mere confusion of thought to suppose that many people around us are New-Churchmen, because they are good and high-minded, and have some ideas that coincide with those of the New Church.

     The New Age which will be the outgrowth of the New Church will no doubt incorporate many of the features of the present day, but it will have dominant qualities which this age has not. It will distinguish more clearly between love of the neighbor and love of the world; it will lift ideas of service or use to the spiritual plane, above the humanitarian level; it will cherish the principle of serving the world instead of exploiting the world; it will restore marriage to its Christian position, and lift it to the spiritual level. Young people will be taught more adequately to marry for love, instead of for self-gratification. Children will be regarded as a blessing rather than as a hindrance to living. A man's calling will be regarded as his special form of use to the community and to the Lord, not solely as a means of livelihood and of money-making. The Lord will be worshiped directly and only; not as an intermediary to an unknown God. His love for others will be the love for others in us and in our lives. Our purpose in life will be to use the Lord's love for us and in us for His sake and for the benefit of others. The New Church will live from the Lord, not merely naturally, but spiritually, with knowledge and understanding, freely and rationally. It will live for the sake of receiving the Lord's love, wisdom, and power in our efforts to do good and shun evil.

     The New Age lies before us, not around us; ahead of us, not with us. The marvels of mechanical achievement, the wonderful extension of the great body of science, the growing knowledge and use of the farces of nature, the world-wide extension of human kindness, the efforts of the peoples of the earth to live in peace and in mutual helpfulness and prosperity, the great stirring of the human spirit to understand the world and man's place in it, the intense striving for purer and higher and more complete religion, the genuine desire to worship the Lord in the fulness of His nature,-all these are outstanding features of the present age; and they will be taken up into the New Age, but only after purification and enlightenment, after being separated out from the evils of the day and from the atmosphere of worldliness, and freed from the infection of natural thought and motive.

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The thought of the day must be purged of its narrow and intolerant naturalism and rationalism.

     The present-day naturalism and rationalism are characteristic products of our insane egotism, the greatest enemy of man, the source and spring of all infidelity and atheism. Egotism is self-assertion and the spirit of self-importance; it is at bottom the assertion of independence and self-existence, and consequently a denial of God and of the rights of others. Egotism, self-assertion, and self-seeking, and the irreligion and immorality that go with them, are the deep poisons of our present-day life, and are utterly foreign and antagonistic to the spirit of the New Age. They are radically hostile to the love of the Lord and the neighbor. Love is not self-assertive, but self-forgetful; it lives in and for others. The fundamental human love, the love of the Lord, acknowledges dependence; men who live in and from that love never forget that they exist from the Lord, not of themselves. They know that the assertion of self-existence is the original sin, the origin of evil, and the first step to moral and spiritual destruction; it is a denial of the Creator and of one's dependence upon God. This explains the enormous individualism of the day, which asserts that a man's private habits are his own concern, and others have no right to interfere. This is the primal argument of the liquor traffic, and an almost unchallenged justification of self-indulgence, The New Age will respect a man's rational freedom as the core of his individuality, but it will not tolerate self-indulgence to the injury of others; it will require full and complete acknowledgment of one's dependence both upon others and upon his Creator, and compel him to respect the rights of others.

     The poison of self-assertion and of a false sense of independence is flagrant at the present time in sex relations. Marriage, when properly entered upon, is the supreme case in human relations of mutual love and mutual dependence. It is also the supreme case of dependence upon the Lord. But marriage of this kind seems to be facing wholesale extinction. With one divorce to every seven marriages, with all sorts of vicious experiments with the marriage relation, such as trial marriages and so-called companionate marriages, young people are left at the mercy of whim, lust, and adventure.

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We hear only too often that young people must live their own lives, and try things out; as if there were no such thing as a world of experience, and no fixed principles established by both experience and revelation. An age which turns its back on experience, and recognizes no fixed principles, and has no settled convictions, but gives itself up to blind experimentation, is on the road to moral and spiritual destruction.

     The age in which we live is complex beyond comparison. We are right in observing, approving, and condemning; but we cannot safely make sweeping judgments. We must judge, and judge in the light of our doctrines; but we must resolve not to be swayed by uninformed public opinion. It is right to enter with sympathetic appreciation into the movements of the day, but it would be disastrous to allow ourselves to be swept along headlessly in their currents. We cannot say confidently whether the present age is favorable to New-Church progress or not. Worldliness is and always has been the great enemy of the Church; and the attractions of the world and worldly motives have never been stronger than they are today. If we look back through our history, and trace the descendants of our New-Church pioneers, we will find that worldliness has robbed the Church of its rightful inheritance, and has been the chief hindrance to our progress.

     It was never more important than now to bear constantly in mind Swedenborg's principle, that self-love and love of the world are the hostile opposites of love to the Lord and to the neighbor. This makes the deepest and clearest distinction between a good and a bad life, between a life of spiritual blessedness and a life of moral and spiritual wretchedness.

     The New Age is properly the New Church in the life of the world. We are living in the New Age in so far as the New Church, as a doctrine, as a light, and as a life, is entering the world. But both the New Age and the New Church are in the beginnings. It rests with us and with our generation whether we shall have progress or retrogression. We must do our part as best we can. The Lord will surely do His.

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TWO LONDONS 1928

TWO LONDONS              1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office a Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor                    Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager          Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address and business communications should be sent to the Business Manager.

     TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
In the United States, $3.00 per year; Elsewhere, $3.25 or 14 shillings; payable in advance
Single Copy          30 cents
     The holding of a General Assembly in the city of London, attended by members of the General Church from all over the world, will add one more notable event to the many in New Church history which have transpired in that metropolis. There Emanuel Swedenborg lived for considerable periods of time while publishing the Arcana Celestia and other volumes of the Writings, and there, in the year 1772, he passed permanently into that spirit-world wherein he was no stranger. Ten years later, in 1782, Robert Hindmarsh became a receiver of the Heavenly Doctrines, and it was in the city of London that he and other disciples of the Lord in His Second Coming were "endued with power from on high "to proceed with the institution of a distinctive New Church priesthood and worship, in accordance with the New Doctrine from heaven, and thus to found the organized Church of the New Jerusalem in the world. (See NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1927, P. 410.)

     The first Ordination of Ministers took place on Sunday, June 1, 1788, and during the 140 years that have elapsed since that time other centers have become established, from which the New Church has spread to all parts of the world. But in going to London this year, we of the General Church are making a pilgrimage to the cradle of the New Church in this world. And we doubt not that our readers will find delight and benefit in recalling, for themselves and for their children, the stirring incidents of that earliest history, as recorded in Swedenborg biographies, Tafel's Documents, Hindmarsh's Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church, Odhner's Annals of the New Church, and other volumes.

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It would be a useful thing to make the present year an occasion for special instruction in family and school concerning the beginnings of the New Church in Europe and America.

     With regard to the city of London itself, we would here recall Swedenborg's very interesting descriptions of the two cities of that name in the world of spirits, one being a very good place to go to, the other a place to stay away from. In that intermediate world, the spirit newly arrived from earth finds himself for a time in familiar surroundings, though this state seldom lasts longer than a year. (H. H. 498.) But even in that first state, it would seem, there is a general separation of the evil from the good, and both are provided places similar to the regions in which they lived on earth. We read:

     "On the cities in the other life, and on the Lord's Providence in preserving them.-Cities appear to spirits like the cities on earth; hence there are London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and all others. The reason is, that every man has spirits with him, who possess all the things of his memory; they do not indeed see the world through his eyes, but still they are inwardly in it from his ideas. Hence ideas of similar houses, edifices, streets, and cities appear to them; and so appear as to be as it were those places. From this it is that the spirits who are with the men of one city have an idea of the same city. . . . Yea, the whole region there is like it is on earth, with its provinces, cities and villages." (Spiritual Diary 5092, 5094.)

     From this we learn why it is that spirits newly arrived from the earth find themselves in a similar environment, though it is not long before the evil are separated from the good, and each for a time is in a region like that in which they lived on earth. At first, indeed, they may reside in different parts of the same city.

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In the Diary, Swedenborg states that "in the eastern part of London in the other life, there is a little city (parva civitas) where upright and good men dwell, but who appear vile to those who are in the city (urbs) toward the west," the latter being prevented by guards from entering the eastern part of the city. (S. D. 5113.) Later on, in other works of the Writings, he describes the two Londons, one for the good, the other for the evil,-two cities that are quite distinct. In fact, the Writings contain several accounts of these two Londons, from which we have selected the three given below, each containing some particulars not found in the others. To quote:

     FROM THE WORKS ON "THE LAST JUDGMENT."

     "There are two great cities similar to London, into which most of the English come after death. These cities it was given me to see, as well as to walk through. The middle of the one city answers to that part of the English London where there is a meeting of merchants, called the Exchange; there the governors dwell. Above that middle is the east; below it is the west; on the right side of it is the south; on the left side of it is the north. They who have led a life of charity more than the rest dwell in the eastern quarter, where there are magnificent palaces. The wise, with whom there are many splendid things, dwell in the southern quarter. They who more than others love the liberty of speaking and of writing dwell in the northern quarter. They who make profession of faith dwell in the western quarter; to the right in this quarter, there is an entrance into the city, and an exit from it; they who live wickedly are there sent out of it. The presbyters who are in the west, and who, as was said, profess faith, dare not enter the city through the broad streets, but only through the narrower ways, because they who are in the faith of charity are the only inhabitants who are tolerated in the city. I have heard them complaining of the preachers in the west, that they prepare their discourses with such art and at the same time such eloquence, interweaving justification by faith to them unknown, that they do not know whether good is to be done or not. They preach intrinsic good, and separate it from extrinsic good, which they sometimes call meritorious, and therefore not acceptable to God; yet still they call it good, because it is useful.

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But when those who dwell in the eastern and southern quarters of the city hear such mystical discourses, they walk out of the temples, and the preachers are afterwards deprived of the priesthood."

     "The other great city like London is not in the Christian Middle (no. 20), but lies outside of it to the north. They who are interiorly evil come into it after death. In the middle of it there is an open communication with hell, by which they are swallowed up by turns." (Continuation Last Judgment, 42, 43. The same, T. C. R. 809-811.)

     "Since the cities in the world of spirits are similar to the cities in our world, there is also a London there, like London as to the streets, but not as to the houses, nor as to the inhabitants and their habitations in the quarters. I was conducted into it in the spirit, and wandered through it, and recognized it. And I spoke with certain ones there, and said that men in the world would wonder, and would not believe, that they who live in London see a London also after death, and, if they are good, also dwell in their city; yet it is altogether so. They said that neither would they have believed it, when they were in the world, because such a thing does not fall into sensual ideas, but only into rational ideas enlightened by spiritual light; also, that they did not even know that the spiritual appears before a spirit as the material does before a man, and that all the things which exist in the spiritual world are from a spiritual origin, as all the things in the natural world are from a material origin; in like manner the houses of a city, which are not built as in the world, but rise up in a moment created by the Lord; so, too, all other things. They rejoiced that now they are in England as before, and in its great city. And they said that there is also another London below, not dissimilar as to the streets, but dissimilar as to the houses and as to the inhabitants; namely, that the evil dwell in the middle, and the upright in the last circumferences; and that those come into that London from the London in the world who have not been in any spiritual love, and hence not in any spiritual faith, but have indulged the pleasures of the body and the lusts of the mind. Also that the city, in the middle where the evil dwell, sinks down by turns into the deep; and the evil are thus cast dawn into hell; and that the opening is closed, and the evil are again collected into the middle of it, and are again swallowed up by hell.

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This is in the world of spirits; it is different in heaven, and in hell." (L. J. Post., 12.)

     "London in the spiritual world appears like the London in the natural world as to its streets and quarters, but is dissimilar as to houses and habitations. This difference is not apparent, because everyone there dwells in a quarter and in a house corresponding with his affection and the thought thence derived. In the middle of the city is situated the Royal Exchange. To the right of it dwells the moderator, and round about it his officers. The middle street of it answers to Holborn. The east there is in front; toward the back, even to Wapping, is the west; the south is at the right of that street, and the north is on its left. In the eastern quarter, which is of considerable length, reaching far beyond the city, dwell the best of them, where they all worship the Lord. Those who are distinguished for intelligence dwell in the southern quarter, which extends almost to Islington, where there is also an assembly. They who dwell there are also prudent in speaking and writing. Toward the north those dwell who are not lettered, and who are in the greatest liberty of speech, which they love. In the west are those who are in the obscure affection of good; those who are there are fearful of manifesting their thoughts. In the southern region, answering to Moorfield's, and round about it, is a promiscuous multitude; thither from the city are sent away all those who incline to evils; wherefore the multitude there is cast out by turns, and thus continually; through this way the city is continually purified, and those who are led away therefrom appear no more. Sometimes they see about the middle of the city a certain malicious person sitting on a seat in a pulpit, and the inhabitants are called together and ordered to go thither to him. They who approach and hearken are led to the place of exit, where there are promiscuous crowds, and, as was said, they are sent out through the ways there. Every society is purified; this is the manner of purifying them there.

     "Their houses, clothing, and food are similar to those used in the world. I asked about wine, strong drink, beer, chocolate, tea and the like, and was told that they had similar things. I asked also about the liquor called punch, and they said that they also have that liquor, but it is given only to those who are sincere and at the same time industrious.

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They do not tolerate in the city any ruler who directs or dictates to them what they must do, for they wish to be in full liberty." (Last Judgment, Posthumous, 268, 269. See also Spiritual Diary 5012, 5013.)

     It is reasonable to suppose that all earthly cities, and all localities in this world, have their double counterparts in the world of spirits, where the good and evil find separate abiding places for a time, and until they are finally judged to heaven or hell. Hence we read as follows concerning the first abodes of the Jews in the other life:

     The Two Jerusalems.

     "In the northern quarter are two great cities into which the Jews are brought after death, and which, before the Judgment (1757), were called Jerusalems, but after it by another name; because, after the Judgment, by 'Jerusalem' is meant the Church in which the Lord alone is adored." (Continuation of Last Judgment 79) Elsewhere it is said: "After the Judgment, the name was changed, because then the Holy Jerusalem mentioned in the Apocalypse, signifying the New Church, became the subject of general conversation everywhere, and no one enters that City unless he regards the Messiah as one with Jehovah, and thus worships the Lord alone." (Last Judgment, Post., 258.)
QUADRILINGUAL MAGAZINE. 1928

QUADRILINGUAL MAGAZINE.              1928

     In the spiritual world, the spread of the Heavenly Doctrine among the gentiles must proceed rapidly, owing to the universal language there spoken and written. In this world, difference in language is one of the barriers to be crossed in that work of evangelization. But that this will be accomplished in time, as in the case of the Scriptures, which have been translated into so many tongues, is a thought borne in upon us whenever we receive a copy of our South African contemporary, TLHAHISO (Expositor), published under the auspices of the General Church Mission at Alpha, under the editorship of the Rev. Fred. W. Elphick.

     The March, 1928, issue comes to hand, an 18-page number, containing articles in four languages,-Sesuto, Xosa, Zulu and English.

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An installment of the Rev. C. T. Odhner's Life of Swedenborg is reproduced in Sesuto and Xosa; Bishop N. D. Pendleton's Letter to the Native Leaders is printed in Sesuto and Zulu; an address on "Ritual," by the Rev. E. C. Acton, appears in Zulu; Church News is given in Sesuto, Zulu and English. In this way, valuable material is reaching Natives who could not otherwise receive it.

     Among the contents printed in English we may note the Editor's in Memoriam to the late Bishop Emeritus W. F. Pendleton, from which we are moved to quote the following:

     "Though only a few members of the General Church Mission have known Bishop Pendleton by name, and still fewer have had the opportunity of studying under him, yet, at the present time, many are indirectly benefitting from the foresight, judgment and loyal New Churchmanship of this revered leader. With a deep study of the Revelation which is given to the New Church, he has shown in a simple, clear and unmistakable manner how the Doctrines of that Revelation may be applied to faith and life. In doing this he has provided for the present and the future, and thus for the New Church throughout the world, helping every race and nation to realize what the Second Coming of the Lord means in the spiritual uplift of all peoples.

     "As far as this Mission is concerned, it is already entering into the labors of Bishop Pendleton. Our services in Sesuto, Zulu and Xosa are the more distant result of his years of study in Ritual. The Government of the Mission, according to the order prescribed in the Writings, has received light, both in theory and practice; while his valued studies in Exposition-simple and direct-are guiding the South African Leaders in the study of the Letter of the Word, which has been brought to their people by means of Christian missionaries and European trade. For these mercies we can be truly thankful. Indeed, just as the Christian Church, in its early foundation, claimed its 'Church Fathers,' so can the New Church, in its present development, claim its 'Church Fathers,' of which Bishop W. F. Pendleton is one. He was, however, not only a Father of the Church, but also a Father of Education, being one of the twelve founders of the Academy of the New Church. As a coworker with Bishop W. H. Benade, and his successor, education was made an arm of the Church, and it was clearly seen that unless education was nourished by the truth revealed to the New Church, no progress could be made.

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Thus again, indirectly, this Mission is entering into the labors of the Church Fathers.

     "Profoundly learned in the Doctrines of the New Church, Bishop Pendleton always placed those Doctrines above himself, and gave admonition to others to seek for the truth as of and for themselves. This, indeed, is the spirit of the New Church. But in searching for the truth from the Divine Source of Revelation, we should ever be mindful that those with ripe experience know better than we of less study; and so, even in our day, we can apply the words of the Psalmist: 'We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work Thou didst in their days, in the days of old.'"

     The editor's address is followed by an article on "Revelation in Africa," quoted from Bishop Pendleton's "Topics from the Writings."
TOPICS FROM THE WRITINGS. 1928

TOPICS FROM THE WRITINGS.              1928

     We take this opportunity to announce that the Academy Book Room will shortly publish Bishop Pendleton's "Topics from the Writings" in book form. It will be recalled that the "Topics" appeared in a series of thirty-six installments in NEW CHURCH LIFE, from October, 1921, to November, 1926. We have received many expressions of appreciation from our readers, bearing testimony to the great interest with which the articles were read, and we anticipate that many will desire to possess the volume in which they will be republished. A great variety of doctrinal subjects will be made available for reference by an Index, and it is likely that the book will also perform a distinct use in the missionary field.

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Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     TORONTO, CANADA.

     Interesting and enjoyable socials are somewhat of a problem to provide in these days of highly organized and specialized entertainment which is so readily obtainable at almost every corner. But the great factor in making such a successful event is evidently that of the effort put into it, as was amply demonstrated by the program provided by the committee responsible for our Valentine Social, held on February 11th. The assembly hall was appropriately and tastefully decorated, and a varied program, well thought out with a view to providing entertainment for all sorts and conditions of men and women, youths and maidens, contributed to the full enjoyment of a large attendance of our people.

     The Forward Club is enjoying its Study Course on "The Human Body, in its Natural and Spiritual Aspects." Dr. W. A. McFall kindly presented the Club with charts of Osteology and the Arterial, Venous and Nervous Systems, which are of great assistance in illustrating the lecture portion of each study, given by the Pastor. At the March meeting, Mr. Healdon Starkey, late of Glenview, Ill., was "initiated" into full membership. He survived the ordeal.

     On March 20th, Mr. Robert Carswell, one of the founders of the Olivet Society, passed into the spiritual world at the age of nearly ninety years. This passing may be said to mark the close of an era in the life of our Society, as Mr. Carswell was, so far as we are aware, the last living founder-member actively connected with the Society. On Wednesday evening, after the weekly supper, and whilst we remained seated at the tables, a memorial meeting was held at which Dr. Alfred Acton gave an exhaustive resume of Mr. Carswell's career; bearing affectionate testimony, as did all other speakers, to the strong, deep and abiding love he had for the church and all its uses, which love is eloquently born out by the very generous provision he has made for the continuance of his financial support of the uses of the Society. This meeting was followed by worship in the chapel at which our Pastor, speaking from Revelation 14:13, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," voiced in well-chosen sentiments the tribute we all desire to pay to our departed spiritual brother, and giving appropriate instruction on the lessons to be derived from such a life and character as that of Mr. Carswell. His outstanding love seemed to be "the love which appreciated the true use of the New Church upon earth,--the use of preparing souls and minds for heaven, and which love, wherever it exists among us, shall keep the dame of spiritual illustration alight, and shall cause the earth at the last to flame with the light of heaven."

     The day of the funeral, March 22d, was a beautiful day, a harbinger of the spring that is breaking over the whole world, bringing with it the assurance of a perpetual renewal of life. The funeral service, conducted by the Rev. H. L. Odhner at the Carswell home, was beautiful, impressive, and regnant with the thought of the eternity of life. "He is not here; he is risen." Many and beautiful were the floral tokens of affection and esteem from friends and business associates, a large gathering of whom were present to pay their last tribute of respect to our departed brother, an especially large representation being present from The Carswell Co. Ltd., of which company, the deceased was President at the time of his death. The pall-bearers were: Messrs. Kesniel Acton, Bryn Athyn; R. S. Anderson; C. R. Brown, Vice President, J. T. A. Smithson, General Manager, P. A. Maxwell, Sec. Treas. of the Carswell Co., Ltd.; and F. Wilson.

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Thus has passed from our midst the physical presence of one, who, for almost as many years as constitute the average lifetime, has fought the good fight for the church. But although not with us in the body, his spirit still lives, inspiring and encouraging those who are left to carry on the good work to an even greater fruition than the past and present has achieved.

     On Thursday evening, March 22d, Dr. Acton kindly delivered his lecture on "The Word Explained." We were unable to attend this lecture, but we understand that a large and appreciative audience enjoyed a masterly exposition of the subject of this new publication now going through the press. The Doctor has added one more to the many obligations for which we are indebted to him.

     We have personally had to miss so many of our local church events during the past month that we cannot give the detailed account of them that would otherwise be possible. Suffice it to say, therefore, that there was the usual joint service for adults and children on Palm Sunday, and the recognition of the special significance of the Easter season by a service in the chapel on Good Friday evening, at which the incomparable music of the "Messiah" was rendered on an Orthophonic Victrola, from imported English records which proved to be a revelation of the perfection which this form of music has attained. We are indebted to Mr. Williams, of the College Street Society, for the loan of the records and the rendition of the music, to Mr. Alec. Sargeant for the excellent Victrola provided, whilst the Pastor read the lessons and the connective readings. Easter Sunday saw the observance of the Resurrection Day by a special service appropriate to the occasion, attended by a large congregation. The Easter Social, in charge of Mr. and Mrs. A. Thompson, was also a pronounced success.

     It is with sorrow and regret that we have to announce the resignation of our Pastor, the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner, who has accepted a call to professional work with the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn. This is not the time to say all that is in our hearts to say on this matter, of which more anon.
     F. W.

     KITCHENER, ONT.

     The 23d of March stands out in our minds as a red-letter day, not only because it is the birthday of two of our young people, but because we had the pleasure of a visit and address from Dr. Alfred Acton on that day. The visit was short, but the address was long, and the interest and enjoyment with which it was received were very great. The address treated of Swedenborg's preparation to become the intelligent medium of the Lord's Second Coming. By a study of the Journal of Dreams, which was written during the same time that Swedenborg was writing the Economy of the Animal Kingdom and other works, and by a comparison of these two, Dr. Acton showed how Swedenborg's spiritual experiences increased in number and diversity while yet he was working on philosophical themes. During his whole life he, was being led unknowingly to the greatest experience, which was his real use. The whole address inspired us profoundly with a feeling of veneration for the great man who suffered and labored so willingly in his search for the truth, and so faithfully recorded the truth when it was shown to him.

     The Easter season always means special events, the first of which was the Children's Service on Palm Sunday. The Pastor spoke appropriately from the text, "For the Lord is our Judge; the Lord is our Law-giver; the Lord is our King; He will save us. (Isa. 33:22.) On Good Friday a special service was held in commemoration of the Lord's Passion. In the address, a comparison was made of the story of Abraham and his intended sacrifice of his only son, Isaac, with the temptation of the Lord in Gethsemane.

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The temptation was a fear that there were none who could be saved. It is said that an angel appeared to strength Him, and so Abraham heard voice from heaven, and then found the ram for the sacrifice. The "ram" signified the revelation from the Divine that there were those who could be saved.

     There were two services on Easter Day. The morning service was service of praise, and in the afternoon the Holy Supper was administered. The text for the sermon was taken from Revelation 1:8: "He who was dead is alive." The subject treated of the Glorification of the Lord. A church is living only in so far as the risen Lord is acknowledged as God of the universe, and by being called "dead" means that He was rejected in the Old Church.

     On Monday evening we had a delightful social. Each person, by some article, represented a song. There were clever ones and funny ones, and it took quite a while to guess them all. The refreshment tables were decorated according to the twelve months of the year. Each person sat at the table of his birth-month. Mr. Nathaniel Stroh entertained with two beautiful selections on the piano, Miss Dorothy Kuhl gave a humorous reading, and Mrs. Fred Stroh sang a solo. All of these were very much enjoyed.
     G. K. D.

     CHICAGO, ILL.

     Sharon Church has enjoyed a series of interesting and well-attended meetings clustering about Easter. On Good Friday, about fifty persons were present at an evening service. The subject of the address was Judas' betrayal kiss. It was shown that his kiss expressed the kind of service the Jewish Church had given from the beginning; it was the service of an hireling who served the Lord only for earthly reward, without any love of the Lord or the neighbor. The service of the Christian Church has been similar, except with a few, and has ended in similar betrayal at His Second Advent. The service of every natural and unregenerate man is similar, and will end in similar betrayal, unless, by shunning evils as sins, he suffers the Lord to take from him the supreme love of self and of the world, and give him from Himself new heart and a new spirit.

     On Easter, fifty-seven were present, the chancel being beautifully decorated with flowers brought by various members of the church. Two of our young men were confirmed, namely, Edmund Y. Gunsteens and Irving J. Anderson. There were forty-two communicants at the Lord's Supper. The subject of the sermon was "Glory Through Suffering." It was shown that it was necessary for the Lord to suffer the death of the maternal human, the desertion of His disciples, and even the apparent desertion of the Father, in order to enter into the glory of the Father. Likewise it is necessary for man to crucify the flesh, if he is to rise with the Lord in spirit. Each man is created to perform a certain use to others. If he shuns his evils as sins, he receives from the Lord the love of that use, and so enters into the glory of the Lord. If he clings to the supreme love of himself, he still performs his destined use, but as a menial, and finally under compulsion in hell.

     The Jews were predestined to perform the use of a church, to be the connecting medium between heaven and earth, by which spiritual life should be imparted to the human race. Had they been willing to accept regeneration, they might have performed the use of a genuine and internal church. Refusing to regenerate, they still were led by love of self and love of gain to perform their destined use. They became a representative of a church, and although they were without any love of spiritual things, they served to conjoin heaven and earth until the Lord should come and establish a more internal church. Finally, their evils could no longer be restrained, and they were cast out of the land. But he who suffers himself to be regenerated enters into the joy of his use, which is the love of the neighbor, the joy of heaven and the joy of the Lord.

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     On Sunday, April 15th, David Francis, infant son of Mr. and Mrs. David F. Gladish was baptized. After the morning service, dinner was served, and at 2:30 the annual meeting was held. All the reports were encouraging. Six new members have been added during the year, but the same number have transferred to other societies of the General Church. Six members of Sharon Church expect to attend the General Assembly in London.
     W. L. G.

     GLENVIEW, ILL.

     Palm Sunday was the occasion of a splendid service, with the children bringing plants to the altar, and the choir in a special service of song, in which they brought to the altar branches of palm. Good Friday was marked by a special service and the administration of the Holy Supper. Easter was celebrated by a children's service at ro a.m., and the Easter Festival Service for adults at 11 o'clock.

     The Sons of the Academy Chapter gave a grand, full-dress banquet on March 31st, the menu including chicken and an abundance of everything. The honor quest was Mr. Donald F. Rose, of Bryn Athyn, who spoke in ringing notes of loyalty to the Academy, and was echoed by other speakers. And you can readily believe that there were many humorous touches. On the Monday following, a luncheon at the Vesuvius Restaurant in Chicago afforded us another opportunity to visit with Mr. Rose and his many friends, including some of the big literary lights of Chicago. The same evening, at Glenview, a Men's Meeting was held under the auspices of the Sons of the Academy, Mr. Rose giving us an account of the making up of great daily newspaper, which was highly entertaining.

     There has recently been a good deal of sickness in The Park, two of the sufferers being teachers in the school,-Miss Susan Scalbom and Miss Agathea Starkey. In their absence, however, Mrs. Robert Cole and Mrs. Trumbull Scalbom came to the rescue and helped out in the school.
     J. B. S.

     REPORT OF THE VISITING PASTOR.

     On a visit to DETROIT, the first service, taking place the evening of my arrival, Saturday, April 14th, was the baptism of the two youngest children of Mr. and Mrs. William Cook, in their home. Afterwards I had the pleasure of listening to the family orchestra, consisting of Mr. Cook and the five oldest children, all girls, ranging in age from eight to fifteen years, each of whom is expert on some musical instrument.

     On Sunday morning, a service was held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. William Walker, at which seventeen persons were present. In the evening there was a social supper, followed by a doctrinal class, at the home of Mrs. Violet Day. The attendance was again seventeen. The subject of the class was the teaching that "the Sense of the Letter of the Word is the basis, the containant, and the support of its Spiritual and Celestial Senses." (S. S. 27-36) In the course of the instruction it was shown that, although this chapter and that next following are frequently quoted to prove that the Writings of the New Church cannot be regarded as the Word, it can be clearly seen from all that is set forth in these chapters that the Writings are indeed such.

     On Monday evening, a class was held at WINDSOR, ONT., at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Bellinger. Besides the four Windsor members, there were four visitors, three from Kitchener and one from Wyoming, Ohio. The subject was, that no creation is possible without a double sun, one living and the other dead. On Tuesday evening, another class was held in Detroit, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Day, at which the subject was man's co-operation with the Lord in his purification from evil.

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     The next place visited was ERIE, PA., Where doctrinal classes were held on three evenings, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 19th to 21st. At the first the subject was the fulness and power of higher degrees in their ultimate; at the second, the history of correspondences; and at the third, purification from evils. On Saturday afternoon, instruction was given to two young people. At the service on Sunday morning, there was the administration of the Rite of Confirmation for Miss Doris Cranch, and the celebration of the Holy Supper. The attendance at all meetings was four or five persons.

     On Monday, the 23d, I went to NILES, OHIO, and that evening baptized the infant daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Williamson, in their home. The following evening there was a doctrinal class at the same place, at which ten persons were present, four from Niles and six from Youngstown. The subject was the teaching that the internal man cannot be purified from evil lusts unless evils in the external man are removed, because they block the way. (D. P. 111.)
     F. E. WAELCHLI.

     TORONTO, CANADA.

     From April 26th to 29th we had the pleasure of the visit of the Rev. C. E. Doering, Dean of Faculties, who came by appointment of the Bishop and under the auspices of the Sons of the Academy, who have, for the past three years, sponsored these visits to the various societies in the interests of New Church Education; and they seem to be covering a real need, with resultant good to all concerned. In addition to his main purpose, i. e., observation of and consultation on the work being done in the Day School, Mr. Doering read to the society an informative and enlightening paper on "Child Training," occasioned by questions asked during his visit in 1927. The paper was well received, and evoked many questions and a, good discussion by our Pastor and others, some of the points brought out being. There is very little literature in the New Church on child training, outside of Bishop Benade's Conversations on Education. Such literature is needful, and is one of the uses that must receive attention in the near future." "There is a great weakness in the 'Topsy growed' method of training, which should be shunned at all costs." "It should be the aim to prolong states of innocence, or that simple leading by the Lord, as long as possible." "Self-government defeats itself, if given too early. Social over-stimulation loses the stimulus of gradual introduction." "Our main textbooks are the Writings of the Church. Parents who are steady readers never lack illustration. There should be a reorganization of our homes, if necessary for the proper education of our children. We should give tithes of our patience, substance, activities, time, etc., if the object is to be achieved." On Friday evening, the 27th, a banquet supper was served, and Mr. Doering read an interesting thesis on the "History of the Doctrine that the Writings are the Word." This also was much enjoyed, and was discussed by various speakers. On Sunday the 29th, the Misses Marion Hicks, Emily Raymond and Anne Raymond were confirmed, and the Rev. C. E. Doering preached the sermon.

     At the May meeting of the Ladies' Circle, held on the 1st inst., the officers for the ensuing year were elected, as follows: President, Mrs. Rudolf Potts; Vice-President, Mrs. H. P. Izzard; Secretary, Mrs. C. R. Brown; Treasurer, Mrs. R. S. Anderson. Mrs. Ed. Craigie, the retiring President, has filled that office for three successive years with credit to herself and the satisfaction of the Circle. She was accorded the heartiest thanks of the meeting for her indefatigable labors on its behalf.

     As announced in the Life for April, the Rev. H. Lj. Odhner has resigned the Pastorate of our Society, to take a position with the Academy in Bryn Athyn, and in addition we learn that he has been appointed an Assistant Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Society. It is with heartfelt sorrow and regret that we shall see him go, and we wish him abundant success in the new sphere of usefulness to which he has been called, and for which we believe him to be so eminently fitted.

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     It is with pleasure that we Toronto folks find our old friend and member, Mr. Arthur G. Carter, in evidence as a contributor of the very interesting articles from his pen which are appearing in New Church Life from time to time. The present continuing article on Flaxman is a particularly interesting and ably written contribution on a subject of historical interest.
     F. W.

     GLENVIEW, ILL.

     The principal event during the past month was the annual visit of the Rev. C. E. Doering. At the Friday class on April 20th he gave a very interesting paper on of Children," bringing out many sidelights on the subject, and stressing the need of moderation in dealing with children, so that their spirits may not be broken, while at the same time they are sufficiently controlled not to be willful. Mr. Doering visited the school and had consultations with the teachers. He also attended a meeting of the Sons of the Academy, held a meeting with parents, and preached for us on Sunday.

     The financial guardians of the society have just prepared the annual budget, showing a total requirement of more than $10,000 for miscellaneous expenses, an increase of 15 per cent. over last year. This budget, of course, is in addition to the support of the Pastor. We are tackling the problem involved, and hope to raise all the funds called for by the budget.

     Candidate Norman Reuter, now attending the Theological School, has, upon nomination of the Bishop, been engaged by the Immanuel Church as Assistant to the Pastor, and is expected here soon after the schools close to take up his duties. The Pastor will attend the General Assembly in London, sailing July 14th.

     Professor Jesse Stevens is preparing another concert of vocal and instrumental music, to be given on Sunday, June 17th, and we are looking forward to the usual treat.

     We have just received greetings from Mr. and Mrs. Seymour G. Nelson, mailed from Naples, and we understand they are greatly enjoying their trip.     
     J. B. S.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA.

     The last regular Friday Supper for the year, held in the auditorium on May 11th, provided a setting of conviviality for the Spring Meeting of the Bryn Athyn Church. The meeting was divided into two parts, the first conducted by Mr. Otho W. Heilman as Principal of the Elementary School, and the second conducted by the Bishop.

     During the first portion of the evening, while the members were still seated at the tables, Miss Bertha Farrington, assistant teacher in the kindergarten, read an interesting paper on the relation of Art to Nature Study. The paper was illustrated by original productions of the children, and showed how attempts at artistic expression led to closer observation of the elementary facts and laws of nature. Mr. Heilman followed with a brief general report of the progress of the school during the year, commending the teachers for their conscientious and efficient work, and showing an encouraging growth and development. While the tables were being removed, the parents were given an opportunity to examine an extensive display of the work done by the children. The walls were decorated with pictures, posters, and other artistic productions, while examples of modeling, composition, notebooks on various subjects. etc., were exhibited on tables, the work being arranged according to grade, and showing marked indication of talent on the part of many of the children, especially in the field of handwork.

     When the chairs had been arranged for a formal session, the Bishop called the meeting of the Society to order. Minutes and reports were read. The Bishop announced that Miss Farrington had resigned as teacher, to continue her studies elsewhere. We shall be sorry to lose her services, and we extend to her our heartiest good wishes for success in the field of study she is about to enter. Miss Louise Gladish has also resigned as teacher in the Elementary School, in order to accept a position as teacher in the Girls' Seminary.

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She has done excellent work, and will be greatly missed; but in this case our loss represents a corresponding gain for the higher department. We have been signally fortunate in securing the services of two experienced teachers to fill these two vacancies, and next year shall have with us Miss Celia Bellinger and Mrs. R. M. Cole.

     The Bishop further announced that Bishop De Charms would enter into Academy work next Fall. He will succeed the Rev. Eldred E. Iungerich as head of the College department. In doing so, he will retain his position as Assistant Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church, but must be relieved of a portion of his responsibilities in that work. The Bishop therefore nominated as an Assistant Pastor the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner, who is coming to accept a position as Teacher in the Academy Schools. On motion, this nomination was confirmed by the Society.

     The Bishop then outlined the steps which have recently been taken with reference to the erection of a building designed to meet the requirements of the General Assembly which is to be held in Bryn Athyn in 1930, and at the same time to serve the uses of the Academy and the Bryn Athyn Society. These steps had been of a preliminary nature, and it was desirable that the whole subject be discussed by the meeting, and a definite authorization be given by the Society before further action is taken. After a consideration of the matter, it was voted that the Society express general approval of the proposed project, and request the Bishop to appoint a suitable committee to act for the Society, in conjunction with a committee to be appointed by the Academy, in perfecting plans for such a building.
      G. DE C.

     KITCHENER, ONT.

     During the last week of April, the Rev. C. E. Doering visited us in the interests of Education. He spent three mornings at the school, becoming acquainted with the children, addressing them and teaching them; and he also had discussions with the teachers, Mr. David, Miss Heinrichs and Miss Venita Roschman, who has been giving valuable and much appreciated help with the younger grades.

     On Monday evening, following a supper, Mr. Doering addressed the society on "The Training of Children," giving a very practical and instructive address. The following evening he addressed the Men's Club on the subject of "The History of the Doctrine that the Writings are the Word." This paper, like the other, was greatly enjoyed, as Mr. Doering's papers always are, and we feel that his visit was most useful and helpful in every way.
     G. K. D.

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ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH 1928

ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH       ELDRIC KLEIN       1928




     Announcements.



     Saturday, June 9, 1928.

     The Annual Joint Meeting of the Corporation and Faculty of the Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa., will be held in the Chapel, Benade Hall, on Saturday, June 9, 1928, from 9:30 a. m. to 12:30 p. m., when the annual reports of the officers will be presented, and other business transacted.
     ELDRIC KLEIN,
     Secretary.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928

     Hotel Accommodations.

     As London hotels are apt to be crowded during August, those expecting to attend the General Assembly are advised to make early reservations. Write to Miss K. M. Dowling, 11 Overton Road, Brixton, London, S. W. 9, England, who will gladly perform this service.

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THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928

     LONDON, ENGLAND, AUGUST 3-12, 1928.

     Friday, August 3.
10:00 a.m.-Council of the Clergy.
1:00 p.m.-Luncheon for the Council.

     Saturday, August 4.
7:30 p.m.-First Session of the General Assembly. Address by the Bishop of the General Church.

     Sunday, August 5.
11:00. a.m.-Divine Worship. Ordination.
          -Sermon by the Rev. Hugo L. Odhner.
          -Subject: "The Day of Small Things." (Zech. 4:10.)
7:00 p.m.-Divine Worship. Ordinations.
          -Sermon by the Rev. R. J. Tilson.

     Monday, August 6.
10:00 a.m.-Second Session of the General Assembly.
          -Subject: "The Calendar Reading of the Writings."
11:00 a.m.-Address by the Rev. Dr. Alfred Acton.
          -Subject: To be announced later.
3:00 p.m.-Third Session of the General Assembly.
          -Address by the Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer.
          -Subject: "The New Church in Holland."
7:30 p.m.-Reception and Assembly Social.

     Tuesday, August 7.
10:00 a.m.-Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m.-Address by the Rev. Albert Bjorck.
          -Subject: "Progress."

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7:30 p.m.-Fourth Session of the General Assembly.
          -Subject: "Church Extension" General Discussion.

     Wednesday, August 8.
10:00 a.m.-Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m.-Address by the Rev. Richard Morse.
          -Subject: "The First Love"
3:00 p.m.-Meeting of the Corporation of the General Church.
7:30 p.m.-Fifth Session of the General Assembly.
          -Subject: "Society Building." General Discussion.

     Friday, August 10.
10:00 a.m.-Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m.-Address by the Rev. William Whitehead.
          -Subject: "The New Church and the Modern State."
3:00 p.m.-Executive Committee of the General Church.
7:30 p.m.-"New Church Club" Men's Dinner.
          -Address by the Rev. Karl R. Alden on "The New Church Education of the Adolescent Boy.')
          -Ladies' Dinner under the Auspices of Theta Alpha.

     Saturday, August 11.
3:00 p.m.-Sixth Session of the General Assembly.
          -Address by Mr. J. S. Pryke.
          -Subject: "The Church and the World."

     Sunday, August 12.
11:00 a.m.-Divine Worship. Holy Supper.
          -Sermon by the Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom.
          -Subject: Text, John 11:28
7:00 p.m.-Open Meeting of the Sons of the Academy.
          -Address by the Rt. Rev. George de Charms.
          -Subject: "The Development of New Church Education."

385


ROBERT CARSWELL 1928

ROBERT CARSWELL       Rev. HUGO LJ. ODHNER       1928


[Frontispiece: Robert Carswell, 1838-1828]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII JULY, 1928           No. 7.
     A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

     When, within a few months of ninety years of age, Robert Carswell passed into the spiritual world on March 20th, 1928, it marked the close of an era in the Olivet Church at Parkdale, Toronto. His life is worthy of more than a passing mention, not only because of the position he has long occupied within the lay body of the General Church, but also because of the remarkable character which his life helped to shape. We shall endeavor to tell this story as it has been told to us.

     Robert Carswell was born at Colborne, Ontario, on July 19th, 1838, five years after his parents had come to Canada from Glasgow. With two brothers and a sister, he was orphaned while still a little child. His father had had a university education, and was rumored to have been a "learned man," which might have meant almost anything in that pioneering period of the Province of Ontario. Just before his death, the father gave Robert to be indentured or apprenticed to Henry Frint, a pioneer farmer, who, although reputed an "atheist" because he could not believe the early part of Genesis, was yet stubbornly philanthropic, and adopted nine orphans, one of whom was Robert. The old man wanted his ward to become a farmer, as he had no use for "book learning." He would not believe, for instance, that the earth revolved, because his millpond never spilled out at night! But despite this, and despite the isolation of the farm, Robert managed to obtain some schooling during the Winter months. And when the farmer died, the boy was bequeathed some land and a hundred dollars or so, and at the age of twelve or thirteen his resolution to "get an education" brought him to the school in the nearby town of Brighton.

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At eighteen he began to teach in Belleville Methodist Episcopal Seminary, where he had begun as a pupil. He then entered the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the young Americans of that school volunteered for service in the army, and the University closed its doors "for the duration." Our young Canadian, who had spent his vacations selling books, returned to Belleville, to teach there, and to act as the Canadian agent for Appleton's Encyclopedia. There, although in trying financial straits, he married Millicent Carman, who left him a widower two years after the birth of a daughter, Emeline, now Mrs. Alfred Acton.

     In the meantime (1864), the family had removed to Toronto, a city of greater opportunities, where Robert combined the business of selling law books and legal stationery with the very different undertaking of conducting a photographic studio.

     From the first, Robert Carswell was of a pious bent, and in the beginning this took the only form it could well take,-a zealous interest in revivalist movements. He joined the Methodist Church at sixteen, and from then on, until he was thirty-two, he took an active part in all the prayer meeting, Sunday School classes, revivals and occasional camp meetings of the church in his locality. He had many conversations with its ministers, studied its doctrines carefully, listened to its best preachers, and fully believed in the Methodist Church.

     When, about 1870, he came into contact with a Mr. John Parker, who had coma from England about the year 1862, and who commenced preaching Swedenborg's message in the public parks of Toronto, thus becoming the leader and later the ordained pastor of a small New Church society there, Mr. Carswell's reactions to the cold truth were purely negative. Mr. Parker was a brass finisher by trade, and Mr., Carswell had to see him repeatedly in order to collect some bills. Whether the bills were ever paid, history does not relate, but Mr. Carswell certainly got the best of the bargain. For, in his anxiety to defend his own beliefs, and to save Mr. Parker's errant soul from its "obsessions," he took to reading the Writings, and became convinced of their Divine truth. He joined the little New Church circle at Elm Street, and despite the violent opposition of his second wife, an Irish Protestant whom he had married some years before, and by whom he had two children, but whom he later divorced, he became a very active supporter of the movement.

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     The photographic studio was dropped in 1872, and henceforth his business was confined to the sale and publication of law books. He was the first to found an exclusive law book trade in Canada. The enterprise prospered, and in 1877 he ambitiously proceeded to build Equity Chambers, then the finest business building in downtown Toronto, and still standing at the corner of Adelaide and Victoria streets. In 1879, he went to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he founded another law publishing house which is still a going concern. In 1881, he married the present Mrs. Carswell, then a Miss Mary Sophia Frankish, a member of the Toronto New Church Society, and their union was blest with a daughter, Flora Edina. The family's missionary zeal may be judged by the fact that the wife and her step-daughter, Emeline, often went out together distributing New Church books from door to door in that city. While in Edinburgh, Mr. Carswell became a prominent leader in the society of which the Rev. Wm. Presland was Pastor, contributing liberally to it uses, and personally sponsoring missionary lectures by such men as Dr. Jonathan Bayley. At the meetings of the General Conference, and later in the General Convention, he stood out prominently as a leading layman, and took an active part in their proceedings.

     In 1883, Mr. Carswell found it wise to sell out his Edinburgh business and to return to give personal attention to the Toronto concern, which had been organized as a partnership in 1879. Now his missionary urge took the form of encouraging colporteur work. The picturesque figure of "Mr. Kelley," a penny-a-day pensioner of the British Army, now comes into the story with a curly full beard, a shiny high hat, twinkling Irish eyes, shabby frock coat, uncreased trousers, and a worn traveling bag full of New Church books! Mr. Carswell provided him with the books, obtained support for him from the Canada Association, and also established a Book Room, which though nominally belonging, first to the Association and then to the Parkdale Society, was always Mr. Carswell's own pet charge. Mr. Kelly, I believe, later decided to try his fortunes and those of the Heavenly Doctrine in other lands, and perished at sea while on his way to India.

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     Mr. Carswell, who was one of the principal supporters of the Elm Street Society, now became interested in the movement to establish a place of worship in Parkdale, then a western suburb of Toronto. As there were no street cars to Parkdale, distances demanded a meeting place for those who resided in the western part of the city. November 10th, 1883, seems to have been the date of the first New Church service in Parkdale. Mr. Charles Frankish, a brother-in-law of our friend, was also active in the movement, being Reeve of the community, and incidentally responsible for the beautiful avenues of elms and maples which still characterize this part of Toronto. At the 1884 meeting of the infant Society, Mr. J. B. McLachlan was Secretary, and the Rev. E. D. Daniels was in the chair. In April, 1886, the Minutes show, the Rev. J. S. David-the invited Pastor-presided for the organization, and the officers elected were: Mr. J. B. McLachlan, President; Mr. Charles Brown, Secretary; and Mr. R. B. Caldwell, Treasurer. In May, 1886, a social reception for the David family was held in the concert room of the Town Hall, and was attended by over sixty persons, many being of the Toronto Society, at that time presided over by Mr. T. Mower Martin. Another social that year was attended by over one hundred persons.

     Mr. Carswell himself purchased and held the lot which the new society favored for its future building when funds would be available. The society later bought a portion of this lot, but sold it at a considerable profit within a year, and the corner lot now occupied by the Olivet Church at Elm Grove and Melbourne avenues became the property of the Parkdale Society.

     In 1889, the Rev. J. S. David accepted a call to Minneapolis, and the Rev. E. S. Hyatt, a graduate of the Academy stationed at Erie, Pa., was invited to come to Parkdale. At this time the Academy was looked upon askance, because of its militant zeal for better order in the Church; and the cry of priestcraft was heard, because of its episcopal government. But numbers in the Canada Association were friendly to the Academy movement. The Rev. F. W. Tuerk, Pastor of the Berlin Society, was a member of the Academy, and the Rev. F. E. Waelchli had become his assistant. And a number in the Parkdale Society had also begun to lean toward Academy principles. Yet it was with some doubts and misgivings that the invitation had been extended to Mr. Hyatt.

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However, he accepted the call, and, on being asked "not to wear a robe," cheerfully consented, but made the sole stipulation that he should be free to teach the doctrine of the New Church. He at once commenced the thorough teaching work characteristic of the Academy, even to the holding of classes in the sacred languages of Revelation,-Hebrew, Greek and Latin,-which were fervently attended by Mr. Carswell. Indeed, he soon began to read the Writings in their original Latin, and his devotion to the Church increased steadily.

     Meanwhile, troubles were brewing in the Canada Association. The high standards of the Academy worked like a ferment, and many began to insist upon a greater loyalty to the Doctrines, a greater degree of distinctiveness in our association and life. History will certainly show how much needed these issues were. For the Church was in an apathetic state, flirting with Old Church methods, and gripped by the natural good of the world, to the detriment of any real appreciation of her mission. While the Academy champions were not infallible, and doubtless at times were a little too extreme in their applications, and too fervid in their oratory, yet they were fighting for a vital thing, for "the Ark of the Covenant," and compromise would have been fatal to the preservation of the feeling of the Divine Presence in the statements of the Writings of the New Church. The attitude of the General Convention toward all this, as shown in their rejection of the Report of the General Church of Pennsylvania, made a separation inevitable.

     The meeting of the Canada Association at Berlin in July, 1890, was occupied with spirited discussions of the "Academy" issues,-the authority of the Writings, the desirability of New Church day schools (one having already been established in Berlin), the dangers of lay-preaching, and our fraternizing in the worship of the Old Church. Mr. Carswell was not an eloquent speaker, but what he said at this meeting was sincere and forceful. He did not side at once with the Academy. But he was just. He had been impressed, he said, more and more pleasantly by the positive and constructive interpretations of the "Academy" Pastor in Parkdale. "We ought to be loyal to the doctrine," he said, "to shut out everything that is contrary to order, whether it is called 'Academy' or by any other name. If we are not in order, we want to get into order. The question is not what we want, but what the Writings say.

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If the Writings are the Word of God, it is far better for us to know it in this world than to have to learn it in the other. The truth is always good!"

     When Mr. Carswell came home to the Toronto Society, of which he was lay president, three stormy "closed" meetings were held, in which the delegates to the recent Association rehearsed their grievances against the dominant "Academy" tone of the meetings, and especially the failure of the Association to renew their missionary's lay-preaching license. Mr. Carswell felt constrained to resign his office. The rebellion against the Association went so far that a large group of the Toronto members formed a "General Church of Canada" of their own, which was to be free from Academy influence. Nor was the Parkdale Society unaffected. On January 8th, 1891, the lay president of the Society read a lengthy report, finding fault with the pastor for advocating Academy views, explaining his own action at the Association meeting, and his reasons for absenting himself from the Sunday services in Parkdale, condemning the introduction of wine at social meetings of the society, and setting forth his views on the Various questions of doctrine and practice that were then being agitated. The net result was the election of Mr. Carswell as the President of the Parkdale Society.

     During the year, the Rev. F. W. Tuerk, the Pastor of the Berlin Society and President of the Canada Association, suddenly reversed his policies and came into open opposition to the Rev. F. E. Waelchi, then in charge of the Berlin Society school; and this made it necessary for the believers in New Church education to separate from their beloved society. Those remaining resorted to the expedient of swelling the roll of the society by new signatures, contrary to the rule of the society; and the educationalists, who had hitherto constituted a large majority of the membership, found themselves unable to procure representation among the delegates to the forthcoming meeting of the Canada Association. This took place at Berlin, in September, 1891, and we find Mr. Carswell at once challenging the legality of the Berlin delegation.

     The record of the meetings of the Canada Association of 1899 and 1891 is printed in NEW CHURCH LIFE, October, 1890, and October, 1891, p. 193; also in the NEW CHURCH TIDINGS, October, 1891. Considering the underlying principles of doctrine that were at stake, the records are of dramatic interest to the present-day reader.

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Throughout the sessions, Mr. Carswell's attitude, with which we are here chiefly concerned, was decisively insistent upon fair play for the Academy, but was always kind and common-sense. When the meeting in 1891 had been deadlocked for two days, and it had been shown how badly the Berlin delegation would look if legally challenged, it fell to Mr. Carswell to suggest the compromise: the Book Room, for which he had worked and sacrificed should go to the Academy section, and the NEW CHURCH TIDINGS along with it. And so, about forty-six sympathizers of the Academy retired from the meeting, after shaking the Chairman's hand, leaving about twenty-seven people behind. To the departing members, the matter stood in the same light as it did to Mr. Carswell, when he said: "For my part, I am willing to lose all my old associations in the Church, in order to come nearer to the Academy. This seems to me to be a similar step to that which 1 took when I came out of the Old Church."

     Mr. Carswell did not escape censure from the Convention side. One speaker referred to him as "this man who has been ruling the Canada Association and the Toronto Society for years." Another, in a tirade against the "priest-ridden" state of the Parkdale Society, ironically asserted that Mr. Carswell "could not retire at night without obtaining the priest's permission"! And so his opponents could not agree as to whether he was a lion or a lamb. Certain it is that his vigorous personality, solid convictions, and generous support of every cause that seemed to him to contribute to the good of the Church, made him an important figure, and at times he unconsciously exerted more influence than he knew. But he never deliberately interfered with the freedom of the society, and accepted his defeats, when they came, gracefully and without grudge. His love of the Church was impersonal, and, we are convinced, spiritual.

     On October 7th, 1891, the Convention Liturgy was discarded by the Parkdale Society in favor of that used by the Academy, and the consent of the lay members was given for the use of a robe by the officiating priest, the first occasion being on Easter Day the following year. The withdrawal of the Society from the General Convention and its Canada Association took place at the same meeting.

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     Shortly after Mr. Hyatt came to Parkdale, in 1889, he had undertaken to conduct a school for three boys of high-school age in the society, and this was maintained for several years. At the special meeting of the society, held October 3d, 1892-123, Mr. Carswell made a speech in which, on the grounds of the doctrine of remains taught in the Writings, and because of the unsatisfactory nature of the schools of the world, he appealed for the establishment of a New Church elementary day school, to be supported by the society. Plans were at once made for the opening day of this school, so ardently desired by the Pastor. And when the school was actually inaugurated, with Miss Emeline Carswell as assistant teacher, and the Pastor had begun special classes in the Principles of Education with the parents and other adults, the spiritual and intellectual yearnings of Mr. Carswell had found a satisfactory outlet. His affections were aroused to the idea of New Church education especially as a missionary arm of the Church, and as a means of the salvation of the I children from the falsities and the evils so subtly rampant in the world. The true education, he knew, was not merely one which fitted them for social successes, but one which was able to maintain them against the temptations of later life.

     This attitude came out in the resolution standing on the Minutes of the quarterly meeting of October 5th, 1892: "It is moved by the Pastor; and seconded by Mr. Carswell, that the following declaration be adopted: The Parkdale Society of the New Jerusalem hereby declares its purpose to be, to promote the reception of the Doctrines of the New Church in the lives of its members, and the education of the children of the same for the church and heaven, according to those Doctrines. To this end it desires to be led and governed by no other laws than those of the Word of the Lord as revealed by Him in the Writings of the New Church, as given to the world through the instrumentality of Emanuel Swedenborg, and as administered according to the laws of Ecclesiastical Government there set forth. It therefore hereby abolishes its former Constitution, as consisting of man-made laws, in order that the Writings, the form of the Word in which the Lord has effected His New Advent, may alone take its place. Carried unanimously."

     The later history of Robert Carswell is tied up with that of the Parkdale Society, now called the Olivet Church, and with the General Church of the New Jerusalem, as a member of the Executive Committee, active supporter of its undertakings, and participant in its Assemblies.

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He was a constant attendant at the meetings of the Olivet Church, and a liberal supporter of its uses. When, in recent years, the move was initiated to reopen the school, which had been closed for several years, he declared his willingness to shoulder the whole financial burden for a few years, if necessary. And while the other members would not permit this, he remained to the last the principal subscriber. It was found, at his death, that he had made ample provision for the continuance of his customary support of the uses of the church.

     When over seventy years of age, Mr. Carswell suffered the fracture of both hips by falls on two occasions, forcing him to take to crutches, and later to the use of two canes; but despite this crippled condition, he came by auto to all church events, and seemed to retain the faculty of adapting himself to changing states in the world and in the church. When Dr. Acton's Introduction to the Study of the Hebrew Word was published, it was found to be dedicated to Robert Carswell, as the last and not least representative of those courageous Academy men and women who, in the early nineties, "undertook the study of the Hebrew from a conviction of its spiritual value." Picture Mr. Carswell, then, undaunted by his eighty-seven years, engaging Mr. Addison Lyman as a special tutor to revive the knowledge of Hebrew which age had rendered obscure!

     Jovial, and of a social temperament, he was always in his younger days a stimulus to the social life of the church; and even in his later years he was ever ready to suggest a game of cards, checkers or chess. He liked to have New Churchmen associated with him in his business, and several were always connected with the Carswell Company, Ltd., which counted among its staff-members the late Charles Brown, C. Raynor Brown, Francis Wilson and others, not to mention his daughter, Miss Edina Carswell, who assisted him toward the last with his affairs. It was characteristic of him, also, that he was always encouraging some form of missionary work, and he was ever looking for opportunities to sell or give away copies of the Writings. The great truths which he had been aroused to see I only after an aggressive believer had placed him upon the defensive, he would artlessly, and without much introduction, "spring" upon his astonished listener on first acquaintance.

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That whereof the heart is full, the truth speaketh. Robert Carswell announced his faith from the housetops. Even the biographical entry in the Cyclopedia of Canadian Biography (1886), which seems to have been written under his direction, is adroitly turned into a missionary article, contrasting the follies of Methodist belief with the glories of the New Jerusalem!

     Mr. Carswell's final illness, an attack of pneumonia, was only of a week's duration. But age finally conquered his splendid physique, and he passed into that spiritual world whose solemn mysteries he had so fervently studied. He was survived by his three daughters (his only son having died as a young man) and his wife, who had fully shared his interests in the Church and sympathetically sustained him in the many trials and struggles which life had brought him, and in his old age was constantly ministering to his comfort in such a way that it is difficult to recall Mr. Carswell without picturing her near him. Our memory of him is that of a staunch and persevering character of tested zeal, great-hearted, strong of conviction, and is associated with a grateful acknowledgment to the Lord, who selects and tunes his instruments to the changing needs of the Church.
WORD AS SEEN IN HEAVEN 1928

WORD AS SEEN IN HEAVEN              1928

     "How the Word of the Lord appears before the angels cannot be described, but some idea of it may be grasped by those who have seen kaleidoscopes in museums, in which are represented beautiful images from the things which are tossed round and round therein; for although the things that are tossed round and round therein appear destitute of form, series and order, but to be merely confused heaps of objects, still, when they are concentrated in the cylinder, they represent there a lovely image. So it is with the Word of the Lord, especially with the Prophetic Word of the Old Testament. In the literal sense, scarcely anything appears except something devoid of order; but when it is read by man, particularly by a little boy or girl, it becomes by degrees, as it ascends, more beautiful and delightful, and at length is presented before the Lord as the image of a man, in and by means of which heaven in its complex is represented, not such as it is, but such as the Lord wills it, to be, namely, that it may be a likeness of Himself. (A. C. 1871.)

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PROFANATION 1928

PROFANATION       VICTOR J. GLADISH       1928

     "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:15, 16.)

     The lukewarm are the profaners. In the most general sense of the word, all evil is profane, that is, in opposition to what is holy. But those who are neither hot nor cold,-the lukewarm,-are the special type and symbol of those who have thoroughly mingled good and evil. These are designated in the work on the Divine Providence as the seventh and worst degree of profaners, who have hopelessly and irrevocably commingled good With evil and truth with falsity in their "book of life" or internal memory, so that after death, for the sake of their very existence, they must come into a brutish, non-human, almost lifeless state. They live in a delirious fantasy, little specks appearing to them like giants or like multitudes of people; and a platter may appear to their eyes as large as the universe. These are they who are spoken of in the spiritual world as "that thing" or "it," for they are no longer distinctly men or women.

     The opening words of the text, "I know thy works," are significative of the Lord's Divine perception of the state of man's life. "I know" refers to the infinite wisdom of the Lord; the phrase, "thy works," means the acts of man from love, thus the love itself or the very life of man. "That thou art neither cold nor hot," is addressed to those who now acknowledge and now deny the Lord and the things of the church. They have admitted heaven and hell into the same mind, and in spirit they hit between the two, coming to rest in neither place. It is said, "I would thou wert cold or hot," because it is better to deny the holy things of the Word and the church from the heart than to commingle affirmation with denial. This fact is a matter of common perception. Everyone feels horror at the mixing of inherent opposites.

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There is an instinctive feeling of revulsion towards the traitor or double dealer. Even indecision, that external analogue of profanation, which dangles us helpless between two alternatives, even such an external mingling of opposites is instinctively feared. But we are involuntarily impressed and swayed by the man who is fixed in purpose, even though his purpose be unworthy.

     "So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." To be "spued out" is to be separated from the Lord, as impossible of assimilation in the body of the Gorand Man. But the unfortunates who are thus separated are neither in heaven nor in hell, but in the best refuge which the Divine mercy can provide for such perverted beings,-a tepid, non-human existence of delirious fantasy.

     In ultimates there is power. It is in the external correspondents of the internal state called profanation that we are impressed with the full horror and disgust which the commingling of holy and vile things should inspire in us. When we read that profaners are vomited forth from the Gorand Man, and when we read that interior profanation is represented by the "foul conjunctions " spoken of in the 18th chapter of Leviticus (18:6-24), then we have the terrible nature of this state brought vividly before us in a stark reality. One great use of passages in the Word where the literal sense is a naked picture of human sin and baseness, is to impress us with a loathing for the evils treated of in the internal sense, which would not of themselves so readily horrify the natural mind. There are passages in the Word which treat of evils so brutish and revolting that we are justified in using such parts with considerable circumspection. Nevertheless, just as the text of a sermon serves to embody and fix in the mind a host of teachings from the spiritual sense, so these bald accounts of man's grossness invest the interior evils with a repulsive external that is in keeping with their deadliness and enormity. It is from correspondence that lukewarm water excites vomiting, and that the mingling of heterogeneous and unmixable substances in the stomach causes nausea and acute distress; for it is similar with the profane conjunction of good and evil in the mind or spirit. "So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

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     In the Apocalypse Explained, a classification of profanations into five types is given, from the most grievous to the mildest; but the most complete and detailed division is given in the work on the Divine Providence, where seven classes of profaners are listed and analyzed as follows:

     The first kind of profanation is committed by those who make jests from the Word or about the Word and the holy things of the Church. It is very easy, especially for those who study the Word, to slip into a mild form of the first type of profanation. One who is in frequent contact with the Word may often be inclined to use quotations from it in an unworthy connection, for there is nothing more striking and universal of application than the letter of the Word. But this light and careless use of expressions from the Word is less or more grievous according to the nature of the language into which it is introduced, and especially according to the acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word with the man himself; and, therefore, this is naturally a more serious offense for New Churchmen than for those who have not the internal sense. Moreover, all that is said of this first type of profanation applies in an especial degree to the taking of the Lord's name in vain.

     The second class of profanation is represented by the disobedient servant in Luke 12:47: "The servant that knoweth his Lord's will, and doeth not His will, shall be beaten with many stripes." They are those who both understand and acknowledge Divine Truths, and yet live contrary to them. Here, as in all degrees of profanation, there is variation in seriousness according to the degree of consent in the will to those truths which are violated in life. When their acknowledgment of truth has been comparatively interior, the final lot of these is very like that of the worst class of profaners, for in the other world they lack the vital heat of love, either good or evil.

     The third type of profanation is committed by those who go beyond the second type to confirm and justify the gratification of their evil lusts by false reasonings from the letter of the Word.

     Hypocrites are the fourth class of profaners,-those who inwardly despise the Word, and confirm themselves against it, but counterfeit an affection for holy things. These are described by the Lord's words to the Pharisees, "Ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but within are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness." (Matt. 23:27)

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     Lucifer, whom legend has made a fallen angel, represents the fifth degree of profaners. These arrogate to themselves what is Divine, and seek domination by means of the Word and the Church. The whole of the 14th chapter of Isaiah treats of these Lucifers or Babylonians.

     The sixth class are those who acknowledge the Word, and yet deny the Divinity of the Lord. These are they who "blaspheme the Holy Spirit," for whom there is no forgiveness in this world or the next. (Matt. 12:32.) Some find it difficult to understand why the denial of the Divine Human is such a grievous and unforgivable sin, especially since we see many apparently upright Christians who drift into worship of the Father alone, and thus of an invisible God. The key to the understanding of this denial is the realization that it is born of supreme conceit and love of self. The actual and full rejection of the Lord as God-Man cannot be brought about in man merely by environment and teaching. Every man has an inmost perception of the truth that there is one God, and that He is Divine Man. The faculty of perceiving this can only be completely perverted by love of self and its conceit. Such denial is a matter of the will,-an unwillingness to bow in humility before a personal God.

     The seventh and final degree of profanation is the state of the "lukewarm," who have first acknowledged Divine Truths and lived according to them, and afterwards receded into a life of evil. Their future life is the most complete and dreadful example of utter frustration and spiritual death. They, among-all men, have most perverted the essential human qualities of freedom and rationality.

     "So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

     Members of the New Church are sometimes disturbed by the doctrine concerning profanation, fearing that they are in great danger of entering into that dreaded state. The New Churchman, having the explicit teaching of the Heavenly Doctrines, is indeed in the greatest possibilities of profanation, but he also has the best weapons wherewith to guard against it. Very, very few come into that state of complete profanation which is called the seventh degree. The Providence of the Lord is continually operating to guard lest men enter interiorly into the truths of faith, and at the same time into the good of life, unless it is foreseen that they will remain in them to the end of life.

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It is rather as the ultimate illustration of what is involved in all profanation that the picture of these skin-covered skeletons is useful to us. From this teaching we may be aware of the essential nature that is within milder types of profanation and to which we are all at times inclined.

     Our constant inclination to profane is evident even from casual reflection. At times it is anger or irritability that leads us to drag sacred things into the mire. Within such a state of mind is rebellion against Providence and hatred toward the Lord. But perhaps more insidious is the temptation to betray what we know to be holy, for the sake of the world's approval. This last leads toward the using of holy things to cloak a domination of others, and into the shades of profane fantasy.

     It behooves us, then, to be on our guard, lest we go the way of the world. For we live in a world full of profanations, though with few profaners in any deep sense of the Word. On every hand, things that should be holy are put to profane uses. The Lord and His Word are profanely regarded; the general attitude toward marriage is profane. But the people, for the most part, are blind sheep. They are ignorant of spiritual truth, and apathetic toward it. There is produced a hybrid and profane type of conduct, by reason of the remnants of genuine truth from the Word, mingled with an external and sensual life. None could portray these heterogeneous minglings more vividly than the agnostic and iconoclastic writers of the day. And this is their use. Even though there be no element of construction in their criticism, it serves to remove decayed structures, and to make room for the new; but it is like the office of birds who feed on carrion; for it is predicted in Matthew concerning the end of the First Christian Church that "wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together." (Matt. 24:28.)

     But neither the critics nor those they criticize have any clear knowledge of what is holy. They have blinded their eyes to the truths of the genuine sense of the Word, and care nothing for the spiritual truths of the Writings. This knowledge is placed amongst us of the New Church. What might be a sin of ignorance for those of the Old Church may be a serious profanation for us. If we "were blind, we would have no sin," but we can claim no such excuse.

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As a guard against any "spiritual recession" on our part,-any interior profanation,-the warning is given: "Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." (Rev. 3:11.) That is, hold fast to the holy things of the Word; nourish and increase your love for the Lord's Church, your love for truly conjugial marriage, your love of unselfish use to the neighbor! The corresponding truth on the civil plane is well expressed in the statement, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." This never-ceasing effort, the man of the Church will gladly and willingly give as the price of that greater freedom,-the regenerate life. For the Lord has said: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life" (Rev. 2:10); and again, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved." (Matt. 24:13.) Amen.

     Lessons: Isaiah 14:12-32Revelation 3:1-16. A. C. 9188 1-3.
FALLEN STONES 1928

FALLEN STONES       Rev. R. J. TILSON       1928

     (Delivered at a meeting of the New Church Club, London, December 9th, 1927.)

     A Divinely telling and suggestive statement occurs in I Samuel 16:7, in these words: "Not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." Or, as a more literal translation, making more evident the spiritual sense within the words: "Not as man seeth; for man looketh to the eyes, but the Lord looketh to the heart." The increased farce of this more literal translation will be seen as we proceed with the consideration of the subject before us, which is that of "Fallen Stones," in reference to the decaying process now going on, in increased measure, in the structure of the First Christian Church, at this time of its consummation.

     "The Lord seeth not as man seeth." Surely this was so when the disciples "came to Him for to shew Him the buildings of the temple" in Jerusalem. (Matt. 24:1.) Looking to the "outward appearance," the disciples called attention to the magnificence of the earthly structure. They say: "Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings!"

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It was indeed an imposing building, standing on some thirty-five acres, rebuilt by Herod, and remaining throughout the Lord's life upon earth in the assumed human. Longer and higher than the Minster at York, more spacious than the Abbey at Westminster, with cloisters some 600 feet long; its eastern front covered with plates of gold, its stones being of white marble some measuring twenty to forty feet, and some weighing a hundred tons!

     Such was the building to which the disciples drew the Lord's attention. To them the appearance was magnificent and grand. To Him it would appear as but a vanishing shadow, the symbol of a passing age, the age of a Church "in name only." (T. C. R. 668.) The shadow would soon vanish; for in the year 70, Titus, the Roman General, caused that temple to be utterly destroyed.

     The Lord knew well what would befall that building, and how soon its destruction would be accomplished. For He knew "the heart" of things; the disciples saw but the "eyes"-the appearance. And, therefore, to them His words must have come with great strangeness, when He said: "Seest thou these buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." (Mark 13:2.)

     How far-reaching was that Divine vision which, while He looked upon that great and wondrous group of buildings, saw that which is only now being accomplished, and which may go on for centuries to come! To Him that temple represented the First Christian Church, which was the outcome of His First Advent. But the prophecy He then made would never be properly understood until He came again at the end of the age, in all the glory of the spiritual sense of His Divine Word. It is our privilege, having been called into the Crowning Church of the Lord, to understand these words of the Lord, and to enter intellectually into the realization of them. For the stones of the First Christian Church are tumbling down all around us, and the time is hastening on when there shall not be left "one stone upon another."

     In the Apocalypse Revealed, in connection with the words we have quoted, it is written: "The temple here signifies the Church at this day, and its dissolution, even to there being 'not on stone left upon 'another,' which signifies the end of this Church, in that no truth whatever would be left; for when the disciples spoke to the Lord respecting the temple, He foretold the successive states of this Church to its end, or the consummation of the age; and the consummation of the age means its last period, which is at this day.

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This was represented by the temple being utterly destroyed." (A. R. 191.) Now "at this day" is not to be limited to the lifetime of the human instrument through whom the Divine Doctrines of the New Jerusalem were given. By "at this day" is meant as-long as the state described shall last; for the internal of time, thus of a day, is state; and whilst the consummation of the First Christian Church shall last, the "at this day" will apply to that time. "At this day," then, we are living within the time and state of the consummation of the First Christian Church. Do we realize this? Are we reading rightly the signs of the times, or are we trying to read them as we would wish them to be, despite the evidence of facts and the teachings of true religion? These are serious questions, and need facing.

     And here let me remind you of the very last work projected by the instrument of the Lord at His Second Advent, but not published by him, viz., The Consummation of the Age, the Lord's Second Coming, and the New Church, which was undoubtedly part of the Coronis or Appendix to the True Christian Religion. In the fourth division of that work, we read: "An invitation to the New Church, made to the whole Christian World, and an exhortation that they should readily receive the Lord. . . . All the points belonging to the doctrine of the New Church are explained in their order; likewise those belonging to the old orthodoxy." Then follows a long list under the heading: "The Abomination of Desolation, the Consummation of the Age, and the Fulness of Time." The list starts with:

     2. "There is no knowledge of God, except what is erroneous, false, or altogether none; there is no knowledge whatever of Omnipotence.

     3. No knowledge of the Lord.

     4. No knowledge of the Divine Human, except an historical one.

     5. No knowledge of the Holy Spirit.

     6. Hence no knowledge of the Divine Trinity.

     7. No knowledge of the Holiness of the Word.

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     The list continues its startling statements until it reaches number 21 which reads: "There is no doctrine of Theology; thus the consummation is such that no truth remains. For this cause the Christian Religion is torn into so many heresies."

     No. 23 reads: "The whole Word is not anything."

     No. 24 adds: "It follows that there is no religion, no church, no worship, no ministry."

     And No. 26 says: "It follows that, because in that church there does not remain a grain of truth, it is the abomination of desolation."
Be it remembered that there are no less than four such lists in this portion of the Coronis.

     Let the question now be asked, in all sincerity and fraternal affection, "Believest thou this?" Of course, these lists are directed to the rational mind of man. For are they not part of "An Invitation to the New Church"? Thus, when it is said that, because of the "abomination of desolation," "there is no religion, no church, no worship, no ministry," it very evidently means none such as is worthy of the names there mentioned. Do you stand by that assertion of the Revelation from the Lord out of heaven?

     No man, either priest nor layman, has any right to demand an answer to such a searching question. But every professing New Church man and woman needs to answer it for himself or herself before the Lord. For in the Lord's mercy they have been called into the knowledge, greater or less, of the Divine Truths of the New Jerusalem, and that call brings with it a great responsibility-a responsibility so great that every man and woman should see to it that history is not repeating itself, by again making true those fateful words of the Lord, as recorded in John: " He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." (John 1:11.)

     Be it said again that the lists containing these startling assertions are to be found in the Coronis-the Crown,-the Crown-of the True Christian Religion. Does it not follow that it behooves every loyal and honest New Churchman to know, to acknowledge, and to uphold firmly the Truths-all the Truths-of that Revelation, which he professes to accept, which Revelation declares Itself to be "The Advent of the Lord"? Emphasis has been laid on all the Truths of that Revelation-that is, all that any one mind could comprehend; for there has ever been a temptation during the history of the outward organization of the New Church to withhold some of the Truths revealed, from the fear that they might offend.

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The Lord has revealed nothing which should not be known; and all He has revealed ought to be proclaimed, for He knew best when to reveal, what to reveal, and how to reveal.

     The siren voice, arising from mental lethargy, or, it may be from a sense of self-righteousness, may suggest that it is best to let the consummated Church alone, and to get on only with the beauty of the Church that is new. But that is not the Lord's way. Remember the teaching of "The Invitation to the New Church" already quoted, wherein it is stated that "all the points belonging to the Doctrine of the New Church are to be explained in their order; likewise those belonging to the old orthodoxy." Had the Lord intended that His disciples at His Second Advent should leave the "old orthodoxy" alone, and confine their attention wholly to the new, He would never have revealed, through His chosen instrument, A Brief Exposition of the Doctrine of the New Church, signified by the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse, wherein, inter alia, there are given the "Disagreements between the dogmas of the present-day Church and those of the New Church in XXV articles. A like statement might be made of several others of the Writings of the Church.

     Moreover, the very law of regeneration demands that man should know, or be cognizant of, the false as well as the true. Before man can do that which is truly good, he must first shun evil. The law is: "Cease to do evil, learn to do well." (Isaiah 1:16, 17.) So, too, before he can really know and understand what is true, he must get rid of the false which is sure to enter his mind as the form of the evil to which he is inclined by birth. Only by this means can that which is true be cemented in the mind. The truth of this statement is emphasized by the following: "When children have become adults in heaven, that they may not have false ideas about themselves, that the good in them is from themselves, and not from the Lord, they are now and then let down into the evils which they inherited, and are left in them until they realize, acknowledge, and believe the truth of the matter." (H. H. 342.) What is good and right to be done in heaven must be equally good, right, and useful upon earth. Moreover, those who are called into the Church of the Lord at His Second Advent, whether young or old, cannot be kept in community glass cases or community glass houses, freed from contact with the false and the evil.

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Could they be so segregated, the devil would be sure to claim them for his own. For as their own nature is evil, it is absolutely necessary that both the evil and the false be seen; for only by being seen can their true nature be known; and unless it be known, it cannot be rejected, but remains within as a putrefying sore. The Lord's care and love for His disciples led Him to say: "I pray, not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil." (John
17:15.)

     Hence, then, it is a duty incumbent upon every New Churchman to find out and carefully observe the "disagreement between the dogmas of the present-day Church and those of the New Church."

     May it not be that the present indifference to the study of the Divine. Truths of the Lord's New Church, and the reluctance to read the Writings, arise from the fact that the Church is less militant today than it was in the days of yore, well-remembered by some now present. Men no longer urge, even rightly urge, their fellow men to become acquainted with the spiritual treasures stored in the Writings. Parents do not keep them before the minds of their children, nor even encourage the reading of the Letter of the Word, as our forefathers did. Why? Evil and falsity abound on every hand, and in far more subtle forms than in the past. The falsities in the various sects of the Old Church are far more subtle and far more deeply seated than in the days of old. The more obvious and foolish falsities of the past have been, or are being, given up, but their place is not being taken by the truths of the New Dispensation. Make no mistake about that. It by no means follows that, because the old creeds are discarded, the new and true creed will be established. It generally follows that there is no creed held, other than to do and believe whatever one pleases, or whatever suits the passing phase of thought or feeling.

     It is suggested that many may be living better than their creeds teach, or that they are better without any definite creed, if that be possible? In support of some such fallacious suggestion as this, some have thought that they find a favoring statement in No. 233 of the Apocalypse Explained, wherein it is written: "It is, however, to be observed that there are very few who thus live from the doctrine (of faith alone), although it is believed by the preachers that all who hear their preachings are under their influence; for it is of the Divine Providence that there are but very few such."

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But surely it would be wrong, from this passage, to make the inference that all those who do not hear the preachers are such as live according to the Commandments, and find salvation. Is it not a fact that, with the marvelous developments of science, with greater liberty of thought, not to say with greater license, and with the wonderful improvements in the externals of natural existence, there comes an increased inclination to reject the old forms of thought, even to the rejection of the Bible itself, without any great increase of disposition to accept the truths of the New Dispensation? True it is that the old forms of faith are being discarded-widely discarded-even by the "preachers." But it is not true that the new forms of a true and living faith, based upon Divine Revelation, are being taken in their place.

     II.

     And here it may be useful to revert for a moment to the literal translation of the passage from I Samuel 16:71 with which this paper opened: "Not as man seeth; for man looketh to the eye, but the Lord looketh to the heart." There is no doubt that it is generally thought and taught that the commencement of the decline of the First Christian Church was primarily due to the acceptance of falsities, and to the perversion and loss of truth. Not so. That is a conclusion reached by looking to "the eyes," the "appearance" only; in other words, to the understanding only, ignoring the will, "the heart" which the Lord first sees and regards. The cause and beginning of the vastation of the Old Church ("Ecclesia Vetus," A. C. 4423) was the turning from the lose of the Lord and of the neighbor to the loves of self and the world. (T. C. R. 632-6) Not merely or chiefly by the turning of "the eyes," but primarily by the turning of "the heart," did the Old Church commence her downward career. Falsity alone does not condemn. It may be held in the innocence of ignorance. It is evil which damns, perverts, destroys, and brings to the consummation of devastation.

     True indeed it is that the First Christian Church was infested with falsities from its very beginning. But it is written: "Heresies themselves do not condemn men, but an evil life." (S. S. 92.)

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Therefore, that which started the vastation of the Old Church was primarily the corruption of the heart of man by self-love, and this produced falsity to cover, conceal, and yet to express its shame and degradation. And from this fact, that man "looketh to the eyes," whilst the Lord "looketh to the heart," shall not the conclusion be maintained that the true state of the Church can only be known to the Lord, and not to man, and that, therefore, man's judgment from externals can never be relied upon as to the state of the Christian World?

     This surely is the teaching where it is written: "The quality of the Lord's Church in the countries of the earth cannot be seen by any man so long as he lives in the world; still less how the Church, in the process of time, has turned away from good to evil. The reason is, that man while living in the world is in externals, and sees only the things which lie before his natural man." (L. J. 41. See also A. C. 4423.) Indeed, the too much neglected truth that the Lord alone knows the true state of the Church, and that man can only correctly learn it from Revelation, is most interestingly shown in the fact that it was not the Jews, not the Rabbis, the Pharisees, nor the Sadducees, but the disciples who showed the Lord the temple and called attention to its majestic "stones and buildings." For the disciples represent the truths of the Word, and the Lord explores the state of the Church, and reveals its condition, only by means of the truths of Revelation-His spiritual disciples. "Not as man seeth; for man looketh to the eyes, but the Lord looketh to the heart."

     Now, having our attention called to the state of the Christian world today, by the teachings of the opened Word, what is it that we find as the result of our investations? What else can we see but that the stones of truth, first delivered to the saints at the First Advent, are, one by one, falling down, leaving no consistency of doctrine and no continuity of faith.

     Yesterday-comparatively speaking, for it was twenty years ago-it was in the region of Nonconformity that the tumbling down of the stones of truth was most noticeable. The publication of The New Theology by a then leading Congregational minister, who has since found refuge in the ranks of the clergy of the Established Church (Rev. K. J. Campbell, 1907), revealed the disintegration which had proceeded very far, so far, indeed that about that time there appeared in the columns of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY magazine an article from Dr. Percival who wrote as follows, "Protestantism, as a system of positive religious belief, is dying out, so that its professors are, for the most part, able to continue in its ministry only by some device of casuistry, which in any other matter would be considered by themselves, as it is in this case by almost everyone except themselves, dishonest and dishonorable." (NEW CHURCH MAGAZINE, Oct., 1899; also NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1899, p. 174)

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     At that time we had such expressions as this:

     "God is all. He is the universe, and infinitely more, but it is only as we read Him in the universe that we can know anything about Him." (New Theology, p. 25.)

     "In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has ever since been returning the compliment by creating God in his." (Ibid.)

     "My God is my deeper self, and yours too." (P. 35)

     "Jesus was God, and so are we." (P. 94.)

     "The true seat of authority is within, not without the human soul. (P. 177.)

     "To regard it (the Bible) as a sort of official document written by the finger of God, of equal authority in every part, and containing a full and complete statement of the propositions we must accept in order to make sure of salvation, is hampering and belittling to the soul. God inspires men, not books, and He will go on inspiring men to the end of time, whether they write books or not." (P. 201.)

     "Never mind what the Bible says about this or that, if you are in search for Truth, but trust the voice of God within you. . . . If God is not there, you will not find Him in the Bible or anywhere else." (P. 202.)

     All this is recalled to mind that there may be an opportunity for comparing it with what is now raging within the ranks of the so-called "Established Church." Established wherein By whom? Not on the Rock upon which the Lord promised to build His Church. What do the present controversies between bishops, canons and clergy, together with many laymen of the first ranks of society, import?

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As you read or hear them, do you not see the stones of truth, now made falsities, falling down in almost endless number, and with a confusing and confounding rattling?

     Again let the NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER magazine be heard, and from the issue of November, 1927. In a most excellent article on "The Case Against Evolution," we meet with the following: "One might well think the human race in a curious condition, when a bishop, in a cathedral, can preach a sermon which is absolutely inconsistent with the fundamentals of the creed of his church. Strange things have in the past been done in the name of religion, but none stranger than this." (P. 595)

     In the next article, also a most able one, on "The Nation and the Prayer Book," the same journal asserts that "henceforth the Church shall speak officially with two discordant voices." It also calls attention to the fact that "belief in the canonical Scriptures is no longer required of candidates for ordination, and offers as a reason the opinion of one of the bishops that "the old question, Do you unfeignedly believe all the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments? puts a very severe strain on the consciences of many." Thus, to placate the spurious consciences of many, the binding authority of the Scriptures must be sacrificed.

     III.

     But let us take one or two samples of the "Fallen Stones" which have been dissevered from the once beautiful temple. The present-day wreckers of the temple of simple truth, the First Christian Church, are found in two opposing camps,-the Fundamentalists and the Modernists. The Fundamentalists are still floundering in the obscurity of an impossible literalism, and of a blind and unquestioning faith. The Modernists are strutting about, priding themselves upon the splendor of their garments of pseudo-science, and exhibiting a courage worthy of better things. Their authority is self-intelligence; for they spurn the belief in an infallible Book; and, imagining that they see God everywhere, as a Divine immanence, find Him nowhere in a concrete and definite form.

     First, concerning God.

     Divine Revelation teaches that "the idea of God enters into all things of the church, of religion, and of worship. . . . If this, therefore, be false, all things which follow derive from the beginning from whence they flow that they are false or falsified." (B. E. 40; D. L. W. 13.)

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     But, says the Bishop of Winchester: "The idea of God cuts no ice in these days." (Article in DAILY MAIL, Oct. 18, I927.) And he gives as the reason for this "that the idea itself is so flimsy, so uninformed, so futile." His own solution of the difficulty is contained in the sentence, "The idea of God is love." Wherever one seeks to find some definite idea of God in the teachings of the Modernists, one fails to find anything intellectually tangible, and never can one find that God is thought of as being in the Human Form. Our chairman this evening had the experience a short time ago of finding that a circle of ministers considered it worth while to debate the question: "May God be only the projection of the thoughts of men?" Most certain it is that Modernists do not believe that Jesus Christ is God, and the only God, as witness the statement of the Bishop of Birmingham in his latest book, entitled Should Such a Faith Offend? In speaking of the Lord, he says: "He apparently refused to admit that He was good as God is good." And, again, in reference to the Lord, the Bishop speaks of "His loyalty to God." Truly, in the so-called Christian World today, "there is no knowledge of God except what is erroneous, false, or altogether none."

     Second, concerning the Word.

     The verbal inspiration of the Word is practically given up by all the Churches. Denying the fall of man as a fact, in the book just referred to, the Bishop writes: "When the writers of Genesis wanted to explain the origin of sin, they took the folklore of the Euphrates valley, whence Abraham came, purified it of its polytheism and grossness, and gave us the familiar story." (P. 15.) Again, making the astounding prophecy that "we may even expect that some day, in the laboratory, the man of science will produce living from non-living matter," and also making the groundless assertion that "man is descended from the lower animals" (p. 4), the Bishop exclaims: "Religion is too important for us to base it upon, or to join it to, any theories of the nature of the universe that are doubtful or untrue, even though they are to be found in the Book of Genesis." (Ibid.) Again, he speaks of "the cursing Psalms" as; "obviously un-Christian." Dismissing the idea of "the infallibility" of the Scriptures, he exclaims: "Let us thank God that men of science have forced us to get a more complete, if more difficult, type of understanding of the value of the Bible." (P. 6)

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And then, as the high-priest of the Theory of Evolution, he blazes forth, in what he is pleased to call "a wider vista," and declares that "from some fundamental stuff in the universe the electrons arose. From them came matter. From matter, life emerged. With life, mind showed itself. From mind, the spiritual consciousness of humanity is developing." (P. 8)

     There you have it! For this great scheme of evolution is followed by the statement, equally untrue: "Science describes the process by which man has come into being." (Ibid.) Is not the writer in the NINETEENTH CENTURY, before quoted, justified in saying: "If traditionalism sees God everywhere, in creation, in miracle, in special providences, even 'in the fall of a sparrow,' Modernism finds natural law everywhere. It prefers Evolution to Creation. It questions the miraculous even in the life of Christ." (P. 604.)

     So far the Bishop, now looming so large in the eyes of the public. After him comes the Dean, who, in preaching recently to the Liberal Evangelical Congress at Birmingham, "was explaining that Jesus Christ relied on the spoken word for His message," and continued by saying: "Jesus wrote, and writes on the human heart. If our Lord had meant to found a book religion, He would surely have written or dictated the books Himself. He would not have been content to leave His Gospel to float for many years on the treacherous currents of human memory, and then to be mixed up with all manner of childish legends." (Dean Inge.)

     IV.

     Men and brethren, such are samples of the teachings of the various sects of the First Christian Church at this day. They could be greatly extended, embracing all the principal doctrines of the Church, its sacraments and worship. But to what end? Sufficient surely has been adduced to show that the contention with which this paper "opened, namely, that we are living in the realization of the Lord's statement: " There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down."

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     It was my desire to deal with the questions of the origin of life; Creation or Evolution; also with the Sacraments of the Church, especially that of the Holy Supper; and thus to show how absolutely the Stones of Divine Truth, as revealed by the Lord, have been thrown down by the self-intelligence of men; but time and opportunity have not been forthcoming.

     After what we have last adduced, is it not with fear and trembling that one reads this forceful passage of the True Christian Religion:

     "Those in Christendom have no faith who reject the Lord and the Word, although they live morally, and speak, teach, and write rationally, even about faith. This follows as a conclusion from all that precedes; for it has been shown that the true and only faith is faith in the Lord and from Him; that which is not faith in Him and from Him is not spiritual faith, but natural faith; and merely natural faith has not the essence of faith in it. Moreover, faith is derived from the Word, and can have no other source, because the Word is from the Lord, and consequently the Lord Himself is in the Word; therefore He says that He is the Word (John 1:1, 2.) Hence it follows that those who reject the Word reject the Lord also, because these cohere as one; and further, that those who reject the Lord or the Word reject also the Church, which exists from the Lord by means of the Word; and again, that those who reject the Church are outside of heaven, because the Church introduces to heaven; and those who are outside of heaven are among the damned, and have no faith. That those who reject the Lord and the Word have no faith, although their lives are moral, and they speak, teach, and write rationally about faith, is because their moral life is not spiritual, but natural, and their rational mind is not spiritual, but natural; and merely natural morality and rationality are, in themselves, dead; consequently, as dead men they have no faith. The merely natural man, who as to faith is dead, can indeed talk and teach about faith, charity, and God, but not from faith, charity and God. That they alone have faith who believe in the Lord, and that others have not, is evident from the following passages: 'He that believeth in the Son is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. (John 3:18.) 'He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.' (3:36.)

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And to the Jews, Except ye believe that I am, ye shall die in your sins.' (8:24.) David therefore says, 'I will declare the decree; Jehovah hath said, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way. Blessed are all those that put their trust in Him.' (Ps. 11:7, 12.) That in the consummation of the age, which is the last time of the Church, there will be no faith, because no faith in the Lord as the Son of God, the God of heaven and earth, and one with the Father, the Lord foretold where He says in the Evangelist, `There shall be the abomination of desolation, and affliction, such as was not since the beginning of the world, and never shall be; and the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven.' (Matt. 24:15, 21, 29.) And in the Revelation, 'Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.' (20:7,8.) As the Lord foresaw this would be the case, He also said: Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?' (Luke 18:8.) " (T. C. R. 384.)

     In reading this passage, with all its terrible bearings, we make no personal application whatever. Judgments belong to the Lord. Again, and especially in this matter, "Not as man seeth; for man looketh to the eyes, but the Lord looketh to the heart." The lesson to us, one and all, arising from this brief study, surely is: Beware of the loves of self and the world; for they are wont to lead astray. They are the ever-threatening curse of mankind. Let us look to the "eyes" of our understanding, that all the principles we embrace may stand squarely, as stones well fitting in the edifice of the Lord's Church within; and let us pray:

"Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my thoughts;
And see if there be any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalm 139:23, 24.)

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ON TEMPTATIONS 1928

ON TEMPTATIONS       J. S. PRYKE       1928

     (A Paper read at a meeting of the Theological and Philosophical Society, London, December, 1927.)

     If, reversing conventional order, we were to offer a conclusion at the beginning of our paper, it would be: That, of all the windows lighting the temple of the New Jerusalem, the one devoted to the doctrine of temptations is the most translucent. True it is that not all its beauties are for the casual glance; but upon him who is willing to sit before it in quiet meditation and reverent study, its light will abundantly shine,-a light at once pellucid, illustrative and vivifying. Perhaps we may approach in weariness, distress or discouragement, or we may be rebellious and waning; if so, early in our contemplation there will be experienced a sense of stillness, of protection and support; but above all, there will be a consciousness of human dual personality. The light from that window will reveal in a clarity never before known the import of man's two natures,-the natural and the spiritual, their perpetual striving for mastery, the held and manner of conflict, and the appointed means for the reception of succor and the ensuing peace.

     For, put quite shortly, the doctrine of temptations is the revealed story of human frailty and Divine healing. It is, unflattering though it be to native conceit, the Odyssey of man's wanderings from hell to heaven-that is, if he permits himself to be led there ultimately. Speaking reverentially, and in becoming humility, we may also say that the path is to be seen mapped out in the story of our Lord's own combats and victories, because the truth is-precious above compare-that the Lord's glorification is the pattern of man's regeneration, and there can be no regeneration apart from temptation. In the story may be traced, step by step, our severance from spiritual and often from natural societies which would impede our progress and our association with others who will serve to further it, with the important distinction never to be obscured that whereas the Lord fought from His own power, it is He who fights for us, and not we ourselves in the smallest degree.

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     Temptations, then, are blessings but thinly veiled; and although the timid natural may petition to be kept from them, the spiritually-minded can welcome them because of their intrinsic mercy, the while shaking off inertia and self-complacency, and asking what truly shall it profit if the whole world be gained, and in the end the soul be lost.

     It is well to repeat that, accompanied as they are by distress, anxiety, and even despair, temptations intrinsically are nothing more than the disclosure of human need and Divine assistance, now for the first time made known in such wise that, according to man's quality, he can co-operate with head as well as with heart in his own regeneration. It is not to be questioned that knowledge is the first of amelioration; and while to each dispensation were given truths adequate for its salvation, to those alone who are capable of becoming members of the New Church has it been told that over the main portal of the Church Nunc Licet is engraved. It is a fact of the utmost significance. Those who pass through that gate can only do so as a consequence of bringing affection and intelligence into right relation according to the measure of their receptivity. And however penetrating research into this doctrine may be, it will always come back to three fundamentals: namely, we have to learn what we were intended to be; we have to recognize what in fact we are; and we must accept outside help if ever the present relation of these two is to be reversed. The whole of the Revelation to the New Church, the totality of 170 years' teaching and effort, so far as these have been responsive to that Revelation, is defined by these three essentials, plus what was accomplished by redemption, which must always remain peculiarly the Lord's.

     Temptations, then, if you will so have it, are but set examinations designed to test the standard of our spiritual learning and the extent of our application; or, in other words, the refining of our individual metal-gold, silver, or copper-before this is minted into the currency of eternal life. In: view of what is taught concerning temptations, if we keep these general ideas before us, it will no doubt help to make the teaching clear.

     Temptations are as varied in their character as men are diverse in their quality; that is to say, no two are precisely alike, though the principal features of all are similar.

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Only what is loved can be the subject of attack, and the assault always comes from a lower plane. The quality of the temptation is determined by the quality of the love assailed, whether that love is pointing to something natural or something spiritual; and to be effective, the conflict must go on to the point of despair, when the end seems lost.

     There is food for much thought in the statement that at this day the state of mankind is such that there can be but little temptation upon the spiritual plane, what is so called being, in fact, mere anxiety as to the safety of some temporal object. Really there need never be any concern as to the well-being of the Lord's Church, but there is ground for much distress as to our own place in it. Has this a selfish sound? It is not selfish in reality, since we can only love our neighbor as we obey our God; and it has been well said that the truest exercise of charity is to take care that no evil finds a lodgment in the world through our agency. Absorbed, as the present age is, in mundane pursuits which are as dear as very life, it is not difficult for us to realize that the natural man desires above all things to avoid temptation, to leave matters hidden and undisturbed; while the spiritual man, knowing from doctrine that, if there is to be life and happiness and real use, there must be combat, and knowing also that God fights for him, meets the day of trial with confidence and hope.

     Regarded spiritually, the time of temptation is the time when man is being separated from some society which can no longer serve him, and which he can no longer serve, and led to another in which mutual uses can be active. In this process, the Lord, the man, angels and evil spirits are engaged. Pain comes by the latter striving to thwart the man's progress, and by the man's having to leave behind as the price of escape something which had hitherto been of his life. This can only effectively be when man recognizes the evil as in reality a sin against God. Anything short of that leads to compromise, a postponement, if not defeat. As we conceive it, this is the meaning of the teaching that evil is to be shunned as sin against God. There is no release from evil until its opposition to Divine law is seen. As said, this is accompanied by distress, as it was preceded by the delight of new knowledge, and is followed by the peace which passeth all previous understanding.

     To quote from the True Christian Religion, there are three things essential to the establishment of the church in man, namely, the Lord, faith and charity.

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Faith, we have to acquire by study; charity, we have to cultivate by the exercise of faith, slowly and painfully at first, but afterwards, as the habit is formed, more quickly and with delight; temptation combats are the means, and the Lord is the first and last of the work. Nor must the mind linger too persistently in the thought of trial; darkness is succeeded by dawn; in the appearance we are forsaken, but the reality is that, even in the moment of direst need, those who are for us are more than those who are against us; angels minister, and the Lord is in fact more intimately present. Each temptation period is followed by states of rest and joy, and preparation for the next step forward. We dwell to this extent upon what may be called the more human aspect of the subject because it is of great importance that man's intelligent reaction in the work of regeneration by the agency of temptations should be kept before the mind. And all the doctrine of the church has been revealed to this end.

     There is an element of pathos in the conception of God as an offended Being who waits to mete out punishment for every least slip, and who can only be placated by sacrifice; when, as we now know, He is very Love Itself, without variableness or shadow of turning, and acts with infinite understanding of our necessities. But, although this description of an outraged God may call a smile to the lips, it is not always easy to keep the image of the true God before the eyes. Not in a single day, nor indeed in many years, can we release ourselves from the last trace of hereditary fallacy; but unless we do see God in the verity of His Revelation, we but make an idol,-the work of our hands. There is no escape, unless it be to fall into the slough of apathy or ignorance.

     II.

     Let us now inquire more directly of the doctrine.

     Truth, we learn, is the first thing of combat, since the knowledge of what is false and evil is acquired from truth, and there are no combats before man is initiated into the science of knowledges of truth and good. (A. C. 1685.) This declares in one word how the church is established in general, and how man becomes a particular unit of it.

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     And if we may properly regard Swedenborg as the first member of the New Church, we may usefully recall his own personal experience. He says, that to remove instantaneously the lusts and falsities of which the natural m, is composed would be to destroy the whole man, and, therefore, that evil spirits are permitted to continue with him for some time so as to excite his lusts, which by innumerable modes may be so much weakened as to be inclined by the Lord to good. Owing to the intense hatred which prevails in the world of spirits against all things relating to love and faith towards the Lord, man would perish unless he were defended by the Lord every single moment. The certainty of this is placed beyond doubt, since Swedenborg, while yet in bodily life, was encompassed by thousands of evil spirits who were allowed to spit forth their venom and infest him by all possible methods, yet without being able to hurt a single hair of his head, so secure was he under the Lord's protection.

     The experience of many years thoroughly instructed Swedenborg concerning the spiritual warfare which the regenerate must needs undergo in order to attain the felicity of eternal life. (A. C. 59) If this lays bare man's desperate condition, it no less shows God's protecting arm, and gives the promise of final triumph; for He ever turns the evil of temptation into good. Moreover, the verity in the letter of the Word, that unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit (John 12:24), is here attested to in man's individual growth; for unless something of the external man dies, something of the natural man be given up, which is the case in states of trial and misfortune, goods and truths cannot come forth.

     Those who are called "dead men" are seldom sensible of the misery attending temptations. Being spiritually dead, they would, if exposed to spiritual warfare, sink under it and plunge themselves more deeply into what is infernal. In humility and the absence of conceit, then, may we welcome the approach of temptation as the pledge of salvation. It is abundantly worth while to pass through these times of obscurity, grief and despair; so that they may give way to the brightness beyond. But there must first be preparation by instruction in the nature of good and truth.

     Another manifestation of the intrinsic mercifulness of temptations is found in the thought that the bitter things often spoken while man is in them are not attended to by the angels, such words and thoughts being expressive of despair, and so not hurtful.

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For one has only a limited power of resistance, and when that limit is reached, and he inclines to sink, then-let us rejoice to know!-he is raised by the Lord, and restored to states of hope, consolation, and satisfaction. Again, what a contrast between the natural and spiritual minds! The former would regard these bitter utterances as so much more evil to be expiated by additional punishment, whilst the latter is instructed that such evils are, as it were, merely incidental, and form no real part of the proprium which is being purified. A consideration of this subject brings out, too, the stupendous importance of the gift of life. Under enlightenment we must cease to regard ourselves as isolated atoms of humanity, or even as links in the human chain. Although, in ourselves, less than nothing, we yet are nothing less than recipients of influences from two worlds. The eternal purpose of fashioning man to be an instrument of Divine intentions can only be achieved in the measure of man's spiritual quality, which is tested, refined and confirmed by passing through the crucible of spiritual trial.

     III.

     All temptations, we learn, are of three qualities, natural, spiritual and celestial, with the same general characteristics appertaining to each. That is to say, there is assault from below of something held dear; there is resistance along the line of appropriate truth; there is a perception, now dull, now clear, that the Lord alone fights; and there is, if man is not to go down, the complete willingness to sustain the struggle in that knowledge. In-appearance, man is accomplishing everything; the reality is, and it is all-sufficient, that he can do little beyond desiring the overthrow of evil. There is no taint of fatalism in this. On the contrary, it is the extreme of human struggling.

     The truth of the matter is, that temptations essentially are fights between evil spirits, on the one hand, who find their foothold in man's weaknesses, and good spirits and angels, on the other, who operate by means of his goods and truths, and behind whom the Lord stands. The assaulters are able to excite all man's perverse doings; indeed, the essential delight of their lives is to do so.

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They arouse the remembrance of all the evils and falsities which he has ever done or thought, even from infancy, and this they do with such subtlety that man fails to perceive that he is being made an object of wicked influx, and so falls into the error of appropriating the evils to himself.

     When the particular temptation is along the line of the understanding, not only are the evils of which he has been guilty excited, but his good deeds are actually called forth and perverted. When it is along the line of the voluntary, his thoughts and actions are not so much stimulated, but he is inflamed by the unclean affections of his tormentors, who thus can carry on the combat by the very lusts of man. This temptation is most grievous, yet big with blessing. The Lord, by the medium of the angels, still protects, and puts a restraint upon the wicked, lest they should go beyond man's ability to bear, and he should succumb.

     The angels defend him by bringing forth his goods and truths, even going so far as to defend temporarily what is false and evil in him, well knowing that these are really from the evil spirits; for man, while on earth, never produces anything false or evil of himself, but these proceed from the evil spirits attendant upon him. Nevertheless, the conditions are such that in the early days of temptation he cannot help imagining that he does fight in his own strength, and also believes that goodness and truth are from himself. While he remains in this state, these are not really genuine, since selfhood resides in them, and he takes merit to himself. Subsequently, when he is better instructed, and makes a fuller use of his understanding, he sees his error, and ascribes the victory to the Lord. (A. C. 741, 751, 761, 1661.)

     There is no time now to trace the story of man's regenerating career through successive periods of stress, until eventually evils have been removed to the circumference of life, and he is made ready for his final sabbath peace. To those who know its meaning it is an epic of absorbing interest and entrancing delight, full to overflowing with eternal realities, yet always making one with individual personal experience. Surely, it is the romance beyond compare: living, and beautiful because living. Is there anything in the pages of merely earthly literature to match it? If we take service under the King of Heaven, shall we miss anything of real adventure until we at last stand before the gates of the City?

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Now the way passes through forests dark and drear, the habitation of dragons; now it winds along smiling valleys; yet ever it leads to the Fields of the Blest.

     Is there any healthy boy who turns from the opportunity of romantic adventure? Is there any healthy-minded man who shrinks from this spiritual Knight-Errantry? Even as our aim is the winning of spiritual liberty, so let us remember that this comes along the path of combat and enlightened self-compulsion, and that in these there is more of freedom, than ever exists in any state out of temptations, inner freedom, by virtue of which wk are desirous of subduing the forces of evil, and which enables the Lord to elect us freemen of His own city. (A. C. 1937.) And-O marvelous inversion of state,-he who so acts believes others to be more worthy, and he himself infernal rather than heavenly.

     We venture to suggest that this attitude has at some time or other been our experience, and that we are able to testify to the reality of the vision, as to our quality and of the profound gratitude which follows the realization of Divine pity in bringing about our liberation. For the time being, at any rate, we are like the "hind let loose," as "the lame who leaps like a hart." Furthermore, we are here reminded, in a very practical manner, of our immortality, since the doctrine is, that he who is tempted in this world, and wins, is not tempted after death, because the Lord's work is never to be repeated. (A. R, 185.) More than this, after experiences of this nature, man is actually in heaven as to his internal, though in the world as to his external; and therefore the conjunction of heaven and the world is effected in him (T. C. R. 598), which, in short, is the full story of human existence.

     IV.

     But let us not fall into error concerning the nature and quality of temptation combats, lest we come into a state of illusory peace. Recalling the teaching that in all temptation the love is assailed, we may, if we faithfully search out our ends, discover something about our spiritual condition.

     Natural temptations, we are told, are not properly so called, but are merely anxieties arising from the fact that natural loves are being threatened.

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Such may be excited by misfortunes, disease, and a bad condition of the blood, and they are attended by straightness from these because they oppose the loves. When we foresee ourselves deprived of honors, reputation, earthly goods, and pleasures, then let us know that our temptation is on the natural plane. Such states have peace with those who are in natural charity, thus with heretics, gentiles and even idolaters; for they, too, can be tried in the love of their faith and the things which they hold dear. Even so, these straightnesses, as they are called, are not to be avoided, for they emulate spiritual temptations, and may be the initiament of spiritual life, and thus productive of good.

     Spiritual temptations are concerned with quite different ends, and directly challenge the existence of the church in man. They are of the internal man, and attack his spiritual life. In them, the anxiety is not because of natural loss, but is on account of the deprivation of faith and charity and consequently of salvation. They occur with those who are in spiritual charity to their neighbor, and the spiritual conscience is the battlefield. This explains why comparatively few are capable of sustaining temptations at this day. The knowledge of the Lord is dimmed; true charity grows cold; truth is falsified, and good is perverted; there is little left for the formation of a genuine conscience, and so spiritual growth is retarded, and men can only be held in restraint, and their state ameliorated, through the anxieties relating to their worldly welfare.

     Nevertheless, the revelation of this carries with it the promise of escape, if it is desired. In times of spiritual temptation, evil spirits are especially active, exciting the falsities and evils with man, drawing forth all the ill that he has ever thought or done, even from infancy; and this, we read, with malice and skill beyond description. But then also the man is guarded and defended by legions of angels, who equally bring out his goods and truths. In an instant, the statement is, evil spirits have the power to bend an affection of good into the opposite, so that the victim cannot possibly think otherwise than that it has actually been from himself. Once more we enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith and life, seeing that, in connection with spiritual combats, neither good nor evil is inherent in us, but that all enters by influx. Is it that natural infirmity hesitates to regard the real position?

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If so, let courage be taken in the fact that knowledge is the first step towards freedom, and that the great design behind the revelation is to teach that the Lord is the all-sufficing Savior. If the church is destined to grow within us, it can only be as we are prepared to face spiritual conflict, armed by its truths and supported by love for its well-being.

     Celestial temptations, we imagine, rarely come to those who are on the earth at the close of one dispensation and the commencement of another. Yet, there must be some who are capable of them, just as there are a few rare souls who can be so far advanced in regeneration while in this world that there is little to be done in the next. Celestial temptations have place only with those who are in genuine love to the Lord; and whatever assails that love causes inmost torture in them. Should we reflect on any experience of this quality which may have been ours, we may perceive how far we have traveled. The perception may perhaps be aided by a correlation of the teaching given in the Chapter on the Decalogue (T. C. R. 317) concerning the three degrees of theft, with that now quoted as to the triple character of temptations. Once this teaching is intelligently accepted, its intensely practical character will be seen. There is nothing either mysterious, difficult, or remote about it. It both directs and enables us to "re-form" our lives, and, indeed, calls to its witness the oft-quoted statement that all religion, all our knowledge of and binding-back to God, must hold relation to life.

     V.

     Thus far we have been engaged upon a mote or less cursory examination of the doctrine of temptation as it applies to man,-a doctrine, it will have been seen, which, which bringing to the spiritual a message of unclouded hope, permits to the natural an alternation between despair and hope. Yet a message there is for all. The actualities of the case are unfolded, and with them the Divine Plan for human regeneration is seen in the teaching, as it cannot be seen elsewhere,-the fulfilment of the promise that whosoever will may be saved. And as we proceed we are allowed to realize a little of what is meant by the Lord's unassailability and man's helplessness; somewhat of the truth enshrined in the saying that man's extremity is God's opportunity; something of what is implicit in the command always to act as of ourselves, while never forgetting that the Lord accomplishes everything.

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     And this brings us to the last phase of our present study, which is, that there could be no human regeneration unless there had been glorification; and that, grievous and appalling though our trials may seem to us, they are not in the smallest degree comparable with those of the Savior, who, alone and unaided, fought, not merely one hell, but all of them, yea, and the heavens, too. The process of man's regeneration, we are instructed, is represented by this, that the Lord made His human Divine. Man's states of temptation are separated by long stretches of tranquillity, precious intrinsically, and doubly precious by contrast, wherein he can rest and enjoy peace, can look back and acknowledge the protection of the Lord's arm, and gather renewed will for the next advance along the path of life. But our Lord fought unceasingly from childhood to the cross.

     May we, then, pass our few remaining minutes in contemplation of that great drama which began with the birth of our Lord and ended with the cry which can never cease to re-echo in human ears: "It is finished!" Short as was that earthly sojourn, even when measured by man's computation, short as a watch of the night to Him Who throughout it trod the winepress alone, there was yet gathered within the span of it all the genuine drama of time and eternity-the eternal conflict between evil and good. It is often asserted that the proper study of mankind is man. With the utmost reverence we would answer that the supreme study of mankind is the Lord. Any knowledge dissociated from Him must hold the seeds of fallacy within it.

     From eternity, and before either time or men were, the Lord foreknew that the Incarnation must take place, He foresaw that human declension would proceed in freedom until at length all freedom would be inverted and the possibility of amendment lost. He provided, too, that this should not take place, but that, when the limit of perversion was reached, He would intervene and restore order. Only the merest outline of what happened can be recounted here. Our Lord was actuated by pure unchanging love, without any trace of self-love or the least desire for human worship, but by pure love of men, to the intent that He might gift them with eternal felicity. Yea, He had the same love to those in hell, since these could not continue to exist unless permitted to exercise their wicked delights in tempting their fellow creatures, and the human nature of their Maker Himself.

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     There is most remarkable teaching (A. C. 6197), witnessing, as it does, to the subordination of the hells, that whereas those who dwell there are abusive towards the Lord, they are yet not displeased to hear mention made of the Father as Creator. Presumably because, while they are rebels against the governance of the Lord, their twisted minds may yet acknowledge the necessity for a Creator. And as the Lord's love was all-embracing, extending to all who had been born, or who ever would be born, so was the intensity of this suffering in His states of exinanition. At Gethsemane, He prayed in cruel agony, attended with anguish from His inmost soul, even to the sweating of blood. Can we conceive this? But nothing of all this could have been possible, unless there had been formed a plane into which the evil could be permitted to operate for the purpose of His combats with them, and yet without their own utter destruction. This plane was found in the infirm human, assumed from the mother to that very end; for tempted He could not be as to His Divine.

     Mary, whose name will always sound like a sweet-toned bell in the ears of all who have any reverence for maternal love, was herself innocent of this. Blessed above women, as she was by reason of her exalted use, she was yet weaving a body through which a sword was to pierce her own soul-the body of that child who was set for the fall and rising of many in Israel. Here, from His earliest childhood even to His last hour, the battle raged, but ever to the defeat of the great enemy of man. Here, also, was met the inmost temptation of all, which came from the angels themselves, and was necessary that He might restore heaven itself to order. (A. C. 4295.)

     In His temptations, the Lord had societies of spirits and angels with Him, but this was because He willed that all things should be done according to order. Very arcane is the teaching given (A. C. 4075), that He took nothing from these societies, but all from the Divine. Yet they were capable of being serviceable for use-for example, societies which are such as to believe that goodness is from themselves were serviceable to introduce the Lord in the human to a knowledge of such good, and thus into wisdom concerning goodness without merit, such as the goodness which comes from the Divine Being.

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This knowledge and consequent wisdom were derived, not from these societies, but by means of them.

     In all His states of humiliation and despair as to the end, of hungering and thirsting, and of loneliness, the Lord fought from His Own unaided power, fought in the evil heredity derived from His mother, until all this evil was at last expelled. When the passion of the cross was suffered, the last trace of the human was made Divine, and He was no longer the Son of Mary but the Son of God; forever God-Man, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent,-God made manifest in the perfect Human Form. Unless this work had been achieved, the human race would have gone down to perdition. Yet, when He was face to face with the bitterest temptation of all, while hanging on the cross, He prayed for His enemies. O the shame of it!-for all in the whole world!

     Nevertheless, our Lord did not by this remove our sins. What He did was to restore equilibrium, so that we, as of ourselves, in the light of His wisdom and the warmth of His love, might be enabled to tread in His footsteps,-the path of sorrow and trial, of joy, and exultation. Temptations-yes, but ever most justly tempered to our capacity. Despair-yes, but never without comfort, for we are accompanied by Him Who saves to the uttermost. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,"-the life of evil desire and false thinking, of opposition to the Divine will, in order that there may be no offence to the neighbor. In glorifying His human, the Lord infinitely laid down His life, so that the whole of His creation might live.

     Does not a consideration of this matter demonstrate beyond question that inmostly the whole of the Word and the Writings treat of our Lord Himself; that He stands forever at the center of His universe; that He dwells in the hearts of all who believe in Him? May we, then, with high courage, face the ordeal by fire in the light and certainty of the new Revelation, and as we chant our Adeste Fideles at this Advent Season may there be given to us some inner perception of what is meant by "Glory to God in the Highest," and also by His assurance, "I have overcome the world."

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JOHN FLAXMAN SCULPTOR, ARTIST AND NEW CHURCHMAN 1928

JOHN FLAXMAN SCULPTOR, ARTIST AND NEW CHURCHMAN       ARTHUR CARTER       1928

     (Continued from p. 349 of the June issue.)

     In 1817, Captain Ludwig Goranholm, of the Swedish Navy, succeeded in abstracting Swedenborg's skull from the coffin which reposed in the vault of the London Swedish Church. Disappointed in his efforts to find a purchaser, at his death, which happened in London not long afterwards, the skull came into the possession of the pastor of the Swedish Church, who replaced it in its original resting place. Meanwhile, the skull was examined by a few New Churchmen at the residence of Charles Augustus Tulk, and the following memorandum of the occasion is to be found at page 555 of the Tafel Documents:

     "Flaxman examined the skull of Swedenborg at Mr. Charles A. Tulk's, in the presence of Mr. Clowes and Mr. Clover, and he said: 'How beautiful the form-how undulating the line here; here's no deficiency, Mr. Clowes.' Smiling, he said, 'Why, I should almost take it for a female head, were it not for the peculiar character of the forehead. On the question whether a cast should be taken, Mr. Flaxman observed that 'the skull was worthy of it for its mere beauty.'"

     John Augustus Tulk, a gentleman of independent fortune, was one of the little group which met in the home of Robert Hindmarsh in 1783. From that time until his death, in 1842, he played a prominent part in the activities of the New Church, and liberally supported its uses. Tulk and Flaxman probably first met in 1784, when the latter attended the gatherings of the Theosophical Society. The association of the two families when in Italy, and the incident of the Swedenborg cameo, would indicate a previously established acquaintance. The son, Charles Augustus Tulk, the future M.P., who was born in 1786, became, we are informed by Dr. Bayley, Flaxman's bosom friend.

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On the demise of the sculptor, when the London TIMES claimed that he "professed himself a member of the Established Church," Charles Tulk wrote the journal in question that, from his personal knowledge, Flaxman's "religious sentiments had for many years been formed entirely on the doctrines of Swedenborg." The fiction continues, however, and is often encountered where authentic information is expected.

     "Members of Mr. Tulk's family," says Dr. Bayley, "have mentioned to me from time to time how devoutly Flaxman was in the habit of expressing his indebtedness to New Church principles, not only in his life, but in his art. And, from one of that family, a very dear friend of my own, one of the members of the Kensington Society, we have three tablets done by Flaxman now erected in our church in Palace Gardens Terrace, which had remained with them from Flaxman's time."

     Allan Cunningham discerned the influence of Swedenborg in Flaxman's designs for Dante's Paradise. New Church writers, such as Dr. Bayley, have seen a like influence in his sculpture. "The intelligent observer of the works of Flaxman will have noticed the influence of his religious views on his art in many ways, but especially in his so often representing both angels and evil spirits without wings. It is not only the conclusion of thoughtful minds like that of Dr. Young that-

     Angels are men in lighter bodies clad,
     And men are angels, loaded for an hour.

     But the direct and distinct teaching of the New Church is, that all angels and devils are from the human race. Indeed, without this, it would be very difficult to give a reason for the creation of this world at all. . . . Wings are the emblems of the elevating and protecting power of truths, and so may be allegorically used, as they are in Scripture. The good man is said to mount up with wings like eagles; the Almighty to protect us with His wings; but neither one nor the other has these appendages literally. In representing his angels and evil spirits, as he frequently does, without wings-as in the illustrations, 'Lead us not into temptation,' and 'Deliver us from evil' in our New Church at Kensington, in Mr. Clowes' tablet, and many others-Flaxman was presenting the real forms of angels; while in other instances, as in 'The Guardian Angel,' where a lovely baby is guarded by a motherly angel with very large wings, he is indicating the great protection needed by helpless infancy and innocence."

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     Toward the close of 1810, Henry Crabb Robinson, the diarist, was introduced to Mrs. Flaxman, "a shrewd, lively, talkative woman," who invited him to spend the last night of the year with the family. "This evening," he wrote, "I merely saw the good-humored, even frolicsome, kind-hearted man. Every sportive word and action of Flaxman was enhanced by his grotesque figure. He had an intelligent and benignant countenance, but he was short and humpbacked, so that in his laughter it often seemed as if he were mocking himself." This was the beginning of a friendship only terminated by the death of the sculptor. Flaxman's home life, his conversations, opinions, and even harmless foibles, are described and related with considerable detail in Robinson's invaluable Diary. Sixteen years of intimacy served but to increase his admiration of the sculptor, whom he termed as "one of the salt of the earth." In 1861, the diarist, Flaxman's last remaining personal friend, passed away at the age of ninety years, bequeathing L2000 to the University College, for the purpose of maintaining and augmenting a Flaxman Gallery.

     Two years later, Robinson again kept vigil with the Flaxmans on New Year's Eve. "Flaxman," he said,'' of all the great men I ever knew, plays the child with the most grace. He is infinitely amiable, without losing any of his respectability. It is obvious that his is the relaxation of a superior mind, without any of the ostentation of condescension." A glimpse of Flaxman in another entry reveals him at his best and at his worst-the latter, that dogmatism occasionally mentioned by those who knew him. "I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Flaxman, making a fourth with Miss Denman. I enjoyed the afternoon. Flaxman is a delightful man in the purity and simplicity of his feelings and understanding, though an uncomfortable opponent in disputation. I so much fear to offend him that I have a difficulty in being sincere."

     A shrewd remark about Blake, and an illuminating anecdote concerning him, are recorded on January 30, 1815 "After dinner went to Flaxman's. He was very chatty and pleasant, and related some curious anecdotes of Sharp, the engraver, who seems the ready dupe of any and every religious fanatic.*

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Sharp became a warm partisan of Joanna Southcott, and endeavored to make a convert of Blake; but, as Flaxman judiciously observed, such men as Blake are not fond of playing second fiddle.** Blake lately told Flaxman that he had a violent dispute with the angels on some subject, and had driven them away."
     * William Sharp (1749-1824), one of the first engraven of his time; very eccentric and stupidly credulous. He is enumerated by Hindmarsh among those who attended the meetings of the Theosophical Society in 1784. If, as it is sometimes claimed, he ever was a New Churchman, it must have been for a brief interval only, as on Flaxman's return from abroad he was a devotee of Richard Brothers, the notorious faker and false prophet. A discharged naval officer on half-pay, hailing from Newfoundland, Brothers informed the world that he was divinely appointed to lead the Israelites back to the Promised Land and rule the nations from the throne to be established at Jerusalem. Sharp engraved the prophet as Prince of the Hebrews with rays of light descending on his head, and tendered Flaxman the position of chief architect in the reconstruction of Jerusalem. The sculptor gravely declined the honor; explaining that he had bought property in London and had a family to support. On p. 121 of the Rise and Progress, Hindmarsh gives an interesting account of a visit to Brothers. When Brothers was confined at Islington as a lunatic, Sharp became a staunch adherent of Joanna Southcott, whom he brought from Exeter to London and maintained at his own expense for a considerable time. He was the last of her followers to admit the reality of her death, and he never lost faith in her mission nor the expectation of her reappearance. Joanna Southcott, it may be explained, was an English religious fanatic, originally a domestic servant. She became a Methodist, and, pretending supernatural gifts, dictated prophecies in doggerel rhyme, proclaimed herself the "woman clothed with the sun," described in the Apocalypse, and, although sixty-four years of age, affirmed that she was to be delivered of "Shiloh." She died in 1814. Her sect numbered over 100,000 and was still in existence in 1889. (Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson; Dictionary of National Biography; Century Cyclopedia of Names; Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Ed., 1849; Morning Light, 1896, p. 145; Hindmarsh, Rise and Progress; Odhner's Annals.)
     ** Compare "I must create a system or be enslaved by another's"; or this from his Descriptive Catalogue, writing of his own paintings, "He defies competition in coloring," or again, "He knows that what he does is not inferior to the grandest antiques. Superior it cannot be, for human power cannot go beyond either what he does or what they have done; it is the gift of God, it is inspiration and vision."

     For a number of years before his death, Flaxman had ceased to attend New Church services. The writer of the obituary notice in the TIMES claimed that he was a member of the Established Church.

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Allan Cunningham says the same. And even now, encyclopedias describe his religion as some form of mysticism with Swedenborgian "admixtures." We would, therefore, draw attention to Flaxman's unequivocal statement of belief to Crabb Robinson, on December 22d, 1823, three years before he passed away:

     "Dined with Southern in Castle Street, and then went to Flaxman's. I read to them parts of Jung's works, but Flaxman thought his system very inferior to Swedenborg's. Flaxman declared his conviction that Swedenborg has given the true interpretation of the Old and New Testaments, and he believed in him as an inspired teacher. He says that, till he read his explanations of the Scriptures, they were to him a painful mystery. He has lent me a summary of the Swedenborgian doctrines."

     Again, two years later, we read: "November 1st, 1825. At Flaxman's, a pleasing visit. He was characteristic. I find his dislike to Southey originates in the latter's account of Swedenborg and the doctrines of that sect in his Espriella. Flaxman cannot forgive derision on such a subject." Southey, a former radical, had been scared into conservatism by the French Revolution; at this period he was a staunch churchman, poet laureate, and everything that was conventionally deemed respectable. The Espriella Letters is a particularly odious assault Upon Swedenborg and the New Church. Southey, moreover, is responsible for circulating absurd stories about Swedenborg which have had a hardy, long-lingering existence.

     Within the compass of this sketch it would be impossible to describe or even enumerate Flaxman's achievements in plastic art. His monumental works are to be found in Westminster Abbey, in St. Paul's, at Glasgow and Calcutta; his most ambitious groups and figures at Petworth, Ickworth, Woburn, Deepdene and Wolverley Wall. The memorial reliefs in honor of the private dead, in which he especially excelled, are scattered throughout England-in Chichester Cathedral no less than eight, in the Cathedrals of Winchester and Gloucester, in the churches of Leeds, Manchester, Campsall, Tewkesbury, Ledbury, Micheldever, Heston, Chertsey, Cookham, Lewisham, Beckenham, Leyton, Milton, and other places. The best public collections are in the British Museum, the South Kensington Museum, the Flaxman Hall at University College, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

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Many remain in private hands.

     In the opinion of Charles Robert Leslie, R. A., the noted artist and writer, Flaxman's greatness was never appreciated by the British Government of the time. He expresses regret that the sculptor was employed upon so few of the nation's monuments, and makes the following remarkable statement in his Autobiographical Recollections: "I have been told by Mr. Baily that Flaxman would not have been employed on the statue of Nelson for St. Paul's, had it not been that the hero himself was acquainted with him, and was known to have said, 'If ever there should be a statue erected of me, I hope, Flaxman, you will carve it.' He had competed unsuccessfully for the monument in St. Paul's, and when, for the reason mentioned, it was agreed by the committee of taste that he should make the statue of Nelson, he was desired to work from Westmacott's design, which the committee preferred to his own!! He submitted, but never competed again." (P. 49)

     Late in life he executed two works which deserve special mention-the shield of Achilles, for a firm of goldsmiths, modeled in low relief according to the description in the eighteenth book of the Iliad; and "Michael and Satan," recognized as one of the greatest sculptures of modern times. Nor should we omit the three tablets erected in the New Church place of worship in Palace Gardens Terrace, which were presented by a member of the Tulk family. Two are in the church itself, illustrating the two sections of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," and "Deliver us from evil"; and there is one in the schoolroom representing " Mercury bearing Pandora to earth."

     Mrs. Flaxman, who had made a good recovery from a stroke of paralysis six years previously, died on February 6th, 1820. The blow to the sculptor was very great. His health and spirits were never the same again, though he did not suffer the shock to diminish or interrupt his industry. It was his yearly habit to give his wife on her birthday a drawing of his friend Stothard. In 1796, he gave her instead, with a charming dedication, a set of forty outline drawings of his own in illustration of a little allegorical poem he had written in blank verse, called "The Knight of the Blazing Cross." The volume is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Crabb Robinson wrote on February 6th, 1820: "Mrs. Flaxman died.

433


A woman of great merit, and an irreparable loss to her husband. He, a genius of the first rank, is a very child in the concerns of life. She, a woman of strong sense, and a woman of business, too-the very wife for an artist. Without her he would not have been able to manage his household affairs early in life."

     On December 4th, 1826, Flaxman invited a few of his intimate friends to dine with him, comprising Soane, the architect, Crabb Robinson, and "the Miss Tulks, sisters of the late M.P. for Sudbury," as the latter described them. The sculptor was ill at ease, suffering from a cold caught by leaving the house the day before, and the party broke up early.* Three days later, early in the morning, he passed away. Flaxman had survived his wife six years.
     * Allan Cunningham says that Flaxman contracted the cold while in church, a version: not supported either by Crabb Robinson or The Times obituary. Our statement follows the wording of the latter.

     The following is Crabb Robinson's description of the funeral: "December 15th. The funeral of Flaxman. I rode to the house with Thompson, R. A., from Somerset House. Thompson spoke of Flaxman with great warmth. He said so great a man in the arts had not lived for centuries, and probably for centuries there would not be another. . . . On arriving at Flaxman's house, in Buckingham Street, we found Sir Thomas Lawrence and five others, who, with Mr. Thompson and Flaxman himself, constituted the Academy council for the year. The five were Phillips, Howard, Shee, Jones, and one whose name I do not recollect. Two Mr. Denmans and two Mr. Mathers were present, and Mr. Tulk and Mr. Hart. I sat in the same carriage with Sir Thomas Lawrence, Mr. Hart, and Mr. Tulk; and Sir Thomas spoke with great affection and admiration of Flaxman, as of a man who had not left, and had not had, his equal. The interment took place in the burial-ground of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, near the old St. Pancras Church."

     The passing of Flaxman was the occasion of many tributes to his memory, the most conspicuous of which was that pronounced by Sir Thomas Lawrence, at the annual meeting of the Royal Academy. The distinguished President, in terms of panegyric, referred to the artistic triumphs of the sculptor, and dwelt at length upon his integrity, piety and unblemished character.

434




     Flaxman was essentially a self-made man. Beginning life under the handicaps of ill health, narrow circumstances, and lack of education, before reaching the middle years he had, single-handed, overcome these obstacles, and his remaining days were spent in the quiet pursuit of his art and the enjoyment of an established reputation. Notwithstanding the eminent position he had attained, he was nevertheless a somewhat solitary figure. He was seldom seen in the homes of the wealthy or the distinguished, nor did he ever participate in the Bohemian life so characteristic among members of his profession, but he ever preferred the retirement of his family circle or the society of a few intimate friends. His lonely childhood, or the sense of his physical deformity, might have repressed his social impulses, and may also explain the paradox of his intermittent connection with the organized New Church and his undoubted adherence to the Writings from 1784 to the end of his life. Nothing is recorded concerning Flaxman's religious opinions before embracing the doctrines of Swedenborg. He said of his early Anglican friend, the Rev. Henry Mathew, that "he read the church service more beautifully than any other clergyman in London," but made no statement as to the merits of his preaching or theology. Probably his beliefs at that time were not very definite or dogmatic; for he remarked to Crabb Robinson that until he read Swedenborg the Scriptures were a painful mystery to him.

     "At no period of Mr. Flaxman's life," says Rainy Day Smith, "did he ever receive a present from anyone beneath himself; and whenever he accepted anything from persons, even in the highest station, he always selected something to give them in return of at least double the value of that received: nor did he at any time, under any consideration whatsoever, when making a purchase, give less than what he conscientiously considered to be the full value. . . . He was habitually simple in dress. His hair was simply combed; he never at any time wore powder, nor did he ever attempt to exhibit ornaments of finery; he never kept a servant in livery, though sometimes his polisher of marble, John Burge, stood behind his chair, at the Royal Academy dinners, in his Sunday clothes."

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     BIBLIOGRAPHY.

FLAXMAN
Cunningham, Allan. Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors and Architects.
Farington, Joseph. Diaries.
Flaxman, John. Lectures on Sculpture. With a Memoir of the Author.
Fuseli, Henry. Life and Works, by John Knowles. 3 vols.
Haydon, B. R. Autobiography and Memoirs. Introduction by Aldous Huxley. 2 vols.
Leslie, Charles Robert. Autobiographical Recollections.
Robinson, Henry Crabb. Diary, Letters and Reminiscences. 2 vols.
Scott, William Bell. Autobiography. Edited by W. Minto. 2 vols.
Smiles, Samuel. Self-Help.
Smith, J. T. Nollekens and His Times. 2 vols.
Teniswood, G. F. "John Flaxman." (Art Journal for 1867.)

BLAKE.
Blake, William. Complete Works. Nonesuch Edition.
Pray, Mrs. Life of Thomas Stothard.
Bruce, Harold. William Blake in This World.
Burdett, Osbert. William Blake. English Men of letters Series.
Ellis, E. J. and Yeats, W. B. The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic and Critical. 3 vols.
Ellis, Edwin J. The Poetical Works of William Blake. 2 vols. The Real Blake.
Gardner, Charles. William Blake, the Men.
Gilchrist, Alexander. Life of William Blake.
Grierson, H. J. C. William Blake's Designs for Gray's Poems, with Introduction.
Palmer, A. H. Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer.
Plowman, Max. The Poems and Prophecies of William Blake. Everyman Edition, with Introduction.
Raleigh, Sir Walter. Some Authors. (Blake.) Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh. 2 Vols.
Rossetti, W. M. The Poetical Works of William Blake. Aldine Edition, with a Prefatory Memoir. 2 vols.
Sampson, John. The Poetical Works of William Blake. Oxford Edition, with Bibliographical Introduction.
Spurgeon, Carolini: F. E. Mysticism in English Literature.
Symons, Arthur. William Blake.
Yeats, W. B. Ideas of Good and Evil. (William Blake, and His Illustrations to the Divine Comedy.)

WEDGWOOD.
Barnard, Harry. Chats on Wedgwood Ware.
Meteyard, Elisa. Life of Josiah Wedgewood. 2 vols.
Wedgwood, Josiah C. Essays and Adventures of a Labor M. P.

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CYCLOPEDIAS.
Dictionary of National Biography.
Encyclopedia Britannica.
New International Encyclopedia.

NEW CHURCH PUBLICATIONS.
Annals of the New Church. C. T. Odhner.
Bayley, Rev. Dr. New Church Worthies.
Documents Concerning Swedenborg. R. L. Tafel.
Hindmarsh, Robert. Else and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church.
Hume, Mary Catherine. Charles Augustus Tulk. 1890 Edition with Pooley's Notes.
Minutes of the First Seven Sessions of the General Conference.
Proud, Rev. Joseph. Aged Minister's Last Legacy. With Memoir by Rev. E. Madeley.
Reports of The Society for Printing and Publishing The Writings of the Honorable Emanuel Swedenborg, 1810-1827.
The Intellectual Repository, 1827, P. 434.
The New Churchman, 1855, PP 4, 5.
The New Jerusalem Magazine, London, 1827, p. 31.
CHURCH AND REVELATION IN BOTH WORLDS 1928

CHURCH AND REVELATION IN BOTH WORLDS              1928

     "When the end of a church is at hand, the interiors of the Word, of the church, and of worship, are then revealed and taught. This is done in order that the good may be separated from the evil; for the interiors of the Word, of the church, and of worship, which are celestial and spiritual, are received by the good, but rejected by the evil. Hence the separation. Moreover, the interiors of the Word, which are revealed at the end of a church, serve for the doctrine and life of the new church which is then established. When the end of the Jewish Church was at hand, the Lord Himself opened and taught the interiors of the Word, and especially revealed those things in the Word which had been predicted concerning Himself. . . . A like thing has been done at this day. For it has now pleased the Lord to reveal many arcana of heaven, especially the internal or spiritual sense of the Word, which has hitherto been wholly unknown, and with that He has taught genuine truths of doctrine. This revelation is meant by 'the advent of the Lord' in Matthew 24:3, 30, 37. The reason why there is revelation at the end of a church is what we have said, namely, that by means of it there may be a separation of the good from the evil, and the establishment of a new church, and this not only in the natural world where men are, but also in the spiritual world where angels and spirits are. For the church is in both worlds, and revelation takes place in both, and by means of it a separation, that a new church may be established." (Apocalypse Explained 641)

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LANDING 1928

LANDING       Editor       1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office a Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor                    Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager          Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address and business communications should be sent to the Business Manager.

     TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
In the United States, $3.00 per year; Elsewhere, $3.25 or 14 shillings; payable in advance
Single Copy          30 cents
     The achievements in aviation during recent years suggest the reflection that man's urge to fly-to "mount up with wings as eagles"-is akin to his aspiration to ascend with the intellect into higher realms of thought, that he may extend his mental vision and view all lower things from above, seeing their proper order and relation with a true perspective. The problems of aviation, ton, are not unlike those of our mental world. As we desire to rise above the doubts and difficulties of our lower mind into clear light, and to descend again with a solution, so aviation is concerned with ascent, sustained flight, and safe landing. Invention and experiment have produced a plane capable of riding into the air, the perfection of the motor has made rapid and sustained flight possible, but the immediate problem is that of safe landing through the fog and darkness which are obstacles to visibility and direction. So in our mental excursions we must learn how to "come back to earth" with sound conclusions after our reasonings, and to descend into the field of practical application after our intellectual flights.

     Providence, we know, preserves with all men the power of the intellect to detach itself from earthly and mundane things, to elevate its thought into the realms of the abstract, and even into the light of heaven, from whence it may look down, as from a celestial height, upon all lower planes.

438


It is preserved with man primarily as the means of his salvation,-the way of his uplifting to spiritual light and life, of his emancipation from his unregenerate state, though this is accomplished only when repentance follows elevation, when the higher light dispels falsity and removes evil. "He who knows how to elevate his mind above ideas of thought derived from space and time passes from thick darkness into light, and has discernment in things spiritual and Divine; and then, from that light, he dispels the. thick darkness of natural lumen, and banishes its fallacies from the middle to the sides." (D. L. W. 69.)

     At this day, from various causes, the use of the faculty of mental elevation is acquired only by effort,-the effort of interior reflection to abstract the mind from the objects of the senses, from material, physical and mundane things, and from all natural things to those that are spiritual and Divine. This latter is only possible in the light of Divine Revelation, and is signified by the "two wings of a great eagle" given to the woman,-the spiritual intelligence and circumspection that are given to those who are of the New Church. (A. E. 759) "He who cannot think intellectually, that is, abstractedly from material things, cannot grasp the spiritual sense of the Word." (A. C. 9407) Once cultivated, however, the faculty of sustained elevation of thought grows immeasurably. With Swedenborg, by long practice, and by virtue of internal respiration, it made possible an "intense speculation" without which he could not have soared into the realms of philosophical and spiritual truth. (S. D. 3464)

     The faculty is abused when it produces a mere intellectualism or impractical idealism, or when it is indulged without an end of use. To effect a use, there must be both ascent and descent-an ascent to the spiritual light of causes, and a descent to the natural plane of effects. The proper exercise of the faculty is the way of deliverance from obscurities of the mind induced by appearances and fallacies, and the way of escape from earthly cares and perplexities, though without a practical application of the higher light thus attained it is no more a cure for the ills of man than "drowning his sorrows in the flowing bowl," or seeking oblivion by an immersion in pleasures.     

     If we would obtain release from the entanglements of earthbound thoughts, or from mental obscurity in any form, let us mount into the higher realms of truth, above the clouds of fallacy and fantasy, and make our journey to distant intellectual fields, that we may attain a truly rational and spiritual view.

439


This we may only accomplish in the light of Divine Revelation, and by effort to think in that light. Yet, sooner or later, we must come down again and effect a landing upon ultimate realities, even through the cloud, the mist, the darkness that enshroud the natural mind. Higher perceptions and ideals are of little use unless we bring them down into life.
GATHERING UP THE FRAGMENTS 1928

GATHERING UP THE FRAGMENTS              1928

     In a review of Dr. Acton's Introduction to The Word Explained (NEW CHURCH HERALD, May 12, p. 296), the Rev. J. G. Dufty questions the advisability of publishing such works as The Word Explained, a suggestion which not only implies an underestimation of the great value of its contents, but also overlooks the fact that Swedenborg, in the work itself, frequently speaks of "when the time comes for printing." Fortunately, there are those in the New Church who would preserve every word penned by the chosen Servant of the Lord, and make it available for all who wish to read, thus "gathering up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost."

     At the close of his review, however, Mr. Dufty speaks in warm praise of the Introduction, the main portion of which he finds "most deeply interesting," and says further: "Here Prof. Acton has done yeoman service. He passes in review not only the usual biographic material, but has collated and brought into alignment all evidence relating to Swedenborg's literary activity, spiritual experience, and the outer facts of his life during those years of crisis, 1743-1747. Every relevant passage and every spiritual experience is deliberated upon and placed in its appropriate setting. Dark sayings and cryptic utterances are seen in new light. Visions and dreams are most suggestively discussed. The order and succession of Swedenborg's studies, writings and publishings are admirably dealt with. The inherent fascination and psychologic interest of the subject is enhanced by thorough and adequate treatment. And we have to thank Prof. Acton most cordially for a competent and comprehensive study."

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Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     SWEDENBORG SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION.

     The thirty-first annual meeting of the Swedenborg Scientific Association was held on Thursday, May 17th, 1928, at Bryn Athyn, Pa. About 55 persons were present. Meetings were held at 3 p. m. and 8 p. m. The reports showed a membership of 247, and a balance in the treasury, in spite of the large amount of photostat work still being done by the Association.

     At the afternoon meeting, the Association expressed its appreciation of the scholarly work of Dr. Acton in his editorship of The New Philosophy. Although the periodical cannot be classed as one of our popular magazines, yet the scholars of the Church value its pages highly. President Hite expressed particular appreciation of the use and value of "The Philosopher's Note Book" to the scholars of the Church. The meeting also moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Brown for consenting to take over the work of editing The New Philosophy during Dr. Acton's absence in Europe for the coming year.

     The Rev. John Whitehead reported that the Swedenborg Foundation was now authorized to publish Swedenborg's Scientific Works, and that some form of cooperation with the Foundation might be possible in the work of future publications.

     The Rev. E. E. Iungerich read a paper, entitled "Swedenborg versus Minute Philosophers," in which he contrasted the value of Swedenborg's universal principles of truth with modern scientific methods. In the discussion, the following points were emphasized: (1) The distinction between science and philosophy. (2) That the Scientific Works are essentially philosophic in character. (3) The value of modern science in confirming many of the theories of Swedenborg. (4) That the end of scientific truth should be to see God in nature. (5) That the science of today can be used to reveal the glory of God, far beyond the science of Swedenborg's time. (6) That Swedenborg's mind was at all times prepared to see the interior principles of nature.

     The President's Address, on the subject of "Swedenborg's De Causis," was delivered in the evening, and was followed by a paper from Prof. Brown on the subject of "Swedenborg's Theory of Gravitation." In conclusion, Mr. Brown conducted a number of experiments spoken of by Swedenborg. Some excellent drawings, illustrating the vortical theories mentioned in the paper, were also shown. In the discussion, many questions were asked relative to past and present theories of gravitation. We understand that all the papers presented will be published in the July issue of The New Philosophy.
     WINIFRED HOWARD.

     PITTSBURGH, PA.

     Our Easter vacation was followed by a very welcome visit from the Rev. C. E. Doering, as the first stop in his journey around the circuit of the Local Schools, affording us the opportunity to ask him questions for the purpose of promoting common standards in our educational work. We teachers especially enjoy his visits, as it makes us feel that we are not, after all, so entirely isolated. The society also receives the benefit, and we certainly make the most of his stay in our midst. Mr. Doering preached for us on Sunday, and also addressed a general meeting on the subject of the early development of the "Authority" doctrine, showing that it is no new idea that the Writings, being the Second Coming of the Lord, are the Lord's own law for the guidance and building of His New Church upon earth.

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     I sometimes wonder whether the Church as a whole realizes the great importance of having these messages fresh from the active sphere of our educational center from time to time. Of course, we do realize the necessity of the Bishop's regular visits. And as long as we continue to send our children to Bryn Athyn, there will be no lack of a desire to visit there whenever possible. We owe Mr. Doering's visits to the wisdom of the Sons of the Academy, who pay his expenses, and to the Academy itself which contributes his valuable services.

     When the Rev. and Mrs. Eldred E. Iungerich paid their memorable visit on May 4th, everyone was most anxious to entertain them and to meet them; and more plans were put forward than it was possible to crowd into the three days available. So we decided to have the most general affair first. A dinner was arranged for Friday evening, at which ninety-three partook of the good things, both natural and spiritual, that were placed before us. For this central reception we felt that we needed a toastmaster who excelled in youthful spirit and progressiveness, and who could at the same time most fittingly express the warm friendship of the society's welcome to its new Pastor and his wife. So we chose Mr. S. S. Lindsay, and we certainly made no mistake.

     The subject of Mr. Iungerich's address had been announced as "Stupidity," and the men selected to follow with a few carefully prepared impromptu remarks were evidently ready to cushion the jolt, if any, of the impact. But so universal, and so interior, was the scope of the address that they called upon the Pastor to act as emergency speaker to "step down" the subject to something in keeping with the flow of wit and song prepared for the occasion. Father Lindsay's refrain to the tune of "My Maryland" rang through the evening, and was carried home with us, to be used, we hope, in many happy years to come. "For its your Church, and my Church, and our Church always!"

     Our guests visited the School on Friday, and the same day settled upon a place to live until such time as our building program gets into operation, when quarters will be available in the Proposed Community House. Meanwhile, the Iungerich family are to occupy the house being vacated by Mrs. Theodore Bellinger, who is moving to Chicago, to the keen regret of everyone here. Miss Celia Bellinger is also taking her departure, after long years of most successful activity in placing the work of our school where it is, as to both phases of its function, the religious and the secular. Consecrated endeavor, patience, charity, and the highest skill have been called for and given and while our school is still small, I feel confident that its quality assures a very real and well-sustained growth in the future. You cannot kill growth that is so real and so vital to the Lord's kingdom, no matter how the spheres of hostile ends and estimations beat upon it. It is the matter of deepest satisfaction that Miss Celia is to continue in the field of education at Bryn Athyn, and the hope is freely expressed that some way will be found to garner her ripe experience into the use of preparing others for this work, which, next to the Priesthood itself, is preserving and perpetuating the New Church.

     The Society has found another property, out near the new park of Frick's Woods, and it gives promise of fitting our present needs and providing sufficient room for the House of Worship of our dreams. The financial problem is great, but mere difficulty has never prevented our members from accomplishing what they really need, if only we can be clear as to the suitability of the present proposition. It is the third plan upon which we have bestowed prayerful thought, which shows that we do not give up when one project fails, but begin again with undiminished zeal. Our zeal is not for any particular spot, but for the use itself.

     The Ladies Meeting has had a quiet but effective and useful season, ministering to uses which must be carried on by the women of any society, and upholding the hands of the Pastor.

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The local chapter of Theta Alpha has also met monthly and contributed to certain of our uses. The school is to lose Miss Jennie Gaskill next year, which is much regretted, for everyone loves Miss Jennie, and her work with the children's singing has been exceptional. Miss Alice Broadbridge is to be Miss Anita Doering's assistant next year.

     In conclusion, let me say a few words as to the progress of our famous Philosophy Club. I may not have another good chance! The Apostle Paul, when, in answer to the Macedonian cry of his vision, he crossed into Europe, found, in a place called Berea, a haven of rest from the persecution of envious non-believing Jews, who had raised a riot in Thessalonica and driven him out. Of the Bereans it is written: "These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed." (Acts 17:10-12.) Our Pittsburgh Philosophy Club has, as its proud record, that it has never turned aside from studies and subjects designed to throw light upon our new Revelation, so that our Church may become the Divine Truth to all planes, not only theological, but also philosophical, and even scientific. It has not been easy, these last few years, to carry on this purpose, owing to the accession of so many new members, who at first tried to trail along with those who had been reading for many years. But we have been greatly helped by the occasional visits of the learned men from Bryn Athyn and elsewhere. The habit of free questioning does much to make things clear to all. Our course this year has followed the work on Generation. By rallying around Mr. Iungerich, they will insure themselves another long period of intensified interest and profitable stimulative that will shed its heavenly and Parnassian glow over all the meetings, and feed the warm hearth fires of mutual love and charity which have made our Philosophy Club such a blessing to the Church.
     H. S.

     REPORT OF THE VISITING PASTOR.

     Services were held at MIDDLEPORT, OHIO, on Sunday, May 13th, at which there was an attendance of twelve adults and four children. At the Holy Supper there were eleven communicants. In the evening there was a doctrinal class at the church, with an attendance of twelve. The subject was the teaching that "the doctrine of the church should be drawn from the sense of the letter of the Word, and be confirmed by it." (S. S. 53-56) They who are of the church must see the Heavenly Doctrine as drawn from the sense of the letter of the Ward; for "there, and not elsewhere, the Lord is present with man, and enlightens him, and teaches him the truth of the church." When, in reading the Writings, we come upon a number of passages from the Letter, sometimes covering several pages, we should not follow the inclination to pass them over without much attention. It is by a careful reading of them, and meditation upon them, that light is given on the doctrine presented. "The Lord never operates anything except in fulness; and the Word is in its fulness in the sense of the letter." And when doctrine is seen as drawn from the sense of t the letter, then it is to be confirmed by that sense. Doctrine with us should rest upon the firm foundation of confirming passages. Many of these should be known by heart. The recently Published First Elements of the True Christian Religion can be most useful in supplying such passages. The church, as whole and individually needs to heed the admonition: "Man should study the Word in the sense of the letter; from that sense only is doctrine given. (S. S. 56.)

     On Monday evening another class was held at the home of Mrs. Lucy Boggess, with eight persons present, and teaching concerning Creation was given.

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We had the pleasure on this occasion of having Mrs. Sanner, of Bryn Athyn, with us. On Tuesday afternoon, instruction was given to four children. And in the evening a class was again held at the church, when he considered the doctrine that with everyone the Divine Providence is universal because in every detail of life, and in every detail because universal.

     On Sunday, June 3rd, a service was held in DETROIT at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Day, the attendance being fourteen. In the afternoon, members of the circle motored to the farm of Mr. and Mrs. George Field, near ANN ARBOR, where we had a social supper, followed by a class. Eighteen persons were present, and all had a delightful time. At the class, the subject was the doctrine that Divine Truth in the sense of the letter of the Word is in its fulness, in its holiness, and in its power. On Monday afternoon, instruction was given to a child of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Bellinger, at FORD CITY, ONT., and in the evening a class was held at their home, at which the subject considered was the successive opening of the higher degrees of the mind by regeneration.

     On Tuesday evening another class was held at Detroit, when the teaching presented was that concerning man's co-operation in regeneration. In the course of the class, there was a discussion of the idea, prevailing to a considerable extent in the New Church, that certain teachings of the Writings as to the state of faith alone in the Christian World, although they applied in Swedenborg's day, have far less application today.

     Members of the Detroit Circle have formed a New Church Life Club, to meet once a month for the reading and discussion of articles in that periodical. One meeting has been held, and I was told that the twelve persons present spent an enjoyable evening.
     F. E. WAELCHLI.

     NEW YORK.

     The New York Society resumed worship in September last at 149 East 61st Street, with somewhat diminished numbers, it is true, owing to the many removals that have taken place in the last two years, but with a rare spirit of unanimity and hope not surpassed in the history of the society. The attendance records of the past year, and of this year up to date, show a better proportion of active worshipers at Sunday services than when the society polled more heads. Resting in the knowledge that all our societies are interested in each other's doings, and in the hope that we may be considered modest and unassuming, as befits the citizens of so vast and cosmopolitan a city as New York, we shall pass swiftly through a brief survey of the year's
activities.

     Early in October, the first doctrinal class of the season was held in New York, followed by the annual meeting. Two classes each month, one in New York and one in New Jersey, and the men's meeting once a month, all held regularly in the homes of members, are the standing activities of the society, besides Divine Worship every Sunday. Candidate Hendrik W. Boef, who was visiting Mr. and Mrs. Larssen in New Jersey at the week-end of October 9th, was invited to preach for us, and was very much appreciated. The Rev. K. R. Alden, visiting New York the week ending October 23rd, preached at the Sunday service, and read his paper on The Ishmael Rational" at the men's meeting the following night.

     The children's Christmas service was held on Sunday, December 18th. They were suitably addressed by our Pastor, and each child received Christmas gift, this latter being provided by the local Theta Alpha chapter. The following Sunday, Christmas Day, the adult service was held, when the Rev. Alan Gill delivered a very fitting sermon. He and Mrs. Gill were the recipients of a token of love and appreciation from the society at this time.

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     Coming along to February, our Pastor attended the Philadelphia District Assembly, and during his absence the pulpit was ably filled by Candidate Norman Reuter. The last weekend of the month was very interesting. Rev. and Mrs. Alfred Acton paid a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Larssen, in whose home a social was held to grace the occasion. During the evening, Dr. Acton gave a talk on his latest book, Introduction to the Word Explained, which was greatly appreciated by all present. On the Sunday he read the lessons and preached for us. The Sacrament of Baptism for Mr. Larssen took place on Sunday, March 29th. It was a most impressive and beautiful ceremony, not easily forgotten by those of us who were at service that day.

     On the evening of Saturday, March 31st, a social for the society was given by our pastor and Mrs. Gill at their home at College Point. It was quite informal, with card games, friendly chatter and refreshments. Quite a number of us were present and enjoyed the evening.

     On April 4th, Miss Eliza Mitchell passed peacefully away. Those of us who knew and remembered her in the days of her activity were happy in the knowledge of her so quiet a transition. Flowers were lovingly sent to the funeral by the society.

     Later in the month came the news that our Pastor had been called to Kitchener, and had accepted. He and Mrs. Gill go into the new work with the sincere good wishes of us all.

     On Sunday, May 6th, our Local Assembly was held, Bishop N. D. Pendleton presiding. The Assembly began with Divine service in the morning, the sermon by the Bishop being on Deuteronomy 10:11, 12, giving us an earnest and enlightened discourse dealing with the subject of influx. At the close of the service the Sacrament of the Holy Supper was administered by the Bishop. After the service we adjourned for lunch, meeting again in the afternoon at our place of worship. There was a short business meeting, after which the Bishop gave a paper on "Immortality." To say that we enjoyed it, is but a feeble expression of our appreciation, for it contained matter of paramount interest, not only for us, but for the whole world, and was delivered with the quiet ease and dignity, with the profound benignity, which is so inimitably Bishop Pendleton's. All too soon the paper came to its close. There was no discussion, and when the Bishop pronounced the benediction which terminated the Assembly we felt that we had indeed been blessed. It was small gathering this year, but a happy and unanimous one.

     On Sunday, May 20th, we bade "Au Revoir" to Mr. Walter Childs, who has removed to Bryn Athyn. Of course, we miss his presence very much, his kind and cheery word for each one of us. His "children" we were, no matter how grey and bent! When any of us are visiting in Bryn Athyn, the first person to be inquired of will be "Uncle Walter" without a doubt.

     A surprise party and farewell shower was tendered our Pastor and Mrs. Gill on Tahk evening of May 30th. Many beautiful and useful articles came to light during the downpour, the little event being attended by fun and merriment. Mr. Gill made a fitting speech on behalf of his wife and himself, not to mention the children. It was a pleasant surprise to us to find Mr. and Mrs. Fred Cooper there, having dropped in unexpectedly on the Gill family.

     In addition to the aforementioned ministers, pastors, and candidates who visited us during the year, the Rev. R. G. Cranch preached on Sunday, June 3rd. Our visitor's calendar also shows that, in November last, Rev. and Mrs. Acton, Miss Benita Acton, Mr. and Mrs. R. B. Caldwell, Jr., and Mrs. Rennels, called upon us. Quite recently, Mr. Donald Merrell, of Cincinnati, was a visitor, and in April Mr. Fred Grant of Washington came to see us. It is gratifying to us to receive visitors, and we should like to suggest that all traveling New Church folk carry that part of the cover of New Church Life which has the addresses of societies on it, so that, when making New York a port of call for either long or short periods, they can quite easily see where we worship, or get in touch with the Secretary for directions or hospitality. This brings our little survey to an end for the time being.
     FLORENCE A. WILDE.

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     GLENVIEW, ILL.

     The approach of our school closing has just been signalized by a school festival. The prominent feature was the demonstration of the progress in music made by the pupils under the instruction of Prof. Jean O. Rydstrom. The various things they did, and the technical knowledge of harmony they displayed, showed that this has been our most successful year in the study of music. The pupils who have been instructed by Miss Edith Goerwitz also performed, and showed much promise. Miss Venita Roschman, of Kitchener, will be a new member of our teaching staff next year.

     Preparations are well under way for our celebration of New Church Day, in which we expect to be joined by the members of Sharon Church. Sunday, June 17th, will be marked by a special service in the morning, and in the afternoon there will be a grand concert of vocal and instrumental music by orchestra, chorus and congregation. On the 19th, there will be a special children's service, and in the evening a banquet.

     Our Friday Suppers closed another very successful year on June 8th, and our Pastor was given a warm vote of thanks for the splendid papers he has read at the suppers, covering, as they have, a large variety of doctrinal topics.

     Two young men have recently come to our society from Sweden, and will make their permanent abode here,-the brothers Gunnar and Niels Ulander, cousins of Dr. Helm, of the Immanuel Church. Mr. Percy Staddon, of Chicago, was baptized and made his confession of faith at the service on June 3rd, and will become a member of the General Church. He has been an affirmative attendant at meetings for several years.
     T. B. S.

     MINISTERIAL CHANGES.

     The Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal, Pastor of the Colchester Society, has accepted a call to the pastorate of the Olivet Church, Toronto, where he will enter upon his duties in September.

     Four Candidates will be ordained on June 17th, and have been called to ministerial duties as follows: Mr. Hendrik W. Boef with the Los Angeles, Cal., Circle; Mr. Victor J. Gladish with the Colchester Society; Mr. Vincent C. Odhner will minister to the Advent Church, Philadelphia and teach in the Academy Schools, Bryn Athyn; Mr. Norman Reuter will be assistant to the Pastor of the Immanuel Church, Glenview, Ill.

     ONTARIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY.

     The Seventeenth Ontario District Assembly was held at Kitchener, May 24th to May 27th, with Bishop George de Charms presiding. A full report of this very successful meeting will appear in our next issue.

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NEXT ISSUE OF NEW CHURCH LIFE 1928

NEXT ISSUE OF NEW CHURCH LIFE              1928




     Announcements.



     The August and September issues of NEW CHURCH LIFE will contain the Journal of the Thirteenth General Assembly, as well as the Addresses delivered on that occasion, and will be mailed to subscribers on or about September 15th.

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THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928

     Preliminary Program.

     LONDON, ENGLAND, AUGUST 3-12, 1928.

     TO BE HELD AT VICTORIA HOUSE, SOUTHAMPTON ROW, LONDON

     AUGUST 4TH TO 12TH, 1928.

     Friday, August 3.
10:00 a.m.-Council of the Clergy. (At Michael Church, Burton Road, Brixton.)
1:00 p.m.-Luncheon for the Council.

     Saturday, August 4.
7:30 p.m.-First Session of the General Assembly. Address by the Bishop of the General Church.

     Sunday, August 5.
11:00. a.m.-Divine Worship. Ordination.
          -Sermon by the Rev. Hugo L. Odhner.
          -Subject: "The Day of Small Things." (Zech. 4:10.)
7:00 p.m.-Divine Worship. Ordinations.
          -Sermon by the Rev. R. J. Tilson.

     Monday, August 6.
10:00 a.m.-Second Session of the General Assembly.
          -Subject: "The Calendar Reading of the Writings."
11:00 a.m.-Address by the Rev. Dr. Alfred Acton.
          -Subject: To be announced later.
3:00 p.m.-Third Session of the General Assembly.
          -Address by the Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer.
          -Subject: "The New Church in Holland."
7:30 p.m.-Reception and Assembly Social.

     Tuesday, August 7.
10:00 a.m.-Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m.-Address by the Rev. Albert Bjorck.
          -Subject: "Progress."

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7:30 p.m.-Fourth Session of the General Assembly.
          -Subject: "Church Extension" General Discussion.

     Wednesday, August 8.
10:00 a.m.-Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m.-Address by the Rev. Richard Morse.
          -Subject: "The First Love"
3:00 p.m.-Meeting of the Corporation of the General Church.
7:30 p.m.-Fifth Session of the General Assembly.
          -Subject: "Society Building." General Discussion.

     Friday, August 10.
10:00 a.m.-Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy.
11:00 a.m.-Address by the Rev. William Whitehead.

     -Subject: "The New Church and the Modern State."
3:00 p.m.-Executive Committee of the General Church.
7:30 p.m.-"New Church Club" Men's Dinner.
          -Address by the Rev. Karl R. Alden on "The New Church Education of the Adolescent Boy.')
          -Ladies' Dinner under the Auspices of Theta Alpha.

     Saturday, August 11.
3:00 p.m.-Sixth Session of the General Assembly.
          -Address by Mr. J. S. Pryke.
          -Subject: "The Church and the World."

     Sunday, August 12.
11:00 a.m.-Divine Worship. Holy Supper.
          -Sermon by the Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom.
          -Subject: Text, John 11:28
7:00 p.m.-Open Meeting of the Sons of the Academy.
          -Address by the Rt. Rev. George de Charms.
          -Subject: "The Development of New Church Education."

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ADDRESS TO THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

ADDRESS TO THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY        N. D. PENDLETON       1928

     
[Photograph of a Group of the Clergy, Bloomsbury Square, London, August 12, 1928.]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII AUGUST, 1928           No. 8
     The promise revealed is, that the morning of man's life will be restored to him, and that the inchoaments of his wisdom will increase unendingly. (T. C. R. 766.) For this cause, God's especial blessing is upon beginnings (A. C. 326), and this for the reason that the quality of such beginnings derives and passes over in following states. (A. C. 3939.) Moreover, it is a law that life's advance to each new conjunction brings thereafter a dividing, (A. C. 4119), which in turn leads to a further unity and a higher consummation, in which there is, or should be, a fuller representation of the first beginnings, and so a revival of those early states which carry a restoral not unlike a resurrection. For the beginning of a thing is its soul, from out of which comes every revival, every life-giving renewal. (A. C. 4736, 5122.)

     The present occasion, and the place of this gathering, bring to mind the beginning of the New Church. Here in London Swedenborg ended his long and spiritually eventful career. Here the New Church had its organic rise. Here notable men have lived and died in its service. Here, as elsewhere, the life of the infant Church has advanced and receded like an ark on fluctuating waters, at times buoyed by a vivid sense of its immortality, and again depressed by the seeming impossibility of finding a permanent place of rest on earth; as if so spiritual a thing could not endure in this unsuitable world. Yet, like its Lord, the Church is Divinely born, to live and as if to die, in order that it may live again. Providence guards the implanting of the seed of the Church, that it may find fruitful ground, now here and now there, and with a seeming variance of fortune.

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It was so in the days of our fathers. It is so now, and so shall it ever be.

     Few in number were the men of the Church in the beginning, and they are not many more now. In this, the progress of the Church will be as slow as time. It awaits the completion of its own inward state of life. Its progress seemingly halts with each generation, lest its virtue be taken for granted, and its truth fail of spiritual power. Of all the Churches, this one is to be the most spiritual. It is to be so in the fullness of its time. It is so now, in the blessing that rested upon its beginning.

     The natural likeness of a Church will not answer to the spirit of the Second Coming; a dead representation can serve only for a time, and as a convenient vessel. The soul of the New Church must produce its own ultimation from, itself. This soul is a new revelation, a new vision of God, and also a new internal worship. This is its quality, and this was manifest in its beginning. Let us, therefore, turn to the record of the earliest days of the Church, and vivify our faith and love by calling to mind the success first achieved, and the failures first encountered in those great days of small beginnings.

     Seven years after the death of Swedenborg, two clergymen of the Church of England met in the City of London. A word passed between them which was destined to have a potent influence upon the first century of the New Church. This word was not a part of the subject in hand, but was as an afterthought in response to a question. It was an advice from an older to a younger priest of the Established Church. Later, a profound significance was attached to this counsel, on the ground that it came from a personal friend of Swedenborg. Its real influence, however, arose from the fact that it was a counsel in accord with life's compromises. It was an endorsement of the policy of non-resistance in dealing with a fixed environment. It was an approval of that tendency in human nature which would maintain the present status as against the freer movement of life which would break with the past to initiate a new beginning.

     The elder of the two clergymen was none other than the "venerable" Thomas Hartley, Rector of Winwick, who, by his former questioning of the Seer of the New Jerusalem, had attached his name to a page of Revelation. The younger was the Rev. John Clowes, Rector of St. John's, Manchester.

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The meeting of these two men was occasioned by their mutual interest in translating the Writings. The one had crowned his life by giving to the world the first English translation of The Intercourse Between the Soul and Body and Heaven and Hell. The other was destined to become the first great translator of many volumes of the Writings, including the Arcana.

     Both of these men were, in the first instance, drawn to Swedenborg by their interest in mystical writers. Hartley was so imbued with the tone of these writers that he imparted a touch of their peculiar style to his translation, while Clowes, throughout his life, gave evidence of a keenly susceptible spiritual temperament. This was manifest in many ways, but notably in that well-known vision which came to him in connection with the term "Divine Human," the phrase having at the time no precise, meaning in his mind. On the advice of a friend he purchased a copy of the True Christian Religion in the original. The receipt of the volume found him cold to its contents, being, as he informs us, "satisfied with his present spiritual attainments." Little did he realize that he was on the verge of an experience comparable with that which befell Saul when on his journey to Damascus. On the eve of a visit to a friend in the County of York, Clowes opened the neglected volume to what seemed dull reading. Turning its pages casually, his eye caught the "new and strange term, Divine Human." But it made no deep impression at the time. He closed the book, and departed on his journey. Awaking early one morning after his arrival at the house of his friend, his mind was "suddenly and powerfully drawn into a state of inward recollection, attended with an inexpressible calm . . . and heavenly joy." While he reflected on this "strange. . . harmony" in the interiors of his mind, a "Divine Glory" became manifest, and a kind of "internal dictate" to the effect that the "Glory" was connected with the words "Divine Human." The "Glory" continued for more than an hour. No "visible form" was seen, but he felt that the "Glory" proceeded from a Human Form.

     The next morning, on awaking, the vision was repeated with "increased splendor." He was then moved by an "irresistible desire" to return home and read the book in which the term "Divine Human" occurred. With this in view, he terminated his visit, and, hastening home, "pressed the sacred volume to his bosom."

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He was ever afterwards convinced that the "transcendent Glory" which was manifested to him on this occasion, together with its effect in kindling in him a desire to read the True Christian Religion, was the result, "not of fancy or imagination," but of "the Divine Presence and operation of the Lord in His Divine Human," inclining and preparing him to read diligently and receive affectionately the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, and to cause him to "hear glad tidings to the Second Glorious Advent of his God." (Clowes Autobiography.)

     Certain it is that on reading the True Christian Religion and the other listed books of the New Revelation, he was subsequently gifted with a rational vision of the Glorified Human, of which his early morning experience was a providential and preparatory forecast. His long after-life was one of utmost devotion to the worship of the Divine Human, and to the work of translating and expounding the Writings. Never having married, he was free from family responsibilities. His mind was ever virgin to the truth and sacrificial in its devotion to the New Church as an internal propaganda. He taught the Doctrines with ability and fervor; but his ritual administrations were strictly confined to the Established Church, to which he remained outwardly obedient until the day of his death. The piety of his life, as known to his friends, was beyond compare. De Quincey, when a boy, knew him intimately, and afterwards describes him as "holy, visionary and apostolic" as "the most saintly, in outward aspect, of all human beings," as "a sublimated spirit dwelling more than half in some purer world." Knowing his sentiments as a Swedenborgian, De Quincey adds, "I am surprised that he should have been unvisited by episcopal censures." He was, indeed, not without ecclesiastical enemies, who at length succeeded in bringing him before his bishop on the charge of heresy. On the occasion, Clowes spoke at length in his defense, and yet with prudence, making his formal denial of the charges against him an occasion for rectifying the commonly accepted view of the Trinity and the Atonement. His generous bishop dismissed him with a kindly admonition, lest he betray himself too much into the hands of his enemies.

     In Manchester, Clowes formed a society for the purpose of translating and publishing the Writings. Other groups of readers assembled at nearby points. Clowes visited these groups assiduously, imparting encouragement and instruction.

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The members of this, his internal church, were drawn from various denominations. The super-refined nature of their leader was not infrequently tried by the close contact with the "driving" Methodists, whose religious enthusiasm was then in its primitive force. The same may be said of the deep-water Baptists, and of the Ouakers, of whose women preachers he plaintively remarked, "Why can't they tell it to their husbands!" From these sources, as well as from the Established Church, he gathered converts rather numerously in the beginning. But he counselled them, one and all, to remain steadfast in their original religious associations, even as he himself felt constrained to do. He is said to have admitted, in the face of argument, that at some time in the future it might be necessary for the New Church to separate from the Old, but his hope and expectation was that the Established Church would gradually modify its liturgy through the unseen influence of the New Dispensation. At one time his hope for this consummation was high. He had on his list of correspondents some fifty clergymen of the Church of England who were receivers of the new Doctrines to a greater or less degree.

     Clowes was faithful to the advice he received from Hartley on the occasion of their first and only meeting, and in turn he passed that counsel on to others, both in England and America, as the true policy for the Church of the New Jerusalem, at least for the time being.

     The account of the meeting of these two men, as it has come down to us, is as follows: Clowes asked Hartley "how far he could conscientiously remain a beneficed clergyman of an Established Church with whose avowed tenets the new Doctrines were at variance." Hartley, in reply, "warmly urged upon him the duty of remaining in the line of occupation which, Providence had marked out for him, showing that by meekly enduring the cross that would be put upon his inclinations and opinions in the course of his clerical career, his own purification and consequent usefulness as a pastor would be more certainly promoted than by the excitement of a self-sought martyrdom with its insidious sense of merit." (See The Life and Correspondence of the Rev. John Clowes, M. A., by Theodore Compton, p. 25.) Indeed, it called for the meekness and patience of a saint to bear for more than fifty years the cross that was put upon this sensitive man, not only by his ecclesiastical enemies in the Established Church, but also by the pressure brought to bear upon him by his New Church brethren who could not tolerate his non-separation policy.

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     As the rector of St. John's, he must needs perform rituals accompanied by the recitation of formulas of faith which were false to his mind and heart. On the other hand, he was driven to a painstaking search of the Writings to find proof of the rightness of his stand. His most plausible interpretation was that which he placed upon the prophecy concerning the "time and half a time" dwelling of the woman in the wilderness, in a place "prepared for her of God." This, to his mind, meant that the New Church should remain in the Old, at least for a time, and perhaps until the Old became New.

     Hartley also remained in the Established Church until the day of his death. In this, his action was consistent with the advice he gave Clowes, an advice to which Clowes on more than one occasion appealed as almost certainly coming through Hartley from Swedenborg himself. He said that he could not conceive of Hartley's not speaking to Swedenborg on a matter of such transcendent importance.

     It is not difficult to understand the attitude of these two men in this matter. At that time, or rather at the first, there was nowhere for them to go if they should separate; or so it must seem to men deeply bound by, and highly responsible to, an Established Church. We must also recognize that it is ever man's privilege, as well as his duty, on receiving the Doctrines, to proclaim them wherever he may find himself, and this until a judgment is made. No ecclesiastical condemnation was ever visited Upon either of these clergymen, and this though neither of them ever concealed his opinions. It is said of Clowes that he sent to his bishop a copy of every book he published. Doubtless he was guarded by a favoring Providence. It appears that his life was made easier by the fact that he was enabled to rest somewhat passively in his official function. His curate performed most of his duties, and at length a second curate was engaged, which quite exhausted his official income. His private means alone enabled him to give his time to translating the Writings and to his New Church missionary work. While he was ever faithful to the general responsibilities of his office in the Church of England, yet he was keen to perceive that the status of his faith in the Writings of the New Church forbade his acceptance of any further ecclesiastical preferment. It was doubtless for this cause that he declined the offer of a bishopric.

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     The only criticism we may advance against the position taken by him, and maintained for the years of his long life, is fundamentally the same as that advanced by some of his brother New Churchmen in his own day. Not only did he remain in the Established Church, which was in a sense his personal privilege, but he made non-separation a more or less aggressive policy for the New Church.

     This policy of Clowes is identified with the famous Hawkstone meetings. The beautiful Shropshire park of that name was for more than fifty years the place of annual assemblage of the non-separated receivers of the Doctrines. There Clowes reigned as the inspiring genius. There, from time to time, came New Churchmen from various parts of Britain, and among them his social intimate and spiritual friend, Charles Augustus Tulk, sometimes to preside.

     Tulk was a gentleman of property and standing, and also of an independent, not to say erratic, spirit. He received the New Church faith from his father, John Augustus Tulk, who was an earnest supporter of the first separated organization. His son, Charles, became a non-separatist, and joined with Clowes in supporting that policy. But a time came when the friendship between these two men received a decided check. Tulk fell under the spell of Bishop Berkeley's idealism, and applied that theory to the Writings, especially to the glorification of the Lord, with startling results. He held that all things of the outer appearing world are created in the act of perceiving them; that is to say, that the supposed material world is but a phenomenon of the natural mind of man, having no existence outside of that mind, and that the Lord's apparent material body was no exception to this rule. Therefore, the question as to the final disposal of the body which died upon the cross, which question was then exciting keen comment in the Church, could, he held, be no other than futile, since there was in fact no such body. The Church profoundly resented this view, and Tulk became known as the great heresiarch of his day. He wrote to his friend Clowes, telling him of his intention to publish his theory in book form, and received in answer a piteous appeal not to destroy the brethren's faith in the actuality of the Divine Human. Clowes' letter betrays an anxious conflict between his "horror" of Tulk's theory and his deep friendship for the man. He protested that his friendship and his charity would even prevail over so grave a difference of opinion.

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His own sense-perception of the early morning vision of the "Divine Glory" had given him a special ground for the belief in the actuality of the Divine Human, and the worship of that Human had become the very life-blood of his faith. Tulk was inexorable. In due course his Spiritual Christianity appeared.

     Let us confess, in passing, that however much we may disagree with the idea dominating this remarkable book, even at this day we cannot rise from a perusal of it without a gesture of admiration for the writer's powers of formulation.

     For a period the Hawkstone meetings reported their annual deliberations to the Church at large. These meetings exercised great influence upon the infant Church. But they were definitely a counterpoise, and at times aggressively opposed, to the early Conferences of the more or less separated brethren. Clowes' death left Hawkstone without a soul, and at length the meetings ceased, though for a number of years after his death, non-separated New Churchmen continued to make annual pilgrimages to that countryside, in memory of their beloved leader.

     The death of this early apostle moved the Church as no other event in its early history. The separated churches everywhere held memorial meetings, whereat the leading men spoke with deep feeling of their admiration of the man and their appreciation of his great work. In fact, his place in the affections of New Churchmen of his day was unrivaled. Noble, who followed faithfully in the footsteps of those who led in the separatist movement, gave his highest personal praise to Clowes, the great translator of the Writings and commentator thereon, who was one in heart with his New Church brethren in all things, save that of s separate worship and a separate priesthood, and even this he came to allow for those who demanded it, though he deeply regretted their doing so.

     The name of Clowes and that of Hawkstone have one significance, and the death of the one foretold the end of the other. If, however, we at this day recall the name of Hawkstone as a forgotten symbol of a lost cause, we shall do well to remember that the spirit of Hawkstone is still a spiritual shrine to which the hearts of many unconsciously turn in seeking escape from the slow and arduous road that leads to the ultimate founding of the Church on earth.

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     Six years after the death of Swedenborg, a young man of nineteen years, a printer's apprentice, was living with the family of a printer in London. It happened that one day at table the conversation turned on the subject of Swedenborg, whose work on Heaven and Hell, translated by Hartley, Was then passing through the press. The remarks were in a light vein, but the effect upon young Robert Hindmarsh was a feeling of "regret that nothing certain was known of the state of man after death."

     Five years passed over his dead, at the end of which time he visited his father in Canterbury. He there learned that a gentleman in that city possessed some of Swedenborg's Writings, and hastened to borrow The Intercourse between the Soul and Body and Heaven and Hell. On the same day he met the young lady who, in a few months, was to become his wife, and with whom he tells us he lived in "much harmony and affection for nearly fifty-one years." Can we wonder that he read the borrowed volumes with "utmost avidity," and, as he records, "instantly perceived their contents to be of heavenly origin"; that he "embraced and delighted in them as the eye embraces and delights in objects that reflect the golden rays of the rising sun"?

     On his return to London, Hindmarsh began a search for other readers of the Writings. He thought at first that every person of sound mind would receive the new Doctrines and rejoice with him in so great a treasure; but instead, he encountered "incredulity and laughter." The first year of his search found only "three or four" receivers. These he invited to hold meetings for "reading and friendly intercourse" at his house, not far from the place where Swedenborg died.

     The first forward step of this Hindmarsh reading circle was to call, through the press, a public meeting at the London Coffee House on Ludgate Hill. Five assembled. No private room being available, an adjournment was taken to the Queens Arms Tavern. Here the purpose of the call was discussed. There were mutual congratulations on the good fortune in having discovered the Writings. "Each one told with sparkling eyes of the never-to-be-forgotten event of their first encounter with, and reception of, the Doctrines. They talked of the wonder of the new Revelation, and felt that the New Jerusalem was descending, and that the tabernacle of God was about to be set up again amongst men."

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     Later they met in chambers in the Inner Temple, near Fleet Street, and subsequently in chambers in New Court, Middle Temple. Here they formed a society called "The Theosophical Society for the promotion of the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem." A sympathetic relation was established with the earlier formed publishing Society in Manchester under the Rev. John Clowes. The members of the London Theosophical Society increased. It is recorded that "gentlemen of respectability" joined, and that some of them were known to fame. At these meeting; we first encounter James Glen, who failed the first-called meeting only because of a misdirection. He was soon to carry the Gospel of the Second Coming to Philadelphia.

     Hindmarsh tells us that many of the friends hoped for a gradual and insensible introduction of the new Doctrines into the service of the Church of England by means of pious clergymen in different parts of the Kingdom. And he adds that there were indeed several such preachers, but that for the most part they were called to account by their superiors. He notes, on the other hand, the growth of a "deepening concern" with some, that there was no "public ensign lifted up," "no congregation throughout the Christian World which worshiped the Lord Jesus Christ as the supreme and only God." And he asked: "Are we to continue inert sluggards" with "lamps burning in secret places?"

     A proposal to institute separate worship was submitted to the Theosophical Society. It was negatived by a small majority. Yet there were a few who refused to be turned from their purpose. They held that "when the human mind is in a prepared state for full reception (of the Doctrine), that then is the proper time for withdrawing from a fallen Church." These few, without separating from the parent Theosophical Society, united for the purpose of establishing "an external worship which should be in accord with the truths of the internal Church."

     The Rev. John Clowes, hearing of this design, came to London for the purpose of dissuading them. Hindmarsh writes that "with purest intentions, he (Clowes) earnestly entreated us to remain in our former religious connections, and not to think of deserting the authorized worship of the country. He thought it probable that sooner or later the bishops and other dignitaries, who alone had the power to make such changes, would be disposed to revise their liturgy and make it more conformable to the truths of the New Dispensation."

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     The meeting of these two leading men, the Church of England ecclesiastic and the scholarly printer, and the argument between them, which is said to have been very able on both sides, marked the first crisis in a contention which, in one form or another, has lasted for more than a century. The printer's vision of the Church and its future development was the deeper, and his sense of the present practical need was clearer. Yet it should be said that the soul of the gentle ecclesiastic gloried in the light of the new Revelation, even while his natural affections bound him to a Church whose leading doctrines he regarded as false. But so divided was he in his loyalties, and so pressed by the advocacy of Hindmarsh in favor of separation, that he subsequently complained that his opponents were only in the first or combative stage of regeneration. The separatists listened to him with "deference add respect," for he was not only an able man, but also in person most lovable. Besides, was he not laboring arduously for the cause of the New Church as he saw it? Yet, in a matter of such importance, the separatists did not feel justified in abandoning their purpose to "proceed in accord with their conscience."

     And so it came to pass that, fifteen years after the death of Swedenborg, a meeting was called to organize a body of the New Church apart from the Old. A select meeting of the most ardent spirits was previously held to arrange for the forthcoming "primitive institution of the Church." A notable paper to this end was drawn up by James Glen, which prescribed baptism as the sole means of entrance into the New Church,-that is, baptism performed in that Church. The paper also prescribed the necessity of partaking of the Holy Supper within the New Church.

     At last the day of solemn institution arrived, July 31st, 1787. James Hindmarsh, the father of Robert, was chosen by lot to officiate as "priest of the occasion," to baptize in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to bless the bread and the wine as a "sign and seal of the formation of the New Church." Eleven persons sat around a table and partook of the Communion thus blessed. Behind these eleven stood five others, who desired baptism before partaking of the elements.

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Among these last was Robert Hindmarsh, who had in his heart fifteen reasons why there should be a new Baptism in the New Church. At the call of his father, he came forward, made his confession of faith, and was baptized, receiving the mark of the cross upon his "forehead and breast." And then came the other four. Hindmarsh notes: "We had confidence in the Divine Providence, and firmly believed that the Church, now beginning in weakness and in imperfection, was destined to become, in the Lord's appointed time, the crown and glory of all the Churches." Thus was the New Church formed and ultimated by an original performance of the two great Sacraments.

     The members of the separated body continued to attend the meetings at the Middle Temple until a place for worship was found in Great East Cheap. It was not until after the removal to the latter place that the mind of the infant Church turned to the question of a minister "capable of teaching the Doctrines and defending them in public." Soon "all eyes" were centered on James, the father of Robert Hindmarsh, who had formerly preached among the Methodists, as the one "best fitted" for this work. His reception of the Doctrines had been "attended with difficulty." At first he opposed them, but after attending one of the meetings in the Temple, where his son Robert was a leading spirit, he was profoundly delighted, and began a serious study of the Writings. At the call of Great East Cheap Society, he undertook the preaching.

     The Church of the New Jerusalem was now separate in body as well as in spirit. Instead of a "Theosophical Society," it now became the "New Church signified by the New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven."

     But there was as yet no ordained priesthood. The question, therefore, of instituting a regular ministry for the administration of the Sacraments, and for authorizing preachers, was actively considered. The following questions were asked: "How should such a ministry commence?" "How was ordination to be effected?" "Who should undertake so awful a solemnity?" "Should the succession be from the Old Church to the New?" "If so, could any ordaining minister or bishop be found who would lay hands upon a member of the New Church?" "Would not the answers by such a candidate disqualify him?" No simple minister or priest had the authority to ordain, if such a one could be found.

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"To whom, then, must the members of the New Church turn, but to the Lord alone?"

     It was unanimously resolved that the institution of a ministry for the New Church could not be derived from any authority heretofore recognized in the Christian World. That authority "must be derived from the Lord alone, in His own Church, and not from any priesthood of a fallen, consummated and finished Church." Here a parallel was drawn with the first Christian Church and the institution of its ministerial order, in that the Jewish priesthood did not pass over into the Christian Church. Besides, it was asked, "How cab authority be drawn from the Old Church to oppose its own doctrines?" Yet no one felt that he himself had any authority to "send forth laborers into the Lord's vineyard." "How, then, was the Divine Will to be ascertained, save by lot, wherein would be given a visible token of the Divine approbation?"

     Accordingly, twelve men were chosen by lot as representatives of the Church, to lay their hands upon the persons to be ordained. Among these twelve was Robert Hindmarsh, who, as secretary, prepared the tickets. The following is the account of the proceeding, from his own hand: "I made sixteen tickets, answering to the number of male persons present, and marked twelve of them with a cross. Being desirous, for my own private satisfaction, to ascertain which of the twelve it might please the Lord to appoint to read or perform the ceremony, I wrote, unknown to the rest of the Society, upon one of the twelve tickets marked with a cross, the word 'Ordain.' I then put the sixteen tickets into a receiver, when a prayer went up from my heart that the Lord would show whom He had chosen for the office of Ordination. I went around to them all, and each one took a ticket out of the receiver, leaving me the last, on which was written the word ' Ordain.' Still, the other members of the Society were not aware of what I had done; and when the twelve (who had drawn a ticket marked with a cross) were separated from the rest, after consulting together for a few moments, they unanimously requested that I should read and perform the ceremony of Ordination. Whereupon, James Hindmarsh was first ordained by me, and, immediately afterwards, Samuel Smith."

     Subsequent General Conferences approved of the mode of this first ordination, and the Eleventh Conference resolved unanimously,

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"That in consequence of Mr. Robert Hindmarsh having been called by lot to ordain the first minister in the New Church, this Conference consider it the most orderly method which could then be adopted, and that Mr. Robert Hindmarsh was virtually ordained by the Divine auspices of heaven; in consequence of which, this Conference consider Mr. Robert Hindmarsh as one of the regular ordaining ministers." A note of added interest is, that the man who was chosen by lot, as well as by the unanimous voice of the twelve, to institute the priesthood of the New Church by ordination, was himself the first to be introduced into the Church by Baptism.

     By these events, the organization of a separate worship, and the establishment of an original priesthood, was accomplished. But the conflict between the separatists and non-separatists did not cease for a generation. Protests came to Great East Cheap from several quarters, and especially from Manchester. The Manchester letters argued against separation from the standpoint of the universality of the Lord's mercy, in that His mercy is extended to all worshipers, however imperfect their forms of worship may be, whether these forms pertain to Christians, pagans or idolaters. In reply, Great East Cheap agreed in affirming the universality of the Lord's mercy, but submitted that this was not sufficient reason for an Old Churchman, a pagan or an idolater, remaining such; nor yet was it sufficient reason against the New Church having its own worship; and that if, as Manchester asserted, the Lord accepts the sincere worship of all men, surely Great East Cheap might hope that His mercy would be extended to them also. "Wherein, then," it was asked, "consisted the evil of separation from the forms of the Old Church, since the intention is not to circumscribe the Lord's mercy thereby, nor yet to confine that mercy to the worship for which Great East Cheap stands? Yet, that such separation is imperative, appears from the fact that the forms of the Old Church worship implant in the minds of the worshipers the idea of a divided God. Manchester believes in but one God in one person. So do the angels of heaven. But the angels profess the same belief with their lips. The acknowledgment of their hearts descends into the professions of their mouths. Why, then, should New Churchmen be ashamed to confess their faith in the open day?" This reply was signed by seventy-seven members of the Great East Cheap Society.

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     The broad question then, as now, was as to whether the New Dispensation, in its fundamental implication, called for a modifying influence upon the established Churches of Christendom, or whether the Second Advent of the Lord as Divine Doctrine demanded a militant base of its own from which its influence would spread. After more than a century, this question is not less but more clearly drawn. Even those who have separated, or who have inherited the results of the first separation, are themselves divided in heart and mind.

     For the first few years, the Society at Great East Cheap prospered under the preaching of James Hindmarsh and the leading of his son, Robert. The prior non-separate Theosophical Society declined in numbers, and in a few years ceased to be. However, difficulties arose in the organized Church. The mind of Robert Hindmarsh was aggressively desirous of forming an external church in accord with the indications given in the Writings. To this end he outlined a well-ordered establishment with an administrative priesthood of three degrees. But it seems that he gave offence.

     As a child, he grew up in an intense atmosphere of Methodist enthusiasm. But no trace of this early environment appeared in his later life. At the time of which we write, the Doctrines of the New Church were inwrought in the very fibre of his being. He spurned all compromise. This was the difficulty. The sacred Revelation was his supreme law, and he would make this law creative. In this he was the worthy original of a line of eminent men in the Church. His spirit is close akin to those of us who are assembled here today. The essential of all that we now stand for, he defended in his day and generation with distinguished ability and undaunted courage. Under him the Great East Cheap Society became the center of the New Church. There those first General Conferences were held which seemed to give high promise of increase. But a spiritual church can hardly develop apart from natural difficulties and regenerative trials. Soon the first sanguine expectations suffered an eclipse; for the standard set by Hindmarsh was more than a hundred years in advance of his time. The Fourth General Conference was the scene of disruption. A question arose in connection with the appointment of ministers. This led to a discussion of the government appropriate to the New Church, as to whether it should in form be Episcopal or Presbyterian.

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The feeling on both sides was so tense that, immediately after the closing of the Conference, the Society divided. Those who inclined to a Presbyterian form, constituting a large majority, chose as their pastor the Rev. Manoah Sibly, who had been recently ordained. They removed to Stone Street, Tottenham Court Road.

     Hindmarsh states that this division was the result of the above-mentioned difference of opinion relative to church government. His opponents gave additional reasons. They asserted that he was high-handed with reference to the property in which they were worshiping. But beneath the cover of these open statements a secret disturbance was concealed. Then first began that whisper campaign that has come down the age. This was not directed against any person,-certainly not against the great leader who was now repudiated by the majority. His life was open and beyond attack. But the imaginations of the timid became fevered. A fear was engendered,-a fear of the bold attitude of those who held that the Writings of Swedenborg were "nothing short of a Divine Revelation."

     The establishment at Great East Cheap seemingly failed, and the Church at large for some years passed Hindmarsh by. He himself was for a time immersed in business difficulties, which lessened his Church activities. In the north, Clowes continued to labor with his unseparated societies. With one hand he beckoned to all the world to come to the New Jerusalem, and with the other he waved them back. A Quaker who had received the Doctrines said of himself that he was a New Churchman, but still a Quaker. Clowes remarked, "I love him for it."

     We read of his traveling, this patient man, ever traveling from one of his reading groups to another. On one occasion, when he had come down to London, a separated society invited him to preach at their place of worship. He replied that it was "not suitable for a minister of the Church of England to ascend the pulpit of a dissenting congregation," but that he would gladly converse with the brethren from one of the pews. And this he did, taking for his subject the spiritual significance of the terms "New Church" and "Old Church," as used in the Writings, saying that there were many New Churchmen in the so-called Old Church, and perhaps some Old Churchmen in the so-called New Church.

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He held that the only separation called for was a separation from one's evils and falsities. Yet he could not hold the Church against the logic of the situation. He could not permanently suppress the desire of New Churchmen to make their external worship concord with their spiritual principles. The movement begun at Great East Cheap spread. The Birmingham Society declared for separation, and built the first New Church house of worship ever erected. In Manchester itself, a like movement, with a like result, followed. Also at Salford, just across the rive from Manchester, a commodious church was erected by a separated congregation, and Hindmarsh himself was called to minister to it. In those days it was the custom to refer to such New Church buildings as "temples," doubtless to distinguish between the New and the Old Christian Churches.

     The Salford call to Hindmarsh was coincident with a revival of his church activities. He labored as pastor of this church for some thirteen years, during which time he again became the leading spirit at the General Conferences, the meetings of which were resumed after a lapse of several years. Salford was the only pastoral charge ever held by Robert Hindmarsh. He preached for other ministers occasionally, both before and after the time of his Salford pastorate, and for a time he was engaged with notable success in missionary work, but his secular business prevented him from seeking constant ministerial employment. But that be at all times regarded himself as a priest of the New Church is beyond question. While he was never ordained by the hand of man, he ever believed that ordination, and also the power to ordain, was imparted to him by the lot that fell at Great East Cheap. He was the more confirmed in this belief by the saying of Swedenborg to certain spirits who were debating in an order determined by lot: "Think not this lot came by chance, for it was of Providence." (T. C. R. 696.) Hindmarsh held, with the pronouncement of the Eleventh Conference, that he was "ordained by the auspices of Heaven."

     Noble's estimate of him commands attention. Speaking from an intimate, personal acquaintance, he says that "Hindmarsh was a bold and consistent New Churchman of unquestioned power of mind and integrity of purpose"; that he was exceptionally "clearheaded" and indeed "high-minded, but not with pride"; that few men equaled him in "oral discussion," during which he ever preserved an unruffled temper; that as a polemical writer he had no equal.

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His well-known Letters to Dr. Priestly in Defense of the New Church are perhaps the most striking example of this. Speaking of these letters, Noble says that they first came into his hand a year after he himself had received the Doctrines, and that he could never forget his "vivid delight" on reading them. He notes that Dr. Priestly, the celebrated philosopher and Unitarian leader, who "loved to interfere in every dispute," felt called upon, in due course, to attack the New Church. Priestly was regarded as a "giant in controversy," but proved to be but a "puny dwarf" in the hands of Hindmarsh, and so the discomfited champion "retired silently from the field, to return no more"; and this, though "he entered the conflict with a flourish and an avowed determination to come again." In this combat, Noble likened Hindmarsh to a "rider on a white horse" grasping in hand the "bow of resistless doctrine," the arrows of which were "piercing truths" which "struck with unerring certainty." This description of Hindmarsh's masterly defense is not overdrawn. His mode of argument was reminiscently Socratic. One is constantly surprised by an unexpected display of strength in the writer's arguments, and a consequent demonstration of the weakness in those of his opponent. To this day his defense gives full satisfaction. No wonder the learned doctor did not reply. It must have been quite clear to him that he had ventured beyond the region of his knowledge. Certainly he encountered defeat at every point.

     Noble was Hindmarsh's younger friend and spiritual heir, and while not blind to the older leader's limitations, he was interested in recording a fair estimate of the man who was bound to be much talked of in later times. One phrase employed by Noble reveals the urgent motive in Hindmarsh's life. He says of him that a separate Church was the "darling of his heart." This tells the story.

     Noble stood by the bedside of his friend in his last illness. He notes that Hindmarsh made little or nothing of his death; that he put on no extra appearance of piety; but that after disposing of his affairs in a methodical manner, he remarked that the circle of his natural life was closing. And we may add that with his death the cycle of life of the first generation of New Churchmen also closed.

     We can only hope that the spirit and doctrine which entered into the first founding of the New Church, through the instrumentality of this great man, may be renewed, and that the future may bring recurrences of those early states of faith and devotion, in order that the Church may enjoy repeated returns of the morning of its life.

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Unless this be so, and where it is not so, the Church will wander far afield and suffer a loss of its distinctive life and doctrine; and if and where this comes to pass, then will be fulfilled the fate recorded of the two witnesses who were recalled to heaven because of the difficult reception of the Divine doctrine which they represented recalled to heaven, there to await an adequate change of state in both worlds.

     It is doubtless well that each new generation of the Church should cast aside the weight of its lifeless traditions; for a Church of mere traditions is purely dead. Yet it is ever a token of life's renewal to recur to the earliest beginnings; for these are as saving remains, apart from which there is no regeneration.

     We are assembled not far from Great East Cheap. Let us pray for the presence of the spirit and counsel which guided in the establishment of that Society. Even as the men of that day, so also do we hold to a separate and distinctive New Church as the "darling of our hearts." For this cause the Academy was called into being a half century ago; and for this same cause the General Church now stands. Neither of these bodies came as the result of a radically new issue. Both are alike bound up in the "bundle of life" with the earliest beginnings of the New Church, and both were and now are outstanding exponents of that spirit of devotion and doctrinal interpretation which founded the first-born Society at Great East Cheap.

     We therefore pray for a continuance of the early blessing which rested upon the Church, that it may be derived to this and following generations-even that blessing which was made manifest to the first New Churchmen in their perceptive formula that the "Writings of Swedenborg are nothing short of a Divine Revelation." This doctrine we confess with joy. We hold that if the Writings are less than such a Revelation, they are as nothing; and that more than such a Revelation cannot be given.

     No fruit may ever surpass the limits of its seed, and so we rejoice in the fact that the first seed sown in the establishment of the Church carried at its heart the acknowledgment of the Divinity of its revelation. Whether we say the Writings are "nothing short of a Divine Revelation," or whether we speak of their Divine Authority, calling them the Word of the Lord to the New Heaven and the New Church, it is the same.

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The wording differs, but the meaning is one, even as the quality of a fruit is one with the vital spirit of its seed; and in this case the seed is of Divinity and faith therein. Only such a seed is competent to found a Church. Only such a seed can produce the requisite faith. Only such a seed may contain the infinities for which the future calls, and provide for an unceasing unfolding of the heavenly mysteries upon which the human soul depends for its salvation.

     DISCUSSION OF THE BISHOP'S ADDRESS.

     Rev. R. J. Tilson, Presiding: Friends, you have listened tonight to an inspiring and exhaustive review of the history of the first establishment of the Lord's New Church in this world, and I feel quite sure that it will have aroused in you' minds many a thought which it will be beneficial to hear expressed. The dosing words of this review seem to me to be a clear call to all of us to stand before the world as witnesses to that which called the New Church into existence,-the recognition of the Divine Human of the Lord. Nothing short of the recognition of Emanuel Swedenborg as the human instrument raised by the Lord for the purpose of His Second Coming, nothing short of recognizing that Revelation as the Divine Human of the Lord, will suffice for us, of the New Church, in this world. It is nothing for us if, like Hindmarsh of old, we have to be suspected. What does it matter, so long as the great principle goes forth to the world upon which alone the New Church can be founded? Surely not one of us has sat here tonight without feeling moved to conquer evil loves, under the Lord's guidance, making the Church theocentric and not egocentric. We have need of co-operating with the Lord in His work. Our gathering together at this time will indeed be a blessed experience, and will draw down from heaven that inspiration which the Lord gave to His Church on that first occasion. We have had a glorious Address. It is my pleasure to extend a most cordial invitation to all who are present to speak. We are glad that we number among us many from many different countries; we are glad also that we have representatives here of other sections (if I have to call them such) of the Lord's New Church; and all are welcome to express themselves on the matter to which they have been privileged to listen.

     Rev. E. E. Iungerich: It has been a great pleasure to me to be present at this time, and to hear the inspiring Address which has benefitted us all, as our Chairman has so well and eloquently expressed it. We know further that our labors in the natural world are of little avail if the spiritual world is not present with us.

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And in that spiritual world our chief associations are the actions of those who labor in the same glorious cause which has inspired us all. I cannot but feel that the Bishop's Address is inseminated with the spirit of those who are likely to fight for the Holy City, New Jerusalem, in the spiritual world, that it may stand more firmly in the hearts of those who are laboring for its establishment on earth. I think the Bishop was very wise in selecting this subject to present in this city of London, in which the first great movement for the distinct establishment of the New Church, of the worship of the Lord in His Second Coming, was initiated. In the city of London in the spiritual world, those who labored for that cause will feel a great rejoicing that a voice is now raised with such strength and eloquence to support a principle which inspired the minds of our great founders.

     We can look upon Hindmarsh much as the Children of Israel must have looked upon Moses, who was raised up to lead them. Moses and Joshua were possibly in a like relationship to that of Swedenborg and Hindmarsh. And with many Jews it was a constant cry, "Let us go back to Egypt!" They did not wish far separation, though it was necessary. It is a most singular thing that those of the New Church who read and study history do not notice that this condition has been represented again and again, and they fall into the same pitfall that beset the establishment of former Churches, not realizing that the conditions are almost identical in the case of the New Church. A Church has never been established except upon a distinct revelation, which was the great and vital thing of that Church; and yet we hear that the Writings are the one great exception to this, and that we must go back to a previous age, in order to get our message. The "Back to Egypt" cry is of the same character as this non-separatist attitude, as our Bishop has so well expressed it. We have mane instances of the "Back to Egypt" cry. I remember, as a young man, meeting an ordained minister of the New Church who was in many respects similar to Mr. Clowes, who told me that he had succeeded in interesting a very promising minister of the Old Church, who had come to him and said, "I have been caught by this Revelation; what step must I take? What do you advise me to do?" He said, "My brother, you are now moving thousands of people. If you come to us, you will only have influence over ten. Remain where you are?"

     We also hear it said that Swedenborg never meant to establish any church, that he never contemplated it. You will find that statement in many New Church publications. This is like a man beckoning to you with one hand, and repelling you with another. And if they do not see that Swedenborg meant to establish a church, they certainly must see that a greater than Swedenborg meant to establish a church,-that the Lord Himself meant to establish it. For, in the spiritual explanation of the passage, " John saw the bride prepared as the wife of the Lamb," it is said that the New Church must be "initiated, inaugurated and instructed," and thus prepared; and certainly that does not refer to a purely idealistic concept of a church. It refers to an exact and formal development of a church on earth. It is as our Chairman has said,-the Lord establishes His church with the aid and labor of man.

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     Rev. Alfred Acton: Like Mr. Iungerich, I am impressed with the appropriateness of the subject chosen by the Bishop for his Address this evening; for the General Church now represents, in the most concrete way upon the earth, the position that was proclaimed by Robert Hindmarsh on the basis of his study of the Heavenly Doctrines. There is something significative in the fact that Clowes based his position of non-separatism upon Swedenborg's own concept, and I can well believe he was quite sincere in supposing that Swedenborg himself advocated such a position. Yet, if there is one thing that is distinctly Swedenborg's Personal attitude toward the New Church, it is that the Lord alone must give advice to men, and that Swedenborg himself refuses to tell men what they shall do, and what they shall not do. It is not Swedenborg the man who was to tell us whether the New Church was to separate from the Old or not; it was the Lord in the Writings who was to tell us; and Robert Hindmarsh based his position, not only upon his own concept of what the Writings teach, but also upon the clear teaching set forth in the Writings themselves, where it is rationally set forth to be rationally perceived. It was on the basis of the Heavenly Doctrines, that Robert Hindmarsh held that this New Church was really a new dispensation, and consequently must have an absolutely distinct existence from the former dispensation, which was corrupted,-corrupted by falses of doctrine and evils of life.

     I was impressed with the remark the Bishop-made,-that the spirit of non- separatism may still exist. The conflict that was initiated in the beginning of the New Church between Clowes and Hindmarsh was a conflict that will go on forever. It was a conflict between belonging to the New and clinging to the Old. For myself, I wish to dissociate myself from any criticism of John Clowes, who was a great man in the New Church. Nevertheless, he commenced the conflict which had to be lost if the New Church was to be won; it had to be lost, in order that the New Church might grow; for it cannot grow, except so far as the falsities of the Old Church are seen. We, of the General Church, hold to this position. It is a logical conclusion, from Hindmarsh's position with regard to the Writings, that the Writings are now the Word of the Lord addressed to the New Church; that this New Church shall have a separate worship, that it shall have a separate and distinct social life, that it shall have marriage within the church, and so on; that the Heavenly Doctrines, for which the General Church now stands as the champion and exponent, are all involved in what was proclaimed by Hindmarsh. And, owing to his labors, a separate and distinct New Church was established. But the conflict between separatism and non-separatism still continued. I cannot but think that it is such a spirit that leads to so much intermingling with the Old Church, both in this country and in America. I cannot but think that it is this that is now attacking the New Church. And while we stand for separatism, we are at one with those in other bodies of the New Church who also stand for the distinct acknowledgment of the Writings of the New Church,

     I say the conflict is a doctrinal one, and the reason is because in its essence it is an individual matter. It is a question whether the New Church and the Old are separated within ourselves.

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That is the real conflict; for everything of the natural mind tends to the Old, and everything of the spiritual mind looks to the angels. Therefore it is said that the angels despair as to whether the New Church can be established in the Christian World. And we find both hope and despair in these words. When we look at ourselves; when we see the conflict that goes on within ourselves; when we see the many oppositions to the growth of the church within ourselves; then we can well say that there is despair as to whether the New Church can be established upon the earth. But when we see the examples of men like Robert Hindmarsh, and when we turn to the Writings, and feel inspired to fight against the enemy of the New Church, to separate ourselves utterly from the evils of enmity, of jealousy, and selfishness-the real enemies of the church, the real men who are striving to prevent separation-then, I say, we can feel encouragement. Even though we realize there is justification for despair, we also see that there is still more justification for the hope and belief which each may have that the New Church will actually grow in our midst.

     Mr. James Pryke: I cannot leave this hall without at least saying "Thank you" for that Address. It was not only an interesting one, but also a profound one, and full of very useful suggestions. I was impressed with its strength, simplicity, and at the same time with its wonderful grandeur, because it brought back the truth that the simple things are always the most interior and the most perfect. It brought back the men that were mentioned, not only as historical personages, but as still living uses. It linked up their work with our own. It took us back, but also reminded us where we are today. Yet the deep point of the Address is on a higher plane, in the wonder of the establishment of the New Church with those men who were the first instruments called together by the leading of Divine Providence. In that wonderful trust, and complete willingness to be led by Divine Providence, in the casting of those lots to ascertain who should be the first one to function in the office of the priesthood of the New Church, I think there must have been a true dictate in the heart of Hindmarsh which led him to write that word "Ordain" on that card. And surely there is no phrase in the English language more beautiful than this, that "the Divine Human is once more on earth with man." It is the recognition of the Divine Human that makes the New Church not only new, but a Church separated from the bid. As I was sitting here, I was wondering whether the time would ever come when science would enable our thoughts to be broadcast on the wireless. If so, I am quite sure we have thoughts we do not always express. I am referring to the thoughts expressed by Dr. Alfred Acton, as to the conflict's being not so much as to separation, but as to whether we, in our own minds, will separate the evils from our minds, and ding to the new truths.

     Rev. William Whitehead: It has been a very great delight to me to listen to the masterly historical survey of those infant days of the New Church. Our Bishop has a way of commingling the delicacy of human sympathy with the unerring analysis of the various elements of such men and movements as he elects to treat of in his historical papers, and I have found this paper no exception. Two or three things especially arrested my attention.

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One was the spirit of equity that dictated his analysis of those early days. To analyze human character and human uses calls for a good deal of that quality which you English call "fair play." I find that quality present in the paper to an unusual degree. That paper dealt with men as well as truths, and it was impossible not to feel the great sympathy for men who ventured in those early days to try untried paths, to meet difficulties and temptations which at least the younger generations in our present Church do not meet. Yet those men steered an even course, and arrived apparently safely at their goal.

     The spirit of the Address might be expressed in this statement,-that no great religion was ever founded on compromise; that the element of compromise is the spirit of defeat. It is true that one or two of those earliest men did not remember his promise, and it is difficult for us today to see why that took place. However, it did not occur to the minds of those earliest men that the New Church was to be so distinct. They thought of it more as continuation of the Old. At any rate, one thing seems queer today. That a man should read the Writings, and imagine for a moment that he might still remain in the Old Church, is a most curious and unthinkable compromise. Although I came from the Old Church, I have never been able to understand the kind of mind that can look upon the pages of this new Sacred Scripture and still remain within the shadow of the Old. I am simply unable to understand such a thing. But we must remember that, in those first days of the New Church, it could not have seemed as clear to them as it does today.

     Another thing in the Address that interested me was the spirit of human sympathy with the New Churchmen of days gone by, and at the same time the unswerving loyalty to what we see to be true, not in the spirit of sectarian enthusiasm, but simply expressing the choice that we have made for ourselves, and for such as see in the Writings the grand message of religion for all the ages. To that profession we propose to remain true, betraying nothing, Yielding nothing, but standing in our small way for the truth that we see, in the best way that we can. More than that we cannot do, and the Lord will Unquestionably stand with those who stand firm.

     Rev. W. H. Claxton: May I take the opportunity of addressing this Assembly, to say a few words as a member of another organization of the Church? I cannot, of course, give you an official welcome, but I would like to give you an unofficial welcome to this great London of ours. It is the first time that your General Assembly has met in London, and I hope that it will not be the last time, because I think it is of the greatest importance that we who are not united should understand you, and that you should have the opportunity of understanding us. As you know, I am not here because I entirely agree with you in all things. I do not agree with you in the expression that the Writings are the Word, and such differences of opinion will have to be fully and fairly discussed for a common understanding. For I am sure that it is more a difference of terms than an actual difference of idea that divides us. But I am thoroughly with you in one thing which the Bishop tonight brought out very clear and fairly,-the wonderful and early origin of the external organization with those London members.

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I am quite with you as to the necessity of that. I would like you to realize that there are a great many others who agree with me that a separate external organization of the New Church, as a necessity to its development, was intended by the Lord, and although not founded by Swedenborg, was clearly contemplated by him.

     Some forty-five years ago, when I met the New Church, the only thing I questioned was the clearness about the truth. When this was dear, I left the organization to which I previously belonged, and in which I held office. But those who still hold to the non-separatist idea serve their use. I was very much delighted to find that the Bishop realized that in his remarks about Clowes. The most remarkable fact of all is, that many more external organizations of the New Church sprang into existence in London from the influence of Mr. John Clowes than from the influence of anyone else. One of the largest churches sprang into existence from his six weeks' visit. And everyone rejoiced when they knew that he was coming. Therefore, in the Providence of the Lord, although he himself held to the non-separatist ideas, he was instrumental in establishing the Church. Not only is that so, but you have another side of the question. If you go to St. John's, Manchester, you will find that everyone loved all the teaching he gave. No one can possibly say that John Clowes was not faithful to the doctrines he expounded. I agree with what Dr. Acton has said, that what we do need is charity of heart, with good feeling and kind consideration for those who differ from us, to prevent the division of life. For, alter all, in one thing we are agreed, and that is, that we are New Churchmen.

     Rev. W. H. Alden: There is one thought which the Bishop expressed at the very beginning of his paper which I feel should be emphasized, namely, that in beginnings lies the whole progress of any event, and that in the beginnings of the church lies the whole progress of the church. Robert Hindmarsh detailed the history of the true church in its beginnings, but he stopped short fifty years before the beginning of the Academy. How shall we understand that? I wonder whether it has some relation to the teaching regarding remains. The teaching of Robert Hindmarsh apparently had not the power to formulate a church, until those men arose who had the power to establish the Academy against the hostility of the men of the so-called New Church. They had the belief and the courage to formulate those principles which now form the General Church, and which stand before the world. I feel that this thought ought to be expressed,-that today we have gone back to the teachings given in the beginnings of the New Church, and that it comes with power before men, and that we, as infants, can be a part of that power.

     Rev. C. E. Doering: In the early part of the Bishop's Address, he spoke of organizations in heaven, and referred to the statement in Conjugial Love, where it is said that men today do not know what love is, and scarcely that it is, when yet they might know, if they recollected the early state of their marriage, heaven at that time loaning them something of itself, even as was the case in the government of the early founders of the New Church; even as the establishment of a New Church is to be by the recognition of the Lord as its Soul and Life.

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So it is that each individual is to establish in himself that of the church which was at first a gift to him from heaven. And I think the church has gone through various stages, and that at this day we are again given that heaven in more fullness than at the beginning, and we may more fully realize that the Lord is present in the world to establish the church on earth; and that it is the Lord who is doing it, through men. And when men believe that they have to establish the church, and later believe they can do it, they must do it of themselves by going to the Lord and seeing Him in His Writings.

     Mr. Stanley E. Parker: I would like to add my appreciation. I feel very thankful that, after I came out of the Old Church into the New, I finally advanced to the General Church position. It is a matter of appreciating the meaning of what the Doctrines stand for. If we regard them as writings by Swedenborg, we remain very near to the Old Church. I am very grateful for the assistance and help I have derived from the friends on the other side of the Atlantic, and I have pleasure in meeting them face-to-face tonight..

     Rev. W. L. Gladish: I cannot forbear expressing my great delight in the Address this evening. The spirit of religious charity toward men who act according to their conscience, united with a firm determination to stand for the truth as we see it, is the spirit we strive for, the spirit we pray for, and the spirit we hope in part to attain. There must be no compromise in standing for the Lord's Revelation as we see it. To us the Lord has spoken in the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and before Him we bow; and when we hear His voice, we go forward. But what is our duty is not the duty of anyone who does not see as we do. Another thought I wish to express is, as our Chairman says, that the Lord does not need us, but we need the Lord. The Lord can always raise up men to do His work, whether they have the spirit of liberty and charity, or not. But the Lord must always use human instruments, and I hope that those whom He uses in the New Church will be men who love the Church. The Lord needs men, and He establishes the Church only by the instrumentality of men, whether good or bad. Robert Hindmarsh upheld the truth that the Lord in His Divine Human establishes His Church by means of the Writings which are His Divine Human in the world. And that charge was caught by others, and carried on by such men as the Rev. Richard de Charms, Father Benade, and the Bishop Emeritus W. F. Pendleton, and now is carried on by our present Bishop and still others who have that faith. But it is to be carried by men; for the Lord works through men, especially by leaders who dedicate themselves to this principle, that the Lord in His Revelation has called men to come to Him. The work can be done, and must be done, by men who consecrate themselves to this cause.

     Rev. Fernand Hussenet: My Brothers and Sisters, I have not the honor to speak in English, but I permit myself the honor of addressing you in my own tongue. C'est avec fierte que je puis vous dire clue la seule societe de notre Eglise en France est entierement devouee a l'Academie.

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On a beau parler de stages preliminaires a la pleine reconnaissance des Ecrits comme la Parole du Seigneur, mais selon mon opinion ce ne sent que des mouvements passagers, et j'ai l'dee que ceux qui ont fait un faux pas trouvent toujours une grande difficulte a y en revinir.

     Notre societe a Paris prend comme son guide spirituel la revelation a Swedenborg. Quant a la question se ses ecrits sent divins ou humains, elle n'a aucune hesitation. Elle les suit a la lettre, pour empecher qu'on introduise quoi que ce soit du propre de l'homme. File veut marcher dens la purete de la doctrine.
                                             
A une epoque nous etions bien troubles de ce pue nous voyions parmi ceux que se disaient etre de l'Eglise mais ne l'etaient pas heaucoup. Mais lorsque nous apprimes par M. Vaissere, un grand ami de M. Pitcairn, qu'il y avait en Amerique une societe qui appliquait la doctrine en toute purete, nous n'avons pas hesite un seul moment a y faire adhesion.

     Et c'est avec bonheur que nous nous sommes attaches a l'Eglise Generale, ear nous avons bien compris les autres mouvements qui se disent etre de la Nouvelle Eglise, mais n'en sent que des parodies, des comedies ou des cieux inaginaires. Dans un soi-disant temple de la Nouvelle Eglise nous avons vu un pretre Catholique defroque, et pas mal de pasteurs protestants qui avaient perdu leur emploi, prechant, sans connaitre rien de nos doctrines, aux brebis du Seigneur dans son second avenement, Dans une occasion, en venant au temple pour le culte du dimanche nous fumes obliges de d'enlever prealablement les habits d'un cure et les deorations du culte de la vieille eglise qu'il venait de celebrer.

     Nous ne sommes pas nombreux dens la France, ceux qui ont l'honneur de faire adhbion a 1'Eglise Generale; mais nous sommes heureux de savoir que nous marchons droit au but dans le sentier qui est le meiueur, celui du milieu. Et pour vous exprimer notre enthousiasme pour 1'Eglise Generale je ne puis faire mieux que de m'ecrier: Vive 1'Acadcmie, Vive 1'Eglise Generale!

     Chairman: The time has now arrived when we ought to adjourn. We have so many meetings before us that we must not remain here too long. I would therefore ask the Bishop whether he wishes to make any reply to what has been said.

     Bishop Pendleton: I really have no reply to make. There was no attack made upon my paper, and I feel that you were all, both members and friends, sympathetic with the mode of treatment, because I treated the subject with a view to bringing back for your contemplation the root and beginning of the history of the New Church. It has been said that the difference that was then raised is with us today, and it will ever continue. I will simply thank you for your very cordial reception of my words.

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SUNDAY SERVICES 1928

SUNDAY SERVICES       H. L. O       1928

     All things of our faith and character enter into our worship. So the Doctrine tells. However difficult it may ordinarily be to estimate correctly the spiritual values of our devotions, yet everyone, I think, felt the intense sphere of spiritual elevation and peace which dominated the three Sunday services held during the General Assembly. With the first strains of the Introit, the somewhat foreign surroundings of Victoria Hall were forgotten, or rather transformed into the House of God. The chancel on the platform had been furnished with the altar, chairs, desks and prie-dieu from Michael Church. Candles and flowers decorated the altar, where, according to the local custom, a copy of one of the Writings in the original was opened as well as the literal Word. The platform was bordered with a wealth of gladioli. The cloths of the lectern and pulpit were in blue, embroidered with Scripture passages in gold.

     The Offices for use in all three services had been provided for the congregation in a neat booklet, and contained the words of all the Chants, Hymns and Psalms. The selections were familiar to all, and were sung with moving power and unity.

     All three services were marked by priestly ordinations. At the morning service on August 5th, the Rev. R. J. Tilson was initiated into the Third Degree of the Priesthood. The Right Rev. George de Charms led the devotional part of the service; Bishop Pendleton performed the ordination. The sight of the three bishops in their simple, bright red stoles not only lent a unique dignity to this service, but also inspired a peculiar gratitude to the Lord for this ample provision for the orderly continuance of the Priesthood of His Church.

     The congregation numbered about 350 persons. The choir of Michael Church led the singing, Mr. Victor Tilson presided at the organ, and Mr. Stanley Wainscot played a violin solo as an interlude. The Rev. Homer Synnestvedt read the Lessons, from Zechariah 4 and Revelation 11; and the Sermon, given by the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner, treated of " The Day of Small Things" (Zechariah 4:10), the emphasis being placed upon the need of spiritual illustration in the upbuilding of the New Church in its beginnings, and the office of remains in opening the spiritual heaven and the spiritual mind with man.

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     At the evening service on August 5th, which was also attended by a large congregation, the pastoral ordinations took place. The Rev. Henry Leonardos and the Rev. Joao de Mendonca Lima, of Rio Janeiro,-who for some years had been acting pastors pending ordination, were ordained into the First and Second Degrees; and then the Rev. Elmo Acton' and the Rev. Victor J. Gladish were elevated to the Second Degree. The Lessons were read by the Rev. Alfred Acton, and the Right Rev. R. J. Tilson delivered the Sermon, the motive of which was also reflected in the Scripture injunction embroidered upon the pulpit-cloth in front of the preacher," Feed my lambs." For his text was taken from John 21:15-17,-the Lord's threefold charge to Peter; and the thrice repeated question, "Lovest thou me?" with its subtle gradations of meaning, was developed with a view to showing the nature of Love, and the need for its discipline by spiritual truth.

     On Sunday, August 12th; the Holy Supper was administered to two hundred communicants, four Pastors assisting the Bishop in the distribution of the elements. On account of the presence of Mr. Moffat Mcanyana, a Native Leader in our Zulu Mission in South Africa, who has labored faithfully and ably for the last ten years, and is the first translator of the Writings into the Zulu language, the Bishop arranged to ordain him into the First Degree of the Priesthood at this service. The ordination was very impressive, representing, as it did, a new beginning of a native ministry in the South African field.

     The discourse on this occasion was given by the Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom, his text being, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." (John 11:28.) The sermon was a fitting preparation for the Holy Supper, picturing the Divine Love as inviting and calling men to a life of repentance.

     Below will be found the Declarations of Faith and Purpose made by the Candidates for Ordination.
     H. L. O.

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DECLARATIONS OF FAITH AND PURPOSE 1928

DECLARATIONS OF FAITH AND PURPOSE       ROBERT JAMES TILSON       1928

     I. I believe in the Lord God Jesus Christ as the only God of heaven and earth, in Whom is the Divine Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the Creator from eternity, the Redeemer in time, and the Regenerator for evermore.

     II. I believe in the Sacred Scripture, or the Word of God, in its trinal form of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, who, by Divine command, subscribed himself "Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ." And I believe that in the first form of Divine Revelation, the inspiration was completely external, reaching down unto the very letters of the original Hebrew; that in the second form the inspiration was in the original Greek, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, as individually received by each Evangelist; and that in the third and final form the inspiration was internal, into the rational mind and thought of the human instrument, making the original Latin an "immediate Revelation," so that nothing whatever was written but that which came from the Lord alone.

     III. I believe in the consummation of the First Christian Church; that in it, as a system of doctrine, not one "stone" of Truth remains standing upon another, thus that all the truths given to it by the Lord at His First Advent have been falsified and perverted, because, as was the case with each of the preceding Churches, men have not continued to believe the Lord, or His Word, but have given preference to themselves and their own senses. (A. C. 231.) Nevertheless, I believe that, in the mercy of the Lord, those of all religions are saved, in spite of all errors of doctrine, provided always that the falsities of doctrine are not allied with evils of life.

     IV. I believe that the Lord has made His Second Advent by revealing the spiritual sense of the Word, within which are the celestial and Divine senses, and that this was done by means of the man, Emanuel Swedenborg, who not only received the Heavenly Doctrines with his understanding, but also was able to make them public by the press.

     V. I believe in the establishment of the Church of the New Jerusalem by the acceptance among men of the true doctrine of the trinal Word, which is made one Word by the science of correspondences, of which Word the spiritual sense is the soul, and the literal sense is the body.

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This acceptance of the true doctrine must be by the rational mind, and be ultimated in the daily life by the shunning of all evils as sins against God.

     VI. I believe the Priesthood of the Church to be of Divine origin and institution, commanded by the Lord for the preservation of the Divine among the people, and as a means by which the Holy Spirit may be communicated to men. Further, I believe that the Lord has commanded that there should be a threefold order in the Priesthood, so that law and order may be assured in the sacred duty of administering the things of Divine Law and Worship, having as an end the salvation of souls.

     VII. I believe in the reality of love truly conjugial, in the promise of its ultimate restoration, as with the ancients, and in the Divine institution of marriage, and I accept the work on Conjugial Love in its entirety as the book of morals for the Lord's New Church.

     VIII. I believe in the necessity for a: distinctive New Church Education, which, whilst having constantly in view a preparation for heaven, shall provide the young with the efficient means to that end, namely, full mental equipment for a life of usefulness on earth whereby they may attain unto regeneration.

     IX. Such, then, is my Confession of Faith, and it is my earnest desire, purpose and determination, by the help of the Lord, to continue to give the all of my affection, thought and strength to the service of the Priesthood-militant, pastoral and governmental-in the faithful performance of whatever duties I may have to perform.

     X. Recognizing and appreciating the importance of the step I am now called upon to take, my fervent prayer to the Lord is, that He will give me increased enlightenment and illustration, and will fill me with His Spirit. And, with this Confession of Faith and Declaration of Purpose, I humbly submit myself to His good-pleasure; and may His will be done.
     ROBERT JAMES TILSON.
DECLARATION OF FAITH AND PURPOSE 1928

DECLARATION OF FAITH AND PURPOSE       HENRY LEONARDOS       1928

     As the Lord has heretofore given me the strength to serve Him in a small way as an instrument for the dissemination of His Truth, it is my firm purpose (under His continued favor), now that I am invested with the priesthood of the New Church, to endeavor, with all my heart and understanding, to be a worthy priest of the New Church, and so to become a still more docile instrument of the truth of the One God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
     HENRY LEONARDOS.

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DECLARATION OF FAITH AND PURPOSE 1928

DECLARATION OF FAITH AND PURPOSE       JOAO DE MENDONCA LIMA       1928

     After repeating the Creed from the Liturgy, Mr. Lima said: "On being ordained into the pastoral degree of the priesthood of the New Church, I declare it to be my aim and resolve to offer myself to the Lord as an instrument for the development of His Church, the doctrines of which I propose to teach according to the principles that have been drawn from the Writings by the General Church of the New Jerusalem."     
     JOAO DE MENDONCA LIMA.
DECLARATION OF FAITH AND PURPOSE 1928

DECLARATION OF FAITH AND PURPOSE       VICTOR JEREMIAH GLADISH       1928

     I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of heaven and earth, who redeemed mankind by His coming in the flesh, and who came again with power and great glory in the Revelation given for His Crowning Church,-the New Jerusalem.

     I believe in the Word of God as the living Divine Truth by which alone the Lord is made known to man, which was in the beginning with God, which was made flesh and dwelt among us, and which yet dwells with us in and through the Divine Revelation to the several Churches.

     I believe that a life of charity from faith in the Lord, and according to the teachings of the Word, is the only door to everlasting life as an angel of heaven, but that rejection of the Lord's commandments leads to hell and spiritual death.

     I believe that the chief means by which the Holy Spirit is received amongst men is the ministration of the priesthood, and that through men consecrated to the uses of Divine worship the true order of the Church is to be maintained.

     I further believe that the Divine Providence has led me through past years to seek the use and high privilege of the priestly office, and has granted me entrance therein. And now, in presenting myself for ordination into the pastoral degree of the priesthood, I earnestly pray that I may be strengthened by increase of illustration, and of zeal, according to the increase of use to be performed. May the Lord grant that my life may be one of genuine service to His Church!
     VICTOR JEREMIAH GLADISH.

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DECLARATION OF FAITH AND PURPOSE 1928

DECLARATION OF FAITH AND PURPOSE       ELMO CARMAN ACTON       1928

     I believe in one God, infinite and eternal, Who as to Essence is Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. I believe this God to be a Divine Man, and the one only Source of life. I believe that this infinite and eternal God, Who is revealed in the Old Testament as Jehovah, assumed a human in time from the Virgin Mary, and was born a man into the world. And I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, by the process of glorification, made the Human. Divine, one with the Father, Jehovah of-the Old Testament,-the One and Only true God and Lord. And I further believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is this One and Only true God Man, in Whom dwelleth the Divine Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

     I believe in the verbal inspiration of the Books of the Old and New Testaments, as enumerated in the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem. I believe in the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg as a revelation from the mouth of the Lord. I believe that these Writings constitute the Second Coming of the Lord, as foretold in the New Testament,-the coming of the Lord as the Spirit of truth which leadeth into all truth. And, therefore, I believe these Writings to be the very Word of God.

     I believe that every man is raised into eternal life after the death of his natural body. I believe that man is raised to that life as to his spirit, which is the very man, leaving his material body in the grave, never again to be assumed. I believe that, in the other world, every man undergoes a last judgment, in which those who have done well are raised into heaven, and those who have done ill are cast into hell.

     I believe in the New Christian Church and its mission to the spiritual welfare of the human race. I believe in this Church as a distinctive and independent dispensation, without the establishment of which no man could be saved.

     And now, in presenting myself for ordination into the pastoral degree, I pray that I may receive power from on high to fulfill this office sincerely, justly and honestly, to the everlasting glory of the Lord and His kingdom in heaven and on earth.
     ELMO CARMAN ACTON.

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DAY OF SMALL THINGS 1928

DAY OF SMALL THINGS       Rev. HUGO LJ. ODHNER       1928

     "For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel. . . ." (Zechariah 4:10.)

     The kingdom of heaven was compared by the Lord to a grain of mustard seed, the smallest among seeds; which yet, "when it is grown, is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." All things in the vast universe grow from seeds. Even the entire substance of both worlds sprang from the primitives of the omnipresent spiritual Sun,-primitives which were the original seeds of creation, and which reflect substantially the infinite purposes of God, building and sustaining the heavens and continuing to act as the underlying cause and reality of all things.

     The same is true of the body of man, which is the soul's kingdom. Man's marvelous powers of life descend from microscopic glands within the brains, whose efficacy is such that they can catch the influx of vital forces from the invisible chambers of the spiritual world. From these principles-or beginnings-man's body was formed, and from these it continues to unfold by growth.

     The power of growth, then, depends not upon size or quantity, but upon quality,-upon subtlety and fitness of organization. Neither has smallness, in itself, any power whatsoever, unless it be the occasional advantage of eluding notice or pursuit. But the capacity of growth comes from the fineness and adequacy of a substance to receive a superior life; from the fact that its interiors are so ordered, so delicately attuned, that they respond to the influx of heaven, whence all strength of survival, growth and eternity comes.

     Our text, from the inspired lips of Zechariah the prophet, speaks of "the day of small things," of humble and disheartening beginnings. For seventy years, Jerusalem had lain in ashes; it had been condemned by the powers of the world as a stronghold of rebellion and an obstacle to their progress. Its people, disobedient even to their God, had been removed-all but the poorest-as captives to Babylon.

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But Babylon's pride was now broken by the Medes and the Persians, and the Persian king, Cyrus, had given leave to the Jews to return to their homeland, had handed back the sacred vessels and subsidized the rebuilding of the temple. Zerubbabel, a lineal descendant of the kings of Judah, was appointed governor over the few thousands of Jews who came back to settle in Jerusalem. A start was made on the erection of the temple, but this was interrupted through the jealousy of the Samaritans and the discouraged state of the people, who preferred to build ceiled houses for themselves before devoting their energies to the house of the Lord. Fourteen years or more passed. The misery of the little remnant was in- creased by droughts and famines, and their earnings seemed to dwindle away as if cast "into a bag with holes." The blessing of the Lord was withheld. They felt that they had made a wrong beginning. They, who had seen the grandeur of Babylon and the power of Persia, lost faith, and began to despise their own "day of small things."

     Do we not recognize here the parable of every new church, and of each new beginning in the life of the regenerating man? A new beginning is attended by discouragement and despair. Let us recall the state of fear and anxiety which the disciples of the Lord displayed after the Lord's crucifixion. In the prophetic story of the Old Testament (which foreshadows every step in the Lord's incarnate life and glorification) the seventy years of the Captivity, during which the altar-fire did not burn on Mount Zion, do indeed correspond to those three days when the Lord, His body cold in the sepulcher, in Spirit descended into Hades, that is, into the lower regions of the world of spirits, preaching to the captive spirits there and liberating them from the yoke of hell.

     Like as Zerubbabel had led his people back to their land, so the Lord, after His resurrection, elevated the spiritual into their inheritance,-the spiritual heaven. During the forty days before He ascended up into heaven, He also appeared many times to the disciples, and taught them to think spiritually-to think in the light of the new heaven which was being formed, to see the Word of the Old Covenant in a spiritual light. He opened their minds to see Him in His Word, and commissioned them definitely to preach the new gospel in His name, and thus to erect the Christian Church on earth.

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     Our text is from the mouth of one of the "latter prophets"-that special group of prophets who labored after the return from Babylon, and who, therefore, represent especially the teachings given by the Lord after His resurrection,-teachings which interpreted the meaning and purport of the "former prophets," and of His own former public teachings, and brought spiritual light, illustration, into the church. Without the prodding and zealous encouragement which Haggai and Zechariah administered, and the new light they shed upon the undertaking, the new temple of the Lord would never have been built. Without the instruction given by the risen Lord, and His shedding upon the Disciples the new Divine Light which henceforth, by virtue of His Divine Human, was able to illumine even the spiritual (A. C. 4180:5), Christianity would have died before its birth. For only in a state of illustration can the church be built.

     Natural prudence is not the seed of the church; for it contains the thought of the world,-the blinded thought from the eye alone which is filled with doubts about the Lord's providence and protection; it tends to hold the church back from its progress, to hold it in a state of hesitation, vacillation and half-hearted support Fortified by the loves of the proprium, and by the inertia of indifference, it builds up a wall against the coming of any new illustration. And it forgets that all life is a miracle, an influx from the Lord; that all change, all progress, runs counter to the nature of the physical world, but comes from the world of causes; it forgets that all regeneration, and all religious awakenings are, from the point of view of man, an impossibility, but that for God all things are possible; because spiritual law can dispose natural law. All that is needed is a seed,-a small beginning.

     All religions have therefore been based upon the miraculous. Israel was led by miracles. The coming of the Lord, from the point of view of the world, was an enormous miracle, although, in the eyes of heaven, it was the irrevocable working of a Divine law. And yet the extent and purpose of that miracle was not clearly seen by the Apostles until the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon them as tongues of fire, to give them illustration and zeal for the kingdom of God on earth. There occurred a spiritual influx,-more intimate conjunction with the new heavens just formed. Every new church must experience such outpourings of the Spirit.

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Before this takes place, it is in something of obscurity, and lacks enlightenment as to what its line of progress should be. Like the Jews under Zerubbabel, it fears to build its temple because of the Samaritans round about; it fears to raise its walls strong and firm, lest it should arouse the suspicion of the world. Even in the present New Church has it been so, and will be so again, unless the states of illustration become lasting, and we learn not to "despise the day of small things," but to recognize our great opportunity in the uses that are ours, insignificant though these may appear, if judged in the light of prudence and by worldly measure.

     The small beginnings of the Jewish colony at Jerusalem in the days of Zerubbabel were never destined to become a spiritual church. The fountain of prophecy and illustration dried up, and racial conceit took the place of religion among the Jews. Still, the temple was rebuilt by Zerubbabel, as Zechariah had foretold in our text, so that the record of its building should stand in the Word as a memorial of all the spiritual principles which must enter into the growth and establishment of a new church on earth.

     And in the chapter of our text the chief stress is placed upon the need of enlightenment. The prophet is aroused from sleep by an angel, and is shown a candlestick of gold flanked by two olive trees, from which golden pipes pass for feeding the seven lamps with fuel. And the word of the Lord comes to the prophet for a warning against these who "despise the day of small things," and proclaims that they shall yet see Zerubbabel with the plummet in his hands to complete the temple.

     The internal sense of that chapter, as given "by the Lord through heaven" to Swedenborg (A. R. 43e), treats of the enlightenment of the New Church by the Lord through truths of heavenly origin (P. P.), or from the good of love through truths. The lampstand, with its seven lamps, signifies heaven, and specifically the second or middle heaven,-the heaven established by the Lord at His First Advent, the heaven whose formation caused the light of the moon to be "as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun to be sevenfold as the light of seven days," the heaven that is based upon the inward sight of truth, that is, the truth of the Divine Human, whose assumption and glorification were the means of His being present with the salvable within the fallen Ancient Churches.

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There is great glory and much beauty in that middle heaven. We are told that when the light, or the Divine Truth that proceeds from the Lord, inflows into the third heaven, it is received, not as truth, but as the good of charity, for it is immediately made a matter of life. But when it inflows into the second heaven, it is received as the truth of charity, as light, thus not at once in the will, but in the understanding. The spiritual angels, however, do not live a life of truth alone; they enjoy also a mediate influx of innocence through the third heaven, by which they are governed and disposed as to uses and life. (A. C. 7836.) But light they can receive from the Lord directly, without any such mediation.

     And now it is by virtue of the establishment of this spiritual heaven at the time of the First Advent that the present New Church can enjoy enlightenment, and thus be built up by the Lord. The New Church will indeed receive the gifts of special influx from all the heavens. The inmost heaven will descend to inspire it with mutual love, with conjugial love, and with internal blessedness of life. The ultimate heaven will sustain it in loyalty and obedience, in faith and knowledge. But its light must be that of the seven lamps of the spiritual heaven. It was in the midst bf seven golden candlesticks that the Son of Man was seen by John,-a vision which represented the New Church illustrated from the Word. (A. R. 43)

     Those who would be of the New Church were thus betokened by the lampstands. Love to the Lord and charity are meant by the gold and the olive oil therein; but the light itself, as indeed the only light of the Holy City, is said to be the Lamb,-the Lord in His Divine Human. The immediate presence of the Lord in the New Church is perceived by the light,-the spiritual light which comes only in states of charity, and which is free from the natural lumen of self-intelligence and the glory of pride. (A. R. 940) This light is found shining serenely in the pages of the new Revelation, is seen through truths of heavenly origin; it is from the Lord alone, through the Word, and abides in its spiritual sense. It is this light which constitutes the Second Advent of the Lord, His coming to the New Church.

     The New Church, the teaching is, must descend from the New Christian heavens. The heavens of the Most Ancient Church could not impart its influx of conjugial love, unless there was a responsive celestial degree or inmost heaven of innocence within the Christian heavens also.

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So also it is with the ancient spiritual heavens, with their gift of light, of spiritual intelligence, of the faculty of seeing truths within one's self. This must come to us through the answering degree of the New Christian Heaven, through a new spiritual heaven, which, like the former, is especially founded in the middle spiritual atmosphere, the luminiferous ether of the other world. (Coronis 17.) And only by association and conjunction with this new spiritual heaven can we come into the illustration which shall build the New Church and give quality to its goods of affection and use. This middle degree of the New Heaven is thus for us,-the heaven of the lampstand.

     And even as the Lord came again by restoring the light of the golden lampstand, so the Lord comes again to each man that is to be regenerated. Before regeneration, our mind is dark and void. Even though there be knowledge of the Lord and of heaven, that knowledge is as yet like the primeval ocean at creation,-a lifeless, watery abyss. It is indeed true that, in man's infancy, the Lord leads his spirit into the company of the celestials, to keep him in a state of innocence; and then amongst spiritual angels, so that his developing proprium may be restrained by charity and childhood friendships; and that later he is instructed in truths, that these may give quality to his goods, and be multiplied by his own thoughts and confirmations. If there is then an affection of doing good to the neighbor, the truths are conjoined with goods, and so are able to be stored up by the Lord for later use as "remains." But although, as knowledges, these states may indeed persist within the memory, and perhaps in the thought from the memory, and in the speech, yet they are borrowed, not appropriated. They are not as yet perceived and appreciated; their real truth, and the good of use they involve, are hidden from man in the interiors of the mind, withdrawn as states of a delight too subtle to be recalled. The foundation of the regenerate life is laid, but the building is in abeyance. The light of knowledge, of faith, of confirmation, is present, but the Lord has not yet come to man.

     The teaching is, that every man has the ability to think and to reason, and that he has this from the diffusion of light from heaven into his natural mind.

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With the evil, this light is only able to inflow as through chinks and crannies, and is bound up with the sight of nature as a natural or sensual lumen. But if man wills, he can receive the light which gives spiritual knowledge, and which can lead him into a state of reformation. This is a spiritual-natural light, which appears in the first or natural heaven as bright as noonday light. It also extends into the world of spirits, and-as intimated-into the natural mind of man, everywhere differing according to reception, and knowledge, and faith. For it is a light, not of genuine understanding (intelligence), but of knowledge and confirmation. It causes abstract truths (when such are discussed in the higher heaven) to be represented in the natural heaven in imagery, in objective paradisal forms, for the sake of knowledge and substantial ultimation. (A. C. 4411.) The reason is, that the inhabitants of the natural heaven are in a simple good; Divine Truths are not inscribed upon them; and they have not as a rule any interior perception of truth. The spiritual mind-with such-has not indeed been closed, but neither is it opened, as with those who receive interior truths in doctrine and life (A. E. 624); what is natural thus adheres to them, and they cannot, in a strict sense, be called "regenerate," but only "reformed." (A. C. 8987.) Their heaven is only a forecourt of heaven, they themselves being servants rather than masters, and in the love of obeying rather than in any real spiritual good. They are carried in the spheres of others, seeing truths in the light of others. And although a certain opening of their interiors could take place after the Last Judgment, when a light arose in the world of spirits, and also for men in the world, from which they have new illustration (C. J. 30), yet their essential character cannot be changed, but only perfected in its own degree.

     We may therefore understand a statement of doctrine which otherwise might be surprising, that it is the second heaven that is opened when man is regenerated, and that is closed when he does not suffer himself to be regenerated. (A. C. 5344) The light of the spiritual heaven, resplendent white, vastly more brilliant than the light of our day, is that wherein man can perceive the second advent of the Lord in the "clouds," can see the "glory" bursting forth from the literal sense of the Word, and from the letter of doctrine,-a light which enables the angels of that heaven to think without personal or material ideas, and without space and time; so that, when the Word is read in a holy manner by men, it becomes translated in that second heaven into a continuous spiritual sense.

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And-such is the promise to the church-that same inward light of the second heaven illumines men in the world when they are in the endeavor to understand truths from a love of becoming wise. That is the light of the risen Lord, teaching and leading to celestial life. It is the light of the "latter prophets," inspiring to the building of the temple in "the day of small things."

     And it is in an image of this second heaven that the Lord, man permitting, builds up the remains of good and truth which He has stored in the very depths of the natural mind, in the interiors 6f the interior natural, where they are placed in spiritual light. (A. C. 5344) Truths are there adjoined to goods in certain arrangements, to correspond exactly with the societies of the spiritual heaven. For it is that heaven with which man communicates by remains.

     And man is unaware, in his states of vacillation, that the Lord would build this temple within his mind. He is often impatient with spiritual truths, neglects his opportunities of instruction, is prompted on by worldly visions, before which the prospect of heavenly life pales into illusive insignificance. When the eye is filled with the grandeur of a man-made civilization, then the day of small things, of childhood piety and youthful spirituality, seems so unimportant, or at least so inadequate to stem the tide of unbelief which our youths are soon to meet! Yet it is these remains that are the seeds through which the new man is to break forth; it is these beginnings that are to qualify all later progress. The work of the spiritual church, lies here, in the interiors of the interior natural, and consists in the shedding of spiritual light upon those things which are in the light of the world. If the things of the world can be placed in the mind in the relation in which they appear from the point of view of heaven, then man's natural can be reformed and regenerated, and reduced into such a correspondence that the natural man may be able to discern the things which are of the interior man, and thus perceive spiritual truths in light, see their uses, and do them; thus coming into the love of spiritual good, and transforming itself into the service of the Lord. Then the Lord has come to His temple, and the earth is silent before Him.

     For, it is around the vision of the Lord in His Divine Human, and the vision of a universe in which He is the omnipresent Soul, that the New Church is to be built.

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This does not imply that all who are of the Church will be able to perceive that vision, or be introduced into the very light of the seven golden lamps which Zechariah and John beheld. It does not deny that there will be many in the New Church who, by reason of simplicity or early spiritual indifference, will be unable to sustain the temptations through which alone the clear light of the spiritual truth itself is attained, but will rather be satisfied to linger in the less unselfish service of the first heaven. Nor does it mean that those of the New Church may not advance even beyond the state of the spiritual angels, by entering into celestial good, which is from the love of doing truths from the Word for the sake of good or for the sake of the Lord. But it does mean that no spiritual judgment between good and evil, or between truth and falsity, can be accomplished without the light of the second heaven.

     It was the approach, the drawing near, of the spiritual heavens which prepared for the Last Judgment (Apoc. 8), and it is the constant illustration from that source which alone can fit the Church intelligently to perpetuate the new state of order and progress which the Lord has brought about in the spiritual realm. It means that the path of the New Church does not lie through any assumptions that it can rise directly to celestial perceptions without the intermediation of doctrinal truths spiritually seen, nor through any attempts to compete with the world's methods of salvation by emotion or by science, that is, by natural heat or natural light; but rather through the increase in our midst of the spheres of spiritual truths which the Revelator ascertained to have been very few in his day, existing only in the New Heaven, and with those beneath heaven who were separated from the dragonists. (T. C. R. 619.) And this vast accomplishment,-the miraculous catching-up of the very light of heaven,-is made possible through the myriad tiny seeds of spiritual truths which the Lord has stored for our use, that they may be rationalized into principles of thought and action.

     To gather and to plant these spiritual seeds, and to kindle them into fruitful life, the New Church is distinctively organized on earth. Its priesthood is formed to facilitate an undisturbed and continuous state of illustration in the Church, and from this of diligent instruction and of wise government.

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And the laity sustains the same illustration in the degree that they respond to the doctrine of the Word and enter into the light which is seen therein.

     Our concern, in this our "day of small things," is not for numbers, not for acclamation by the world, not for the easing of our burdens, but for the increase of spiritual truths. We may not always expect startling reactions to every new truth, in ourselves or in others. We must, of course, realize that in the economy of spirit, as well as in lavish nature, only one seed out of a hundred may meet the soil and the responsive state that can make it grow into a fertile future. Yet we also know that nothing is lost. No word of God, no truth, returns void to its Maker. Though our blind eyes may not behold it, all contributes to a life more abundant. What must govern us, in our private lives, as well as in our common assembly,-is the desire that the seeds of spiritual growth be generously present within us, and within each soul to which we minister so that the substantial creative forces of the Divine Truth, which, as the "beginning of the work of God," forms the inmost of the spiritual world, may also inflow omnipotently into the minds of men, there to build up the Tabernacle and City of God. Amen.

     Lessons: Zechariah 4. Apocalypse 11. A. C. 5477.

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THREEFOLD CHARGE TO PETER 1928

THREEFOLD CHARGE TO PETER       Rev. R. J. TILSON       1928

     "So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me move than these, He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He said unto him, Feed my lambs.

     "He saith unto him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou Knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

     "He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me! And he said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep." (John 21:15-17.)

     A wonderfully simple yet arresting statement is made in one of the Books of the Gospel of the Second Advent, in these words, "Love is the life of man." (D. L. W. 1.) And it is accompanied by an equally thought-provoking assertion, that "Man knows that there is such a thing as love, but does not know what love is."

     Natural thought will rebel against this statement, for the natural thought of man is based upon his senses and his sense-impressions. It might accept, in its dim and obscure way, the statement that "love is the life of man," but it would not admit that man "does not know what love is." Calm reflection, however, will yield the result that the common idea of love is derived merely from general expressions and usual conversations, lacking altogether the basis of a concrete conception of "what love is." Experience may indeed convince the more thoughtful that love is the life of everything, because of the rational conclusion that if you withdraw love and affection from anything of thought, speech, or action, that thing ceases to have any force, vitality, or being. But whilst experience and observation may dimly suggest what love is, even that it is the life of man, yet the fact remains that man, from merely self-acquired or self-derived knowledge, can have no intelligent idea of what love is. Really to know what love is, and to realize that it is the life of man, it is absolutely essential that one go to Divine Revelation, and to that latest form of Divine Revelation, which is the spiritual sense of the Word, and by the revealing of which the Lord has made His Second Advent.

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     Now it was to show the reality of love-love in its first and most real form, its origin and esse, love from and to the Lord, and also the absolute necessity of cultivating that love,-that the Lord held that wondrous conversation with His Apostle, and gave to him the threefold pastoral charge, as recorded in the words of the text.

     "When they had dined"-when affection had been aroused by their eating together in the sphere of the most holy presence of the Lord, "Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?"

     At both His First and Second Advents the Lord called into His especial service twelve disciples, to be, as it were, the equivalent of the twelve tribes of Israel, through the instrumentality of which the Lord established the Jewish representative of a Church. The twelve disciples, like the twelve tribes, represented all the goods and truths of the church-all the principles by which the Lord's kingdom can be established in the individual, or in the community. And from among the twelve disciples, the Lord chose three especial ones to be most constantly with Him, as representing them all,-namely, Peter, James, and John,-these representing the three essentials of faith, love and charity in act. To the first and third of these the Lord gave a special and most significant charge. To take the third first,-John. At the time of the Lord's crucifixion, the disciple John and Mary the mother were standing by the cross, and, addressing Mary, the Lord said, "Woman, behold thy son!" To John He said, "Behold thy mother!" And as a result of those exclamations, it is written that " from that hour that disciple took her unto his own" (John 19:27), that is, regarded her and took care of her as if she were his mother, and this because by "the mother" and "the woman" was represented the church, and by the "disciple" the good of charity, or charity in act, or good works. And it is revealed in the Gospel of the Second Advent that this incident "signifies that the church will be where the good of charity is." (H. D. 122.) Or, as again revealed; " That the Lord gave the mother to John, and he took her to his own, signifies that the church is where the good of charity is. Mary signifies the church, and John the works of charity." (Dicta Probantia.)

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     Thus that dual charge to Mary and to John contained, in the spiritual sense, the significant teaching that the foundation of the true church of the Lord is, and must be, charity in act, which is the living of the truth, or the keeping of the Commandments; for every truth which the Lord has revealed is a command from the Lord for the eternal well-being of man.

     The charge given to the first-named disciple, Peter, was given to him as the representative of faith, which is the first of the church, in time; for man must know and believe before he can live and do. This latter charge, given in the text, was a triple one: "Feed my lambs," "Feed my sheep," and "Feed my sheep!" Revelation teaches that Peter was a very simple man (A. C. 2760) and in the hereafter a very simple spirit (A. C. 3750); but he stands, in the Word, for the ever-necessary principle of faith,-the absolute essential of regeneration, even as the Lord said, "according to your faith be it done unto you." (Matt. 9:29) But there are many kinds of faith, and to represent this, Peter is variously named in the Word. For example, he is sometimes called merely "Peter"; at other times, "Simon"; again, "Simon Peter"; and also "Simon son of Jonas," as in the text. When, in the Word, Peter is called simply "Peter," he represents faith generally, both true and false; true, when the Lord said to him," Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church" (Matt. 16:18), and a false faith, or faith separated from good, when he denied the Lord, saying, "I know not the man." (Matt. 26:69-75)

     When, in the Word, peter is called "Simon," he represents that faith which obeys (A. E. 443); for "Simon" comes from the same root as Simeon (Hebrew Shema-to hear, which, spiritually, is to obey.) But when, in the Word, Peter is called "Simon, son of Jonas," he represents truth from good, or the affection of truth, which is the "first of the church." (A. E. 820.) And this is the representation which Peter has in the words of the text.

     Peter had thrice denied the Lord. He, in all the self-assurance begotten of a state of intellect alone, had declared: "Though all shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended." (Matt. 26:33.) "Three" denotes a whole period from beginning to end (A. C. 10087), and that threefold denial represented the complete consummation of the Jewish Church.

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     In the text, the Lord thrice addresses to "Simon son of Jonas" the question, "Lovest thou me?" adding, at the first, "more than these," to emphasize the change from the denial, as by the Jewish Church to the acknowledgment by the First Christian Church, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matt. 16:16.) And Peter, now representing the faith of the First Christian Church at its beginning, thrice asserts his devotion to the Lord and his affection for Him, saying, "Thou knowest that I love Thee." And to show that this true faith, to be really living, must be based upon genuine affection, the affection of truth for its own sake,-the Lord charges the apostle to "feed my lambs," to I "feed my tender sheep" and to "feed my sheep."

     Thus the great teaching underlying the Divine dialogue between the Lord and His impetuous disciple is, that faith is to be genuine, living and saving, that it must be based upon true affection, maintained as a solid conviction, and ultimated in the deeds of disinterested usefulness and unselfish, devoted works of charity and good. All this may be seen in an intensely interesting manner when the words of the text are carefully considered in the original language in which they were given, also in a careful literal translation, and all in the light and under the guidance of the internal or spiritual sense of the Word. (A. C. 10087; A. E. 820.)

     It is to be noted that the Lord, in thrice asking Peter, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me!" twice uses the Greek work agapas, which means an intense affection, one closely allied with judgment, a solid and enduring affection. But in asking the question for the last time, the Lord then uses the same word in the Greek which Peter has used in his threefold reply,-the word philo, which indicates a lesser love, given in reaction.

     Agapar, the word twice used by the Lord, is the same word for love as is used in the well-known texts, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another." (John 13:34), and also, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." (John 14:15.)

     Phileo-the word used by Peter in his three replies, and by the Lord in His last question,-is the term for love in the original which is used in the texts: "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me " (Matt. 10:37), and "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own." (John 15:19.)

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     It is also very significant that when the Lord asks for the third time, "Lovest thou me?" Peter was "grieved" or indignant. That indignation came from Peter's proprium-that proprium which caused him to deny the Lord-and which is expressly said in the Divine Revelation of the Writings to be of " faith separate from charity." (A. C. 10087.) And in this third time of asking, the Lord descends, so to speak, to use the original term phileo, which was the word Peter used on each of the three occasions when he replied to the Lord; for it is said that the Lord asked Peter thrice if he loved Him, because "three denotes a whole period, from beginning to end, and therefore, because He spoke to Peter concerning the church, from its rising to its setting, Me said three times, 'Lovest thou me?'" (A. C. 10087. See also A. E. 820.)

     Note also that the Lord, in His first and third charge to Peter, uses the Greek term boske for "feed"-"Feed my lambs" and "Feed my sheep." This term boske involves the idea of finding pasture for, and the same is used in Luke 15:15 When it is said of the prodigal son that he was sent into the fields "to feed swine." But when, in verse 16 of the chapter from which the text is taken, the Lord says, the first time, "Feed my sheep," the original term used is poimaino, which means to tend as a shepherd, to watch, to defend, and to rule. And the same word is used in the Apocalypse: "For the Lamb, who is in the midst of the throne, shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters. (7:17.)

     The first of the three charges given to Peter by the Lord is: "Feed my lambs," and this was the first of the three because it signifies the inmost or highest embodiment of true love, which is innocence. For wherever lambs are mentioned in the Word they represent innocence. The Lord Himself, because He is the Fount of all real innocence, is called the "Lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world. The definition of innocence given in the spiritual sense of the Word is that it is "to be led by the Lord." (H. H. 280.) Or, as given in a more extended manner, " Innocence is to acknowledge that with self there is nothing but evil, and that all good is from the Lord, and also to believe that one does not know or perceive anything from self, but from the Lord." (A. C. 7902.) Innocence is the characteristic of the helpless babe, in most external form; and innocence is also the characteristic of the highest angels of heaven, in its most internal form, that of wisdom, for it is the esse of all good (H. H. 281), and the receptacle of all things of heaven. (H. H. 341.)

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     "Feed my lambs," therefore, spiritually considered, is a command from the Lord that faith, to be real and true, must ever minister to innocence by the destruction of the proprium, the abasement of all selfishness, the renunciation of all self-intelligence, the abandonment of mere human prudence and intellectual conceit; and to the cultivation of true humility, perfect trust in Divine Providence, and faithful devotion in deed and act to the life of faith. Thus lambs represent those in innocence, and also the virtue of innocence itself. (A. C. 3994.) But "sheep" represent those who are in the good of charity and thence in faith (A. C. 4169, 4809)-that is, those who are in the genuine affection of truth, desiring, and loving, and living the truth, because it is the Word of the Lord and the expression of His infinite love. The second and third charges-of the Lord to Peter, therefore, enjoin the cultivation of that which is called in the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem "truth from good, which is from the Lord." (A. E. 820.) "Shepherd my (tender) sheep" and "feed my, sheep" are commands inculcating the ultimation of the doctrine and duty of loving the Lord.

     And here we would return to the statement with which this present instruction commenced,-that "man knows that love is, but does not know what love is." The so-called Christian World knows nothing of a "doctrine of love to the Lord." Love is well-love! A distinguished scientist, very much to the fore today, under the caption of "A Definition of Life," writes: "Life is the particular kind of activity exhibited by living organisms." (Professor J. Arthur Thomson, in The Outline, August 4th, 1928, on "Can Living Creatures Be Made?") True, the learned, but spiritually astigmatic, Professor admits that "this is plainly a bad definition, since it includes the term to be defined." But he adds, "Yet it is not so bad as it looks," which shows that he is satisfied with it. Then with a charming confession of ignorance, he adds that that definition "expresses the fact that we cannot at present define life in terms of anything else."

     So too, as a definition of love, the following is found: "Love-a feeling of strong personal attachment, ardent affection . . . strong liking; fondness . . . an instance of love." (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.)

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     That Revelation in which the Lord has made His Second Coming, speaking of "how comprehensive is the doctrine of love to the Lord," says: "It is the doctrine of all the affections belonging to love, and each affection has truths inscribed on it, according to its perfection, and produces them in act with infinite variety." (A. E. 826.) Further it is revealed that "every man is affection, and there are as many various affections as there are men born, or that will be born to eternity. . . . The reason why every man is affection, is because his life is love, and the continuations and derivations of love are what are called affections; wherefore affections, in themselves, are loves, but subordinated to the general love, as under a lord or head." (Divine Love XVI.)

     "Love is the life of man," and, like life, love is uncreatable. Love, therefore, can only be perceived in its forms,-the forms which it infills, and by which it manifests itself. Those forms are truths, if the love be good, or falsities, if the love be evil; and the results of love are words and actions, true and good if the love be pure, but false and bad if the love be impure.
The soul of life is love or good; its forms are truths and deeds. Therefore no truth ever becomes man's own, unless it enters into his character; and it can only do that by being appropriated by love or good. This finds correspondence in man's physical frame, inasmuch as good is the soul, truths from good are the fibers which make his body, and truths themselves are as the nerves, which carry life to the whole of the physical frame. (A. C. 5435)

     It is written: "The universal heaven is founded on love; yea, more, so is all nature. For nothing of union or conjunction exists in nature, whether it be animate or inanimate, which does not derive its origin from love. . . . Hence, in all and everything, love, or the likeness of love, has been implanted." (A. C. 1055.)

     Love may therefore be said to be the everlasting "covenant" between the Creator and creation. Man alone can render that covenant null and void, through providing forms-falsities and evils-that pervert the love and life which flow into them. The doctrine of love to the Lord is the teaching of those things which, being possessed by man, and incorporated into his character, will receive love from the Lord, that it may return to Him as its source, and thus realize the Lord's desire: "Abide in me, and I in you.

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As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me." (John 15:4. Divine Love XIII.)

     These teachings-this "doctrine of love"-can only be found in Divine Revelation. Not knowing what love is, no man could teach the doctrine of love. It can and must come alone from Him Who is Love. Further, the Lord's teaching concerning love would never be received by man, unless the Lord had instilled into man, at the very first of his existence, an inclination to receive that doctrine. Man, from his own nature, which is wholly evil, would never be inclined to love or good. Therefore, the Lord must implant in him, at birth, "remains" of and an inclination towards the love which comes from Him, and which is His Own. In respect to this conjunction of man with the Lord, through that which comes alone from the Lord, it is written: "The first and last must be conjoined, before conjunction can be effected; the first must be the good from which truths are derived, and the last the good to which they tend; and further, in order that truths may be conjoined, good must reign universally; for it is that which reigns universally which conjoins." (A. C. 5440.)

     "Love is the life of man"-life's first and last. But love must be manifested, in order that it may be known, and also in order that it may exercise its use, in which it shall ultimate itself; The first of love, therefore, is the affection of truth, which first manifests itself in the desire to know; and the last of love is love in act, or love in the performance of truths, love guided by truths, and resulting in good works.

     Love is the universal. God is Love, and He is universally present in the love which manifests itself in the laws of the Divine Providence. Hence love, or good, being the universal, manifests itself in truths; and truths being done, or lived, become good, which is the receptacle of God. Thus is it written: "In proportion as a man is in the love of uses, in the same proportion he is in the Lord's love, and in the same proportion he loves the Lord, and loves the neighbor, and is a man." (Divine Love XIII.)

     All this is involved in the Lord's threefold charge to the Apostle Peter, who was the representative of faith. And, to quote: "As faith is not faith, unless it is from charity, . . . and thus from love to the Lord,... the Lord first asks Peter whether he loves Him, that is, whether there is love in the faith." (A. C. 3994.)

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     The conclusion, therefore, is this: "Love is the life of man." Yes! But love can only be manifested in truths; for truths, and only truths, are love's forms or goings forth. Hence nothing is really love, or charity, or good, save that which is dictated by truths, even the truths of Divine Revelation; for, in their turn, there are no truths, which are really truths, but those which are taught by the Lord; for no truths can originate from man, but must be revealed by God. Along this line of thought, therefore, the man of the Church arrives at this confession: The Lord is everything Man, in and of himself, is nothing.

     In every duty of life unto which we are called, in every decision, desire, or thought we have to make,-that we may love truly, think wisely, and act unselfishly,-the Lord, from infinite love, asks: "Lovest thou me?"

     May He who knows all things give strength, that the reply of each may be: "Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee," that we may be included among those whom the Lord described when He said: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:27) Amen.

     Lessons: John 21:15-25. A. E. 820:1, 2.

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SEVENTEENTH ONTARIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY 1928

SEVENTEENTH ONTARIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY       L. W. T. DAVID       1928

     HELD AT CARMEL CHURCH, KITCHENER, MAY 24-27, 1928.

     If one had hovered in the vicinity of Carmel Church in the cool of the evenings preceding Victoria Day, he must have noticed many busy figures on the lawns and about the building, uprooting weeds, pushing lawn-mowers, trimming and setting out flower beds, raking, housecleaning, and removing litter. Consequently, in the sunshine of the morning of the 24th, the grounds looked very beautiful indeed, and stimulated one's affection for the church, at the same time recalling the saying that "order is heaven's first law."

     In the afternoon, the first to appear were the boys of the school, well supplied with fire-crackers; for no human voice can sufficiently express their sense of loyalty to the Empire. But by midafternoon many families had gathered there, many visitors had arrived, the girls were playing ball, the men tossing horseshoes, while aged jokes were broached for the sake of their well-ripened goodness, and the sound of fire-crackers was lost in the volume of the friendly gossip and badinage. Though the evening was too cold for the expected picnic on the grass, a very cheerful company gathered in the school room for supper, making shift with hastily arranged tables; for all were very hungry. After the repast, everyone went home, so that numerous little folk might be put to bed, and the rest prepare for the reception and dance in the evening. When the scribe returned at about 9:30, a few couples were already dancing, but it was not long before the floor was crowded and the chairs well filled with happy elders looking on. About midnight the party broke up, and we went home, where many lingered in conversation to a late hour.

     First Session.

     On Friday morning at 10:30 o'clock, the first session of the Assembly began, Bishop George de Charms presiding. After an opening service, the Minutes of the last Assembly were called for.

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     The Secretary, on rising, asked the privilege of speaking a word of welcome to Bishop de Charms, this being his first visit to the Ontario Assembly in his episcopal capacity In responding, Bishop de Charms said that he had looked forward very happily to this event, and in general to the use of traveling to the various centers, and becoming better acquainted with the members of the Church. This occasion recalled to his mind the declaration of Bishop W. F. Pendleton, that the principle of council and assembly is the cornerstone of the growth of the church. He bore to the Ontario Assembly a message of affection from Bishop N. D. Pendleton.

     The Minutes were then read and approved.

     Mr. Frank Wilson, rising to read the Treasurer's Report, first said that, on behalf of the laymen of the Church in Canada, he wished to join in welcoming Bishop de Charms to this Assembly, with the hope that his visits to the societies in Ontario might be frequent. He then read a statement of account for the period since the last Assembly (Oct. 13, 1927, to May 23, 1928) showing total receipts of $70.78, disbursements of $56.90, and a balance on hand of $13.88. On motion, the Report was accepted.

     The resignation of the Rev. L. W. T. David, as Secretary of the Ontario Assembly, was accepted, and Bishop de Charms appointed the Rev. Alan Gill to act in that capacity until the next meeting of the Assembly.                    

     Mr. John White, of Toronto, then read a paper on the subject of "Discrete Degrees," which was very greatly appreciated. It awakened an active discussion, of which many of the men present took part.

     At 12:30 p.m., the meeting adjourned.

     As there was no session on Friday afternoon, the women of the Assembly gathered at the Church to hear a talk by Bishop de Charms. With the aid of a chart, he described the formation of the heavens, one after another, as the last judgments were performed on each of the great Churches, and pointing out that spirits from the newly formed Church were not incorporated into the heavens gathered from the preceding Church. The two pastors present, Revs. Hugo Lj. Odhner and L. W. T. David, discussed the address, and several questions were asked by the ladies.

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     At 7:30 p.m., we all sat down to a bounteous supper prepared by a committee of ladies, whose well-conceived plan and arduous work were much appreciated. After the supper, we listened to a lecture by Bishop de Charms on the subject of the "Tabernacle of Israel," illustrated with lantern slides and the furniture that has recently been completed for the model of the Tabernacle at Bryn Athyn. The lucid treatment of the subject enlisted our very close and delighted attention. By this lecture a practical and objective basis was laid for the episcopal address on "The Holy of Holies," delivered next day.

     Second Session.

     On Saturday morning, the second session of the Assembly was opened with a service conducted by the Rev. L. W. T. David.

     Memorial Resolutions to the memory, of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore S. Kuhl and Mr. Robert Carswell were offered and adopted. The Memorial to Mr. Carswell follows:

     The passing into the other life of our friend and brother, Robert Carswell, has taken from our midst one dearly loved by the people of the New Church, not of Canada only, but of the Church in general. He is missed from our councils; for in spite of grievous disabilities in his later years, his was a familiar presence in the activities of the Church. His interest was keen, and his enthusiasm for the upbuilding of the Church undiminished to the end.

     His outstanding characteristics of stanch adherence to truth and integrity of life were marked as exceptional in the business world; and these same qualities were of peculiar value to the Church in days of bitter strife, when his rugged loyalty to the Divine Doctrine was as a tower of strength.

     Yet he is not lost to us. In that other world he joins the little band of devoted New Churchmen who are gathered there. Released from earthly trammels, he enters into the higher uses of the Church with renewed energy. His living presence will still strengthen and inspire us. We therefore cherish the memory of Robert Carswell with deep affection.

     Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to the wife and family of the deceased.

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     The Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner then read a paper on "The Historical Development of Swedenborg's Philosophical Concept of the First Aura." The paper aroused an active discussion, in which quite a number of speakers took part.

     Third Session.

     The opening service was conducted by the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner, who also presided at this meeting. Bishop de Charms then gave us a masterly discourse on the subject of "The Holy of Holies," dwelling upon the inmost and secret relation of the Divine with man, and of man's reciprocal internal opening to reception of the Divine. Not only were our minds uplifted to an exalted realm of spiritual thought, but our affections were also deeply stirred, and at the close it was some time before we came into the mood to make comment; and all who spoke felt their inadequacy to express their appreciation of the address.

     At the close of the discussion, Mr. Frank Wilson offered a Resolution expressing the thanks of the Assembly for the entertainment afforded by the Carmel Church, also the pleasure of the Assembly in the coming of Bishop de Charms, as well as thanks to the two pastors, the Revs. Hugo Lj. Odhner and L. W. T. David, who are about to leave the Canadian field, for their faithful work in sustaining the well-being of the Church in Kitchener and Toronto and the Ontario
District.

     Mr. Rudolph Potts seconded the Resolution, and spoke of the special value of this Assembly. It had showed clearly that the Church is being led by the Lord more and more deeply into the understanding of the Divine Doctrine. Bishop de Charms will always be welcome to the Church in Canada.

     The Resolution was adopted, and the meeting adjourned.

     On Saturday evening, the ladies of the Assembly had a delightful social gathering at the home of Mrs. George Schnarr and Mrs. Rudolph Schnarr. The large, pleasant rooms provided ample space for the sixty or more women present. A light program included a short play, a recitation, a folk dance, and musical numbers. Besides this, Miss, Laurina Doering read a paper on "Animism," in which it was suggested that children's ideas of life in natural objects and creatures should be fostered, and used to lead them to a belief in angels and a spiritual world.

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The men, who had been meeting elsewhere, called for their wives as the ladies were beginning to enjoy the delicious refreshments, including two weighty boxes of chocolates which the men had sent an hour before.

     The men of the Assembly gathered for supper at the Church under the auspices of the Men's Club. After a period of jollity and singing, the Chairman, Mr. Fred Stroh, introduced the subject of the evening,-"The Order of the Church." It was divided into three parts, as follows: "Divine Instruction"; "The Priesthood"; "The Laymen." The Rev. Hugo Lj: Odhner spoke to the first, Mr. Frank Wilson to the second, and Mr. Nathaniel Stroh to the third. A very useful discussion followed, which culminated in a stirring and searching speech by Bishop de Charms on the subject of charity as the essence of all order among men and in the Church.

     On Sunday morning, the Assembly was lifted to the summits by the service of worship. The church was filled with worshipers and an intense sphere prevailed. The Lessons were read by the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner, and Bishop de Charms preached the sermon, which was on the text of Malachi 3:10, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." The sermon was complementary to the address of the day before, treating of the inmost presence of the Divine with man, but showing also man's part and duty, so that such an interior opening may be given as is indicated by the opening words of the text, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse." At the close, the Holy Supper was administered by Bishop de Charms, the two pastors assisting.

     Thus came to a conclusion one of the most enjoyable and inspiring District Assemblies it has been our privilege to hold in Canada.
     L. W. T. DAVID,
          Secretary.

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Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     DURBAN, NATAL.

     May 15, 1928.

     The Society has not been idle during the past few months. During October alone four successful events took place. First, a friend of Mrs. J. D'A. Cockerell, Miss Harlow, volunteered to give us an entertainment. She was assisted by Madame de Vere, danseuse (we secretly think this was Miss Enid Cockerell), and they gave a very enjoyable evening of clever recitations. A collection at the door went to swell the Women's Guild Funds.

     The next event was a play given by Mrs. Kenneth Ridgway,-"The Monkey's Paw," by W. W. Jacobs. The players, Audrey Fraser, Scott Forfar, Ivan Ridgway, L. Levine and Bobs Ridgway, gave a very creditable performance, and the audience was duly thrilled and "creepy."

     This was followed by a highly successful Bazaar. In opening it, Mr. Acton quoted an America Negro minister: "Contribute according to your means, and not according to your meanness!" Judging by the amount taken in (over L300) it would seem that this advice took effect. The stalls were very tempting, and fairly groaned under the weight of the things they held. The stage was a most attractive sight, having been transformed into a tea garden with flowers and pretty waitresses in old-fashioned costumes. In the evening there were stunts and side-shows. A Gypsy crystal gazer told wonderful tales if her palm were crossed with silver. To the consternation of the stall-holders, a light-fingered little lady (Yveline Rogers) "lifted articles from the different tables and put them into a bag; later she returned and paid for the things she took, having cornered some poor unprotected males and induced them to pay exorbitant prices to obtain them. At another time this same little lady was seen in the guise of a witch, selling love potions and charms. The evening closed with a mock radio program.

     The last social event in October was a Hallowe'en Party given for the children by Theta Alpha. With the children all in costume, and an environment of grinning pumpkins, ghosts, and dim lights, the proper atmosphere was created. Judging by the shouts of laughter and fun, the children had a good time.

     A sense of loss was felt by us all when we heard of the passing of Father Pendleton early in November. The information was received by cable, and the Memorial Service was held within a few hours of the one held in Bryn Athyn. The knowledge that the Church all over the world was following Father Pendleton with love and admiration on his journey across the border helped to create the strong sphere that prevailed at our Service, We also had Memorial Service in the Church for "Aunt Sarie" (Miss Warland) who passed into the other world early in November.

     Christmas in this country should be held in June! To work up Christmas spirit of heartiness and good-will when one is simply wilted from the heat is too much to ask. It is difficult to be in the right spirit when sleep seems about all one is able to accomplish. To eat a real Christmas dinner,-the good old English kind,-and the burning of the Yule-log, all sitting cozily around the fire, are out of the question. So our Christmas must be differently arranged. There is no use decorating the house when all outside is decorated in nature's best style. However, we do our best to make the day all that it should be.

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We have an early service on Christmas morning; afterwards some play tennis, some go down to Isipingo and bathe all day, and some of us go home and sleep. But the children are always given a festival the day before, and tableaux, with music from the "Christ Child," are ever new and beautiful.

     This report would not be complete without a reference to the birth within the Society of three babies in one day! We are very proud of this, as it is a record, I believe.

     Two engagements have been announced since our last report,-Miss Enid Cockerell to Mr. L. Levine, and Miss Iona Leask to Mr. Norman Ridgway. Our church building has never been graced by a wedding ceremony, so it will be interesting to see who will be first.

     The Thursday morning Ladies Class is a very pleasant institution, typically South African. Mr. Acton is reading us The Mythology of the Greeks and Romans, by Rev. C. Th. Odhner. The practice of serving tea after Doctrinal Class is still carried on by Mrs. Forfar. The money taken during the year for this is about L25, which helps to pay the teachers' salaries.

     Kainon School has welcomed a new teacher. Miss Joan Braby has taken on the Kindergarten, and also some other classes among the older children. We wish her every happiness in her new found use. The School is progressing favorably, although it is confronted with rather a weighty problem which must be decided during the next school year. When Miss Cockerell leaves to get married, it will be necessary to give up the higher classes as we cannot I provide another salary adequate to anyone not living at home. There is no one in the Society available and qualified to take the higher classes through the examinations set by the Government of this country. We realize that the other Societies in the General Church maintain only Elementary Schools, but our children cannot go at once to the High School in Bryn Athyn, as they would be too young to send so far from home Therefore, it seems more necessary for us to have a High School than any of the other societies. We fail that it will be retrograde to discontinue what we have already started, but it seems to be the only thing we can do.
      V. K. R.

     SOUTH AFRICAN MISSION.

     Since our last report, dated February 14th, the routine work of the Mission has continued without a break. The Elementary School at Alpha has an enrollment of eighty-five, and meets in three different buildings, in order to furnish the needs for the various standards. The three theological students meet in the Superintendent's study. And while these activities are in progress, the printing press and industrial departments have their allotted tasks. We are still in the initial stages, as compared with missions of over fifty years' standing, but we can safely say that our Mission is slowly shaping itself into a well-defined institution. While as yet we provide for few, yet even these activities-Student Literary Society, Football Club, Teachers' Meetings, Competitions, and Matches with other schools,-all result from an educational endeavor. Such is the weekly routine at Alpha, as far as its Mission is concerned. At the same time, the usual Sunday Services and Doctrinal Classes at the headquarters, and at all the outlying stations, have been maintained without interruption.

     During March the two Natal groups near Ladysmith were visited. John Jiyana is caring for a growing society at Lusitania. At present the services and classes are held on the property of one of the members; but a site of land is to be granted, and in due course a suitable building will be erected by the members. At Kalabasi, Johannes Lunga is still Leader.

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This, too, is a small struggling group, up against the teaching and sphere of the old theology and the "enthusiasm" of Zionist spirits!

     In April, the Superintendent paid a visit to Zululand, where preliminaries are being made to establish a group under a resident Native Leader, thus following up the extended lecture tour recently undertaken by Moffat Mcanyana. The Tongaat group-about thirty miles from Durban-was visited in company with the Rev. E. C. Acton and Leaders Moffat Mcanyana, Sabele, Stole and Noykana, with several members of the Mayville (Durban) Society. This took place on Sunday afternoon, April 29th, when two Baptisms and the quarterly Communion were administered, and two marriages were solemnized.

     On May 6th, the church building at Mafika-Lisiu was dedicated. Over six hundred Basutos attended, the building only seating about half that number. Leaders Jonas Mphatse, Nathaniel Mphatse, Sofonia Mosoang and Twentyman Mofokeng took part b the ceremony, while the Key was presented by the Chief's representative. The dedication service was followed by the sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Supper.

     The Alpha Circle, as far as possible, has been holding its regular Sunday Evening Service and Doctrinal Class. For the time being, the work entitled The Last Judgment, Posthumous has been taken up for study, and its paragraphs often give rise to interesting conversations on the subject of the Spiritual World.

     On Sunday afternoon, May 19th, the infant son of Mr. and Mrs. F. Parker was baptized. At this service, which was held at the Alpha Homestead, sixteen adults and six children were present. After the ceremony, the guests met at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Parker and partook of afternoon tea, and there was a toast to the health of Clive Stanley. The trip to Zululand gave opportunity for a stay of a few days with the friends in Durban, as also for the pleasure of officiating at the baptism of the Rev. and Mrs. E. C. Acton's youngest daughter, Yone Loel. The best wishes of all are extended to these youngest flowers of South Africa!
     F. W. E.

     TORONTO, CANADA.

     There is always a peculiar pleasure and delight to New Churchmen when newcomers evince an interest in the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Church, and particularly is this so when it leads to their reception. Thus it was our joy on Sunday, May 20th, to welcome into the spiritual fellowship of the church Mr. and Mrs. Van Paassen and Mr. Felix Du Quesne, who were baptized on that date by the Rev. H. L. Odhner, the occasion being improved by a timely and illuminating sermon on the "Uses of Baptism."

     The Seventeenth Ontario District Assembly, held in the Carmel Church, Kitchener, from May 24th to 27th, will be remembered by those present as a time of spiritual refreshment. An official report of the Assembly will appear elsewhere in the pages of the Life, so we will content ourselves with a few impressionistic notes. An excellent program for the four days commenced with the observance of Victoria Day, May 24th, in the time-honored custom of the Carmel Society by a field-day on the beautiful grounds of the church, when games and races and all kinds of sports are indulged in, including the pitching of horseshoes by the doughty champions of the Kitchener and Toronto Societies, the ubiquitous firecrackers, a picnic supper, and the singing of old-time songs. The evening was devoted to a reception and dance. By the time this was over, acquaintanceship had been renewed and the assembly sphere on the social plane fully and happily established.

     The Assembly sessions proper commenced at 10:30 a. m. on Friday, May 25th, and the opening Hymn 32 from the Liturgy, "Lord of all being, throned afar," struck a fine keynote for the whole of the meetings, which was sustained throughout, and which came to a climax with the singing of that grand old hymn, "Triumphant Zion, lift thy head," at the close of Divine Worship and the Holy Supper, which brought the Assembly to a fitting conclusion.

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     The official report will record the great pleasure felt by all at the first episcopal visit of Bishop George de Charms. Regrets were also voiced at the absence of Bishop N. D. Pendleton for the first time in many years, whose visits on these occasions have been the source of increasing delight and profit from his wise counsel and leadership.

     Our Kitchener friends, noted for their fine hospitality, had left nothing undone conducive to the comfort and pleasure of their guests, and all who were responsible for the arrangements are to be congratulated on the smooth and efficient manner in which the programme was carried out. It was a most enjoyable Assembly. It was good to be there. One feature may be worth while to comment upon, and that is the apparent increasing difficulty, owing largely to changing conditions, in getting a maximum attendance of visitors, when, as on this occasion, the holiday comes in the middle of the week. Whilst there Were some fifty-odd visitors from Toronto, not all were there together, and some made the trip to and fro twice. This is a matter that the Ontario District Assembly Committee have decided to consider fully, with a view to assuring as full an attendance as possible at future Assemblies.

     The Olivet Society during the past month has been largely concerned with the calling of a new Pastor and winding-up the season's work of the various organizations of the Society. Mrs. Odhner had planned Friday evening, June 8th, for one of those "home-together-evenings" so rare in the lives of bur Pastors and their wives, when, lo! a bunch of young people called in upon them by way of a surprise party, marching in singing and bearing under their arms sundry packages of "eats," and one young lady bearing in her hands a flat thin package, which, on being opened, proved to be a beautiful oriental brass tray, which was duly presented to Mr. and Mrs. Odhner with sundry felicitous remarks and good wishes apropos of the occasion.

     On June 19th, the annual business meeting of the Society was held. There was a large attendance, and the usual reports of the year's activities were received, showing well-sustained endeavor and progress in the various uses, a particularly pleasing feature being the increased attendance at worship. Mr. A. Sargeant was re-elected as Secretary, and Mr. F. Wilson as Treasurer. These two officers, together with Messrs. R. S. Anderson, T. C. Bellinger, H. P. Izzard, R. Potts and J. A. White constitute the Finance Board for the ensuing year.

     The Day School dosing exercises were held June 15th, when songs were sung, compositions read by the pupils, and a particularly suitable address given by the Pastor on the "Four Rivers in the Child's Garden of Eden," his dosing remarks being of a valedictory nature in which he expressed the hope that he might some day see them all in the Bryn Athyn Schools and have an opportunity of observing whether the little trees of knowledge which had been planted survived any late "spring frosts," and whether the buds were firmly set with promise of abundant fruit.

     Miss Dora Brown's report for the teachers showed a successful school year, the following pupils having attained an average of over 80: first, David K. Richardson; tied for second, Helen Anderson and Helen Richardson; whilst Lorna Barber and Stanley Jesseman held the proud distinction of never having been late once during the year. On behalf of the school children, Helen Richardson presented Mr. Odhner with a pair of book-rests; and Serene Odhner presented Miss Dora Brown with a small table clock.

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     Several of the children then gave a really delightful little play, "Helga and the White Peacock," which tells the story of a real baby being stolen from her home by "The Trolls," and a "Troll" baby (which by the way is not supposed to be mortal) substituted, and of the brother who had "the love and strength and courage" to carry him to the world's end if needs be, could he but find his sister again. The "Grey Goose," through his homely kindness and dignity, and the "Peacock," through his pride and vanity, each contributed in his way towards leading Olaf, the brother, in his quest for his lost sister whom he ultimately finds in Helga at the home of the "Trools," despite the desperate efforts of the "Spider Woman, grandmother of all the Trolls," to prevent him. By the way, "Trolls" are "a kind of supernatural being in Scandinavian mythology, dwarfish in size and dwelling in the interior of hills and mounds." "They know not weariness or sorrow or happiness; that is only for mortal bodies and mortal souls. Trolls have no souls." The little song in the story is worth reproducing, as sung by the Grey Goose:-

The earth is wide, its paths are long,
     Its hills are steep and high.
Yet tho'ts take wing, and brave hearts sing,
     As weary feet trudge by.
Each blowing tree, each calling bird,
     Each flower's face a friend;
And so at last when years have passed,
     The longest road must end.
For faith will win and hope begin,
     And all roads have an end.

     And so the faith of Helga in her brother sustains her, and prevents her from becoming as the trolls. And the strength, courage, and high purpose of Olaf wins through all difficulties, and restores to him his beloved sister. To the teachers, assisted by Mrs. Ray Brown and Mrs. Frank Longstaff, great credit, is due for this enjoyable production.

     The Sunday School closed for the season on Sunday, June 17th, when a joint service was held in the chapel, and gold ribbons were presented for perfect attendance, red and white for second class, and red for third class. The first part of the sermon on the "Correspondence of Fishermen" was in simple form for the young folks, and, evolving into the regular discourse for the adults, led the mind to and in preparation for the celebration of New Church Day.

     On the Nineteenth of June, about one hundred persons sat down to an excellent supper, and our Pastor, as toastmaster, in characteristic fashion and in his best vein, after some introductory remarks apropos of the occasion, proposed toasts on a variety of subjects which were responded to by the following speakers: Messrs. E. Craigie, Healdon Starkey, A. Sargeant, G. H. Orchard, F. Wilson and Dr. E. K. Richardson, who, in short pithy speeches, kept well within the scope of their subjects, held the interest and gained the appreciation of their audience, both young and old,-a somewhat rare achievement.

     Other items on the program were a pianoforte solo by Mrs. Dr. Richardson, and a song by the Rev. H. L. Odhner, both of whom surpassed themselves in the rendition of their respective numbers, which were enthusiastically encored, but, to our regret, in vain. A male-voice sextet from the Forward Club also gave two pleasing four-part songs which added to the enjoyment of the musical portion of the entertainment. Amongst the visitors from other centers, whom we recall, were Mrs. Selma Gyllenhaal and Mr. Alvin Gyllenhaal, of Glenview; Miss Celia Bellinger, of Pittsburgh. A strong sphere, imbued with all the elements of a true banquet spirit, was manifest throughout the evening. It was one of those occasions redolent of deep affection for the Church and all it stands for with us, when time slips by unheeded, and good-nights are said with something of regret.

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     The Annual Meeting of the 1927-8 season of the Forward Club was held on Thursday, June 21st, when regular routine business was transacted and the following officers were elected for the ensuing year: President, F. Wilson; Vice President, T. C. Bellinger; Secretary, R. S. Anderson; Treasurer, F. Du Quesne. This being the last regular meeting of the Club at which our Pastor would be present, F. R. Longstaff proposed, and R. S. Anderson seconded,-in terms voicing our strong affection for and appreciation of Mr. Odhner's service to and interest in the Club during his pastorate-that he be made a Life Member. The motion, on being put, was accorded enthusiastic musical honors, the members circling round, singing in lusty voice the Club song, and giving him the "grip" in passing. The President then presented him with a framed, illuminated card of membership as a souvenir of his connection with the Club. Mr. Odhner suitably responded; and thus passed into history the second phase in the life of the Club. As this membership card had not been conceived of when the Rev. K. R. Alden, under whose pastorate the Club was founded,-left Toronto, a framed copy was also sent to him as the only other Life Member.

     It is with regret that we have to record the death, on July 11th, of Mr. J. M. Somerville, at the ripe age of eighty-three. Mr. Somerville had been a member of the Olivet Society for many years. Of a quiet and retiring disposition, he nevertheless, during his long connection with the Church, was faithful in his attendance and support of its uses and activities, until failing health curtailed his ability so to do. Many beautiful floral tributes testified to the esteem and regard in which he was held by the members of the Society and the many friends of the family.

     As an illustration of the contrast that life affords in its unending progression, on the following Friday, July 20th, we gathered at the church to celebrate the marriage of Miss Gladys Brown to Mr. Healdon Starkey, the Rev. H. L. Odhner officiating, assisted by the Rev. G. G. Starkey, father of the bridegroom. The bridesmaids were the Misses Dora and Rosamond Brown, sister and niece of the bride, respectively. Mr. Cleo Starkey was best man, assisted by Mr. Robert M. Brown, whilst Jean Bellinger made a pretty little flower girl and Miss Mary Smith played the wedding music. A reception and dance followed in the church assembly hall at which the happy pair received the congratulations of a host of well-wishers. The bride, who has been an active and efficient worker in the Society, was the recipient of numerous "showers" and presents. Mr. Starkey, who came to Toronto from Glenview, was just beginning to find his place amongst us. We shah miss them both very much. After a short honeymoon, Mr. and Mrs. Starkey left for the Peace River district of Western Canada, "the last great West of Canada" to be opened up for homesteading, a country, judging by reports, of an almost boundless fertility, where we trust our friends will build for themselves a happy home, and that abundant success will attend their venture. Western Canada thus gains two active New Church members. Already there is in that country a Mrs. Miller (daughter of the late Wm. Evens of Penetang), her husband and their young family. Thus it may be that a new circle can be formed, from which, in time, may grow another addition to "The Church's ever-widening circle."

     We are now looking forward to the arrival of the Rev. and Mrs. Gyllenhaal, as our new Pastor is to enter upon his duties here on September 1st.
      F. W.

     IMMANUEL CHURCH SCHOOL, GLENVIEW ILLINOIS.

     As is our custom when we have a graduating class, the closing exercises were held on Saturday afternoon (June 16th), so that the fathers and uncles and big brothers of the boys and girls of the eighth grade could hear the graduation "essays."

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These exercises always afford a happy meeting for the members of the society, when we renew our interest in the School, and pledge our faith to this Church use when we sing "Our Alma Mater" with the children. The Parish Hall was crowded with the friends of the School.

     After the procession and opening prayers, the Pastor spoke of the meaning of the satisfaction and happiness that comes with work well done, and commended those who had completed this first assignment of their work in the world. The graduates were then introduced, and we heard seven interesting papers on a variety of subjects, as follows: "Something About the Moon," Jean Smith; "The Revelation or Apocalypse," Louis S. Cole, Jr.; "The Life of Isaiah," Eunice Nelson; "John the Baptist," Russell Stevens; "Something About the Lord's Life," Marjory Lee; "The Gospel of Luke," May Melter; "The Inhabitants of Jupiter," John Potts.

     When the papers were finished, the seven were called forward, one by one, to receive the red and white ribboned diplomas. Then the class rose together and asked Mr. Smith to receive gift for the school. Marjory Lee and Eunice Nelson presented a book to the Library, and a red and gold banner to be hung upon the walls of the school in remembrance of the love of the class of 1928.

     This closed the service, and the pupils marched out to the court, where Miss Emelia Nelson was waiting to take pictures of the class groups for the photographic record of the school. Meanwhile the congregation held informal class reunions, and then marched across the court to congratulate the graduates and make another red in Mr. Smith's motion-picture history of the church.

     When the children wandered back into the building they found that ice-cream was being served in the Hall, while the graduating class served tea to their guests in the schoolrooms, where the most interesting features of the year's work were exhibited.
     G. B.

     LONDON, MICHAEL CHURCH.

     Sunday, June 17th, being the nearest Sabbath to New Church Day, was made a special occasion-indeed, it seemed to be a series of special occasions! An outstanding feature of the morning service was the Declaration of Faith made by Mr. A. V. Cooper, the Vestry Deacon, on his coming of age. It is an impressive and encouraging sight,-that of a young man known from his infancy by many of those present, and accompanied by his parents,-standing before the Lord's representative to acknowledge publicly his indebtedness to those parents, and to express "my determination by the Lord's help, and in His strength, to devote all the energies of the manhood, to the threshold of which I have now come, to the faithful performance of all the uses of my future life, according to the teachings of His Word." Invited by the Pastor now to extend the right hand of fellowship to his son, the father recognizes publicly that the former "has now attained the age of young manhood, and that from henceforth his responsibility is to the Lord alone. May the Lord protect him and bless him for evermore!" The trine is completed by the voice of the priest greeting the young man with the Divine salutation: "O man, greatly beloved, fear not; peace be unto thee! Be strong! Yea, be strong!" A simple but telling pastoral exhortation, and the Benediction brought this memorable little ceremony to a close.

     The texts of the powerful and very appropriate discourse were from Divine Providence 53: "The Lord cannot have a dwelling place, and abide with man and angel, except in His Own, and not in their proprium, for this is evil, and if it were good, still it is finite, and in itself, and from itself, it is not capable of holding the Infinite"; and also from John 15: "Abide in me, and I in you.

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As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me." The service culminated in the administration of the Holy Supper to forty-eight communicants, including the one who had just assumed the responsibilities of manhood, and who, presenting himself for the first time, received the individual Benediction-surely a fitting and helpful experience.

     At 6 p. m., a feast of charity was held, the Pastor Presiding as usual. The first hour was taken up with social converse and the consumption of the many good things which had been most generously given by Mrs. Lauriston Shaw, whose absence, through indisposition, was greatly regretted. Next, the Pastor called upon Mr. Victor Cooper to read "Concerning the Nineteenth of June" (from New Church Sermons); and after the singing of "Our Glorious Church," he arose to read his report of the work of the past year. This is always looked forward to with interest, and it helps us to realize, once a year at any rate, how wide is his "parish," and how varied and manifold are his activities.

     Now all this was part of our regular program for New Church Day. But June 17th, 1928, was a day of "extras." A pleasant little incident was the presentation to Mr. Leonard Lewin of an umbrella, in recognition of his indefatigable and very successful services as Secretary of the Social Club, accompanied by the expression of our regret at his being obliged to retire from that position owing to the distance from London at which he now lives. In acknowledging the gift, Mr. Lewin expressed his intention of still being at Burton Road as often as circumstances permitted. Another victim of space and time!

     But the largest "extra" was still to come. Seated at the Pastor's right hand was one well-known to us all, the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal, Pastor of the Colchester Society, and we knew that he was to give us an address. A special interest attached to Mr. Gyllenhaal's presence, as he is so soon to leave our shores for Toronto, and this was his last public appearance at Michael Church before he goes. His departure will be great loss to the Church in Colchester, and is a matter of sincere regret to us all. Our best wishes for success and happiness in his new sphere of work go with Mr. Gyllenhaal, and when we say "good-by" we shall also say-and mean-au revoir! The title of the address was "The Sign of Enlightenment," and the speaker was at his best. "Those who acknowledge the Second Coming of the Lord," said Mr. Gyllenhaal, "are to look for the 'sign' of the New Church, which is enlightenment, and, as it were, individual revelation, as the Doctrines of the Church are studied, loved and lived." He urged all to greater energy and more vitality; to cultivate the active joy of giving, rather than to be continually satisfied with the passive joy of receiving. May his forceful and inspiring utterances remain with us all!

     The speaker resumed his seat amid great applause, and then our Pastor rose and asked him to accept (even though it were only a passive joy!) the two volumes which were offered him to take over to Toronto, as a memento of Michael Church. It was a scene not easily forgotten-the two Pastors standing with clasped right hands, having worked together in mutual support for some eight years. Mr. Gyllenhaal suitably acknowledged the gift, assuring us that he was by no means entirely "passive" in his reception of it, since he fully reciprocated the affection it expressed. More applause, and short speeches by various laymen were followed by a few further remarks from the Pastor, voicing our thanks to those who had prepared the feast, and making special reference to the beautiful collection of lilies on the chancel, most of which were the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, and were appropriate to Coming of Age Service, with their buds in various stages and the fully opened flowers.

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The singing of "Vivat Nova Ecclesia," the dosing of the Word, and the Benediction brought this very full Sunday to a close.

     On the following Saturday, June 23d, our annual New Church Day Outing took place-this year to Barnes Hill, a delightful spot in Middlesex. An appetite for lunch was acquired by cricket practice, and later on digestion was aided by the same in earnest-deadly earnest-the gentlemen playing left-handed against the ladies. Great prowess was shown, fearful and wonderful scores were made, though the pitch was not all that could be desired. Shortly after 4 p. m., half an hour's walk through pleasant country brought us to the house of Mr. and Mrs. V. R. Tilson, who had very kindly invited the whole party to tea. Here, some three dozen hungry mortals enjoyed a bountiful supply of good things, served in a delightfully informal manner, and were very happy. Various games in the garden followed, and the time slipped by till we realized regretfully that it was getting late and that the best of friends must part. Thus ended our New Church Day celebrations. Now for the Assembly!
     R. M. D.

     SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.

     This year our celebration of the Nineteenth of June was held earlier because of our Pastor's impending departure on June 12th to attend the General Assembly in London.

     The celebration commenced on Saturday evening, the 9th, with a supper given to the children of the Sunday School, of whom forty-four were present. The grace sung at the commencement was the first verse of Hymn 61 of the Hymnal. After the supper, two tableaux were shown. In the first, eleven boys of the Sunday School took part, representing the eleven Disciples looking upwards as their Lord ascended into heaven; the second represented John viewing the descent of the Holy City, New Jerusalem. The postures were reverent and well-maintained during the singing of the songs, "Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him," and "Jerusalem, the Golden." The character costumes, made and arranged by Miss Taylor, completed a very interesting and instructive object lesson. Prior to each tableau, the Pastor gave a brief description of the subject to be presented; and after the two tableaux were finished he gave a short address on "The Day" for the benefit, not only of the children, but also of the adults, several of whom were unacquainted with the Doctrines of the Church. After the address all joined heartily in singing "June Nineteenth Forever." The celebration then closed with the Benediction. The total attendance was about seventy.

     The adult celebration was held the following evening, with an attendance of about thirty. The church building was festooned, and the usual red and white colors-not forgetting the banner that has done duty for a quarter of a century-adorned the tables. The celebration opened with the singing of "Joy to This Meeting Fair," and after we had sung our usual grace, a sumptuous supper was enjoyed in friendly communion. One special feature of this supper was that it was served hot, the significance of which fact will be appreciated when the reader is reminded that it was only eleven days from the shortest of the year; and for this innovation we have to thank our good friends and members, Mr. and Mrs. T. R. Taylor, as well as for a cake beautifully adorned with correspondential objects and colors.

     At the conclusion of the supper, a basket containing short quotations from the Writings selected by Mrs. Taylor was taken round the tables, and after every person had taken one, they were read aloud by their possessors, commencing with the Pastor.

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The results attending this custom are most interesting and instructive, and, in the order of the Divine Providence, the selections frequently are most appropriate acid useful to the recipient.

     Then came the toasts: "The Church"; "The Day we Celebrate"; and "Distant Friends." The first was responded to by the Pastor, after which all sang "Our Glorious Church"; the second was responded to by Mr. Guthrie, and the third by Mr. Kirschstein. Papers on "How I came into the Church" were then read by Messrs. Taylor, Kirschstein and Guthrie. All were exceptionally interesting. The heart of Mr. Taylor's paper may be expressed in the words, "A little child shall lead them"; for, as stated in the paper, it was through the connection with the Sunday School of their children, Nellie and Tommie, that he and his wife were led into the Church, the Church that can answer all questions. Both now evince warm love for her doctrines, and take active part in her uses. At the conclusion of Mr. Taylor's paper, the Pastor's daughter, Mrs. Winnifred Marsh, played a pianoforte solo. At the conclusion of the second paper, Mr. Kirschstein, to his wife's accompaniment, sang "I shall Meet Her." A fourth toast, not on the program, was added. Mr. Guthrie called for one to the Pastor, and to Miss Taylor, whose untiring energy and help in the Church is so much appreciated.

     Miss White, our organist, Sunday School teacher, and general helper, is now spending a few weeks with her people in Adelaide, South Australia. She will join the ship Cathay on the 21st, and, with the Pastor, will attend the Assembly in London. Afterwards she will proceed to Bryn Athyn to prepare for the conducting of a New Church day school in Hurstville. Her place at the organ and Sunday School will, in the meantime; betaken respectively by Mrs. Marshand Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Heldon will preside at the piano at the Wednesday juvenile gatherings.

     The united efforts of Miss Taylor and the parents of the children of the Sunday School resulted in a happy social held on May 16th which included pleasant and surprising features for two of our members. During an interval in the program, Miss White was the recipient of a purse of sovereigns representing the affections of the parents of the children of the school; and Mr. Morse was the recipient of a traveling suit-case. Both were deeply appreciative of the affections that prompted the gifts. There was an attendance of over seventy.
     R. M.

     BRYN ATHYN, PA.

     THE PAGEANT.

     On the evening of June 11th, the Pageant portraying "The Story of Joseph" (Genesis 37-50) was given by the Academy Schools on the campus in the presence of a large audience. It had been in course of preparation throughout the school year, pupils from the third grade to the theological school taking part.

     We had been strongly advised not to miss this event, and we attended with high hopes of witnessing something very much worthwhile. From the first note of the music to the final Psalm of Praise the audience was held spellbound. The colorful costumes of oriental lands, the lights that made everything true to life, the music that expressed heavenly affections, and the marvelous unfolding of the Scripture story,-all was carried forward as a worshipful representation, and not as a performance or play.

     The story itself was told in a series of chants beautifully rendered by a male quartet, and the chief incidents were then enacted with dramatic vividness by those who took the parts of the leading characters. These tableaux vivants were followed by rhythmic dances and spectacular marches, each scene culminating in the singing of a Psalm from the Psalmody, with over two hundred voices fired by the holy words.

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Our pen fails in any attempt to describe further this great work of the Academy Schools. It was not a pageant, but a glorification of the Lord, even as we read takes place in the spiritual world at stated intervals. It was a blessed privilege to feel such a manifestation, and to know what is in store for the countless generations that will pass through the halls of our beloved Alma Mater.

     The text of the Pageant was prepared by Bishop George de Charms, and included a number of selections from the Hebrew Scriptures set to special music by Mrs. Besse Smith, who also trained the schools in all the singing. The costuming and staging were under the direction of Mr. Fred Finkeldey, and the dances under Miss Florence Roehner. To these four especially our gratitude is due for the superlative excellence of the whole undertaking.
     FRED J. COOPER.

     ACADEMY COMMENCEMENT.

     The dosing exercises of the Elementary School were held in the Auditorium on June 13th at 9 a. m., when 14 pupils of the Eighth Grade received certificates of graduation. Mr. Raymond Pitcairn addressed the school on the subject of "Honor and Character Building, accommodating his thoughts to the children in an unusual way. He commenced his address with a few simple questions, paused for a reply, and was not long in eliciting responses. In charming manner he won the confidence and attention of the children, so that he could develop his remarks into an understandable and serious treatment of his theme, bringing out especially that what counts is the intention of the will more than the external appearance of the act.

     The Commencement Exercises of the higher schools were held at 10 o'clock, with a large audience filling the Auditorium, including many parents and visitors from a distance. The students entered singing a new processional song composed by Mr. Foster Krake. When the President and Faculty had taken their places upon the stage it was noted that, for the first time in many years, the President Emeritus W. F. Pendleton was not present to take part in the worship. The Commencement Address was delivered by Mr. Frank Wilde, of New York, whose extemporaneous remarks were listened to with the closest attention by the student body and all present, as he described the opportunities and problems that await the young men and women of the New Church when they enter into their uses in the church and in the world.

     The President then presented diplomas to 10 student graduates from the Girls Seminary and 7 from the Boys Academy. Eight students received Junior College Certificates, and Mr. Edward Allen was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Science. Four students in the Theological School received the degree of Bachelor of Theology. The honorary degree of Doctor of Theology was conferred upon the Rev. Eldred E. Iungerich. Various awards and honors were given to four boys and three girls, and Mr. Robert Brown received first honors in the College.

     The dual feeling of happiness and sadness was strongly felt by those who were about to leave the Schools, and was especially evidenced in the valedictory addresses.

     NEW CHURCH DAY.

     On the Nineteenth of June, more than the usual number were present at the Banquet of the Bryn Athyn Society in the Auditorium. The subject of "Church Development" was ably introduced by Mr. Eldric Klein as toastmaster, and very enjoyable presentations of the subject in its various phases were given by the speakers,-Mr. Fred Cooper, Mr. Wilfred Howard, Dr. Alfred Acton, and the Rev. Vincent C. Odhner.

     Preceding the speeches, Mr. Fred Cooper, on behalf of the Advent Church, Philadelphia, presented four volumes of Swedenborg's Writings to the Rev. Hendrik W. Beef, in appreciation of his ministration to that Society.

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     The occasion was also marked by the pleasure of having Mr. Walter C. Childs lead the company in song. We believe this celebration was far in advance of those in recent years, being marked by the feeling that "this was a real Nineteenth of June celebration."
     H. W. B.

     GLENVIEW, ILL.

     Our observance of New Church Day began with a special service in the church on Sunday morning, June 13th, and in the afternoon a Festival of Music was given in the Parish Hall by the Symphony Orchestra, Chorus and Congregation, under the direction of Mr. Jesse V. Stevens. The program of twelve numbers comprised choral and orchestral selections from the great masters and the congregational singing of Psalms XXI and XLV from the Psalmody. As in former years, we can only speak in superlative terms of the great delight afforded by this Festival of Music.

     The 19th of June was marked by a children's party in the forenoon, and by a banquet in the evening, when four speeches on themes appropriate to the Day were given by the four ministers present, this including the Rev. Norman Reuter, now Assistant to our Pastor.

     The Fourth of July was a beautiful "homey" day, and was featured by the first parade of the newly organized drum and bugle corps of the American Legion. It is a representative body. The leading drum is the Chief of Police, the bass drum is His Honor the Mayor, and Alderman Crebert Burnham is the leading bugle. The young veterans made a gallant show, and aroused the thrill of patriotism in us all. A barbecue lunch was served to all, which included our Sharon Church friends who had come to join in the celebration.

     There have not been many church activities during the month of July. Our Pastor and his family have been touring the East in their automobile, and Mr. Reuter has officiated at the Sunday services. There has been remarkable attendance, and the opportunity for regular Sunday worship during the summer is appreciated by all.

     A notable feature of the month has been the arrival of four new additions to our numbers, being the new-born infants at the homes of Messrs. George S. Allen, Edwin Burnham, George Fiske and Felix Junge. Dr. King has been absent for some time in the West visiting his son Louis and his family. We regret to hear that Louis is in a very low state of health. We are eagerly awaiting the return of the pilgrims who attended the General Assembly in London, from whom we expect to get the personal sidelights which only an actual visitor can give.
     J. B. S.

     REPORT OF THE VISITING PASTOR.

     Services were held at MIDDLEPORT, OHIO, on Sunday, June 24th, with an attendance of fifteen, including children. In the evening there was a doctrinal class, at which the subject was the teaching that "genuine truth, which is to be of doctrine, does not appear in the sense of the letter of the Word to any but those who are in enlightenment from the Lord." (S. S. 51 to 61) On Monday afternoon, instruction was given to four children concerning the tabernacle of the Sons of Israel, and, as is always the case with children, called forth affection and interest.

     Another doctrinal class was held Monday evening, when, in response to a question, it was shown what is to be understood by the Sons of Israel being a chosen people, notwithstanding their evil character. Again, on Tuesday evening there was a class, at which the doctrine was presented concerning the evil results from compulsion by others in matters of religion, and the good results from self-compulsion.

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At each of the three classes the attendance was twelve. We had the pleasure of having at our meetings Miss Elizabeth Doering, daughter of the Rev. and Mrs. C. E. Doering, of Bryn Athyn, who had come to visit her mother's childhood home, staying with the Boatman family.
     F. E. WAELCHLI.

     WASHINGTON, D. C.

     Owing to Dr. Alfred Acton's leave of absence, the Washington Society will be without a regular pastor for the coming year, and Bishop Pendleton is to send a minister to us once a month. We are now obliged to rent a hall in which to hold our services. Hitherto we have always been fortunate enough to meet in a private house, and for many years it was the Schott's old home; but the family moved to Laurel, Md., last year, and services were held at the Stebbing home or that of Mr. and Mrs. Rowland Trimble near Laurel, This year, there is no house large enough or equipped with a piano, so we must rent a place.

     We shall miss Dr. Acton's semi-monthly visits very much, but we shall enjoy getting better acquainted with those ministers whom the Bishop sends to us. We have felt greatly blessed in having the wonderful doctrinal classes and extemporaneous sermons which such scholar and minister as Dr. Acton has given us. Each Sunday we have felt, "If only it could have been shared by more!" We hope that Dr. Acton, with his wife and daughter, will have a most interesting year in Sweden, and will come back to that place which he has filled in our minds and in our affections.
     E. H. G.
REPORT OF THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

REPORT OF THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY              1928

     The Record of the General Assembly, held in London, England, from August 4th to 12th, 1928, begins in the present issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE, and will be continued in succeeding numbers until finished. We shall endeavor to place this very interesting report of the proceedings before our readers in consecutive order, and as completely as possible, thus enabling those who were not present to follow the meetings day by day, and to catch something of the sphere which prevailed throughout the deliberations. The Report will include: The Assembly Sermons and Addresses, with the Discussions which followed; A Journal of the Proceedings; Reports of Officers and Committees, with Discussions; Accounts of the Social Gatherings; Notes and Impressions.

     The September and October issues will be mailed to subscribers at an early date.

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ORDINATIONS 1928

ORDINATIONS              1928




     Announcements.



     Bishop N. D. Pendleton has officiated at the following Ordinations:

     Acton.-At London, Eng., August 5, 1928, Rev. Elmo Carman Acton, into the Second Degree of the Priesthood.

     Boef.-At Bryn Athyn, Pa., June 17, 1928, Mr. Hendrik Willem Boef, into the First Degree of the Priesthood.

     De Charms.-At Bryn Athyn, Pa., March 11, 1928, Rev. George de Charms, into the Third Degree of the Priesthood.

     Gladish.-At Bryn Athyn, Pa., June 17, 1928, Mr. Victor Jeremiah Gladish, into the First Degree of the Priesthood. At London, Eng., August 5, 1928, into the Second Degree of the Priesthood.

     Leonardos.-At London, Eng., August 5, 1928, Mr. Henry Leonardos, into the First and Second Degrees of the Priesthood.

     Lima.-At London, Eng., August 5, 1928, Mr. Joao de Mendonca Lima, into the First and Second Degrees of the Priesthood

     Mcanyana.-At London, Eng., August 12, 1928, Mr. Moffat Mcanyana, into the First Degree of the Priesthood.

     Odhner.-At Bryn Athyn, Pa., June 17, 1928, Mr. Vincent Carmond Odhner, into the First Degree of the Priesthood.

     Reuter.-At Bryn Athyn, Pa., June 17, 1928, Mr. Norman Harold Reuter, into the First Degree of the Priesthood.

     Tilson.-At London, Eng., August 5, 1928, Rev. Robert James Tilson, into the Third Degree of the Priesthood.

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Thirteenth General Assembly 1928

Thirteenth General Assembly              1928

     
[Frontispiece: Latin inscription, "This Book is the Advent of the Lord." "Written by command." And photograph of the British Museum-Main Entrance.]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII SEPTEMBER, 1928 No. 9
     CALENDAR READING OF THE WRITINGS.

     Second Session-August 6th.

     Bishop Pendleton: In making arrangements for this meeting, it was necessary for us to propose certain subjects for your consideration, but if the Assembly desires to consider any other subject instead, it is free to do so. Nevertheless, those who have arranged this program have suggested that we take up, at this session, the consideration of the Calendar Reading of the Writings.

     About a year ago, some of us became convinced of the spiritual benefit that would come to the General Church if we could again institute a universal reading of the Writings daily, whether by all or almost all of the members of the General Church. We recalled that a number of years ago-some forty years ago-this plan was adopted. I was, of course, a young man at the time, and my feeling was, that a great spiritual uplifting resulted throughout the Church from that reading of the Writings. And the question arose in my mind as to whether or not it would be advisable for the General Church again to institute that idea. I well remember that, thirty-nine years ago, we were reading the first volume of the Arcana. Several of us who had just completed our education in the Theological School-there were five altogether-came to Europe, perhaps the first New Church Americans to do so. We toured Europe on bicycles, and we carried the first volume of the Arcana with us, and we very nearly succeeded in finishing the reading of it. If we could again initiate that use in the General Church; I believe that it would not only have an individual spiritual benefit, but that the effect would be to draw us more closely together.

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The Church has a greater need for its unity, and it appears to us that at this day such a movement is a vitally necessary one to the New Church. Differences necessarily arise, especially differences in the customs and habits of the various countries, but it is our faith and belief that the New Church is, in some way, and at some time, perhaps gradually, to develop an interior creative power that will have with it a sufficient force to bring together all men in a common unity. I would like to suggest, therefore, if it is your pleasure, that at this time we give some consideration to the question of a Calendar Reading among the members of the General Church.

     Rev. E. E. Iungerich, appointed to introduce the subject, said: One of the most interesting statements in the Writings is in the fragment called Ecclesiastical History of the New Church, where Swedenborg states that the books written "a Domino per me," meaning the books written "by the Lord through me" or "by the Lord by means of me," are to be enumerated. Now it is plain that Swedenborg would not have stated that fact unless there was in his mind a conviction that these "books written by the Lord by means of me" constituted a sort of canon for the New Church. Subsequently he says, in the same interesting passage, that he was commanded by the Lord to write on two books, "Hic Liber est Adventus Domini, Scriptum ex mandate." ("This book is the Advent of the Lord. Written by command.") This statement was written on two copies of the Brief Exposition in the natural world, and on all the books in the spiritual world.

     In 1875, or thereabouts, one of these books came into the hands of Mr. James Speirs, of London, who valued it as a very great treasure. The members of the General Church and of the Academy also valued it as a great treasure, and therefore were somewhat hopeful that Mr. Speirs might be prevailed upon to give it to the institution in Bryn Athyn. On the death of Mr. Speirs, the book was purchased by Mr. C. J. Whittington, who gave it to the British Museum for perpetual safe-keeping; and I have been informed that the latter body valued this gift very highly. With this thought in view, I went there last Saturday and inquired for it. I found that none of the attendants to whom I spoke was aware who Swedenborg was, and that they had never heard of such a work.

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I inquired further at the entrance, and it was suggested that I obtain a permit for entrance to the Reading Room. I went there, and having obtained the necessary permit, was admitted. I inquired further for the same book, and finally was referred to the Superintendent. I thereupon told the Superintendent that there was a congress in London during this week, and that in the course of the meek there would probably be three hundred and ninety-nine other persons on the same mission as myself, and that if they all had to get permission to enter the Reading Room, it would be rather troublesome to their officials. Finally I saw the book, after some little difficulty, and the Superintendent said that he would certainly see that it was exhibited during this week. I feel that it would be a good thing if a young and active group of New Church people, realizing what that book means, would make a constant demand at the British Museum to see it, until they appreciate that treasure.

     Are we ourselves really sufficiently interested today in what this book signifies to us? "This book is the Coming of the Lord!" There has been considerable variation of thought in the New Church as to what the coming of the Lord is. I was told by one prominent teacher that it was a descent of the interior heavens,-an inpouring into the minds of men that some day or other will bring out the real New Churchmen. That is not Swedenborg's statement. He says, "Hic Liber est Adventus Domini." It is not some secret inpouring. I was told that the gentleman defended himself by saying that the Lord would come secretly "as a thief in the night," and that coming as a library of books is entirely too public a method of coming. The real coming is in these books, but that is not sufficient. It will not take place unless these books mean something to us. If we hide them in our minds, as that book is hidden away in the British Museum, and if we do not know what that inscription means, and never see it, then these Writings will mean nothing to us. There will be no Second Coming to us, and the labors of our Church will not be preserved. There will be no advance, but failure, as with those who make continued effort to accommodate the Writings to people more and more superficial, more and more uninterested. That is not the aim and purpose of the New Church, but rather to cultivate the quality of New Churchmanship in each man's heart, letting numbers take care of themselves. But the Lord has given to New Churchmen the responsibility in regard to the quality of New Churchmanship which shall be in our hearts, which can only come from the books on which was inscribed, in the spiritual world, "Hic Liber est Adventus Domini."

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     Now the reading of the Writings is an individual matter. It seems strange to me that those who join the Church do not make a vow at the moment they join that they are going to read, and read faithfully, a certain number of these volumes, let us say Heaven and Hell and Divine Love and Wisdom. You would think, in the fervor that leads men to join the Church, that they would make such a vow. Why do they not do sol I believe that all at this Assembly have made this vow, or they would not be here; but we are only a small percentage of the Church at large. It is our hope and expectation that we will cause this light to shine. Although it is an individual matter, still, with those who have the zeal and fire to do certain things it can become in time more than individual; for their sphere, given forth, will draw others into it. That is why this subject is one of great and paramount interest to us. It would be of little appeal to us if the Church could become numerically strong without increase in devotion to these Writings, which are Divine Doctrine to all of us, or that we in this meeting might discover some successful way of enlisting wide cooperation. The plan of Calendar Reading has been suggested, either such a plan as we formerly had or some other method that would be more effective than the old plan was.

     DISCUSSION.

     Rev. Enoch S. Price: I do not wish to speak on the subject, but to give some information. I was informed by a lady that she had been through the British Museum, and had accidentally come across the book that Dr. Iungerich has been speaking about.

     Rev. W. L. Gladish: The book is now on exhibition in a glass case beside an atlas. As to the subject in hand, I hope that we will take up a concerted reading of the Writings. I know that there are some objections. Not all wish for a regular course of reading. But I feel, if we have a course pledged to, which the Church has adopted, that there will be a great many more readers than otherwise, reading systematically. And there is great importance in our reading together, becoming like an angelic choir, receiving the same enlightenments and delight from the Ward.

     I wish to speak about a matter that may be worked out, either by a committee or individually; that is, with reference to the numbers that are assigned. If we should take the Arcana Celestia, for instance, we would come across some tedious references and reiterations. I want to suggest that notes should be given, either through New Church Life or some other way, to the effect that these may be omitted. It is not necessary to read every word. These references and quotations are for the student. Let the person conducting worship select something that is of interest to everyone.

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I hope the assignments for the daily reading will be sufficient for the student and man of leisure, and that others will be able to pick out from that daily assignment something for the business and family man.

     Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal: I have been very much interested in this subject during recent months, and I looked back to the same thirty-nine years the Bishop mentioned, and recalled the impressions which the readings of that day made upon me as a child. Some of the most beneficial memories of my father had to do with the daily worship. It is true that I was anxious to get out when my father would read three or four chapters at a time. Nevertheless, I remember the many deep impressions that were left. If one were to read two or three chapters, and at the same time take care of some lively children, it would be rather difficult. It is on account of these children that I am very much interested to see a calendar system, especially since I came to the Assembly and have met friends from all over the world. I cannot help feeling that such a reading will create a sphere that will assist everyone to train the children in the things of the Church. Therefore, I hope that the plan can be carried out before long. As I said before, my testimony is, that, as a young boy, very deep impressions of loyalty to the Church were left with me, which have been a help to me ever since.

     Rev. Homer Synnestvedt: I would like to add a word in line with what the Bishop said, which brings back the blessed memories of my first visit here. I had the honor of being included in the party to which he referred, and it was one of the high points of my early life. What I recall especially is, that we would sit down by the roadside and read those precious words from the
Arcana. It gave us a broad outlook, as if we were seeing in the light of the two worlds, and not only in the light of that which was external, and which on our journey was often curious. To me it has been a powerful illustration of the value of daily reading, especially when going into other spheres. The angels are present when men are reading these precious books. I have a collection of passages made that year which I have often referred to since. The natural man is not interested in the spiritual truth of Revelation. This is an indication of the state of the world, and may be an indication of our own state in regard to spiritual progression, The Writings contain many statements which indicate that we may judge of the progress of the church by the attitude of its members toward spiritual truth. I should like to see the Calendar Reading renewed. In fact, it would be the greatest thing in the Church to get back to that kind of reading of the Writings.

     Furthermore, I have been reading the Four Doctrines. Now I hope that, when we come to such long quotations as are contained in that work, for instance, we do not think we can skip them. I believe we are getting shallow when we are glad to skip these things. They are the precious jewels by which the Heavenly Doctrine is being conveyed, and the most that should be done is to read small portions at a time. Of course, with little children, we have to be sensible about it; but the fact of the matter is, we have in these passages the richest and finest things, and if we are in the sphere of the angels while reading, we shall not be anxious to cut them out. I do favor, however, some plan of concerted reading.

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I should like to see the Arcana resumed. It is about forty years since we began it. I see in this a tremendous revival for our Church; for nothing else can take the place of it.

     Discussion Continued at Third Session-August 6th.

     Mr. Otho W. Heilman: The first prerequisite for reading the Writings is to own a set of the Writings, and there is a very large number of members in the Church who do not possess a set. Now I have worked out a plan whereby a complete set of the Writings can be purchased. The amount required would be one English penny a day, or seven hundred and thirty cents a year, covering a period of seven years to those who do not own any of the Writings. The plan could be advertized in the periodicals of the Church, and other persons could be reached in other ways. I think the plan could be handled without a great amount of work. The Concordance could be supplied in the same way. Anyone must have tools to do his work. A complete set of the Concordance could be purchased in seven years; this seems a little long, but it will pass very quickly. I think the Book Room could take care of the financial end.

     Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner: The subject of the reading of the Writings is one which has so frequently come before the minds of the Church that many things I might say would simply voice the thoughts that have many times occurred to you, but I feel that the center of our lives and the center of our homes is the Repository,-our daily gathering around it, and gaining inspiration from the Divine Revelation which is at the center of our Church. Whatever we can do to encourage ourselves and others to make as regular and frequent a use of that source of inspiration ought to be done. Certainly greater benefits would accrue to the Church, and the more regular would be its progress. I understand one of the great advantages that accrued from the old Calendar Reading, and its universal use in the Church, was the creation of a universal thought in the Church upon various profound and practical subjects, and I think that could be stimulated if the periodicals of the Church were to discuss certain topics treated of in the Calendar Reading for the period in question. I believe that many things in the Writings are obscure, until their bearing is pointed out and thought of to some extent, and the periodicals of the Church could do a great deal to prepare the way and stimulate us for the things to be read.

     Mr. Heilman has spoken of a plan for procuring copies of the Writings, and I must say that I have very often been disappointed in going to our New Church homes and finding that they are utterly ignorant of some of the smaller works belonging to the Writings. They do not possess them because their attention has not been drawn to these works. The smaller works of Swedenborg, such as that on the Last Judgment and some of the posthumous works, might well be selected for Calendar Readings. The reading of the Arcana Celestia is one of the great and profound delights of the Church, but the ordinary reader may be impressed with something of immensity in being confronted with its volumes. Shorter works would not bring that sense of discouragement. That, however, is only a suggestion. A committee might well be formed to make plans for this work. It will be of great use to the Church, even though the pastors here and there may prefer to make plans for their own societies in a different way.

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We cannot infringe upon the freedom of others, but many would be stimulated by the resumption of Calendar Readings.

     Mr. Gladish suggested that cuts might be made, or certain portions skipped as being less adaptable for general reading. That plan might well be resorted to under certain circumstances, but when we come to think of the Writings as the Divine Human of the Lord, presented to us in rational form, the matter of making exceptions here and there in our reading seems to me to be somewhat undesirable. We need to know the whole of the Writings. I feel the same way in regard to the reading of the Word in family worship. We know that the Word in its letter is arranged in its universal series to correspond, chapter by chapter, with great groups of angelic societies, with which communication is brought about when each chapter is read. Swedenborg recounts how this communication took place. He saw these groups being stimulated by the reading, and drawing near to him as the mental pictures from the Word blossomed out in his mind. The same holds good with regard to a concerted reading of the Writings. If we are to make cuts in such readings, it would mar the continuity of our reception, the reception of the whole of the Divine Human, because the spirit which is in the Writings rests upon every word therein. If, as a Church, we are to undertake the reading of the Writings, it should be done without any compromises as to what would be more or less adaptable to the reading.

     I would say that, in our effort to establish habits of reading and home worship in families, we are apt to make the reading too long or to build up too elaborate a program. It is far better to gather with the children for five minutes every day, and perhaps tell in a simple way the story from the Word, than to have an elaborate service once or twice a week. It is the regular recurrence of turning to the Word that will benefit the Church. If anyone personally likes to read great portions of the Writings, certainly nothing need prevent him from doing so, but it is wrong to try to impose too much upon the attention of children. Their nervous systems are not adapted to listening to pages of the Writings which they do not understand. On the other hand, adults can stand a great deal of it, reading a small portion at first, and gradually training ourselves to stand much longer portions after some months.

     Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal: I should like to call attention to another side of the subject, and to present a different view from that of the last speaker. I take it that all agree that the aim is to stimulate the adult in his reading, so that all will gradually be trained to this reading according to the Calendar, or rather the reading of the Word of the Lord in its Three Testaments. We must consider, therefore, whether the Calendar Readings are to be prepared for family devotions primarily, or for the individual reading and study of the Writings. If they are designed to meet the needs of family reading, then we must take into consideration the needs of the children. Then it would not be planned for the individual adult, the leading of his reading, giving some guide to his reading, and for the purpose of uniting as many as possible into a choir reading the same thing the same day, doing the same thing together, and so introducing us into a choir, and providing us all with common subjects of thought and conversation.

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     I am quite in agreement with the last speaker as to the advisability of reading the smaller works first, but I think there might be a selection, not only of works of the Writings, but also of books like those of the New Testament. It all depends upon what is our aim in having this reading according to calendar. I have been told that many of the early members of the Academy read as much as thirty and forty pages of the Writings every day, and even more: I have no doubt that many in this room have read as much as thirty or forty pages of the Writings in a day. But I do not believe it is the intention now to provide a calendar for the reading of thirty or forty pages of the Writings a day. One or two pages, perhaps, and a small portion of the Old and New Testaments, would be sufficient; and if the student and scholar wishes to read more, let him do so.

     First of all, however, it should be our aim to gather together into an immense choir of readers of the Writings. It seems to me that everyone should read the small portion that is provided for in the calendar. The essential thing is that the calendar arouse and keep alive the delight of the younger people; and if we should start, say on the 21st of February, 1929, with the first number of the Arcana Celestia and the first chapter of Genesis, we might have a well-connected reading, but it would not be at all consonant with our religious festivals during the year, and certainly would, I think, result in this, that many of the young people would not have that same delight. I firmly believe that every member of the Church should read through the whole of the Writings in continuity. That is for the individual to do. But it would be difficult to provide for that in a calendar. Surely the supreme purpose of the Calendar Reading of the Writings is to approach the Lord Himself in His Word revealed to men; and another high purpose would be fulfilled in helping our young people to carry out what is stated several times in the Writings, particularly in the Arcana Celestia, namely, that everyone, for himself, must read the Word. He receives instruction from teachers, but he must himself go to the Word, in order that he may have a living, saving faith. And if we fulfill this high purpose, surely all the lower purposes will also be fulfilled, and the Church will gradually renew its strength, and be able to give men, in their relations with one another, more sympathy, more understanding.

     Rev. F. E. Waelchli: A number of years ago, our Church had a calendar for the daily reading of the Word in the Sacred Scriptures and in the Writings of the Church. In the course of this use, covering a period of about twenty years, the Sacred Scriptures were read through ten times, and all the Writings were read once. Twenty years may seem a long time to the young. Yet how great is that which can be accomplished in the following of such a calendar! How great is that which can be accomplished, not only for those who are older, but also for the children! Their interests have been spoken of by several in the discussion of this subject. The children listen to the reading, even though they do not understand what is read, especially what is read from the Writings. How wonderful are the remains implanted in them, not only by the Word in its letter, but also by the sacred Writings of the Church!

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The reading of the Writings, even though they do not understand, impresses them with the sacredness of those books; and that is something that will go with them throughout life. What they understand gradually, little by little, leads them further into an understanding of it.

     Mr. Odhner referred to the consociation of the Letter of the Word with the heavens. We are taught that every verse of the Sacred Scriptures has extension into some heavenly society and group of societies. From the first verse of Genesis, even to the last of the Apocalypse, there is a continuous series of extensions into the heavens, embracing all the heavens, so that when anyone is reading the Word through, from beginning to end, he is, as it were, journeying through all the heavens, and so coming into consociation with all states of thought and affection in general. How wonderful this is! And each successive time the Word is read through the journey is repeated, with more and more of angelic consociation.

     Now we are told by Swedenborg, in the Memorabilia at the close of the True Christian Religion, that when this work was finished, the Apostles were sent forth to preach the Gospel anew. In other words, they were sent forth to preach the Gospel of the New Heaven and the New Church. And let it be noted that they were sent through the entire spiritual world, and not, as some have interpreted it, only through the whole world of spirits. They were sent into all the heavens. There was no region of the heavens into which they did not go. This took place when the True Christian Religion was finished. Thus, when the last of the Writings had been completed, there then existed upon earth a written ultimate which made possible the proclamation of the Gospel throughout the spiritual world. The Providence of the Lord guided in the order in which the Writings were written. Each work is one great series of Divine Truth, having extension into all the heavens. Each is, as it were, a great stream and current of truth, having its flaw through all the heavens. With the completion of the True Christian Religion, all the general series of Divine Truth in the heavens had found their ultimation in written form upon the earth.

     The question may arise, "What about that which was written after the True Christian Religion?" I would conclude that it was something that was necessary as a sort of further ultimate for the formation of the New Heaven. Again it may be asked, "What about the works that were published posthumously, and then those that were lost?" I would answer that at the time they were written, the writing of them fulfilled its use in the order of the giving of the Revelation, in the order destined for the establishment of the Holy City, New Jerusalem. For the Providence of the Lord guided in the matter of publication, and this for reasons that might be entered into if time should permit. Does it not follow from these considerations, that when the Writings are read through in the order of their writing, he who reads places himself successively in great currents of Divine Truth, and in them is carried repeatedly through the heavens, even until, in the end, there is the completion of extension into all heavens? In other words, the Writings are written in him who reads them in their own order of writing, till in the end, when the True Christian Religion is reached, a state has been attained when, in him, the Twelve Disciples can be sent throughout his whole spiritual world for the full and complete establishment of the New Heaven and of the New Church in him.

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This is what can be accomplished by the reading through of the Writings at least once in a lifetime. And, be it remembered, it is something that is accomplished if it is finished; for the Doctrine,-that written ultimate of Divine Truth,-will remain impressed upon the mind as a basis for endless progress in heavenly intelligence and wisdom such as would not be possible to the same degree if that ultimate were lacking.

     I have spoken in favor of reading the Writings in the order of their writing. However, I would be quite content with any order that might be adopted, whether of their publication or that order which Mr. Odhner has suggested. We should read word by word, until in time all the Writings have been read. The great and important thing is that we read. The great and important thing is that we be a reading Church. In the degree that we are such a Church, in the degree in which we progress in being such a Church, in that degree will our Church progress and live. And in the degree that such reading declines, in the degree that we become less and less of a reading Church, in that degree the Church with us will surely decline, and perhaps will reach the point when the Church with us must die, and our trust be transferred to others. It is only by being a reading Church that we can live, and I believe that, in order that we may be such a Church, it is well that we should adopt such a calendar reading as is proposed. I also believe that the following of a calendar is worthy of a sacrifice of preference on the part of those who might desire some other choice of reading. It is worthy of that sacrifice for the sake of joining with all in the great effort to make this a reading Church. So, then, let us, as a Church, all of us together, unitedly day by day, place ourselves in the great currents of Divine Truth, and in them be carried through the Heavenly Doctrines, to the benefit of each and everyone, and to the glory of our Church!

     Right Rev. George de Charms: I am intensely interested in this subject, and I believe that the time has come when there should be a revival of this reading of the Writings with us. There are indications that our Church is growing, growing from within by an increase of our own families, and growing from without by accessions from other bodies of religious people in the world. It is growing in countries where it first had its external form, and his extending to other countries throughout the world. And there is only one thing that can put the stamp of a Divine blessing upon this Church, wherever it may be, and that is the reading of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. It is the source of our inspiration, the source of our spiritual knowledge and understanding, the center of our understanding of the Lord Himself in His Divine Human. The Church can only be stimulated, and be made to grow, by means of study and reflection upon the Writings of the Church.

     We have in the history of the past a great illustration of what can be accomplished by such a Calendar Reading. It was a tremendous sphere of enthusiasm for the Writings that led to the adoption of the calendar years ago, and the vital thing in it was that sphere of enthusiasm which caused them to join together for the reading of the Writings.

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I believe that we have that enthusiasm with us now, but that it needs expression. Most of us who are here today read the Writings individually; but there are many, both among the young people who are growing up in the Church, and among those who came to us from other bodies, for whom this reading of the Writings must be established as a habit, in order that it may become what it became for the Church in those earlier days. And that it may become such a habit, there is need that we help one another, that we work together. This is the crucial and central use of such a calendar. We derive great individual benefit from reading the Writings for ourselves, but we can do something more if we will join together for the benefit of the Church as a whole, if we will join together, not according to our own preferences, but to the end that all men may be joined for the united sphere and influx from the other world into all who are of the Church, by reading together. And I think the desire to do that, and to love doing it, will stimulate the life of the Church. As the last speaker has said, we must be a reading Church, because this is the sign and seal of the fact that we long to be a living Church,-a Church that will live, the Church of the Writings.

     The truth cannot be lived unless it is known and understood, and this leads me to the final point, namely, that it is the understanding of the Writings for which we should strive, and the reading for the sake of understanding them. For there is much read that does not lead to understanding, and there are many who read in states of obscurity. I believe in this movement. We should so plan the calendar that it will stimulate our understanding in a very practical way, and may lead to an increase of our interest in the Writings of our Church. I have just one suggestion in that connection. The series of articles written in his last days by our late Bishop Emeritus, beloved by all of us-the articles published in the Life under the heading of "Topics from the writings"-would perform a tremendous use in connection with Calendar Reading. I believe that if we have such a Calendar Reading of the Writings, we should also have, concordant with it, a series of comments on those calendar reading, comment of the quality and character of the "Topics from the Writings," which comments could be published in the Life. They would be of great value to us, would stimulate our interest, and help us to understand the thing read, with a realization of something of that infinite truth which is involved in them, so that we could grasp it and apply it to our lives. So my suggestion is, that we do two things: That we have a Calendar Reading of the Writings, and that we plan in some way to provide a comment on that reading in the pages of the Life, which may perform in the Church the use, so widely recognized among us, that was performed by the "Topics from the Writings."

     Mr. Seymour G. Nelson: I cannot let this occasion pass without expressing my very great satisfaction and pleasure that there is the prospect of a renewal of the reading of the Writings by means of a calendar, as in the early days of forty years ago. I would like to testify to the benefits my family received from those daily readings, and I have not regretted the time that was spent upon them. In those days it was often difficult for us to keep it up, but we spared the time and let something else go. We can well afford the sacrifice that we may have to make, and such sacrifice will be a test of our love for doing the work that lies before us. If we will make the sacrifice, we will accomplish this.

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     Mr. James Pryke: I would just like to say what my own experience has been. Of course, I am not as old as some, and have been only thirty-three years in the Church, but have done some reading in that time. I have read the whole of the Theological Works at least once, and some of them quite a number of times. The essential point, as I see it, is not so much that there should be Calendar Reading, but that there should be reading. It was said earlier that the prerequisite of the reading was the possession of the Writings. That, of course, goes without saying. The second prerequisite is that we should approach those Writings in a proper spirit; that is to say, we should realize the eternal value of meeting there, in all humiliation, face to face with the Lord.

     As to the necessity of reading, there can be no question. We are told that the first thing of the Church is the acquisition of knowledges. That acquisition can only be obtained by reading at the fount, by reading the Writings as the very meat and drink of our daily spiritual life. Without them, our spiritual life would languish away. There should also be, in our homes, a place set apart, made holy to the Lord. If we cannot have a room, we can have the corner of a room, in which we may set up a repository. That, I know, has been the experience of many homes. They have had their reading the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. There is nothing like it for the enjoyment of the soul.

     On the other hand, English people do not like external restraints put upon them, and I am just a little bit doubtful as to the wisdom of Calendar Readings. May it not be that some will consider obedience to the calendar of first importance, and perhaps by that means miss the delight of the Writings? not approach the subject of the Calendar Readings from the same viewpoint as some of the other speakers; but if there is to be a calendar, it seems to me that it would perform a greater use if such readings were arranged year by year, when some great doctrinal subject could be read in unison, and we could get influx from that unisonal reading. I do not believe in skipping all the examples and uninteresting particulars. We do not know how much good can come in our future years from reading these particulars. Read we must. The Lord has prepared the pasture. But we have to eat all the ears of corn, and if some of the tufts are not to our taste, they may be of medicinal value, and we should take them with the rest.

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DIVINE GOVERNMENT AND HUMAN FREEDOM OF CHOICE 1928

DIVINE GOVERNMENT AND HUMAN FREEDOM OF CHOICE       Rev. ALFRED ACTON       1928

     The Word teaches, and all Christians acknowledge, that the Lord is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. The Word also teaches that man is free to accept the Lord or reject Him. Both these truths are at once apparent to the rational mind, and, when considered separately, are acknowledged spontaneously. Men have also striven to see them in their relation to each other. This is indeed a legitimate exercise of human thought; for it is only as truths are harmoniously combined into a one that the perception of truth itself becomes more universal. But, in this striving, men have hitherto been at a loss. How can God be omnipotent, that is, powerful to do all things, and yet man be free to act against His will? How can God be omniscient, that is, know the future thoughts and wills of men, and yet men be free to think and will as they please? The question has hitherto baffled all philosophers and theologians, and the insistence upon a solution in the absence of spiritual light, and merely from the thought of the natural man, has led to many direful heresies, especially that most abominable of all heresies, Predestination.

     Happy indeed are those who, though not able to reconcile Divine omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience with human freedom of choice, have yet believed in both because both are true. Such a man was the famous English philosopher, John Locke. "I cannot have a clearer perception of anything than that I am free," he writes, "yet I cannot make freedom in man consistent with omnipotence and omniscience in God, though I am as fully persuaded of both as I am of any truth; and therefore I have long since given off the consideration of that question, resolving all into the short conclusion, that if it be possible for God to make a free agent, then man is free, though I see not the way of it." Here Locke speaks as a wise philosopher; for to believe a truth because it is seen to be true, even though one may not see how it is true, this is wisdom; but not to believe, a thing until it is proved, is folly.

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     Throughout his scientific works, Swedenborg frequently speaks of the happiness of him who believes from faith, as contrasted with him who will believe nothing until it is proved before the understanding; and it has been thought that, in this, Swedenborg accepted the dogma of faith alone. Such, however, is far from being the case. "Faith alone" is a belief in that which is not seen, and which, indeed, is against the instincts of rational thought. But spiritual faith consists in believing truths because they are seen, and in refusing to deny them merely because the natural mind raises objections. Thus the spiritual man sees and acknowledges that the Lord rules the universe even as to its most single particulars, and this for the end of the formation of an angelic heaven; and when the natural man asks, "How, then, can you account for the misery and distress that exists around us?" the spiritual man, if unable to answer, does not therefore give up the truth that he sees, but refuses to allow the natural man to dominate, and so to becloud spiritual truth by the obscurity of natural thought. This is what is meant in the Writings by "thinking spiritually." It does not mean profound abstract thought, but simply the acknowledgment of truths, and thought from truths, because they are seen to be true, and not because they are proved. Indeed, this is the only way to the attainment of wisdom. For man must first see truth before he can confirm it. If he sees merely from confirmation, he can equally well see falsity as truth.

     So in the matter of the Divine attributes and human freedom of choice. The Christian acknowledges both; and if he wills to think in the light of heaven, he will not allow any obscurity of natural thought to deprive him of this acknowledgment.

     If man can confirm his spiritual sight by considerations of the reason, it is indeed well. To the end that men may be able to do this, God has now given a revelation whereby we can enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith. But only those will so enter who can elevate their thought above time and space; and to do this requires the reading and study of the Writings, and thought and meditation thereon. Many cannot or will not thus elevate their thought, and for them, we are told, it is better that they should not think of Divine omnipresence and omniscience from the reason of their understanding, but should simply believe them from religion, that is, believe them because they are seen to be true.

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If, however, such men do use their understanding, let them confirm these truths by thinking that the Lord is everywhere and infinite, and that the Word teaches that He is both omnipresent and omniscient; and if they would think of this from nature and its space and time, then, the Writings continue, let them say to themselves that God is omnipresent and omniscient in a miraculous way. (A. E. 1220.)

     It will be observed that the Writings give this advice to the end that a man may be preserved in the acknowledgment of truth even if he is in obscurity. It is indeed legitimate to endeavor to confirm truth by the reason, but it is not legitimate to deny it because one cannot prove it. Divine Truth is all that proceeds from God. This ultimates itself in the forms of nature; and just as God has given man senses whereby to perceive the forms of nature, their colors, shapes, odor, taste, etc.; and just as a genuine perception of these depends upon the perfection of the organs of sense; so is it with spiritual truths. Man is also given spiritual senses, and so far as these are healthy and unperverted, so far he can see truths simply because they exist before his sight. The test of truth is, that it is seen to be true by the unperverted rational sight. It may be asked, "What rational sight is unperverted at this day?" We answer that, while human nature is so far perverse that the rational sight is deeply affected, yet, if not perverted by evils of life and confirmation thereof, it is always able to see great universal truths such as the existence of God, His government of the universe, the immortality of man, etc., and when these are seen, the sight can be gradually trained to see also the innumerable truths which they involve.

     But to confirm truth when seen requires knowledges, and a mind disciplined by study and reflection. The simple and ignorant may indeed see truths more clearly than the learned; in fact, this is often the case; but they cannot so well confirm them, or refute in rational language the arguments of naturalists and unbelievers. A simple man who is in good clearly sees that God is omniscient, and also that man has freedom of choice to acknowledge God or not; and yet he may be utterly unable to answer the arguments of the predestinarian, even though he sees those arguments to be false and abominable.

     In the midst of the naturalism that reigns at this day, however, it is necessary that spiritual truth be rationally confirmed and established. Otherwise the simple, and especially the young, would be in danger of being overwhelmed by the specious reasoning of the natural man, so that all spiritual truth would be lost.

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It is for this reason that the Lord has given a rational revelation, "lest the negative principle, which especially rules with those who are wise from the world, should infect and corrupt the simple in heart and faith." (H. H. 1.) Nevertheless, the giving of this revelation does not detract from the fact that spiritual truth is to be seen because it is true, and not because it is proved. Thus we are to believe in the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of God because this is true; and we are to believe in the free choice of man because this also is true. But now it is given to confirm these truths rationally.

     The passage from the Apocalypse Explained, which we have already quoted to show that man must believe in these truths because they are true, goes on to say: "Because at this day naturalism has almost inundated the church; and because it cannot be dispersed except by rational considerations, whereby men may see that these things are so; therefore, by means of rational considerations, these Divine things also shall be brought forth from the darkness which nature has induced into light. And this is possible because man is endowed with an understanding which can be elevated into the interior light of heaven, if only from love he wills to know truths. All naturalism comes from thought concerning things Divine from the things of nature, that is to say, from matter, space, and time. The mind which abides fast in these, and does not will to believe aught save what it understands, cannot fail to blind its understanding, and, from the darkness in which it immerses that understanding, to deny that there is any Divine Providence, and, consequently, any omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience." (A. E. 1220.)

     It is this endeavor to see Divine Truths from the light of nature that has led to the prevalence of falsity in the Christian Church. Men see that the Word and Religion teach that God has omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, and that man has freedom of choice; but the proving of these truths from the light of nature, and their attempted reconciliation, has led to conclusions directly opposed to the Word. With many, however, the cause lies deeper, springing from the loves of self and the world, and from the conceit of self-intelligence which makes men unwilling to acknowledge what they cannot demonstrate t, the understanding.

     Cicero, in the second book of his work on Divination, where he undertakes to disprove all manner of prophecy, comes to the conclusion that any knowledge of the future is opposed to the fortuitous, under which term he includes all that depends on the will of man; and, therefore, that not even the gods can know the future.

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His words are: "If we cannot foresee anything that happens by chance, since it is necessarily uncertain, there can be no divination. If, on the other hand, things which are to happen can be foreseen because they happen by infallible fatality, then also there is no divination, for divination relates only to fortuitous events." (11, 10.) Here Cicero denies omniscience to the gods, because to him such omniscience involves fate or predestination. "Like a truly great and wise man (says Augustine, who undertook to answer Cicero's arguments), and one who greatly and skillfully consulted for the good of humanity, of these two he chose the freedom of the will; and to establish this, he denied the foreknowledge of future events." (City of God, VP.) Cicero may be pardoned in this, for he had not the light of revelation: nay, he must even be praised, because he preserved the belief in human responsibility. But what shall we say of those who had the light of the Gospel, and who, when they faced the question thus raised by Cicero, established the cruel doctrine of predestination, in order to confirm their merely natural idea of the Divine omniscience?

     In the early days of the Christian Church, men were content simply to believe in the omnipotence; omnipresence, and omniscience of God, and also in the possession of free decision by man. The teaching of the early Fathers was that Divine omniscience consisted, not in a predetermination of human actions, but in the foreknowledge of what men would freely choose.

     Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho, says: "That you may have no occasion for saying that it was necessary for Christ to have been crucified, and for those who transgressed to have been of your race, and that it could not have been otherwise, therefore I said that God, willing that angels and men should obey His will, willed to create them free for the observance of justice. They were gifted with reason, whereby they might know by whom they had been created. Law also was imposed upon them, that they might be judged by Him if they did ought against right reason. Therefore, we ourselves are convicted of unrighteousness unless we repent. And if the Word of God foretells that certain angels and men will be punished, it relates this for the reason that it foreknew that they would be unchangeably wicked, but not because God made them so. (Chap. 141.)

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Tertullian, Iranaeus, and others wrote to the same effect.

     Augustine, writing at the end of the fourth century, attempted to establish these positions more firmly in his answer to the objections raised by Cicero. "We assert," he says, "both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do of our own will all that we perceive and know to be done by us, only as willing agents. . . . It does not follow that, because with God there is a certain order of all causes, therefore nothing is left to the choice of our will; for our wills are themselves included in the order of causes which is certain with God. . . . Therefore our wills have just so much power as God willed and foreknew that they should have. Therefore also, what power they have, they have most assuredly; and whatever they will do, they will most surely do; for He whose prescience cannot be deceived foreknew that they would have the power, and would do the deeds." And further on Augustine continues: "Because God foreknew what would be in our will, it is not therefore the case that there is nothing in our will. He who foreknew this did not foreknow nothing; moreover, if He who foreknew what would be in our will foreknew, not nothing, but something, then certainly, even with His foreknowing it, there is something in our will. Therefore, holding to the prescience of God, we are in no way compelled to take away the will's freedom of choice; and holding to the latter, we are in no way compelled to deny-which would be wicked-that God foreknows the future. But we embrace both, and confess them faithfully and truthfully; the former that we may believe well, the latter that we may live well. . . . A man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin. Nay, there can be no doubt that, when a man sins, it is himself who sins. For He whose prescience cannot be deceived foreknew, not that fate would sin, nor fortune, nor anything else save the man himself, who, if he wills not, most surely sins not. But if he have not willed to sin, then this also God foreknew." (City of God, V 9, 10.)

     As an answer to Cicero, this is not satisfying. Indeed, we see in it some suggestion of that doctrine of predestination which Augustine later developed. But it is an evidence of the sincere and Christian character of the Bishop of Hippo, that whatever his arguments, he "faithfully and truthfully " confessed both the omniscience of God and the freedom of man's choice.

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     Prior to Augustine, however, the Christian Church had established the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's merit, and of the utter sinfulness of man occasioned by Adam's fall. The Apostolic Fathers had indeed insisted upon the salvation of man by faith in Christ, but they had equally insisted an obedience to the teachings of Christ. Gradually, however, and especially in the Latin Church, the doctrine became established that man is utterly corrupt, and that he can be saved solely by faith in the imputation of Christ's merit. Hence the saying which then arose, "Let us continue in sin that grace may abound."

     It was to oppose this doctrine that Pelagius wrote in the beginning of the fifth century, affirming that man was not utterly corrupted by the fall of Adam, and that he still preserved the power of good, although from Adam he had also the power of evil. Hence, the imputation of grace is not absolutely necessary, and in any case, grace is given only according to man's merits. In other words, God does not influence man's freedom of decision, and salvation depends on man's use of that freedom.

     This emphasis upon the freedom of man's choice between good and evil was accepted by the Eastern Church as not opposed to the teaching of the Apostolic Fathers. Such was not the case, however, in the Latin Church, which had greatly emphasized the doctrine of salvation by the imputation of Christ's grace. As the champion of this view, Augustine, in the beginning of the fifth century, commenced those anti-Pelagian writings which occupied him during the last twenty years of his long life. Here, his zeal in defense of the grace of God led him to maintain that God imparted grace to those whom He predestined for salvation. It is God's will that some are saved, and others damned. God predestines some to salvation, not as the Pelagiaas would admit, because He foresaw that they would use the freedom of will aright, but solely from His own election. (Pred. of the Saints, XIX.) Yet in all his earlier works, and sometimes even in his anti-Pelagian writings, Augustine insists on the necessity of rightly using free will. And from what is said of him in the Writings (T. C. R. 840), we cannot question but that this was his real belief, and not that predestination which disfigures his later writings.

     Augustine was the first Christian teacher of unconditional predestination. Nevertheless, it did not take root in the Church at that time, the general belief being that God's predestination was conditioned by His foreknowledge of what man's choice would be.

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But in the ninth century the doctrine of unconditional predestination was again revived by Gottschalk, who formulated it as a doctrine of the Church; and still later, it was further formulated and finally established by Calvin.

     Calvin's teachings were bitterly opposed by Arminius, who again revived the doctrine of conditional predestination, teaching that we are indeed predestined to heaven or to hell, but only because God has foreknown from eternity what use we will make of our freedom of choice; and this is now the prevailing belief among non-Calvinists.

     Of absolute predestination we need not speak, its abominable falsity being at once apparent, even to the natural mind. But what shall we say of the conditional predestination of Arminius? If the use which man will make of his freedom of choice is known to God from eternity; if, in this sense, man is predestined; is it possible to conceive of his possessing actual and real freedom of choice in the formation of his character? This question has occupied the attention of many men, and various theories have been advanced. Many philosophers, and even theologians, have preferred, like Cicero, to deny God the knowledge of future events, rather than grant that He predetermines the course of man's life. (Leibnitz, Theod. Pref. n. 16.)

     It has been held that the foreknowledge of contingent actions, that is, of actions depending on the exercise of absolute freedom of choice, is, in the very nature of things, a contradiction; for, if foreknown, they would cease to be free or contingent. Therefore, to say that there is no Divine prescience of such actions is no detraction from the perfection of God.

     Others, again, have maintained that, if God were ignorant of the future wills of man, He would not rule the universe, but, like the god of Epicurus, would be disturbed by the events of each succeeding day, and would be in continual suspense. (Leibnitz, Theod. n. 364.) Still others have despaired of any solution of the question, and have contented themselves with saying that Divine prescience, being infinite, cannot possibly be comprehended by finite beings. This was the position of Andreas Rydelius, a Swedish philosopher, who is quoted by Swedenborg in his Philosopher's Note Book. "The Socinians and Dippel," says Rydelius, "deny that God knows future contingencies.

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Leibnitz concedes it, but only for the reason that God has predestined all things. They do not consider, however, that God's knowledge is infinite, equally as God Himself." (Fornufts-Ofning. V, n, 6.)

     The answer given by Orthodox theology,-and the same answer is given also by men in the New Church,-is that; while God has foreknowledge of our future wills, yet, since that knowledge is not revealed to us, it in no way interferes with our freedom of decision; in other words, prescience of an action is not the cause of the action itself. To the rational mind, such an answer is far from satisfactory; for whatever logical argument may be advanced, it is inevitable that any dwelling upon the thought that our future decisions are already known will tend to a feeling of fatalism, and certainly is not an encouragement to spiritual exertion. And yet the contemplation of God, and the thought of His omniscience, ought, in the very nature of things, to strengthen the spiritual man and encourage him in the right exercise of freedom of choice.

     Though freely acknowledging Divine omniscience and human freedom of choice, the reflecting mind cannot escape the encountering of difficulties from which there seems no escape but simple belief. The mind asks, for instance: Was evil known, to God before evil ever existed? and if so, would not the blasphemous conclusion follow, that evil was in the Divine counsel, or was a necessity, and not a contingency, of the abuse of free choice? Can there be foreknowledge of a decision which is to be made by a free agent who is as yet unborn? And, granting this, would it not follow that the free agent, if really free, contributes to the knowledge of God; for, had he decided differently, prescience would also have been different? Yet it is unthinkable that God's prescience can be dependent on man; for in God is no passivity. Again, if Divine prescience of the decisions of men yet unbornconsists in the knowledge of causes, can the conclusion be avoided that human decisions are inevitable effects established from eternity? and that freedom of choice is a mere appearance? But this is predestination, which is both blasphemous and insane.

     Believing in the one God who rules the universe, we must necessarily acknowledge His omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; and believing that He is Love Itself and Wisdom Itself, we must necessarily acknowledge that He endows man with freedom of choice. If we cannot reconcile these beliefs, we can at any rate hold to them because they are true.

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But in the light now given to the New Church, can we make further advance? "Hitherto," say the Writings, "the Divine omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience have not been understood because their progression according to their paths, which are the laws of order, has not been known." (T. C. R. 49.) But now the laws of this progression have been revealed, and we ask ourselves, Is it not possible that man can now enter intellectually into this mystery also? Before proceeding with this inquiry, however, let us first premise some remarks as to the seat of man's free decision.

     My hearers may have noticed that I have used the words "freedom of choice" and "free decision," rather than "freedom." "Freedom" is an attribute of the Lord alone, and it is imputed to man,-to be, as it were, man's own,-only so far as he receives the Lord and obeys His Word. "Free decision "is an entirely different thing, and consists in man's ability to choose between being a free citizen in God's kingdom, or a slave. Whatever that decision be, he cannot escape from submission to the laws of the Divine government of the universe, whether in the spiritual world or the natural. This is inevitable; for the Lord is omnipotent He governs the universe in its minutest details, and this would not be possible if man could in any way alter that government.

     The origin of the faculty of free decision is in the soul itself, being the Divine Love and Life. The Lord wills that man be an image of Himself, and therefore, with life, gives him also the power, as of himself, to direct his life; and this would not be possible without free decision. The seat of this free decision is in the mind at its point of contact with the soul, if I might so express the matter. In other words, the soul, which is the Lord's dwelling place in man, when it flows into the organic vessels of the mind, gives to those vessels the full appearance that they live from themselves. It is this appearance, and the consciousness, resulting therefrom, that constitutes the faculty of free decision. For it is manifest that if man feels that he lives from himself, then also he has the sensation of complete freedom in the direction of his life. This freedom of direction, however, exists in fullness only in the internal mind.

     Man is not free to choose as to his soul: he is not free to choose his place in the Gorand Man or its opposite. (D. P. 68-69) He is not free to choose his genius, his innate abilities, his sex. He is not free to choose the shape and appearance of his body, though he can exercise decision as to its habits and expression; but these belong to the mind.

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Even as to the intrinsic form of his external or natural mind, he has no free decision. He cannot choose his native race, the parents of whom he is born, or the heredity which he receives. Even as to the forming of his natural mind, he has little to say. His mind is molded differently if he is brought up in a free country than if he is, brought up under a tyranny; differently if brought up in the Church than if brought up in paganism or materialism; if brought up in the New Church, than if brought up in the Old. Even in his later years, man's freedom of choice is greatly limited in respect to speech and actions; for the laws of society and the laws of nature cannot safely be defied.

     It is in the internal mind only that free decision exists in fullness. Here man is free to decide as to the attitude he will take to the gifts he has received from God; to the laws by which he is surrounded; and to the form into which his external mind has been molded by education and environment, both in his earlier years and, to a less extent, in his later. In other words, "man is in complete liberty of thinking and willing, but he is not in complete liberty of speaking and doing what he thinks and wills." (D. P. 281.)

     Reflection upon this truth will show that, whatever differences there may be amongst men as to heredity, education, and environment, yet every man who is not foolish has complete free decision as; to his inner attitude to the things with which his mind has been furnished. He may have been so brought up in the light of the Church that by education and habit he can hardly be ought else than a Christian and an upright man, and in his natural rational cannot conceive of denying the teachings of the Church. And yet, in his inner mind, he is wholly free to will these teachings and obey them from the heart, or not. He may have been brought up in paganism, so that as to his external mind he is in darkness; yet there will always be some idea of right and wrong, and in his interior thought and will he is free to decide between the one and the other. And according to this decision, so will his decision be in the other world, when spiritual truths will be opened to him; for as one is faithful or faithless in little things, so will he be in great.

     This free decision of man is a pure gift of Divine Love, and is the necessary concomitant of the reception of Life. It is inalienable from man, and is constantly vivified in him; it is that "third thing," spoken of in the Writings as the determining factor in the equilibrium in which every man is held (H. H. 537); and its presence constitutes the only reason why man chooses to will and to think as he does.

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The question is often asked, Why did Adam fall? or, Why does any man choose good or evil? The only answer is, because God continually imparts to him the ability to live as if of himself, and thus to choose the life of his will. To give any other reason would be to deprive man of any free decision, for it would make his choice a necessary consequence of that reason. Reflect upon this in spiritual light, unhindered by the continual obscurities raised up by the natural mind, and its truth will, I think, become apparent.

     It has been truly said that every action has its causes, and that, granting the causes, no other action is possible. Take a pack of cards, and throw it up in the air. If we knew the order of the cards before they were thrown, the weight and area of each card, the exact amount of force exerted upon it, the condition of the air, etc., etc., we could tell exactly how each card would fall. Of course, these knowledges which we are taking for granted are too numerous to be grasped by any human mind, and herein we see something of the Divine government of man, in that the Lord alone can know the myriads of forces operating upon him, and alone can rule them.

     That given causes must produce given effects, is undoubtedly true in physical things, and from this many modern scientists have built up a theory of predestination which maintains that every man is merely the creature of heredity, environment, education, etc. There is some false reasoning here; for when we come to moral actions, it is not true that, granted certain causes, only certain effects can follow. If this were true, we would arrive at fatalism,-the conclusion that the present state of the world is but the necessary and inevitable consequence of all the causes that have existed from the beginning; that it has its origin in the first cause of all, and that there is no such thing as freedom of choice. In the moral world, that is, in the world of human minds, there must be some point at which given causes will not necessarily produce given effects; some point at which absolute free decision comes into play. A given series of causes might operate on the mind, and yet, even if we knew all these causes, and knew also the state of the mind, we could not tell with certainty the action that would result. Taking the example of the cards, we may conceivably know exactly how they will fall, we may know the character of the man whom they affect, we may even know how they will affect him, and yet we cannot know with certainty what he will think and will in consequence.

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     Human free decision is, in itself, absolutely free in regard to its attitude to that which comes before it. There are myriads and myriads of circumstances which regulate what does come before it; there are myriads and myriads of antecedent causes, such as heredity, education, etc., which have had their influence in the forming of the mind; and all these myriads of things are under the government of Divine Providence. Yet there is a point at which the man alone has the decision, and this point is ever guarded by the Lord as the very palladium of human life. And the whole course of Divine Providence is to preserve the man in equilibrium, to the end that in all that comes before him his power of decision may be truly free. Here we have the explanation of those numerous cases furnished by history, where men have developed for good or for ill, and apparently in defiance of every expectation based upon their parentage, surroundings, and education.

     After the decision has been made, man comes again into the sphere of causes beyond his control, all under the government of the Lord. Thus, though man's freedom of decision is absolute as to his will, it is not so as to his speech and action. Man indeed has free decision, but the Lord alone rules the universe, both in its greatests and in its leasts. Yet, even in the sphere of ultimates, the evil man has some freedom of speech and action. Indeed, in times of mob-rule and bloody revolution, such freedom seems without restraint, though, as all men know, the ultimate dominance of the laws of order is inevitable. But, as we shall see later, the possibility of living for a time in defiance of the laws of order is in itself a part of the Divine government of the universe, and is necessary to the existence of man's freedom of choice in spiritual things. And yet the Lord alone is omnipotent.

     The Lord governs the universe by means of Divine Love and Wisdom proceeding from Him. This Divine Proceeding is like a series of spheres even to the ultimate, which is our aerial atmosphere; spheres which carry with them, or rather, which themselves are, the laws of order whereby the Lord governs the universe. The end of this government, being the inmost end of creation, is that man may have free decision in spiritual things, and so may become an angel of God, to whom the Lord can impart the blessings of His love.

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From this end, it is an intrinsic part of the laws of order that, in ultimates, of which alone the natural man has any clear conception, man shall appear to possess the power of escaping from the influence of those laws; for there is no obedience without the power of disobedience.

     We see this illustrated in man's ability to avoid the laws of the operation of the ultimate atmosphere. An apple fallen to the ground would be operated upon by the air until it rotted and finally returned to some form of use. But it is possible for man, in various ways, to protect it from this action of the air, and so to keep it in good condition for some length of time. This power to escape from the law of the ultimate atmosphere is itself a part of the laws of order. But there are many laws unknown to man, or not perceived by him except in their ultimate manifestation, from which he cannot escape. And so an apple cannot be preserved forever, and, if not used, will be forced to decay, to the end that it may eventually serve for some other form of use.

     It is the same in spiritual things, that is, in moral actions. It is a part of the laws of order that man shall for a time seem exempt from those laws. It is for this reason that it is of Divine order that, on earth, government and the administration of the laws of justice shall be in the hands of man, who at best is fallible; and that thus man shall have the appearance of controlling the destinies of society. It is owing to this that the wicked sometimes succeed, even in defiance of all law. Yet it is merely an appearance; for there is no escape from the universal forces of the Lord's government. Nothing whatever can happen, not even the least thing, unless it be permitted by the laws of order which are the laws of omnipotent Divine Love. The success of the wicked is but temporary, and, in fact, apparent. So many are the unseen forces over which the wicked have no control, that they can never have internal assurance of success, and still less of happiness. In the language of the Prophet: "They flee when none pursueth." Nay, at times they themselves vividly experience the irresistible power of the laws of order which govern the universe. For what man has not felt in his heart the power of Divine Truth when his evils are exposed before his fellow men? Or, in the quiet of his own imagination, when he reflects upon some shameful deed that he has done or willed, what man has not felt the power of the Divine Truth to terrify and subdue?

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Hence there is some truth in the statement by Leibnitz that "we are ruled by Providence when we follow reason, and by fate and like a machine when we are carried away by our affections." (Epistola ad Hanckium, 1707.)

     This, then, is the nature of man's free decision. He is free to choose what attitude he will assume to the Lord's government of the universe; but he is not free to change that government, or to escape from its operations. Man is indeed in free decision, but the Lord alone rules the universe.

     Let us now turn our thought to the Lord's omniscience, and, if this be permitted us, let us see how this also makes one with man's freedom of choice. By omniscience, I mean the knowledge of all things, past, present, and to come, even to the least actions of the human will. There is no limitation to Divine knowledge.

     But here, at the outset of our thought, we must carefully note the difference between Divine omniscience and human knowledge. Man knows a thing solely from the experience of the senses. Without his senses, he would be devoid of knowledge, and even of consciousness-as in cases of swooning, coma, etc. All human knowledge, however sublime, consists of those impressed states which form the mind, together with the influx, whether from this world or from the other, of the things that are to be known. The case here is the same as with the eye. Sight consists of the form of the eye as molded by the induction of various states, together with the influx of the objects that are to be seen. Thus the universal characteristic of all human knowledge is state, and change of state.

     But state cannot be predicated of the Lord. The Lord does not know from experience; He does not know a thing because it happens; but He knows because He is Divine Truth itself, because He is the very life and essence of the laws of order, which alone govern the universe and human life itself. In other words, historical knowledge or the knowledge of particulars, cannot be predicated of the Lord. The Lord is omniscient, we read, because He is Order, "and because order is universal from things most singular; for singulars taken together are called a universal, just as particulars taken together are called a general." (T. C. R. 60.) Thus the Lord's omniscience is not omniscience from particulars or generals, but it is universal from things most singular. A general is nothing but the sum total of its particulars, and has no existence apart from those particulars. But a universal is that which comprehends all its singulars, and is wholly present in each one of them.

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To illustrate: The hairs, the skin, the different members and organs of the body, are so many particulars, the totality of which is the body as a whole. But the universal of the body is the soul, and this is wholly present, with all its order and law and perception, in every least part of the body. So the Divine omniscience is universal, and is universally present in the most single things of the universe, perceiving, seeing and knowing all things, and ruling all. On the other hand, human knowledge-considered merely as human-consists of a congeries of particulars from which the man frames general conclusions. But man can also come into universal knowledges, and so can partake in human measure of the Divine omniscience, so far as he receives wisdom from the Lord; for this interior wisdom then enters into all the single things of his thought, and he is enabled in a finite way to perceive, see and know the things which are according to order, and thus those which are contrary to order.

     It is essential to keep in mind this distinction between Divine omniscience and human knowledge; otherwise, instead of seeing some image of the Divine attributes in man, we shall ascribe to the Lord attributes that are merely human mind so shall remove ourselves far away from any possibility of seeing even remotely that which is now revealed to us in light,-the truth, namely, that God is omniscient.

     In the True Christian Religion (n. 49), it is stated that the chapter on Divine Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience follows that on the Divine Essence because the Divine Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience proceed from Divine Love and Wisdom; this being not unlike the power and presence of the sun in the natural world. The Divine Esse is the Infinite and Eternal, but, in its proceeding to the creation of the universe, this Divine Esse is present in that universe as the Divine Essence,-the Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. The Divine Essence is the All in all of the universe; it is the law and order of the universe, the omnipresent soul which alone rules, and which alone knows. Therefore, it is of the Divine Essence, or of the Divine Love and Wisdom, that Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience are predicated.

     But here, for the further enlightenment of our thought, the Writings add another truth in the presentation of this subject, the truth, namely, that Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience belong to Divine Wisdom from Divine Love, and not to Divine Love by means of Divine Wisdom.

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This truth, moreover, is given us as "an arcanum from heaven which has not hitherto entered into the understanding of any man, because no one has hitherto known what love in its essence is, and what wisdom in its essence, nor what the influx of the one into the other, which is, that love, with all and single things thereof, flows into wisdom, and resides therein as a king in his kingdom, leaving every government of justice to its judgment, or every government of love to its wisdom." (T. C. R. 50.)

     This is an arcanum hitherto unknown, and yet the knowing and understanding of it is necessary to any rational comprehension of Divine Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience. These Divine attributes are from the Divine Love Itself. They are the Divine Love proceeding, operating, ruling as Divine Wisdom. In other words, the Divine Wisdom, which is the Laws of Order that govern the universe from firsts to lasts, must not be considered as giving power to Divine Love, but must be seen as the Divine Love Itself exercising its own power.

     We see an image of this in man, though only obscurely, since man's will is nothing unless conjoined to knowledges that come from without. Still, in the adult man there is an image of the truth above stated, in that it is the man's love alone that rules the man, and that manifests its power by his understanding. It is not the understanding that gives power to the love, but the love that directs its ends by means of the understanding.

     The importance of this truth lies in the fact that by it we can see that it is the Divine Love alone that governs the universe,-namely, the love of giving to others outside of itself. (T. C. R. 43.) Without this truth, the laws of the universe would be regarded as the modern materialist now regards them, merely as the inner laws of nature, proceeding like the car of Juggernaut with relentless insistency, and decreeing the inevitable destinies of human beings, without love, end, or purpose. And the result on human thought must be that belief in materialistic predestination which is more and more manifesting itself in the thought of the so-called learned world.

     But now we know that the laws which govern the universe, from firsts to lasts, are nothing but the Divine Love, or the Lord as Love, proceeding and manifesting Himself as Divine Wisdom, or the Laws of Order. These Laws, therefore, are the Divine Love of the Lord operating.

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It follows, therefore; that there can be no understanding of the Divine Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience unless there is a knowledge of the Laws of Order. The Divine attributes can indeed be acknowledged, even by the simple, because they are seen to be true; but if we are to enter into any intellectual comprehension of them, then our thought, and even our language, must be consciously ordered by the acknowledgment of the Laws of Order, and that these are the Laws of Divine Love.

     Order is defined as "the quality of the disposition, determination, and activity of the parts, substances, or entities which make the form, whence the state, the perfection whereof is produced by wisdom from its love." (T. C. R. 52) Applying this definition to the created universe, including man himself, it can be seen that, in the beginning, all creation was perfect in its own degree, or, as stated in the Book of Genesis, was "good," and "very good"; and that this perfection consisted in the disposition, determination and activity of the parts of the universe, from firsts to lasts; a disposition, determination, and activity, continually produced by Divine Wisdom from Divine Love.

     The definition of order which we have quoted concludes with the statement that "the imperfection of form is produced by the insanity of reason from cupidity. There is then imperfection in the universe, as well as perfection; and, as we have seen, this imperfection is permitted by the very laws of order which govern the universe. The source of this imperfection is the human mind, or man's misuse of his faculty of free decision; but the imperfection itself can extend no farther than the sphere of man's actions, this being the limit set to it by the laws of order. It can extend merely to the externals of the natural and spiritual worlds, that is to say, to the natural mind and the actions of the body. Moreover, even there the power of man to introduce imperfection and disorder is vastly limited by the operation of internal laws. For whatever imperfection may be introduced into the externals of the universe by the insanity of reason from cupidity, the essential disposition, determination, and activity of the parts of creation is still the omnipotent and universal operation and manifestation of Divine Wisdom from Divine Love. Whatsoever the disorders permitted in externals, yet the laws of Divine Wisdom from Divine Love are ever present, ever reducing to order, ever overcoming disorders and using them for the promotion of the Divine end.

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     Something of this is expressed in the old saying, "The mills of the gods (that is, the laws of Divine Wisdom) grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." We can clearly see this illustrated in the world around us. That which is not in order, that which is of no use, or which opposes use, is forced into order, that it may serve a use. Civil governments which are not founded in order must either come into order, or death and destruction await them. The same is true of the Church, whether considered internally or as an external body; it is true of society; it is true of the human body. So far as these conjoin themselves with the Divine end, so far they are in health and happiness; but so far as they disjoin themselves, and cease to serve any use, so far they are in pain and distress; and if they cannot be brought into order, they come to destruction.

     Does the same principle apply to the human mind? The question can be answered both in the affirmative and in the negative. In the inmosts of man's organic mind, the Lord from within gives man the faculty of free choice between good and evil. From without, both in the natural world and in the spiritual, man is pressed upon by the laws of Divine order, urgent to be received that they may bring him into concordance with that universal order wherein God is present in His omnipotence. (T. C. R. 56.) If he will not receive, then, though in speech and action he will still be bound by the laws of order, his will and thought will be outside the Divine Love, unconjoined therewith, or, as it were, absent therefrom. Not that any man can be absent from the Lord, for the Lord is omnipresent, but the man is aware of His presence only from without. He has no perception of His internal presence. Therefore it is said of that man, that he is separated from God, and is in hell. Yet the Lord is still with him, and sustains him from within. (T. C. R. 56.)

     Here we have the true key to the understanding of the Divine omniscience. "God is omniscient; that is to say, He perceives, sees, and knows all, and single things, even to the most minute that take place according to order; and from these, all things that take place contrary to order." (T. C. R. 58.) The Laws of Order are the disposing, determining, and actuating forces of the universe, from its firsts to its lasts. All that is according to order is at once perceived, seen, known; and if disorder is introduced, this also is at once perceived, seen, known, and omnipotently resisted. "The universe, with its single things, is a work cohering as a unit, and not one thing can be touched or affected without bringing some sensation thereof to the others." (T. C. R. 59)

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It is because of this universal law that we find the same thing in the human body; Here not the least thing can be affected but the soul at once perceives, sees, and knows it, even though the man be unconscious of this. And if the thing that affects be contrary to order, the whole force of the soul. is in the effort to reduce it into order,-an effort which is felt by the resisting body as pain and disease.

     So is it with the Lord. "God does not hold man in evil, but draws him from evil; thus He does not lead him, but struggles with him; and from the perpetual counter-struggle and resistance of evil and falsity against good and truth, thus against Himself, He perceives both the quantity and the quality of that evil and falsity." (T. C. R. 61.) The Writings add illustrations which set the matter in ultimate light. Thus the Lord's omniscience of all that is contrary to order is compared to a man whose ear has been formed by harmony. Such a man knows exactly the quantity and quality of any disharmonious and dissonant sound, and he perceives, sees, and knows this, not because he has heard, but because his ear is formed in harmony. So with taste, smell, and the other senses. A man whose taste is formed in true harmony need not be told that the nauseous is nauseous, the bitter bitter, etc., but he perceives, sees, and knows this, because his taste is formed in harmony. So also it is in spiritual things. When the mind has been molded in the order of heaven, then evil and falsity are at once distinctly perceived, seen, and known; and not only are they known, but there is at once a resistance to them, a striving to reduce them into order.

     In the regenerate man we can see the Divine omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience as in an image; for when the Lord is present with a man, He is present with all His attributes. Thus we read: "Man is in power against evils and falses from the Divine omnipotence, and in wisdom concerning good and truth from the Divine omniscience, and in God from the Divine omnipresence, just so far as he lives according to Divine order." (T. C. R. 68.) Many illustrations of this truth come to mind. Thus, when a man thinks and speaks the truth, he at once perceives, sees, and knows all that opposes the truth. So if a witness gives true testimony, his testimony foresees every falsity that may be brought up against him. If the law, the order, the constitution of a society be true, it contains within itself the foreknowledge of every contingency that can arise to disturb it.

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If a man is in good, that very good has within it the foreknowledge of all that is good, and of all that is opposed thereto. Thus we can have some rational conception of the truth that the Lord is not only omnipotent, but also omniscient, that is to say, knows all things, past, present, and to come. He knows because He is Order Itself, and order disposes, determines, and actuates all things of the universe.

     To the natural mind, if it still persists in asking how man can be in free decision if the result of his decision is known to God from eternity, the answer may be given that man's decisions are known to God, not because the man will so decide, but because God is Order. Divine knowledge is not an assemblage of particular knowledges, is not historical knowledge, but is universal from things most singular. The result of a man's free decision is not before God as a particular historical fact that will happen at a particular time. When man uses his free decision, this is at once perceived, seen, and known by Divine omniscience, not because the man so decided, but because God is omniscient, and thus because He is Order Itself. The man might have decided otherwise, and yet there would be no difference in the Divine omniscience.

     And here let it be noted that, in God, previdence and providence are one. We are not to think of Divine foreknowledge as a bare foreknowledge; that is to say, we are not to endeavor to establish God's foreknowledge apart from His providence, or to entertain the thought that God provides because He foreknows. God foreknows because He provides, and both His previdence and His providence are infinite. Says Swedenborg in his work on the Infinite: "I grant whatever can be granted with wisdom, if on the other hand you will grant that Gods infinite. And if He is infinite, then all things were present to Him that are future with us. Can anything be predicated of the infinite in a finite sense? If in His infinity He has foreseen all things, has He not also provided them? In the infinite, providence cannot be distinguished from previdence." (Inf. vii.)

     What of Divinity attaches to a mere foreknowledge of events, unless this prescience be also providence? In fact, what is prescience and previdence but the omnipotent provision of Divine Love for the fulfilling of its ends? And, remembering that God is the Soul and Life of the universe, cannot we comprehend, even in a natural way, something of the Divine omniscience when we comprehend that, being Order Itself, He perceives, sees, and knows all that takes place according to order, and consequently all that takes place contrary to order, and thus eternally provides?

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Can we not see that this previdence and providence, being infinite, are entirely independent of the results of man's exercise of free decision?-that man is free to decide, and that whatever his decision, God's previdence and providence, that is to say, His omniscience, is still the same, still infinite? If we insist upon attributing to the Divine our finite conception of foreknowledge, we not only take away from His Divinity, but we bring ourselves into inextricable confusion of thought.

     If these considerations are not sufficient to convince the natural then let it suffice for him that the Lord is omniscient because He is God, and that man has free decision because this is the will of Divine Love. Believing thus, he can then confirm himself by many considerations; as, that the Lord created the universe, and continually sustains it.

     The rational man, however, can go further, provided only he thinks spiritually, that is to say, thinks in the light of heaven, and not in the light of the world; from state, and not from time and space. To remove the thought from time and space is to think of truth as it is in itself. To think in this way concerning the Divine omniscience is to think from the knowledge that in the Lord is no time, no past, no present, no future. He is in all time and in all space, but in Him is no time and no space. The truly rational mind will not even entertain the question, "Did the Lord know Yesterday what I shall do tomorrow?" If the natural mind demands an answer, let the answer be "Yes." But if the natural mind then begins to doubt concerning man's freedom of choice, let him be reduced to obedience. The rational man neither asks such questions nor requires an answer. To him it is clear that the Lord is omniscient, not because He knows all things, but because He is the Law and Order of the universe.

     We see this illustrated in the human soul; for as the Lord is to the universe, so the soul is to the body. Can we say of the soul at conception, that it has a historical knowledge that legs and arms will be needed in so many months, or that hard things will enter the mouth; and therefore teeth will be required? Shall we not rather say that, since the soul is the law and order of its body, all things are present in her simultaneously and universally, and that therefore she is both the previdence and providence of her body?

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So with the Lord, who is the Soul of the universe, its Law, its Order, and its Life, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient therein.

     Human freedom of choice is not determined or even influenced by Divine omniscience; still less does it influence the Divine omniscience. That freedom, so far as will and thought are concerned, is absolute, unconditional, ever preserved by Divine Love. But whatsoever the use man makes of it, this is perceived, seen, and known by the Lord, because He is omniscient. If we thus elevate our thought, and remove it from time and space, can we not see that God is truly omniscient, and that yet man is truly free to choose? And then, reflection on the Divine omniscience, instead of bringing to the mind obscurity and the fear of predestination, will further enlighten it to see the reality of God's gift to man of free decision and the infinite wisdom of His Providence.

     But here a word should be said concerning Divine Prophecies. For it may be objected that such prophecies show, not only that the Lord is omniscient, but that man's future state, and even the future state of generations yet unborn, has at times been revealed in a historical sense, and so may seem to have been predetermined. To this we may remark that, considered in itself, Divine Prophecy is not essentially the prediction of a future historical event, but the revelation of the interiors contained within the state of the present. We may see something of this in our own reflections. If we reflect upon our will in the light of heaven, and see what is involved therein,-see, for instance, that in jealousy is involved murder, in self-will the desire to rule over all, in avarice the wish to possess the goods of all, in lust cruelty, etc.,-these may at times present to our mind a picture of what we will actually do if such loves continue within us.

     So with the Divine Prophecies of the Word. They are a revelation of the interiors contained within the state of the peoples to whom they are delivered. When such revelations come into ultimate representations in the minds of the prophets, those representations assume the form of future historical events, though necessarily of a general character. And we may note that, in the Word, the prophecies of events that are to occur in the distant future, if considered in a historical sense, are of a very general character.

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It should not be difficult for the New Churchman to see the truth of this statement concerning prophecies; for he well knows that, when seen interiorly, the Word does not treat of the events of time and space, but of spiritual states.

     It does not follow that because Divine Prophecies were thus revealed in the Word, therefore the natural events must necessarily follow. The Word predicted the shameful treatment of the Lord by the Jewish Church, and in that prediction were revealed the interiors of that Church as they existed when the prediction was made. No one, surely, will claim that therefore nations yet unborn were predetermined and predestined thus to persecute the Lord! Nay! the Word itself contradicts such a conclusion; for even by the Prophets themselves the Lord continually exhorted the Jews to turn from their evil ways; and if they were exhorted, then surely they might have hearkened, as indeed some of them did. It may be thought that they were indeed in freedom, but that the Lord foresaw how they would use that freedom. But this g thinking from time, and can result only in obscurity. Remove time and space from your thought, and you will see that the Jews might have repented, that they were ever free to do so, and that if they had done so, and had they not crucified the Lord, still the Divine Prophecy would be true, and still the future would have been foreknown. For, to repeat the words of the Writings, "The Lord is omniscient; that is, he perceives, sees, and knows all and single things, even to the most minute that take place according to order; and from these, all that take place contrary to order; because He is Wisdom Itself and Light Itself, and because He is Order, and Order is universal from things most single." (T. C. R. 59, 60.)                    

     He is everywhere, yet in Him is no space. He knows all states, yet in Him is no state. He is the Order and Law of the universe-not the order and law vainly imagined by a materialistic philosophy, but the Order and Law which is the Speech and the Operation of Divine Love.

     "Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; Thou understandest my thought afar off. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high; I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.

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If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand hold me. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Thy works." (Psalm 139)

     DISCUSSION OF DR. ACTON'S ADDRESS.

     Rev. E. E. Iungerich: I think that I can voice the sentiments of all present by saying we had a real treat in Dr. Acton's paper. It was a notable contribution, and especially in regard to his treatment of problems which have shaken and divided the world for ages previously. Certainly, in the light given to the New Church, these can be brought to some solution. My own conviction is that a great step in that direction was taken in this paper. I do not wish to comment at length on the paper, as the comments would then equal the length of the paper, but I will come myself to a few remarks.

     I was very much pleased with the clearness in which the limitations to man's freedom were brought out. The Lord has not left man without bonds. He must have one, but may add a second. The Lord says, "My yoke is easy, and my burden light." Man may add another bond to himself, if he refuses to follow the Lord. In that case, he not only resists the Lord's order for him, but is compelled to follow it, and so is torn in two directions. He has not the privilege of creating a new universe, with laws to suit his caprice. And so his freedom is under the yoke of the order created by God.

     Another point I enjoyed very much in the paper was the proof that we are not pantheists in regard to omnipresence and omnipotence, and so ought not to be pantheists in regard to omniscience. By pantheism is meant that the whole circumstances about God are all of them continuously Divine. I presume that, to a mind of the celestial genius, the pantheistic form of expression does not mean a form of idolatry. When the most ancient people looked abroad on the world, everything to them was God, and yet there was no idolatry in their thought,-no pantheism.

     In the Writings, where Swedenborg speaks of the apparent limitations on Divine omnipotence, due to God's never acting contrary to His Divine order, we are told that many spirits indignantly accused Swedenborg of having bound God by laws, and so of having denied His omnipotence. But it is with regard to omniscience that greater difficulty has been found in avoiding the pantheistic crux. God is omniscient because He is order, not because He has made a kaleidoscopic panorama of lands, waters, mountains, etc. Here it is necessary also to make a distinction between that which is of the Lord and that which is not of the Lord, lest we measure Him by our own human standards in the world.

     This subject is very thoroughly brought out in the third part of the work on the Divine Providence, which says that the Lord, in the operations of His Divine Providence, looks to what is infinite.

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There is a discrimination here, very distinct, between looking to what is infinite and looking to what is merely temporal. In the other world, it is there stated, thought brings presence, and affection always brings conjunction Consequently when angels think of the Lord, He is brought to their view, and they are conjoined with Him, so that they see His face, and are Under His view. Here an interesting discrimination is made between the way in which man looks at the Lord and the way the Lord looks at man. Angels look at Him with their eyes, and He looks at them in the forehead. We are told that at this day our faces are more or less masks, and do not express our interior thoughts, except for two things that are not under our control. One is hushing, the other is the sparkle of the eye. But men who are dissemblers avert their eyes, lest their thoughts be betrayed. Now the fed that angels look at the Lord with their eyes means that they are perfectly willing that the Lord should see and read all that is in their interiors. They turn to Him without reserve, keeping nothing back from Him. On the other hand, it is said that the Lord looks at their forehead. That is a very interesting statement. They do not see the Lord's eyes looking at them. That, of course, is an expression of the fact that no men can know the Lord as to His infinite qualities, although they can discern that the Lord knows the very inmosts of their minds. They can see that the Lord reads their minds, and guides them, though they cannot see the qualities of His inmost attributes as they are in se.

     Rev. Albert Bjorck: I had an impression, when I listened to Dr. Acton, especially during the latter part of his paper, that I would like to read it in print several times, before I should be able to follow his thoughts fully; and that is not saying anything in a critical way, because Dr Acton is always very clear and very real and profound. At the same time, I felt, while listening to that paper, that it is almost impossible, in one lecture, however clear and however profound, to present a subject of that nature so that the listeners will be carried away without requiring to read it again. I am certain that the paper shows that it is possible to enter intellectually into the mysteries of the subject, and I think, too, that Dr. Acton has entered intellectually into the mystery of man's freedom and God's omnipotence and omniscience. Whether he has been able to convey that intellectual clarity to his listeners is not for me to say. I know that I could not help comparing it with what Bishop W. F. Pendleton stated in the Life some Years ago, and of which I thought very highly indeed. The two are really expressed very differently, but they amount to very much the same thing, and I remember the conclusion I came to after reading Bishop Pendleton's article. I came to the same conclusion after listening to Dr. Acton. And that was, "Well, there is not much left for man's freedom!"

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     And I think that is a very good conclusion to come to. We have frequently had wrong ideas about human freedom, and I think such ideas are very common today, even among New Church people. We are yet to understand that our freedom is circumscribed in many ways, and yet it is that which is given for us to choose between good and evil.

     Another point was brought home to me very strongly,-that when men really study the Writing; in the way Dr. Acton does, the way is opened more and more to enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith, because the Writings are the only basis, and they are all that we need to help us to an understanding of things which have been mysteries for generations of men.

     Rev. W. H. Claxton: I should like to say a few words on one of the finest treatments of a profound subject that I have ever had the opportunity of listening to,-so clear in its marshalling of facts from the Writings, so clear in its grasp of the matter involved. And yet I dare to say that even Dr. Acton will not think that he has stated the final word on the question. It seems to me that the paper was most appropriate at this time, especially because, if I understand it, the thought of the world today, both outside and inside the New Church, does tend toward a coquetting with the old idea of the Eastern world,-the idea of feudalism; coquetting with it to such an extent that the real belief in the freedom of man has been very slowly and almost unconsciously undermined. I find it in other religious fields, as well as in our own, and to my mind it is a great danger, because it tends to influence the man so that he does not realize the necessity of his own cooperation with the Lord, or of his own effort to live in accordance with the Divine Law.

     There are just one or two matters I would like to put to Dr. Acton. Perhaps he may settle with them now or later. He distinguished between free will and freedom of choice. Now that distinction is only made by our own choice; it is inevitable to any thinker on the subject, and to my mind it tends to get rid of the fundamental difficulty. It makes a distinction, but leaves the question of the free will of man more or less untouched. It is quite a recognizable fact that we have freedom of choice, but not freedom of action; that there are internal restraints and external restraints which interfere with our freedom of action, not merely with other people, but also with ourselves. We do not do things, because under the present circumstances we do not consider them to be useful. We may consider them to be in advance of our time, but we recognize for the moment that we may be doing more harm than good in exercising: our freedom of choice in the direction in question. We are left with freedom of choice and action so far as those things are concerned which are fundamental to our eternal well-being. Convention, form, and limitations to human knowledge, and many other things, interfere with our doing what we ought to do. I mean that we deliberately say to ourselves sometimes, "Now I cannot do that, but if the circumstances were different I should do it." We exercise our freedom of choice by limiting our freedom of action, can illustration of the absolute freedom of choice in which we are.

     But upon the question of freedom of choice lies the question of freedom of will. You cannot separate will and understanding from human life. A certain profound philosopher endeavored to do so, and practically reached the conclusion that you would never be able to think absolutely correctly until you had separated thought from feeling, because will-feeling was always bound to influence will-thought so as to bias it. I asked him if he really meant that, and pointed out that will and understanding are the two essentials of the human mind, and that the Lord Himself laid the emphasis on the will in the right exercise of the understanding in arriving at the truth.

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We have always recognized that there is a limitation; no matter how much we may gain a knowledge of the teachings of the Writings, no matter how great our intellectual desire to understand them, we are always limited by the fact that, unless the will be on the same level, we shall not establish that clarity of vision. This shows how necessary it is that the Church, in all its teachings, should endeavor to carry out truth into action, whereby the will may develop a principle up to the level of the truth revealed.

     As a result of my study of the Writings, I hold that man, in his limitness, in his finiteness, is as absolutely free in will as God is in His Infinity. More than that God cannot impart to man; less than that He cannot offer to him; because the nature of the Divine is to give of Himself. He cannot give to man infinite freedom, but He can give man finite freedom, which means something more than freedom of choice, something more, so far as the Divine is concerned, than freedom of action. It means freedom in the fundamental of our nature. Although I recognize the rational difficulty, I have never been able to see that the recognition of the absolute omniscience of God, of His complete foresight of things, can in any way invalidate that freedom of will. I agree with what Dr Acton said, that when we see a thing to be true, we are bound to accept it, even though the rational mind is not sufficiently enlightened to explain it. We must quieten our difficulties, and accept that knowledge which we have from heaven.

     Another point in connection with a quotation It was not always clear to me where the speaker's language finished and the quotations began, and there was one passage quoted that seemed to imply that, while the omniscience of God does deal with generals, it does not necessarily include the knowledge of particulars. Now, to me that would be a greater difficulty than any that has yet been raised, because man is in particulars, is in the knowledge of external things, and knows events when they arrive. Man can not only do that, but so far as his thoughts and will are admitted into spiritual as well as natural truths, he can, with almost certainty, foresee what is going to happen, given certain circumstances. If I know the will and understanding of a certain man, I will know exactly how he will react to a certain proposition. And I know of another man who, if I make the same proposition to him, will act differently; and so on. This foresight sometimes includes the rather distant future, because, given the same conditions, the same man will react in exactly the same way twenty years from now. Then I should probably be able to foresee, not merely the will and the understanding, but the actual details. And it does not seem to me that this must be included in Divine foresight. This, then, does not mean an interference in the freedom of the will, but that God foresees what will happen in the exercise of the will. He looks on the heart. But again now, I note, that brings us to the verge of fatalism, though to my mind it does not detract anything from our recognition of the omniscience and omnipotence Of the Lord, or of that omnipresence and infinite character of the Lord.

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     Rev. W. L. Gladish: I wish to express my great appreciation of Dr. Acton's paper. He told me in February the subject he was going to take, and gave me an outline, and I thought, "Well now, he is going to spring some heresy on us." But I do not feel that any difficulties have arisen. I liked especially his definition of spiritual thought. Spiritual thought consists, not in some abstract and wholly intellectual effort, but it is simply thought in the light of spiritual truth. I liked also his clear statement of instances in which there seems to be a conflict between Divine omnipotence and man's free will. We cannot reconcile them, but must hold to both, for both are true. There is Divine omnipotence, and there is human freedom of will, and we will not be able to reconcile them. I thought he was remarkably successful in treating the whole subject from spiritual thought.

     Another point is the matter of prophecy. I was turning that over in my mind very often, in regard to how prophecy can be given. It not only involves Divine foreknowledge, but in some way the foreknowledge of human beings and angels. The angels must have in their minds something of a knowledge of things, for it cannot be poured into them without some vessels to receive; and these must happen from without, for otherwise it would pass like water through a sieve. So the Predication of future events must involve, not only the knowledge of angels, but also the knowledge of natural things. They are in the interior essence of things, and think, see, and speak from that which is present with them, but have not a distinct foreknowledge that on a certain day, in a certain way, with certain people, there will be certain things fulfilled. Before the Lord came into the world, His presence was actually with men in the world. The Divine Human after the Lord tame was a very different thing. The Divine Human before He came was something seen dimly, like the light of the moon; after the Lord had come, and had fulfilled all these things, then angels could recognize them as things accomplished. I think the explanation of prophecy, and how it can be given, will hold a great deal of attention in our thought in the future.

     Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner: I hesitate to give praise to Dr. Acton's paper, because to do so might sound somewhat in bad taste, or patronizing, since his treatment is so much more excellent than that to which others attain. It went into the depths of history, and into the problems of philosophy, and finally into a very excellent summary of the thought that has been held in the church. But what we all may feel grateful for is that Dr. Acton, in his treatment, showed no disposition to deny any general truth. It is so frequently the case that, when we enter into the interiors of a subject, some general truth seems to be destroyed. I feel that there is great danger in the attitude that I have just designated. Interior truths are the interior understanding of the general truth; and the progress of the church, and the solution of its intellectual problems, will not be great unless we always keep the sanctity of the ultimate truth, the general truth, in mind. The solution that was suggested,-the part most strongly affecting me,-was his pointing out that only in certain states, only with a certain attitude of mind, can we possibly approach the dilemmas of these profound theological problems.

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Probably almost all, as they enter into the church, have had to settle with themselves this great apparent contradiction, that God is omnipotent and omniscient, and yet that man is free; and we find from experience that it is only when we are in a certain state that we can perceive the truth of this apparent paradox. The state has been described by Dr. Acton as a state of perception. It is one in which we submit the natural man to the discipline of the soul's perception. We cannot, with the natural mind, get away from time and space, but with the spiritual mind it can be done.

     Now, in line with that general attitude, Dr. Acton points out that man's knowledge is very, very different from the knowledge that pertains to God. A knowledge of evil, with us, is produced by a sense-experience of evil things, the disorders entering into our brain substances; and in our minds there seems to be latent, therefore, the experience of evil things. Such a knowledge of experience obviously does not exist in the mind of God; no evil can ever enter into the substance of the Divine. But still I feel that there is a knowledge that can hardly be expressed unless terms are used in a very philosophical sense; and in such a sense it might be said that the Lord lacks the particulars of knowledge. But we know that the Divine Providence enters, not only into universals and singulars, but also into particulars and generals. And so we can hardly make the general statement that particulars of knowledge are lacking to the Lord. However, the Lord's knowledge of those particulars is a knowledge that comes from within rather than from without, and is consequently a knowledge which contains omniscience itself, as does our own soul's knowledge of the evil states that may arise in our bodies. The Lord's omnipotence is directing the stream of human life, and in coordinating the cross-purposes of myriads of men, involves no real contradiction. The Divine is infinite. For every choice that can possibly be made in a human life, for every choice that all the myriads and myriads of men and women can possibly make, there is an adequate replying power in the Divine Substance to cope with it, and thus to bring us into a better order. It is that which we mean by the Divine omnipotence and the Divine omniscience. "My thoughts," the Lord says, "are not your thoughts."

     Mr. James Pryke: I should like one minute in which to express my appreciation of Dr. Acton's paper. If I may say so, the crystallization of it all was in that wonderful quotation from the Word with which it concluded. And it seems to me that in hearing that quotation we realized something of what the spiritual sense or deeper meaning is.

     If I might respectfully say so, Dr. Acton well considered the statement in saying that this controversy was age-old. But the thought that occurred to me while listening to the paper was that a belief in Revelation and coquetting with definitions would not exist in the same mind. We must go to the Word if we want the truth, and no philandering with the sybil will give any shade or shadow of it. But it also seemed to me that there is no essential conflict between the Divine omnipotence and man's power. It is also a question of the division between the natural and spiritual mind. Even in the Church, our order of terms like omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, have changed with ideas derived from the world. We have to divest ourselves of those ideas.

     With regard to Previdence and Providence, are they not so bound together that they cannot be separated?

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How can the Lord provide unless He foresees what He has to provide. Man can only act according to his own order, and therefore he is not allowed to infringe upon those laws of order. So, it seems to me, day by day we can learn more of these things. Day by day we can see more of the truth of man's freedom; day by day we can get a clearer idea of the Divine omniscience.
NEW CHURCH IN HOLLAND 1928

NEW CHURCH IN HOLLAND       Rev. ERNST PFEIFFER       1928

     When we consider how small is the group of sixty people who form our Society in Holland, and the fact that it is practically unseen and unknown, and no doubt will remain so for many years, one may call it a euphemism to speak of "the New Church in Holland." It is evident, however, that the parable of the grain of mustard seed, which is the least of all Seeds, but when it is grown becomes a tree, is applicable also to a newly built church-society, provided it has its origin in the love of truth With those who form it, and is founded upon sound principles,-that is, upon the doctrine that the laws of building up the Church are a matter of revealed truth, and that the Writings are the rational Word. We may say that these principles are nothing else than the Principles of the Academy in their special application to external evangelization. It is my intention to give you some particulars of such an application from our actual experience in Holland.

     We need not here recall the history of the New Church in Holland up to the beginning of the present century, because the facts we would touch upon might give the impression that they were mere casual occurrences. I will only mention the names of van Goens, Charles; Ley, Tydeman and van Alphen. (NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1927, p. 125; Hindmarsh, Rise and Progress, pp. 256, 284, 386; Odhner, Annals.) They are just so many striking instances illustrating the truth that every attempt to produce a lasting use from the knowledge of the Writings, without the means of a distinctly organized Church and its ordained priesthood, is condemned to failure in the end.

     It is well known to you all that Holland played a very important part in Swedenborg's own life, and that many of the Writings were originally published there; also, that Holland is frequently mentioned in the Writings, and is said t, be one of the countries in the centre of Christendom.

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There is no doubt that a thorough analysis of these facts would throw much new light upon our understanding of the qualities of the Dutch race and country.

     Mr. Gerrit Barger, who was British Vice Consul at The Hague during the later years of his life, was the pioneer of the New Church in Holland. He presents a beautiful example of an isolated layman standing entirely alone for many decades, and finding at last the reward of his faithfulness and his labors in a small but living movement that will prove to be the beginning of a real Church. In 1899, with the help of the London Swedenborg Society, Mr. Barger published the first Dutch translation of Heaven and Hell. It was through Mr. John Pitcairn and the Rev. G. C. Ottley that he became acquainted with the General Church; and he showed his love of truth, and his good judgment, in readily making the choice between the Church of the Lord and the mere conventions of men. He continued his work of translating. We have from him: The Intercourse between the Soul and Body, The Four Leading Doctrines, The Last Judgment and Continuation, The White Horse, The Earths in the Universe, and also a number of well-written missionary tracts.

     In April, 1909, at the instance of Mr. Ernst Deltenre, then a lawyer at Antwerp, Mr. Barger cooperated in the founding of the Swedenborg Society for Holland and Belgium. When, in 1912, the Rev. Deltenre returned from America as priest, and established a mission of the General Church at Brussels, he also became visiting pastor of the circle in Holland. The war brought an end to these visits, but in the period before the war, and again after the war, Mr. Deltenre baptized eleven adults and three children at The Hague. Mr. Barger and his family had been baptized before. When Mr. Barger died in April, 1921, the Dutch Swedenborg Society had a membership of nearly thirty, of whom fourteen were baptized persons.

     In June of the same year, I was sent by the Bishop to take charge of the work at The Hague. We arrived there on Wednesday, the 15th of June, and the following Sunday falling on the 19th of June, it thus came to pass that our first service and the organization meeting of "The First Dutch Society of the General Church of the New Jerusalem" were held on the 19th of June.

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And among those present there were twelve baptized members of the General Church, who signed the roll.

     Although, when I began, I clearly had the concepts of both internal and external evangelization, and all the circumstances impressed me with the necessity of both, it was only after three years, when, in October, 1924, through the aid of the Rev. Theodore Pitcairn, we got the use of a separate building, that we could make a beginning of systematic missionary work. I cannot help believing that, although the pastor of a New Church society should acknowledge the internal evangelization of his flock as his first use, he should regard external evangelization as nearly of equal importance. It seems to have been a historical necessity that the Academy movement in a large measure withdrew its attention from the external missionary field,-a fact which is easily explained, if we realize the internal decay of the then so-called New Church, a state which has perpetuated itself unto the present day. But it would be a great mistake to conclude from the statement of the Principles of the Academy, "The most fruitful field of evangelization is with the children of New Church parents,"-that the Academy had no eyes for the external missionary field. You need only to read the article of the late Bishop Emeritus on "Evangelization" (NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1925, P. 591) to see that the subject of missionary work was clearly and internally understood, and that it was fully appreciated. That this opinion is also in harmony with the spirit of our present government becomes quite evident in this Assembly, which devotes considerable time to the subject.

     While thus in theory the feasibility and even the necessity of external evangelization seems to be acknowledged, I do not know whether all the pastors in charge of societies in the General Church practically see and attend to the possibilities of external evangelization. "It seems to me it would be very useful if those figures of the statistical reports which indicate the numerical gain or loss of a society could be published annually, together with the corresponding figures of the previous year.

     That every pastor should engage in external evangelization also, is quite evident from the two Sacraments. We may say that, with respect to the pastoral office, the internal sense of the Holy Supper is internal evangelization and the internal sense of Baptism is external evangelization;

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The institution of the two Sacraments is thus the clearest and indeed a Divine indication of the necessity of both. I therefore consider external evangelization to be that priestly work which leads men to the Sacrament of Baptism, and I consider internal evangelization to be that priestly work which leads men to the spiritual use of the Holy Supper.

     In a specific sense, it is, of course, correct to say that the children also who are born within the Church belong to the field of external evangelization,-a truth which led the Bishop Emeritus to the statement, "that the most fruitful field of evangelization is with the children of New Church parents." But this definition is simply based upon the relative value of the term "external." Everything, whether it be internal or external, has its own internal and an external; even inmost things have an external; there is the external of the inmost heaven; and the Divine Human is the external of the Divine Itself. Strictly speaking, therefore, the religious instruction and education of our children is the external of internal evangelization, while what we often call "missionary work "is external evangelization itself. This latter also has an internal and an external; for it is quite evident that there are external methods and external results of missionary work, and there are internal methods and internal results of missionary work.

     I have a certain feeling against the term "missionary work," unless we use it in a very loose and conversational way. It carries with itself the sphere of the Old Church, and I think that it does not really belong to our distinctive vocabulary. I would suggest that henceforth, when we speak of external evangelization, we mean that priestly work which leads to the Sacrament of Baptism those outside of the New Church whose minds are open to receive. I am confirmed in this view by the following considerations Although the children born and baptized within the Church are not church, but only with the church, just in the other life they are not angels, but only among the angels (A. C. 2304), and their religious education is therefore in a certain sense their gradual introduction into the church, nevertheless this introduction does not lead them to the first, but to the second, Sacrament; it is really nothing else than their gradual preparation for the Holy Supper, simply because religious education is the external of internal evangelization.

     For the sake of further illustrating this law, which shows the presence of the Infinite in every single feature of the structure of the church, we see that this external of internal evangelization has again its own external and its internal, both being of the greatest practical importance.

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The external of it is instruction, and the internal of it is education; and again, the term "instruction," which belongs to the external is formed by the use of the prefix "in," while the term "education," which belongs to the internal, is formed with the use of the prefix "ex," a clear indication that there is an internal and an external in both terms. Reflect upon this, and you will readily discern them.*
     * Concerning this reciprocation of terms, see A. C. 2240. It derives its origin from the presence of the Infinite in the finite, or, what is the same, from the law that good and truth must be conjoined in all degrees.

     Another reason why I should like to eliminate the religious education of children from our concept of external evangelization is the fact that religious education, in all its methods and results, is entirely similar to the methods and results of internal evangelization, and entirely unlike the methods and results of external evangelization. In view of the Divine commandment of the Gospel "Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them," (Matt. 18:19), and in view of the new institution of Baptism in the Heavenly Doctrine, we cannot escape the necessity of external evangelization. But it would indicate a lack of clearness in the appreciation of the relative significance of the term, if, in connection with the education of the children, we were to stress the word "external" in such a way as to make it cover practically the entire field.

     Truly it is curious that there is the appearance as if it were necessary to prove the importance of external evangelization. It was no doubt a historical necessity that the General Church, in its first years, appeared to be blind to the possibilities of external evangelization. Born from the reaction against the utter lack of appreciation of internal evangelization, and of the education of the youth,-a lack which had devastated the New Church,-the Academy movement and the General Church showed in their beginning the distinct signs of an abnormal, because polemical, state; abnormal, however, only in comparison with the perfect state of a fully established Church. Under the circumstances, this state was perfectly normal; even, it seems just to say, that it was the work of Providence.

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The marvelous zeal with which the founders and followers of the movement devoted themselves to the internal evangelization of the Church, and the fascinating, because paradoxical, truth of the statement "that the most fruitful field of evangelization is with the children of New Church parents" began so to overrule the policy of the Church that most of the pastors had no experience and no practice in external evangelization.

     During the last fifteen years the signs have accumulated that the General Church is seeking the way to external evangelization as an acknowledged use of great importance. The times and circumstances which forced the Church to the previous attitude have changed. The General Church has completely moved away from those disorders which provoked her polemical attitude. About fifty years ago, if one asked, "Where is the New Church?" there was some doubt as to the answer. If one asks this question today, there is no longer any doubt. Internal evangelization and the education of the youth have been firmly established. The dangers of a non-genuine missionary work are clearly seen. I think the Church has now reached the state in which external evangelization can be given its proper place.

     I remember the time when many people in the Church spoke with some disdain of what was then always called "missionary work." Both as to its methods and as to its results, it was considered inferior to most of the other uses of the Church. I truly hope it is our unanimous conviction that this is a sore mistake; for external evangelization is nothing less than one of the ultimates of the Lord's own love; and the more ultimate the Divine presence, the more it is in its fulness, holiness and power.

     Quite evidently, it is not sufficient that the priest should know how to perform a ceremony of Baptism; he should also know, and in a certain measure have in his control, those things which lead up to Baptism. And if he thinks that he is a fairly good performer of his work,-as every performer of a work should be able to say, at least in a modest way with regard to his own vocation,-the priest should also, each one in his own measure, be a master of those thing;. Let me make this quite plain with somewhat drastic illustrations. Just as a bootmaker must know how to make a boot, and just as a cook must know how to prepare a meal, and a physician must know how to cure the sick, so a pastor must know how to make a convert.

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It is true, of course, that in his work of evangelization, perhaps more than in any other human work, the priest has to deal with almost unmeasurable and always deeply hidden things, but the realization of this fact will induce him so much the more to be very humble, and to rely in all his work upon the Lord alone. But it is a fact, and it is also according to the Writings, that converts can be made. And it is the priesthood that should make them. And truly it is not an inferior kind of task. It really leaves no room for any blind enthusiasm. It is a noble and difficult art, a genuine priestly use, requiring much experience, much love, and much knowledge, intelligence and wisdom.

     While, of necessity in the beginning, the whole attention of the Church was directed to her own internal state, she has perhaps not paid as much attention to the doctrine concerning the remnant in the Christian Church as it really deserves. At a time when the New Church has attained a state of internal soundness and stability, we should realize that it would be the greatest possible mistake to neglect the doctrine concerning the remnant of the Old. It is a general truth that a new church can only be formed from the remnant of the old church. I think that a thorough exposition of that doctrine, combined with actual experience, will lead us to a new understanding of the relative significance of the truth "that only a few of the former Church will turn to the Lord in His Second Coming,"-a truth which has been used as a fundamental of the Principles of the Academy. Thanks to the evidence of, Revelation, we are intelligent enough to know what we must think of the imprudent attitude of certain so-called New Church bodies towards the existing Christian religiosities; yet the New Church may never show a lack of love and of compassion towards those outside who seem to be well-disposed.

     The following figures show the development of the Society at The Hague during the first seven years of its existence. The membership has increased from 12 to 59. The average attendance at public worship has increased from 13 to 32; the average attendance at the Holy Supper from 10 to 26; the average attendance at the doctrinal class from 7 to 21. Within the scope of this lecture it is not feasible to give you many particulars in regard to the methods of evangelization which we have gradually developed.

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Moreover, these may be very different in different societies and different countries. I will merely outline two or three of the main features.

     We have organized a course of five public lectures, which are given once a year, during five consecutive weeks on the evenings which we would otherwise devote to our doctrinal class. We are giving much care to the advertising of this course, and every year it has brought us in touch with about eighty to one hundred strangers.

     A question of vital importance to such efforts is the choice of the subjects to be treated. I would never choose a subject that does not lead directly to the doctrine of the Lord and of the Sacred Scripture. I believe that a Christian who really accepts the Lord in His First Coming as a Divine Being will accept Him also in His Second Coming. It seems to me to be of the greatest importance that in a missionary lecture the priest should have at his disposal as many passages as possible from the literal sense of the Old Testament and of the Gospel proving the sole Divinity of the Lord.

     I do not like such subjects as for instance: "There are the dead!" A spiritist or a theosophist will also choose such subjects; they appeal much more to the curiosity of the public, and often even to some proprial love, than to the love of truth. It is the choice of such subjects by most of the missionaries who have come to my notice that has confirmed many of the more earnest people in the opinion that missionary lectures are inferior in quality and do not require as much knowledge and ability as a lecture to the members of the Church on the interior things of doctrine. I must say that I find it far more difficult to deliver missionary lecture than to teach my doctrinal class, and I can imagine the possibilities of a wonderful art and wisdom in the performance of this priestly work; but I must say at the same time that my ideal is far removed from that of certain famous missionaries in the history of the New Church, and my admiration for the work of men like Chauncey Giles, for example, is very moderate.                         

     The subjects to which I have come back every year are: "The Internal Sense of the Story of Creation"; "The Internal Sense of the Christmas Story"; "The Internal Sense of the Story of the Crucifixion"; "The Internal Sense of the Story of the Resurrection." This series of lectures gives an opportunity to expound, by means of the letter of the Word itself, all the generals of the doctrine concerning the Lord and concerning the Sacred Scripture.

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These subjects, each in its own way, bear on the fundamentals of our religion, namely, the regeneration of man or the establishment of the church, the fall and judgment of the church, the establishment of a new church.

     Of course, the series must be introduced and closed with general remarks concerning the Divine mission of Emanuel Swedenborg, and concerning the Second Coming of the Lord and the establishment of the New Jerusalem. I do not know of any better way to move both the affection and the thought of a receptive mind than to show him the fundamental concepts of the true Christian religion, hidden within the words of the Gospel story concerning the birth, the death and the resurrection of the Lord. It is evident that these subjects also give ample opportunity to speak about the life after death, and about heaven and hell, but then it is possible to present all such particulars in the light of general truths. I am convinced that these subjects would also be excellent for missionary pamphlets; but the very best missionary pamphlet which I can imagine would be, just as it stands, the exposition of the internal sense of the Ten Commandments in the Arcana Celestia, the True Christian Religion and the Apocalypse Explained, with the introduction of a few general remarks on the Lord as the Word and His coming in the revelation of truth.

     As to the mode of lecturing, I think that an extemporaneous missionary lecture has great advantages when compared with a written lecture. The machinery of a written lecture is so clumsy that you will find it impossible to remain in continuous contact with your audience. It is possible to present the truth in such a way that it is convincing to the good will. This is a genuine priestly use. It charges the priest with the difficult task of finding and bringing into practice all the spiritual and rational laws involved. The love of the use will give the perception of the means; and also, in connection with this work, the priest should base all his efforts on the faith that all genuine priestly work is the Work of the Lord himself.

     All my experience has confirmed me in the view, and it is also evident from a rational consideration of the problem, that missionary lectures are only the very first beginning of external evangelization. It is of the greatest importance that the first results should be made the object of further and continuous care.

572


It is in a deep and wonderful sense that the work of evangelization is compared to the work of the tiller of the soil, whose care and attention for his field must be very close, from the first preparation of the ground, and from the sowing unto the bringing in of the harvest. What I want to say is this: I consider it wrong, and an imprudent dissipation of means and energy, to organize any missionary efforts without a definite provision to take care of the results. I question, therefore, the wisdom of doing systematic missionary work more than once a year, and this in the form of a public course such as I have described. When this is finished, we again take up our usual doctrinal class. Those whose interest has been aroused by attending the course of public lectures are then invited to the doctrinal class. By following this method it has been our experience that each year a small but certain number of people have gradually found their way into the Church.

     I have told you that before we had the church society in Holland we had the Swedenborg Society. When we began with the establishment of the church, I felt that it would be useful to continue the Swedenborg Society, and to charge it mainly with the task of representing the church in its intercourse with the outer world. Our experience has proven that this feeling was justified.

     The Swedenborg Society of The Hague has proven to be of such a great use that we could by no means carry on our work now without it. There are no other requirements for membership than a very modest annual contribution, and the charter and by-laws provide that the Swedenborg Society will remain entirely under the control of the church. The majority of the board must be members of the church, and the pastor of the church society is ex-officio President of the Swedenborg Society. We could, therefore, safely give several important tasks into the hands of the Swedenborg Society,-our publishing department, our bookroom, our library; and even the annual missionary course is given under the auspices of the Swedenborg Society.

     It is due to the whole psychology of the case that the public feels more free to come into contact and to deal with such a society than with the church itself, and nevertheless provision is made that nothing of the ecclesiastical standard and integrity of the church is compromised. Perhaps I may say that this is nothing else than an orderly application of the general law of preparation.

573




     I cannot help feeling that almost every New Church Society should have something similar to this, which may work as a kind of forecourt to the Church. We have found that it happens quite frequently that those who have tarried in this forecourt a while enter after their appointed lime into the Holy Place of the Church itself. I wish the pastors of the General Church would seriously take into consideration the organizing of such auxiliary Swedenborg societies. The name of Swedenborg is truly a venerable name; like the names of Moses, Isaiah, Matthew, and John, it is, in a certain sense, a holy name. That there is an internal sense in the name "Emanuel Swedenborg," just as in the names of all the inspired writers of the Old and New Testaments, is quite evident; and you know that Swedenborg himself once wrote to a friend, that "Swedenborgianism is nothing else than the Worship of the Lord our Savior." The Swedenborg Society at The Hague numbers at present 102 members, the Church society, as I told you before, 59.

     In the foregoing I have tried to analyze what, according to my understanding, the Divine institution of the Sacrament of Baptism involves for every pastor of the Church. The practical significance of Baptism is external evangelization; but the practical significance of the Holy Supper is internal evangelization. In the administration of the two Sacraments all priestly uses are involved.

     As to the work of internal evangelization, we have tried to live up as fully as possible to the standard of the General Church. We have regular Sunday services according to the Liturgy, slightly shortened, and the monthly administration of the Holy Supper. We have a doctrinal class every Thursday evening, and a social supper once a month. We have not yet attained the ideal of a school, but it is an object toward which we strive; and we have taken provisional care of this great necessity by having a children's service for the younger children once a week, and by organizing classes of religious instruction for the older ones.

     I would say that the quintessence of internal evangelization is to lead the people in the way of regeneration, and to the internal worship of the Lord, by means of the exposition of the spiritual sense of the Word. The earnest endeavor to bring the people more and more to an intelligent vision of the Arcana and the Heavenly Doctrine will gradually make self-evident to everyone the truth that the Writings are the Lord Himself and the rational Word.

574




     The spiritual instruction given in the sermon and in the doctrinal class must make the members of a society gradually familiar with the fundamentals and with many particulars of the Divine exposition of the universal theology and the universal anthropology, as it is to be found in the Arcana Celestia. To the members of a well-instructed society, the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be full of a very definite spiritual significance. On hearing, for instance, the stories of Abraham's doing down to Egypt, of Isaac's blessing his son Jacob, of Jacob's flight from Laban, or of Joseph's being hated by his brothers, their thought will be aroused to bring forth from their memory certain very definite teachings concerning the Lord, the heavens, the church and man.

     It is the responsible task and privilege of the church gradually to come to see and worship the Lord in His Divine Human, in accordance with the genuine truths which are involved in all the representative stories of the Word. Every single word of Scripture is as it were waiting to be understood by the church. In our worship, we should more and more come to avoid any devotion which is not based upon and conjoined with the distinct understanding of spiritual truths. It is a false charge that this is an outgrowth of intellectualism. There is no pure affection in a man of our age, unless it be the affection of truth; for with us all affection of good must also be based upon the affection of truth.

     It is indeed a fact that, for those who know nothing of the existence of the new Revelation, there is nevertheless a possibility of genuine worship from their gentile charity and from the appearances of truth. But if those who know of the existence of the Writings refuse in their worship to base all their ideas concerning the Lord upon His own truth, as He, for the first time, has revealed it in the Third Testament of His Word, they should be reminded of the teaching that there is worship of the Lord from the Lord, which is the true worship, and that there is worship of the Lord from man's own will and thought, and that this worship, if internally scrutinized, appears to be full of unspeakable filthiness, however pathetic and pious it may appear from without.

     The Lord has made His Coming in the revelation of truth, and after a man has entered upon the way of regeneration according to his understanding of the spiritual sense of the Word, he should be utterly distrustful of all his religious emotions which are not clearly based upon the understanding and appreciation of the Heavenly Doctrine.

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No man at this day can really see the Lord and worship Him in truth, except he see and worship Him in the Writings. We cannot possibly see the Lord in the Old Testament or in the Gospel except it be in the light of the Writings. In the mind of a New Churchman, every thought concerning the Lord which is not from that source is from his own proprium, and is therefore false and evil.

     They who deny the Divinity of the Writings, or who have the curious idea that it is possible to say that the Writings are a Divine Revelation but not the Word, and not the Divine Human of the Lord Himself, who, therefore, deny that the Writings are the Word, are denying the Divinity of the Lord Himself. For it is utterly impossible to have a rational concept of the Divinity of the Lord except from a rational Word. The true spirit of the Church is to receive the Lord in His own revealed truth; but to reject His revealed truth, and to deny the Divinity and to challenge the authority thereof, and to refuse to see and worship the Lord according to His own revealed truth, is the same thing as to persecute, to revile and to crucify the Lord.

     Who does not see that if the Heavenly Doctrine is bound, minimized and put aside, the Lord Himself is bound, minimized and put aside? It is quite evident, and it is distinctly taught, that the story of the Crucifixion has its application to the Second Coming also, because every least thing of the Word has a universal application, and especially such greatest things. And it is quite clear that the Pharisees and scribes of the Second Coming are not those who have never heard of this Second Coming, but they are those who, having heard of it, have made themselves the judges over the Divine Human in which the Lord has now appeared.

     The Divine Human is manifested in one way in the Old Testament, in another and more interior way in the New Testament, and in still another and inmost way in the Writings. When the Lord made His First Coming, the Jews were opposed to His Divine Human as it appears in the New Testament; they would acknowledge no other Divine Human than that of their own idea from the Old Testament. And now that the Lord has made His Second Coming in His Divine Human of the Heavenly Doctrine, there are, among those in the Christian world to whom He has manifested Himself, some who are opposed to the Divine Human of the Heavenly Doctrine.

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Truly, such religious bodies are not of the New Church; they are merely curiosities, because anachronical and paradoxical sects of the first Christian Church. Simply to say that one believes that the Christ of the New Testament is Jehovah Himself of the Old, may, with many people, be nothing more than a series of positive falsities, or at best a series of empty words. The Lord can manifest Himself in His genuine essence only to those who are willing to elevate their understandings above their own darkness, and to come into the light of genuine spiritual truth.

     But I am speaking of a conflict that happily does not obtain in Holland. Yet it is just the realization of this threatening danger, wherever the self-assertion of the human proprium is imminent, that makes me put so much stress upon the necessity of making the utmost of the opportunities which our sermon and our doctrinal class afford for the instruction in the spiritual sense of the Word. All spiritual instruction should impress the audience as something original and new. After all, a good instructor is always instructing for the sake of his own instruction. This is an application of the heavenly law, that he who best takes care of others will best take care of himself. The Arcana Celestia gives an infinite field for a genuine exposition of spiritual truth which is always new and original. The thought of the angels, although they are always concerning the same subject of the Creator's love for the angelic and the human race, are never exactly the same. Therefore, also, it is said that "every scribe who is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." (Matt. 13:52)

     I have made it the chief aim of my teaching that the Arcana Celestia should not be a closed book for the members of our society. I have made it a habit, from which I could now deviate only with difficulty, to systematize all my sermons in a continuous series. Beginning seven years ago with the exposition of the first chapter of Genesis, we have now reached the 37th chapter, which treats of the story of Joseph's being sold into Egypt by his brothers. In the doctrinal class, our subject during the first three years was the Apocalypse Revealed, and during the last four years the subject was the Book of Exodus, from the 19th to the 29th chapters.

577




     The purpose of this address has been to illustrate my faith, that if we accept the pastoral office in the full extent of all its legitimate uses, it is possible to progress from the ultimate of external evangelization to the old Academy ideals, with all its internal uses. And I will conclude with expressing my conviction that the further development of an intelligent and loyal priesthood, in the same spirit as hitherto, is the only hope of the New Church.

     DISCUSSION OF MR. PFEIFFER'S ADDRESS.

     Dr. Alfred Acton: I listened with a great deal of appreciation to Mr. Pfeiffer's very able paper. It was not only an account of the excellent work he is doing, but it was also a very able exposition of the principles which have actuated him in that work,-the underlying principle of which is, that a man should be introduced into the New Church by the letter of the Word, and afterwards should be thoroughly instructed in the Doctrines of the New Church, in order that he may be a New Churchman in fact as well as in name. But towards the end of his paper he had what someone has called "hot stuff," in which he rather excluded from the New Church, or seemed to do so, all who do not believe that the Writings are the Word, He did not say so in these words, but that is what I understood him to mean. He said that the Scribes and Pharisees are not those who do not hear of the New Church, but those who do; presumably, also, those who more or less profess it. It seems to me there is no analogy there. The Scribes and Pharisees are those who have heard, but have refused to receive. In addition, there are those who have received it in various degrees, but have introduced heresies. These he likens to those in the Old Church who do likewise.

     At the very center, I think we are all united upon the acknowledgment of the Writings as the Divine Revelation now given as the Second Coming of the Lord. But the formula that the Writings are the Word is not the only formula that can express that acknowledgment. I believe that it is coming more and more to be the case that that will be the only formula, because in that expression the belief in the Divine Authority of the Writings is becoming more and more crystallized. But there are men in the New Church who do not see the appropriateness of that expression, but who yet believe in the philosophy of the Writings as the sole standard of the New Church. To my mind, such men are contradictory to themselves, rather than deniers of the truth concerning the Writings, because of the fact, as the Bishop pointed out so clearly yesterday, that the acknowledgment of the Divine Authority of the Writings brings with it the acknowledgment that they are the most excellent of all revelations; and, therefore, if they are that, you will have to find some word more excellent that the Word itself.

578




     Now this acknowledgment that the Writings are the Word is denied by many people, on the ground that the Writings themselves do not specifically declare that they are the Word. I might remark, in this connection, that no revelation declares itself distinctly and clearly to be of Divine Authority The Lord Himself refused to give a sign. And in the New Testament, where it refers to the "Scriptures," it is referring to the Old Testament. Every revelation is made on the basis of a former revelation It is only in the light of a former revelation that the Word can be recognized and seen; therefore the Lord Himself so often appealed to the Old Testament When the Old Testament was introduced into the New, then it behooved the Christian Church to see that this is the Word, and from this to derive its doctrine. So it is with the Writings now given to the New Church. They do not unequivocally state that they are the Word, except possibly for in the statement in the beginning of the True Christian Religion, where it states that "unless the Lord had come again in the Divine Truth, which is the Word, no man could have been saved." But even this is interpreted as referring to the letter of the Word. And this I understand to be the real crux of Mr. Pfeiffer's method of missionary work. When it is said that "doctrine is to be drawn from the letter of the Word, and confirmed thereby," (S. S. 50), the reference is to the Old and New Testaments, and it is from these that the doctrines of the New Churchman are to be drawn.

     Now this doctrine is the doctrine which the Christian Church might have drawn, had it remained in its integrity. And you will find that the doctrines upon which the different bodies of the New Church are united are those doctrines which are distinctly drawn from the letter of the Word and confirmed thereby. And it is the preaching of those doctrines that really constitutes the New Church, and really introduces into the New Church But when we have been introduced into the New Church, then, as Mr. Pfeiffer said, we must take a rather dose attitude, and draw our doctrines from the Writings. There is no dispute in the Church as to the letter of the Word; all our disputes are based upon the interpretation of the doctrines of the Church, whether correctly or not. For instance, our doctrine of social life in the Church, our doctrine of the priesthood, are not taken from the Letter of the Word, but from the Heavenly Doctrine. So, while Swedenborg says that the doctrine of the Church must be drawn from the letter of the Word and confirmed thereby, and while specifically and literally he does refer to the Old and New Testaments, the great truth there revealed is that every church must draw its doctrines from revelation; and our revelation is called the Heavenly Doctrine.

     To say the Writings are the Word is not a new thing. As the Bishop implied in his opening address, it was settled in the declaration made by Robert Hindmarsh that these Writings are the Second Coming of the Lord. Even prior to Robert Hindmarsh, during Swedenborg's own time, at Skara in 1771, a priest of the name of Smitt was tried in the Skara Consistory to Swedenborgianism, and in that trial be openly declared that the Writings of Swedenborg were as much the Word of God the Four Gospels. Moreover, a little later, Dr. Beyer wrote, not quite so clearly, but to the same effect, in a letter to Nordenskiold. In the beginning of 1801 or 1802, a gentleman, writing to a journal of the New Church (The Aurora), said that he had found that there were two classes of people in the Church; one acknowledging the Writings of Swedenborg to be as much the Word of God as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and another class that acknowledged them as a general Divine Revelation.

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This letter led to a discussion throughout the year. It is a curious fact that the ministers who opposed the doctrine that the Writings are the Word were not in London; those in London inclined to it. Tulk wrote supporting the doctrine, and others wrote quite strongly. Nevertheless, in 1802 or 1803, two sermons were published which were intended to be delivered in London, but which were not, and these sermons brought together every passage that has subsequently been adduced by the Academy to prove that the Writings are the veritable Word of God, just as much as the Old and New Testaments.

     Now, if we do not acknowledge that, I say we have not entered into the center of the Church. We lead to the doors of the New Church when we preach the doctrines of the Church drawn from the letter of the Word. But our true work of evangelization,-the work in which we are placing the very soul of our movement, the work on which we rely for the establishment on earth of a genuine knowledge of the Heavenly Doctrine, of the arcana now revealed from heaven,-is to lead into the doctrines peculiar to the New Church, which must be drawn from the Writings and confirmed thereby. And this is what I understand is meant in the Writings by the statement that "doctrine is to be drawn from the letter of the Word, and confirmed thereby," namely, that the doctrines of any church, and of the New Church in particular, must be drawn from its Word, from its Revelation, and then must be confirmed by that Revelation.

     Rev. Albert Bjorck: I was very much interested in Mr. Pfeiffer's address, and perhaps even more so in what Dr. Acton has just said. This is natural, because he supports the position I tried to make clear in my address. I do not understand how it could be otherwise. When the Writings are once accepted as the Word of the Lord, the logical consequence is to know that no revelation of spiritual truths can be given to men without an ultimate sense. If that is the Word, it is the Word in the letter. I do not understand how anybody who clearly understands this can avoid coming to the conclusion that what the Lord has revealed in the Writings is a crowning revelation. That revelation which is the crown of all revelations is the authority of the Lord. For when we have once accepted this truth, we do not need any confirmation from the Old and New Testaments; but the letter of the Word, that is where we have to confirm the truth.

     Another thing is, that when we present the truth to other people who do not know anything about the Writings, we appeal to their knowledge of the Old and New Testaments. But if New Churchmen have once accepted that the Writings are the Word, the logical consequence is to admit them to be the Divine Authority, without any confirmation; and I tried to make that clear by showing how the Church is like one individual, When a man understands a thing clearly, he can see that that truth is implied in some experience of his, but he has no need to confirm the truth by that experience.

580




     Mr. Pfeiffer, in his paper, spoke about the different circumstances that prevail in different countries, and how, in the case of a monarchy, our freedom is circumscribed by circumstances. In America, when the Academy was formed, it was in protest against certain views in the Convention. You had to separate. It was necessary. You had to concentrate upon the education of the young; and I think that is necessary in all bodies. Convention went on doing what they called "missionary work" exclusively, not recognizing that the education of the young is also missionary work. Mr. Pfeiffer went to Holland, where he did not find it necessary to separate from any New Church body or group of people knowing the New Church, and he started in with the same idea that education is the first and fundamental. It is strange enough that you in the United States have not been striving for missionary work until quite lately. Before the cathedral was built, you had to leave it to the Convention to do this. Now in Sweden there are similar conditions to those that existed in the United States at the beginning of the Academy. The society to which Mr. Baeckstrom is ministering was formed by a nucleus that withdrew from the existing New Church body. If that circle or society is to grow, and grow strong, so that it can carry on real missionary work continually, that strength,-the strength in the center,-must be preserved. I am afraid that the missionary work will weaken the center, instead of making it stronger. It will weaken it, because the time and application should necessarily be concentrated upon the center from which light should afterwards be spread.

     Rev. F. E. Waelchli: While I am in full agreement with what has been said, as to the Writings being the letter of the Word from which our doctrine is to be drawn, I feel that something further should be said in regard to that. The Word was given to us in three phases,-the Old Testament, the New Testament, and in the Writings of the Church,-which is, so to say, the Letter of the Word. And if we might make a distinction, we might say the letter of the Old Testament is on the sensual plane, the New Testament on the natural, and the Writings on the rational. Now I feel that the letter, as it is in the Writings of the New Church, must everywhere rest upon that letter which is in the New Testament as upon an ultimate, and this again must rest finally on that letter which is of the Old Testament. I think it must be true, and we must agree, that there is not a single thing in the Doctrines of the New Church, not a single thing in the Writings, but what somewhere in the New Testament is its ultimate, its basis, its containant; and a still further ultimate, basis, and containant in the letter of the Old Testament. If it were not so, it would be lacking its foundation, and it would be like a palace in the air without a foundation upon which to rest. The statement is very strong in the Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture, to the effect that the Word in its spiritual and celestial senses would not be the Word without the Word in its natural sense. So everything of our doctrine must finally rest upon the letter of the Old and New Testaments. We may find it difficult sometimes to determine just where that ultimate is, just on what portions of the Word it rests, but it must rest there. Our doctrine needs it.

581




     Now, as to what is the real character of the revelation which is given to us in the Writings, and wherein lies the distinction between it and that which the first Christian Church might have known, had it remained a true Church, this distinction lies in the manner in which the Lord reveals Himself. The Christian Church might have known from the Word that the Lord Jesus Christ is the One Only God, in whom is the Divine Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is known from the letter of the Word; it is there everywhere. But that doctrine,-the genuine truth of the letter of the Word,-was lost, and had to be restored in the Doctrines of the New Church. Yet that is not really what is new in the Revelation of the New Church. There is something distinctly new concerning the Lord which the Doctrine of the New Church gives, something beyond the idea that the Lord Jesus Christ is the One Only Divine Man; and that which is new is this, that this Divine Man, as to Substance is the Divine Love, and as to Form is the Divine Wisdom. That is now the whole Doctrine of the New Church from beginning to end, and is the Lord's revealing Himself in His Second Coming, revealing Himself as the Divine Love and Divine Wisdom; and also that man is an image of that Love and Wisdom. I think you would find it difficult to open the Writings at any page, and not come upon the expressions "love and wisdom" and "good and truth." And that is what all the Writings are. And so they give us the spiritual idea of the Word, and thought of the Lord Jesus Christ in Person as the One Divine Man, in whom is the Divine Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the thought of Him as the Divine Man, who is Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, is a spiritual conception that is the new thing to the New Church. That is the Lord's Revelation of Himself which is made in the Writings of the New Church. And again I would say, all that is there can well find its ultimate in the letter of the New Testament, and finally in the letter of the Old Testament.

     Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom: Mr. Bjorck referred to the work in Sweden, and it is as he said,-we started from a nucleus that consisted of twelve persons. Had I started in educational work, there would have been scarcely any society at all in Stockholm, but there are now almost one hundred people. And the same would have been the case if I had confined myself to missionary work in Stockholm, when there are so many in other places of the country who are more or less receivers. For at almost every place and every city to which I go, somebody introduces himself as a reader of the Writings. We have got hold of those people, it seems to me, and there are several at a distance who are members of the society, and who want to have the Holy Supper from a New Church minister, and I try to visit them once a year. And if I do that work of visiting them, and giving them the Holy Supper, and at the same time take the opportunity to give a missionary lecture, is it not a wise thing to do? I think that you will all acknowledge that it is right to do so.

     The society in Sweden is still alive, and this is due mostly to the interest that has been aroused in other places than Stockholm. Furthermore, I think it is our duty to think of those people who are away from the center, and I try to do this during the year, traveling continually, even on Sundays. It is very expensive, but in order not to suspend the work I undertake to do this once or twice a year. Then I have extended the work to Norway.

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I was very hesitant in doing so, but I was called there by the Norwegians themselves. There are several receivers in Norway. In Stavanger, there is quite an Academy man who is a lone New Churchman in that place. Yet he is so devoted to the Church that I see no difference between him and you here. To see his affection, and to hear from him all he felt when visited by me for the first time, I will never forget it, and I think it would be a great mistake to leave these isolated people alone. Mr. Bronniche, a Conference minister, had undertaken some work in Norway before, but had given it up because of lack of strength. So I asked him what I should do, and he said he would be very glad if I would take care of these people. Judging from circumstances, the prospects in Norway seem more promising than in Sweden; at least, the newspapers there are favorable, which they are not at all in Sweden. If, for instance, it were possible to have a man live in Oslo, the capital, he would soon be able to build up a New Church society there. I only regret that he would be alone. There is much to do, and there would be work for two others at least. But I am afraid I shall have to do it, even at the sacrifice of time for Stockholm. However, I have a feeling that it is useful for people there to think of others than themselves; though, in connection with the missionary work we are doing, we try to be economical, charging an entrance fee, etc. So if people are willing to sacrifice for that work, I think it is good to do it.

     Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer: I feel that I should rise for a moment to defend myself against a charge of having presented to you "hot stuff," because it would simply mean that I had done the very thing which I criticized so much in my paper, namely, that one should not run off with his own emotions, without being sure that such emotions are conjoined with the distinct understanding of truth. And that is what I understand "hot stuff" to be, namely, something given to eat that burns the tongue, hurting the body instead of being healthy.

     Of course, I have realized that there are states of genuine perception and worship of the Lord without the distinct and rational understanding that the Heavenly Doctrines are the Word. Such states are possible even in the Old Church. And I am quite sure that the large majority of the members of other so-called New Church sections are of that kind. I was not thinking of these when I spoke of the possibility that a man may worship the Lord and love Him from gentile charity and from the appearances of truth. But I was referring to those who have had a part in the history of the New Church during the last fifty years, and even in the time of Hindmarsh, of whom we cannot but say that they have positively put themselves against the fundamental doctrines concerning the priesthood and many other doctrines. And the periodicals of the New Church are full of such instances, where we find accounts of open attacks, cases of binding the Divine Doctrines, of putting aside the Divine Doctrines. These are the words I used: "binding," "minimizing," and "putting aside" the Divine Doctrines, which amounts to the same thing as so treating the Lord Himself. And I think history proves that this has been done by many ministers, and also by many prominent laymen, of other so-called New Church sections. There is an application of the story of the crucifixion to the First Christian Church, and there is a universal application of every story of the Word.

583


But I hold that there is, at the present time, special application to those to whom the Lord has manifested Himself in the Writings; and that application is much more distinct and much more evident if a man has had the Heavenly Doctrine in his hand,-and binds it, and minimizes it, and puts it aside. That is a case of the story of the Scribes and Pharisees.

     I feel that I should make these few remarks, to try to make it clear that the specific remarks which Dr. Acton criticized were not "hot stuff," but that they were very carefully prepared food, and very tastefully spiced and peppered; and that if Dr. Acton will be so kind as to try it once more, it will taste better.

     I want to make one other remark with regard to the work of my beloved friend, Mr. Baeckstrom. In writing my paper, I was not thinking of Mr. Baeckstrom, or of any other country, or of any other method of doing the work of evangelizing, but only of my own country. When I was considering the way to start evangelizing, I considered all possibilities, and I looked for the way which would, in Holland, lead more directly to success. And I assure you that I have only appreciation for the work Mr. Baeckstrom is doing. I was present during his speech last night, when he said that he thought it very important to take care of those who are isolated. I think likewise. And whenever we get any response from outside, we do the very best we can to get in touch with these people, and to keep them as close as possible to us. And we are glad when this happens. What I meant to say was, that I would not expend special energy and means to try to arouse such reception. I would leave that work to Divine Providence. We are doing our external evangelization in a systematic way. We are doing it only in our own sphere. But if we excite interest outside of our circle, we always do our very best to take care of these also.

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PROGRESS 1928

PROGRESS       Rev. ALBERT BJORCK       1928

     The truths from the Lord revealed to us in the Writings give us the laws of all true progress. These laws are plainly to be seen by all who possess an elementary knowledge of the general teachings of the Writings. They show us that the beginning of all progress rests upon our shunning what is evil and false, and that we must do this as of ourselves. But it is only through revelation of truth from the Lord that we can obtain a knowledge of the evil and false that are to be shunned. This revelation comes to us in an external form which we become aware of through our bodily senses, as we do all things that surround us in this world. If we believe that the Lord has given us that revelation, and if we obey it, and shun what it tells us is evil and false, we can receive love for the opposite good and truth through influx from, the Lord, which is from His life. So, guided by the Lord, we progress in heavenly life. All who faithfully endeavor to do so can in this way make a general progress spiritually, even if they have no intellectual grasp as to why the revelation or the teaching of the Church comes from the Lord, or are not themselves aware of His guidance and their progress.

     The Lord, however, has given to his New Church particulars of teaching which enable us to see the laws of progress in a clearer light, to understand the reasons for them and the manner of their working, and therefore to cooperate more and more fully with Him in the progress He desires us to make, and also to see whether we are progressing or not. These particular teachings also indicate the reasons why we as individuals often fail to do what we ought to do for our own progress and that of the Church, and, as a consequence of this, they also indicate something of the manner in which best we can work together as laymen, teachers, pastors or governors in the ecclesiastical matters of the Church.

     One of these particular teachings is that the Church is a unit, and that it grows in a manner corresponding to the growth of the individual man's body and mind.

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     The Writings tell us that there have been several Churches on this earth, and that they have died, one after another, each being succeeded by a new church raised up by the Lord; and further, that each of these Churches passed through states corresponding to those of man's infancy, childhood, youth and manhood up to old age. When this teaching alone is dwelt upon, it may overshadow or seem to contradict the other teaching, that the Church on earth, from the very first to the present time, is like one man, and has grown as one man who has now reached the age of manhood. In the light of this teaching, we may see that the Church has never really died, and that its heart has never ceased to beat, though its breathing has been temporarily suspended, giving it the appearance of being dead.

     To some it may seem difficult to understand that the Lord's New Church, numerically small and feeble, and which can hardly be said to have grown out of its early childhood, is the same individual who, at the time of the Lord's First Advent, had reached the state of youth, when the natural rationality had developed to such an extent that it could serve as a soil in which spiritual truths could be sown and spiritual-natural thoughts grow up. The childhood of this same individual is represented by the story of the Old Testament, from Moses to the Coming of the Lord, while his earlier childhood coincides with the period depicted in the Word by the time from Noah up to Moses, and his innocent infancy is represented by Adam dwelling in the Garden of Eden.

     The heavens are all one in the sight of the Lord, and the church on earth is one with the heavens. Without the church, the heavens could not grow, neither could they subsist. The church is their very foundation, and, though it is true that the life of the church comes from the Lord through the heavens, it is equally true that the growth and life of the heavens comes from the Lord through the church on earth, where the Word that creates the heavens is with men.

     In the light of this teaching we see that the progress of the church and the heavens is a process of growth and development which involves constant movement and change. The laws of spiritual progress me therefore the same that govern the changes and movements of the human mind. That which is static can never produce anything.

     Swedenborg was aware of this law long before he became the Lord's servant as a revelator of spiritual truths. In his Principia, he says that "whatever is void of motion remains just as it is; that which is in a quiescent state produces nothing; whatever is to be produced must be produced by a mode or by motion." (Vol. I, p. 49.)

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     Although the heavens, in the sight of the Lord, are like one man, each one of them, yea, each society of the different heavens, seen by itself, is also a complete man. So the different stages in the development of the one church on earth may be said to be a unit in itself. The schoolboy learning the rudiments of natural science and the strict rules of external conduct is a very different being from the same individual in his infancy or in the years of his earliest childhood. The erstwhile innocence is gone, and his mind, now being filled with knowledge of material and external things, no longer understands the workings of his imagination in early childhood, which gifted all dead things with life and made them symbols of life. As the understanding of this disappears, the very memory of it is gradually lost.

     The Writings declare, and give us to understand, that, if the Most Ancient Church had not lost its integrity, the church on earth, and the heavens from it, would nevertheless have grown from infancy to childhood, youth and manhood. It would not have remained an infant, but its development would have proceeded along lines different from those necessitated by the Fall, until celestial manhood had been reached. The growth would have taken place without the separation of the understanding from the will; and consequently without the pronounced differences in state that now characterize and stamp the different ages of the church, and make them appear to be different churches succeeding one another. In that case, as I picture it to my mind, the innocence of infancy and the interior reception of knowledge of good from the Lord would have followed the growth of the church throughout all its ages, uninterrupted by periods of evil in the will and false beliefs, which we now mark as the end and death of a church.

     The pronounced difference of the state of mind with men in the different ages after the Fall necessitated a different, and, as it were, a separate revelation of truth to each age, adapted to a new plane of development in the mind. On each of these new revelations of truth from the Lord a new church was raised up.

     Each of these successive churches, in its turn, passes through stages of growth corresponding to infancy, childhood, youth and manhood in the individual. According to the degree in which men of the church allow themselves to be guided by the revelation adapted to the stage of growth which their minds have opened up to, the progress of the church is advanced or retarded.

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     The Lord's New Church coincides with that stage of growth with the one church which corresponds to early manhood, when the natural rationality has developed so that it can begin to see spiritual things in a rational way when they are presented; that is, to understand truths, not as they are represented by corresponding things on another plane, but to see these spiritual truths themselves on their own plane, as far as they can be presented in natural language. When that stage in the growth of the human mind has been reached, it is possible for us to receive a revelation that opens the mysteries of faith and allows us to enter into them intellectually. Before that, neither the human instrument necessary for the revelation nor any acceptance of its truths by others is possible.

     II.

     We are told that the New Church is the crown of all the Churches; that it is to become a celestial Church, whose wisdom will surpass that of the Most Ancient Church, even as the wisdom of an old man surpasses that of an infant. We are also led to understand that the Lord's New Church is not to degenerate and die as the Churches before it, but that it will grow in wisdom as it advances from childhood into youth and manhood. This is so because the Lord in His Divine Human is with us in the Word of His Second Advent in a fuller and more direct sense than He could be in the revelations adapted to previous ages of the one Church. The general truths of life are there so plainly revealed that they cannot be misinterpreted by men in whom the degree of spiritual rationality has been opened; and the infinite love and wisdom of the Lord, who is the creating Life Itself, will be seen more and more plainly through the particulars of doctrine, as the spiritual rationality of men within the Church grows, guided by the generals, and this to eternity.

     This does not imply that particular organizations of the external New Church may not degenerate and become useless as organs in the main body, or even disappear. Men of the New Church, like men of previous Churches, are left in freedom, and can abuse that freedom. Through abuse of freedom, faith, and also the understanding of spiritual things, may be lost. Led by themselves, men may come to misinterpret even the most clear and fundamental of the revealed doctrines.

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But it does imply that there will always be men within the external organizations who will not be led astray, but who, loving the truth for the sake of truth, will be led by the Lord to react against such misinterpretations, this very reaction stimulating their comprehension of the revealed truths. Such men constitute the real Church. They keep the foundations for the New Christian Heaven strong, and after the death of the body they enter that heaven, and take thither the clearer light which they, as men on earth, received from the Lord in the Word. For the angels are instructed in heavenly truths from the Word that is with men.

     This being so, it necessarily follows that the heavenly truths revealed by the Lord to those whose minds are capable of seeing spiritual things in a rational way are truths in themselves from the Lord. They are not a man's inspired explanations of previously given revelations, but they are given us by the Lord Himself for the guidance and growth of spiritual life in the New Church. The revealed Doctrine is verily the Word of the Lord to His New Church, and its truths should be accepted on the authority of the Lord Himself. In other words, they are unlike the explanations any man could make of previous revelations, and in this respect, that they have no need to be confirmed by the representations of truth in the former revelations. Yet the man of the church who receives these truths on the authority of the Lord can see that they are involved in those representations, and without that his consciousness of the church as one unit could not be preserved.

     The fact that we, in the light of the Word of the Lord to His New Church, can see that the truths given us there are involved in the representations of truth given to former Churches, arises from the other fact that the Churches which apparently died and succeeded one another, in reality constitute one man, and are not separate, except in the sense that the planes of a man's mind as to capacity to see and to state truth are separate in childhood, youth and manhood.

     From what the Writings tell us we can understand that the whole past of a man's life remains in his present individuality. All the states through which we pass, succeeding one another in time, from earliest infancy-the feelings we harbor, the ideas we form, and all that we learn, often seemingly forgotten and vanished with the never-to-be-recalled past-all nevertheless have had something to do with the forming of our present state.

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And as the present is ever passing, they are pushing into the future, and will have something to do with the tendency and direction of our future growth, however unconscious of the fact we may be.

     This consideration helps us to understand how the different Churches represent the different ages in one individual. There is not a sudden leap from one to another, but the one succeeds the other through remains.

     Those who have come into the New Church in mature years will, if they reflect, find that they have accepted the Divinely revealed Doctrine, not through reasoning about its truths, but because the new truths, when presented to them, answered to something within them,-some inner state awakened to life by the truth, and affirming it. Reasoning about the truth generally comes later, or, if the acceptance is the result of reasoning alone, it may never become anything more than an intellectual admittance of its reasonableness; and that kind of acceptance, other doctrines, false but plausible, might secure.

     This response to revealed truth means that there were in us remains of states formed in earlier periods of our lives, which met and united with the truths presented tons. These remains-they may be affections implanted in infancy or instruction received in later childhood and youth-have blended in the forming of our minds, so that we were prevented from an interior confirmation of the false teaching of the degenerated Church. If not, the truths of the new revelation would not have found in us any soil in which it could be received and take root. The ideas and beliefs that we had accepted ready-made from others had stayed in our minds more or less externally, even if we had thought that we had accepted them fully as the truth; and therefore they could be removed, more or less easily according to their externality, and we could become functioning cells in the heart, lungs or brain of the one living Church.

     In a corresponding way there are living remnants of one church which form the nucleus of a new church. The Writings reveal this in a strikingly clear way. True precepts of charity, traditionally handed down to the descendants of the Most Ancient Church, plus their knowledge of the correspondence between spiritual and natural things, made it possible for a remnant of that Church to become the beginning of the succeeding Ancient Church, represented by Noah, and also made it possible for that Church to receive further representative revelation.

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     Belief in one God also remained with a remnant of that Ancient Church when it came to its end, and through it the one Church entered into its later childhood, when it was capable of receiving Divine commandments and giving to them an external obedience without understanding their spiritual import. By a trusting obedience to God's commandments, there grew with a few in that Church a power to receive further revelation from the Lord, prophetic of a state to come, when He, in an assumed natural humanity, could be conceived by men, and His teaching as a man on earth be followed and carried on by a few,-a remnant forming the nucleus of the Christian Church, or the period of youth in the one Church.

     When the Christian Church as a whole approached spiritual death, a remnant was preserved alive by belief in, and life according to, spiritual truths given to that Church. One of these, whose mind had been formed by such belief and life, was prepared by the Lord to become His servant in giving to the world the revelation in which He comes again as the Spirit of truth. In a similar way, others were prepared to receive the truths of the new revelation, and, by preaching them, to become the means in the Lord's hands for the building up of His New Church. The age of early manhood had been entered upon by the one Church.

     III.

     The revelations of Divine Truth from the Lord to men have always been progressive. This is most evidently the case during that age of the Church which corresponds to the school-years of children, which is represented by the Israelitish Church, witnessed to by the long period of time during which the Old Testament books were given.

     When the age of youth is reached, instruction deals more with the removal of those misinterpretations which have been imparted by poor instructors, with misconceptions in the mind of scholars, and with the true application of the knowledge received.

     This instruction was given by the Lord Himself, the Author of the textbooks used in the school-years,-the Law and the Prophets; and His instruction was adapted to the growth of mind which, with a remnant, had opened to the plane of youth in the one Church.

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To do this it was necessary that He should come in a natural humanity like ours, in which He could speak as man to men.

     But the Gospels, which contain His teaching, also came progressively into their present forms. It is probably true that the letters of Paul were written before the Gospels were in completed form, and, if so, it shows that the Master had hardly departed before those who intended and meant to carry His teaching to the world began to substitute their own ideas.

     When the first Christian Church approached its spiritual death, and it could no longer serve as a basis for the heavens or true spiritual life in men, the Lord-Life Itself-prepared Swedenborg to receive a new revelation of Divine Love and Truth, and to publish it to men in the world. This preparation of Swedenborg was progressive. (Dr. Acton has given us g wonderfully lucid exposition of that in his Introduction to the Word Explained.)

     By this preparation, Swedenborg's mind widened and progressed on the plane corresponding to manhood in the one Church, when spiritual things could be understood in a truly rational way, and the mysteries of faith be entered into intellectually, until he-his rationality instructed by the Lord Himself-could give to men a revelation in which Life Itself, the Lord with His infinite Love and Wisdom, is present and instructs us about finite human life in His image and likeness. And this revelation is the basis of the New Church.

     This revelation was also progressive. Time had to pass by as Swedenborg wrote out one work after another. During that time, stupendous changes took place in the world of spirits, which encroached upon the heavens. Those changes involved the judgment upon the false heavens, and their destruction, as also the deliverance of the salvable elements in them for the forming of a new and truly Christian heaven.

     Swedenborg was not only a witness of those changes, but they were indeed caused by the judging and upbuilding truths from the Lord in the Word which were made known by Him through Swedenborg. Obviously, the descriptions given us in the Writings of those changes and their causes, which in themselves are revelations of Divine Truths; could not have been given before they took place.

     The judgment upon the false heavens, and the way they were destroyed by the power in the Lord's Word, revealed great principles of truth upon which the New Heaven was founded, and even Swedenborg himself could not have clearly seen these truths, much less have revealed them to us in his subsequent works, before they had taken place.

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     But in the Writings the New Church has a revelation from the Lord expressed in the terms of human language by one man, who was especially prepared for that purpose. The external form in which the truths from the Lord are revealed to the New Church, and through which we can obtain a knowledge and understanding of these truths, did not pass through more than one finite mind. Even as to its human and natural side, therefore, it is more directly from the Lord than the revelations given to the former Churches. It is the crown of all the revelations, and yet it makes a one with the former, just as the New Church makes a one with the former Churches; and it will serve as a basis of growth and progress in the church and in the heavens for all ages to come.

     We acknowledge these Writings as the Word of the Lord upon which the growth and progress of the Church must be based. But the New Church, in its present stage, has barely entered into that plane in the growth of the Church, seen as one, which answers to manhood, when spiritual truths can be rationally understood. The revelation which is to serve as the basis for men's further spiritual progress, and for the growth of the heavens to all eternity, has the Lord Himself within it, that is, infinite love and truth. At present, we do not see far beneath the surface of the natural expressions through which they are revealed to us. Swedenborg himself could not possibly see all that is involved in the revelation for which he became the instrument, and this although it is given us in the language which his own rational comprehension of the truth chose for it.

     IV.

     In NEW CHURCH LIFE for March this year, the Right Rev. George de Charms, in a review of Dr. Acton's Introduction to the Word Explained, makes the observation that, if we think that Swedenborg understood all the infinite possibilities of the revelation given through him as an instrument, we "postulate a finite mind with infinite understanding, or require that the revelator himself be Divine." I think this observation is a timely warning to us not to lose sight of the fact that all finite understanding of Divinely revealed truth must necessarily be progressive, keeping step with the growth of the mind's capacity of development through instruction in and guidance by the truth.

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     In the Writings, the infinity of the Lord's Love and Wisdom is present, but we learn to see it in a finite way, and more and more of it, only as our minds develop through its guidance. That Swedenborg himself could not see all the possibilities involved in it, and that even now he cannot do so, follows from the fact that he is a created with a finite mind. This observation is also in full harmony with what we can gather from the Writings themselves about the progressive growth of the Church as a whole, and the different degrees of inspiration and consequent modes of revelation to the different Churches, corresponding to different ages of the one Church. It also points to a work to be done by members of the Church, if we are not to give up our belief in the Writings as something more than man's explanations of formerly given revelations.

     All Divine revelations to men on earth must be couched in human language. That is its ultimate or natural side. In this sense the Writings are like nature, within which the creative sphere of the Lord works. If we would progress in understanding more and more of the infinite truth they contain, and enter more and more interiorly with our intellect into the mysteries of faith, we must study the Writings in a manner similar to that in which Swedenborg, during his preparation, studied nature, the spiritual world, and the Word that existed at his time. We must train ourselves to study, develop our faculty of searching but the connections between the different statements in human language of what are continuous truths from the Lord, and become so skilled in logical analysis that we distinctly comprehend these connections, even when the statements at first seem contradictory or disharmonious.

     We are differently talented for such work, and the individual development of logical reasoning and spiritual understanding is not the same with all. There must always be teachers and learners. And among the teachers themselves there will always be differences in their understanding of what the Writings teach in many particulars, as there is now, even in regard to some leading doctrines. This, in itself, does not prevent progress for the individual or the church as a whole. It is possible for all, notwithstanding these differences of talent and development, to cooperate harmoniously for the progressive development of the whole, just as the different organs work together to ensure the proper function of the whole body.

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     But a necessary condition for progress is that we recognize the need of progress, and that all progress involves, and necessarily carries with it, change in our intellectual grasp of the teaching given us in the revealed Doctrine, even when such changes appear to some like "reversal of doctrine." If the Church as a whole recognizes that necessity, the foundation exists for the progressive perfection of an organism capable of constantly receiving, more and more interiorly, the influx of infinite truth and love from the Lord, as these are revealed to us, and to apply that influx in use to our fellow men.

     The whole trend of thought and work within the New Church must be quite different from that in previous Churches, whose leaders were chiefly concerned with defending traditionally formed theological dogmas and usages against the growing doubts among men and their attempts to rise above them. Such methods were nothing but endeavors to prevent the child from becoming a youth, or the youth from progressing into manhood. If such methods were to be used in a New Church organization, it would amount to an attempt to keep the man who lately has entered into manhood from developing and maturing the qualities that belong to mature manhood. Such methods can never succeed. They may retard the growth, but never wholly suppress it; and if insisted upon, there will be rebellion and lack of faith, resulting in the spiritual decay of the organization.

     Now, as always before in the history of the Church, the enemies of true progress are to be found in the inherited tendencies of human nature to evil. Pride in our own intelligence, lust for power, or the natural ambition striving for high places or for the applause of those who share our views,-these may at times rule us, though we are unconscious of it. And they produce a lack of charity, and the desire to force others to our conceptions, and, if they wont, to force them out of the Church organization. If such evils spread among the individuals of the Church, the progress of the whole will be jeopardized; for it is the perfection of the simple parts of the body, and their harmonious working together, that make the perfection of the whole.

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     V.

     May I, in conclusion, as an old man whom circumstances have compelled to become simply an interested spectator, ask your permission to tell you in a few words how the outlook for the immediate future present itself to me?

     I think the outlook is good, and I base that judgment upon some facts which I have observed. In the first place, it seems to me that, in our body as a whole, charity has been preserved, and has developed to such a degree that individual differences in the conception of particulars of doctrine can exist without giving rise to uncharitable or hostile attitudes, thus preserving the freedom of the individual,-the Lord's gift to all men. The Church has passed through some temptations involving attempts to repress that freedom, and has come out victorious, even if not without some scars.

     Further, we have among our teachers and leaders a high percentage of talented and learned men of studious habits and discriminating minds, who look to the Lord in His Revelation for guidance in their search for truth; and their skill in logical analysis, and their understanding of the more interior aspects of the revealed Doctrine, are being constantly developed thereby. To judge from papers published in recent years by the younger men in the Church, who in the natural order of things will become the leaders of tomorrow, they will, by the same means, be fit to carry on the progress. Such men constitute the brain of the Church, and as long as they, following in the steps of Swedenborg in their study of the Writings, learn to think rationally, and, by a life of true Christianity, learn to think wisely, and by genuine humility learn to submit their will to the Word of God, the functions of the heart and lungs in the Church as a whole will be stimulated, and the welfare and growth of the whole body furthered.

     The Lord, in and through His Word, indeed has power to make all things new, and the rational understanding of the spiritual truths revealed in the Word of His Second Coming to men is being renewed within our body; and as such renewal takes place, the Church will progress.

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     DISCUSSION OF MR. BJORCK'S ADDRESS.

     Rev. E. E. Iungerich: There are many things of deep wisdom in the paper which has been presented to us. It brings to our attention the relative smallness of man in comparison with the big association in which he is placed when in contact with the Lord's Spirit in developing His Church. It establishes the truth that the New Church is not inferior to any other. In the temporal aspect, the paper has set forth the unity of this Church, one reason being that the human mind through which the new revelation was given was a united one, and not, as in the case of previous Churches, many minds more or less automatically led, with very little rational appreciation of the revelation given. The very necessity of having a crowning revelation would require that there should be one mind, with all the units focused upon it as an instrument for that purpose. In that way a certain unity of power and strength has been given to this revelation whereby it will be the means of carrying on the Church forever. There will be no need of any further revelations. This revelation is all-sufficient, and its character gives promise that the minds which are held to it will be the means of the purification of the Church. When we think of the previous Churches, and how men came under the exercise of dominion, we can see that such a Church would be only a temporal affair. For those who were not grounded in revelation would automatically depart from it. The other planets have no written revelation, but it is said of the planet Mars that men who begin to spread disorder turn their steps automatically to solitudes. So it will be with those who do not accept revelation as a Divine thing. They automatically break away into solitudes, with the consequence that they and their descendants will have no interest in the Church, and finally there will be no Church.

     Mr. Horace Howard: I wish to say how much I enjoyed Mr. Bjorck's paper. I should like to ask a question. He said that the states of the church degenerate if the states of man degenerate. Do we look upon this as a state of degeneration like that of the Old Church, for instance? But he also pointed out the use of that Church to the Church that we belong to; and it seems to me that, in view of what we are told about the degeneration of the state of the Old Church, it would be better for us to be without its use. Let us get on with the New. Is it not a waste of time to think of the degeneration of any state? A man does not look back upon his past evils and dwell upon them. He indeed sees the evil of his youth, but does not keep thinking about it. That is how we, as laymen, ought to look at things. I feel indebted to Mr. Bjorck for his paper, and very thankful that I have been able to hear it.

     Mr. Godfrey: I must just say a few words in appreciation of the Address. The pith of it was to confirm the Writings as Divine and true. We look upon the Writings in a very holy way. I came across a passage in the Diary the other day, where it said that an angel was with Swedenborg, and the angel said that the writing was God's. And Swedenborg was let into the same state as the angel, and he could see that what was said was true. I do not wish to take up the time of the meeting, and would like to hear our friends from across the pond talk.

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     Rev. W. L. Gladish: May I just speak for myself, and perhaps for others, in saying that I think our reluctance to rise to the discussion of this most interesting and illuminating paper is that we want to hear the men from this side speak, especially the laymen. I do not like to have the ministers do all the talking. But lest there should be a feeling that we have no enthusiasm for this subject, which has been so well presented, I may state that we want to hear from the laymen about it.

     Mr. J. H. Ridgwey: Mr. Gladish's request is for those on this side, and I speak as one on this side in two senses. I belong to Britain, although I am a son of South Africa, and I belong to the General Church. The great point, and one that appealed to me more than anything else in Mr. Bjorck's paper, was the conclusive establishment of the fact that the Writings of the Revelation to the New Church are veritably the Word of the Lord. An appreciation of that fact has been given to the General Church, and we recognize the progress which Mr. Bjorck has been describing in his paper. We appreciate what is due to the original founders, Mr. Hindmarsh and others, but it did not come out then to the full blossom as it does today in the actual words that the Writings are veritably the Word of God. I regard that position as the forefront gateway into the courtyard of the Church. I believe that anyone who has not yet that acknowledgment is standing outside the growth of the crown of the Churches. And the time will come when there will be no New Churchman who does not come to the realization of that one fact, and enter into that gateway. When that happens, then the Church will begin to prosper and progress to its fullness.

     Right Rev. R. J. Tilson: I have listened with very great pleasure to the paper we have heard this morning, and I would also like to say one word, if I may, of Dr. Acton's masterly paper of yesterday morning. It was an immense joy to listen to. In his own way, Mr. Bjorck seems to have carried on very largely the same idea, and he appeals very strongly to me whenever he speaks, because he has been my comrade and friend, and we have been associated in the work of the church in this country. I have always felt inclined to give a very attentive ear to everything he-has to say, and I have found it to be for my good. I am glad that, in his paper, he brought emphasis to bear upon the fact that it was unity that composed the church. That fact, in the mercy of the Lord, has been very forcibly brought out by the assembling of the General Church in this country. There is not one ministerial office that is not based upon the fundamental fact,-the fact which I had impressed upon my mind by the beloved Dr. Tafel, and which was impressed upon me by that great man, dear Father Benade; a fact which has grown more and more evident with the years of my existence in the church;-namely, that the Writings are nothing less than the Word of the Lord to His New Church. So long as we remain fixed and settled on that point, all minor difficulties that may arise in our minds will but unite us more distinctly in the end, because we shall be founded upon the rock represented by Peter of old, upon which rock the Lord has promised to found His Church. There is no question of charity here. How abused that word has been! We are ready and willing to meet with others in those things which are not essential; but when we come down to essential difficulties, we cannot afford to go back one iota.

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     I have listened to other ministers in Conference. We have shown every disposition to work with them, but one thing has always remained with me, and that is the difference between us. One of them said that the Lord had not made His Second Coming, but is making it; that the Lord's Second Coming was not in space, but in the hearts of men. That, to my mind, is sickly sentiment, upon which you cannot build anything. The position which Dr, Tafel took, that the Writings were indeed of Divine Authority, was as a sign from heaven. Since that time we have increased in our realization of that fundamental fact, and that increase has produced a new term with us. We no longer speak merely of the Divine Authority of the Writings, for there is no longer any question of that fact. I thank my good friend for the paper he has given us this morning.

     Rev. W. H. Claxton: I had not intended intervening on the subject this morning, and I rise very reluctantly, but I do not feel that I can very well remain silent, because the position of the General Conference will be misunderstood. I am not an official representative of the Conference, but I should like to make it perfectly clear in the first place what I feel as to the Revelation of the Lord through the inspired Writings of Swedenborg, given from the time when the Arcana Celestia was being published to the dose of the True Christian Religion. Whatever difference of opinion I may hold, and those who think with me in the General Conference, there is a difference of opinion about the interpretation of these Writings, not a difference of opinion as to their truth; and I do not think that their truth is in any way increased by an insistence upon the idea that the Writings are the Word.

     A few years ago, at a British Assembly, Mr. Bjorck read us a very wonderful paper like the one this morning, and it was felt at the dose of that paper that discussion was not wise, because of the beauty of the form of the paper, but I felt it would have been wise, in regard to some of the statements included in the paper, to have left them out. One is sometimes apt to miss the full effect of the statements because of the beauty of form and the almost celestial feeling our friend is apt to enkindle in his paper. I have very great respect for Mr. Bjorck, but there are some things in which I do not agree.

     One or two things, this morning, were overlooked in his paper, and to my mind he carried the statement of truth beyond what the Writings themselves justify; at any rate, beyond that which I, as far as I am able to understand the Writings, feel that they justify. He implied in one or two phrases that the present Revelation needed no confirmation from former revelations. At the same time, the suggestion was made that there was no need of the confirmation of doctrines drawn from the Writings by the letter of the Word; and if we are to accept that, then you can take doctrine from the Writings quite apart from and independent of other inspired teachings from the Old and New Testaments; yet it does not seem to me to be implied in the position that the Writings are the Word of the Lord to the New Church. And, therefore, when that statement is made, it is due to a lack of consistent, intellectual, and careful thinking about terms. Swedenborg is very precise in the use of his terms, a great deal more precise than some writers are aware of. The simple fact is, that he is a great deal more particular in his Latin than the various gentlemen who have translated him ever realized.

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What we do really need is a consistent translation by some one mind.

     But it does not seem to me that this idea that the Writings are the Word of the Lord is sufficiently accounted for by the claim that Swedenborg uses the term "Word" in at least half a dozen different senses in the Writings. I fail to discover that Swedenborg ever uses the term "Word" in the absolute and complete sense of anything else but the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures; and when he tells us that all doctrine must be confirmed by the Word, that is the sense in which he uses it. But when he uses the term "Word" in its correspondential form, in which we have the infinite truth brought down to the natural sensual capacity of man, then he is talking about the Hebrew and the Greek, and never has he so talked of his own Writings, by which the rational mind of man was to open the Word. I am prepared to stand by that until I am satisfied that I am mistaken in the light of the Divine Revelation of the Writings themselves. And I refuse to accept it as reducing me to the position of someone who is not in the Church, as someone who has not the faith of the New Churchman, as someone who has crucified the Lord, as someone who has not accepted this Revelation through which the Lord has made His Second Coming. I claim to be a member of the New Church of the Lord, and I claim the charity that I shall be informed if I am wrong; that I shall be accepted as a member of the Church of the Lord, and shall be shown that I am wrong; and when I am so shown I am ready at once to acknowledge it.

     I do not think the way to get at the truth is by making unkind statements against an absent body. We have many faults in our body; it is by no means perfect; but there is one thing I was brought up to, and that was never to talk about people in their absence, and never to say things when they are absent that you are not prepared to say when they are present. There is another thing,-that while you may be prepared to say things very definitely when they are present, you ought never to say things about them in their absence, unnecessarily. I make it a point never to say anything or to talk of friends in their absence of what I would not be willing to say in their presence. I wish to say that we do know something of the Writings, have come to very definite conclusions, read your literature, and are not, therefore, such weaklings as you may think us, because we do not think the Writings are the Word of the Lord in the sense of complete fullness as an ultimate presentation of this truth in its external natural form.

     Mr. James Pryke: The closing words of Mr. Bjorck's paper brought such a hush upon me that I felt very diffident about making any comment upon it. That feeling was rather intensified by what Mr. Iungerich said, but it was lessened to some extent by the invitation given to us by Mr. Gladish. So I propose to say just a few words. It is not my object to present any biography of myself, or any statement of my faith beyond this one statement from the Writings,- that I believe most firmly, and I think I can understand something within it, that all that the Lord has revealed is the Word with men. As to the paper itself, the first thing that struck me was, that in spite of the fact that our old friend and leader, Mr. Bjorck, lives miles away from us, surrounded by water and the unfortunate condition of geographical isolation, yet he still brings to us thought and affection which is in the very heart and center of the Church as though he were present with us as to his body.

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     Now the idea of progress, as I see it, is one of the fundamental laws of creation. It is bound up with creation itself. We cannot stand still, either spiritually or naturally. To do so is retrogression, and eventually death. Furthermore, it is also bound up with the scheme of creation, since it calls into place that Divinely given faculty that man should react as of himself to his Maker. The basis of all knowledge is Revelation; and that Revelation, although it has come down to men under different phases, even to the natural mind, is united and continuous. The truth is wonderfully perpetuated even to the end. Just as a New Church is raised up from the prepared remains of the Old Church, so it is with the succeeding Revelations, one after the other. And so we get somewhat of a glimpse of the Divine mind and quality when we are told that there is no past and no future with Him; that with the Lord there is an eternal present, and He sees all things as they are now. That belongs, as I say, to the Revelation given to the New Church. But there is a further point. We can never stand still in the senses of the Word, being satisfied with the Revelation as we have it now, as we have seen it in the first state of our reception. We have the new truth fixed in our mind; it enters with explosive force; but it also deposits there a germ of future growth. And that, as I see it, is the real hope of the New Church. The Revelation, as we understand it today, is as nothing to what it will be in the future; for growth does not end in this century; it goes on. Therefore, when we speak of progressive understanding of the Writings, we mean that which cannot die, but which is never finished to eternity.                              

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: Mr. Claxton's remarks are very welcome. We are delighted to hear from him on all occasions, and trust he will feel that there is the very greatest cordiality in our hearts, and the desire to let him speak his mind. The Academy has been rather characterized by the disposition to say just what it thinks upon any discussion, so that we believe that we are better friends if we are free to speak as we wish. I am sure that all the ministers and laymen of the other bodies of the Church will draw dose to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, if there is to be an advancement in our understanding of the Writings concerning their own character and needs. If, for instance, it is believed that the crown of the Churches is to be established, and if it is recognized that the Revelation given us through Swedenborg is the most excellent that has ever been given, then the use of the term "Word" might hardly be necessary. In that case, I venture to say that if we give the term "Word" to the designation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, then we must have a word that means more, for we have a more excellent revelation than before. This is Swedenborg's own definition of the revelation given through him. This is the very essence of the General Church's position and organization. We are willing to waive any words you please, but the thing is there, and Swedenborg has described it as supreme, and given it the first and highest place for the purpose of establishing the last and highest Church.

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Thirteenth General Assembly 1928

Thirteenth General Assembly       Various       1928


[Frontispiece: Drawing of Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, England. And photograph of Victoria Hall. The meeting place of the General Assembly.]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII OCTOBER, 1928          No. 10
     CHURCH EXTENSION.

     TUESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 7TH.

     Dr. Alfred Acton, Presiding: The time has arrived for the consideration of the subject of Church Extension,-that is, the growth of the Church, especially in distant parts. The program calls for addresses by the Rev. Messrs. Ernst Pfeiffer, Karl R. Alden, Henry Leonardos, F. E. Waelchli, Gustaf Baeckstrom, and F. W. Elphick. Mr. Pfeiffer feels that in his address of yesterday he has given an account of his work in Holland, and wishes to be excused from speaking tonight. I will therefore call upon the Rev. Karl R. Alden to speak about the missionary work in Bryn Athyn.

     Rev. K. R. Alden: It is with mixed emotions that I speak on the subject of missionary work at this time. I am only a school teacher. On several occasions when I have spoken on this subject I have been curiously misunderstood. I have praised missionary work, and someone has understood that I was condemning New Church education. To my mind, the two things are not in the slightest opposition. The Lord said, "These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." There is no doubt in my mind that New Church education is a great and fundamental part of the General Church. That is why we are able to record a steady increase in members, and why it will continue to be so. That is the very rock and basis of our work. And before I offer any enthusiastic remarks about missionary work, I would like it to be understood that I am thoroughly convinced that New Church education comes first and foremost, and that if the Church were to have only one use, it should be education.

     Our missionary work in Bryn Athyn was thrust upon us.

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It may seem strange to you to learn that in Bryn Athyn we have one of the largest frontiers in the whole Church. We have to contend with a great many people who are not in the Church. For that reason we have not only internal evangelization, but also external evangelization, and the latter was thrust upon us without solicitation, after the Dedication of the Cathedral in 1919. Shortly after that service, it was observed that increasing groups of sight-seers came to visit the Cathedral. Some thought that these people should be shown over the building as a matter of courtesy. There were plenty to volunteer, and a number of enthusiastic members went to the Cathedral to show people about. The visitors would ask: "Why was this church built?" Someone answered, and a crowd gathered. There was no order about it, and it became evident, after a year or so, that it was not in keeping with the sacredness of the church to have this going on. It will give you some idea, if I tell you that on a Sunday afternoon as many as six thousand persons come to visit the Cathedral. We expected that the crowds would dwindle in time, but they did not.

     Now there has always been a little group in Bryn Athyn who have been passionately interested in missionary work. Most of them happen to be members of the Faculty of the Academy. When New Church education is provided for, we still have the Gospel to preach to new hearts. I believe that there are always fresh hearts that will receive Divine Revelation when preached from Divine Authority. This group in Bryn Athyn held a meeting one night, and a committee was appointed to ask the Bishop if there was an orderly way in which this love of taking care of the outside world coming to our doors could be ultimated. The Bishop said it would be all right, and talked of establishing a service in the Cathedral. So in the middle of July, 1925, the first service was advertized. Mr. Heilman, who is the greatest optimist, said we would have to lock the doors to prevent a stampede. However, the day arrived, and there were 461 persons at the service, of which 430 were strangers. I have had a little experience in my day, doing missionary work with the Rev. Theodore Pitcairn, and the greatest number we ever collected at one time was fifty-seven. All that was done for that Cathedral service was to put a little advertisement in a Philadelphia newspaper, and four hundred and sixty-one persons were there!

     That brought missionary work to the fore in Bryn Athyn, and there was quite a lot of discussion.

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Some thought it was very dangerous, and others thought it was very good; but none knew what the Bishop thought about it, and we like to keep close to his counsel. At the end of the summer, after eight services, we found that the average attendance for the whole eight times was 341. At a meeting of the society, the Bishop gave his report on this interest in the missionary movement. We were breathless when, as I remember it, he said that we were obliged to face the fact that there was a use at hand which must be fully performed, and that the difficulty was to find someone with the energy to Perform this use. We should be careful not to forget the primary Academy uses. That put the missionary service on a true basis,-that "these things ought to be done, and not to leave the other undone."

     Mr. Alden then cited figures from the following table:

     STATISTICS REGARDING MISSIONARY SERVICES AT BRYN ATHYN.
                         1925           1926           1927           1928 to July
Number of services held           8           25           28           11
Average total attendance           341           101           152           132
Highest total attendance           481           185           461           209
Lowest total attendance           216           16           36           53
Average number of visitors           255           66           111           97
Highest number of visitors           440           137           316           158
Lowest number of visitors           133           0           32           22
Total number of visitors           2043           1662           3112           1066
Gorand total attendance           2731           2537           4253           1458
Percentage of visitors           75           65           73           73

     LITERATURE SOLD AT THE CATHEDRAL.
1921            $479.35
1922            236.02
1923          204.94
1924           203.05     
1925          458.14
1926          678.68
1927           930.14

     The Cathedral Book Room was organized to take charge of the sale of New Church literature. In 1925, 93 pieces of literature were sold, and last year (1927) 5682 pieces of New Church literature were sold at the Cathedral. You will see that here we have a real fighting line,-people who listen. Let me tell you about the change in the character of the attendance.

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In the beginning the visitors were plainly sight-seers; at the present time, visitors of this type compose not more than thirty per cent. of the congregation. The attention in worship is intense; there is perfect silence. Many of the strangers kneel when they come into the Cathedral, and kneel when they leave. I believe that many of them, who have not been baptized, are using these services as a means of their devotions, apart from any idea of curiosity.

     Let me give you some illustrations. My brother-in-law met at the Cathedral a boyhood acquaintance whom he had not seen for ten years, and said to him, "What are you doing here?" He answered: "I have been here for ten services, and I would not have missed them." He then explained that he had become an atheist, but came to our service to hear a sermon on "God is Love. That man is interested. He has bought Divine Love and Wisdom and Heaven and Hell. He has read the first, and is reading the other. A young lady who is a teacher at Bryn Mawr came to a morning service and heard Bishop de Charms, and afterwards attended our afternoon services. I had an interview with her, and she kept me going for five hours. She had read Heaven and Hell. I have never had such a session. It was very, very pleasant, but exhausting. Another gentleman, who is reading the Arcana Celestia, wants us to hold some classes to establish the necessity of an external church. If he could have come to this Assembly, he would not have any doubt on that subject. I could mention many more individual cases if time permitted. I would not wish you to think of our missionary work in Bryn Athyn as merely catering to curiosity seekers. We can tell the difference.

     In conclusion, let me say that none of us knows the workings of Divine Providence. We only know that, as human instrumentalities, it is our duty to work sincerely and unquestioningly whenever the opportunity offers. Here we have the opportunity. What is the effect upon us, who are living in Bryn Athyn under the sun of New Church education? Without it, our children would grow up supposing that no missionary work is done. They would then say, "Our fathers are afraid to talk to Old Church people; they are afraid they will not be able to make the logical truths intelligible to the outside world." Now I am a teacher of boys, and many a boy has put that question to me. But when these same boys have attended our missionary services, and have been astonished at the thoughts presented, and have seen us ardently endeavoring to convince the man of the world about the Doctrines, their young hearts warm up in a new way.

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     The undertaking has also enlisted the services of the young men and women of the Church. The Cathedral Book Room is open every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and our young people go there and give their services in selling books. Very often they have discussions with people who inquire as to the contents of the books. They also act as ushers at the services. So, if for no other reason, I believe the missionary work in Bryn Athyn has been of great importance to our own children and young people. And when I view the sum total of our work, and consider the fact that ten thousand strangers have been in the Cathedral, and ten thousand pieces of literature have been sold, I am confident that Mr. Heilman need have no fear that I shall ever lack the conviction that the New Church Doctrines can be brought to new hearts.

     Rev. Henry Leonardos: (Interpretation of the Portuguese by the Rev. E. E. Iungerich.) Brazil is one of the great countries of the world. It is filled with churches, but the people do not know the Word, because it is a Catholic community. The services are in Latin, and the people are ignorant. They go to church, not because they love the church, not because they love the priests of the church, but simply from habit and prejudice. Nor does the Word enter their houses. That is the condition in Brazil. When the first New Church truths were preached, nothing but curiosity seekers came to hear. They wanted interpretations of their dreams and the foretelling of future events, and would retire when their curiosity was not satisfied. But when the time was ripe for the establishment of the New Church, it was undertaken by one who had a belief in the interpretations of dreams and the prediction of future events; and so there were many of that sort in the first group of receivers, and there had to be a separation. Finally a number left the group, and these are the people that now belong to the General Church. They are very clear as to what the Writings are, and they recognize the Lord's guiding hand through the temptations in regard to the interpretation of dreams, etc.

     Mr. Leonardos himself became convinced by what he received from Bryn Athyn. He had no communication with other bodies of the New Church, although his name had been placed upon their rolls, and he had asked them to take it off.

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He did not know whether this had been done. They had written to Bryn Athyn, saying that they would be willing to join in that movement, because they believed themselves to be spiritually one with it; and they asked for someone to instruct them as to the practices and habits of the General Church. This had been complied with. Many of them were then baptized who had not been baptized before. And now, as the result of the ordination of two priests who have been associated with the movement, he feels that a new state is beginning in Brazil, which may be compared to the confirmation of a child who has been baptized. He believes that better times are coming for the New Church in his country, and that a greater influx will come into this work, now that the leaders of the movement have come into true order. He believes that, with the Lord's help, this work will be continued. At present, the movement consists of about 150 people, adults and children, and although they are scattered, the majority is in Rio Janeiro. Though the average attendance is small, on account of the great distances, yet he knows that those who stand firmly upon the rock may feel the certitude of the Lord's own prediction, that that rock will some day become a mountain and fill the earth.

     Rev. F. E. Waelchli: The subject of Church Extension is a very appropriate one for consideration at this Assembly; for the presence of members from so many countries-some of them far distant-is an evidence of the wide extension of our Church. Ever since the institution of the General Church, this extension has been progressing, and surely it will continue if we remain true to our trust. From this extension there has been an increase in the number of our Societies and of our members. This has been a delight; for we are told that the angels know no greater joy than that of welcoming newcomers to their societies. This joy we, too, as a Church, have had, and are having constantly; and the angels rejoice in our increase of members, not only because there is thereby an extension of their happiness to others, but also because the happiness of all in the society is thereby perfected; for perfection comes from variety in which there is harmony, and each increase brings a new variety. So in the Church, there has been delight in our extension, both because others have thereby come to share our privileges, and because the entire body has attained greater perfection from greater variety. Each new country that becomes represented in our body, each new society that enters it, and each new member received, contributes a variety for the perfection of the whole.

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More than this. With increase in membership, there comes increase of extension into societies of the spiritual world; for the Church in each country, in each society, and in each member, has its Peculiar extension into that world.

     In the work of church extension, the first essential is the endeavor to hold what we have; that is, to provide that our members may grow in intelligence in the Heavenly Doctrine, and in love for the same, and that the children may be saved for the Church. By this there will be that internal extension by means of which alone the external can be assured. In line with this thought, permit me to speak of the work in which I am engaged, which is not that of a missionary, in the sense that Mr. Alden has spoken of missionary work, but that of a visiting pastor to circles that are without a resident minister or pastor, and to the isolated.

     My field is of wide extent, from the Great Lakes on the north to Florida on the south, and to the far-distant Pacific Coast. Some of our circles are increasing in numbers; others are decreasing, this being due partly to the fact that, in America, quite a number of people are continually moving from place to place. So, when any of our people move to some locality where there is not a resident pastor, we follow them up, if possible. We also have the very remarkable growth of Bryn Athyn, which, it must be admitted, is to some extent at the expense of other societies, and especially of smaller circles. But all this change of residence on the part of our members is of Divine Providence for the good of the Church. The Providence of the Lord guides the distribution of the Church in various countries, and within each country. May not the purpose of this Providence be, that thereby the Church may be established, and that we may fulfill its function as heart and lungs of the Church of the universe? And may not another reason be, that thus there is given just that variety of states which is necessary, and which contributes to the perfection of the whole? Let me say another word in regard to this matter of the location of our members in various places. It is undoubtedly of Divine Providence that Bryn Athyn should become so great a center; in Providence it is for the good of the whole Church. It is of Divine Providence that our members make their homes, some here, some there.

     I would mention that our circle at Los Angeles, California, is soon to have a resident minister.

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Ten years ago, this circle did not exist. There was not a single member of the General Church there. And then, members of our body began to move there from various places, and nearly all of them came from five circles far-distant from California, to which circles I had ministered. These people moved there, and we followed them up. May we not see in this the guiding hand of Divine Providence for the good of the Church?

     Go where our members will, we follow them up, if possible. Yet, this we do, not primarily forth sake of holding our membership, but for the sake of Performing the use of our Church, which is that of the salvation of souls. Wherever there are New Church people hungering for the administrations of the Church, and especially for the Sacraments, we should endeavor to reach them.

     There are some of this kind whom we are not reaching. There come to my thought a husband and wife and six children, two of them adult, who have made their home in the far north of Western Canada, in what is known as the Peace River Country. They love the Church; a young man of the family has been to Bryn Athyn. They have little hope that any of our ministers will be able to come the long, long Way to their home. Again, there comes to my thought a young couple recently married, both of them former Academy Pupils who are about to make their home in that same Northwestern country. They are going in for homesteading. I wish you knew, as I know, the hardship that is in that work. We should reach them. And again my thought turns to a family of six, both the husband and wife of old New Church families; the wife an Academy girl. They live in the great mountains of Southern California. We should reach them.

     The three cases I have mentioned represent eight adults and eight children,-sixteen souls to whom should he brought those things of salvation which the Lord provides in His New Church for those who are of it. The three cases I have mentioned are not the only ones of the kind. There are others similarly situated in my country, and no doubt in other countries also. May the Lord provide the men and the means, that we may bring to them the things of salvation which are provided in our Church! May we do our part, so that the Lord can so provide!

     In conclusion, allow me to revert to the subject of our consideration yesterday morning,-the reading of the Sacred Scriptures and the Writings according to calendar.

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What an instrument for extension this can be! Extension of affection and thought, of each to all, and of all to each! And what a wonderful blessing it can be for those who live in far-off isolation, and who yet, in their daily worship, will feel that they are not isolated, but are in intimate touch and spiritual consociation with other members of the General Church throughout the world, and with the societies of the New Heaven, with which our Church makes a one!

     Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom: I have a prepared paper, but after the inspiring addresses that have just been made, I have changed my mind, and will say something quite different. Although, as was said today, extemporaneous speaking is apt to be speaking from an empty brain, I will dare to attempt it, because my heart is full, and I will thus speak without danger, since it is from my heart.

     With reference to the Address last night, in which Mr. Pfeiffer referred to the situation of the Dutch in the spiritual world, I feel rather embarrassed about saying anything in regard to what is said about the situation of the Swedes there. But as that was the state of the Swedes some time ago, there may yet be hope for some few of us! As we are so much worse than the Dutch, the means of evangelization permitted among the Swedes may be a little different. Mr. Pfeiffer said that the work ought to be done by giving lectures in the beginning, these to be followed by doctrinal classes held in the place where the minister is resident This might be all right, if I stayed in Stockholm all the time. Then I might do it that way. But under present circumstances I do not think it is necessary. I myself came into the Church without any doctrinal classes, and without any lectures, but simply through reading the Writings.

     If you will pardon me, I will say a few words about my personal experience There was a time when I was young and stupid, and you all know how stupid one may be when young, and how, at that age, a man may come into a state in which he thinks that everything is hopeless, that it is not worth while living any longer. One night I underwent temptation; it was after I had attended a service in the Old Church. And I had just been reading Heaven and Hell. Out of curiosity I had bought the book. I had also read other books of the Writings, and had spoken about them with some New Church women. All this had not changed my life in any way. But that night,-the night of despair,-I suddenly felt very strange.

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I have never experienced anything like it before nor since. It lasted for a very short time, but in that brief time I saw a great light. What I had read in Heaven and Hell,-that the Lord has made His Second Coming,-stood before me. I had never thought about it before. But now it stood clearly before my mind. I have never felt so strange since. For a whole year previously I read those books. Miss Liden told me that I believed in three gods. I replied that I did not, and became angry, but I was not enlightened. But that night, after suffering and standing face-to-face with death, I saw it; and then I understood what is said in the Bible,-that the Lord was to come as a Light shining "from the east even to the west." When the light comes in darkness, it shines suddenly, and that is what I experienced.

     So I have decided that, as that was the case with me, there may be others who will come into the Church in somewhat the same way. It was the book Heaven and Hell that did it, or rather it was the Lord. If, that night, I had considered the Writings as a commentary upon the Bible, they would not have made much difference in me. I would not be standing here now. But that is the reason why I am still living, namely, that I saw the Lord had come, and that the Writings of the Church are the Second Coming. It is stated in the Arcana Celestia that scarcely anyone at this day is regenerated without suffering, without tribulation of some kind or other; and I think the way for most of us who have not been born in the Church is through a broken heart. At any rate, that was my experience. Many, directly or indirectly, have came in through a broken heart. You would scarcely wish that I should start by breaking people's hearts, when I undertake to do missionary work; but that is of the Lard's Providence, which is really the whole thing. What we ministers do after that is simply to give the message we think we have to give,-to sow the seed in ground prepared by the Lord Himself in His Providence. There it will grow, and there it will produce a good harvest.

     Experience has shown that several of our members in Stockholm-there are now about fifty-have come into the Church simply by reading the Writings, and hearing some lectures which were given to lead people to do this, and for nothing else. So I may close this speech by saying: May we leave all to the Lord!

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We may try, we poor feeble men, to do what we think best. It is really very little we do. It is the Lord, the Almighty, who does the whole thing; it is God who does it. Nobody could do it better.

     Herewith we print Mr. Baeckstrom's prepared paper, which he did not read to the Assembly:
CHURCH EXTENSION. 1928

CHURCH EXTENSION.       Rev. GUSTAF BAECKSTROM       1928

     The missionary work performed by me is chiefly done by lectures. Before and after the lectures, books are sold. Everyone that comes to a lecture receives at the entrance a catalogue of our books, including the Writings. Those who come early have time to study the catalogue before the lecture begins, and this has proven a good thing. They then have a little idea as to what they want. In the catalogue are reviews of many of the books. Most people keep the catalogue, and some order books later, and subscribe to our magazine, Nova Ecclesia. Last winter books were sold to the value of about Kr. 2,700 ($730).

     Comparatively few places can be visited, and these mostly the large cities. It would be useful, therefore, to advertise our books in the newspapers, which go to all parts of the country. Much has been done along that line, but the time is past when that kind of missionary work would pay for itself. It did some few years ago, but not now. During the last two or three years we tried a little, now and then, but were soon compelled to stop for lack of means. This is deplorable, because our earlier experience, when we were able to advertise, showed that most of the orders for books came from people living in small places, many of whom we had not heard of before.

     I am very glad to say, however, that a new field has been opened for this work in America, where Mr. Alfred Holm, of Glenview, Illinois, has undertaken to advertise our books in the leading Swedish-American paper. This advertisement has appeared ten times, with the very best results. He seems to have had his hands full in answering all kinds of letters and filling orders.

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I have carried to the post office whole bags of books ordered by him from Sweden. He also expects to advertise in some Norwegian-American papers, as the Norwegians easily read Swedish.

     As already reported in NEW CHURCH LIFE, my missionary work during the last two years has been extended to Norway, where the New Church was scarcely known, except by some few. Of these there is a little group in Oslo which has founded a Norwegian Swedenborg Society, with the end in View of forming a New Church Society in Norway. During the past winter I delivered twenty-one lectures in other places than Stockholm, with an average attendance of 174 persons. Of these lectures, eleven were in Norway, with an average attendance of 205 persons. Two lectures were broadcast. The outlook in Norway is promising, and I only regret that I was unable to go there oftener than twice a year. The work in Norway has been concentrated in Oslo, the capital. So far, however, it is only preparatory work that I have been able to do there. Norway should have a resident minister.

     Thus the field is widening, and there seem to be receptive minds in many places. The work should be continued, and kept up on the same scale as hitherto. It is also a very interesting work, encouraging and inspiring, where you meet many different people and many different states. I only regret the lack of time and strength. What has been done is very little in comparison with what I wish to do and what seems to be much needed. "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.


     Chairman: I will now call upon Mr. Moffat Mcanyana to address us. Mr. Elphick informs me that his translation of the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine has just been published in South Africa. Mr. Mcanyana is a most eloquent speaker in his native tongue, and commands great respect as a teacher among the Zulus.

     Rev. Moffat Mcanyana: In connection with New Church mission work, I am going to speak about what happens in Durban on the coast, because that is where I came from last, I wish I were allowed to speak to you in my own language.

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     The New Church work among the Zulu natives is making more favorable progress at the present time than it did at the time of its commencement. When the Zulus first heard of the New Church, many different sects had come among them, some from America, some from other parts of the world, and some from the natives themselves. So, when they heard of the New Church, they thought it was one of these sects; and as many of these sects had died out, they thought that the New Church would also die off. Very soon, however, those who were moved by the teachings of the New Church tried to stamp out this feeling. Seeing that these teachings have now lasted for three to four years, some of the natives are beginning to realize that they are not going to die off. But afterwards they said, "Where are you going to learn about this Church? Where are the schools?" When, later, some of the natives went to Bryn Athyn to be trained, that opposition also died off. Another reason was that they thought this was a white man's church, and all the books were in English. "How will you come to understand?" they said. I had made a few translations into Zulu. I first translated the little pamphlet, "The Second Coming of the Lord," and then extracts from the True Christian Religion, the very useful Catechism by the Rev. Hugo Odhner, and The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine; and these translations were sold in many parts of Natal. Then this opposition also died out.

     At the present time they are getting much more interested in the teachings of the New Church. Some of the natives who have joined the Church in Durban have taken these books with them when they have visited their homes, and have read them to their fathers and people at home, so that we are everywhere called upon to give an explanation about this wonderful Church which teaches that God is One. That had been the original belief among these Zulu people,-that they knew of only one highest Spirit, whose origin is not known. But the Old Church taught that there were three persons in the God-head. Now a great change is taking place, not only in Durban, but also in the surrounding country. They are going back to the teaching of the New Jerusalem, into a belief that there is only one God.

     A minister of another sect told me that he was now afraid to tell his people that there are three persons in the Godhead. One of the natives met me, and asked me: "To what church do you belong?

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I answered: "The General Church of the New Jerusalem." I asked him: "Would you like to know the difference?" He said: "Yes." I said: "The first, principal difference is in the teaching about God." He said, "What does your Church teach about God?" I said, " It teaches that God is One." After a long time he said: "I was not taught that; I have learned that there are three." But he now teaches his class that there is One God. So the natives are becoming better prepared to understand the Heavenly Doctrine than when we first commenced.

     I was once ordered by those I work under to visit Zululand. I am sorry to say I visited the Paramount Chief's Kraal and had a talk with him. In a month's time I told him I had better go back. He said, "Wait here, I have not had enough time to talk with you." I told him that I had not only come to visit him, but that I had to go to other places. He asked me: "What does this Church do, if we want to join in? Will it allow me to live in polygamy?" I said, "No." He had thirty-five wives. He said: "For myself I do not want them; they are too many; but I am bound by the Zulu law to have them. The Zulu people will not let me do without them."

     The Zulu people were very much interested in what I told them, and they wanted me to live in Zululand with them. I was given two young boys. The fathers think they themselves are too old to learn, so that they give me their boys. I could not take them with me; so I said, "I will write to you when I get back." Alpha was not as it is now, and so they wrote many letters to me, but I did not answer them, because I did not know what to say. I went to four different places in Zululand, and in only one of those places had a layman been there before me. Many natives are interested, but they have not been received by baptism into the New Church. There are only two there who have been baptized, and that was because they came to Durban and were living there.

     Now I found that, when I first began to speak to the natives, I did not know where to begin; but experience itself taught me that I must always begin with the doctrine of the unity of God, and that has been more powerful, I have found, than anything else. I have never found anything more powerful than that. If I come and say, "Do you know that the Lord has made His Second Advent?" they will not listen at all. But if I speak about the unity of God, and about a New Church, they are interested at once.

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Then I ask them (for they do not think of asking it themselves): "How does this Church differ from the Old Church? Would you like to know this?" And I answer that the first, principal difference is in its teaching about God. After having spoken and explained how God is One, they begin to ask me, "Where can we always see you?" I answer that I can visit them whenever they have time to see me.

     That is how much power the Doctrine has, and the natives are very interested, not only in Zululand, but also in other parts. For instance, on my way here to England, when I stopped at Capetown, where I had never been before, I was informed that I would find a place to rest at the native hostel, where I could be quiet and write letters, etc. It was 12:30 o'clock when I arrived, and at about one o'clock many natives came there for their lunch. Seeing them, I asked them if they had heard about the New Church. I spoke to them and said, "I wish I could have the opportunity of speaking to you, and telling you about the New Church." So I began to speak about the Church, and one intelligent native there asked me," In the New Church, what is the great difference between its teaching and our teaching?" I said, "It is the teaching about God." And then I explained. After that I explained to them about this wonderful Church. They said to me, "When you return from England, please make it your point to visit us and tell us some more about it. And in England, bring from there what is good about the New Church and we will buy it."

     The Rev. F. W. Elphick then gave an Address on Church Extension in Native South Africa. (See next page.)

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CHURCH EXTENSION IN NATIVE SOUTH AFRICA 1928

CHURCH EXTENSION IN NATIVE SOUTH AFRICA       Rev. F. W. ELPHICK       1928

     As an introduction to this subject your attention is directed to a Prologue, three brief Word-Scenes, and an Epilogue. The Prologue and Epilogue are in fiction; the three Scenes are in fact.

     Prologue.

     Somewhere in Europe or the United States. An Armchair-a fireside-someone sitting in the chair reading. Book-True Christian Religion;-Subject: "The Africans."

     After reading, the reflection is provoked: "Is it really possible that the dark people in that distant Continent will have the intelligence to understand and the perception to see what the Doctrines of the New Church proclaim and admonish? It seems impossible."

     Scene I.

     South Africa-Orange Free State. The close of a burning hot day in December. An oblong stone building with thatched roof-cool and clean. Herein a class of Native Teachers-intelligent natives in European dress. Each member of the class has a copy of Heaven and Hell in English. They read, each in turn, the Missionary listening, and following from his copy.

     A question: "Sir, It says here that there are three heavens. In the Apocalypse Revealed, the New Heaven is spoken of. Where is the New Heaven?"

     A second question: "We read that the angels of a higher heaven can see the angels of a lower heaven, but not the reverse. How do we explain the case of Dives and Lazarus?"

     A third question: "We are told that the sun appears in the Spiritual Kingdom like a moon, and that in the Celestial Kingdom it appears as a sun. What does it look like in the World of Spirits?"

     Scene II.

     South Africa.-O. F. S. A small study. Three students sit at the table. After reading about the wisdom of the ancients, leading up to the philosophers, Plato, Socrates and Newton, the question is asked: "Are there any philosophers in the New Church?"

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     Question by a native student who reads NEW CHURCH LIFE: "On which work shall I rely, The Adversaria or the Arcana Celestia? "

     Same Place-another occasion. In illustration of how the Old Church theology is slowly being dissipated by its irrational doctrines of the Trinity, Atonement, etc., a clipping from a London newspaper was given to the class to read. The subject referred to the recent revision of the English Prayer Book. On returning next morning, the reflection was provoked: "Bishop Barnes has a Science Degree, the Dean of St. Paul's an Arts Degree. Which is the more spiritual?"

     Study-evening time. A knock at the door. After entering, a student asks for Volume V of the Spiritual Diary. His companion asks for a book he saw lying on the desk,-The Supreme Adventure!

     Scene III.

     South Africa-Transvaal. Morning, 9:30.-A rough stone building sparsely furnished. Within, a school of about forty Zulu children, ranging from six to sixteen years-majority neatly dressed.

     Two teachers, a man and a woman, take their own classes. But now it is "Religion," in which the whole school takes part, and it is a class conducted by the Leader of the Society,-a Leader who is unfortunately blind. He sits at the table, and, deciphering the Braille, he reads from the Word. The children then hear one of the teachers read from Heaven and Hell, how little children are taught in heaven. The blind Leader-seeing in spirit-explains in the Zulu language. It is a scene pathetic and touching.

     Epilogue.

     If the one sitting in the arm chair could "listen in," his doubts would be removed. But he would face new problems.

     It is with the new problems in modern Africa-often called the "New Africa"-that our Church extension-work has to contend.

     The Mission of the General Church is now in its fifteenth year. From that memorable day when the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal and Mr. J. H. Ridgway interviewed two Basutos in a Durban drawing room, and until the present time, the spreading and teaching of the New Church Doctrines have been faithfully sustained.

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Already a considerable number of Natives of South Africa, under the auspices of the Divine Providence, have come to a knowledge of the message of the New Church. There has been direct touch with the academic center of the General Church at Bryn Athyn. The Revs. F. E. Gyllenhaal and Theodore Pitcairn; Bishop Pendleton on his visit to South Africa in 1919; the Revs. Reginald W. Brown, Hugo Lj. Odhner and Elmo C. Acton; have been associated, each in turn, with the missionary field in South Africa. Nor should the assistance of Mr. and Mrs. F. C. Frazee, during their three years' stay at Alpha, be omitted. Three native students have been to Bryn Athyn. By these means, the wish expressed by the two Basutos who visited Durban in 1913-a wish that their people might be organized as a unit of the General Church-has been fulfilled. Many have labored, and others are entering into those labors.

     True, indeed, there have been many vicissitudes-ups and downs, goings and comings, and misunderstandings in a "continent of misunderstandings. The native personnel has been added to and subtracted from. Some withdrawals have been due to removals to the spiritual world; others on account of the incessant need of discipline, in order that a New Church Mission, as far as is humanly possible, shall stand for purity of doctrine and Christian uprightness with a race that is in a state of transition and living in a world of universal change and unrest. Spiritual progress can never be fully seen in this world. It is beyond written report and statistical enumeration. But, as far as outward organization is concerned, advancement can be registered.

     The Mission, allied with the General Church, and extending the New Church in Africa-of what does it consist? At the present time it has eighteen organized groups, representing Basutoland, Orange Free State, Natal, Transvaal, and Zululand. Each group has its own Native Leader, who acts as Pastor to his group. There are seven Elementary Schools, educating a fluctuating number of about 350 children, and employing thirteen Native Teachers. A technical section has been commenced at Alpha Headquarters, but is only in an initial stage of development

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Attempts are being made in Printing, Leatherwork, and Carpentry. The Mission has its own official Magazine, which is printed at Alpha.

     From the commencement, the idea of instructing those natives who could act as Leaders in the Doctrines has been a first use. This work, in the form of a Theological School, is gradually becoming more clearly defined. It is well known that as soon as educational uses are attempted, these imply uses within uses,-wheels within wheels. Even elementary education in a mission means the usual school routine, teachers' meetings, student clubs, football and recreation needs; and then the supporting uses of accommodation, accountancy, catering and medical. With these, and the provision for the Sacraments and Rites of the Church, Annual Meetings, and Committee Meetings, we have indicated what is involved in a missionary undertaking,-natural uses and spiritual uses,-the spiritual always endeavoring to uplift and purify the natural.

     But there is more. It is a spiritual-natural law that a strong center is essential to enduring growth. It must needs be, therefore, that a center of a mission-its headquarters-be staunch to the principles on which the mission rests. If not, how can there be consistency? Hence the need that the Alpha Headquarters be an "outpost of New Church civilization." Such a condition it is hoped will endure. For Alpha, be it remembered, with her share of blessings, is a veld settlement far from the usual church and social life attached to our General Church societies. It is an isolated group, having their own life within the sphere of the church, yet accommodating that sphere to the circumstances and needs of an African farm and an African mission-station.

     This outline of the work being undertaken in Africa would not be complete without mention of the Conference Mission under the supervision of the Rev. E. J. Pulsford. Africa is large enough for both institutions, since both are imparting the Doctrines of the New Church to the natives. There is a good understanding between the two bodies. Mr. Pulsford has visited Alpha several times, and on every occasion he has been invited to give a class or conduct a service for the Mission, and has also taken part in the services and doctrinal classes at the Alpha Homestead.

     Although the General Church Mission-its work, organization and finances-do not fall into the range of vision of the majority of members of the General Church, yet, in its present status and development, it can no longer be regarded as a plaything, a pastime, or an experimental adventure of no importance. It is an arm of the Church, or, better, endeavoring to become an arm of the Church.

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It is, perhaps, only the missionaries who realize the nature of the plough to which they have put their hands. In South Africa, for the most part, the trader, the farmer, the modern machinery of business in gold mine, coal mine, diamond mine; the local councils, as evidenced in too many instances by the squalid locations (native tenements); indicate how much the native is thought of. It is still the missions which endeavor to educate and uplift, while the literature, both English and American, relating to the ways and means of making such uplift possible, is to thousands of people an unseen library. Thoughtful theory is twenty-five years in advance of unthoughtful practice.

     It is in such a mixture of spheres, with the faith of Christendom still persisting in their wornout dogmas, that the extension work of the New Church is placed, and is one of many agencies trying to help in the solution of the most difficult of all South African problems,-the problem of race. Clearly this problem is only solved by spiritual emancipation. Bring to the Bantu races a true idea of God; bring them back to their traditional belief in one Supreme Being, which has been broken by the imported doctrine of the Trinity of Persons; help in the realization of the meaning of the Ten Commandments; inspire the ideal of being useful in use-bearing occupations, and instill without any equivocation the truth that the Lord has made His Second Coming by the unfolding of the spiritual sense of the Word,-so, line upon line, the New Church in South Africa will be extended from few to many, and this by the natives themselves, according to their own genius.

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FIRST LOVE 1928

FIRST LOVE       Rev. RICHARD MORSE       1928

     The "First Love" is that most eminent quality which the Church in Ephesus once possessed, but lost. That it once possessed it, is evident from the words addressed to its angel by the Lord, and concluding with these: "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love"; which action is revealed to mean the regarding of the truths of doctrine in the first place, and the good of life in the last.

     The seven churches in Asia, of which Ephesus is the first, are revealed to mean all in the Christian World who are in the light of truth from the Word. They are the remnant of the consummated Christian Church "who have religion, and out of whom the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem, can be formed." And this is formed by those "who approach the Lord only, and at the same time repent of evil works." Such, with good gentiles and the children of all in the whole world who have died since the Lord's time, will constitute the New Heaven, with which the New Church on earth is in conjunction. The rest, who, from the confirmed negation of the Divine Human, do not approach the Lord alone, and who do not repent of evil works, are indeed in the Church, but have nothing of the Church in them." (T. C. R. 69.)

     Two Classes of People.

     If, therefore, we mentally view the world at the time of the Last Judgment, we shall see a spiritual desolation, which is the consummation of centuries of evil living and false thinking, until not a truth of the Word remained that was not falsified. Everyone was in it, and a part of it; but there were two classes: one in the will of evil, and the other in the will of good; and both in falsity of doctrine, in consequence of every truth of the Word having been falsified. The former are they who, from the confirmed negation of the Divine Human, do not approach the Lord alone, and do not repent of evil works: they are in the Church, but the Church, or the conjunction of good and truth, is not in them.

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And the latter class comprise all "who have religion, and out of whom the New Church can be formed." They are in "the light of truth from the Word"; not the specific light, such as they will be in when they come to the New and true Church, but in the light which illumines the minds of all who read the Word in simplicity and sincerity. Such comprise the church universal, as distinct from the church specific, to which the Lord has fully revealed Himself in His glorified Human, as expressed in fulness through the prepared mind and the pen of Swedenborg. And since a collective church specific, or church in the aggregate, must necessarily be constituted of regenerating men and women,-regenerating by means of specific truths revealed by the Lord out of heaven,-it is clear that a church must be individual before it can be collective. And there need be no hesitation in believing that the first individual specific Church of the New Jerusalem on our earth was the man whom the Lord was pleased to prepare, from earliest infancy, for the full reception and promulgation of the revelation establishing that
Church.

     The measure of the ability to receive revelation from the Lord is the measure of the advance in the new birth; for since the separation of the will and understanding at the decline of the Most Ancient Church, all revelation has been given for the definite purpose of bringing mankind back to God; the prodigal, or younger son, back to the Father.

     No one will deny this; for the Lord has said: "Except ye be regenerated, and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of the heavens." And to Nicodemus He said: "Except a man be born again, born of water and the spirit," he can neither see nor enter the kingdom of God.

     And this great metamorphosis is brought about by the reception of the truths of revelation into the life. And this is possible because the evil will is quite detached from the understanding, which is able to see truth in its own light; and by means of saving remains, and the gift of liberty and rationality, the truth may be obeyed and lived.

     The Magnet of a Devilish Heredity.

     But just here the question that everyone may ask himself or herself is, "Why do I permit a wholly evil will to retard my progress towards spirituality, if I am spiritually free and in my freedom receive power from heaven?"

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For the tardy acceptance of revelation by those who profess acceptance of the doctrines of the New Church cannot be denied. Our gathering together at this time, in the great center of the British Empire, is a striking proof. For why could we not have gathered together with the General Conference that was held some weeks ago? Clearly the answer is, that the specific Church, like the Church of Ephesus, tends to a preference of the means rather than the end. It sets the truths of doctrine before the good of life, when yet those truths have been given by the Lord for the purpose of attaining to that good.

     It is a remarkable thing that it is possible to have two concrete general bodies claiming the name of the Church, and associated with the revelation made through the man who called Himself "the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ"; one body calling that revelation the "writings of Swedenborg," and subject to the judgment of human reason; and the other body claiming them to be the very Divine Human of the Lord in written expression.

     The general reason for the existence of a state so extraordinary lies in the fact that all the component parts of those bodies belong, by heredity, to the seven Churches in Asia, and, consequently, are under the Divine censure pronounced in the case of Ephesus for having left its first love. Truths of doctrine are regarded in the first place, and the good of life in the last.

     Nevertheless, it must be admitted that these bodies comprise the only specific Church in the world today; for they are based, either directly or indirectly, upon the revelation that supplies the only reason for its existence. But in its constitution today, it is a long, long way from its destined glory. And the reason is, that its members possess a devilish heredity.

     Nebuchadnezzar's Dream-image.

     You will recall that very interesting journey Swedenborg took, under an angel guide, to the people of the ages represented by the various parts of the man-image which Nebuchadnezzar dreamt about. You recall the heavenly qualities of those of the head and breast-the ages of gold and silver; also of those of brass and iron, which still retained fragments, ever decreasing, of the high eminence of Eden's race.

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But it is not pleasant to contemplate the dreadful state of those who are represented by the image's feet of iron mixed with clay, which the angel told Swedenborg was the state of the Christian World at his time, when it became necessary to bring it to judgment. And because a Church, once vastated, increases in evils and falsities, we know that the spiritual state of that Church is worse at this our day.

     Into such a spiritual state is everyone born; but constant familiarity with it prevents a clear appreciation of its evil character. That especially blinds the mental vision are the evil loves which everyone inherits. Familiarity causes forgetfulness of quality; or, rather, in the absence of contrasts, it dulls the perception But it is the evil loves, the only inheritance apart from remains, that really prevent the state from being seen as to its true quality; for love is life; it is the individual himself or herself. It was made known to Swedenborg, from much experience in the spiritual world, that a man is such as his love is. It is this knowledge that we of the church possess, that should cause every member of it to pause in judgment of others. That which is loved is necessarily believed in, unless there be a willingness to examine it by the truths of revelation, and to shun the evil that is revealed. The evil loves into which we are born favor everything that the Ten Commandments forbid.

     The Trinal Quality of the Mind.

     We know that the mind is of three degrees; and that, before regeneration, the two higher degrees, which belong to the spiritual and celestial heavens, are closed, and are open only to the understanding which rises "by continuity among the two higher degrees, and receives their light of wisdom" (D. L. W. 258); while the hereditarily evil will resides in the natural degree, which is alone open, but to hell. It is open to heaven through the spiritual degree in the proportion that good from the Lord is admitted by deliberate obedience to His commandments. Thus is this degree opened by the man himself; and the Lord, who is the only Good, enters and sups with him, and he with the Lord, faculties of rationality and liberty.

     The natural mind, from its two faculties of rationality and liberty, is able to ascend through three degrees, and to descend through three. It ascends by goods and truths, and descends by their opposites.

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When it ascends, the lower degrees, which tend to hell, are shut; and when it descends, the higher degrees, which tend to heaven, are shut. None of these degrees is open or closed in early infancy, as there is then no knowledge of good and truth and of their opposites. The opening and closing takes place when anyone in whom the rational is developed submits or refuses to be regenerated. (See D. L. W. 274)

     Each of these six degrees is a degree of altitude and latitude, or discrete and continuous. It is in the element of continuity, in the second or spiritual degree, that we find the explanation of the lack of charity that abounds in the Church. For if its members, all over the world, be regarded as standing upon a plane, arranged according to states of regeneration, increasing from the lowest, at the boundary, to the highest at the center, it will be manifest that those at the boundary are least removed from the evils into which they were born, and which relate solely to the loves of self and the world. The evils of "self love are, in general, contempt of others, envy, enmity against those by whom they are not favored, and hostile action in consequence; hatreds of various kinds, revenge, cunning, deceit, mercilessness and cruelty. If such honor Divine things, it is only with the mouth. Those are in the love of the world who desire to appropriate the goods of others by various stratagems; especially those who endeavor to do so by cunning and deceit, holding the good of the neighbor of no account. Those who are in this love covet the goods of others; and, so far as they are not afraid of the laws, and of the loss of reputation in the acquisition of gain, they rob and plunder them." (H. D. 75, 76.)

     A member of the Church is in some phase of the regenerate life, being of the Seven Churches in Asia, "out of whom the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem can be formed." And, being of those churches, he or she partakes of the spiritual deficiencies of all, and is under the censure received by Ephesus for having left her first love, for having regard to truth before the good of life.

     It is this only which causes the lack of charity in the Church, and which separates those who ought to be harmonious members of God's great family. "Loving self is not the essential of love, but loving others and being conjoined to them by love. The essential of love is also to be loved by others, for then conjunction is effected.

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The essence of all love consists in conjunction, and so also does its life, which is called delight, pleasantness, enjoyment, sweetness." (D. L. W. 47)

     The revelation respecting the tardy states of regeneration, represented by the six days of creation, should ever be present in the mind; for it is revealed that very few attain to the altitude of later days or states. And it is known that those in earlier states are too hampered by the hereditary loves of self and of the world to be able to know the states of those who have reached later ones; while those who have attained to later ones, certainly know those that have been passed through.

     It is possible that there are nominal members of the Church who are not regenerating, who do not shun evils because they are sins against God, and are in merely natural good; but the true member is in some phase of regeneration. And it is important that the Divine injunction to Ephesus be kept in mind: "Remember from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent!" By which is meant that truths not finalized in unselfish uses cannot be retained. We have the teaching that "so far as anyone is in the good of life, so far that one is really in truths of doctrine. The reason is, that goods of life open the interiors of the mind, and truths then appear in their own light. They are understood, and also loved. But when doctrinals are placed first, truths may be known and committed to memory, but they are not seen interiorly and loved from spiritual affection." (A. R. 82.)

     If blame for lack of charity in the organized New Church be attributed, it can hardly be attributed to the laity, but rather to those by whom they are taught and led. When Pilate's question was put to the Lord's persecutors, the multitude, responding to the influence of the chief priests, cried out "Crucify Him!" So it is today, and always will be, so long as human nature is what it is.

     The General Church, with its educational uses, is the highest form of the New Church on earth, for it is wholly guided by the Lord in His Divine Human, as fully revealed by means of the man whom He fully prepared. That the Lord is competent to reveal Himself fully in His establishment of His crowning and eternal Church, none can truthfully deny.

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     The Academy of the New Church, by patient and long-continued effort, has instituted a system whereby the children of the Church shall be kept within its sphere during the opening years of their lives. Moreover, being guided wholly by the Lord's Revelation, its literature is necessarily of a very high standard of spiritual excellence. I remember the pleasure experienced about twenty-five years ago upon reading a copy of NEW CHURCH LIFE. It opened a new era in my life; for, shortly after, I was able to ultimate a long-cherished desire to travel round the world for the specific purpose of seeing the New Church in its ultimate expression. The conspicuous event in that investigation was my visit to Bryn Athyn, which dispelled misgivings that were in my mind from members of the Church who were unable to speak from personal observation and contact. It was not long afterwards that I was able to see that the Word of the Lord is in its fulness in the Writings.

     But the lack of charity still exists in the general body outside of the General Church. Probably the most notable instance is the studied silence of the most read organ of the English Conference regarding the NEW CHURCH LIFE; a silence that, so far as I know, has not been protested against by any member of that body. If the silence is of deliberate intent, then all the liberty shown to friends must be placed in the category of natural good, which resides plentifully in the lower states of regeneration.

     The absence of spiritual charity in the Church is due to the activity from merely natural good, which, by means of its truth of doctrine, is in opposition to the truths of spiritual good which are from heaven. Natural good repudiates the Divine Authority of the Revelation made by the Lord for the establishment of His crowning Church, because its own authority would be surrendered. It favors democratic rule in the Church, and meddles with the Divine order of the Holy Supper. Those of the Church who desire that the Lord alone shall rule deplore such a state; nevertheless, they have a large charity, because it is evident that such a state is inevitable in the very beginning of a Church that is to move onwards to never-ending and ever-perfecting life; and especially in view of the heavy load of devilish heredity that is ever tending hell wards.

     Objection may be made to the statement that the preferring of the truths of doctrine before the good of life is the reason why those who claim the name of the New Church are not willing to meet as brethren, or as children of one Parent.

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And, therefore, it may be well for me to anticipate it. The New Church is the one only Church in the world today, simply because it is the Bride of the Lord; and all who rightly claim its name are integral parts of the Church's body, and, indeed, are individual churches. The church "is called a communion, because it is as one body, under one head, who is the Lord. And as it is in the Church, so it is in the heavens, which consist of myriads of myriads of angels. Unless they each and all looked to one God, one would fall away from the other, and heaven would be dissolved." (D. L. W. 25.)

     From this quotation from Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, it may be seen how contrary to Divine order it is for any integral part of the Church to be shunned or held in aversion by another integral part. That such aversion is lack of charity-a leaving of the first love-cannot be denied. And that it is preference for the truths of doctrine, may be evident from the fact that the good of life has been sacrificed when charity has been slain; and when any action is taken contrary to the Commandments, it is done by means of the understanding; and the understanding with the priesthood of the New Church operates, or should operate, by means of the truths of doctrine, which, in this case, are the particulars of the general doctrine of charity. Therefore, when an action according to what is regarded as the truths of doctrine results in injury to the neighbor, charity is sacrificed, and nothing is left save the truths of doctrine, which then have been falsified. Truths of doctrine are barren unless they lead to good, and have their home in good.

     The Heavenly Doctrines of the New Church are the Ten Commandments in their fulness. Some suppose that an extensive acquaintance with them tends to harden, rather than soften, man's nature-makes him too intellectual. It certainly will if they are not regarded from use; but if they are regarded from use, it is just as certain that they will break the stony heart and give in its place a "heart of flesh."

     The revelation establishing the Church has been given by the Lord to the end that it shall be read and obeyed. It is a message handed to us by the Lord's servant because the Lord Himself was not able to come in Person.

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Nevertheless, the Lord is fully in His message with the whole of His Divine Love and Wisdom. It is His last and crowning Revelation. And if we will read it carefully and consecutively, even as we would the letter of some very dear friend, or some message of instruction leaving us great wealth, we shall surely find and receive the First Love.

     DISCUSSION OF MR. MORSE'S ADDRESS.

     Rev. Homer Synnestvedt: I was very greatly impressed by the presentation of this subject by my beloved and respected co-worker in far Australia. There is no doubt whatever that the Church's growth and salvation, and its gradual extension and unification, and its power to cooperate harmoniously with those of any organization in the Church, depends upon the recognition of the truth that that first love given by the Lord is the very seed in the ground for the growth of heaven among men. There is an opening of the celestial heaven, we believe, at the beginning of every use; and we see how, in early youth, the zeal and the whole-hearted devotion and loyalty to the Church can be opened by the Lord in the things of His teachings from the Word, and especially from the Divine Doctrine. But we know, as Mr. Morse has pointed out, that the Dragon is always present; the serpent is always in this Garden of Eden in which the Lord implants the seed. For these first loves are not our own. Certainly they are not the peculiar property of the General Church, or of any other organization. They are the Lord's, and they are given to man as a sacramental gift, a loan from heaven. The Lord Himself points to the future, and wills that these first states, with all their delights, should come into our hearts and He accomplishes this by temporarily laying to sleep that devilish proprium to which we are inclined. So the time must come when we shall be let down again into a state of our own mind, when we shall come into temptation and into doubt, and sometimes into despair. And the same will be true of this New Church of ours.

     During many years of work in the priesthood, I have come to see that there is little use or benefit to the Church if I sit and dwell upon the resistance to the progress and charity of the Church which is shown by my neighbors. I have come to regard as of little use that great depression in the state of the Church, of a society, among the people, or in the school work and elsewhere, when the group comes to be quite conscious and to dwell upon the lack of charity and rebelliousness of anybody else. The Lord leads us back into our "first love" by leading us to reflect upon our own proprium. No better way is to be found than by humiliation. So when we come into meetings, especially of our own body, we need to focus our attention upon things which ultimate our development and progress, upon the happiness that can come where there is the fullest reception of those things which come from the Lord. Therefore, I feel that the appeal that Mr. Morse has made is a very timely one.

     For we are taught to find our progress, and the prosperity which we feel abundant in the Church of the Lord, in the universal practice of daily worship of the Lord and of reading the Writings.

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It is most useful to us, when we come together, to give some very serious and powerful attention to those matters in which we feel sure, and in which we find that our Church is in danger of sinking into the gyre of the worldly tendencies of the world about us. We have had it called to our attention that the Lord Himself is now present among men; and never before have I personally realized so fully the utter newness of the New Church, and of the truths that are contained in those precious Heavenly Doctrines which now become clearer and clearer day by day. I think that this appeal by Mr. Morse, to return to our first love, is extremely timely.

     May I beg the privilege of saying a word here as to the setting for this meeting? It is in the center of the beginnings of the New Church, here in London, and has been remarkable for the atmosphere of good will. It has been most delightful and successful as a result. I do not think that in my experience we have had a better and more satisfactory General Assembly than this one in London.

     Rev. W. H. Claxton: May I venture, Bishop and friends, to say a word in this new atmosphere,-one that to me is very delightful indeed, because it brings to us the fundamental of the Church? It was many years ago that I had the pleasure of a quarter of an hour's walk in company with the Rev. Richard Morse. It has been a very great delight to hear his words this morning. I wish the whole of the Conference could have been here to have heard the very frank statements which were made. Because it does seem to me that wherever the Lord is acknowledged in His Supreme Divinity, wherever the Lord's Word is acknowledged as being fully Divine, and wherever there is the life that is called charity, then, we are told, there are the three essentials which are of chief importance, and the external form of organization will have the enlightenment for thus receiving these truths into the regenerate life. Also, wherever you have an organization, the nominal or actual principles of which have enlightenment as to the truths of the Church, and yet they are not receiving the truths of those principles in the regenerate life, then you have not the Church there. Now that seems to me the fundamental defence of the Church of the Lord; and that is the universal church of the Lord going forth in its specific form, in which the external organizations may or may not express the fullness of that spirit.

     With almost every word that the essayist said I find myself in agreement. There are, however, just one or two things that I would like to draw attention to. It did seem to me that there was an implication that some one organization might have its ultimate in a special form, and that another organization might not do so. My own experience is, and it is a pretty wide and varied one, that you never can divide things like that; that you will find those who do and those who do not in every form of organization, just as you find those who do not ultimate the truths in individuals of the same family, or just as you find those things and those faculties which do not ultimate the truth in yourself. I know a great many New Church people, and I have no use at all for one who complains of other people, of one who uses the truth to condemn. Because the Lord Jesus Christ did not use the truth in that way.

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"But I say unto thee, Go, and sin no more!" This is that "light which has come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

     The use of truth is the reforming of particulars; and one of the indications that the truth is not being put to its Divine purpose is that absurdity of spirit and of intellect which condemns those individuals and organizations which do not come up to the standard that that individual keeps. Now, I would like the Conference to have been here this morning especially, because I think they would have come to a better understanding of you, of the way in which you are looking to the Doctrines, of the way in which you understand them, and have consideration for the views of the Doctrines held by others as they understand them. Now, so far as that understanding comes into existence, so far there will come unity,-a unity to which I look forward in the New Church. There will be no separateness of organization, only one; and in the one there will be a variety in the acceptance of truth, because all will be in the endeavor to apply that truth to life.

     Now, I have never seen the need for this separateness, although, in the Providence of the Lord, it has been permitted. I have been in contact with it here in our own country, and I have been in contact with it in the States, and I have never been able to see the need for it. It has always seemed to me that this is the right place to bring the Lord's truth to the individual who is transgressing, to the organization, to anybody, great or small, who is infringing that truth. It means hardship, it means difficulty, it means charity, and so I have never quite been able to understand the need for the separateness. But, granted the separateness, the next thing is the need for union, of realizing the first use of truth in the meaning of life. So, in the atmosphere of heavenly feeling and heavenly thought,-in that feeling is put more than an assertion of heavenly word and deed to make the Church of the Lord, even in this world, a kingdom of the Lord on earth. It can come now to dwell among men, as we are taught to remember. I know that there are those who do protest against any violation of this spirit on the part of any other organization, but protests are not heard loudly in this world. But you must admit that they do not like to have done elsewhere that which they do not admit to be right in spirit. I am hoping to read Mr. Morse's paper in full. It has been a very great delight to be with you this morning, and to hear the gentleman whom I met fourteen years ago.

     Right Rev. R. J. Tilson: I have been very deeply impressed by the paper we have heard from Mr. Morse this morning, and I think that the angle from which he looks upon the subject is a most refreshing one. I feel that it was a call to each one of us to review the history of our own lives here, and of our advancements in the Lord's New Church in the light of the first love that was given to us when the Lord called us into His Church. I was doubly glad that my friends, Mr. Synnestvedt and Mr. Morse, called attention to the effect of the Lord's first gifts from the Word. And I think it would relieve us from any anxiety which our conceit sometimes forces upon us, to know that the things of today are not unqualified by the things of the past. I am tempted sometimes, when I look back forty-nine years to the work of the Academy of the New Church in its beginning, and when I think of those states which were given to some of us through the instrumentality of that wonderful ever-to-be beloved Father Benade, and compare them with some experiences which we go through at the present time,-how the good days are fading, and different days, not quite so lovable, are come upon us, I am quite sure that when one is tempted that way, he is sick for his first love.

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I fully realize that altered circumstances require altered externals, but I think this Assembly has proved to all of us that none of us need fear that the love has failed; for it is in the Lord's own keeping.

     One thing impressed me more deeply, and that was, that in the Seven Churches of Asia, representing all the states of the New Church, you never find one single word that would justify any undue hungering and thirsting for external unity in one body. We are taught in the work on Heaven and Hell that the expansion of heaven depends upon its varieties. And I am persuaded that where there is just need for our distinct formation, for division from everyone, it is our duty to divide, but to do so in the spirit of the first love, which will make one ever more anxious for the freedom of his fellowmen, with dogged determination to hold his own. Our very first concern is our own regeneration; and as that is our first concern, we get further and further away from our proprium, and nearer and nearer to the first love which came from the Lord, and to which, by regeneration, He will enable us to get back. I do not hunger and thirst now for one moment. What is the good of it? It only means the multiplication of the proprium of man. Necessarily, first of all, we have individually to become regenerate, and I think it will take all our time in this world, before we come into that condition finally.

     Now, while we find no indication that the Seven Churches wanted to become one, but only to reach into one in the Lord, we also find in each of them the word, "Repent!" And I am going to be so inconsistent as to say that, in one particular, I never intend to repent; and that is the keynote of the spiritual position in which I wish to stand and shall work. The Lord says, "I know thy ways." To each Church He said, "Repent!" Repentance is also necessary for the regenerate man; and inasmuch as that was the Lord's own word, and the word of John the Baptist before Him, so it should be our word. And in connection therewith, we may have our basis in the principles which guide us. One may talk about agreement, but sometimes it is necessary to give a thrust. I think there is in this text something which calls us to repentance of life; and to us the Word must always be, that the Lord has revealed Himself in a concrete form; and that being so, never mind about variety so long as it shall end in our being united by the Lord to form one in His heavenly kingdom.

     Rev. G. A. Sexton: We have listened to a most delightful and elevating paper, which has put before us some phases of the work that is going on in the New Church. I should like to make a remark or two upon this paper. First of all, however, I must correct one mistake which Mr. Morse made. He referred to the Conference, and said-as nearly as I can quote the words-that the Conference held that these revelations were to be subject to the understanding of man. Now I wish to tell you that this is not the foundation of the Conference.

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The truths of the Conference,-its foundation and local constitution, are exactly the same as the General Church; for it is constituted upon that Doctrine which is written in the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. And if it is not in the Doctrine written by Emanuel Swedenborg, and if it is thus not the Doctrine of the General Church, then it is not a part of the Conference.               

     It is true, as Bishop Tilson has told us, that it is necessary to have different points of view, and the foot cannot do the same work as the hand, but the hand and the foot are still parts of the same body. And it seems to me that Mr. Morse has looked to the future, as we must all do if we are to progress and carry our minds forward. If we keep our minds fixed on things as they are now, we can go no farther than we have already gone. And we must look forward in our Church to the time when the appreciation of these glorious states that have been sent upon the world shall be deeper and nearer to what it should be. I look forward to a time when all of us shall live out these doctrines more fully than at present, when we shall be able to receive the sphere of the angelic heavens, as it were, around us and within us; when we can, as Mr. Morse said, spurn or despise anything that is not part of the body of the Lord's Bride. We ought to be able to receive that angelic sphere, so that we would not only see the communication of the Lord, but also think in communication. Though there must always be evil in existence, we are told that when evil is seen by an adult, he can dispel it. And so we must look forward to a time when we members shall be free, and when the hand and the foot shall still be members of one body, that there shall be "one flock and one Shepherd," even the Lord Jesus Christ. And the one standard is, that we are all members of the body of His Bride.

     Rev. W. H. Alden: I have listened with a great deal of attention to the remarks which have been made here by our friends of the General Conference. They recall vividly to my mind the history of the Academy and its early relations with the General Convention. I think that we are now obliged to speak in something other than general terms, and state frankly in what respect and why the General Church and the Academy have been separated from the General Convention and the General Conference. It has not been because of lack of charity on the part of the Academy and the General Church. What I have to say I think needs to be said here. Now from the first day that the Academy gave utterance to its carefully considered views in Words for the New Church, it came under the condemnation of the leaders of the General Convention; and it came under that condemnation, I am bound to say, because of its uncompromising stand for the teachings of the Heavenly Doctrines. The publication of Words for the New Church was met with contemptuous and slighting comments in the periodicals of the General Convention. There was some attempt at answering the arguments, and when this failed of effect, resort was had to slander. This is the simple statement of fact as to what took place in America. I do not know what happened in Great Britain. I do know in general the attitude of the two bodies, the General Convention and the General Conference,-the abominable attitude of slander.

     I was born in the General Convention, and remained with it until some twenty-two years ago, when I left it, or, to speak more truly, was driven from it.

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Mr. Gladish had a different experience. He offered his resignation, and left the Convention, because he saw that the Academy was right; and he joined it freely. He was told in the Convention that he might hold his Academy views and still remain in the Convention. But when the time came that I saw the essential truth of the Academy position, I was told that I not only could not continue in my position in charge of the Book Room in Philadelphia, but that I could not hope for employment in the General Convention ministry. And when I endeavored by frank inquiry to trace the source of the scandals against the Academy and discover the facts underlying them, and found them baseless and unwarranted, I was personally condemned for trying to find out the truth. For that reason I was condemned. The experience was not a pleasant one.

     Now I have been of those who desired the union of the two parties in the Church. I desired it before I left the Convention to join the General Church. At one time we had meetings of the ministers of the General Convention in Philadelphia and New York. I raised the question as to why we might not usefully admit to our conference the ministers of the General Church. At first, the majority of the ministers seemed to favor the idea, at least believing that it could do no harm. But the matter was closed by the decided opinion of the leaders that we could not trust the ministers of the General Church, and therefore could not go into conference with them. You remember Mr. Potts, who was essentially an Academy man. When he came to Philadelphia, and joined the General Convention, I said to Mr. Worcester, "I think it may be very useful that Mr. Potts has joined the Convention." He said," I do not know whether it will be useful or not; I am afraid not." As it turned out, it was not useful, simply because the Convention, to use a common proverb, "sent the Academy to Coventry," and refused to have anything to do with its members. That, we know, is the situation today. For the most part, they omit all reference to Academy publications in their periodicals, and will not publish advertisements of them.

     What are we to do under these conditions? Reference has been made to friendly relations between the two great divisions of the Church. I cannot see the possibility of it. I have relatives in the Convention, holding high positions there; but in my relations with them, to my great grief, I have to leave the question of the Church out. Now what are we to do? It is all very well for these ministers of the General Conference to come here and say we should be friends and love one another, but they must show us that they do love us. When they do that, then I will love them and work with them; and to those members of the General Convention or the General Conference who do that I will be friendly. But I will not be friendly with those who treat the Academy as an alien body not of the New Church, who circulate scandals, and consider the Academy to be so bad that no intercourse can be had with it. I cannot! I cannot!

     Rev. E. A. Sutton: I am not an eloquent speaker, but I am very anxious to say one or two words at this, the first General Assembly held in London. And the context of this discussion of the paper by the Rev. Richard Morse gives me the best opportunity.

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His treatment of the subject, I have appreciated very much indeed; and this, together with the subsequent discussion, has touched me in a very exposed part,-shall I say? I am deeply concerned about the relationship of the General Church and the General Conference. I am exceedingly indebted to the writers of New Church Life, and that is the one touch I have with the General Church. All the articles of New Church Life have influenced my thought very considerably in the recent past. Moreover, I have been under a personal influence, since I was in Glasgow, which has helped to shape my thoughts considerably, or at any rate to confirm them, and that was the influence of a member of the General Church,-Mr. Bowie. I give testimony to that, because it has been an influence to help me to see certain aspects of the Writings themselves from a different viewpoint,-such a charming and helpful influence.

     Now I think you will accept that Conference is performing a use. I am going to say nothing here which I should be ashamed to say in my own church. I am a member of the New Church Conference, and proud of being such a member, and I believe the Conference is doing a great use. I like to look upon it as a man, just as this organization is in the form of the human mind. The Conference is passing through a state which can be criticized by the General Church, but, for all that, I see no reason for anything but the most charitable understanding between the Conference and the General Church. There are any differences in the way, as Mr. Tilson has said. It is necessary to separate. I am quite in agreement with that. Nevertheless, the very best relationships can exist between the two bodies. And I look forward most earnestly to the time when the General Conference meets the Bishop of the General Church, and the General Church will send greetings to the General Conference. As you break down the ghastly and deplorable bridge that exists between the two bodies, then we shall be in a more open state to tackle the fundamental problems that have separated us, and that will bring us to the light.

     Now a recent speaker has attributed charity to the Academy and the General Church, and has withdrawn that attribute from Convention. Of that I am unconcerned, but this is my point: The history of the Church has an important place in our consideration. Do not all the ears of the young, I beg you, with prejudice and filth of the past that will blind their eyes, so that they will see the truth of no other section of the Church than their own. Mr. President, Conference is criticized for never mentioning you I have no brief for that, no brief whatever, but their never mentioning you necessarily involves that there is never heard a word against you in the meeting of the General Conference, and that is a very important thing. If I told you the truth, it would be this,-that as a young New Church student in the college here, I went to one of your social gatherings. At that gathering a feast of charity was in progress, and that evening I beard some bitter criticism of Conference I know we are silent in the Conference. I have no brief for that, but I would rather be silent than condone the bitterness and prejudice that continues between the two bodies. I want you to understand this, that there is standing before you one of your friends, who holds deep affection for many of your members, and one who, I trust, throughout life will labor with deep fervor for one of the two bodies of the Lord's New Church.

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     Right Rev. George de Charms: I may say that I have enjoyed very much indeed the discussion which has arisen this morning, involving, as it does, questions of vital concern to the New Church. I was particularly interested in the courageous statements made on the floor of our Assembly by members of another body of the New Church. I think it is a compliment to the English people to say that this could hardly take place in our country. I have never known of such a discussion in America. I personally welcome the presence of these gentlemen, and their frank expressions of view, because I believe that only in this way can a better understanding arise. I do not believe that restraints upon the freedom of speech are to the best interests of the Church.

     While it is true that silence may be somewhat less irritating, it will not promote a greater unity of thought or sympathy of feeling. We are told that on the floor of Conference and Convention there is not a word spoken against the General Church, while with us men speak openly what is in their minds with reference to the other bodies. I think the fact should not be allowed to Pass without notice, that the charge has been made, in all good faith and earnestness, by my friend, Mr. Claxton, that the General Church was giving a stab in the back to Conference by speaking its mind on the floor of our Assembly. That was said, perhaps, in the heat of argument, but it was as lacking in the heart and spirit of charity as anything that has been said here. If the charge is true, then Mr. Claxton and I have a very different understanding as to what is meant by a stab in the back. These meetings are open to all. So far as possible, they have been advertized, and the request to advertize them in the papers of the Conference has been refused. Nevertheless, all the members of the New Church in this country have been invited to attend, and what is said on the floor of such a meeting is not spoken behind anybody's back. If we are not to be free here to express our mind, without laying ourselves open to such a charge, where can we do so?

     Now I tell you, gentlemen and ladies, regarding this matter of a separation between the two bodies, I believe that in the General Church is to be found the spirit of real charity. Charity is not a matter of personal feeling between individuals in the Church. Real charity is manifested in the love of truth, such as will give every man the freedom to express the truth as he sees it, and without regard to personal feelings, and will expect in return the freedom to reply. It is not open discussion that tends to divide the Church. What is subversive of the unity of the Church is the other kind of talk, not on the floor of an open meeting, but individually, here and there, by insinuation and innuendo. Whatever may be said about the kindness of individuals in Conference and Convention, to my knowledge that kind of attack is found in those bodies.

     Mr. Claxton has said that we cannot divide between the bodies of the Church, and hold that one possesses an attitude of charity while another does not, because we find a mixed state in both. There are some individuals in both bodies who are charitable, and some who are not. This, of course, is true. But I do not agree with the speaker that, because of it, no judgment can be formed with reference to a body of the Church as a whole.

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Any Church is qualified by the character of its leadership. It is known by the policy that guides its actions, whatever may be the belief of a minority that protests against them. Mr. Claxton himself has admitted that there is a minority in Conference and Convention who protest against certain attitudes, but without effect; and, in so doing, he has proved that the quality of those bodies is on the other side of the fence, so far as their leadership and policy are concerned. I am speaking this with nothing but charity in my own heart for the Lord's New Church, and for its internal unity. I hold that we ought to be frank and open in our expression, and that there ought to be a feeling of kindness which does not compel us to be silent, but gives us the freedom and the courage to speak our mind, with mutual respect for one another, and the willingness to believe that what is said is spoken in sincerity, and with the desire that the Lord may give us to see the truth.

     What I have said here has been spoken in order to correct a misunderstanding. I would not with the General Church, by its silence, to admit that we have given a stab in the back. We do not so consider it, and I trust that Mr. Claxton will not so consider it. The Lord's Church, in itself, is a greater thing than any human opinion. There is something above the interpretations of men, something beyond the individual view of the Writings held either in the Conference and Convention or in the General Church, if you please,-something that is infinite and Divine, revealed now for the salvation of men. That is the truth toward which we should strive. And so far as we really seek that highest truth, with a courage and conviction that refuse to be turned aside by selfish or worldly considerations, just in that degree will the Church grow toward a deeper unity throughout the world. And as those personalities that now divide us are cast aside by a more interior view of the Heavenly Doctrine, a more perfect understanding of what the Lord has given, and a greater willingness to live according to His Truth, will result. In this way will the Church become united, and it is the only unity that will be of real value. It is not by saying how deeply we should love one another that we can bring unity to the Church. True unity comes from receiving the Lord in His Second Coming in heart and mind, without qualification, without compromise, with a willingness to put aside all else to follow Him. Then will we draw nearer and nearer to one another, because we shall be going in the same direction, traveling side by side toward the same goal. Our unity will then come from the Lord, Who alone can form our hearts together.

     Mr. Colley Pryke: In the Writings of the Church there are some statements in which the English race is praised for its love of truth, and it is said that this race is in a good position in the spiritual world because of their love of freedom. However, I do not think this pertains only to the English race. But it does seem to me that this discussion has been of a very doubtful character, because unless the fresh air is let in we get a little stuffy. The air is becoming rather cloudy. There can be unity between the two bodies of the Church only when there is charity, and only if they work for the same ends. I have, I am proud to say, some very good friends in Conference, but I do not think these friends represent the real body of opinion. It was our desire to have at this Assembly a large number of friends of Conference, that these sessions should be open.

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We felt that the presence of members of other bodies of the Church would be welcome, and it was my duty to endeavor to have an announcement inserted in the journals of Conference in this country. In one case, the advertisement was accepted and the fee was paid; in another case, there was quite a long delay before I received a reply. Finally, both those journals refused the advertisement, the fee being returned. That is not a broad-minded attitude. That is not real charity to another body. And I think we are making a mistake if we dose our eyes to such things. However, we do welcome in our midst all those who are able to share this Assembly with us.

     Mr. Harold F. Pitcairn: The question was asked, Why we cannot get together? There is one reason. We believe that the Conference and Convention are so friendly with the Old Church that they also wish to be one with them. Therefore, we believe that by this means the very life-blood is being taken away from them. Now if they ask us to join with them, we feel that our life-blood also would be sapped by the Old Church, were we to do so. They say, "Let us get together," and that invitation requires that they should accept our ideas or we should accept theirs. If they will drop their ideas and accept ours, we will be most delighted to join with them.
CORPORATION OF THE GENERAL CHURCH 1928

CORPORATION OF THE GENERAL CHURCH       RANDOLPH W. CHILDS       1928

     A REPORT OF THE PUBLIC MEETING OF THE MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM, A CORPORATION,

     Held at London, England, August 8th, 1928, at 3:00 p.m.

     Bishop N. Dandridge Pendleton Presided at the Corporation Meeting, at which thirty-two members were present.

     The Report of the Secretary, as printed among the Reports to the Thirteenth General Assembly, was approved. The printed Report of the Treasurer was approved, subject to audit.

     The following named gentlemen signed application cards, and were thereupon admitted to membership, and participated in the deliberations of the meeting: Right Rev. Robert J. Tilson, Rev. Alan Gill, Rev. Elmo C. Acton, Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer, Rev. Albert Bjorck, Rev. Fred W. Elphick, Mr. W. Copley Jubb, Mr. James S. Pryke, Mr. Norman H. Motum.

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     The following were elected members of the Executive Committee:
Rev. N. Dandridge Pendleton           Nils E. Loven
Raymond Pitcairn                    Charles G. Merrell
Geoffrey S. Childs                    Alvin E. Nelson
Hubert Hyatt                          Seymour G. Nelson
Felix A. Boericke                    Harold F. Pitcairn
Edward C. Bostock                    Colley Pryke
C. Ray Brown                          J. Henry Ridgway
Paul Carpenter                          Rudolph Roschman
Randolph W. Childs                Paul Synnestvedt
Alexander P. Lindsay                    Victor Tilson
Samuel S. Lindsay

     Messrs. Walter C. Childs, Jacob Schoenberger and Richard Roschman were elected Honorary Members of the Executive Committee.

     A Resolution was passed in affectionate memory of Mr. Robert Carswell, who had passed into the spiritual world since the last meeting of the Corporation.

     EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETINGS.

     At a meeting of the Executive Committee, held the same day, at which ten members of the Committee were present, the following Officers were chosen: President, Bishop N. D. Pendleton; Vice-President, Mr. Raymond Pitcairn; Treasurer, Mr. Hubert Hyatt; Secretary, Mr. Geoffrey S. Childs. Finance Committee: Messrs. Raymond Pitcairn, Edward C. Bostock and Hubert Hyatt.

          RANDOLPH W. CHILDS,
               Secretary pro tem.

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SOCIETY BUILDING 1928

SOCIETY BUILDING              1928

     WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 8TH.

     Right Rev. George de Charms, Presiding: The program this evening is really a continuation of our program of last evening, when Church Extension was the subject. The purpose in providing these two evenings was to give all at this Assembly the opportunity to hear of the vital pastoral work that is being done in the Church, and to become acquainted with the work that is being carried forward by our ministers in various parts of the world. It was impossible, in the time at our disposal, to provide that all the ministers should have such an opportunity, and those were chosen whom you might not hear so frequently. Last evening we heard from those who are laboring in what might be called "new territory," building up the church from the very beginning. And we are now to hear from those who are ministering to the smaller societies. Accordingly, we designate the subject, in general, "Society Building," and I have the pleasure of asking the Rev. W. L. Gladish to tell us about the work that he is doing in Chicago, and after he has spoken we shall hear from the Rev. Messrs. J. M. Lima, F. E. Gyllenhaal, Richard Morse, and Elmo C. Acton.

     Rev. W. L. Gladish: I will first speak of what seems to me to be the vital half of our work, and what makes for its success. It is this, that all our teaching is done with the thought that it is the Lord's own teaching, that what the Lord has once spoken He speaks every day. We only come to Him through the Word. When the Lord came, He "bowed the heavens and came down"; and whenever the Word is opened, whenever we prepare ourselves to read and hear the Word, the Lord so comes,-comes again,-so that the voice of the Lord is heard when the Word is read in public. The Lord is present, and all heaven is present, when the Word is open. So I would emphasize the necessity of meeting together and reading the Word; for then the Lord Himself is present among us, speaking to all who are prepared to hear.

     Another thing,-along the line of teaching that first came from our beloved Bishop Emeritus,-is to keep prominently in our thought that all wisdom and intelligence, and all light of truth, is in the Word, and not to be found anywhere else.

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No man by searching can find out good, nor can he do so with any truth on any plane. The Word is the only light and the only Teacher with simple hearts today. The Lord comes to us through the Word, and in no other way can the Lord be present. And since He has now opened His Word, the light and power of the crowning Revelation is to be found also in the letter of the Word. That is the soul of our work, or the reason it has succeeded; for there is poured into it the power of the Lord's own presence; and, as Mr. Baeckstrom said last night, when the Lord does the work, no one can do it better.

     As to the external work of the society, let me briefly recount its history. It was begun fifty years ago by Bishop W. F. Pendleton, so that the work was started in his own way, as he alone could do it. Then, as most of you know, the church moved out into the country, about seventeen miles away from the heart of the city of Chicago. Then, for some years afterwards, the pastor of the Immanuel Church at Glenview came into the city in the afternoon to minister to the members who had been unable to move out. This was many years ago, but we are still drained continually by the Glenview society. They take our young people, and the married people who have children to be educated. But we are glad to have them go, because of the benefits they enjoy, though it leaves us with only a few. When I became pastor of the society eight years ago, it had only thirty-six members. We worshiped in a rented hall belonging to one of our members, and I was on part-time teaching in a school, as was the pastor before me, the Rev. David H. Klein, until his health failed.

     Five years ago, however, we purchased a residence, a large house with nine rooms, which we have made the home of the pastor. We meet in the parlor for our worship, and we have had a little chancel made which we keep curtained off, except on Sunday, when we open the curtains. Every Sunday the chairs are filled. We have accommodation for fifty people, and in the parlor and dining room combined we can accommodate more. We soon began to increase. There were reasons for it. We doubled our membership in a very short time. We have now, I think, seventy-five members, although within the last two years we have lost two or three families by their removal to Glenview. This has been a very great influence for worship,-being under one roof,-and Sunday morning services are held regularly.

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We also have room for society suppers, which take place before the doctrinal class. We have not as yet been able to have a doctrinal class every week, but we hold it every two weeks. We have not tried having doctrinal classes without the suppers before them. Some of our members come from quite a distance; one in particular comes forty-one miles; and it does not seem feasible to have evening meetings and doctrinal class without supper in connection with it. Therefore, we have a supper every two weeks, followed by singing practice. The doctrinal class is preceded by instruction for the children. We have been covering, just as far as we can, the same program begun by Bishop W. F. Pendleton fifty years ago.

     Just what we shall do in the future I do not know. We ought to have a church, but I do feel, and I think others of our society feel likewise, that we must never get very far away from the present idea of having a place where the pastor lives. We think our success is largely due to that fact. We have a small society; and not very large means, although I should say that the society is now supporting its pastor. I have been able to give up the school teaching and devote all my time to the work of the society. We could not have accomplished what we have without a plan of this kind,-one building for services, doctrinal classes and social purposes, all under one roof. But there are signs that we are outgrowing our present quarters. Late in June, there were fifty-nine persons present at the supper, and we occupied all the space we had in the parlors, and had to put tables on the porch. We hope we shall grow, but we do not want to separate the church from the pastor's residence and society house.

     Rev. J. M. Lima (interpreted by Dr. E. E. Iungerich): The New Church in Brazil is developing slowly, owing to the present conditions of humanity in the world. In contrast with New Church missionary work elsewhere in the General Church, advertizing and giving public lectures bring almost no results in Brazil, and it would mean spending resources that might better be devoted to other uses. So they have turned their thoughts to ministering among New Church members. Three things should be done, in order to carry this out. The first is the publication of the Writings translated into Portuguese. At present, they have only the Doctrine of Life and Heaven and Hell.

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Mr. John Pitcairn, during his visit there, was very much impressed by the character of the people, and provided a fund for the publication of translations of the Writings into Portuguese. But the members have not done this work, because of a very strong feeling that they are not very deeply learned in Latin. Although quite a number of them have had this language in their school days, they cannot do justice to translating the Writings; and they feel that it ought to be a first class bit of work. But, since talking with members here; and learning how the translation began in Holland (not at first from the Latin), he and Mr. Leonardos have come to the conclusion that it would be better to make some translation of a provisional character, based upon the French or English versions of the Writings, while waiting for their own translation from the Latin.

     The second means which de considers important for the development of the Church in Brazil is the construction of a New Church House of Worship. This matter came up for discussion two years ago, and since then they have, by their own efforts, raised $400.00 for a building fund. There is a contribution at the service every Sunday, and the donations are very regular. Mr. Lima feels that in a very few years, on this basis of weekly contributions, they will be able to acquire ground for a temple,-the first to be erected in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

     The third and principal one is now being carried out,-the publication of a quarterly journal, called A Nova Igreja, which has a double purpose. One is to spread the Doctrines through the society there, for those who are unable to read the Writings in Latin, French, or English. The other is to make a connecting link between their society and other sections of the General Church, because the journal goes elsewhere. Comments are made; elsewhere these comments are translated in another journal; and so they feel this is an organic part of the Church. The leading news of the Church in Brazil, and the leading news of the Church in all other parts, is given in each issue. In this way, they feel that, although they are so remote, they are in close touch with other activities of the General Church.

     Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal: The subject is "Society Building,"-the building up of societies of the New Church on earth. If we ask: "How are societies built in heaven?" I think all will agree that the answer, first, is this,-the well-known doctrine that "the Divine of the Lord makes heaven."

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The Divine Proceeding of the Lord is that which makes heaven, and so makes the society in heaven; and angels who come from the human race constitute these societies. And if we were to study this subject thoroughly, we would derive the principles which are of the greatest value for society building on earth. It would be necessary for us to study what is revealed in the Writings concerning the building of societies in the other world. And this subject is one that is too large to Present even in outline on this occasion; but there is one point I should like to refer to, namely, that societies in heaven grow slowly, from a few who form the nucleus in the center, until they become very large; and that new societies, in their formation, are supported in many ways by the larger societies. We are even told that there are angels sent from the larger societies to enable the smaller society to grow.

     Now, if we carry this thought down to earth, we see how true it is of our society building on earth. All of our societies have started with a few. In one case-that of the Immanuel Church, Glenview-the commencement of the society was the work of an ordained priest who gathered around him a few laymen. And I believe it is true of all of our own societies,-that they have been built up from a few, whether a priest or a layman has taken an active lead in the work. And I also believe that in most, if not all, of our societies of the General Church, there has always been a recognition by the leader, or by those who have cooperated with him, that it is the Lord who builds the Church; it has been His work with man which has built the society; it is the Divine of the Lord in His revealed Word which makes our societies.

     As to the priestly work in society building, we have the principle, which has been taught to the students of the Academy as the principle of the Theological School, that the priest is to teach the truth, and by the truth to lead to the good of life, and thus lead to ultimates by which men, and priests particularly, are able to build up societies. That comprehends, if you please, all the particulars, and all the methods which men may devise in building up societies. But when we say it comprehends all these particulars and methods, we do not exclude the fact that we may enumerate the methods, and such an enumeration of methods would take more time than is at my disposal.

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For I believe, if we could conceive of ten thousand or one hundred thousand societies in the General Church, we should doubtless have a thousand or more different methods of society building. The principles involved in that work are revealed by the Lord; I believe the methods are left to human devising, that there may be cooperation with the Lord in upbuilding the Church. I shall only touch upon one or two of those methods which are well known.

     For the services and classes, perhaps the most efficient method is to educate the children. There can be no growth in the society without it. It should be education within a school; but even if there is no school, there can be education of the children, either by the pastor or by the parents. The responsibility of building up a society does not rest solely with the pastor, but equally with every member of the society. But all things must come down into ultimates, even into material things, and so we cannot ignore them. I would place them last in importance. We cannot ignore such things as the organization of a society, and even of a building for the worship of the Lord. The building is the most ultimate of all, but it is nevertheless one of the most powerful means, and I would conclude my few remarks by emphasizing it.

     Let me recall to your minds the exhortation given in the Book of Haggai. When the Children of Israel returned from the Babylonian Captivity, and found that the temple of Jerusalem had been destroyed, they commenced laying a foundation. Then they discontinued it, and built their own houses. Haggai was then sent to them. In the first and second chapters of that Book are verses of very great impressiveness, and also of great value to every New Church society. The people said that the time had not come when the Lord's house should be built. That was an excuse, and Haggai said, "Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Consider your ways; And he said, Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways." Thus did Haggai exhort the people to direct their attention to the building of the Lord's house.

     The spiritual message is, that we place the Lord first in our minds, and remove evil; but we also know that it means to put the Church first, as the Lord's Bride and Wife.

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But I ask: Can there be any society building in the New Church, unless it comes down finally into the ultimate of a building, however small, however unpretentious, however humble, which is set apart for the worship of the Lord, where all can gather to worship the Lord? In our societies we also build our own houses first. We have done so in the past; we do so now; and we shall perhaps continue to do so. But if we actually place the Lord first in our hearts, and the Church first in our hearts, perhaps there will come a time when no society in the General Church will be without its building set apart for the worship of the Lord in His Second Coming. And such a place will be as an angelic magnet, drawing every man, woman and child to the Lord. The captives from Babylon afterwards repented, and built the house of the Lord, and it was greater than they at first contemplated.

     Rev. Richard Morse: It gives me very great pleasure indeed to meet you all here tonight. In what I shall say about the Church in Australia, I would not underestimate the work that has been done by the priests and ministers of the societies of the General Conference, because they have been, and are, still my friends. But as a priest of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, I will confine my remarks to the work we are doing in connection with our body. If we regard the Church as being individual before it is collective, then I may say that the Church in Australia started over a hundred years ago, when my father came to Australia. As a young man of about twenty-six years of age, he joined the Waterloo Road Society in London, and being fond of music, he entered the choir; and he also joined that Church, and I have his membership certificate in my possession. I mention him because, as a youth of seventeen years, I began to assimilate the teachings of the Church that he gave; for he was very faithful to the Church. Therefore, I may say that the Church really started over one hundred years ago in Australia. Now I will speak of my own work in connection with the General Church.

     When our small society limped out of the old New Church, as I would call it,-because our society in Sydney had never had a minister, and consequently, as with most societies that have never had a minister, they had been degenerating, until you could find hardly a speck of the New Church in them,-we had to meet in the home of a Miss Taylor.

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She is an eminent member of the society, who is now spending her time and money in furthering the work of the Church. And so, for a long time, we had services in this home, where we placed an altar to the Lord. The children of the members, however, could not come, because the distance from their homes was about nine miles. And so we felt that we ought to go out there in the afternoon, after having the usual morning service at Miss Taylor's house. The name of the place is Hurstville, and finally we formed a Sunday School there, in the Workman's Institute. A lot of children came to us. In spite of the fact that we were teaching the Doctrines of the New Church, and that the service included the Creed of the New Church, the people continued to send their children, until finally we had to build a church. Many of you, perhaps, have seen the picture of the church, as printed in NEW CHURCH LIFE. And now this is becoming almost too small for our uses. We have on our Sunday. School roll sixty-two children. It is remarkable the way the children are continually being sent tons, although we come out clearly as to the teaching of the Doctrines. We have great difficulty in securing enough teachers. At present, we have six teachers. We do not feel that any teacher should have more than about eight children to teach, and so we are not as yet fully equipped to give the children the proper teaching.

     The Sunday School opens with worship. The children all enter in a procession, and we teach them that the first act of worship is an offering to the Lord. It is a wonderful sight to see the children entering in the order of their height, and making their offering. The Word is opened, and they all say the Lord's Prayer. Then they all repeat the Commandments; there are hardly any of these children who cannot repeat the Commandments. I sometimes stop them, and ask them what Commandment they have just said, and about half of them can tell me. Then we have the Creed from the True Christian Religion. Thus all these children have the principles of the New Church in their minds; and as they grow up, they will never forget, because what is absorbed in childhood is never forgotten. I can remember many things in my boyhood that I would not remember if they had happened in later years.

     And then we began to consider the question of a New Church Day School, and this led Miss Taylor to offer the necessary money for such a school.

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Consequently, we now have one of our best teachers visiting Bryn Athyn for the purpose of being better prepared to undertake this school. And we hope to have a New Church Day School in the course of a year, and I think it will be the nucleus of an institute which will grow in years to a very large one. For we are trying to lay the foundation securely upon the Revelation of the New Church, and I believe that, if we are faithful to our purpose,-and as long as I live we shall be,-that the Lord will bless our work, and that in that blessing we shall, in the years to come, have a place almost second to Bryn Athyn. I am hoping that we shall have a very large institution and college, and that teachers will come there from Bryn Athyn. I have great hopes for the future in Hurstville. Australia is slightly larger than the United States of America. You have a population of about one hundred and twenty million in America; we have only six million. Sydney, with which Hurstville is in contact, is in New South Wales, and that city has a million inhabitants. It is a very large and beautiful city. Every person who comes from Sydney crows about the harbor, and they do so with great delight. It is a very pretty sight, and anyone going there will be promptly welcomed. I hope the Bishop will come back with Miss White, when she returns from the other center of the universe.

     We have doctrinal classes every Wednesday night. We have the gymnasium, and all the other exercises that go to make up a useful society of the Church. The average attendance at worship is about twenty or twenty-one. I received a letter yesterday from a gentleman who is conducting the services for me in my absence a very nice letter, stating that he had spent ten hours in writing out one of my sermons. He is a good extemporaneous speaker. He stated that there were twenty-three present at the last service, and forty-eight children at the Sunday School. They are going along very well in my absence.

     The financial support is wonderful, because we go on the principle that, if there is a use to be performed, people must give to that use. We have no need to go begging. We have a piano, the cost of which (?60.) has been paid off. In fact, everything has been paid off, except the church building.

     The parents of the children come to the socials, and we tell them the Doctrines of the Church. We make a point of this, of giving a little information about the Church.

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They receive this quietly, and still send their children. These children are of a superior class of child. The older girls are very fine, and receive the teaching with clearness, and that teaching can never fail to have its effects upon the minds of those children. And I am sure that, when we get a school, a large number of children will come from the Sunday School, and feed the New Church Day School. The children of the New Church Day School, however, will only be received through the rite of baptism. In the Sunday School, we take them whether they are baptized or not, although a number of them have been baptized. The proportion of the children attending the Sunday School who have been baptized is about thirty per cent.

     Question: Is there any difficulty with regard to baptism?

     Mr. Morse: Just before I left, I baptized three children. They replied quite freely to the questions put to them, and there was no trouble in that respect. People in Australia seem to be a different kind of people. They do not make a six weeks' journey unless there is an object. I often wonder about my father. It took him six months to get to Australia. He must have had great courage. But if he had not been a New Churchman, I would not be here today. That is why I have mentioned him, because no one else would have taken on the work that I have had to take on. I can say that no one, except Mr. Tilson, or those who have been through this cruel world, can realize what it is to be alone, and to be misrepresented. But I knew that I had the-truth at my back, and I knew that the truth would carry me through.

     Rev. Elmo C. Acton: The New Church in Natal was begun by Mr. Ridgway, a great-grandfather of Mr. J. H. Ridgway who is with us tonight. This Mr. Ridgway went to Durban from Manchester, sailing from Liverpool, and he established the Church there; and the present society has gradually grown from that beginning. There was one woman in the society, a Mrs. Emma Cockerell, who held the society together. Without her, I feel there would be no Durban society today. Her work was really marvellous. Mr. Morse has just said that a society without a minister often declines, but Mrs. Cockerell held that society together in a wonderful way, and when she died she had read the Arcana Celestia for the seventh time. Later, through Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Ridgway, the society came in contact with the General Church.

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At first it was not definitely joined to any larger body of the Church. But through the help of a Miss Florence Warland it learned to understand about the Academy, and about the work that Father Benade and Bishop Tilson were doing. Finally, the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal went to Durban, and the work that he did there was certainly very fine. After he had been there four years, or approximately that long, Bishop N. D. Pendleton visited South Africa and received the whole society into the General
Church.

     The work there is now the work of a well-established society. We have a school, with about twenty-five children attending, and it is doing very well. It has been running for about four years, and there was quite a bit of difficulty in establishing it, and in establishing the traditions of the General Church in regard to New Church education. However, the work is progressing very favorably, and I think that the society as a whole is thoroughly convinced of the necessity of New Church education. I might mention the fact that the school is not a society school as most schools are. in the General Church. It was started by Miss Champion, and it has been her school. Miss Champion, however, has very kindly placed the school in the position of a society school, so that, as regards most of its policy, she refers to the pastor of the society. It has been felt that it would be in better order for the school to come directly under the society. Miss Champion has been looking to this end, and in a general meeting held in May the sentiment was expressed that the society is now ready to take over that school. Certain difficulties stand in the way, which will probably be cleared away shortly.

     In Durban we hold regular Services every Sunday. We also have Children's Services, Doctrinal Classes, the Ladies' Classes and the Men's Meeting. For the most part, we follow along the lines that were laid down by those who preceded me. There is just one thing I wish to speak about in regard to services. In the Theological School, our Professor in the study of the Letter of the Word, the Rev. W. B. Caldwell, suggested to us the following of a calendar of subjects in the sermons, and I have been doing this ever since I have been in Durban. I wish to testify to the success of it. You know it is good for a man to speak on what he is interested in, and I think it is a good thing for a minister to keep a sufficient variety in his sermons when he has to speak to a society fifty-two times a year; and a calendar, it seems to me, is a very good way of doing this.

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It is a calendar of subjects covering all the principal doctrines of the Church, and you give your society instruction in those subjects. I feel that if I did not follow such a calendar it would be difficult for me to cover all those doctrines. I would be inclined to repeat them several times.

     The Right Rev. George de Charms: I am sure that it is with a great deal of pleasure that we have listened to these accounts of the progress that is being made in our Church in such widely separated places in the world. The accounts that have been given are most encouraging, encouraging for the future particularly, because of the fact that they all give evidence of a firm conviction with reference to those central spiritual forces that alone can build the Church in the world. I believe that this work that is now starting in such a small way in these various places will in time grow into something great. That is the hope that is in all our hearts. It is certainly the hope that is in the hearts of those men who are devoting their life to the task. And I believe that it is more than a hope with those men; it is the conviction that arises from a sense of the greatness of that Church for which they are laboring, a sense of the tremendous power that comes from the presence of the Lord in His Divine Human.

     Dr. Alfred Acton: May I make a remark about the reports to which we have been listening? I was very deeply impressed by the note of New Church education that appeared in these reports. I do not want to make a speech about the matter, but I think that particular attention ought to be called to the fact that, in two of the most isolated societies of the General Church, New Church schools are being established. When Mr. Morse was speaking, in memory I went back to Bishop Benade when in the distant past he dreamed a dream of a future university. We have in some manner, surely, realized that dream; but he had the vision to see that the realization of that dream was not in his ambition to establish, but in the power of the Divine Truth. And so, when Mr. Morse spoke about the establishing of a great school in Australia, I thought that Mr. Morse had something of the same faith and power, and that he works in Australia with the same spirit that Father Benade gave to the Academy, and which, I trust, we still have preserved among us.

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JOURNAL OF THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM 1928

JOURNAL OF THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM       Various       1928

     HELD AT VICTORIA HOUSE, BLOOMSBURY SQUARE,

     LONDON, ENGLAND,

     August 4th to 12th, 1928.

     First Session-Saturday, August 4th.

     1. At 7:40 p.m., worship was conducted by the Rev. R. J. Tilson, Pastor of Michael Church, Burton Road, London, who occupied the chair during the session.

     2. At 7:50 p.m., the Right Rev. N. Dandridge Pendleton, Bishop of the General Church delivered his Address to the General Assembly. The Address (printed in the August issue, pp. 449-468) was followed by a discussion. (August, pp. 468-475.)

     3. On motion, the Assembly adjourned at 10 p.m.

     Services of Divine Worship were held morning and evening on Sunday, August 5th. An account of these Services is given in the August issue, pages 476-500, and includes the Declarations of Faith and Purpose made by the Candidates for Ordination, and the Sermons delivered on those occasions.



     Second Session-Monday, August 6th.

     4. The Assembly came to order at 10:00 a.m., Bishop Pendleton presiding and opening the meeting with worship.

     5. On motion, the Minutes of the Twelfth General Assembly, as printed in NEW CHURCH LIFE for August, 1926 (pp. 505-535),were accepted without reading.

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     6. The Bishop appointed Messrs. F. R. Cooper and Albert E. Orme a Committee on the Roll of Attendance.

     7. It was announced that, with a view to saving the time of the Assembly, the Reports of Officers and Committees had been printed and distributed for examination by the members of the Assembly, and that opportunity would be given to discuss them. (For the Reports, see December issue.)

     8. The Bishop stated that the Rev. W. B. Caldwell, owing to the pressure of other duties, had resigned the office of Secretary of the General Church, and that the Rev. George de Charms, prior to his ordination into the Third Degree of the Priesthood, had been appointed to fill the office until the meeting of the General Assembly. It would now be necessary for the Assembly to elect a new Secretary. The Bishop nominated the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner.

     9. On motion, the Assembly approved the nomination of the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner as Secretary of the General Church, and Mr. Odhner expressed his pleasure in undertaking the duties of that office.

     10. The subject of a CALENDAR READING OF THE WRITINGS was introduced by the Bishop, and the Rev. E. E. Iungerich, by appointment, led in the discussion. (September issue, p. 521.)

     11. On motion, it was voted to continue the discussion at 3 p.m.

     12. At 11 o'clock, the Rev. Dr. Alfred Acton delivered an address on "Divine Government and Human Freedom of Choice," which was followed by a discussion. (September issue, pp. 533, 557.)

     13. On motion, the Assembly adjourned at 12:30 p.m.

     Third Session-Monday, August 6th.

     14. The Assembly came to order at 3:15 p.m., the Rev. C. E. Doering acting as Chairman.

     15. The discussion of the subject of a CALENDAR READING OF THE WRITINGS was continued.

     16. On motion, it was Resolved, That this meeting approves of the plan for a Calendar for the daily reading of the Writings, and that the matter be referred to the Bishop and his Consistory. Carried unanimously.

     17. At 4 o'clock, the Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer delivered an Address on "The New Church in Holland." (September issue, p. 563.)

654


For lack of time, there was no discussion of the Address at this session. (See September, p. 577.)

     18. On motion, the Assembly adjourned at 5:00 p.m.

     On Tuesday, August 7th, at 10:00 a.m., an Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy was held, at which the Rev. Albert Bjorck delivered an Address on the subject of "Progress," which was followed by a discussion. (September issue, pp. 584, 596.)

     Fourth Session-Tuesday, August 7th.

     19. At 7:40 p.m., the Assembly was opened with worship conducted by the Rev. Alfred Acton, who presided at this session.

     20. The discussion of the Reports being in order, the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal spoke on the Report of the Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE and was followed by other speakers. (See December issue.)

     21. The Rev. Fernand Hussenet spoke in French on the subject of Church Extension, describing his experiences with missionary work. He advocated four evangelistic instrumentalities: 1. Preaching. 2. Reading the Writings, although this is difficult in France owing to a shortage of the books of the Writings in the French language. 3. Conversations. 4. A weekly periodical, which he would like to see established.

     22. On motion, a recess of five minutes was taken until 8:35 p.m.

     23. The subject of CHURCH EXTENSION was discussed in short addresses by the Revs. Messrs. Karl R. Alden, Henry Leonardos, F. E. Waelchli, Gustaf Baeckstrom, F. W. Elphick, and Mr. Moffat Mcanyana. (See p. 601.)

     24. On motion, the Assembly adjourned at 10:20 p.m.

     On Wednesday, August 8th, at 10:00 a.m., an Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy was held. There was a discussion of the Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer's paper on "The New Church in Holland." (See September, p. 577.) At 11:00 o'clock, the Rev. Richard Morse delivered an Address on the subject of "The First Love," which was followed by a discussion. (See p. 621).

655




     Fifth Session-Wednesday, August 8th.

     25. At 7:45 p.m., the Assembly was opened with worship conducted by the Right Rev. George de Charms, who presided at this session.

     26. The discussion of the Reports being in order, the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal asked that the Report of the Treasurer of the Academy be taken up for consideration. In the absence of the Treasurer, Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, a detailed explanation of the Report was given by Mr. Edward C. Bostock.

     27. A discussion of the Report of the Committee on NEW CHURCH SERMONS was introduced by the Rev. E. E. Iungerich, who was followed by other speakers. (See December issue.)

     28. At 8.30 p.m., the subject of SOCIETY BUILDING was discussed in short addresses by the Rev. Messrs. W. L. Gladish (Chicago), Joao de Mendonca Lima (Rio de Janeiro), F. E. Gyllenhaal (Colchester), Richard Morse (Sydney), and Elmo C. Acton (Durban). (See p. 640.)

     29. On motion, the Assembly adjourned at 10.00 p.m.

     On Friday, August 10th, at 10:00 a.m., an Open Meeting of the Council of the Clergy was held. There was a discussion of some questions in connection with applications for membership in societies of the General Church. (See p. 665.) At 11 o'clock, the Rev. William Whitehead delivered an Address on the subject of "The New Church and the Modern State," which was followed by a discussion. (See November issue.)

     Sixth Session-Saturday, August 11th.

     30. At 3:15 p.m., the Assembly was opened with worship conducted by the Rev. Homer Synnestvedt, who presided at this session.

     31. On motion, of the Rev. Dr. Alfred Acton, seconded by the Right Rev. R. J. Tilson, it was

     Resolved, That this Assembly record its sincere appreciation of the services of the Right Reverend William Frederic Pendleton, Bishop Emeritus, and of the Reverend Dr. Ernst Deltenre, and its loving remembrance of these faithful servants of the Lord's New Church.

656




     Carried unanimously by a rising vote.

     32. On motion, the Reports as printed, except for an error in printing the name of the Treasurer of the Academy, were accepted and filed.

     33. On motion of the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner, seconded by the Rev. Dr. E. E. Iungerich, it was

     Resolved, That the members of the Thirteenth General Assembly hereby express our deep feeling of appreciation of the hospitality of our hosts, the Pastors and Members of the Michael and Colchester Societies, who have labored unstintingly to make for its success. The Assembly has been memorable, held on sacred ground fraught with the memories of the heroes of the New Church and rich in hopes for the future; and the atmosphere of the Assembly has been surcharged with charity and social delight. May the Lord bless the fruits of His work!

     Carried unanimously by a rising vote.

     34. At 3:30 p.m., Mr. James Pryke delivered an Address on the subject of "The Church and the World," which was followed by a discussion. (See November issue.)

     35. On motion, the Thirteenth General Assembly adjourned at 5:00 p.m., Bishop Pendleton Pronouncing the Benediction.

     A Service of Divine Worship was held on Sunday morning, August 12th. An Ordination was performed by Bishop Pendleton, introducing Mr. Moffat Mcanyana into the First Degree of the Priesthood. The Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom delivered the Sermon, on the subject of "The Divine Call," the text being, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." (John 11:28.) (See December issue.) The Service closed with the administration of the Holy Supper to 200 communicants.     
     HUGO LJ. ODHNER,
          Secretary.

657






     ROLL OF ATTENDANCE.

     MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF THE GENERAL CHURCH.

     ENGLAND.

     London.
Miss Acton
Mr. R. W. Anderson
Mrs. R. W. Anderson
Mr. H. W. Ashley
Mrs. H. W. Ashley
Mrs. Katherine Benade
Miss Lucy Birchal
Rev. W. H. Claxton
Mr. A. Cooper
Mrs. A. Cooper
Miss E. Cooper
Mr. V. Cooper
Miss Jessie Currie
Mr. H. G. Dicks
Mrs. H. G. Dicks
Miss K. Madeline Dowling
Miss E. Elphick
Miss Janet Elphick
Mrs. Louisa Elphick
Mr. F. A. Gardiner
Mrs. Mary Greenwood                                   
Miss M. B. Greenwood
Mr. Frank A. Harrison
Mrs. Frank A. Harrison
Miss T. E. Hart
Miss G. E. Hart
Miss M. A. Lewin
Mr. E. L. Jesseman
Mr. W. D. Jesseman
Mrs. W. D. Jesseman
Doris E. H. Jurgens
B. L. Maskell
Mr. John Morris
Mrs. Mumford
Miss D. B. Mumford
Mr. A. E. Orme
Mrs. A. E. Orme
Miss Agnes J. A. Orme
Miss P. Patrick
Mr. W. D. Pike
Mrs. W. D. Pike
Miss A. L. Priest
Mr. Arnold Priest
Mrs. Arnold Priest
Mr. Robert J. Priest
Mrs. Robert J. Priest
Mr. W. Priest
W. H. Pusey
G. H. Richards
Miss Florence Roberts
Mr. Alfred H. Searle
Mary A. Searle
H. G. Searle
Irene Searle
Mrs. May H. Shaw
Miss Ethel H. Spalding
Mr. George E. Stebbing
Mrs. George E. Stebbing
Miss Joan Stebbing
Mr. R. A. Stebbing
Mrs. R. A. Stebbing
Miss R. E. Stebbing
Mr. Felix J. Summerhayes
Mrs. Felix J. Summerhayes
V. S. Summerhayes
Miss Annie E. Tilson
Rt. Rev. Robt. J. Tilson
Mrs. Robt. J. Tilson
A. Tupper
L. A. S. Thornhill
Mr. Edgar H. Waller
Mrs. Edgar H. Waller
Mr. Edward J. Waters
Mrs. Edward J. Waters
E. K. Waters
Mr. F. G. Waters
Mr. Gilbert Waters
Mrs. Gilbert Waters
Mr. J. E. Waters
Mrs. J. E. Waters
Miss Mary Waters
Miss May Waters

     Colchester.                                   
Mr. A. H. Appleton
Mr. A. J. Appleton
Mrs. A. J. Appleton
Mr. Noel Appleton
Mr. W. S. Appleton
Mrs. W. S. Appleton
Mr. C. Ashley
Mrs. C. Ashley
Mr. Edw. G. T. Boozer
Mrs. Edw. G. T. Boozer
Miss I. V. Clarke
Mr. F. R. Cooper
Mrs. F. R. Cooper

658



Mr. John F. Cooper
Mrs. John F. Cooper
Miss Olive Cooper
Miss Barbara Everett
Miss Winifred Everett
Mr. W. E. Everett
Mrs. Elizabeth Gill
Mrs. Jessie Gill
Miss Muriel Gill
Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal
Mrs. F. E. Gyllenhaal
Mr. Horace Howard
Miss Eunice Motum
Mr. Norman H. Motum
Mrs. Norman H. Motum
Mr. Kessel Motum
Miss Lois Motum
Mr. Philip H. Motum
Miss D. Potter
Mr. J. Potter
Mrs. J. Potter
Mr. C. Pryke
Mrs. C. Pryke
Mr. Dennis Pryke
Mi. James S. Pryke
Mr. Kenneth Pryke
Mr. Martin Pryke
Mr. Owen Pryke
Miss Ruth Pryke
Mr. A. N. Waters
Mrs. A. N. Waters
Miss Kathleen Wright
Mr. H. S. Wyncoll

     Sundry Places.
Mr. E. H. Bayley
Miss Beryl G. Briscoe
Mr. E. R. E. Briscoe
Miss Esylt Briscoe
Miss Iris O. Briscoe
Mr. J. E. Briscoe
Mr. Ivor Dawson
Mrs. Jane Dawson
Mary Dawson
Mr. D. G. Dyne
Mrs. D. G. Dyne
Mr. Felix Elphick
Mrs. Felix Elphick
Mr. A. E. Foord
Mrs. A. E. Foord
Mr. A. L. Godfrey
Mrs. A. L. Godfrey
M. H. Higgs
Mr. Conrad Howard
Mrs. Conrad Howard
Mr. W. Copley Jubb
Mrs. W. Copley Jubb
A. S. Lewin
B. S. Lewin
E. L. Lewin
M. Lewin
S. R. Lewin
A. Mold
Mr. E. B. Morris
Mrs. Rate Morris
Miss Muriel G. Morris
M. D. Parker
Mr. Stanley E. Parker
Mrs. Stanley E. Parker
Rev. J. R. Presland
Mr. Bernard H. Rowe
Miss A. B. Rivers
Mrs. J. W. Rivers
Elizabeth C. Shaw
Mr. F. G. Shepherd
Mr. F. G. Shepherd, Jr.
Mr. Stretton Smith
Mrs. Stretton Smith
A. Stebbing
Miss Margot Stebbing
Mr. W. H. Stebbing
A. B. Summerhayes
Miss Blanche Summerhayes
Mr. John L. Summerhayes
Mrs. John L. Summerhayes
B. V. Tilson, of Wembley
Dorothea Tilson
R. J. Tilson, of Wembley
Mr. Victor R Tilson
Mrs. Victor R. Tilson
A. S. Wainscot

     JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLES.

     Miss L. G. Cooke
Rev. G. A. Sexton
Mrs. G. A. Sexton

     SCOTLAND.

     Mr. A. Bowie
Miss Edith Bowie
Mr. Ernest Bowie
Miss Olive Bowie
Miss Vera Bowie
Rev. E. A. Sutton

     UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

     Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Alfred Acton
Mrs. Alfred Acton
Miss Benita Acton
Rev. K. R. Alden
Mrs. K. R. Alden
Rev. Wm. H. Alden

659



Miss Celia Bellinger
Mr. E. C. Bostock
Rev. Reginald W. Brown
Miss Dorothy Burnham
Rev. W. B. Caldwell
Mr. Randolph W. Childs
Mrs. Randolph W. Childs
Mr. Walter C. Childs
Rt. Rev. George de Charms
Mrs. George de Charms
Rev. C. E. Doering
Mrs. C. E. Doering
Rev. Victor J. Gladish
Mrs. Victor J. Gladish
Mrs. Robert M. Glenn
Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal
Mr. Otho W. Heilman
Mrs. Otho W. Heilman
Mrs. Mary Hyatt
Mrs. Edw. C. Iungerich
Rev. Eldred E. Iungerich
Mrs. Eldred E. Iungerich
Mr. Stevan Iungerich
Rev. Vincent C. Odhner
Rt. Rev. N. D. Pendleton
Mrs. N. D. Pendleton
Mr. Harold F. Pitcairn
Mrs. Harold F. Pitcairn
Rev. Enoch S. Price
Mrs. Enoch S. Price
Mrs. Irene G. Robinson
Miss Anita Synnestvedt
Rev. Homer Synnestvedt
Mrs. Hubert Synnestvedt
Miss Sylvia Synnestvedt
Rev. Wm. Whitehead.

     Chicago, Illinois.
Mrs. Catherine Doering
Miss Beatrice Farrington
Dr. Harvey Farrington
Mrs. Harvey Farrington
Rev. W. L. Gladish
Mrs. W. L. Gladish

     Cincinnati, Ohio.
Rev. F. E. Waelchli

     Denver, Colorado.
Rev. H. Heinrichs
Dr. Irvine
Mrs. Irvine

     Glenview, Illinois.
Miss Sophie Falk
Mrs. Selma A. Gyllenhaal
Mr. Alvin E. Nelson
Mrs. Alvin E. Nelson
Mr. Gerald F. Nelson
Mr. Hubert S. Nelson
Mr. Seymour G. Nelson
Mrs. Seymour G. Nelson

     New York, New York.
Rev. Alan Gill
Mrs. Alan Gill

     Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Miss Roena Acton
Mr. Stanley F. Ebert
Mr. A. P. Lindsay
Mrs. A. P. Lindsay
Mr. Alexander Lindsay
Mr. S. S. Lindsay
Miss Agnes Pitcairn
Mr. Ulrich Schoenberger

     Philadelphia, Pa.
Mrs. Donald S. Edmonds

     Washington, D. C.
Mr. David H. Stebbing
Miss Margaret Stebbing

     CANADA.

     Kitchener, Ontario.
Mrs. Agnes Kertcher
Mrs. Mary Witt

     Toronto, Ontario.
Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner

     AUSTRALIA.

Rev. Richard Morse
Miss A. I. Near
Miss Martha M. White

     BRAZIL.

     Rev. Henry Leonardos
Mrs. Henry Leonardos
Mr. Henry Leonardos, Jr.
Rev. Joao de Mendoca Lima

     FRANCE.

Mr. Henry de Geymuller
Rev. F. Hussenet

660




     HOLLAND.

     The Hague.
Mrs. E. G. Barger
Miss Mary Barger
Mrs. H. D. G. Groeneveld
Mrs. H. D. G. Groeneveld
Miss J. Kamerling
Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer
Miss A. G. Poulus
Mr. N. J. Venenga

     NEW ZEALAND.

Mr. H. R. Hyatt

     SOUTH AFRICA.

Rev. E. C. Acton
Mrs. E. C. Acton
Miss Denise R. Cockerell
Dr. F. Doering
Rev. F. W. Elphick
Mrs. F. W. Elphick
Rev. M. B. Mcanyana
Mr. J. H. Ridgway
Mrs. J. H. Ridgway

     SPAIN.

Rev. Albert Bjorck
Mrs. Albert Bjorck

     SWEDEN.

     Stockholm
Mrs. Ellen Ahlberg
Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom
Mr. Bertram Liden
Mrs. Bertram Liden
Miss Brita Loven
Miss Sophie Nordenskiold

     
SUMMARY.

British Isles          193
United States          73
Australia           3
Brazil                4
Canada           3
France               2
Holland           8
New Zealand           1
South Africa          9
Spain                2
Sweden          6
Total                304

     The persons whose names appear in the above list, with a few exceptions, signed the Roll of Attendance. As the Committee had considerable difficulty in securing signatures, the total of 304 does not represent all who were present at the Assembly. On Sunday morning, August 5th, there was an attendance of 350 persons. An estimate of the total number of individuals, old and young, who were present at one or more of the meetings, would range from 350 to 400.

     We have made every effort to compile a complete and accurate list, and would ask to be forgiven for any errors or omissions.

661


Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     DENVER, COLO.

     At this close of the year's activities, readers of these columns may be interested in a brief review of our year's work. In the doctrinal classes, two subjects have been presented, the first being a series of classes on the development of the mind, taking as a text the internal sense of Genesis 12 to 17. The object was to trace the laws of influx and afflux in the opening and formation of the various planes and degrees of the mind. The second series was devoted to the consideration of the Academy principles. The history of each was reviewed and their basis in the teachings of the Writings shown. We were impressed with the fact that all these principles have met with strong opposition in one form or another from those who were numbered among the members of the New Church,-a fact which we may take as a sure evidence of the necessity of these principles to the existence and prosperity of the New Church as a spiritual and internal church.

     Our great days of the year, Christmas, Easter and June Nineteenth,-received Suitable commemoration in the sermons. At the Christmas service the subject was "The Virgin Birth, as the Corner Stone of Christian Doctrine." On Palm Sunday, the teaching that the Lord was tempted even by the heavens was brought out in the consideration of the words, "It is finished," and of the incident of the giving and receiving of the vinegar. (John 19:19-30.) The Easter sermon had for its text Matthew 28:1, 2, and was a discussion of the old and new sabbath; the former representing the Divine presence in the Human Divine before glorification, and the latter the Divine Human of the Lord after glorification. On June 17th, in commemoration of the birthday of the New Church, we heard a sermon on the text, "And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men." It was shown how this prophecy has been fulfilled, and how the New Church, by virtue of its reception-hearing "the great voice"-is to be a celestial-spiritual church, having an internal perception of the Lord in His Divine Human.

     Among the social events we may mention a reception at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Schroder in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Synnestvedt, who were honeymooning in the Colorado mountains. On Swedenborg's Birthday, and at the 19th of June celebration, we had the customary speeches, and in addition the very unusual spectacle of seeing some dancing, an evidence that our children of the Sunday School are growing up. Most of our social contacts here, as perhaps in some other societies, are made in the informal gatherings after services and doctrinal classes, and this year we have enjoyed meeting the following welcome visitors in this way: Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Synnestvedt, and Mr. Seymour Nelson, who were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Schroder; Mr. and Mrs. Peter Klippenstein, of Los Angeles, who spent two weeks at the home of the Pastor; Mr. Ray Brown, of Toronto; and Mrs. Hagar and her son, formerly of Los Angeles, but now residing in Denver. Mrs. Hagar has been a frequent visitor, and manifests a great interest in the Doctrines. Recently her daughter, of Los Angeles, paid her a visit and was present at one of our services.

     While on the subject of social life we must record the luncheon which preceded the last ladies' meeting of the season, given by Mrs. Schroder in honor of Mrs. Heinrichs.

662


Being a mere man, the writer feels that he had better not attempt to describe the dishes and appointments, other than to say that everything was as fine as could be The occasion turned out to be a travel-shower for the Pastor's family. It was a complete surprise, and was very much appreciated.

     Nor must we omit to acknowledge the good work of our Ladies' Society. The monthly meetings have been (as in the past) both useful and delightful. The readings and discussions of selected subjects from Bishop W. F. Pendleton's "Topics from the Writings," presented by the Pastor, have been well received, the social interchanges enjoyable, and the business transactions very useful and practical. The society has continued its efforts, begun last year, to aid the treasury in meeting the running expenses; and so well has it succeeded that we understand that there will be a balance in the treasury with which to begin next year.
     HENRY HEINRICHS.

     THE ACADEMY SCHOOLS.

     The fifty-second school year of the Academy of the New Church opened on September 19th with exercises for the Elementary School at 9 a.m., and for the Higher Schools at 10:30 a.m., when Prof. C. R. Pendleton delivered an Address on the subject of "The Divine Providence and Human Freedom."

     The total enrollment for 1928-29 is 268, a decrease of 7 from the attendance at the opening a year ago, which was 275. The enrollment in the different departments is as follows:

College-Men           12
College-Women      22
Girls' Seminary      35
Boys' Academy      41
Elementary School      18
                         268     

     While there are no enrollments in the Theological School this year, two students in the College are taking courses in preparation for entering the Theological School next year.

     PITTSBURGH, PA.

     After a somnolent summer, the Pittsburgh Society has begun to hum again. Church services were resumed on September 2d, when the Rev. Dr. Eldred E. Iungerich began his pastorate of this Society. Mrs. Iungerich and Stevan have arrived, with their lares and penates. The members of the Society greeted them with a surprise shower, mostly soaps and cleansers, and Pittsburgh housekeeping has really begun for the Iungerichs at 7437 Ben Hur Street. We heartily welcome them, and hope they enjoy their new environment.

     The much-talked-of property for the church and school is now a fact. The Society was able to strike a wonderful bargain during the summer, and now we must get behind the movement with enthusiasm and push the project to a finish. The property consists of 175-foot frontage on Homewood Avenue and a depth of 600 feet. There is a marvelous old house and a well- constructed stable on it. The house, alas, must be torn down, but from it we shall be able to salvage beautiful mahogany, bird's-eye maple and walnut paneling, not to mention cupboards, doors, iron grillwork, and many other useful things. The stable is to be rebuilt into school assembly hall, and parsonage Mr. Iungerich, in order to create interest in the proposition, had the ladies meet him there to inspect the "gold mine." Needless to say, they now have a perception of all the possibilities of this property.

     A meeting was held, September 12th, to discuss the General Assembly in London, and those who had attended accounts of various happenings. Dr. Harvey Farrington, of Chicago, was here at the time, and told of his impressions. So now we "stay-at- homes" feel up-to-date as to what took place abroad this summer.

     The Philosophy Club began its year's activity with a corn roast at Mr. August J. Trautman's farm. A substantial contribution was raised for the building fund.

     The School opened on September 17th, with an enrollment of twelve pupils. Miss Anita Doering has returned, after an interesting and inspiring summer course at National Kindergarten College in Chicago and a visit to Kitchener.

663


Miss Alice Broadbridge, of Frankford and Bryn Athyn, is our other teacher. She comes from a very interesting experience in teaching this summer with Miss Venita Pendleton in New Jersey.

     Pittsburgh is well represented in the Academy Schools at Bryn Athyn this year, Charles Blown, Alexander and Nadezhda Iungerich, Alexander Lindsay, Jr., and Joan Schoenberger attending. Mr. Samuel E. Lindsay, formerly of Pittsburgh, is in Bryn Athyn too.

     The Ladies Society had its first meeting of the year at the home of Mrs. Charles H. Ebert. They have agreed to hold "Friday Suppers" the first and third Friday of every month, beginning with October. The doctrinal class will be given at the table. The Sunday School, with four classes, starts on Sunday, September 30th, at 9:45 o'clock. There is a prospective attendance of over twenty.
     E. R. D.

     GLENVIEW, ILL.

     September 9, 1928.

     Mr. and Mrs. Seymour G. Nelson returned from their protracted travel in foreign lands, and fresh from the General Assembly in London. Not many days after the dose of the Assembly, we all gathered at a meeting in our Parish Hall, and listened to a very interesting and detailed resume of the proceedings. Such an account has many sidelights which the official account will not contain.

     Mr. Nelson has resumed his seat at the organ for Sunday services.

     The vacationers of our society are rapidly coming home, and church activities will soon be resumed in full. Already the call for choir and chorus rehearsals has been issued by our leader.

     Our pastor and his large family have just returned from about a I month's visit in Vermont, where an enjoyable vacation was spent at the Potts' farm. Mr. Smith returned in time to perform the marriage ceremony of Mr. Harold Lindrooth and Miss Norma Burkhart Staddon. This important event took place at the church on Saturday, September 8th, at 8 p.m.

     The two splendid and accurate hard tennis courts are now completed and in most active use. Last Wednesday, an enthusiastic meeting of the tennis "fans" was held, and the organization of a tennis club, with officers, rules and dues was effected.

     On September 6th, a grand dance and send-off was held for our young people who are about to leave to attend the Academy Schools at Bryn Athyn. A party of young ladies will make the same journey by auto for a visit in the East,-Miss Elizabeth Fuller, Miss Edith Goerwitz, and the Misses Virginia and Phoebe Junge.
     J. B. S.

     MR. COLON SCHOTT.

     AN OBITUARY.

     Mr. Colon Schott passed away on August 6, 1928, at the age of sixty-five years. He came to Cincinnati from Washington as a young man, studied at the Law School in that city, and entered the office of his uncle, Gustave Tafel, who was at one time Mayor of Cincinnati.

     He sang in the choir and taught in the Sunday School during the ministry of the Rev. John Goddard, when there were other members of the General Church still active in the Convention Society. After the death of Mr. S. S. Carpenter, Mr. Schott found himself pretty much alone, and, on account of increasing doctrinal differences, he felt it was best for him to withdraw from active participation in that Society.

     For many years he met every Sunday with Miss Callie Grant, and from time to time with other congenial spirits, reading the Writings and a sermon from the Life. About fifteen years ago, the Rev. W. L. Gladish, then pastor at Middleport, Ohio, began visiting Cincinnati once a month, when Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Merrell joined the circle. A year or two later, Mrs. Schott, who was not originally in the Church, became a member of the General Church, and since then the circle had its humble beginnings in these monthly meetings.

664


Mr. Schott, therefore, may properly be called the father of the Cincinnati Circle; and when regular services were established, he often officiated as leader in the absence of ministers. In doctrinal classes, his presence was most valuable, and his comments exhibited wide reading of the Doctrines and of the collateral works. In fact, he was one of the most widely read laymen in the Church. He had sets of the Writings at home and in his office. More often than not, one would find him reading from the Writings, or from the latest number of the Life.

     He had an abounding faith in the dispensations of Divine Providence, and an affectional interest in everything pertaining to the Church. We, of the Cincinnati Circle, shall miss him greatly, but we shall try to remember Mr. Schott's injunction that there are no accidents, and to believe that his use in the other world was greater than his continued presence among us.

     Besides his wife, Mr. Schott leaves a family of three children, two daughters who are attending Smith College, and one son who has just graduated from Princeton University, and is now entering the Cincinnati Law School to follow in his father's footsteps.
     CHARLES G. MERRELL.
Thirteenth General Assembly 1928

Thirteenth General Assembly              1928




     Announcements.




[Frontispiece: Photographs of the place of meeting and the pastor's residence of the General Church society at the Hague, and the Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer, pastor.]

NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII NOVEMBER, 1928 No. 11
     MEMBERSHIP IN THE GENERAL CHURCH.

     A DISCUSSION-AUGUST 10TH.

     Right Rev. F. R. J. Tilson: As I understand it, if anyone wishes to become a member of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, wherever he may be, he applies to the Bishop for admittance into the membership in general, and having done that, he either applies to the pastor of the church which he attends or can be selected by him. I think that is a proper definition of our procedure at the present moment. But there is considerable difficulty there. It is this, that the pastor is put into the difficult position of being faced, as I was on one occasion, with this question, that if a man is good enough to be received as a member by the Bishop of the General Church, why is he not good enough to apply to his particular society? The pastor of a particular society is not going to enter into the motives of a man, but in his judgment he may be unsuitable. It has occurred to me that the difficulty might be removed if, before the admittance into the General Church of any person living where there is a New Church society, the pastor were notified of that application, and thus given the opportunity of doing what the Bishop cannot do, namely, of getting to know that individual intimately.

     When the society at Burton Road showed by a majority expression that they wanted to join the General Church, the Bishop put forth what seemed to me a very satisfactory and proper decision, namely, that he took the Michael Church into the membership of the Church, and recognized every member who was then a member of the Michael Church as still a member, but under this condition, that no member should be received in the future by the pastor of the Michael Church who had not first been made a member of the General Church through acceptance by the Bishop.

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     I would like to know whether there is not some way of easing the position in which the pastor finds himself, unjustly though it may be, of being put into a kind of competition with the Bishop.

     Dr. Alfred Acton: It is difficult to speak of a matter such as Mr. Tilson has brought up, in the absence of knowing its application, for it is largely a matter of application. As the question presents itself to my mind, anyone who is a member of the General Church ought to be received by any particular society and by the pastor if he applies for such reception, the presumption being that he is a member of the General Church and wishes to unite with the society for the particular uses of the Church performed by that society. But if such a member becomes a disturbance in the society, the pastor of the society has the right to separate that member. It is quite possible that a member might cause a disturbance in the society, and yet not do so in the General Church. So I do not think the pastor is bound to act in one way or another, but that every member of the General Church should be presumed as eligible in any society.

     Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner: I feel that the question will probably be settled when the time comes, if any difficulty arises from the present mode of procedure. We are not legislating for the future, and in the past, I presume, there has been no abuse of the present order. This is not the time to discuss any change in the procedure. I take it for granted now that there has not been any problem in connection with it, but that it is simply a matter that might come up in the future. I do feel, however, that there could be a better liaison between the General Church and the pastor, in connection with notifications as to members received into the General Church. Perhaps the Secretary of the General Church could notify the pastors, or the Bishop's office might notify them as to what members in their locality have been received. I should think it would be an advantage to the pastor to know this.

     Rev. W. H. Alden: As I understand it, membership in the General Church carries with it no certificate of character. If a person was good enough to be received by the Bishop, he should be good enough to join a society. It is not a matter of character.

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This question does not enter into the question of membership in the General Church. Any member of the New Church who pleases can be received without question. Of course, if a man is notoriously bad, that is a different question; in that case a pastor would feel it incumbent upon him to refuse membership.

     Rev. G. A. Sexton.-Bishop, is it actually the case that any person who has been baptized in the Lord's New Church can be received by the Bishop as a member of the General Church?

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: Mr. Alden's statement needs qualification. The very fact that the application must be received and approved implies the fact that it may not be approved. Also there are other conditions that do pertain to the matter, and one is that members who apply for membership in the General Church are presumed to be free to do so, so far as other church associations or connections are concerned. For instance, it would not be in order for the General Church to receive one who applied, but who is a member, let us say, of the General Convention. We would not consider that a proper mode of procedure. With reference to the General Convention and other bodies of the Church, we stand in a relation that is sufficiently distinct. If anyone belongs to one, it is not in order for him to belong to the other. I presume that the Conference in England and the Convention in America are two distinct bodies, and that if a person belongs to one of them it is not necessary, and would confuse the situation, to have a membership in both. So it is with us. We are quite a distinct body. We have distinct rules and regulations, and great confusion would result if it were otherwise. That, however, does not refer to subordinate undertakings by one or other of the bodies, with reference to which there may be cooperation. For instance, we have the Swedenborg Scientific Association in America which has members both from Convention and the General Church. The Swedenborg Scientific Association makes no pretense whatever of being a church; it has no sacred order, no ritualistic ceremonies and all that goes to make a church. You can belong to as many such bodies as you please.

     Rev. W. H. Claxton: I want to state that members of individual societies are not necessarily members of the Conference in England, but every member of the Conference, if he signs the rules and tenets, is accepted.

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: None the less, Conference is composed of individual societies, has its own ecclesiastical discipline, and all that comes from that; and it is quite distinct from Convention or the General Church, so that the two distinctions that I have made are quite clear.

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     Rev. W. L. Gladish: I can add no light on the question, except to describe what is our custom. I cannot imagine myself refusing membership in Sharon Church to a man who wanted to join; but if I thought it advisable to do so, I would feel free to do so. Our custom is, that the pastor invites to membership in the Sharon Church, and they afterwards sign the roll, which is a subscription to our constitution and by-laws; and that is all there is to do. I have always been glad to welcome members. I have usually seen first that they join the General Church, so that the application for membership in the General Church usually comes through me. Then I invite them to join our society. I cannot imagine refusing membership to anyone who is a member of the General Church. I should not wish to do so.

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: We ought to publish in NEW CHURCH LIFE a list of those who have applied for membership in the General Church. As a matter of fact, I think that almost all applications come through the instrumentality of some pastor who has been the means of forwarding them to me.

     Dr. E. E. Iungerich: It often happens that members belonging to one of our societies retain their membership after moving to another society. I believe that it is proper for the pastor to encourage an affiliation with the society in which they reside.

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: I have known a number of cases of men who have moved from one society to another and continued their support of the previous society.

     Rev. Homer Synnestvedt: In Pittsburgh, we have what we call "members of the congregation," not as yet members of the society, including all who come and partake of the uses of the Church, without being prepared as yet to be baptized and become members of the General Church. But as soon as they send their application to the Bishop, they are received as members of the society. They are not eligible for membership in our society before that. We try to make these members of the congregation very welcome, and encourage them to come and take part as far as they are prepared to do so.

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They have not the right to vote in meetings, but our effort is to encourage them to come and partake, and to go along with us as far as they can. The Philosophy Club, which is an organization of the men of the society, requires baptism, but not membership in the General Church necessarily. I can conceive also that a society might find it undesirable, from purely external and local reasons, to have a certain member who might disturb the society, and yet who should be free to come for its Public ministrations.

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: The policy of the General Church is most emphatically against placing any unnecessary stumbling blocks in the way of people who may wish to come into the Church; but coming into the Church is not any proof of character, but has regard to their receiving spiritual benefits. The Academy in the early days was very strict in regard to beliefs, but it was not a church; and the General Church is necessarily regulated on a broader basis in that respect. The first thing laid down by Bishop Benade was that there is no such thing as close communion. In the cathedral at Bryn Athyn, many people take communion who are not members of our Church at all. It is between the man and the Lord alone. No priest has the right to interfere with that man. The elements are there, and whoever desires may partake of them. It represents admission into heaven, but so far as we are concerned, it is a representation which closes heaven to no man. Certainly no one holds that there is any such close communion in our body.

     As to the purpose of applying to the Bishop for membership in the General Church, that is simply a matter of general order. An individual enters the general body before he becomes located in a particular body. And this was also laid down by Bishop Benade, who insisted in the beginning of the formation of the General Church that the joining of the Church should be an individual matter; and we have always held to that fundamental principle. That gives every man in the General Church a definite and distinct relation with the Bishop of the General Church, just as the joining of a local society gives him a definite relation to the pastor of the local church. We lay down no restrictions, for the same reason that our purpose is to teach men the Divine Truth, and enable them to be led in the way of heaven. The application calls for no confession or creed; no man has to confess; it has no such formula as an expression of their faith.

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As a result, the young people hardly know what is meant by it, but the joining of the Church means that they place themselves under our administration and instruction. That is what they want.

     Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal: Application for membership in the General Church is an individual matter, and at present the application forms are obtainable principally through the pastor. Perhaps we are not as free as we should be in making those application forms available. Would not the individual freedom be more complete if the members sent these forms direct to the Bishop? Application blanks might be put in a prominent place, where anyone may see them and make individual application to the Bishop, instead of through the pastor.

     Dr. E. E. Iungerich: Mr. Gyllenhaal's point is one of great importance. In many cases, people become acquainted with a society of the Church, and it represents to them practically the whole of the New Church; but it is important that they should have their view extended, and realize that a society in the circumference is not greater than the center, or the particular greater than the general. In the case of Brazil, it would take so long for a person to apply to the Bishop and be accepted into the General Church that they adopt a plan by which an applicant for membership in the local society is provisionally accepted while his application to the General Church has been sent forward. Strictly speaking, he should join the General Church primarily. For this is a question of order, very decidedly a question of order and of strength in the General Church, to have this universal bond rather than an aggregation of societies. It is like the form of an army, where the individual units are all under one command. The experience of the General Church has shown the value of this form.

     Right Rev. R. J. Tilson: While I am younger than the rest of you, so far as membership in the General Church is concerned, I cannot but feel that the General Church, from what we have heard this morning as regards its membership, is in danger of stressing this principle of freedom to the vanishing point. I agree with what our Bishop has told us, that no man has any right to refuse the sacraments; but, according to my reading, it is said in the Writings that, when we get into the world of spirits, there will be some difficult places to cross before we can get into heaven; and I think it ought to be so on earth in regard to membership.

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I would go so far as to make, as a condition of membership in the General Church, the recognition that the Writings are the Lord's; and no man who did not acknowledge the Writings to be of Divine Authority should have the right to enter into a body which is based upon the Divine Doctrine of the Church.

     Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner: May I just stress, for a moment, the same idea that Mr. Iungerich brought out? I feel that the great strength of the General Church lies in the fact that membership is extended into the Church itself as a universal body standing for a Revelation, rather than in the group of men associated locally for the promulgation of some specific use such as is conducted in a local society. Now, in the work of a society, a great deal of personal affection is involved, a great many interests of our proprium are stimulated, and so membership in a society is often not on that abstract plane of religion which membership in the Church itself, or in a general body, calls to mind. Therefore, I feel that every member of a society should sensibly be made to feel the general character of the Church, and not limited by thinking only of the local society with which he happens to come in contact. That becomes more necessary in these days of travel and change in occupations. Some men are under the necessity of moving from society to society, and even of becoming isolated. Hence the importance of being members of the General Church. And I believe that we should stress that as much as possible to our various members. I might say that the Secretary of the General Church has blank applications for membership at this time, and you can test for yourself, in case you wish to find out what are the requirements of membership.

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NEW CHURCH AND THE MODERN STATE 1928

NEW CHURCH AND THE MODERN STATE       Rev. WILLIAM WHITEHEAD       1928

     Once upon a time,-near the middle of the reign of Tiberias,-in the days when Judaea was slowly ceasing to be an autocracy, and was becoming a Roman province,-the party of the Pharisees and the party of Herod entered into a surprising alliance to entrap the newly arisen Messiah, Jesus Christ. Afraid to let Him alone,-lest all men believe in Him, and the Romans come and take away both their place and their nation-they took counsel together to get rid of Him.

     Even as the general body of Jews in that day,-and as the Methodists and myriad other Protestant "reformers" of these modern days,-they believed that His kingdom was of this world,-to be established by civil and moral prudence, and bound together by a statutory righteousness. So they sent unto Him with a disingenuous appearance of seeking the truth, and asked Him, saying, "Master, We know that Thou teachest the way of truth, neither carest Thou for any man. Tell us, therefore, 'Is it lawful to pay tribute unto Caesar?'"

     The Lord's answer was according to the correct rabbinical tradition, which enjoined that if people once accepted the coinage of any foreign king they thereby owed him political allegiance. "Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?" said the Lord. "Show me the tribute money." And they brought unto Him a penny unto them, "Whose is this image and superscription?" They say unto Him, "Caesar's." Then saith He unto them, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

     The intricate and world-old story of the relations of Church and State, in every dispensation, is written in this symbol of Caesar's penny. The incident in itself is no approval of a particular form of government;-especially is it no literal subscription to the law and policy of Tiberias.

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Nor are the Lord's words to be regarded as merely emphasizing an antithesis which scorns the things of this world (in mediaeval ascetic fashion) in order to elevate the kingdom of interior love and thought in which men and angels may have spiritual citizenship and communion.

     The doctrinal fact is, that the Lord's words involve all the profound arcana ultimated in the teaching of the Writings:

     "There are two things which ought to be in order among men, viz., the things which are of heaven, and the things which are of the world." (N. J. H. D. 311.)

     In other words, the uses of the truth and good of the civil plane, signified here by Caesar's penny, have now been given rational definition and true degree in a Divine Revelation, even as the Decalogue of the Jews,-the essential contents of which were well known to the nations of antiquity since the dawnings of human culture,-were, at Mount Sinai, given an abiding and eternal relation to the Divine Justice by which man's regeneration is ever conditioned.

     It is somewhat astonishing that the Writings given through Emanuel Swedenborg have received no credit in the eyes of the world for the clearest and profoundest philosophy as to the relations of Church and State that has ever been expressed. Yet consider the situation in his day, and immediately before his day.

     The Old Civil State in Europe, preceding the Revolutionary Era, was an age of enlightened despots, ranging all the way from benevolent autocracies to hard and cynical tyrannies. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the exception only (in part) of England and Holland, the idea that royalty was vested in the person of the ruler himself, or in the successor of the ruler, or (as a practical matter) in the person of the minister who controlled the king's policy, dominated every nation in Europe,-dominated Christendom. These men were the State! They were the Law! When challenged, they were above any law that did not coincide with their personal interests. Their subjects not only had no right of "consent" to the form of government by which they were controlled, but they had no final right to their very possessions and their lives. The whim and caprice of the ruler enslaved the subject,-dealt with him as a mere pawn in a royal game of self-interest. Nay, the possessions and lives of entire nations and peoples,-such as the Poles, for example,-were made the spoil of a tortuous and treacherous diplomacy that has borne bitter fruit to the present day.

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     These moods of the royal proprium were even elevated by subservient ecclesiastics, such as Bossuet, to the dignity of a religious doctrine of Divine Right,-a perverted echo of ancient correspondential truth. Indeed, three main principles underlay the old, perverted Christian idea of the State: (1) The identity of the civil State with the person of the ruler; (2) the utter subordination of every use to the use of the chief governor, who was not content with the function of maintaining order, but sought to dominate completely the uses of every individual and society within his physical jurisdiction; and (3) the assumption that the welfare of the State justified any public act, however unscrupulous, brutal or domineering,-an assumption which fills alike the pages of Machiavelli's manual for the princes of northern Italy, and the sumptuary laws of the modern Puritans of North America.

     These principles, first popularized in the Renaissance, worked havoc with human freedom, extended the civic power of the Roman Catholic Church for several more generations, and put into the hands of militant Protestants a weapon of self-righteous dictation that is still wielded to the disability of those who love freedom.     

     It is true, of course, that some of these rulers appear to have possessed a genuine love of country. In some cases they plainly loved order. They sincerely wished to do away with feudal disorder. They restrained the local tyranny of the nobles. They put a useful curb on the more arrogant priests of the Roman hierarchy. They simplified the civil and criminal law. They encouraged industry and commerce, and safeguarded men in the enjoyment of their fruits. They actively promoted wealth, and rewarded artists and scholars. But in all of this there was little, if any, concern for the freedom of the neighbor. And even the appearance of a love of civil order for the sake of order was considerably offset by palpable loves of dynastic self-interest, and of dominion over rising rivals, both priestly and aristocratic.

     The plain, unvarnished truth-whether from an economic, civic or ethical angle-is, that the subjects of these rulers were really slaves;-slaves who lived their lives, not as they wished to live them, but as their masters had decided they must live them. "Right" and "wrong," before the Last Judgment, were the creatures of the will and understanding of kings.

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The kings were their own Decalogue!

     The result of this proprial interpretation of civil order in the old Christian State was deplorable in the extreme. Freedom of speech and opinion was throttled. Even the vehicle of printing was, save in London and Amsterdam (providentially for Swedenborg!), harassed by captious legalities and censorships. The education and discipline which men may acquire by acting as of themselves could not be obtained. Moral and civil character were thereby weakened. Men never grew up! Their fibre was emasculated, their adolescence was prolonged, as always happens under any autocracy, however benevolent or well-interested, The religion of the great mass of man- kind in Christendom had no relation to their civil life.

     Yet, long before the Last Judgment, the Divine Providence was preparing the way, even in ultimates, for the overthrow of a fallacious order of natural society,-an order no longer corresponding with spiritual verities. For the preparation for the Second Coming of the Lord could not be made dependent upon the regeneration of man, either individually or collectively. The "fullness of time" predicated a preparation, even in the use made of the loves of self and of the world. On both the just and the unjust the light of a new day of freedom was to dawn.

     As a matter of historical fact, much of our civil and moral freedom was bought with hard gold, from selfish men, by selfish men. The Magna Chartas of our natural liberties were wrested from greater tyrants by powerful combinations of lesser tyrants. Cities-reaching out for greater power and profits-purchased immunity from the tyranny of hard-pressed kings. Little nations, after great wars, consciously found their freedom in the very exhaustion of the giant nations who had fought for the possession of their goods and lands. Even the great gentile peoples deliberately found liberty (as always!) in the preoccupations of their quarrelling Christian enemies.

     Though we do not minimize the aspirations of noble men in every age who have loved freedom more than they feared death, yet we cannot ignore the historical fact that the Divine conatus that wills that man shall be free has ever been so powerful that it may be rationally held that the major part of man's civil and moral freedom was not the conscious work of man, but the direct gift of the Divine Providence.

     When the Armadas of Catholic dominion bore down on the little ships that fought for English freedom, the victory was rather to that "God who blew with His winds, and they were scattered."

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When a great, destroying genius held Europe in thrall, it was the clouds of the heavens over the fields at Waterloo that deceived his strategy and made slippery the paths of his cannon. When a coldly deliberate enemy to human freedom set out, in the name of scientific progress, fourteen years ago, to impose a moralless Super-State upon the consciences of human beings, it was surely the Lord of Hosts who aroused and sustained a world of nations to fight with the angels of Mons for the sacredness of man's right to live in his own home without invasion or menace from a brutal might without right, or a power without justice or judgment.

     Indeed, all of history testifies that man's freedom has been obtained "not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."

     It is true that the ancient State of Caesar's day stood for an order and freedom hitherto unknown in the ancient world;-even as the modern State of Swedenborg's day began to herald a new day of scientific, literary industrial and religious freedom unknown in the Middle Ages. And these were indispensable preparatory conditions in the matrix of human natural life for the coming and reception of the Divine Word, both in its First Coming and its Second Coming.

     Yet both the Ancient State and the Mediaeval Interregnum suffered from certain hard limitations of crystallized civil and moral forms which cramped and confined the uses of the natural man and therefore imposed a tyrannous reaction on man's spiritual life. The Renaissance was but the awakening to this fact,-an awakening which released both the imprisoned nobler forces of classic paganism and the remains of primitive Christian spiritual energy,-entombed under the altar of mediaeval Roman domination.

     Why, then, this Divine solicitude for the things of Caesar, in every age and dispensation? Why the honor of tribute to Caesar's penny?

     One answer-and there are several,-lies in the newly revealed definition of civil and moral good. To provide the necessaries of life,-the things necessary to our occupations,-the things needful for protection,-and even (and especially) a sufficiency of wealth,-are not only elements of the common good, but essential items in a genuine doctrine of religious charity. This is a new thing, That they are merely of the world,-worldly,-is the reaction of the old orthodoxy.

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But the New Churchman is not only able to perceive a rational relation between these uses of the laity on the sensual plane, and the Divine uses provided through the priesthood on the spiritual plane; he may also perceive, to a degree hitherto unknown, that the plane of justice and morality is the very meeting-place, in a true civilization, of the spiritual and civil degrees of existence. Indeed, the genuinely moral plane of life is the rational intermediate, partaking of both spiritual and civil life, and bringing into order the kingdom of the spirit and the kingdoms of this earth. There is no real morality outside of the marriage, in use, of what is Divine and what is just.

     Herein lies the fundamental necessity for a distinctive New Church education, and a distinctive system of social culture. Herein also stands revealed the fact that genuine freedom for man involves freedom on both spiritual and natural planes, at one and the same time. Indeed, man's freedom is at present so circumscribed, and limited, and fragmentary, because his concept of freedom does not rise much higher than the level of his own use, or than the level of the uses of that society in which his life is enmeshed.

     Nevertheless, the first great characteristic of the modern State, which distinguishes it from the city-state of the ancients, and the feudal state of fallen Christianity, is the possession of a greater quantity of freedom,-freedom not yet fully articulated, and certainly not yet under rational control.

     None will dispute the possession of this quantitative freedom; and no wise New Churchman will regret it. Even though it be used by men to sell themselves into a more interior slavery. This new freedom has created wealth out of the resources of Nature, and of man's natural mind, on a scale undreamed of in the ancient world. It has distributed that wealth in a manner which-though, alas, far from equitable-has yet dethroned the old exclusive possessing classes who toiled not, but based their leisure on the joyless drudgery of the lowly and helpless,-denying them just opportunity for happiness and the just fruits of their own uses. It has liberated the great spirit of small nations;-multiplied printing presses;-thrown open vast stores of natural truth to all men;-blazed roads across new continents;-destroyed physical disease;-opened the paths of the air and of the seas;--and given opportunity to millions of human souls to escape from the petrifying inhibitions of old social traditions and forms that had been sustained by the self-interest of old governing classes, and builded like tombs around the uses of men and nations.

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     Especially in the English-speaking world have men sought this freedom. No matter what their motives, they have grown to love it, and learned how to promote it;-the English in their steady, calm and persistent love of home and the spiritual heirlooms of their ancient land;-and also, perhaps, those of us of the American lands, in our restless passion for energy, movement, and a certain consuming desire for new ideas, ideals, and things. Many other nations have also contributed to this vast modern release of thought and action which is but shabbily represented by that inadequate word, "democracy."

     But, good and bad,-true and false,-we have Freedom as men have never had it since the end of the Golden Age; and it is impossible to avoid the thought that it is all-in Providence-for the sake of the New Church,-its homes,-its schools,-the very freedom of its worship and sacraments.

     Yet this wider freedom uncovers more and more a separation of Church and State,-a vital rather than a merely legal separation,-an actual divorce of the living uses of charity from the religious faiths of men. Economics, civil philosophy, the natural sciences, and the other handmaids of social culture have to render their services to Caesar as if there were no God to worship and no relation between the way to heaven and the uses of this world.

     Herein lies the especial work of the laity, to create and sustain, with ever more interior wisdom, those natural conditions in the midst of which the spiritual uses of the Church may best flourishing peace and security. It is not the work of the priesthood to favor this or that school of political thought, to favor this or that nation or race, to interfere in the government of the State on behalf of this or that needed natural reform, to assert a Divine favor for this or that theory of medicine, or art, or economics.

     Of course, the Church may, and will to the best of its ability, prepare its laity, in early life, to enter with understanding upon the performance of the duties of charity, and especially to enable them to apply the Heavenly Doctrines to those uses.

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But it is the function and spiritual privilege of the individual layman to act according to his own judgment and conscience in all applications of doctrine to life; and none is to impose by word or deed a supervision or dictatorship over his conduct.

     On the other hand, it is the function of the priesthood to render unto God the things that are God's, to defend and promote the spiritual uses of the Church, even to the degree of resisting the encroachments of the civil State in the spiritual things of heaven. It is on such account that we could never willingly suffer civil inhibitions on the sacraments of the Church; or yield our right to educate our own children in the tenets of our faith; or subject any liturgy to the decision of any civil parliament.

     Nevertheless, it is idle to say that the Church bears no intimate and vital relation to the life of the State. If there is no reforming and regenerating State there is no true, living Church, and the priesthood strives in vain. The especial work of the laity is to provide a genuinely civil and moral State; and if it should be asked, "Where is, or can be, the genuine New-Church State?" it may be answered that it already exists in embryo in every nation or country where a society or societies of the New Church have been established. That opportunity and privilege for the new laity of a new civilization is now here among men.

     These external relations of the Church,-its relations to other human associations, especially the State,-these uses of genuine charity living and working amongst men to bear witness to the true faith,-these means of individual and collective regeneration, are in the hands of the members of the Church.

     Yet the true doctrine as to these relations, is, it must be confessed, dark and obscure to the Christian world. For herein lies one of the greatest problems that has ever agitated the history of Christian thought,-as to whether or not any obligation to God exists in the performance of civil and moral duties to Caesar, i.e., to the State. Or, to state it in another way, as to whether or not religion has any genuine theological and philosophical relation to a moral and civil life.

     In early Christian times, the Roman Catholic Church was forced to take up the problem; and its theologians were compelled to admit that the laws of human charity were in some way identical with the laws of Nature, as reflected in Stoic philosophy, and especially in the writings of Plato and Aristotle,-both of whom certainly perceived the truth that "the love of self and the love of the world by creation are heavenly loves; for they are loves of the natural man serviceable to spiritual loves, as a foundation is to a house. . . .

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All this for the sake of the end, which must be use. For through these things man is in a state to serve the Lord and to serve the neighbor." (D. L. W. 396.)

     But such doctrine, clearly to be seen in numerous passages in Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics, did not agree with the dogmas of the Church. The Catholic theologians even wished to forbid the works of Plato, lest men should be so content with them as to ignore ecclesiastical dogma. So a diplomatic discrimination was made between "philosophical morality " and "ecclesiastical morality." And that pretended line of demarcation has since been maintained by most Christian theologians, Protestant as well as Catholic, as an "essential difference." (See, for example, the latest edition of Schaff-Herzog, vol. iv., p. 186.)

     "Philosophical" morality they called "political and civil"; and it was to be dependent on the authority of individual philosophers;-a secular morality, in short,-and that was, in fact, what it quickly became. But "theological morality," so called, was to be dependent on the authority of Popes and councils.

     Now that was the essential separation of Church and State,-the separation in the perverted thought of the leaders of the fallen Christian Church. The major political and other consequences of this separation came far later, and in increasing volume, especially at the Reformation, and even to the present day.

     This prime separation of the two great institutions of a genuine civilization, however, was only an expedient postponement of the problem. The keen intelligence of the Italian scholars and school teachers, catching something of the sacred flame of Greek perception, resented the alleged inferiority of "secular" morality; and they revolted against the civil and moral philosophy of the Church. With the evils and hypocrisies of the priests before them, they were quickly able to popularize a freer scheme of life, as typified in such codes as were put forth by the merciless and cunning mind of Machiavelli, whose teachings, in fact, have poisoned the wells of political philosophy to this very day.

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     But this neo-pagan revolt against the authority of religion on the civil plane suddenly met with the aroused peasant conscience of Europe. Secular and priestly philosophers alike were arraigned by Luther. Secular morality, roared the great German reformer, was only for the unregenerate. It was not the norm of conduct for the true church. In fact, he bluntly denied that there was any rational nexus between reason and faith, in the whole matter. Men could reach heaven regardless of human law.

     The civic and moral theology which Protestantism now builded up relied exclusively for its authority on the literal letter of the Word, to which it fanatically appealed, with far-reaching consequences even to our own day and western civilization. A curious skin-deep morality, marked by all kinds of natural prejudices and fallacies of reason, was soon deemed sufficient for salvation; and even here the soul could still "sin bravely" if a sufficient influx of saving faith had been importuned from God.

     In the seventeenth century, beginning with Hobbes, the natural philosophers scouted the relation of religion to the affairs of the State. "Enlightened self-interest" was recognized as the only safe basis for the theories of statesmen and economists. The uses of the State became a cold-blooded arithmetic of natural thoughts and affections, dominated by economic necessities. And philosophy, government, science, and commerce have ever since been dominated by this evolving materialism, before which the spiritual love of use for its own sake-as done to the Lord and the neighbor-has gone down, as the flowers of the field might go down before some merciless machine driven by an inexorable Fate. Even the arts and crafts of a so-called "dark age" mock us with strange gleams of beauty from the dark corners and crannies of their Gothic towers, bearing mute witness to the world that was lost.

     In brief, the vital works of the civil plane have been divorced from religion. Humanism has been replaced by Machinism. What God had joined together in the creation of primal human society, when Church and State were genuinely one, man has put asunder; and the maimed body of civilization, driven by the restless fires of its own self-loves, has created a world of evil in which my neighbor is my natural prey if he is weak enough,-and in which I must be his follower if he is strong enough;-a world in which the chief objection to wrong-doing has come to lie, not in the intention, nor even in the act, but in the unpleasant consequences to the wrong-doer.

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     Thus we face, today, in the midst of unprecedented opportunities for spiritual service and elevation, the amazing spectacle of great human societies, once made in the image and likeness of God, destroying their own souls, and wrecking their own future possibilities, by ignoring the Decalogue of their own Maker.

     It is folly to pretend that the laity of the New Church can reform the present institutions, uses and professions, of the Christian world. The civil and moral institutions of the modern world have reacted on the lives of many succeeding generations, molding and fixing their habitual thought and practice. Indeed, the very forms and bodies of these institutions have become part of the inmost life of humanity today; and they are giving more actual leadership to men in civil life than the nominal churches of religion. Interwoven with the affections of men, they lie at the very heart of the modern State. Natural self-interest is the modern Caesar,-and not easy to dethrone.

     Even without the testimony of Revelation,-with only History to teach us,-we can see that the power of these institutions will only be broken by a slow and orderly succession of judgments Such judgments are taking place every day. The vast fabric of the old Christian society and body of doctrine no longer coheres; and natural science is largely the means for its destruction. Probably this will be a work of many generations. Mr. Bryce has pointed out that it needed seven centuries to create mediaeval civilization, three centuries to develop it, and nearly four centuries to destroy the principles on which it rested (Holy Roman Empire, p. 510). How long a time, then, must elapse before the power of the institutional civilization of the Old Church has passed away! In the meantime, Caesar must be obeyed,-not for what he is, but for what he represents, and may be in actuality at some future day.

     One thing, however, we can do. We can see clearly the natural and spiritual relations between the uses of the Church and the uses of the State,-a relation inherent in the created nature of mankind, and constituting the basis of the whole duty of man.

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We can see that the natural law of the Decalogue is identical with the law of Nature as perceived by the ancients long before the Hebrews; and that this law was involved in the created faculty of reason, for the highest social development of man. We can see, in the light of a rational revelation, that the foundations of man's civil and moral world were built on at least as Divinely ordered foundations as the world of physical nature. We cart raise and transcribe these natural-moral laws up to the spiritual planes of life in a genuine charity, both individual and collective.

     And-perhaps best of all,-what we cannot do for ourselves in this complex world of evil and difficulty, because of our weakness and feebleness in this day of small beginnings, we can at least make possible for our children. Lacking the light and power of revelation, contemporary education cannot adjudicate between the claims of Caesar and of God. But we are more fortunate.

     To teach our children to train their minds and bodies to act from a religious conscience, not from external restraints;-to leach them to exercise and develop an internal power, from the Lord's Word, to control the natural propensities of the old will;-to teach them that virtue lies deeper than fear,-that it has roots that begin in the love of God and of the neighbor;-to teach and guide them, with insight and patience, until they grow up under our eyes into a generation of It men and women in whom spiritual, moral, political and scientific things are properly subordinated, and who think and act from justice and judgment";-this is surely the least that we are now able to do for the State of the future.

     This is why I love the Academy institution;-because it is trying, in the face of misunderstanding and difficulty, but with increasing vigor, courage and power, to minister to the spiritual-natural development of our young people,-to prepare them to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.

     Probably this is the highest use of charity that we can perform in this present generation of New Church men and women; and we need more distinctive communities in which to protect it,-more schools in which to pursue it,-little cities of God, to be as a refuge for the innocent and the simple, and as a home for the wise.

     Numbers, wealth, power, reputation amongst men,-these things are as nothing to the New Jerusalem now descending from God out of heaven.

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     When we look upon the faces of our own children, we know in our innermost hearts that there is only one ambition that is worthwhile to the fathers, and mothers, and teachers of this generation of the Lord's New Church. And that is contained in the promise of the Word of God, that "They that teach and do shall be great in the Kingdom of Heaven."

     All else is a little dust and noise on the Road of Life.



     DISCUSSION OF MR. WHITEHEAD'S ADDRESS.

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: I have heard this Address with great pleasure, and I am quite sure that you have also. It has stirred our thoughts to a question that is of vital interest to us, apply, as to whether or not we believe firmly in the descent of the New Jerusalem. We know that it will come on the earth, and we trust that we shall be given the privilege of cooperating in some respects. Whether or not the Church is to be founded by the gathering of communities, that we cannot say; but we do know this, that the Lord has given us to see the immediate duty that lies before us, and that He will make it a part of the great pattern that His Divine Providence is following. The New Jerusalem is descending. It came ultimately into the world in that day of Robert Hindmarsh and Clowes. It has continued bearing fruit up to the present time, but under a most serious and discouraging struggle in the minds of many men; so much so, that the Church still labors with great and almost overwhelming difficulties, and perhaps will continue to do so for many years to come. Put it is just in the midst of those difficulties, and by the long struggle that will be necessary, that it will find its own salvation; for, as I have had occasion to say at other times, and I think it might be repeated here, the Lord's purpose is the establishment of a genuine spiritual church on earth. And if, in any place, that spiritual element fails, the Lord will break down that church, for it has no use. There are plenty of external churches, devoted to all sorts of good ends, but the purpose of the Revelation of the New Church is a definitely distinct spiritual church; whether that be with ten men or more, the essential difference is not as great as it appears After all, we in the Church need not the satisfaction of the external spread of the Church. That is not our purpose. Our purpose is to go forth seeking, ever seeking, to find a way of cooperating with the Lord in this providential work. Little by little, the Church will be established, and it will be established in the end. Let us pray that the Lord may give each one of us at least a small part in this most glorious work.

     Dr. E. E. Iungerich: Professor Whitehead has brought out a great many particulars in the field in which he is a noted specialist; and the Academy is to be highly congratulated in having his services. There are many students who need studies of this character in preparation for theology. Everyone should have this in his mind and thought as a basis, because there is a distinct difference between the planes he has mentioned,-between the theological and the civil and moral planes, or between the loves of heaven and the loves of self and the world, as mentioned in the True Christian Religion 394.

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A notable paragraph there speaks of these as central and fundamental loves; and it is said that the loves of self and the world are true loves when gradually subordinated.

     One of our great difficulties has been to reconcile the natural and the spiritual principles set forth in our Church; and a study of the kind we have just listened to is of great profit. One of the reasons why the Church is in its wilderness state is that we have been obliged to take up with existing systems, such as we find them, choosing what we consider to be the best, and with the knowledge that many of them are fallible and will lapse away with our posterity.

     There is a notable statement in the Apocalypse Explained 1171, where it says that spiritual love in the natural will give illustration in spiritual things, but a natural love from the spiritual will give illustration in natural things; a very important distinction. That has led me to conclude in my own mind that a man, as a student of theology on natural subjects, should look for his illustrations to give him what is confirmatory of spiritual particulars that are not necessary at all for that lower plane; and that if he finds it necessary to make applications of laws to that lower plane, he must associate himself with the understanding of those who have a natural love for the things of that plane from things spiritual.

     The civil uses of the church are matters with which the pastor and the society of the church have a great deal to do in common; the pastor to bring in the light of the reality of the uses, the laymen to bring in the experience and light of their acquaintance with matters that concern the civil affairs of that society. In certain of our societies, the question of the civil state has already been developed, as in Bryn Athyn, where there are not only the spiritual uses that are performed, and the civil uses belonging to the church, but there is also the government of the borough. The men who are engaged in that are almost all New Church men; but they are not conducting the borough for the sake of the aggrandizement of the New Church body as such. They are conducting it for the maintenance of the civil laws of our country, as far as those pertain to the borough.

     Rev. K. R. Alden: Mr. Whitehead's paper is particularly interesting to me from the standpoint of answering the question which is frequently thrust at New Church educators, namely, "How can you teach the various arts and sciences in a distinctly New Church way?" Everyone admits that the religious courses of the Academy in all our schools are distinct and unique, but it is not so easy when we come to teach the history of the various countries, arithmetic, geography, etc., in the light of the New Church.

     This paper is a very good illustration of the quality of education that we have given along different lines. I have had the privilege of attending many of Professor Whitehead's classes, and listening to the promulgation of New Church theology, as he discussed the history of various countries. And that application of the philosophy of the New Church to the every-day teaching of the arts and sciences is what makes for distinct New Church education; but the study of that philosophy makes it possible for the Academy to produce, not only the effect in its religion classes, but all along the line.

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     Mr. R. W. Childs: This Address is so masterly that it is hardly possible to do more than select a few thoughts from the great field that has been covered by the paper. In the first place, there was one consideration which was very important, namely, as to the meaning of freedom to man. It comes to me in this way so strikingly because, about two weeks before the Assembly, we were looking at some of the great cathedrals of France, and finally at some of the chateaux. And as we came to those chateaux, we were told of the great old days and the great life that once existed there, and then we came to a place which was a dungeon, and we went down there, and saw places where human lives could be extinguished in twenty-four hours because of lack of air. We saw dungeons where men had lived for years on bread and water. And we saw far worse things,-torture chambers and implements for the most cruel actions, and in one case a great banquet hall where the nobles drank wine and enjoyed life, while below it was a torture chamber where wretches were torn to pieces, and many of them for no fault of theirs, as in the case of the Jews. It is for that reason that a paper of this kind moves me very deeply.

     There is also the thought that this freedom is necessary for the growth of the Church. It does seem, in looking over the speeches that have been made in the past on the subject of church government, that it has been a wonderful thing how there has been developed among us, or by us, the concept of freedom that prevails among us in the Church. Mr. Whitehead spoke of the fact that in the course of time the Church and the State became separated. And I think that anyone who has read anything of the history of man, including the history of the Inquisition, will be thankful that, in the Lord's Providence, that separation came to pass. He also pointed out, as only a New Church specialist could, that these two things which were separated in Providence should, nevertheless, be welded together again. We recognize the separation of Church and State, but with the individual man these two things should be united, so that he could take the doctrine of the Church and make his own application to his own life in full freedom. When that is done by a man, a great many difficulties are spared. A great deal of trouble has arisen from time to time by an attempt to take the doctrines of the Church and make our own application of them in matters that only belong to the State. The priesthood of the Church can develop these doctrines; and, therefore, it is true in the Church, as it is in the State, that that Church has found the best government which is least governed, that is to say, when external variety is allowed to exist. We know no hard and fast rule laid down by some ruler or other.

     This paper is particularly appreciated by the laity of the Church, because to a large extent it points out the duty of the laity. We laymen are New Church; that is, it is our ambition to be New Church; and we are not New Churchmen by going to church and partaking of its sacraments; and we are not New Churchmen by attending meetings, listening to speeches, and making them. The duty of the New Churchman, in the first place, is to receive the doctrines of the Church, because none can be saved by a good life without some concept of the Divine Truth, whether it be known in one revelation or another; and we are New Churchmen when we apply those doctrines to our lives, and thus faithfully, sincerely and justly perform the duties of our office.

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     Rev. W. H. Claxton: The subject is one in which I am very greatly interested. Some of you know that I have recently delivered a paper on the same subject; and I preached a while ago on all the points raised.

     We have heard a very eloquent paper, and in the main I find myself in agreement with its statements, and certainly with the spirit and with the aim in view,-an aim to bring about the reunion between civil and spiritual things which is absolutely essential to the development of New Church life in the world. The division that has been brought about was largely owing to the final decline of the first Christian Church into a state of faith separated from charity, in which men found the evils that separated the religious from the secular life. And what we have frequently deplored in the external lives of men is the inevitable ultimation of the falses of the doctrine of the church in practical forces; and the only possibility of recovering from that is the ultimation of true doctrine in practical forms.

     Now in the Heavenly Doctrine we are taught that there is a definite doctrine of ecclesiastical government. I am quite sure the General Conference has not quite realized what that is; and if I may venture to say so, even the General Church has not quite realized the full implication of that doctrine. But I am quite satisfied that, in regard to the doctrine of civil government, we are in the A B C of the question, and I am very glad to find that you have, in your body, men who have given so much attention to it as to be qualified to give such a fine paper. But it does seem to me there is just one danger, and in the brief space of time available I shall try to explain what I mean.

     I am not in agreement with the general position that the restoration of the civil things in this world to a state of order, to bring them into concordance with the things in the Writings, is specifically and fully the work of the laity. To my mind that would be a fundamental falsity. It is particularly the part of the laity to bring to bear upon the things of the world the things that shall live; but the work of the ministry is to see that the laity have the doctrines of the church with which to do this. And it is also the ministry of the church that shall ultimate in the eyes of the world their reaction. What I mean is this. Every individual human being, every individual New Churchman, has his own foundation in the world, is raised, and educated, and lives in that world; she comes in contact with people who live in the world, and it is his duty to ultimate the truths as he understands them. Therefore it is his duty to understand what those truths are. I am quite sure myself that, if this is realized, we will find a great many things that we can do to help bring the world back into order from the disorder into which it has fallen, because of the disorder of the Christians.

     Heaven, which is the Greatest Man, is order itself. The human form, as created by the Lord, is order itself. And order itself demands that every part and portion composing the great whole shall contribute its services to the forming and use of that whole. Therefore, we have in the doctrine of the human form that principle of social order and of government which shall enable the civil things of earth to be brought into a state of order, that every individual being may contribute his use; and in doing so to the great service of the whole of mankind, he will be forming man to the highest degree.

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We have the opportunity of illustrating what the truth is, so that in the light of that truth we may see how fully the operations of the world out of these specific uses are in accordance with order. I do know, as a business man of some years, that it is not so easy to live the New Church life in the spirit, because there is a contradiction between the external things of life and the demands of the truth in regard to external things.

     Rev. G. A. Sexton: I was interested in the remarks that were made from the point of view of the constitution of the State as it has developed, and in relation to the old feudal custom, coming as I do from a country where the old feudal customs remain even in practice. One can see that, although those customs which resulted from the cruel conditions of the world in the past were necessary, yet the world has to remove them if progress is to be made. There was really some necessity for the order of government by the feudal baron or senor, because if the people who were perpetrating those terrible cruelties had been removed, restraint would also have been removed, and the whole race would have come into disorder and chaos. In short, the feudal system was the restraint of the feelings of the people.

     The point of that is, that as human nature rises from the evil and false at its own internal leading, as it were, it struggles into the human form. It must be so of orderly society. And that human form, in the natural state into which it fell, was governed from above. And as the whole race is improved, the evil of those conditions is changed, and we have another form. But we must guard against what is of nature, or, at any rate, we must not depart from religion. Freedom is not bound; it is a necessity that each individual be a law unto himself. The individual is not under the necessity of submitting even to Divine Laws. Nor is he to force them on the neighbor.

     Now we must recognize that the majority have to express things in some wise, and yet, at the same time, that the duty of the State and the duty of the Church, and of the New Church in particular, is to keep on looking to government from above. How has every advancement been made in the world? Has it not been by the Lord inspiring some man to be the leader? Of course, we do recognize civil liberty, and strive for it, although we admit that politics have no place in the building of the church. We recognize that the church must have the doctrine also, which is, that we must keep the principle of government from heaven. It seems that the New Church, in its relation to the State, has definite doctrines against what is called "communism." We have to stand for those principles.

     Mr. Henry de Geymuller: Might I congratulate Mr. Sexton for what he has just said? I would have said the same thing if he had not said it. I am sure there is a danger in the New Church, which is a characteristic rather of Convention and Conference, but I have been surprised to see that it exists even in the Academy. It is an evil. It is, after all, the permeation heresy. It is to consecrate, in the name of the New Church, certain developments which are occurring in the man of the world, and which we understand as being directed. by Providence, or as being the expression of the Divine will in mankind.

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For instance, all this talk about liberty, which has quite a different origin in the world than in the New Church, coming from the mistaken idea that human nature is good. The present world is changing, and certain developments are occurring in the world in preparation for the New Church, but this does not prove that they are good. For instance, the idea of liberty, as it is in the world, is, I am quite sure, exactly opposite to our own, which, after all, is based upon the idea of self-restraint.

     In general, I have noticed that many New Church people, instead of teaching the doctrines of the New Church in the Sacred Scriptures from heaven, say, "Oh well, it is a new era, you see; everything is changed; there is democracy; the old forms of government have disappeared." And so, many people who love order, and who are attached to their national traditions, are astonished. It is really a revolutionary body, and we really do not want to have anything to do with it. Now I think the New Church stands for order, in civil as well as religious things. And in the General Church, which is more or less of a monarchical form of government, it may seem a contradiction that some of these principles are claimed, ultimated, and practiced as being a civil corollary counterpart of the doctrine of the New Church government.

     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: I would like to say a few words in the endeavor to express, at least what I see to be, the ideal government in the Church. I thoroughly agree that government is from above. It matters not how democratic the people may be, they cannot escape from some form of government from above. But in the Church We recognize that there is a certain Divine authority for an ordered government arranged in series and degrees, call them what you may; that the Divine stamp of approval is put upon the general idea of an order of government in a trine of degrees in general, and that government must descend according to those degrees; that the highest degree is as a government per se. Nevertheless, we realize that, in the world, in the blind search for human freedom, there have been attempts at every kind of government. Every form fails in some respects, because each one of them can be very readily perverted. Democracy can be just as vicious and tyrannical as any monarchical or even papal form of government.

     There is one idea given in the Writings as to what government in the Church should be, as to what should rule in the Church, and that is what is called, in the letter of the Word, "the Holy Spirit," and what is called in the Writings, "Enlightenment." The Holy Spirit is interpreted as being enlightenment. It brings the Truth to us m light, inasmuch as we see and perceive the Divine Truth, that it is true. Now there is no one means by which you can guarantee that democracy as a whole would have this enlightenment; nor is there any means by which you can guarantee that some one chosen as a governor should have the office. It cannot be a guarantee, but we can provide the forms of what we can see to be a true and orderly government. Then, as being New Churchmen, we can trust that the Lord's mercy will be upon that government, as ken as upon all others.

     My own thought about the subject is, that I think an autocracy is wrong, whether by one man or by many, but that the government of enlightenment is the true one, if we can achieve it.

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I think that the idea of the General Church should be, that the government descends indeed from the higher degrees, but that they also govern through descent. It should be a free and liberal government, with no effort at autocracy or personal dominion or through ignorance. It is quite possible that in our Church we shall have the same troubles, but I think safety lies in the realization that the order of the office of government has been indicated clearly to us in the Writings. And the spirit that should enter therein has also been very clearly defined.
CHURCH AND THE WORLD 1928

CHURCH AND THE WORLD        J. S. PRYKE       1928

     "Human life," we are told, "from infancy to old age, is nothing but a progression from the world to heaven" (A. C. 3016); and accordingly one of the distinguishing characteristics of the member of the New Church is the faculty of living consciously in two worlds, the natural and the spiritual, at one and the same time, and of bringing those worlds into orderly relationship, the one with the other, by means of laws revealed out of heaven. Seeing that the word "church" is synonymous with the word "heaven," and that the word "world" stands alike for the "external universe" and for man's "natural mind," the subject of the "Church and the World" in reality is concerned with the connection of the spiritual world with the natural world, and so with the intercourse between the soul and the body. Furthermore, in its personal aspect, it is the story of man's rational birth, of his spiritual growth, and of his attempt to interpret upon his own plane and in the light of use the Psalmic declaration, "All things hast Thou put under his feet."

     And assuredly, as the tale of years passed within the Church increases, as the mind unfolds in the glow of the Heavenly Doctrines, no series of truths are seen to be more outstanding than those which bear witness to the transcendent importance of human life,-life temporal and restricted, as the precursor of life eternal and of endless expansion. Dangerous as spiritual conceit born of the proprium is, it does sometimes seem possible to hold the gift of life too cheaply, to undervalue such powers as have been entrusted to us, and so to re-enact the tragedy of the servant with the single talent. A faith of heavenly origin, rationally expounded, intellectually received and humbly lived, will guard us from either error.

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     It is not difficult to acknowledge that while potentially the forces of two universes may act through us, we ourselves can contribute to the result little more than the desire to turn these to good account, and that even this power of reaction is derived from outside sources. This teaching that unaided man can do less than nothing is perhaps the oldest and most generally accepted in the Church, yet the wonders of its application are ever new, so expressive is it of our twofold humanity. On the one hand, the power to do all things; on the other, the power to do nothing. On the one side, a creature of but three score years and ten; on the other, an immortal being. Thus it is at once mysterious and transcendent; and only after long years of study and effort does bewilderment give way to certainty, and is the significance of the duality perceived.

     So it comes about that, during the earthly career of all thoughtful New Churchmen, not once but fifty times the question has to be faced: "What, in my own individual case, have I made to be the real relationship between the church and the world? Is the church within me expanding to the full measure intended, and do I attempt to make the world around me sufficiently subordinate to its call?" This is merely asking in another form whether the life of heaven is admitted freely into our active thought and affections; for, as we are instructed, the real test is not so much whether we are in the church as whether the church is within us. If it is, undoubtedly it must soon manifest itself around us. Nor does the attainment of this desirable state imply any withdrawal from the active uses of the external world, since man is placed in the natural world to the intent that he may be initiated by his training there into those things which are of heaven. Moreover, the inclination to abstain from participation in civil uses-an inclination which must be combated again and again-is the ultimation of the faith alone horror, and this in the end will produce a dullness, sadness and positive loathing at the bare thought of spiritual good and truth. (A. C. 5006.)

     The close inter-relation between heaven and the world is very clearly seen in the teaching that man cannot be formed for heaven save by means of the world. (H. H. 360) Ultimate effects in which the affection of everyone must be terminated are there; and unless this affection puts itself forth into acts it is suffocated. The number describes how those who renounce the world and give themselves up to solitude and pious meditation are of a sorrowful temper in the after life, and despise others who are unlike themselves.

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     The intrinsic grandeur of human destiny must be realized and striven for, if we are to do justice to the work of our Creator upon the outer plane, and this quite irrespective of whether our earthly lot be humble or exalted. Is not our very existence a pledge of the Lord's desire to gift us with the ability to know somewhat of His designs and to feel responsive gratitude for their beneficence? But for the New Churchman this is not all. Incredible as it may sound, he is called upon to take his share in the work, so far as he is a genuine man of the church. For the church on earth is instituted solely to the end that there may be a communication of the world, i.e., of the human race, with heaven, or, in other words, through heaven with the Lord; otherwise the race would cease to exist. (A. C. 10500.)

     As the church is the Lord's kingdom on the earth, and as each regenerating man is a church in miniature, it will be evident that one office of man is to assist in preserving the connection between the Lord's kingdom on earth and in the heavens. It is sometimes useful to place a truth in sharp contrast with its opposing falsity, and it is suggested that the spiritual use here indicated finds its perversion in the idea that the doom of a sinful world can be averted by the unceasing prayers of the saintly and the pious. So the ordained (the word is used in its basic sense of denoting that which happens according to order) the ordained human destiny is to help to preserve, strengthen and increase the link which holds earth to heaven; first in the individual mind, then in the society, religious and civil, in which that mind moves, and ultimately to affect the race. That, it seems, is the proper measure of a man, which, as we know, is angelic.

     "The chief thing of the church is to acknowledge God, to believe in God, and to love Him. (H. D. 281.) How extremely simple and even trite this sounds to the natural ear, just as, we imagine, the Ten Commandments sounded to the ears of the Jews, since these laws were already known to them and to the neighboring nations! And yet in what circumstances of awe and majesty was their repetition made on the Mount, because externally, and by external people, it is true, they were now to be revealed, not as decrees emanating from men, but as commandments promulgated by God Himself.

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     Is not the case very similar in the present generation? From our youth we have been told, as has the world around us, that upon the two commandments of love to God and charity to the neighbor, all the law and the prophets depend; but the spiritual and logical import of the saying is only to be found in the revelation given to the New Jerusalem. Until a modicum of this revelation penetrates our mentality we go on thinking and acting as did the Jews of old time, as do Christians now. Clearly, then, the first duty is to obey the injunction: "Man, know thyself!"-To learn concerning the quality of the church, to realize, so far as this may be permitted without injury, in what degree the church lives within us, and to determine in what manner this growth may be encouraged and made to place its mark upon the outside world. In doing this, the proprium may be kept in check, if we do not forget that the Lord is the whole of the church, and that what we possess of it is in His gift. "The Lord alone," says A. C. 768, "is the All of the church, and the all of the church is love and charity."

     Upon the faith that the internal sense of the Word has been opened and revealed to those who can receive it is the Church built. How entirely different is this from the conception of those who hold that the Church was founded upon the man Peter, and by a kind of derivation upon his successors! Yet, if we think for a moment, we must admit that, just so far as we consciously allow the proprium to influence our church activities, so far are we short of release from that enormity; that is to say, man, instead of the Lord, is ruling. Thoughts from b0th of these states are often focussed in our minds, and how slender at times seems to be the division between heaven and hell! Approaching from the one side, action freely taken appears as if it were our own; approaching from the other side, we boldly declare it to be ours of inherent right.

     Some in the world today tell us that Christians might very well dispense with the Word of the Old Testament, because all the directions needful for a pious life are to be found in the New Testament, which is much less objectionable in style. We should have imagined that even one who confined the Bible study to the New Testament Scriptures would have grasped the obvious fact that the destruction of the Old would involve that of the New also, since the outstanding claim of the New is that it fulfills the Old.

694


The pronouncement referred to is one of those flashes of self-revelation on the part of the Old Church which are as warnings lest we be deceived by surface attractiveness and forget the real quality hidden beneath.

     In the light of the Doctrines, and of our experience, we can see that Jesus is being relegated to the position of an "elder brother," whose sayings, after suitable editing and polishing, are acceptable, since they may be left open to interpretation, doubt and denial. There must be no law-giving, omnipotent God, however, since the human mind is rapidly reaching a state of self-adequacy, though there may conceivably be "earth's great ones" to advise or assist. Since correct diagnosis is the forerunner of radical cure, we may recognize the mercy of the declaration that in these days there is no knowledge of the Lord or of His Word save what is perverted. Borrowing the language of the sightless Milton, let us pray:

     "Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
     Irradiate: there plant eyes; and all mist from thence
     Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
     Of things invisible to mortal sight."

     This same denial of the Divine of the Lord pulls out of place the very corner stone of the church. For where no God is known, there can he no church. Moreover, the quality of the church is as the quality of its acknowledgment of God. This teaching has a very familiar ring, but, again, tides of doubt rush in from the world and strike with insistent force against our faith. Although it is very easy to see the necessity for the existence of a God, it is not so simple a matter to see in all our mental states that He must make a new advent, in order that a new church may be founded, which advent is now made, as were all previous ones, by the agency of a revelation of truth which, in its essence, is the Word of the Lord, and thus is the Lord Himself.

     So we reach the further doctrinal guidepost, telling us that, of the two principles of doctrine which constitute the church, one is that the Lord's Human is Divine. (A. C. 4723) Some quality of this Divinity must be perceived on all planes and in all revelations, notwithstanding the varied types which ever go to the making of the church on earth, dividing, as these do, into three general groups, namely, those who are in love to the Lord, those who are in charity to the neighbor, and those who are in the affection of truth. (A. C. 3653)

695


In all probability, we shall never be permitted to know whilst in the body to which of these three divisions we inwardly adhere-happy shall we be if we are found in either,-still less is it allowable to classify our neighbor. At the same time there is some faculty for exploring our intentions, and thence to refine them.

     When we consider that what may be lawfully predicated of the church may equally be said of heaven, and that heaven and the church act as one, like the internal and external man, this rectification of the thoughts and affections becomes of the utmost importance, lest we, as members of the earthly church, should fail in due reciprocation to our "opposite numbers" on the other side,-that is, to those angels and spirits who are adjoined to us. Further, the church in the heavens and throughout the earth is the Lord's body, the members being in the Lord, and the Lord in them. What a picture of unimaginable beauty is held before our gaze in the passages which describe how the ultimate heaven and the church upon earth are in the Divine Natural; how by the "head of the Son of Man" His Divine Celestial is to be understood; by His "eyes" and His "breast" which was "girt about with a golden girdle" His Divine Spiritual; by His " feet like unto fine brass" the Divine Natural. And because every man is created in the image of God, he has these three degrees within him.

     If man, in his civil associations, has been driven by disaster to evolve systems of public health, so that there may be with the people more adequate housing, sanitation, and medical relief, to the better reception of healthy life in the body politic, how much more is it incumbent upon the church, whether individual or in group, to take care that there be a full reception of spiritual life, to the end that the church may become the worthy representative of its Lord on earth. Love of the Lord's kingdom, we read, is the most universal love, and consequently is in all things which belong to spiritual and natural life. It resides in man's supreme principles, and descends by influx into the lower as thought enters speech and as will enters action. That is remarkable teaching, and remarkably practical, making one with the old familiar doctrine that "uses for receiving the spiritual from the Lord are all things which teach the knowledge of God, of good and truth, and of eternal life."

     The second fundamental principle of the church is love or charity towards the neighbor. How freely the phrase "charity towards the neighbor" trips off our tongues! There is none that we are more accustomed to hear and to utter.

696


But, once more, how persistently reflections from the world invade this doctrine also! We hear it asked: "Is not the world of today largely concerned with bettering the lot of the less fortunate? Does not the state busy itself with the mental and physical welfare of the individual, with his employments and recreations? Indeed, may not its beneficence be said literally to pursue him from the cradle to the grave?" What modern picture is more common than that of charity, in one of its varied forms, being extended to the neighbor? Mendicants are relieved at our doors; flag-day collections flourish; holiday excursions for the poor are organized; to make no mention of such greater institutions as hospitals, almshouses, orphanages, and the like, where much charitable work is accomplished.

     It is far from our intention to detract from the value of these ameliorative agencies. Indeed, it may well be that the New Churchman, in his association with the world, is called upon to assist them. But how far short of the ideal of genuine charity to the neighbor they fall! This charity occupies itself in the first place with things eternal, with the good of the church, the advancement of the Lord's kingdom upon the earth, with the actual reformation of the individual life. It is often far more difficult to act from spiritual probity in this matter of charity than it is merely to pass over coin to aid some externally desirable object. Here again the world has slowly to be made to be made to take up its proper place in regard to the church. Besides, in its entire complex, charity to the neighbor implies so translating heavenly law into act that the world around us shall be made subordinate to the needs of the church, and that no harm shall reach the neighbor by reason of our default.

     No clearer or more concise definition of the neighbor can be found than chat given in A. C. 6023, which deals in general aspect with another point of doctrine, namely, that of the infilling of scientifics. This number explains that a scientific is merely a vessel capable of receiving either truths or falsities with immense variety; as, for example, this particular scientific of the church, that every man is the neighbor. Truths in great abundance, we are taught, may be collected together into this scientific,-that every man is indeed the neighbor, but each one with a difference, and that he is most the neighbor who is in good, although this again with a difference according to the quality of the good.

697


That the origin of neighbor is drawn from the Lord Himself, thus that the nearer men are to Him, the more they are in good, the more they are the neighbor, and counterwise. Further, that a society is more the neighbor than an individual, a kingdom more than a society, a man's country more than other kingdoms; that the church is still more the neighbor than a man's country, and finally that the Lord's kingdom is the neighbor over all. Then this is added,-that the neighbor is loved when everyone duly does his duty for the good of others, of his country, or of the church. Very simply set forth; yes! but it involves a new conflict between the church and the world, a conflict in which, as we well know, self-love often takes a hand.

     II.

     So much, then, as indicative of what the church essentially is, and of our search for it in our own inner consciousness. How are we to look at the world? Let us remind ourselves here that the earth is the Lord's, "with the fulness thereof," and that it was He who "founded it upon the seas." Since, also, it is ordained that man can only reach heaven via the earth, and, as we have seen, that he can be fitted for eternal use only by means of a discipline during his earthly life, the conclusion surely follows that, in a proper sense, the world can be made amenable to the church.

     Inasmuch as the world, equally with the church, is the Lord's, and that the church with man is the Lord's servant, we believe that in the years to come, after men have so far advanced in regeneration that they can be trusted to employ the power wisely, the affairs of the external world will be administered-perhaps even in their entirety-by members of the New Church acting consciously as servants and house-stewards of their Lord. Indeed, there have been, and are, examples in this very direction. In the meantime, we have rather in mind the disposition of the world in small; that is to say, the placing of that portion of it which lodges within us, and that portion upon which we operate immediately outside. We are neither to permit it to dominate us, nor endeavor to flee from it. It is our school, our workshop; everything in it presenting some suggestion of the Lord's kingdom.

     What distances of state separate us from those of the Most Ancient Church, who, by means of perception, regarded all objects of the senses as significative of celestial things, so that dead things with them became living!

698


As a matter of church history, it is interesting to note in passing that such significations were collected orally by their posterity, and framed by them into doctrinals, and that these doctrinals composed the Word to the Ancient Church, after the Flood. (A. C. 1409) By virtue of the correspondence between internal and external things, here indicated, the angels are no longer in corporeal ideas, and, to a lesser extent, the angelic-minded who are in process of being divested of such ideas, perceive heavenly things when man is reading the Word or is thinking upon terrestrial matters. A knowledge of this fact should in time lead to the placing of a truer estimation upon the things of the world; should lead us to hold them lightly as merely temporal possessions, and at the same time to hold them firmly as vessels of use.

     Pursuing the same line of doctrine, we learn that, unless men had ideas derived from worldly things, they could not think at all. How harmoniously a one the doctrines of the New Church are upon their inner side-marvelous to the point of the miraculous-is well evinced by what now follows. We have seen that the road to heaven runs across the world, and that the real importance of the latter comes from this fact. Now we are further instructed that man can receive nothing unless he can form some idea thereof from his rational, and that this takes place by the intermediation of objects in the natural world. In all his conceptions of the Divine mysteries there must always adhere some idea of worldly things, or of things analogous to them; and by their agency those conceptions are retained and reproduced in the thought. Wherefore, if naked truths from a Divine origin were proposed to man, they would exceed his apprehension and consequently his belief.

     Let two examples illustrate. First, Divine Truth cannot be, except in what is Divine; that is, in the Divine Human, and through this with man. But the rational, if consulted, would say that the Divine Itself can be in the human of everyone. Second, there is nothing holy but what proceeds from the Lord. Yet, if the rational were asked, it would reply that there are other sources of holiness. Because the human rational is of such a quality, the Word is written according to man's powers of comprehension, and for that reason also its internal sense is so very different from its literal sense. On this account, scarcely any mention is made of the life after death, of eternal salvation, or of the internal man.

699


For the Jewish and Israelitish people, among whom the Church was at that time, were such that if these things had been openly declared they would have misunderstood and even derided them. Hence the Lord spake to them in parables. (A. C. 2520.) As we feel our interest quickening in the world around us, as its true quality is unfolded, we may pertinently ask whether its real use could have been made known by any other than He who fashioned it.

     Now it has already been pointed out that man must trade with such talents as are entrusted to him, and that the world is his mart. This doctrine is for the clergy and laity alike; for all alike live in and through their individual use; and it is of order that due reward should follow faithful service. There is in our Liturgy a prayer to that purport. Spiritual blessing, as we are aware, must inevitably come to use faithfully done; and in orderly conditions this would also be the case in mundane affairs. And so the teaching is given that, not only are those greatly mistaken who conclude that it is impossible for spiritual good to reside in worldly opulence, but the renunciation of worldly things is expressly forbidden, because those who so act render themselves despicable in the sight of others, because they deprive themselves of the means of continuing earthly life, and then look to others for support. (A. C. 3951.) Nor need the spiritual man despise wealth, since by its agency he is able to be active in the world, and to further the cause of the Lord's kingdom on earth. The test of spirituality in this connection is not the possession or deprivation of wealth. It lies in the first place in the recognition that all wealth belongs to the Lord alone, and, in the next place, in the quality of the use we make of it.

     In all ages men have been moved to devote their possessions to their church, although this has very largely come to mean the mere gift of external wealth. It is now known that we really own nothing until we recognize that our wealth is not ours at all, and we begin to devote it to some spiritual use. We leave the paradox to explain itself, and merely point to the distinction between the church and the world in that matter:

     Finally, we repeat-and the fact is stupendous-that through the human brain alone can there be a descent from the heavens into the world, and an ascent from the world into the heavens. (A. C. 4042.) Is a greater human destiny conceivable?

700


Patriots and martyrs we have all known, but worldly patriotism and self-sacrifice pale into insignificance before the conception of an allegiance given at once to heaven and to earth; an allegiance which enables us in a very real sense to make "the best of both worlds."

     What a marvelous piece of work is man indeed! The whole of the spiritual kingdom is spread before him, to the intent that he may understand how uses, from the inmost to the outermost, and downwards to their corresponding perversions, are served. The whole of the natural world and its counterparts lie at his feet, and the character of their interplay is disclosed to him, all being in Divine order. For it is so stated: "The external man communicates with the world, and the internal man with heaven. Divine order consists in heaven ruling the world with the man, and not the world ruling heaven; for when heaven rules the world, then the Lord rules him." (A. C. 9278) There, in a few sentences, is a complete, Divinely revealed, working philosophy concerning the relation of the church to the world.

     Possibly it will be objected that this address has proceeded along wrong lines, and that the proper method would have been to show first what the church really is, then the inner quality of the world, and lastly their effect, each upon the other. If so, we cry, "Peccavinzus," and explain that our original plan was to do this. As our preparation went on, however, it became evident that while men remain in the flesh, they are subject to an influx from two worlds as closely related as to make a separation appear almost impossible. Often the barrier between the two is frail; more often, perhaps, it is obscure. Doubtless we have all had experience of the perpetual conflict between them; of thought starting from heaven, and ending up in the other place, and vice versa, the transit being quiet, as the passage of the shuttle in a weaver's loom; nay, often being instantaneous.

     It seemed best, therefore, to deal with the selected phases of the subject in the light of immediate contrast. The rational, spiritual, and progressive discrimination between the two sets of forces, coupled with their proper alignment, is, under Divine auspices, the task of a lifetime, and of eternity. The real battlefield between the church and the world is within the individual mind. There the fight is either won or lost. True enough, the present is the day of small things for the New Church. Yet we do not falter nor forget that the future is the child of the present, and thus that this is also the day of well-founded hope.

701


The number of believers, we are told, is daily increasing, and evil itself is made to subserve the establishment of the Church. Thus we look upon the Church-militant, it is true, but with all the light of victory already playing round her brews. We look also at the world, and gratefully, confidently, let us trust, with some spirituality,

     "Find the awakened world remade
     By miracles of sun and shade,
     And know that God in morning mood
     Still finds his green earth very good."



     DISCUSSION OF MR. PRYKE'S ADDRESS.

     Rev. victor J. Gladish: Needless to say, we enjoyed this Address immensely. Carefully prepared, and flowing in musical meter, it appealed to me very much; but especially for its contents. I take it that the main theme of this paper is to show that, while man can "receive nothing except it be given him from heaven," nevertheless, whatever he receives is given him from heaven by means of the world, by means of the things of nature. And that profound truth must enter into all our temptations, all our combats of life, and we must preserve this knowledge,-that all power comes from above by means of things around us. We can, therefore, be neither hermits nor of the world worldly. It calls to mind something I read a few months ago in Swedenborg's Rational Psychology, where he states that the sincere impressions we receive do not come from any interior mind, and are thus impressed upon the pure intellectory, but that the intellectory takes from its will through the things round about. The world does not come to us and force itself upon us. Although the appearance is that the world comes to us, the truth is that we have the ability to take whatever we will.

     Dr. Harvey Farrington: The subject of the relation of the Church to the world is ever present with us; for the world is always with us. In this connection I often think of the words of the late Bishop Benade, when the move to Bryn Athyn was contemplated. He said, "You cannot escape temptation by moving away from a city to the countryside, because wherever you go you will take hell with you." It has been well shown in the paper that it is necessary for us to live in the world. According to the Divine Wisdom it is necessary for us to be born on this earth, and to pass through the life here, in order that we may be prepared for the life to come. Otherwise there would be no use for the natural universe. We have to accept this and act accordingly. This is a good old world; and it constantly beckons us, and it is our own inclination to turn toward it. But we are not placed here for the purpose bf living a life of pleasure, of gaining riches and power, but in order that we may perform a life of use to the world, and in the world to the church, in order that the church may grow and that the world may live; for the church is the connection between heaven and the world.

702




     And, my friends, do you realize that a new race is forming, a new race is being born, composed of the peoples of many nations and many divers elements, but who yet are inseminated with the realization that the Doctrines are a Divine Revelation direct from the Lord Himself? These Doctrines teach us and prepare us to live in the world, and give us the necessary armor to protect us from the things which that world exercises upon us so strongly. We are taught what is the state of the Christian World. The natural man is liable to have a mistaken charity toward men in the world. He is liable to judge that the world is in a better condition, and in consequence to believe that the distinction of the New Church is not at all necessary. We understand the fallacy of this, and so long as we appreciate it we are safe. So, therefore, let us go forward, and be loyal to our Church, be loyal to the truths that it teaches; and then, like the prodigal son, we can repent and return to our Father.

     Rev. Vincent C. Odhner: This paper is one that delights us, for the subject it treats of is fundamental. As Mr. Pryke has pointed out, the world is not to be avoided. The Lord Himself prayed the Father "not to take men out of the world, but to keep them from the evil." It is a fundamental doctrine of the Church that man should not make evil his own, any more than he should feel that he is the origin of good. It is important, therefore, to recognize that evil is from hell. The Writings teach very plainly that hell inflows into our intentions and will just as heaven does. Therefore, when we deal with the subject of evil, we really must deal with our intentions, and not with our thought alone. And upon this point the Writings have to say that, if men would resist evil only once a week or twice a month, they would soon perceive a change,-a very practical point. And since man stands midway between the source of evil and the source of good, and since his will is the meeting place of those two forces, it is there that he must deal with them, and there he has the opportunity to resist evil in intention, and to turn nearer to heaven while engaged in the uses of the world.

     Rev. E. E. Iungerich: I was interested in a phrase that was used in the paper, and I began to think of another application of that phrase. Mr Pryke said, "We may be in the church, and the church not in us." This is perfectly correct. But I thought of that other phrase, that " the Lord is always in us, but we may not be In Him." It occurred to me that the one with regard to the church refers to something that flows to us from outside; and the one with regard to the Lord refers to something that comes from within; and the difference is like that between good and truth, the good coming from within, and the truth coming from without.

     The speaker referred to the statement in the Writings about the truth being sweet in the mouth, and afterwards becoming bitter. That, of course, is connected with the teaching about the New Church, that it will first be among a few, and then grow among many. The mouth represents that in us which is close to the world, and when we are delighted with the things of the church for merely worldly reasons, because it gives us something that will elevate us above others, then it is sweet in our mouths; but when we have to live according to the truth, it becomes a difficult and bitter task.

703


The prediction about the few and the many is frequently taken in a merely worldly sense. In the spiritual sense it means that the Writings will be with few things in us, and eventually come to be with many things in us. And if the Writings are only among few things in us, it is not likely that there will be very many people who will be drawn to them. But if the Writings are in many things in us, we may be the means of interesting people in the New Church. I recently heard a sermon which showed that every church at its beginning was dependent upon the conditions then in the world, the state of the decadent church clinging to those of the New Church. In that condition the new was not strong enough to be independent. In fact, that has been the case in regard to the New Church. Many of its members do not stand firm. Many doctrines of the Writings are accepted only so far as their worldly affairs allow. So we should pray to the Lord that the Writings may be among many things in us, and become independent of the world, through the Lord's mercy in our hearts.

     Rev. W. L. Gladish: I want to express my great pleasure in hearing this paper. It was a very able treatment, and Mr. Pryke expressed the thought that has dominated every paper and address we have heard,-that "except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it,"-that the Lord in reality does all the work. The appearance is that man does it, but he can only do it in conjunction with the Lord.

     In connection with the subject of charity towards the neighbor, I ran across a statement where it is said that a certain man loved all the human race excepting those he knew personally. That is very easy. But the trouble is to love those of the human race whom we know personally, and the closer we get to them the harder it is. But that is what the New Churchman has to learn, to love those he is personally associated with, to harbor no grudges against the Lord's people. It is said in the Word that man is to fight it out with his neighbor, if he differs from him. Our loving the neighbor is not a mere sentiment. As man is regenerating he becomes very closely conjoined with others of the same faith. The church then forms such a body that the Lord can inhabit it. That kind of association with the neighbor is not on a merely sentimental plane, but on the plane of an effort to cooperate with the Lord, to continue in loyalty and courage, especially in this world, to establish the church. If we can do that, then, from that state of charity, we shall be able to live in charity with others who are not of the church.

     Rev. W. H. Claxton: This delightfully given paper has touched upon the one principal thing that the church ought to consider. And until the church does consider it to a greater extent than it has yet done, the church will not fulfill its real use in the world in which it is. And, in my judgment, the church is not fulfilling its real use to the extent it might, to the extent that the Lord would like to have it, and to the extent that it would be capable of doing, if we thought more about this question. Mr. Pryke has gone along the line of the individual layman, rather than the collective one.

704


But the two things are in perfect harmony. What is true of the one is always true of the other. Each individual man should be a church in himself, as each individual angel is a heaven in the individual form.

     One reason why it seems to me that we are not making progress in the world, or fulfilling our function in that world to the extent that we ought, is because, in relation to the individual, the church is not fulfilling its function to the extent that it ought. For if we were advancing with inward progress, we should acquire the power that would enable us to procure greater external progress in the world. When the Lord came into the world in the flesh to save the world, the one thing He did was to bring into the world His own Divine Human, to overcome the forces of evil, and thereby acquired a capacity to help men in the direction of His Divine ends. It could not have been acquired by that Human in any other way. In a much lower degree, we acquire the capacity to understand the world of nature, and to help the world. According to the degree of our knowledge, we conquer evil in ourselves by the external way, and become truly regenerate.

     Now the church exists in the world for the salvation of the world. That is its fundamental and only use, and it is that very end that is far too much lost sight of. The church exists in us individually for the same specific purpose,-for our salvation; and, far too often, I think, that also is lost sight of. We are content with a knowledge of the Doctrines themselves, and with the enlightenment which that knowledge gives intellectually. We are far more likely to look from the world outside, and to condemn the inside; far readier than we are to resist the very power of evil in us, or to rescue the poor in the world from the evil there. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," says the Lord. We are far too ready to judge the world, and to look upon it as our enemy, patting ourselves on the back because of that, than we are to stoop down and help the world in its difficulties.

     I am very anxious to see a living church; but in every organization of the Church at present I find far too much of that rather dangerous attitude of mind, that "we are very good, and you are very wrong." And if there is anything that puts a man's back up, it is that. Let us remember that the human mind was a Divinely created temple of the Lord, and that the purpose of the Revelation of truth is to bring that mind back from a state of ruin into a state of order. The larger mass of humanity in the world is another temple in ruins, and it also needs to be brought back; and this needs great humility, great willingness to suffer for the sake of truth. I am afraid that there is a little bit of the Peter spirit in the church today. "This be far from Thee, Lord," said Peter. But the Lord said to him, "Get thee behind me, satan!" Even in regard to our own individual salvation, the things of the world are necessary. But this is by no means a path of roses. And if we are afraid to suffer for the sake of our own individual regeneration, we shall be unable to suffer for the sake of the world's regeneration. It was the willingness of the Apostles to suffer, and the willingness of their hearts to suffer any difficulties that would make it possible for the world to be saved. And it should be the same with us today, individually and collectively.

705




     Bishop N. D. Pendleton: I wish to express my great pleasure in the paper we have just heard. There are very many excellent teachings in it, very many excellent attitudes assumed in it toward the church and the world. I noted with particular pleasure the characteristic effort to present a well-balanced view of the subject. That is probably one of the highest gifts that can be given to man,-the ability to take a well-balanced view of any subject that may come up. We all strive to do that thing; and that, perhaps, is just the difference between New Churchmen and other men. Naturally we think that our view is the well-balanced one. The truth is, however, that we may make an error in that direction as in any other. I have rarely known a man to get up to speak, that his words have not carried him away wholly in one direction, although he may have known exactly what he wanted to say, leaving an impression which he afterwards would have taken great pleasure in balancing.

     The proper presentation of the question of the church and the world is vital to the church, and will ever continue to be. For the world is the love of the world, and is the world that is in you and in me,-our world, our impressions of the great world about us. And we must make a distinction between out spiritual ideas and standards and those of the great world of natural affections with which we must be in secret contention. The truth is, that it is the ambition of the New Church to save the world. But there is a little preliminary that is necessary. The Church must save itself in the world, and that is our difficulty. For the tendency, especially in the New Church in the past, has been more and more to surrender to the world, and to lose the first love, to begin to compromise, and then take the compromise as a truth,-a principle of action that is fatal, that is deadly, to the New Church. The only counterpoise we have, the only make-way against the very alarming sentimentality of the world, which would destroy all religion, is the truth,-the clean, pure truth that is revealed to us in the Writings.

     It is my belief that the more a man kneels before the truth that is revealed to him, the fess he thinks of himself, and the less disposed he is to regard himself as a better or more salvable individual than other men. The fact is, that the Writings expose the interiors of the human mind and the interiors of human life. The Writings reveal to us the evil conditions of the world,-the evil conditions of the natural mind upon which that world is based. And the teaching is, that the angels keep our minds fixed upon the falses which are in us, whereas the evil spirits are fearful that those who follow them should realize that they are evil. They would conceal that fact. So that there is a vast world of difference that is revealed, and the truth appears at times to be contradictory. That is one of the great facts of the Divinity of the Writings, that there are contrasting passages, and in that respect they are not unlike the letter of the Word, that we can always quote them to prove this, that or the other thing. Such quotations, whether from the letter of the Word or from the Writings, avail but little. The only salvation that is given to the rational mind is to give its approbation to the truth itself; it is that we are to pray for. And if that is given to a man, I believe that the first thing it does is to remove the power of external sentimentalities from his mind, and to humble him before his Lord.

706


It makes him poor, and far away from any attitude that would say, "I am better than you, and on that ground I will not associate with you." That was not the attitude of the Lord. The Lord associated with the publicans and sinners; and I maintain that it is the duty of New Churchmen to do likewise, if it comes in the way of his use in life. Truly, we must be in the world. We cannot leave the world. It follows us wherever we go, in every thought and in every affection. But this does not mean that New Churchmen should not gather together, and meet for the furthering of the uses of the Church. Do not mix the two things, by calling one thing by the wrong name, or you will be in error. I believe profoundly that the salvation of the New Church depends upon a strict separation policy. At the same time we must go back and forth; we must separate, and we must go out and beyond the protecting walls of Jerusalem, that we may give a helping hand, not to those who have crucified their Lord, but to those whose eyes are not yet open to the true light of the New Jerusalem.

     In the few moments left to the Assembly, I desire to bring to your mind the fact of what a great pleasure it has been to all of us to come here. And I know that there are many hearts in our Church who are with us, and who wished and longed to come. One gentleman said to me repeatedly, showing how much it was on his mind: "O, I wish I could go with you to the Assembly!" And as often as he made the remark, I said, "I wish you could!" Just this morning a cablegram from him has been handed to me, and I want to read it to you: "Greetings to all Assembly members! May the meetings bind in closer union brethren of the General Church in all lands! (Signed) Raymond Pitcairn."

707


MESSAGES TO THE ASSEMBLY 1928

MESSAGES TO THE ASSEMBLY       Various       1928

     The following letters and cablegrams were received with enthusiastic applause when they were read at the Banquet on August 11th:

     FROM ALPHA FARM, SOUTH AFRICA.

Dear Bishop and Dear Friends:
     It is but natural that, at such a time as the present, we should all wish to be present and partake in the spiritual benefits of such a gathering. Since our duties and distance prevent, we shall endeavor to be with you in spirit. Greetings to you all! And may you have a real feast!

     In conveying our good wishes for the natural and spiritual success of this Assembly, we hope that it will result in a greater unity in the Lord's New Church on earth.

     Fraternally yours,
     NORMAN RIDGWAY,
     IONA LEASK,
     STANLEY F. PARKER,
     LILIANE M. PARKER,
     E. J. WATERS,
     G. M. WATERS.
          Ladybrand, July 10, 1928.

     FROM GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS.

Dear Friends:
     Several considerations have made it seem inadvisable for me to attend these meetings which you will enjoy by the time this letter arrives, and I regret that I cannot be present. Please let me send, however, a word of greeting.

     Since the New Heaven is of all nations, and kingdoms, and peoples, and tongues, it is altogether of order that on earth the New Church should be an international Church, thus more fully ultimating the conditions in the spiritual world. However hallowed the love of country may be, the love of our Church is above it. Internally, it must be that we are forever united in this love,-a love which no international conflict or strife of nations can ever disrupt.

708




     My heart and interest is with you, and the same may be said of all the people of the Immanuel Church. May the Lord's blessing be upon all your deliberations, and give a new impetus to the whole body which shall be felt for a long time!

     It seems to me most desirable and necessary that there be new things for the New Church,-new forms of worship, piety, and ritual, and so a continual revision and growth. And I offer the thought that the light for continual revision, both in our individual and in our corporate life, will come from continual reading in the Heavenly Doctrine.
     Sincerely and Cordially,
          GILBERT H. SMITH.
               Glenview, Ill., July 23, 1928.

     FROM AUSTRALIA.

Dear Bishop Pendleton and Friends:
     It is my privilege to convey in person the greeting from our Society to the General Assembly now meeting in the Metropolis of the British Empire.

     It is cause for rejoicing that probably for the first time the Revelation establishing the Church-the chief of all Revelations-will be the foundation underlying and infilling all the uses to be performed by a large and corporate body. And especially is it cause for rejoicing, in view of the fact that the founding of the Church upon that Revelation was in this city. Robert Hindmarsh, in his Rise and Progress, says:

     "The pulpit and the press incessantly announced the sublime truths of the new revelation; and many individuals, who heard and read them with astonishment and delight, were led to adore the Divine Mercy for having been pleased a second time to visit and redeem His people."

     And Hindmarsh quotes from the 25th Report of the Society that was formed in Manchester in 1782, which states that, "on account of the doctrines contained in the Writings being so contrary to the prevailing sentiments then maintained in the Christian world, a long period must elapse before the reception of them would become general.

709


But the Society, perceiving that these Writings contain within themselves the clearest evidence of their heavenly origin, they proceeded to print and publish volume after volume, under a firm persuasion that truth would finally triumph over every obstacle, and remove every impediment that might stand in the way."

     The great continents of America and Australia now meet together in the country from which they have sprung; in the country that formed the center of the Last Judgment, and with those, in that country, who are truly of the Church; and moreover, in the country in which the Revelation was first made public by the press.

     As members of the New Church, we ignore physical nationality, which is very transient. It cannot compare with eternity-with spiritual nationality. Every true member of the Church belongs to some society in the Lord's Kingdom. The Lord is Father and King, and all we are brethren, and friends of the Lord if we do whatsoever He commands us.
     RICHARD MORSE.
          Hurstville, Sydney, N. S. W.
     
     FROM THE OLIVET CHURCH, TORONTO, CANADA.

Friends of the General Assembly:
     On this Nineteenth Day of June, which we celebrate as the anniversary of the first proclamation of the Second Advent of the Lord throughout the entire spiritual sphere, the of the occasion, and This Assembly will go down in our history as marking an epoch, being the first occasion on which such a general gathering has been held in Europe. May we not see in this the added significance that the New Revelation was not intended merely for one nation or race, or for one time or place? May we not see in it the first golden rays of the glorious era foreseen by the late Bishop Benade, when great streams of children, youths and maidens, would attend the schools and universities of the New Church, and through them go forth to replenish the uses of the Church, and this, not in one place or country, but among all peoples and kindreds and tongues?

     And so, while we wish you wisdom in your deliberations and decisions, charity as the all-pervading essence of all your discussions, and cordiality in all your social relations, it may yet not be amiss to hope that at your banquets, besides glorying in the correspondences of the viands offered, you may also be minded of the words of the English bard, "So now to eat.

710


Let good digestion wait on appetite!"
      For the Olivet Society,
          (DR.) E. K. RICHARDSON.
               Toronto, June 19th, 1928.

     CABLEGRAMS.

     Rev. R. J. Tilson: "We desire to convey through you to the General Assembly in London our cordial greetings and best wishes. MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL CHURCH IN SWEDEN."
Stockholm, August 3, 1928.

     "Love and greetings to the Assembly from the Immanuel Church. Salutations to Bishop Tilson.
     GLENVIEW SOCIETY."
          Glenview, Ill., August 9, 1928.

     "To the Thirteenth General Assembly: Greetings from the members of Carmel Church! May the Lord bless your deliberations!
     CARMEL CHURCH SOCIETY.
          Kitchener, Ont., August 9, 1928.

     "Greetings to all Assembly members! May the meetings bind in closer union brethren of the General Church in all lands!
     RAYMOND PITCAIRN."
           Bryn Athyn, Pa., August 11, 1928.

     Greetings were also received at the Banquet from the following: Madame Deltenre, Brussels, Belgium; Rev. F. E. Waelchli, on behalf of the Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and other Circles of which he is Visiting Pastor; Rev. W. L. Gladish, on behalf of Sharon Church, Chicago; Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer, on behalf of the Society at The Hague, Holland; and Rev. Henry Heinrichs, on behalf of the Denver Society. Olivet Society of the General Church extends cordial greetings to the General Assembly to be held in England in August.

711


ASSEMBLY BANQUET 1928

ASSEMBLY BANQUET       Various       1928

     AUGUST 11TH, 7.00 P.M.

     On Saturday evening, as the Assembly neared its close, the Hall in which the services and sessions had been held became the scene of a feast of charity. There was ample space for the large number present. The speakers' table extended the length of the room, with the remaining tables at right angles-all laden with good things to eat and decorated with flowers that blended harmoniously with the colors of the ladies' gowns to make a brilliant ensemble. In the warm and festive atmosphere of a banquet, the undercurrent of enthusiasm which had been felt throughout the series of meetings found expression in lively conversation, song, and frequent applause.

     Mr. Colley Pryke was the efficient toastmaster, charmingly adequate in conducting the program, and in the brief and pointed remarks with which he offered the various toasts and introduced the speakers of the evening. The words for the songs were provided in printed form, and at intervals many Messages to the Assembly from absent friends were read by the toastmaster and others. (See page 707.)

     Introducing the first toast, Mr. Pryke said: The character of this gathering, composed of New Church men and women from all over the world, emphasizes the idea that the Church is international. We have come here to pay homage to the Lord's New Church. I therefore ask you all to be upstanding, and to honor the toast to "The Church." The Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal spoke in response as follows:

     THE CHURCH.

     REV. F. E. GYLLENHAAL.

     The toast to the Church is one which has been honored many: many times in the General Church, not only at its larger meetings, but also in the many small meetings, even when two of us meet together. I wish it were possible on this occasion to have some representations such as are produced in the spiritual world. Some day we shall be able to throw a moving picture upon the screen, and catch something of what took place when the picture was being taken.

712


In place of reading the minutes of any Assembly, we would have the Assembly presented to us, and also hear what is said. And if it were possible to have such representations now, there are three pictures that I should like to show. One is that of the Children of Israel gathered around about Mount Sinai, Moses having gone up to the top of the Mount, and disappeared in a cloud; and we hear the thunder and see the lightning. They were a peculiar people, starting on a forty years' journey through the wilderness to the Land of Canaan. And during those years they were being prepared for that kingdom. They did not think of themselves as a church, as we think of ourselves as a church, but they had rites which contained so much that their meaning cannot be exhausted to eternity. Yet the performance of these rites, the celebration of their worship, was not wholly different from that of the church today. We speak of it as a church,-the Israelitish Church.

     Then another picture. This time, not a people, but One man,-John on the Island of Patmos, and the vision of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven,-the complete picture of a symbolic church, and, indeed, of the New Church. I need say no more of that.

     The third and last picture is that of Our Glorious Church today.

     And when we go back to the first Picture, with the people gathered around the mount, we have listened to the thunder; we have seen the lightning; for the Divine Truth has been expounded to us; and we have been filled with that love which is the fountain of God. But we have not feared because of the thunders and lightnings; rather have we loved and feared. To fear is the beginning of love. That fear which we have had is now combined with a state of love, of love to the Lord, or love for His Glorious Church. We shall soon depart, each to his own land and to his own home, and we shall still hear in our ears the reverberations of the thunder, and have our eyes enlightened by that to which we all have listened and which we have all felt at this Assembly of the General Church.



     At the conclusion of Mr. Gyllenhaal's remarks, various Messages to the Assembly were read, and then followed in succession toasts to "The Priesthood," to "Conjugial Love," and to "The Academy," with responses which are printed below.

713


Introducing the toast to "The Priesthood," the toastmaster said: It has been our privilege during this Assembly to witness the ordination of a number of men who are devoting their lives to the great use of the priesthood, and our thoughts have been turned powerfully in the direction of that use. The position which the priesthood holds in our Church has only been achieved by struggle, and I think we may expect that the doctrine of the priesthood will be attacked again and again by those evil forces which are opposed to the Church. But there will be some who understand the power of those truly devoted and learned men who go forth into the world to give life and strength to the spreading of the Doctrines of the New Church. Let us, then, be upstanding, and honor this toast to "The Priesthood." Bishop George de Charms then responded as follows:

     THE PRIESTHOOD.

     RIGHT REV. GEORGE DE CHARMS.

     As the toastmaster has just remarked, the subject which has been assigned to me is one toward which our minds have been turned particularly during the past week. The fact that we have been privileged to witness a number of ordinations has led us to reflect somewhat more deeply than is our wont upon all that is involved in the intromission of a priest into his sacred office. On the one hand, the priesthood is Divine; on the other hand, it is human. On the one side, it is the Lord alone who can build His Church, and on the other side it is by means of men alone that He can perform that building work. All the holiness and all the power of the priesthood is derived from the Divine that is there present. It is the work of the priesthood to provide that the Divine shall be with the people, but this Divine cannot come out, cannot go forth manifestly before the Church, without the mediation of the priestly function according to the Divine teaching of the Heavenly Doctrines. And this involves that men belonging by virtue of inheritance to a degenerate race will bring to the work much that is fallible, much weakness, many failings, personalities, external things that are extraneous to the work of the Lord in establishing His Church. And this is inevitable.

714


The judgments of men are not dependable. We have lost that interior perception of Divine Truth which belonged to the most ancient peoples, by virtue of which they recognized the Divine in the world about them, and saw the relation of all things to that heaven toward which they were being led by the Providence of the Lord. We have lost that perception, and there remain with us only glimmerings of light, here and there, with reference to Divine and heavenly things. This applies to those who are chosen, in the Providence of the Lord, for the priesthood, as well as to all in the world, whatever their use or function may be. These two elements, the Divine and the human, must be together, and one must work through and by means of the other, if the Church is to be established. And in this working together, the Divine really is everything, and the human is nothing but a vessel or medium which the Lord uses in His own way and according to His own wisdom for the establishment of His Church.     

     At such a time as this, when we feel the sphere of the Divine presence with unwonted power, we can realize, perhaps with a new sense, the meaning contained within the familiar words so often quoted in the meetings of this very Assembly: "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. And the whole problem of church government and church organization is a problem of the most effectual, the most sure and perfect, way by which the Lord may operate with us. It is a question as to how we may best provide that the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, now received in the Writings of the Lord's Second Coming, may be imbued in the hearts of all who are willing freely to receive those blessings, and so to become disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, our risen Savior and only Redeemer.

     It is true, indeed, that with all men the Lord is present from within. He Himself enlightens the mind and touches the heart, and lifts men up from earth to heaven. For this internal presence we employs no intermediary It is our faith, based upon the truth of revelation, that the Lord in His glorified Human is now revealed personally, and is universally present with all power to effect the work of human salvation. For this reason the priesthood in its highest sense is above all that is human. It is an office purely Divine, being all that the Lord performs as Savior. In this sense it is broader than any human institution, and is wider than any church organization.

715


It is the Lord Himself present interiorly with every race, with every creed and religious communion, with every individual in whom there is a human soul destined for eternal life. For the Lord is the one only God of all the heavens and of all the earths; and by the Lord we mean the Divine Human now revealed in the Heavenly Doctrine. Ever since the Second Coming there is no Divine operation anywhere or with any people except that of the glorified Human. In this sense the coming of the Lord has altered His influx and His presence with all men. And to this extent we agree with those who hold that the Lord's Advent is at this day exercising a world-wide influence over the minds of men, that a profound change has taken place since the Last Judgment, that the Lord is now present as He could not be before, bringing the whole power of His Divine Providence to the task of preparing for the full establishment of His kingdom on the earth.

     As the Lord is thus operating everywhere, He alone is the great High Priest after the order of Melchizedek; and there is no power on earth, there is no power in hell itself, that can prevent or in the least degree disturb the tide of His saving mercy, which holds open the gifts of heaven even to the lowest of His human children. As He Himself declared, "Behold, I have set before you an open door, and no man can shut it." This was spoken to all men, for the Lord came to save all men. The door is ever open, and none but the man himself can shut that door; but this the man himself can do. It is in the power of man's will to receive the Lord in freedom, and therefore it is inevitably in his power to reject Him. That which stands in the way of a full establishment of the Church with any man is not the circumstance of his birth; it is not the power of tradition; it is not the lack of education or an ignorance of the truth; although these things, in human eyes, seem to block the path of regeneration; but it is ever the unwillingness of man himself to receive the Lord now present, the evils of will and of life which he freely chooses rather than the goods and truths of heaven. This is perhaps a hard Saying, but it has the unquestionable support of Revelation. It is because of those evils which each man chooses for himself that false religions, dead faiths, consummated churches, endure, even though the Lord is here. These are imaginary heavens in which men think they shall find salvation, and to which they cling, lest the ends,-the worldly and selfish ends upon which they have set their hearts should be lost to them.

716


In the midst of these false faiths, these spurious religions, the Lord is interiorly present, ever leading gently as a shepherd leads his flock, bearing the young in his arms, and proceeding slowly, lest the feeble or the footsore should perish by the way. Continually He leads away from hell and towards heaven, leads so far as man will freely follow.

     This Divine leading among those who know Him not, among those who are not yet ready to know Him, must of necessity be done in secret. If it were done openly, men would turn back, and would close the door of their hearts forever against the Lord. It must be done in secret, for the man's own sake, to the end that he may be saved if possible. It is from Divine mercy that the Lord does not break down the false belief of any man. He does not destroy that which man has come to regard as holy. The Lord always flows into what religion a man may have, insinuating innocence, concerned ever with the inmost heart and its intention; that so the way may not be wholly closed against the reception of the blessed things which He, in His mercy, loves to give.

     This universal work of infinite love, of infinite mercy,-this, in essence, is the office of the priesthood; and it belongs to the Lord alone. But, let us remember, this secret operation of the Lord depends upon His open operation, both in heaven and on earth. This is made possible by His coming, that is, by the revelation of Himself. It is true today, as it was at the First Advent, that except the Lord had come, no flesh could have been saved. It was the open manifestation of the Lord through Emanuel Swedenborg that was the means by which the Last Judgment was effected, that the good were separated from the evil, that the hells were reduced to subjection, that a new heaven was formed and ordered. This work was not the result of a secret operation, but of an open one. It was because the Lord was seen, both in heaven and on earth, in His glorified Human. Because of that, He can now operate secretly in the midst of falsity and evil, preserving the freedom of men everywhere to lead a life that will prepare them for heaven, if they choose. And the need is paramount that He should be seen, to be worshipped openly, both in heaven and somewhere on the earth, no matter how few the numbers that so see and worship Him.

717


Without this, the bonds between heaven and earth would be broken; without this, all influx out of heaven would be cut off, and all illustration into the minds of men. Without this means, spiritual equilibrium, the only hope of our salvation, would be destroyed. Heaven itself would fall into a swoon, and the human race on earth would perish in a hood of evil.

     The great High Priest, and the very Priesthood itself with man, is the Lord revealed,-the very Lord manifest in His Human before the eyes of men on earth and of angels in the other world. The only Redeemer, and the only Regenerator at this day, is the Divine Truth that is given to the world in the Heavenly Doctrine. That this Divine Human may appear in the church universal, the Lord must be openly worshiped in the church specific; and there must be a church specific that proclaims His name before the world. It is for this work of forming a center for His presence, to serve as the heart and lungs of the Gorand Man of the church universal; it is for this that our church has come into existence, in the Providence of the Lord,-our church as a human organization. That it may receive Him, that we may receive Him openly, is the task that He has assigned to us, and that task is essential to His great secret operation in the world around. Without it, the other cannot take place; and this is the responsibility which He has placed upon our shoulders,-openly to proclaim His name in word and in life before the world.

     It is the body of men and women who have the Word of God in the Writings of the New Church today, and who by it know the Lord now come as the living Savior,-it is those who carry the Ark of the Covenant who hold in their hands the thread of conjunction between heaven and earth. And the minds of such men and women, frail, fallible, completely human as they are,-these together may be said to form the little manger in the stable where the Lord must be born. Without this, without this manger in the stable, He could not come, either to us or to the rest of the world; for there is "no room for Him in the inn." Here He must he born, that there may be some place, some state, however simple or obscure, to which the shepherds or the spiritually wise men of the world may in Providence be led, that they may find their Lord. This is the ideal of the New Church with us; not that we are better than others, but that as members of the Church there is given to us an inescapable responsibility, on the faithful upholding of which depends our own salvation, and, in the Lord's Providence, the salvation of the world.

718




     To fulfill this Divine Commission, there must be a church, calling openly and fearlessly upon all men who may be willing and prepared by the secret operation of the Lord's Providence to "gather themselves together unto the supper of the great God." In this church there must be a priesthood of men; there must be those who sit at the feet of the Lord and hear His Word in all humility. There must be those who, by studying the Heavenly Doctrines, by receiving its teachings, and by separating themselves from the things of the world and resisting the evils of their own hearts, may become,-by a miracle, indeed, but still may become,-vessels receptive of that truth, vessels by which that truth may be brought down to the plane of man's perception by further accommodations to the continually changing conditions of the world, and to the ever-shifting kaleidoscopic states of men. In doing this, indeed, they must not act from themselves; they must and can act only from the Lord as He is seen in the pages of His Word now open. Thus do they become priests. Herein lies their priesthood. For then the Lord works in them and through them in ways that are beyond their knowledge, their belief, or their comprehension. All the holiness and all the saving power of this function is derived from this living operation of the Lord. It is not their own, but is adjoined to them. As men, indeed, they are weak and fallible. Often, when we look upon them from without, we forget that for which they have been ordained. We center our thoughts upon those external failings which blind our eyes to the Divine of the Lord that is striving to operate by means of them for human salvation. This is a natural tendency with all of us, and it can be the cause of great harm to the Church. Whatever men may be, the fact that they have been called by the Lord to this sacred use, that they have consecrated their lives to His service,-these facts stand with us for something that is beyond any man's personality, beyond anything of himself that would be inadequate to fulfill that Divine function.

     Our Church depends, as all human organizations depend, upon human leadership. There are two things of importance in any movement that succeeds,-the Divine Providence and human leadership. Look through the pages of history; look upon any movements of men in the world; and you will find that, for their success, those two things must be present there,-the Providence of the Lord and human leadership.

719


This is the reason why the priesthood of the Church is necessary, why it has been ordained, not by man, but by the Lord in His Divine Revelation, that the Lord, working through the priesthood, may meet the needs of men as they shift and change from time to time.

     And there rests upon the men who are so chosen a tremendous responsibility. It is the responsibility to struggle throughout their life, not primarily for the establishment of the New Church as an organization, but for the establishment of the Church first within their own hearts; to struggle throughout life that those things which would interfere with the descent and influx of the Lord's Love and Wisdom, for the dissemination of which they have been ordained, shall be cast aside. In this they need the Lard's help. They also need the help of their fellow men, as all of us do in the work of our regeneration. The priesthood is but their use of charity,-an external use of life by means of which they may be regenerated, in the Providence of the Lord. A great responsibility rests upon them, and if they fail they bring a tremendous calamity, humanly speaking, upon the Church; but unless they are free to fail, they will not be free to succeed. There must be confidence in these men who have given their lives to the Lord,-confidence that they will act in all sincerity according to the Divine law, that they will act from illustration, and by Divine leading, and that, whatever the difficulties arising from their personal failings, they will, by the Lord's mercy, succeed in the end. And here lies the great responsibility of the laity of the Church; for it is not only by human leadership, but also by mutual cooperation, that our Church can be formed.

     When we say that there must be loyalty to the priesthood on the part of the Church, we mean nothing more than that there shall be loyalty to the Lord, to His Truth, to that which is given in the Heavenly Doctrine, and that that shall coincide with loyalty to the priesthood, because our priesthood stands for that and that alone. This loyalty to the Lord, the Great High Priest, on the part of the Church, is to love the Lord, to love His Truth, to love one another for the sake of that truth, and so to do His will in our daily life. This is the great responsibility of every man who has been given this peculiar privilege of bearing the covenant of the Lord, and of holding in his hands the threads of conjunction between heaven and earth.

720


This is what we are called upon to do. And, my friends, I believe, I profoundly believe, that we will do it; failing many times, but going back again with renewed determination, till at last we succeed. For the Lord is with the building of this Church; the Lord Himself is here in His Human; to us He is come as the living Savior; we have been given to see His Advent; and if in heart and life we will rise and follow Him, then indeed will the prophecy of John at last be fulfilled, and the tabernacle of God will be with men, and God Himself will be with us, and be our God.

     The toastmaster then proposed a toast to "Conjugial Love," as the "crowning blessing which the Lord has promised to His New Church," and Dr. Alfred Acton responded as follows:

     CONJUGIAL LOVE.

     REV. DR. ALFRED ACTON.

     Conjugial love is spoken of as the gem and precious jewel of the Christian life, and the words are such that it leads us to the knowledge that this is the crowning jewel given to the New Church. Indeed, in that the New Church is remarkable; and all Christians, if they examine the question, will see that it is a remarkable thing that there should be a church which has conjugial love as a central doctrine of its life. There has been no such church since most ancient days.

     The Christian Church has taught marriage, but it has never taught it as the very center of the life of religion; it has never taught it as the very home and palladium of heaven in the hearts of men. And it is natural that conjugial love should thus be given to the New Church, for the Church is the home of heaven in the hearts of men, and to this home corresponds the home in which dwell the man and the woman who are husband and wife. And we know that a country's prosperity depends upon its homes till ordered relationships have one center, and that is the home. So we must not be surprised that, in the New Church, conjugial love, which is the source of the home, is the very center of the religious life.

     The New Church has been attacked on this very subject, because it has dared to speak the truth about conjugial love, and strip away the falsity and shallowness of modern thought.

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Because the New Church has dared to spread abroad the light of the Writings concerning conjugial love, and to Proclaim that this love is a love that descends from heaven, therefore the New Church has been attacked. But the more we are attacked, the more ready we are to defend this love.

     In the Writings there is given as an illustration of this love something that is very familiar to men and women on earth, namely, the first love of a young man and a young woman who are engaged or betrothed or in the first days of marriage. This state is well known in the world, and has often been made a matter of cynical criticism. But it is this state that the Writings speak of as an image by which we can know the end of conjugial love. And I think it is a sad thing-the state that has arisen in the Christian World-that so many young people are talking concerning marriage, which they are approaching in a somewhat sophisticated way, and saying that they will not do this and will not do that. In other words, they are so sophisticated that the remains of love and the remains of that image are almost dissipated, and there is only pretense. Now it is a truth that this first state between a young man and a young woman is truly an image of conjugial love, that is, heaven present on earth; but it is present, not so much by reason of the operation of man, but because the love of another so fills the heart and mind that the love of self is, as it were, abolished; and whenever that is so, men come into a state of charity. Thus it is not the descent of heaven by the cooperation of man, but by the laying aside of what belongs to us. And so, in these first states of conjugial love, there is the love of another which so fills the heart that the love of self seems to be taken away, so that the young man and woman at that time are willing to give up their very life for the sake of one another.

     We see some image of this in our Assembly, where great things in the love for each other are stirred up. We feel charitable toward each other. That does not mate the Church, but it encourages future states. The real Church is made when a man has that state as a result of the life of repentance. So it is in this conjugial love. And the first love is the foretaste of conjugial love; it is, as it were, a kind of heaven by which men can taste what this love is, so that, in after years, when the gift seems slipping from their grasp, they can remember former years and the early states of marriage, and fight for them, aspire for them.

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It begins with the enthusiasm of the state, and this is, as it were, loaned to him, and afterwards he must fight for it, if he is going to make it his own.

     Now the Writings state that conjugial love itself is according to the state of the church with man. It is also said to be according to the state of religion with man. It is also said that it descends from the marriage of good and truth. The three statements are one and the same, for the life of religion is the church, and this is the marriage of good and truth. Mr. James Pryke, in his paper today, made a statement that greatly interested me,-that the means of communication between the two worlds is the human brain. Thus the descent of conjugial love from heaven into the world is to be by means of human brains, not by means of great assemblies. It is not going to come by generalities of men, but by individual human brains. We have, as I have said, the loan and foretaste of this state. Everyone has had it who has experienced the joy and innocence that attend the first state of marriage; but, in order to receive this state and confirm it with ourselves in our own minds, that is to say in the mechanical forms of our own brain, we must form states, and must hold to states. Here is the architectural plan of these states, and by reading the Word we must impress that plan upon the actual mechanical substances of the brain, and form them, and hold them there. We fight in temptations, and then the truth descends and infills them, and heaven in conjugial love actually does descend to the earth. That is the marriage of good and truth. It is no abstract thing. It is nothing to alarm you. You need not say, "What is this great abstract thought,-the marriage of good and truth!" The truths which are laid down in the Writings, the truths which you remember from your earlier years, shall be united with love and good from heaven, and they are united when you become them.

     Conjugial love is not easy for us; but, as the saying goes, anything that is worth having is worth fighting for, and the thing that is easily obtained is just as cheaply valued. Easy come, easy go, belongs as much to spiritual as to natural things. And if conjugial love is to be established in the Church, it is to be established in the individual man and woman of the Church, and not by their dreaming some dreams, by talking in high language about the beauty of conjugial love; but by their shunning those things that oppose conjugial love.

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And we know that every one of us is, of himself, opposed to that love, and, of himself, turns and inclines to the opposite. But if we are going to be the means by which conjugial love shall be established on the earth, then we must have our brains as receptacles for the love of heaven, and then indeed that love will descend upon the earth, and the prophecy will be realized that to the New Church will be granted that precious jewel of Christian life which has not been known since times most ancient.



     Toastmaster: To round up and complete our list of formal toasts, I propose "The Academy." We always square our shoulders a little when we say we are Academicians, privileged to give our lives to its service. The Academy has gone on from strength to strength, and nothing can stop it in its course. In it we see, not merely a group of colleges or schools, but the embodiment of the determination of men and women to educate the young in the light of the Doctrines which have been revealed to us. I ask you, therefore, to be upstanding, and to honor the toast to "The Academy." Mr. Randolph W. Childs responded as follows:

     THE ACADEMY.

     RANDOLPH W. CHILDS.

     The toast to the Academy awakens a host of memories and ideals which throng the mind and deeply move the heart. For the phrase, "The Academy," is a dear familiar name,-the name of that first youth of our glorious Church, when the interiors of men's minds were opened to behold the majesty of our Lord in His Second Coming. The men and women of this early Academy were so few that we may Proudly call them our "old contemptibles." Their enemies proclaimed that the Academy must be stamped out. And yet this little band of the Second Coming, like the twelve sons of Israel, and like the twelve Apostles, were destined to become as the sand of the sea and as the stars of heaven. Truly these beloved souls are worthy to be called "the Academy Saints," whose memory shall shine forever in the firmament of the New Church.

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     But, pleasant as it is at times to muse upon the days that are no more, it is even more inspiring to think of the states and problems of The Academy of this day.

     We indeed need the old Academy principles to guide us,-those twelve principles announced by Bishop W. F. Pendleton upon the organization of the General Church: The doctrine of the Divine Authority of The Writings; the state of the Christian world; the necessity of an ordered and trinal priesthood; the use of fermented wine in the Holy Supper; the importance of Baptism as an entrance into the church; marriage within the church; the blessing of large families; the Divine authority of the work on Conjugial Love; the celestial quality of the New Church; the importance of unanimity; the avoidance of legislation for the future; and the concept of distinctive New Church education as the main source of the growth of the church.

     These twelve principles still sway our minds. The doctrine of the Divine Authority is our constitution. The state of the world is obvious to every man who works in the world, or reads its literature, or sees its plays, or searches his own thoughts and desires. Our dependence upon educated and experienced priests for spiritual guidance and inspiration must be evident to every member of the church, and the use of the priesthood is even more clearly seen as the church grows and its problems increase. The use of fermented wine in the Holy Supper is an accepted fact. The requirement of Baptism as a door to the church is seen to be essential, and the experience of a comparatively large society like that at Bryn Athyn has demonstrated the protection which this requirement affords against a dilution of the life-blood of the church with the deadly serum of externalism and sentimentalism. We are constantly working to promote distinctive social life, as a principal means of bringing about marriage within the church-realizing that if our friendships are elsewhere than with our fellow New Churchmen, our hearts will be stolen away, the glory of the Divine Revelation will become to us only a dim and uneasy recollection, and will be utterly lost with our children. Still do we realize the blessing of large families, a perception which is at variance with the Old Church which surrounds us, especially with those of child-bearing age.

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Still do we believe in the Divine Authority of the work on Conjugial Love, wherein is to be found the precious pearl of human life. Still do we look upon the New Church as a celestial church, although we are troubled by no illusions as to the celestial quality of ourselves or even of our neighbors. Unanimity is with us a fact rather than a theory; and yet, when we do not agree with some proposed action, we are to Yield to the majority of the church, rather than to let our minority view obstruct progress. We avoid legislation for the future; and, therefore, our church looks to customs rather than to statutes. And today we see, as we have never seen before, that the main source of growth is with our children.

     But, comprehensive as are these twelve principles of the Academy, they are not all-inclusive. A wise man has remarked that these twelve principles were, in fact, only those principles of the Academy which were denied or disputed by other bodies of the New Church. The doctrine of the Academy cannot be contained in twelve principles or in twelve thousand principles; for our doctrine is contained only in the Writings, and, being Divine, is beyond all enumeration and measure. And so we can truly say that the Academy has only one principle, and that is, that the Lord is present with us in the Writings, and that, in the words of Bishop W. F. Pendleton, "the Church recognizes no other authority and no other law." On this principle we stand. There may be those in the New Church whose hearts burn within them as the Lord walks and talks with them on the road to Emmaus, and yet whose eyes are holden that they do not know Him; but we have arrived at Emmaus, and the Lord has been made known to us in the breaking of bread. We cannot retrace our steps, but we shall wait the time when all New Churchmen shall reach this hallowed village.

     While the principle of the Divine Authority is to us "the law and the prophets," yet we realize that changing states of the church require the application of new principles from the Writings. It may not be amiss to attempt some analysis of the present state of our church.

     In the first place the Academy has to a large extent ceased, on the external plane, to be a militant body. It has almost forgotten that it was once a revolutionary body. It has been occupied for more than a quarter of a century with the development of its own ideals in constructive work, and it has been very busy. It boasts of no prosperity, and yet the results of its devotion are to us a sign that the Lord has built our house and will keep our City.

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     Since the formation of the General Church, there has been a development of distinctive New Church education such as was but dimly seen in the early days of the Academy. This development has been balanced and thorough. Let an Old Church educator make a survey of our Academy schools, and I am satisfied that he will give our schools a high rating, I do not believe that our schools, from an external standpoint, are the greatest schools in the world, but I do believe that, from such a standpoint, they stand high. They are excellent because our teachers are able. But we must all agree that, from an internal standpoint, we have not only very good schools, but the best schools in the world. For in those schools, not every two or three years, not once a month, not once a week, but every day and every hour, trained teachers are devoting all their ability and energy to teaching children and youths to see this great world in the light of heaven. And this work is not the product merely of the individual teacher, but of all our teachers, who consult frequently, in order that the ideas of each may be passed on to the others.

     Not only have the educational methods of the Academy improved greatly in the past twenty-five years, but higher New Church education has attained a safe foothold; and here, in these higher schools, the Academy resembles the old Academy of Plato, where the things of time and space were examined in the aspect of eternity.

     This leads to another condition which exists in the church today, and that is the doing of research work. Many of you have doubtless read, in the Journal of Education, some of the papers of Doctor Charles R. Pendleton, one of our New Church scientists, and you have seen an expert in his field applying the principles of Divine Revelation to an exhaustive collection of facts. You have read the papers of the Rev. Reginald W. Brown and Mr. Wilfred Howard, and have seen the same methods employed. Only yesterday you heard the Rev. William Whitehead, dealing not only with "sweeping generalities," but supporting these generalities by hosts of facts, which enabled him to speak with authority. You have heard today a paper by Mr. J. S. Pryke which is an excellent example of research work. And we have all heard that philosopher of the Academy, Doctor Acton, select for treatment the most difficult subject he could find, and, after an exhaustive review of all philosophical theories, construct an original theory which will be examined and discussed by New Church scholars for many years to come.

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     And this leads me to mention another quality of the church of today, and that is toleration. It is probable that there never was a time when the Academy's members entertained more divergent views than they do today, although there is a great harmony on fundamentals. No longer do we use the same sewing machine and the same medicines; we have not the same social customs, nor do we think the same thoughts. We attempt, indeed, to apply the Doctrines to every subject under the sun, but we do not seek to bind others to the acceptance of our interpretations. We have ceased to be a family or patriarchy, and have become a Church. We no longer address our Bishop as "Father." We are grown to full stature, and each one has his own views on a wide range of topics.

     A freedom has been built up in our Academy during the past fifty years which is freedom indeed,-a freedom which was ably set forth in Mr. Whitehead's paper, a freedom which is necessary for a Church that is to be universal. I believe that when in the far future the members of the General Church look back upon the first two governing Bishops of the General Church, these members will find in the records of these Bishops much to respect and to admire; but I believe that these governors of the Church will be especially loved because of the freedom which they gave to the General Church,-a freedom written upon our banner in the words "Council and Assembly," a freedom which involves a willingness to let men and societies work out their own problems, and even to make mistakes, rather than to hold these men and societies in a rigid and unyielding discipline.

     Indeed, it is toleration and freedom that have made possible the growth of the General Church as an international body. If we are students of history; if we are something more than homekeeping youths; or, even if we stay in our own towns, and yet visit our neighbors; we must be aware of the truth that the General Church can be an international body, only if, and so long as, our freedom is preserved. The exercise of our love is freedom, and our loyalty to the General Church is due to the fact that in this Church we most fully pour out that deepest love of our life,-the love of the Heavenly Doctrines.

     The development of the General Church as an international body rests, indeed, upon the principle that the uses of the Church are above all national boundaries.

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Yet we further realize that the qualities characteristic of each nation are necessary, in order that the Church may present a Gorand Man. One nation may contribute stability, another may contribute imagination, and so on; but no nation or small group of nations can contribute all the qualities, natural and spiritual, which are needed to constitute the church specific.

     The great lesson of this world-wide Assembly is, that the Lord leads His people through His Word to the New Church, and that, as we read and hearken to His Word, the Church will grow, and find unity and peace. Like the Academy founders, we take the Writings joyfully as our guide. And yet this state of joy grows feeble at times. States of depression, of friction with our neighbors, of distrust of the old by the young, and of the young by the old, of coldness to heavenly things, must necessarily follow states of spiritual exultation. We cannot always be enthusiastic, but we can be faithful. We can read the Writings; we can teach our children the law of the Lord; we can resist the powerful evils that yawn to swallow us up; we can carry on, even although peace and happiness seem like idle words. And then will come that sense of joy in the worship of the Lord with our fellow members of the Academy which is so beautifully expressed in the one hundred and twenty-second Psalm:

"I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go into the house of the Lord.
Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem, . . .
Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lard,
Unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord. . . .
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall rest that love thee.
Peace be within thy walls, tranquillity within thy palaces."



     After this conclusion of the formal program, the toastmaster proposed a toast to the Right Rev. R. J. Tilson, who responded as follows:

     Bishop Tilson: "With a heart full of gratitude I thank you for this personal toast. I believe that the question which was asked me last Sunday morning was earnestly answered when I said that I believe the call came from the Lord.

729


And I believe it all the more because it came through the Bishop, as the head of what I believe to be the purest form of the Lord's New Church in the world, organized in the proper form, and having a trinal order of the priesthood. No man, but the Lord's own Revelation, decided what the Lord's New Church should be. I am glad to say this in the presence of the only surviving founder of that great and glorious institution with which the Lord formed a recognition of His Second Advent,-the Academy of the New Church. I am sure we are all moved to enthusiasm in looking upon our dear old friend, Mr. Walter C. Childs. In comparison with him I am but a youngster, but still I am the oldest living member of the Academy in England; for, in 1879, it was my good fortune to be received by Father Benade into the Academy of the New Church, and I have never ceased in spirit to belong to that great founder of the Academy. Yet this call to the Third Degree of the Priesthood, while I believe it came from the Lord, came also with warmest expression from him who is now the spiritual head and leader of our Church. Again I thank you with all my heart for this recognition, and I trust that I may remain faithful and true to the great responsibility of the office which has been conferred upon me."

     Toastmaster: "The time has now come to conclude this feast of charity, and I therefore propose a final toast to our beloved Bishop Pendleton." When this had been duly honored, the Bishop spoke as follows:

     Bishop Pendleton: "I have a few words to say in this closing meeting of our Assembly. I would call to your mind the first day, when we proposed the consideration of the question of establishing a Calendar for the reading of the Writings in unison by all members of the General Church. It is my heartfelt wish that this plan may be carried out successfully, and I would do it with all our minds together in a closely spiritual union; for in spiritual union alone shall we find the Church. I trust that the plan will be carried out, and I hope every member of the General Church will at least in part, make it his duty to join in this reading. I believe that a great spiritual value will come to us as individuals, and that a greater blessing will rest upon the Church. Viewed in numbers, we are weak and defenseless, save for the protection of the Lord; and if you would be protected by the Lord, there is but one way to do it, and that is to immerse your minds and hearts day by day in the glorious revelation that He has given to you.

730


We have come together, and we have renewed our loyalties to His Church. Let us go from this meeting, and let us keep alive the spirit that has descended upon us, and I believe we can best do that by joining in a daily worship together,-all for the sake of our spiritual advantage, and for the sake of our protection from those evils of selfishness and the love of the world which invade the human mind of every mortal man. This is our defense, the Writings say. Let us appeal to them again and anew and forever."
ASSEMBLY NOTES. 1928

ASSEMBLY NOTES.              1928

     Council of the Clergy.

     So far as the Ministers were concerned, the Assembly began on Friday morning, August 3d. Thirty strong, the Council of the Clergy met at the pleasant Hall of Worship of the Michael Church, Burton Road, a building associated in our minds with the struggles of early Academy days, and with the heroic efforts of some twenty years or isolation. Bishop Pendleton presided at the meeting, which was mostly occupied with a discussion of the eventual need of a revision of the Liturgy, and with arrangements for the impending Assembly. Such topics came up as the formula of New Church Baptism, the usefulness of a simple office for missionary services, and the necessity of retaining a wholesome conformity in ritual, despite the variety of conditions which are represented among our widely scattered circles and societies.

     At the conclusion of the session, a delightful luncheon was given for the Ministers in one of the school rooms downstairs, and the cordial goodwill that prevailed expressed itself in toasts: To the Rep. R. J. Tilson, whose ordination into the Third Degree was referred to by the Bishop; to the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal, about to leave the field of his work in England; and to the Rev. Victor J. Gladish, the latter's young successor in the pastorate at Colchester. In the afternoon, the Ministers accepted the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Tilson to visit their home nearby, and had the additional privilege of inspecting Mr. Tilson's well-equipped study and library.

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     Photograph of the Ministers.

     For the benefit of the members of the Church who were not present at the Assembly, we give herewith the names of the Ministers appearing in the Group of the Clergy photograph taken in Bloomsbury Square on Sunday afternoon, August 12th, and which was reproduced as the frontispiece in the August number of NEW CHURCH LIFE:

     BACK ROW (left to light): Revs. Moffat Mcanyana, F. E. Gyllenhaal, G. A. Sexton, Vincent C. Odhner, Elmo C. Acton, Alan Gill, Charles E. Doering, Reginald W. Brown, Joao de Mendonca Lima. MIDDLE ROW: Revs. Frederick W. Elphick, Richard Morse, Fred E. Waelchli, Homer Synnestvedt, Henry Heinrichs, Hugo Lj. Odhner, Victor J. Gladish, Eldred E. Iungerich, Fernand Hussenet, Henry Leonardos, Willis L. Gladish. FRONT ROW: Revs. Alfred Acton, William B. Caldwell, Karl R. Alden, William H. Alden, Enoch S. Price; Bishops R. J. Tilson, N. D. Pendleton, and George de Charms; Revs. Albert Bjorck, Gustaf Baeckstrom, William Whitehead.

     Of the thirty-one Ministers in this group, thirty are Bishops and Clergy of the General Church. The Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer was not present when the picture was taken. The Rev. G. A. Sexton is Minister of the Society in the Island of Jersey, and a member of the General Conference.

     On the same occasion, an excellent group photograph of the General Assembly was taken, but it is too large to reproduce in NEW CHURCH LIFE.

     Meeting Place of the Assembly.

     Victoria House, the building in which the General Assembly met, is a handsome stone structure, thoroughly modern in its appointments, and conveniently situated near the hotels of most of the visitors. It occupies an entire city block, our photograph showing the Bloomsbury Square front as it will appear when completed; for the southern part (right of the picture) is still in course of construction. The meetings were held in what is known as the Ball Room, and the collations were served in an adjoining room, the entrance to which is shown at the left of the picture. The accommodations proved very satisfactory, and the acoustics of the Hall were excellent.

732




     The Collations.

     A pleasant feature of the Assembly was the opportunity which the luncheons and afternoon teas gave us to become acquainted with our friends from other countries. Some of the Americans, it is true, after brave attempts to "do as the Romans do," found the tempting English bakery at the five o'clock tea too insubstantial to replace their time-honored evening meal; in which cases, you would find them, after the evening sessions, indulging a late supper at their hotels. The luncheons were occasionally enlivened by outbursts of song, and the last of them threatened to turn into an informal banquet, so many things were found as yet unsaid.

     The Reception and Assembly Social.

     By an admirable arrangement, the first formal social gathering of the Assembly, on Monday evening, August 6th, provided entertainment for young and old. The "sprung" floor of the Ball Room had somewhat mystified us, but was very fine for dancing. An enjoyable program of vocal, instrumental and dramatic numbers brought to the stage the very talented members of the London and Colchester societies, who were received with warm applause. The program follows:

     ASSEMBLY SOCIAL.

Part Song-"The Academy Colors"                    Colchester Glee Party
Song-"Bells of the Sea"                          Philip Motum
Song-''By the Waters of Minnetonka"               Miss Winnie Everett
Duologue-" The Collaborators"                    Mr. and Mrs. Felix Summerhayes
Violin Solo                                   Mr. Stanley Wainscott
Part Songs                                    The Burton Road Male Quartette
          a. "Serenade "
                b. "The Noble Duke of York"
Part Song-"Strike the Lyre"                         Colchester Glee Parry
Song-"Morning Hymn" (Henschel)                    Miss Joan Stebbing
Humorous Song-"Drake is Going to Sea"               Mr. Victor Tilson
Song-"Danny Boy"                              Miss Lois Motum
Master of Ceremonies:                          Victor R. Tilson

     Reception at Crosby Hall.

     On the following afternoon, Tuesday, August 7th, many accepted the kind invitation of Mrs. Lauriston Shaw and Miss E. H. Spalding, and went to Crosby Hall, by the Thames in Chelsea.

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This fine old baronial hall, with its stately arches and armorial bearings, was itself of great interest, and we were surprised to learn that it had been moved from a distance, stone by stone, to its Present location. After tea had been served on the lawn, we repaired to the Hall, where our hostesses had prepared a delightful surprise in the form of a musical treat, as witness the following program:

1. VIOLIN SOLOS:
     (a) Air on G String                              Bach
     (b) Rondo                                   Mozart
     (c) "Imagination"                               Zacharewitsch
          MICHAEL ZACHAREWITSCH.

2. SONGS:
     (a) "Fair, Sweet, Cruel"                         Thomas Ford
     (b) "Whither Runneth my Sweetheart)"               Bartlett
     (c) Menuet Chante                              Rameau
     (d) "Un Mote di Goija"                         Mozart
     (e) "Alleluja"                               Mozart
          MISS ADELAIDE RIND.

3. VIOLIN SOLOS:
     (a) The Court of Henry VIII. From M. S. at the British Museum. Jane Seymour, "The Power of Music"-First Performance.
     (b) "Rise, Glory, Rise!"                         Purcell-Zacharewitsch
          MICHAEL ZACHAREWITSCH.

4. SONGS: Folk Songs from Many Nations.
     (a) Jasmin Flower                              China
     (b) Cherry Bloom                               Japan
     (c) "Tandawa"                              India
     (d) The Seagull                              Russia
     (e) "Caecelia"                                   Canada
     (f) "Monsieur de Framboisie"                    France
          MISS ADELAIDE RIND.
     At the Piano: J. Saxby. Ella Ivimy.

     The members of the Assembly had reason to be very grateful to Mrs. Shaw and Miss Spalding for their enjoyment of this fine program. Miss Rind's French songs were especially charming, and the violin novelty from "The Court of Henry VIII" was a gem, its olden flavor being admirably preserved by Mr. Zacharewitsch in his arrangement. He had a dozen more like it, on which the ink was not yet dry, but time forbade his sharing their beauties with us.

734




     The New Church Club Dinner.

     On Friday evening, August 10th, the 88th Meeting of The New Church Club took the form of a Men's Dinner at Anderton's Hotel, Fleet Street, London, and was attended by about one hundred members and guests. It was a memorable occasion, overflowing with enthusiasm. Bishop Tilson, President of the Club, introduced the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal, organizer of the Club, as toastmaster, and presented him with a silver loving cup as a token of affection and appreciation from his fellow members.

     The Rev. Karl R. Alden was speaker of the evening. His address on "The Education of the Adolescent Boy" (to be printed in an early issue) was marked by in eloquent blending of a doctrinal message with the culled experience and wisdom of educators and scientists, applied to the practical needs of our youths and dedicated to the vision of New Church education. Mr. Alden received an ovation, and the subject brought other speakers to their feet. Among the varied phases of the discussion came references to the athletic prowess of the Academy football team, affectionate recollections by the oldest teacher in the academy grateful acknowledgments of what the Church owes to its spiritual fathers,-the first New Churchmen of England,-and a final speech by the Bishop, who disavowed any grandiose claims by the General Church, which, he stated, had not come to London for propaganda, but was only anxious to be the servant of the New Church. In discussing the status of the General Church, the Bishop further remarked that the salvation which the Lord provides for many New Churchmen would not suffice to save us; we need the absolute acknowledgment of the Divine Truth of the Writings. The affection which the Church bears to its Bishop was, on this as on other occasions, manifested in prolonged applause.

     The presence of Mr. Walter Childs, one of the founders and social lights of the early Academy, was remembered, and he did not escape adding one of his inimitable songs to the program. And the usual tribute-choral, verbal, floral and confectional-was paid to the ladies, who were meeting elsewhere at a Dinner given under the auspices of Theta Alpha.

     Ex-Student Organizations.

     As announced in the Assembly Program, the Theta Alpha Service and Business Session were held on Friday afternoon, August 10th, and followed in the evening by the Ladies' Dinner under the auspices of that organization, These meetings will be fully reported in the THETA ALPHA JOURNAL.

735




     The Business Meeting of the Sons of the Academy was held on Sunday evening, August 12th, and followed by an Open Meeting attended by a large audience. On this occasion, the Right Rev. George de Charms delivered a stirring Address on "The Development of New Church Education," which will be printed in THE BULLETIN OF THE SONS OF THE ACADEMY, along with the discussion which followed it.

     Sundry Notes.

     Thursday, August 9th, was an "open date" in the series of meetings. One group of about thirty Assembly visitors went by bus to Colchester, as described elsewhere by an "impressionist." Another group went by bus to various London localities of special interest to New Church people. The day's relaxation was welcome to others who went shopping or sight-seeing. Not the least important among the features of an Assembly are the informal social gatherings, and there were many of these in the homes of the London members or at the hotels where the visitors were staying during the Assembly.
Title Unspecified 1928

Title Unspecified              1928

     At the suggestion of the Rev. E. E. Iungerich, the authorities of the British Museum placed on exhibition for Assembly week the copy of the Brief Exposition bearing Swedenborg's inscription, "Hic Liber est Adventus Domini." This precious volume, it will be recalled, was found in the year 1876 or 1877, and purchased by Mr. James Speirs, in whose possession it remained until his death in 1912. It was then bought by Mr. C. J. Whittington, and presented to the British Museum for perpetual safe-keeping. In a letter written an June 4, 1913, Mr. Whittington thus explains the transaction: "Convinced that this one volume with the inscription should not remain the property of any one person, I have availed myself of the opportunity, kindly offered me by Mr. Speir's representatives, to buy it and present it to the British Museum. It will there remain, in perpetuity, the property of the British Nation, and will be shown to any person visiting the Museum and desiring to see the inscription.

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This course commended itself to me as the best possible under the circumstances, and I hope and believe it will meet with the approbation of readers of Swedenborg's Writings throughout the world." (NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1913, p. 597.)
Title Unspecified 1928

Title Unspecified              1928

     The meeting of the Bishop and his Consistory which was placed on the program for August 4th was postponed. But, at the invitation of the Bishop, the members of the Consistory met him at luncheon on Monday, August 13th. All nine members were present, and the occasion was not only delightful socially, but also gave opportunity for the discussion of many interesting matters of the Church.
Title Unspecified 1928

Title Unspecified              1928

     The General Church was fortunate in securing the services of Miss Beryl Briscoe to make a stenographic report of the speeches made during the Assembly, and her painstaking work has enabled us to place before the members of the Church a very full and accurate record of the discussions, which we believe to be of great interest and value. Perfection in such matters is not expected, but we have endeavored to preserve the ideas of each speaker, and, for the most part, the exact words.
     HUGO LJ. ODHNER,
          Secretary.
     W. B. CALDWELL,
          Editor.
PART V OF THE ASSEMBLY REPORT. 1928

PART V OF THE ASSEMBLY REPORT.              1928

     The concluding portion of the Report of the Thirteenth General Assembly will be published in the December issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE, and will include: The Rev. Gustaf Baeckstrom's Sermon entitled "The Divine Call"; Address by the Rev. K. R. Alden on "The Education of the Adolescent Boy"; Reports of Officers and Committees, with Discussions; and "Impressions of the Assembly" by several writers.

737


Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     COLCHESTER, ENGLAND.

     September 25th, 1928.

     It is some months since a report was received from this society, but repentance is always in order, and we trust you will be lenient. At our Nineteenth of June celebration our Pastor presided, and was supported by the Rev. R. J. Tilson. After taking supper together, the usual toasts were honored. Mr. Tilson spoke of the difference in the two statements in the True Christian Religion in regard to the calling of the disciples in the spiritual world. (T. C. R. 4, 108, 791.) Mr. J. F, Cooper read a short address by Bishop de Charms. An interesting paper by Miss Muriel Gill on "Evangelization in Relation to the School" was followed by an earnest speech by Mr. James Pryke. Among several impromptu toasts was one to the Rev. R J. Tilson, in proposing which Mr. Potter made reference to his approaching ordination into the Third Degree of the Priesthood. Mr. Tilson briefly responded, and Colchester certainly assured him of its best wishes. Other toasts and speeches followed, and a very enjoyable occasion concluded at a late hour.

     Colchester much enjoyed the visit of the Rev. and Mrs. Alan Gill and daughter. On July 8th and 22d, Mr. Gill conducted our worship. On July 8th we also had an informal reception for them at the church, when Mr. Gill gave us an interesting talk on his work and experiences in New York and elsewhere. It was a great pleasure to have them with us again. On July 25th he conducted our Doctrinal Class, speaking on the subject of "The Mosaic Laws."

     On July 29th, Bishop N. D. Pendleton visited us, and at the morning service preached an inspiring sermon, our congregation numbering sixty-tour. In the evening the Bishop presided at a meeting of the Society, as we desired to confer with him on matters pertaining to the advent of our new Pastor, the Rev. Victor J. Gladish, and also in relation to our day school. It was a most helpful meeting, and the Society is deeply indebted to him for his guidance at this time. The Rev. Richard Morse and Miss White of Australia, and Miss Sophie Falk of Glenview, were with us on this occasion.

     Of the General Assembly one hesitates to speak, so inadequate are words to express the sum and substance of this memorable occasion. The inspiration on the spiritual side is internal, and thus enduring. Our grateful thanks for blessings on the natural side are due to those who labored in the organizing of this wonderful series of meetings.

     On Thursday, August 9th, the only free day on the Assembly program, a party of upwards of thirty persons journeyed from London to our ancient town by motor coach. The weather was ideal. After lunch at the Red Lion Hotel, the Castle was visited. The next objective was the church, after which the parry were entertained by Mrs. Rey Gill at her home, nearly opposite the church. Here old time memories were revived by speech and conversation as we sipped our tea. A delightful hour was spent together, and as the coach departed snatches of song bore evidence of satisfaction and good humor.

     On Thursday, August 16th, a farewell social to Mr. and Mrs. Fred E. Gyllenhaal was held at the church. After we had eaten together, our toastmaster, Mr. T. F. Cooper, presented "The Church," to which Bishop son responded. "The Academy" was then offered, and responded to by the Rev. William Whitehead, who reminded us of the arduous and difficult work in which the Academy was engaged.

738


At this point, Mr. A. H. Appleton (our oldest member) made the presentation of a piece of silver tableware to Mr. and Mrs. Gyllenhaal as a token of our affectionate regard for them, and for the great work which had been accomplished during the eight years of his ministry. In response to a toast, Mr Gyllenhaal, after thanking the Society for their gift, referred all too modestly to his share of the work, which the Society can appreciate at its true valuation. Bishop Tilson, the Revs. Homer Synnestvedt and Albert Bjorck, Messrs. James Pryke, Colley Pryke, F. R. Cooper and others bore testimony to his wise and tactful leadership. A memorable meeting closed by joining hands and singing "Our Glorious Church."

     The old adage that "truth is stranger than fiction" is verified by the progress of the Colchester Society during the past eight years. A part from the ample supply of our spiritual needs from our Pastor, a great achievement on the material plane was the holding and development of our ambition and enthusiasm to secure a suitable building as a spiritual home for the uses of the Church. It may be interesting to recall briefly at this time its inception and growth. In January, 1920, a building fund was started with the sum of five shillings Two collectors were appointed, and in October, 1923, this trifling amount had increased to ?450, and the plot of land on Idaldon Road was purchased for this sum, and in less than a year the present building was completed, being dedicated by Bishop N. D. Pendleton in August, 1924, verily a great achievement, in which it was our inestimable privilege to cooperate.

     On August 19th, our Pastor preached his farewell sermon to a congregation of fifty, after which the Holy Supper was administered to thirty-one communicants. It was an occasion of mutual recognition of service during the past eight years.

     On Saturday, August 25th, the Rev. and Mrs. W. L. Gladish, of Chicago, came to spend a few days in Colchester with their son. Mr. Gladish senior conducted the service on August 26th, and it was a great pleasure to get into personal touch with yet another of the Ministers of the General Church. On the following Thursday, a reception was given for our new Pastor and his wife, with the added pleasure of having also with us the Rev. and Mrs. W. L. Gladish. There was a large attendance. After a series of competitions had been strenuously engaged in, our toastmaster, Mr. J. F. Cooper, called us to order, and after the usual toast to the Church followed the toast to our new pastor and Mrs. Gladish. This was honored in the usual hearty way. Mr. Colley Pryke then extended to him a very cordial welcome on behalf of the Society, and assured him of our undivided support in the uses of the Church. Mr. Gladish's response certainly inspired our confidence, and briefly outlined the plan he intended to follow in the work before him. A toast to the Rev. and Mrs. Gladish, Senior, followed. Mr. Gladish expressed their pleasure in visiting the Colchester Society, and concluded with an interesting account of his visit to Sweden. The sphere of the whole meeting was such as to inspire all with confidence in the work that lies before us.     
     F. R. COOPER.

     SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.

     [Editorial Note: After the General Assembly, the Rev. Richard Morse visited Bryn Athyn during September, and stopped at Glenview, Ill., en route to Vancouver, B. C., where he sailed for Australia on September 19th. The following communication was written by him on board ship, and mailed to us from the Hawaiian Islands.]

     At our Nineteenth of June celebration, three papers were read under the title, "Why I am a New Churchman."

     Mr. A. Kirschstein, who read the first, attributed his ultimate entry into the Church to a close study of the Bible-especially the New Testament-when a boy.

739


During that study, the truth, he said, "became firmly implanted that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one only God," even though his understanding of the Trinity remained obscure. His only previous knowledge of the Scriptures was derived from the Bible stories taught in the day school in Germany: for his parents "simply could not be bothered" with the churches, owing either to their failure to carry out their mission, or to the division of nominal religion in the home. And when he came in contact with the New Revelation, he received it without hesitation. The "riddle of the universe," he said, "is a riddle no longer."

     The second paper, by Mr. T. R. Taylor, was of special interest. After some preliminary criticism of the Old Church regarding its inability to answer questions, and especially regarding its false teaching, Mr. Taylor continues: I must tell you how I came to know of the New Church. The Lord's words, "A little child shall lead them," best expresses the method. It was through our two little children. Until my wife and I came to Hurstville, we had not heard of the New Church. While living at Hurstville, my wife's mother stayed with us, and she used to go to church; but as the distance was long, she wished for a place of worship nearer. Then she heard of the little church in Dudley St., called the "New Church." which we thought was a church newly built; so she went one Sunday and told us that the service was different from that of any other church, and she could not understand the religion there taught. She heard that a Sunday School was held in the afternoon; so having two little children, we thought we would like to send them to learn about God, the same as when we were children. And they would come home happy and tell about the nice teachers and nice children, and what hymns they sang. Being very young, they could not grasp very much; but one day we, as usual, asked what the teachers told them. They said they told them that Jesus Christ is the only God, as well as other things. That one saying-"Jesus Christ is the only God"-made us sit up and think. It struck me at once; for it was what I had been looking for when I gave up going to the Old Church. So I went once or twice to the concerts that were given, and got talking with the pastor and teachers of the New Church about the children, and they invited me to the Doctrinal Class that was held Sunday evenings.

     I shall never forget that first Sunday night. It was a new chapter in my life. The comments and discussions sounding to me quite strange, I asked several questions. One was, "Is your Bible the same as ours?" and was told that there is only one Bible, but that its spiritual sense has been revealed by the Lord by means of Emanuel Swedenborg, and that the New Church is the last of all the Churches. My question no doubt sounded silly, but I had to make a start somewhere, because I went that night to learn, and learn I did. Mr. Morse was my teacher, and has been my teacher ever since, and I hope he will be in the future; and my wish is to be as good a pupil to him as he has been a teacher to me. I learn more at present through Mr. Morse than by reading; but I hope that by continual reading I shall progress in the understanding of the New Revelation. I therefore thank God for sending our children to the New Church for my wife and me to follow. Had it not been for our children, we might never have heard of the New Church. But the Lord works in wonderful ways, and that must have been one of them. The things that have been revealed to me have given me a new life. I now see that, before I became associated with the New Church and its teachings, I was putting sport first, which is a selfish love, instead of love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor.

     Answering the question, "Why I am a New Churchman?" Mr. G. W. Guthrie opened with a statement by Paul: "No man knoweth the mind of a man save the spirit of man that is within him." Consequently, the answer cannot satisfactorily be given, since some have been born into the Church, some have entered gradually as age developed, and others have been led.

740


The latter seems to have been the method used regarding my spiritual destiny. The question is embarrassing, and the answer cannot be given briefly. If the questioner has not attained the spiritual rational, the answer must be different from that given to one who has. The object of my paper is the imparting of instruction to those outside the pale of the New Church. Quite early in life I had a desire to know about God, and was taken through various states of spiritual education until I was able to discern truth. These states occupied more than half a lifetime. But, evidently, because of an inherent spiritual desire for truth, I was led by the Good Shepherd to the River of Life,-the Divine Revelation to the New Church. The certainty that the Revelation is Divine was established with me, first, by the promise of it in the Word, and afterwards by the Revelation itself, which postulates a God of Love and Wisdom-attributes not bestowed with a patronizing concern to the worship of God and man, but acknowledged as infinite realities, of which human love and wisdom are distant and fragmentary echoes.

     After receiving the new Revelation, I realized that my study of the Word, during many years, had been superficial, and that the letter of the Word was like one's voice, or vehicle which conveys goods; and that it is the truth that matters; the truth that has power; the truth that supplies the soul with the knowledge that enlightens and satisfies.

     "God works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." And after thus writing, I wonder why such an insignificant unit of creation should thus be drawn. Is it any wonder that the Psalmist should say, "What is man, that God should be mindful of him?" Yet God is the magnetic power that is ever drawing to Himself all who desire to know Him; consequently I found that the onus was on myself. But unlike the hart that possesses the keen perception of smell that leads it to the water brooks, I was like a child, having to be fed upon the letter of the Word, in order that a foundation might be laid for nobler ideas of spiritual truth.

     In my boyhood I attended a Wesleyan Sunday School for a year or two. Later I became connected with the Church of England, and; for some time, taught in the Sunday School, and afterwards became Superintendent. But feeling the need of being taught myself, and having a consciousness that I was not spiritually fit to lead others, I severed my connection with church-work for several years, until again drawn by what I considered advanced spiritual teaching by a Spiritist, who held me to the study of the letter of the Word for many years, until, in God's good time, I had arrived at that state in which the Lord could trust me with His own Truth. Out of a class of a little over two hundred persons I was the only one, at its break-up, to be transferred into the light of Truth. By the medium of the daily press, I was directed first to the external, and then to the internal, and finally was landed in the reflected glorious light of the internal truth within the walls of the building in which we now are. And may God grant that I be worthy to receive the continual influx of His Holy Spirit, in order to enable me to impart the truth with whole-hearted self-sacrificing devotion which may be the means to those celestial heights where the blessed shall abide in eternal peace.

     Under date of July the 12th, Miss Taylor says:

     "This will be the last letter to you in England. Well, we are going very strong. I sometimes pause and wonder whither we are tending. The Sunday School is increasing: there were fifty-five last Sunday. Providence sends them, and we must just go on. The church will be too small in the very near future at the rate we are increasing. What shall we do? I had the electric light installed, and the improvement is very marked. There is a light just outside the door which lights the porch and path to the gate. Three lights inside: one in center of building; the others equally spaced near the chancel and entrance.

741


Mr. Graham made a good job at a cost of L6.

     "Last night was history making for numbers at the July social. The building was uncomfortably full. I covered the lights with a pretty, soft, apricot color. The church looked lovely. I wish it were a hall though. But what can we do? I think I read recently in the Life that all modern appliances could, or should, be used for the man of the Church, or are a necessity now. I think that must be so, because all perfection comes from heaven, and man, if regenerating, is becoming a little heaven. All these things are certainly nice to have, and Were made for man's use."
     RICHARD MORSE.

     GLENVIEW, ILL. October 10, 1928.

     Our society is saddened by the very sudden death of Mr. Nels Johnson, who suffered a stroke last Thursday at the home of Mr. Seymour G. Nelson, and died at about 7 o'clock on Sunday morning. Mr. Johnson was eighty-one years of age, and has been a member of the Immanuel Church from its inception until the formation of Sharon Church in 1903, when he joined that society. He was always a loyal friend of the Immanuel Church and showed his friendship in many ways. During its early struggles for existence he always maintained a most friendly attitude. He was affectionately known as "Uncle Johnson," and it was always a pleasure to see his kindly face among us. Our pastor, Mr. Smith, painted a very fine portrait of Mr. Johnson several years ago,-a living likeness that will perpetuate his striking features. Several years ago, Mr. Johnson suffered a severe illness, and at that time expressed a willingness to assume the new life after death, and this attitude he maintained through all his later years. If he had had any choice in the matter, his sudden going would have been exactly to his liking. His memory will always be cherished by all who knew him. The semiannual meeting of the Immanuel Church took place at the set time of the first Friday in October, and was very largely attended by members and friends. This meeting is largely devoted to receiving the reports of officers and boards of our society, and the treasurer's report showed budget of $10,000 to be raised uses, and presented during an active interest in and support of the various the new fiscal year. The report from the school showed increased activity, with six or seven teachers. This semiannual meeting also inaugurates the regular Friday Suppers, and judging from the start, we may look forward to an enthusiastic year.

     The Chicago District Assembly meets October 12th to 15th, and we shall certainly crowd as many interesting meetings and incidents into this time as possible. The Park is looking as beautiful as ever, with its fall dress of gorgeous colors, and we hope to show all visitors next week the very finest brand of weather for the meetings. The tennis courts are a tremendous feature in the activities of our young folks, and even the young housewives park their baby carriages at the side of the courts and enter the tournament which is now going on.
     J. B. S.

     ERIE, PA.

     In the absence of the Rev. F. E. Waelchli, who is in Los Angeles, it devolved upon me to visit the Circle in this city on Thursday, October 4th, as the guest of Mr. C. Edro Cranch. In the morning, his son, Frederick, took me to visit Mr. Evens and his daughter, Miss Ruby. Mr. Evens has been confined to his room for many months, but of late has rallied and become more vigorous.

     In the afternoon, a memorial service was held for Mrs. Addie Louise Cranch, who had died the previous Monday. There were about twenty persons present. Besides the five of her immediate family, there was her sister, Mrs. Stella Homiller of Bryn Athyn, Mrs. Cranch, Sr., and her daughter Edith, from Cleveland, several members of the Erie circle, viz., Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, Miss Ruby Evens, and Mr. Near, and some eight friends from Erie.

742


An address on the interdependence of the spiritual and natural worlds was given, and three hymns from the Liturgy which had been favorites of Mrs. Cranch were sung, Miss Edith Cranch playing at the piano.

     Mrs. Cranch, the eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Zeppenfeld, would have been forty-seven years old if she had lived three days longer; for the funeral took place on her birthday. She attended the Academy Schools one year, and shortly thereafter was married to Mr. C. Edro Cranch, the Rev. C. Th. Odhner officiating. For years she has been a staunch member of the Church group in Erie. Under her charm and hospitality, her home has been the center of its activities. Their four children are Miss Wyneth, now living in Bryn Athyn, Frederick, Doris, and Edward. Mrs. Cranch's absence from the church activities will be keenly felt in the Erie Circle.
     E.E. IUNGERICH.

     TORONTO, CANADA.

     We find, on reference to the August issue of the Life, that the last recorded event in the doings of the Olivet Society brought us down to July 20th, after which came the "Great Hiatus," by which we mean the great gap created by four Sundays without public worship in the church, something that has never occurred before in the memory of the oldest living members of our Society. This, of course, being due to the General Assembly, in London, England, all the pastors being "over there."

     Our first contact with our new Pastor, the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal, was made at a "free and easy" gathering at the home of Mr. Theodore Bellinger, on August 31st, when a number of the men of the Society met for the purpose of getting acquainted with him and having a final chat with our retiring Pastor, the Rev. H. L. Odhner;-one of those affairs with which the men of the Church are quite familiar. The very informal, round and across the table talk drifted to something of an international aspect, Mr. Gyllenhaal bringing it definitely within that scope in a very pleasing, impromptu dissertation on the impressions gained during his experience and travel in the various parts of the British Empire, particularly in South Africa and England. His remarks being concluded just before midnight, Mr. Odhner, running true to form in his characteristic and most trenchant style, "crossed the Rubicon" of his pastorate with us, in an inspiring speech on what we might term "Internationalism" or, a "True Internationalism in the Church." By the time we were through we were all feeling very happy and well pleased with each other, due no doubt to the "Spirit of the occasion" and the geniality of our host.

     On Sunday evening, September 2d, a large gathering met at the church for the threefold purpose of hearing an account of the General Assembly, bidding farewell to our retiring pastor and Mrs. Odhner, and welcoming Mr. and Mrs. Gyllenhaal. We cannot begin to report all the kind things that were said in appreciation of the former, the place they have come to occupy in our affections, the impress left upon the Society by their work amongst us, or the warmth of welcome extended to the latter, and the assurance of sympathetic and whole-hearted cooperation with them in the coming years of endeavor in the life and work of the Society. We partly "said it with flowers," both Mrs. Odhner and Mrs. Gyllenhaal being the recipients of bouquets of roses, presented by Mrs. Rudolph Potts, whilst Mr. C. Bay Brown, for the Society, presented Mr. and Mrs. Odhner with a "baby" grandfather clock with Westminster chimes and a dinner gong. No special significance attaches to the choice of either of these articles, they being simply necessary household requirements (which our friends did not happen to possess) imposed upon us by "time" that needs to be observed and "space" that must be made nugatory at regular intervals for man's comfort and well-being.

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And so another chapter is closed, a new page is started. May the writing on it be fair and legible, recording that progress of our beloved Church which is made possible only by the understanding of its doctrines and their ultimation in an increasingly regenerate life. Better evidence of success no Pastor can desire, or wishes. It is the ultimate requirement of all true order, the panacea for all the ills society and the world is heir to.

     Practically all the regular activities of the Society have been resumed. Time will not permit of more detail at present, which will be reserved for a future occasion.
     F. W.

     PITTSBURGH, PA.

     The Annual Meeting of the Pittsburgh Society was held September 21st. After the reports had been presented and discussed, the proposition regarding the new property was set forth and generally discussed, but no decision was reached, and the meeting adjourned to meet on the following Friday. At this adjourned meeting it was unanimously voted that the Pittsburgh Society purchase the property, raise money, and make plans for building as soon as possible.

     The Sunday School opened on September 30th. There are four graded classes. Mrs. Silas E. Walker has the Youngest group, Mrs. A. P. Lindsay the grammar grades, Mr. Stanley Ebert the junior high, end the Pastor has the adult group.

     All our organizations seem to be getting under way for a good year of work. The Ladies' Society held its Annual Meeting on October 2d, at the home of Mrs. Iungerich. Dr. Iungerich began a series of lectures on his book, The Palace of Wisdom. After the class the business meeting was held. Mrs. Grubb was elected President; Mrs. David Lindsay, Vice-President; Mrs. Frank Doering, Secretary; Mrs. Doering Bellinger was reelected Treasurer; and Mrs. G. P. Brown, Housekeeper. Mrs. Iungerich entertained the first meeting of Theta Alpha at her home on October 10th.

     Mr. Samuel S. Lindsay, Jr., entertained the Philosophy Club at its annual meeting on October 4th. Mr. J. Edmund Blair was elected President; Dr. Doering, Vice-President; Mr. Richard Goerwitz, Secretary; and Mr. G. P. Brown, Treasurer.

     The first Friday supper and doctrinal class was held on October 5th. The Doctrine of the Lord is the first subject to be taken up. The class is held at the table for thirty minutes after the supper, and is followed by discussion.

     On September 26th there was a shower for Miss Venita Blair. The people responded with enthusiasm, and with lovely and useful gifts, and the party was Success. The marriage of Miss Blair to Mr. Gilbert M. Smith, of Reading, Pa., was solemnized by the Rev. Karl R. Alden on October 13th. There were many guests from Bryn Athyn, and in some respects the occasion resembled a little assembly. This affair made us realize the inadequacy of our present building, for the 180 guests were rather crowded. It is a good thing we are making plans for larger quarters in the near future.
     E. R. D.

744


DIVINE CALL 1928

DIVINE CALL       Rev. GUSTAF BAECKSTROM       1928




     Announcements.




NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XLVIII DECEMBER, 1928          No. 12
     "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." (John 11:28.)

     "Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus," and his two sisters,-Mary and Martha, were in a state of affliction on account of the sickness of their brother. And they sent for assistance to the Only One who could help them. So also it is spiritually with us, when we see "the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, and stand in the holy place," and the Eight that is within us is darkness. Great then is that darkness. The understanding of truth in our minds is then like the dying Lazarus, a flickering light just going out.

     He who loves truth cannot but grieve when he sees the light being extinguished and the gloom casting its shadows. For these shadows mean death. We may grieve, but we may not despair. One there is who can save us, One who always was, and always will be, our Savior, He who is Light itself.     

     Therefore, we may do as the two sisters in Bethany did,-look to the Lord for help, when "if is toward evening, and the day is far spent"; and offer up to Him a prayer like this: "Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick." For we know that the Lord loves us, loves all of us, and that there is nothing which He desires more than to help us. That is the sublime substance of the message to the New Church. God is love! And therefore we can offer up to Him this prayer: "Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick."

     He who wept over Jerusalem, the sinful city, and wept at the grave of Lazarus,-will He not be moved to compassion at such a prayer? Will He not have mercy upon us? He is near us.

745


He knows our distress. We are all of a fallen race. Thousands of sinful generations have left us an inheritance of the most dreadful kind,-a proprium that would fill us with horror, if we could see it as it is, see it in the light of heaven. Our great hope is that we may be delivered from this proprium, that we may get away from ourselves, as it were, and forget ourselves; and this is done when the Lord gives us a new proprium,-a proprium that will then seem to us to be our own, though we will know and acknowledge that it is from the Lord. For this end He is near us, yea, is standing at the door of our hearts, longing to save us from ourselves, from hell. But though He is standing there, knocking, He is not visible to us. He is a God that hideth Himself, because He is Love. It is as if He were not there, as if He were absent, as if He were slow to approach, though we, in our affliction, ask Him to come.

     The first Christian Church in its early days was already in a state of tribulation, and the faithful receivers expected the Lord to come. They felt the need of His coming. But He did not come. He tarried many hundreds of years before He came. The darkness grew. The shadows fell more and more thickly upon the earth, Upon the church. The spiritual Lazarus was sick, was dying; yea, he died, before the Lord came, and all hope seemed to be gone. But then He came.

     It may seem strange that He should tarry so long. Yet He tarried longer still before He came into the world to judge the Jewish Church. For He is love; and in infinite love He desired nothing more ardently than to come. Yet He tarried hundreds and hundreds of years. Why? Because He is love, infinite love, a love that cares even for the evil ones,-for those who would reject Him, as He knew they would. For their sakes He could not come earlier. Their state would then have become worse. They might first have received Him, and then rejected Him, and so have profaned His holy presence.

     But now He is come. Finally the Lord is come. He has revealed Himself in the Letter of the Word, in the clouds of the letter, hiding heaven, and yet revealing it. He is coming in the spiritual sense of the Word "with power and great glory," as He promised, and we have seen Him in His coming there. We have seen a great light, yea, we have seen Him "as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west. And it was wonderful in our sight.

747


We have rejoiced and been exceedingly glad, for "the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready." (Rev. 19:7.) "Let us be glad end rejoice," the heavens say; and there is reason enough for us to join in their exultant "Allelujah," when we think of what the angels add: "Blessed are they which are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb." (Rev. 19:9.) Blessed are they, not only that they will become blessed, but that they are blessed.

     We have seen the Lord; we have heard the calling; we know the angels' message of salvation. We have rejoiced. We have come. We have been in the presence of heaven. We have felt something of the blessedness promised to him who comes. But how often it seems as if almost all this were gone! The fact remains that the Lord is come. We know, because we have seen. We are fully convinced. We certainly believe that salvation is now at hand.

     We cannot always say that we feel happy. There are times when we feel distressed and in great affliction. Yet are we blessed. We know this, because the Revelation says so. The internal man is blessed, but there is another man wherein there is what is cursed. Our consciousness is still mostly in the external man where the evil resides. We feel that evil. It makes us distressed. Now and then it makes us feel unhappy, in spite of what we have seen, in spite of the joyful fact that the Lord is come. For we know that faith alone does not save-no more in the New Church than in the Old.

     "The Lord is come." That I see with my understanding. But in my heart? Is He there? Is He fully there? I cannot say: Lord, behold, he who loveth Thee is sick. I would like to say so, but I dare not. I can only say: "Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick." The Lord's love is my only hope, the only sure thing in which I may confide.

     For though the Lord is love, He does not instantly let us feel His presence with consolation and peace. Why? Because that is best for us, on account of the evils in which we are. In spite of our having seen the great light that means the dawn of a new day, a darkness sets in, and the shadows of death fall upon us, and we are seized with despair, because in the light of heaven we now see something of our proprium, something of hell. As long as we live in this world, our proprium is with us; we cannot get rid of ourselves. Even in that memorable night when the Lord instituted the Holy Supper, and His disciples were sitting with Him at the table, He said: "Verily I say unto you, that one of yore shall betray me." (Matt. 26:21.)

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     The Holy Supper is a heavenly feast in which the Lord is present with His whole redemption, and opens heaven to those who approach Him worthily. Therefore, all the blessedness of heaven must be there, and is given to us. And we may well be moved in our hearts, and happy in our souls, when the consecrated bread and wine are given to us, together with the Lord's love and wisdom. And yet we cannot feel all we would if we had been delivered from ourselves,-"not mine, but wholly Thine." Our Judas Iscariot, our proprium, is with us still. How much we desire that he were not! How much we wish that we were free-free to feel the presence of the Lord and heaven, free to feel all the blessedness of the saints!

     But we are no saints. We are sinful men. And in order that we may not forget this when we approach the Lord in His Holy Supper, our proprium, our traitor, is with us, and reminds us of our sins, and thus makes us see and feel that we are by no means worthy of the grace which the Lord bestows upon us. Only a heartfelt acknowledgment of our own unworthiness can make us worthy to approach the Lord in that feast where heaven and earth meet. For the humble heart the Lord can accept. There He can be. And to the man who comes in that way, feeling his own unworthiness, in awe before the majesty and purity of God, He says: "He who cometh to me, I will by no means cast out." Such is the mightiness of love.

     And therefore "He calleth for thee." He calleth for thee as He called Mary through her sister, who said: "The master is come, and calleth for thee." He calleth for thee as He called for Lazarus in his grave, speaking with a loud voice: "Lazarus, come forth!" He calleth for thee as He called Simon Peter, and Andrew his brother, and said to them: "Follow me!" He calleth for thee as He called James, and John his brother, when they were in a ship with their father, and when they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed Him. He calleth for thee as He called Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him: "Follow me!"

     He calleth for thee as He calleth for all His disciples. Some of us He calleth away from our old worldly employments, to become priests and messengers of the new Revelation which He has given for the salvation of mankind; as He called His twelve disciples, and on the Nineteenth of June sent them forth in the spiritual world.

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But not only the priests are called. All are called. Every one of us is called. Everyone has an especial function, now and evermore, for which he is called-called in one way or another, to be prepared for in this way or that. But every calling, in whatever way it comes, may be comprehended in these two words: "Follow me!"

     It is Love that is calling, the same infinite love that speaks to us in these Divine words: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30.)

     Thus we ought first to see and acknowledge the evils in which we are. And when we feel heavy laden on account of them, then we may come to the Lord, in order that we may find in Him the peace that we desire. This is what we need, all of us, however different our external conditions in the world may be; and this He alone can give, who, through His victories over all the hells, is Himself peace.

     "Ye shall find rest unto your souls." We may yet have some difficulty in grasping what that really means; but we feel that it must be something wonderful, something that cannot be described in human language, something that meets all the desires and wants of our hearts, something that gives to the soul all that it is longing for. "Rest unto your souls!" It means heaven! Heaven is the great, sweet rest, the wonderful peace that cannot be expressed, but only felt in one's own experience. It cannot be intellectually grasped.

     To this the Lord is calling us. To this He has been calling us throughout our life,-every day, in every thing. He is especially calling in special events and special things. In the Lord's Providence, this Assembly has been an especial calling to Him. And the Holy Supper, of which we, from various parts of the world, now jointly partake, is an especial occasion in which the Lord is come, and calleth for us to follow Him.

     So may we come,-all who labor in the work of regeneration, feeling ourselves heavy laden with sins. Because He calleth for us. You who think, "I do not dare to come, I am too unworthy," may be the first to come to Him who does "not call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."

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He calleth for us to come as we are, weary and afflicted because of our faults and sins. For when He gives us His bread and wine, He will give us new strength from a new love and a new faith,-new strength against evils and falsities, that we may "find rest unto our souls."

     We must begin anew when we have failed, begin again and again. We must make up our minds to try to do better now, even if we know from bitter experience that we have had such good intentions before, and yet have failed. But it is easy to see that if we had not had any good intentions at all, we should have done much worse than we have, and be farther from the goal than we are. Evidently it is better to walk in the way to heaven with feeble stumbling steps than not to walk in it at all. If we fall, let us rise again, and go forward! Then we shall finally reach the goal. But if we make no efforts whatever, we shall never reach it. But failure should not make us disheartened. It may show us our weakness, and inspire us with a feeling of humility.

     So may we confess our sins before the Lord our Savior, and make supplication to Him for aid and power to resist our evils. And when we discover some special evils within us, let us pray for help against them. Yea, let us pray-not only this day, but every day! Let us often pray to the Lord for aid and power against ourselves. May we learn the Lord's will by reading His Word in its literal and spiritual senses! May we let the Lord speak to us there! There He comes to us, and calleth for us. But we may also go to Him, and speak to Him,-speak to Him in our prayers.

     The Lord is come, and He has come to lift us up to Himself. The faint beating of the wings of our own thought cannot lift us up. It is something within us that seems to lift us upwards, above ourselves. It is prayer. It is the soul speaking with God. Interiorly viewed, it is even then that God calls for thee, awakening the child that is slumbering within thy Soul,-the child who knows its Heavenly Father and its right home, and who longs for it,-the child who prays with folded hands: "Our Father who art in heaven!"

     We may easily forget that we are children, or that what is best in us is as a child. The custom of praying will remind us of this. It is not enough to learn what God has spoken. His words will be something of the past, if they are not made living and active within us now.

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Only a personal intercourse with God can do this. It is not that we ought to speak with God; we are permitted to do so,-permitted to come into a living communication with God, we feeble creatures, clay from the Potter's hand.

     Without prayer to God, He is a stranger to us, even if we should know, as it may seem to us, a good deal about Him. It is really very little we know, if it is only from books that we have our knowledge of Him. Knowledges from books alone are as the fishes in the depths of the sea. Such knowledges are really not our own. If the Heavenly Doctrines are not active in our lives, they are not ours. And they cannot become ours except from the Lord, and this by means of sincere prayer.

     As a bird that has not practised flying will never be able to mount on its wings towards heaven, but remains on the earth, so we shall never be able to mount on the wings of our soul to our heavenly home, but must remain in the dust, if it does not become a dear habit to us to think of the Lord and to Pray to Him. If we begin our day with prayer, we shall finish it with thanks and praise. But a life without prayer is a life without God.

     Intellectual instruction from the Word, and the heart's sincere prayer, are thus the two great means of our salvation. The Heavenly Doctrines teach us this great truth: "It is an eternal truth that the Lord rules heaven and earth; that no one besides the Lord lives of himself; that everything of life inflows,-the good of life from the Lord, and the evil of life from hell. This is the faith of the heavens. When man is in this faith, then evil cannot be fastened and appropriated to him, because he knows that it is not from himself, but from hell. When man is in this state, he can be gifted with peace, for he will then trust solely in the Lord. Nor can peace be given to others than those who are in this faith from charity." (A. C. 6325.)

     There is a great consolation in the knowledge which is thus imparted to us,-the knowledge that we are mere vessels, that the all of life inflows, the good of life from the Lord, and the evil of life from hell. But we cannot really make use of this great knowledge without a life in prayer. If we appropriate the goad to ourselves, we will also appropriate the evil; and the good we appropriate is then no real good. That we may not appropriate the evil to ourselves, we must learn not to appropriate the good to ourselves; and this we cannot do without a life in prayer.

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But if we place our lives in the Lord's hands, trusting in Him as little children, because we have learned that "we are dust, that our days are as the grass, as the flower of the field which the wind passeth over, and it is gone" (Ps. 103:14-16), then we shall be able to say of the evil that infests, that it is not ours, but is from hell, and also to acknowledge that the good is not ours, but is from the Lord, and is His. Then He will be able to give us good from heaven, giving it constantly as a free gift, in order that we may fully enjoy it as if it were ours. And then our proprium will be closed, as hell is closed; and heaven is opened when at death the Lord finally comes, and calleth for us, that we may live a new life, happy and free in everlasting peace. For this it is that the Lord is now come, and calleth for thee. Amen.
EDUCATION OF THE ADOLESCENT BOY 1928

EDUCATION OF THE ADOLESCENT BOY       Rev. K. R. ALDEN       1928

     (At a Men's Dinner given by the New Church Club, London, August 10th, 1928.)

     There was a game in ancient Greece called the torch race, in which a youth ran a given course holding aloft a flaming torch. The race was won not merely by the swift of foot and the strong of sinew, but by the one who first reached the goal with his torch still burning. As New Church educators, our task is to prepare boys for this torch race. It is our high calling to light the torch and place it in the hands of successive groups of lithe-bodied, clean-minded boys, and to teach them to carry through the race of life the flaming brand of light which is bestowed upon us by the Heavenly Doctrines. The adolescent mind is not unlike the chaos described at the beginning of Genesis, where we read that "the earth was empty and void, and darkness was upon the faces of the abyss." Then the "Spirit of God moved upon the waters," and finally there was light. "God said, Let there be light, and there was light."

     New Church education performs toward the fire of God's Word a task not unlike that of the ancient vestal virgins, who guarded the sacred fire day and night, that it might never go out. There is an altar in the heart of the Church, upon which rests the Word of God, and upon which it is the duty of the ministry of the Church to keep kindled an ever-burning, ever-blazing, beacon light.

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"A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid; neither do men light a candle, and set it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house." The fire of the altar is a sacred fire, and it must never be allowed to die. It must be continually fed, in order that the torches of youth may ever find a fountain-head from which their may be kindled, and made to glow. No merely temporary light may be given, nor a light that would go out, leaving the runner with a charred stick in his hand. The torch must be kindled into a glow of its own, else it will never serve to light the runner on his course. Every New Churchman, be he high or low, humble or exalted, is a torch bearer, a prophet, a seer, a man possessed of a light; and he should be so prepared for life that he can go out and mingle in the dark places, and everywhere, in every contact, shed light. The Lord said to His disciples of the First Advent, "Ye are the light of the world!" And to us He says," Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."

     Gentlemen, today the Academy of the New Church stands in the midst of a Godless world. We live in a world that is more and more giving up all real religion. In order to stem the tide of this paganism, we are called upon to work from a profound center, a center which is the source of all light, a center which is the very essence of the fire burning upon our altar. This center is older than the universe itself. It is God Himself. The great inspiration of the Academy movement is the worship of a living God, the drawing of wisdom from an all-wise God, the reception of love from a God of infinite love. Our pupils may criticize us; they may see our defects; they may not like the clothes we wear or the way we walk; but if we can just make them feel the power of the ideal of God that actuates all our work, that sustains all our energies, we shall not have worked in vain. We shall have kindled upon their individual altars the torch of the Second Advent. If we can just make them feel one tiny spark of the infinity of inspiration that lies behind the worship of a living God, then our work will be well done, and future ages will rise up to bless us.

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     The idea of God dominates every department of our learning, and whether it be in the religion class, the mathematics class, or the history class, behold, He is there! And the God that is our inspiration is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Divinely Human God. It is the same Lord Jesus Christ who forgave the sorrowing woman taken in adultery; the same Lord Jesus Christ who was present with Peter, James and John on the mount of transfiguration; the same Lord that called His disciples to Himself on the Nineteenth Day of June, 1770, and sent them throughout the spiritual world to proclaim the gospel that the Lard Jesus Christ reigneth, of whose kingdom there shall he no end.

     The second great mission of our education is to prepare youth for conjugial love. Of all human relationships this is the most important. There is nothing that compares with it, and yet, in the world, there is no real light on the subject. They know nothing of its Divine origin. They are ignorant of the fact that marriage on earth descends from the marriage of love and wisdom, the marriage of good and truth in heaven; that its origin is Divine, and consequently that it is holy, pure and clean above every love that is with the angels of heaven and the men of the church. But to the New Church has been given this flaming torch, a real solution to be handed down to our sons and daughters, to become the center of countless happy New Church homes all over the world. We know that sex does not end with death, that marriage is to eternity; and, coupled with this vision of the origin and end of marriage, has been given all the light that is needed to guard and to guide men through all the intermediate states which prepare for and find their fulfilment in a true marriage.

     Upon the high altar of our church glows the light of the Word restored. In all the world, the Writings declare, there is but one source of light to the minds of men, and that is God's Word,-His Divine Revelation, the Word of God, with the gold and silver threads of its internal sense running from Genesis to Revelation, capable of filling the mind of man with the highest light of truth. Ours is the noble task of passing this light to our children,-the light of a true doctrine of use which makes noble every life of usefulness, showing men how to live in this world that they may be useful members of the Gorand Man of heaven. What a glory there is here! It is the light by which all the social ills of our times may be solved, when the doctrine of use is applied to life.

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     And then there is the light which the Writings shed upon the life to come. Where, save in the New Church, can men see this vision? It is a veritable beacon, beckoning us through life, and receiving us in death, that our footsteps may tread the straight and narrow road. The power of New Church education resides in the light-giving qualities of the Writings of the Church. Before us the minds of youth are passing; behind us is the blazing altar from which we teach. How to impart the vision, how to kindle the individual torch of each scholar,-that is our high task, and it is a noble work. Erasmus, who was much admired by Swedenborg, and often quoted in his earlier works, once said to a school teacher: "I admit that your vocation is laborious, but I utterly deny that it is tragic or deplorable, as you call it. To be a schoolmaster is next to being a king. Do you count it a mean employment to imbue the minds of your fellow citizens in their earnest years with the best literature and the love of Christ, and to return them to their country honest and virtuous men? In the opinion of fools it is a humble task, but in fact it is the noblest of occupations. Even among the heathen it was always a noble thing to deserve well of the State, and no one deserves it better than the moulder of raw boys."

     The Academy education now extends from Kindergarten to Theological School, and it is essentially a unit. Those who labor in the different departments are actuated by the same purposes, the same high resolves; and yet it is true that pupils of each age require different adaptations of the Writings; each age has a distinct Gospel of its own; it has its own importances, its own specific needs, requiring different modes of approach on the part of the teacher. We would call your attention to one particular field, in order that we may have a vision of the manner in which the torch of light is passed to adolescent hands, that their vigorous race of life may be lighted by the Heavenly Doctrine.

     It is common throughout the Writings to divide the general life of man into four ages, comparable to Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Thus, in Heaven and Hell, no. 166, we read of "the four ages of man, or infancy, adolescence, manhood and old age." The same division is given in Conjugial Love 185, where we read: "The general states of man's life are called infancy, childhood, youth, manhood and old age."

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Here the division is fivefold, that which was called infancy in the first classification being subdivided into infancy and childhood in the second. But the state of adolescence, as we know it, is not always clearly defined in the Writings. In A. C. 10225, the first state is said to be from the first to the fifth year, the second from the fifth to the twentieth year, the third from the twentieth to the sixtieth year, and the fourth from the sixtieth year onward. Thus there is a variation in the Writings as to the exact divisions of these periods; and so, for the sake of clearness, I shall adopt in this paper the classification given by Bishop Benade in his Conversations on Education, pp. 113, 114, where we read:

     "First, then, the subjects of instruction are human beings, who come under the charge and into the care of the teacher at about the age of five years, and who remain in that relation, if the conditions be normal, until about the age of twenty-one. Now let us, for the sake of convenience, and also according to the order of things, divide the whole period of instruction into three terms, adding to the first term the five years of infancy, when the child is in the family school, and we shall have the three terms commensurate with three complete periods of time or of age, and agreeing with the three states of the understanding in the subjects of instruction, described by, first, the corporeal sensual state; second, the sensual scientific state; and third, the scientific rational state; the first comprising the period from birth to the seventh year, the second the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year, and the third from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year.

     "Let me observe here that the terms of this division are, of course, to be regarded in the nature of averages, because of the patent fact that children vary greatly, as well in genius and mental quality as in development, and also this,-that the one term passes over by imperceptible degrees into the other, because states of mind cannot be subject to strict and exact delimitations. For this reason, the first state is denominated the corporeal-sensual; the second, the sensual-scientific; and the third, the scientific-rational. Knowledge of the scholars and of their progress, with great judgment, are required in the teacher's treatment of the children, especially about the period of the state of their transition from one term to the next succeeding.

     If, for purposes of clarity, we use this classification of pupils given by Bishop Benade, we are particularly interested at this time in the third group.

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Of these our High School is made up; and we would concentrate upon the first Part of this period, as the latter part is taken care of in our College.

     The first point to be noted about these general groups is that they Progress from one state to another, shifting their spiritual environment, coming into new societies of spirits. The panorama of the unseen world is changed for them. In dealing with children, the New Church teacher must never forget that they are inhabitants of two worlds, one of which they see, and one of which they know only from Revelation. It is our knowledge of the spiritual environment of the child, given us by Revelation, that enables us to meet their states better than can possibly be done by the educators of the world, who have no knowledge that this condition exists. Concerning this change of Spiritual environment, we read in Heaven and Hell:

     "The spirits associated with man are such as he himself is in respect to his affection or love; but the Lord associates good spirits with him, while evil spirits are invited by the man himself. But the spirits with man are changed in accord with the changes of his affections; thus there are some spirits who are with him in early childhood, others in boyhood, others in youth and manhood, others in old age. In early childhood those spirits are present who are in innocence, and who thus communicate with the heaven of innocence, which is the inmost or third heaven; in boyhood, those spirits are present who are in an affection for knowing, and who thus communicate with the outmost or first heaven; in youth and manhood, spirits are present who are in an affection for what is true and good, and in consequent intelligence, and who thus communicate with the second or middle heaven; while in old age spirits are present who are in innocence and wisdom, and who thus communicate with the inmost or third heaven." (H. H. 295.)

     What a wonderful thought it is to the New Church educator to realize that there are in very fact unseen bands of angels upholding his feeble hands in the work which he longs to do! And that, while he is busily engaged in this world with the outward aspects of the work, the adolescent boy, by the Divine mercy of the Lord, is in charge of angels who are in the love of what is true and good, consequently in the love of intelligence. Does this not explain in large measure the fact that boys are idealists? that their visions are high visions? that the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts?

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     To every close worker in any given field of educational work, his own particular section gradually assumes the appearance of being the most important in the development of the pupil. And this conviction has surely come to me in regard to the age of adolescence. We know that the period of infancy is vastly important, that the remains then implanted exert a tremendous influence over the rest of the pupil's life, so much so that the Catholic says: "Give me a child until he is seven, and you can have him for the rest of his life; for you can never take the Catholic faith from him." In infancy, the mind is indeed plastic and susceptible to the deepest remains. But the very physiology and psychology of adolescence make it closely allied in its receptivity to this first state of infancy. The phenomena of adolescence are the phenomena of a new birth. The body itself almost doubles in weight; the heart, lungs, liver and all the major organs double, and sometimes almost treble, in size. And the mind at this age is plastic, yielding, easily influenced, readily capable of receiving impressions; and the impressions received are of almost ineradicable intensity. While the spiritual association has been shifted from spirits who were merely in the love of knowing to spirits who are intelligent and in the love of good and truth, the natural mind has turned itself to a review of the scientifics stored in childhood, and a process of revaluation commences, the fruits of which penetrate to the deepest interiors, and are rarely destroyed or altered in after-life.

     Concerning the remains of adolescence, the Writings have the following to say:

     "What is meant by remains has been stated and shown, namely, that they are all the states of affection for good and truth with which man is gifted by the Lord, from his earliest infancy even to the close of life; which states are stored up for his use in the life after death; for all the states of his life return successively in the life after death, and are then tempered by the states of good and truth with which he had been gifted by the Lord. In proportion, therefore, as he has received more of remains in the life of the body, or more of good and truth, the rest of his states, when they return, appear more delightful and beautiful. Man, at his birth, has not the slightest portion of good, of or from himself, being totally defiled by hereditary evil; but all the good that he has, such as love toward his parents, nurses, and little companions, and this from innocence, enters by influx.

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These are what flow in from the Lord through the heaven of innocence and peace, which is the inmost heaven; and thus man, during his infancy, is imbued with such things. Afterwards, as he grows up, that infantile, innocent, and peaceful good recedes by degrees; and in proportion as he is introduced into the world, he is introduced also into the gross pleasures thence, and into lusts, thus into evils, and in the same proportion the celestial or good things of his infantile state begin to disappear. They nevertheless remain, and by them the states are tempered which man afterwards puts on and acquires for himself. . . . In the subsequent period of man's life he is also gifted with hew states, which are not so much states of good but of truth, for in the age succeeding infancy he is imbued with truths; and these likewise are stored up with man in his interior man. By these remains, or those of truth, born in him by an influx of things spiritual from the Lord, man possesses the power of thinking, and also of understanding what the good and truth of moral life are, and likewise of receiving spiritual truth, or the truth of faith." (A. C. 1906.)

     It, is the storing of the mind with these remains of truth which forms the primary duty of New Church educators of adolescent youth. Here is a plane of the mind of the youth which has not been written upon; it is as a blank book, awaiting the impressions that are about to be made upon it. It is here that the torch of the true faith must be kindled. It is here that our contribution to the book of life must be made. The spiritual environment of angels who are in intelligence and the love of good and truth is our ally in this task. With what hallowed hands we must, on our part, join with their angelic efforts to save the child for the church on earth, and for the angelic heavens!

     The educators of the world have noted well the fact that the early adolescent age is a time in life when great decisions affecting the whole future character are made. From a study of the life-history of thousands of criminals, it has been ascertained that the vast majority of that class of humanity first cast the die of destiny in that direction during the age that we are considering. On the other hand, men who have been interested in the formation of religious character tell us that the religion which is embraced with a whole heart during adolescence is rarely departed from.

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The recognition of this fact is evident from the custom prevailing in so many churches of performing the rite of confirmation about the fourteenth year. These facts but confirm the truth revealed in the Heavenly Doctrine, that the age of adolescence is an age when man is associated with angels who are in the love of intelligence, and by whose ministry remains of truth are deeply impressed upon the plastic pages of man's internal memory.

     I believe that it was Bishop Benade who said: "Take a little piece of plastic clay and flatten it out, and then let a little child impress its hand upon it. The child will wonder at the impress made upon the plastic substance. A thousand times more capable of impress are the minds of our children. Let the educator himself be duly impressed by his experiment, and realize the full measure of his responsibility." Ours is the high duty of impressing the mind with the prints of truth. All the truth of the universe is ours to draw from. And always and ever the receptacle of that truth is to be some plastic adolescent mind, which is turning for the first time from the mere knowledge of things to the first rational understanding of them.

     In the Writings we find a beautiful simile. The stages of a man's life are compared to the development of a tree. In the Divine Providence, no. 332, we read:

     "As there is a correspondence between man's life and the growth of a tree, let a parallel or a comparison be drawn between them. Man's infancy is comparatively like the tender shoot of a tree sprouting up from the ground out of the seed; his childhood and youth are like that shoot growing into a trunk with its little branches; the natural truths that everyone first imbibes are like the leaves with which the branches are covered; the man's initiation into the marriage of good and truth, that is, the spiritual marriage, is like the blossoms which the tree brings forth in the springtime; spiritual truths are the petals of these flowers; the primary activities of the spiritual marriage are like the beginnings of the fruit; spiritual goods, which are the goods of charity, are like the fruit; the procreations of wisdom from love are like the seeds, and by these procreations man becomes like a garden or a paradise. . . . Man is a corrupt tree from the seed; nevertheless, a grafting or a budding with the tree of life is possible, whereby the sap drawn from the old root is turned into sap forming good fruit.

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This comparison has been made to show that, when there is so regular a progression of Divine Providence in the growth and regeneration of trees, there must needs be a regular progression in the reformation and regeneration of men, who are of much more value than trees." (D. P. 332.)

     What a beautiful picture is presented in this passage! Man has the possibility of grafting upon the old hereditary stock into which he is born an offshoot of the tree of life which was in the midst of the paradise of God. The initial grafting of this new shoot for the regeneration of man is made during the period of adolescence. It is then that the tree of life, or a branch therefrom, can be inserted into the growing mind, and find deep lodgment there; for at that time, as at no other period in life, the mind is capable of receiving new ideals, new visions of the future, new impulses toward higher things. Think of it! The vital energy from the old root can be trained into the new shoot, there to put forth leaves, and blossom and bear rich fruit, containing within itself the seeds of the paradise of God. "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God."

     The life of man in this world is a stern battle, a temptation, a never-ending warfare against evil and falsity; but the whole power of resistance is qualified by the preparation for that battle of life. In the Word, the battle of life is represented by the epic story of Israel and his sons; and the adolescent training, where the remains of truth are added to the remains of good stored up in infancy, is represented in the Word by the seven years of plenty in Egypt. For the growing mind of the pupil, the years in High School should be seven years of plenty. All the rich stores of truth in the Writings and in the Word are to be implanted in the storehouse of the interior mind,-a fortification, and a sure savior in the day of famine that is bound to follow.

     Concerning this state we read in the Arcana: "The truths adjoined to good are stored up in the interiors of the natural mind, and are there preserved together for use in subsequent life, especially for use in temptation during man's regeneration. (This is an arcanum with which few at the present day are acquainted.) Wherefore, it may be told how the case is. By the seven years of abundance of provision are signified truths first multiplied, and by the corn being stored up in the cities and in the midst, is signified that those truths adjoined to good were stored up in man's interiors; and by the seven years of famine, and by sustenance then from the collections, is signified a state of regeneration by truths adjoined to good stored up in the interiors.

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The arcanum is this: Man, from first in fancy to first childhood, is introduced by the Lord into heaven, and indeed among the celestial angels, by whom he is kept in a state of innocence. Infants are in this state until the first age of childhood commences. He then by degrees puts off the state of innocence; but still he is kept in a state of charity by the affection of mutual charity toward his like, which state with some continues until adolescence. He is then among spiritual angels; and then, because he begins to think from himself, and to act accordingly, he cannot any longer be kept in charity as before, for he then calls forth hereditary evils, by which he suffers himself to be led. When this state arrives, then the goods of charity and innocence, which he had before received, according to the degree in which he thinks evils and confirms them by acts, are exterminated; yet they are not exterminated, but are withdrawn by the Lord toward the interiors, and are there stored up. But inasmuch as he has not yet known truths, therefore the goods of innocence and charity, which he had received in those two states, have not yet been qualified; for truths give quality to good, and good gives essence to truths; on which account, he is from that age imbued with truths by instruction, and especially by his own proper thoughts and confirmations. So far, therefore, as he is then in the affection of good, so far truths are conjoined by the Lord to the good with him, and are stored up for uses; this state is what is signified by the seven years of the abundance of provision. Those truths adjoined to good are, in the proper sense, what are called remains." (A. C. 5342.)

     The salvation of Egypt at the time of the famine was due to the foreknowledge of Joseph, given him by Divine vision. The salvation of the New Church is from the same source. If there is one thing lacking in Old Church education it is the vision of its end or purpose. They cannot tell definitely what education is for. But to the New Church has been revealed the truth that education is for heaven. It is for regeneration; it is for life. Not only this, but the needs of each period have been revealed to us. Just as Joseph foresaw the oncoming famine, and thus wisely used the time of abundance, so we may foresee the time of spiritual famine that follows adolescence, and be moved to fill the storehouses of the minds before us with an abundance during their sojourn with us, that the barns may be bursting and the treasure-houses overflowing.

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     In adolescence, we are striving to build up an interior structure that is to culminate in the opening of the spiritual rational degree of the mind. All the means that contribute to this end are the tools of New Church-education, And the greatest of all is the New Church religion, with its warm, pulsating relation to life, and the New Church philosophy which overshadows all our work. We must ever remember that the education of our day and age was born, first of all, of a civilization that had a false theology, and then of a civilization that had no theology. Faith was separated from charity; and that tendency is manifest in the endeavor to educate the child into a kind of faith alone which awaits the judgment day of graduation for its application to life. This conjunction of knowledge to life, which is so neglected in the world about us, is what the Lord meant, in an interior sense, when he said: "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

     But what, you may ask, are the characteristics as externally manifest in the age of adolescence? In the Arcana we are told that the characteristic of this age is that man for the first time begins to rule himself from himself. This process commences with the birth of adolescence, and comes to a full fruition at the age of twenty-one and beyond. But the first general sensation of individual thought commences with adolescence. (A. C. 5470.)

     The age of adolescence has very marked characteristics. It is a period of storm and stress, occasioned by the change from childhood to manhood. Psychic, as well as physical, disturbances beset the boy. He hardly knows himself. He is possessed of so many new emotions. Truancy, wanderlust, and the lack of continuity of purpose and action, best his path. His humor is of the slapstick variety. Sex manifestations, with their new emotions, plunge him into early love affairs, which to him seem very serious. His mind is plastic, and rudimentary will-power appears. He passes through cycles of susceptibility to religious influence. He is infilled with the love of experimenting for himself. Hero worship, with some older boy as its object, manifests itself. He is lacking in gratitude; and his sense of proportion is exceedingly distorted.

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His ambitions are great visions; unconquered worlds lie before him, and in his own mind they lie at his feet. And it is in this realm of the boy's vision,-his deep capability of being idealistic,-that the sympathetic educator finds his greatest ally.

     This is a brief description of the boy of fourteen that comes to us in the High School to be educated. He comes to us exceedingly plastic and as changeable as the wind. He leaves us with budding maturity, and a code of idealism that will go far toward bearing fruit in his future New Churchmanship. We have already mentioned the general principles that guide us in our endeavor. Let me now trace one specific course showing you in detail how it is applied to the successive states of the adolescent youth.

     I will take the course of instruction in religion. Our greatest task at this critical period is to assist the pupil in making, as of himself, a covenant with the Lord. It is this sense of personal religion which counts in later life. Now, in this work, the Lord is the real Worker; the teacher is but a humble husbandman working in the vineyard. He is not unlike the sail-maker who fashions the canvas so that it may best receive the wind; but the real source of power to the ship is the wind, not the sail that is made by man. So with the work of the educator. He is only the builder of vessels; both the clay, and the Divine Spirit that fills the clay, are from the Lord. The teacher must always act as a photographer acts, confident of the material he uses; but at the moment when he does his work he must not expect to see the results. The exposure of the child's mind to the great truths of the church will not be developed in a moment. It will take the trials of a lifetime to bring out that imprint in all its glory and all its beauty, but he who works with the tools that New Church education places at his disposal need never fear as to the final result. If he does his part faithfully, the torch will be carried ever onward. It is his duty to establish the covenant between the boy and his God,-to establish it in the surroundings of thoughts of valor, nobility and moral endurance. To achieve this high end, the Academy plans a course in religion which I shall briefly explain.

     During the first year, the pupils are introduced into the great doctrines of the New Church just as though they had never heard of them; and the endeavor is made to get them to reconstruct them for themselves from the Writings, and from what they have previously learned.

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They are called "enthusiasms," and are spoken of as the great truths which have made New Churchmen in all ages enthusiastic over the Writings. Together with these fundamentals, they are given with definite precision the geographical facts concerning the Holy Land, and a factorial outline of the history of the letter of the Word, together with definite texts upon which to hang all their doctrinal convictions.

     In the second year, they are introduced into the realities of the spiritual world, and the whole quality of other-worldliness is inspired into their work, that they may have impressed upon them the fact that man's destiny is greater than success in this world, and that his real goal is heaven. The work on Heaven and Hell is used as a text in this course.

     In the third year, the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine is used as a text, and the church as a unit, as a whole, is painted. This is the age where strong loyalities assert themselves, and the endeavor is made to make them feel that the New Jerusalem is in very fact their Church, to whose purposes and achievements their lives should be dedicated.

     In the fourth and last year, they are first given the laws of the Divine Providence, with the endeavor to show them the presence of the living God of love in all the affairs of human life, that their contact with the Divine Spirit may be full, and real, and personal, and within their grasp. This is followed by a course in the great doctrine of Conjugial Love, where the vision of marriage, as set forth in the Heavenly Doctrine, given them as their ideal of life; and the whole wonder of God's creative power is lovingly portrayed in the sphere of true religion.

     The other courses of study all revolve about the course in religion as their center, and every teacher, from his own angle of illustration, brings the same message to the plastic minds of the growing youths. This is what religion in education means.

     That Old Church educators are not altogether blind to the need of a true religion in their educational work, is manifest from the following significant paragraph from a book by Wm. E. Chancellor, Superintendent of the schools of Washington, D. C. He says:

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     "Nothing more clearly indicates the decadence of the Church than that in Protestant circles it now relegates the religious instruction of the young to an hour on Sundays for the benefit of those who come, totally neglecting those who do not care to come. This course is nothing more nor less than neglecting its very life-blood. The Church has ceased to be a universal institution, and needs itself to be redeemed. 'Preach the Gospel to every creature' means being the keeper of the children of the neighbor. Every child of right is born into the Church as well as the State, the School, and the Family."

     When some in the Old Church itself realize this need, how much more must we, who are to be torch-bearers, realize it! To us has been revealed the spiritual environment of our children. To us it has been granted to know what remains are implanted during this age of life. We have been given a vision of the grafting of a new limb from the tree of life upon the old tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We know that before us lie the seven years of plenty in which to do our work. Shall we be found wanting? Is not the vision sufficiently clear? Let us gird ourselves for our task with a new consecration!

     First, let us seek the means from the Lord for stimulating with higher ideals the natural affection for scientifics, which is so strong at the entrance into High-School life. Second, let us preserve in the minds of our young, through the fostering sphere of the Church, a simple obedience to the tenets of Divine Revelation, and that affection for scientifics which is the basis for instruction at this period. Third, let us build in the minds of our students a religion for youth which shall have a definite relationship to the evils then manifest in their lives, encouraging the shunning of evils as sins against God, and glorifying their lives through a vision of a life of usefulness and a devotion thereto. Fourth, when doubts come, as come they will, let us give from Revelation a picture of the glory and wonder of the new life, which shall inspire our students to make it their own. Fifth, let it be our every endeavor to allow the minds of our pupils to ripen to full maturity, using all the means at our disposal to insure a balanced growth, so that, upon separating from the parent tree, the seed of a regenerating life will ensure a fruition into life eternal.

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     Today, only a small proportion of the New Churchmen in the world have beheld the vision of New Church education. Let us pray that the Lord, in His mercy, will increase this band in wisdom, in love, and in numbers, that the torch-bearers who shall carry far the blazing emblem of the Church shall never cease to go out into all the highways and byways of the world, ever faithful to their greatest trust,-the proclamation of the Gospel: " That the Lord Jesus Christ reigneth, and of His kingdom there shall be no end."
IMPRESSIONS OF THE ASSEMBLY 1928

IMPRESSIONS OF THE ASSEMBLY       J. S. P       1928

     IN RETROSPECT.

     The Thirteenth General Assembly will probably go down into history as the "International Assembly." Members and friends from the United States, Holland, Canada, Sweden and Brazil hobnobbed with those from Scotland, Australia, France, South Africa and England. Those who could not understand their neighbor's language proved their fraternal feelings with many a friendly nod and smile.

     The Victoria Halls, where the Services and Sessions were held, proved a very satisfactory home for the Assembly. The large and pleasant rooms near the center of London, were yet private and quiet because situated on a typical London square, one of the many eases of lawns and ancient trees hidden behind and between the busy thoroughfares of that big city. One of the pleasant memories of the Assembly is of the many informal gatherings out in Bloomsbury Square, before and after the meetings.

     England's much libelled weather proved that it can smile. It had, in fact, been practising for many weeks, and remained fine until the meetings were over.

     Other things were equally well arranged, and many thanks are due to the Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal and his committee for their efficient organization and successful carrying out of the whole program. Their attention to our needs and comfort gave them very little leisure.

     Of the social occasions, the Reception and Social on the Monday evening, August 6th, was a great success. With pleasures for young and older,-music, dialogue, dancing, singing and refreshments,-what more could be desired?

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     The Reception at the fine old Crosby Hall, at the invitation of Mrs. Lauriston Shaw and Miss Spalding, with its fine music, was a very delightful time. And the Assembly Banquet on Saturday, August 11th, was a real "Academy" time, a feast of good things both mental and otherwise.

     The Ladies' Dinner under the auspices of Theta Alpha was a successful and enjoyable time, while the men,-endeavoring to prove their independence of the other sex,-had what they said was the best meeting of the whole Assembly, with the most and finest speeches. Of course, it is what the ladies do not say that means the most. But then they do leave so little unsaid!

     Between meetings, those from overseas had much sightseeing to do,-The Tower, The Abbey, Liberty's, Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and visiting one another's hotels. There was also a motorcoach trip to Colchester, the ride enlivened by the ingenuous and ingenious remarks of the self-elected guide. That town's ancient and modern, Norman, medieval, Roman and New Church buildings, were hurriedly inspected, but entirely approved.

     In fine, it was a great Assembly, "better and better every day, and carried out in a New Church way."
SOME GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 1928

SOME GENERAL IMPRESSIONS.       J. S. P       1928

     The Thirteenth General Assembly of the General Church of the New Jerusalem-the first General Assembly to be held on England's soil-has, so far as things ponderable in time and space are concerned, passed into the realm of history. Its spiritual reactions may well continue for centuries, since by its agency friendships were formed, enthusiasms aroused, and doctrinal concepts elucidated which time itself may prove powerless to efface.

     A pen much more facile than my own is needed to record even a tithe of the impressions and emotions which follow in the wake of web an Assembly, yet I will try to set down two or three very shortly.

     The first impression is undoubtedly one of gratitude,-profound gratitude to the Great Convener of Assemblies. I use the word "convene" rather than "convoke," because, as will be admitted, the sphere of the Divine presence was perceptible at many of the gatherings.

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Deep gratitude to our Bishop for his initiatory vision and courage in pronouncing an Assembly in London as desirable and therefore possible. Lively gratitude to all those, on both sides of the Atlantic, exalted or humble as they were, who labored so untiringly and intelligently in the province of administration to accomplish an but standing success. That the Assembly proved to be a notable triumph on all planes, none will deny.

     The second impression comes from an appreciation of the remarkable vivacity of our visiting brothers and sisters. From the first point of contact-and some of those first contacts were humorous enough, by my token-to the final handshake, waist-clasp, or shoulder-buffet, they were all alert and eager for the Church. To our overseas colleagues, the Church is unmistakably the thing. Any person, any thing, which makes for the welfare of the Church is immediately welcomed by them and helped forward; and it was abundantly clear that the old, friendly teaching as to the relation of religion and life was observed every day of the week and properly assimilated.

     The third impression dominant in my mind was that of the intense and unswerving loyalty to the Bishop. Not a confused, half-hesitating, following at some distance, but a clear-sighted, intelligent, cooperating loyalty. A loyalty which most of the time keeps step with the leading, and when this is not seen, is content to respond in the conviction that love for the welfare of the Church is its motive power, and that in all probability the means employed are the best available.

     My fourth and last impression is of a renewed realization of the actuality of the Church. To those who have to pass the greater part of their church lives in isolation, this meeting with members holding the same faith stimulates a sense of the reality of the Church, and of the work which is always going on within its borders. Social life to the isolated is often little more than a phrase, and they, perhaps, sometimes wonder how they would behave in a heavenly society if ever they reach one. The Assembly meetings-our friends will detect no trace of flattery in this-amongst many others, have served the use of relighting the desire for cooperation and association with those whose lives are so faithfully devoted to spreading the knowledge of the New Jerusalem upon our earth.

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     I venture to say that we in England never expected to participate in such a series of wonderful events. The religious services and the successive ordinations were soul-stirring to a degree. The papers and debates were on a high level throughout, and will serve as a standard for future years. While the intermingling of the sober and the frivolous at the many lunches and dinners not only caused the servers to loosen their facial muscles, but made our own people winnow out the wheat from the chaff, there being a plentiful supply of both.

     The Thirteenth Assembly, then, was brilliant in every respect. It brought with it a new visualization of the Church and church-fellowship, and not the least valuable of its gifts was a newer understanding of the prime importance of New Church Education.

     May we hope that, as a result, something more definite in this matter of education will be brought about in England?     
     J. S. P.
ASSEMBLY AND AFTER IT 1928

ASSEMBLY AND AFTER IT        BAECKSTROM       1928

     WRITES FROM SWEDEN.

     The Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE has invited me to say some words about the impressions made upon me by the General Assembly, and perhaps the best way to do it will be to translate some extracts from what I have just written for our Swedish publication, NOVA ECCLESLA:

     The General Assembly in London is now only a memory. No, it is more than a memory; it is an experience of life. And this experience is, first of all, the spirit that inspired all the meetings, from the beginning even to the end,-the spirit of faithfulness to the Revelation that is given to us by the Lord through his servant, the spirit of implicit acknowledgment of its Divine authority, the spirit of devotion to the truths of its doctrines, the spirit of a strong and true brotherhood that unites all, independent of nationality, age and social conditions, into a harmonious unity. That our Bishop's intention to strengthen this spirit by such a meeting was fully attained, we all felt, and perhaps never so strongly as when we all, young and old, from so many parts of the world, joined in songs such as these: "Our Glorious Church, thou heavenly bride," "Dear Alma Mater, hear our song," and last, but not least, "Our Own Academy!"

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     The young and sympathetic Bishop de Charms, with Mrs. de Charms Mrs. Selma Gyllenhaal and Mr. Leonard Gyllenhaal followed our returning Swedes to this country. Soon after them came the Rev. and Mrs. W. L. Gladish. And earlier, Mr. and Mrs. Gustav Welander and Mrs. Ingrid Larsson, with her two sons, had come from Arlington, New Jersey. So quite a number of friends from across the sea assembled in Stockholm, and they all attended the worship there on August 19th. The following Sunday, Bishop de Charms preached to us on the subject of "Prisoners of Hope." The sermon was briefly interpreted in Swedish by our Pastor, and will be published in full in NOVA ECCLESIA.

     The spirit of the meetings in London was carried over to Sweden and continued by this visit of our friends from abroad. They were ever memorable days we spent together, and the Sunday of August 26th marked the climax. After the service, we had dinner for our guests, with about thirty persons present. Of all the animated speeches, none was more successful than that of Mr. Gyllenhaal in Swedish. (He is always successful here when he speaks our language.) After dinner, there was a social, to which some more of our members and friends came. On this occasion, Bishop de Charms spoke about the meetings in London, and especially with regard to the prevailing spirit there. "What we desire in the General Church," he said, "is to create everywhere a sphere of mutual love, and of a worship of the Lord as He has come to us in the Writings of Swedenborg." And we surely all felt something of this sphere, something of the mutual love in the Lord, which must be inmostly present in our being together, in order that there may be a spirit of true charity in it.

     Our pastor then spoke of what the General Church has done for us spiritually, as well as in the matter of support, and expressed our willingness to do what we can to become a self-supporting society. He asked Bishop de Charms to convey our thankfulness and greetings to our friends who so lovingly and self-sacrificingly have helped us, and at the same time have always made us feel nothing but full liberty and independence in every respect.

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     The following day there was another meeting, at which Bishop de Charms spoke on New Church Education, and especially about the schools in Bryn Athyn, showing us how the truths of religion can be implanted in the instruction given on different subjects, such as natural history and mathematics, together with the external facts of these subjects,-an instruction which makes these schools something quite unique, makes them an institution, the like of which does not exist in the world.

     In NOVA ECCLESIA, we have further given the statistics of membership during the last thirty years, referred to by Bishop de Charms at the Assembly in London. And we add: "These are figures which speak, and call for an earnest consideration. It is the New Church schools that have done this. It is also the marriages within the Church. But it is something more. In the very innermost it is the full and unconditional acknowledgment of the Divine authority of the Writings, and a love for the revealed truth. This is the spirit and life of the Academy. This is the reason why it is dear to its sons and daughters, and why they sing, in a way that no others can do, 'Our own Academy!'"

     Our pastor especially expressed our great regret at not having Bishop Pendleton with us this time, and asked Bishop de Charms to convey to him our most hearty greetings of affection and love.
     GUSTAF BAECKSTROM.

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OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES 1928

OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES       N. D. PENDLETON       1928

     Thirteenth General Assembly, August 4-12, 1928.

     REPORT OF THE BISHOP OF THE GENERAL CHURCH ON ORDINATIONS AND PASTORAL CHANGES SINCE THE LAST GENERAL ASSEMBLY

     Ordinations

     On March 11, 1928, the Rev. George de Charms was ordained into the Third Degree of the Priesthood.

     On June 12, 1928, Candidates Victor J. Gladish, Vincent C. Odhner, Norman H. Reuter and Hendrik W. Boef were ordained into the First Degree of the Priesthood.

     On August 5, 1928, 11:00 A.M., the Rev. Robert James Tilson was ordained into the Third Degree of the Priesthood.

     Mr. Henry Leonardos and Mr. Joao de Mendonca Lima, having for seven years, by special authorization, performed the functions of the First and Second Degrees of the Priesthood, were on August 5, 1928, 7:00 P.M., ordained into the First and the Second Degrees thereof.

     The Rev. Elmo C. Acton having been ordained into the First Degree of the Priesthood, and having been for two years authorized to perform the functions of the Second Degree, was on August 5, 1928, 7:00 P.M., ordained into the Second Degree of the Priesthood.

     The Rev. Victor J. Gladish was on August 5, 1928, 7:00 P.M., ordained into the Second Degree of the Priesthood.

     Pastoral Changes

     Subsequent to the last General Assembly, the Rev. Frederick W. Elphick began his work as Superintendent of the General Church Mission in South Africa.

     The Rev. Llewellyn W. T. David tendered his resignation as pastor of the Carmel Church of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. This resignation was laid before the Society an October 18, 1927, and was accepted. Mr. David was subsequently appointed by the Bishop to take charge of the Society, pending the selection of another pastor.

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     In order to accept a position as teacher in the Schools of the Academy, beginning with the fall term of 1928, the Rev. Homer Synnestvedt resigned as pastor of the Pittsburgh Society.

     In order to accept a position as teacher in the Schools of the Academy, and as an assistant pastor of the Bryn Athyn Society, beginning with the fall term of 1928, the Rev. Hugo L. Odhner resigned as pastor of the Olivet Church of Toronto, Canada.

     In order to accept a call to the Carmel Church of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, the Rev. Alan Gill tendered his resignation as pastor of the New York Society, on April 6, 1928, to take effect as of September 1, 1928

     On March 26, 1928, the Rev. Eldred E. Iungerich resigned as Dean of the College, to take effect September 1, 1928, in order to accept a call to become pastor of the Pittsburgh Society.

     Arrangements have been made for the Rev. William B. Caldwell and the Rev. William Whitehead to preach for the New York Society on the first and third Sundays of each month, alternately, and to hold doctrinal classes, once a month in New York and once a month in New Jersey, on the Saturday evenings preceding the Sundays on which services are held. This plan to take effect as of September 16, 1928.

     The Rev. Frederick E. Gyllenhaal has accepted a call to the Olivet Church of Toronto, Canada, and has accordingly tendered his resignation as pastor of the Colchester Society, to take effect on September 1, 1928.

     The Rev. Victor J. Gladish has been appointed minister to the Colchester Society. He will assume the duties of this ministry on September 1, 1928.

     The Rev. Hendrik W. Beef has been appointed to minister to the group of General Church members in Los Angeles, Cal.

     The Rev. Norman H. Reuter has been appointed as assistant to the pastor of the Glenview Society. He will also teach in the School of that Society.

     The Rev. Vincent C. Odhner has been appointed minister to the group of General Church members residing in Philadelphia. He will also be a special teacher in the Academy Schools.

     In conclusion I desire to note the death of the Bishop Emeritus William Frederic Pendleton, and of the Rev. Ernst Deltenre. Mr. Deltenre was for fifteen years the Superintendent of the Brussels Mission. His death deprived the Church of a keen intellect and an able theologian. His going made the dosing of the Brussels Mission an unfortunate necessity, since his place could not be filled.

     The death of the Bishop Emeritus, who was from February 6, 1897 to June 22, 1915 the Bishop of the General Church, can be here only briefly noted. The regard in which he was held by the members of the General Church, which body, in its present form, he was instrumental in founding, is expressed in several articles which appeared in the January, 1928, issue of New Church Life. Here it may only be said that the passing of time will not lessen the admiration of those who have known and loved him.
     N. D. PENDLETON,
          Bishop of the General Church.

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REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH 1928

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH              1928

     During the five months that have elapsed since the last report of statistics, December 31, 1927, we have received 33 new members. Deducting 12 deaths, the net increase in five months was 21, which increased our total membership from 1912 to 1933, this being the number of record at this date (May 31, 1928).

     During the two years that have elapsed since the report to the last General Assembly, we have received 143 new members, or an average of 71 a year. During that two-year period there were 53 deaths. Deducting these 53 from the 143 new members leaves a net increase of go in two years, or an average net increase of 45 a year.

Total Membership, May 31, 1926      1,843
New Members in 2-year period      143
                         1986
Deducting deaths               53
Total Membership, May 31, 1928      1,933

     These figures do not include the membership of the South African Native Missions. According to the report of the Missions to December 31, 1927, there is a total of approximately 636 native members in various parts of South Africa.

     NEW MEMBERS

     January 1, 1928 to May 31, 1928

     A. IN THE UNITED STATES

     Atlanta, Georgia
Mr. Augustus Chester Frost

     Chicago, Illinois
Mr. Irving John Anderson
Mr. Edmund Young Gunsteens

     Glenview, Illinois
Mr. Adam Wright Melzer

     East Aurora, New York
Miss Eleanor Grace Loomis

     Cheshire, Ohio
Mr. Ellison Castor Boatman

     Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania
Miss Katherine Macbeth Boggess
Miss Beryl Gertrude Caldwell
Mr. John Adam Doering
Miss Anita Synnestvedt

     Erie, Pennsylvania
Miss Doris Madeline Cranch

     Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
Mr. Stanley Faulkner Ebert

     B. IN CANADA

     Hamilton, Ontario
Miss Marion Lyle Hicks

     Toronto, Ontario
Mr. Felix du Quesne
Miss Jacquine Fountain
Miss Annie Marie Raymond
Miss Doris Margaret Raymond
Miss Emily Jean Raymond
Mr. Adriaan Laurusse van Paassen
Mrs. Adriaan Laurusse van Paassen

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     C. IN ENGLAND

     London
Miss Jeltze Jacobus Posthuma

     Somerset
Miss Jean Morris
Miss Muriel Gertrude Morris

     
D. IN SWEDEN

     Stockholm
Miss Alma Wilhelmina Bergh
Miss Amy Mary Elisabeth Stavenow
Mrs. Alma Axelina Tengstrom

     E. IN HOLLAND

     Arnhem
Miss Jacoba Henriette Robbemond

     The Hague
Mrs. Helena Hendrika Brandenburg
Dr, Feiko Van der Feen
Mrs. Feiko Van der Feen
Miss Hilda Van der Feen

     F. IN SOUTH AFRICA

     Durban, Natal
Miss Joyce Melville Ridgway
Mr. Carl Dowdall Schulz

     DEATHS

     January 1, 1928 to May 31, 1928

*Mr. Charles D. Weirbach, Harrisburg, Pa., June 6, 1925.
*Mr. Walter W. Northgraves, April 30, 1921.
Mrs. Smith Gilroy, Fox Chase, Pa., January 20, I928.
Mr. Emil Theodor Eriksson, Stockholm, Sweden, January 29, 1928.
Mrs. E. P. Goodrich, Warren, O., January 29, 1928.
Mr. William Francis Junge, Glenview, Pi., February 3, 1928.
Mrs. Theobald S. Kuhl, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, February 10, 1928.
Mr. David Denney, Norbury, London, England, February 12, 1928.
Miss Agnes Therese C. Engstedt, Enskede, Stockholm, Sweden, February 14, 1928.
Mr. William P. Lidman, Chicago, Ill., February 26, 1928.
Mr. Daniel E. Horigan, Pittsburgh, Pa., March 6, 1928.
Miss Ida Hauser, Redland, Bristol, England, March 16, 1928.
Mr. Robert Carswell, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, March 20, 1928.
Miss Eliza Mitchell, Yonkers, N. Y., April 4, 1928.
     * This death occurred before the period of this report but notice was not received until this period.
REPORT OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY 1928

REPORT OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY       WILLIAM WHITEHEAD       1928

     June 1, 1928

     During the two-year period since the Twelfth General Assembly in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (June, 1926), the following events and facts of general interest have been recorded:

     1. The total MEMBERSHIP of the clergy has increased by three, and this notwithstanding the deaths of Bishop W. F. Pendleton and the Rev. Ernst Deltenre.

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     On June 17th inst., four Authorized Candidates are to be ordained into the First Degree of the Priesthood, viz., Messrs. Hendrik Willem Boef, Victor Jeremiah Gladish, Vincent Carmond Odhner, and Norman Harold Reuter. On August 5th next, the Revs. Henry Leonardos and Joao de Mendonca Lima will be ordained into the First and Second Degrees; the Revs. Elmo Acton and Victor Jeremiah Gladish are to be ordained into the Second Degree; and the Rev. Robert James Tilson is to be ordained into the Third Degree bf the priesthood.

     The list of the Clergy will then comprise three Bishops, thirty-seven Pastors and four Ministers,-making a total of forty-four.

     2. VARIOUS CHANGES have taken place during the past two years as to the location of the members of the Clergy, as follows:

     The Rev. Llewellyn Warren Towne David has resigned as Pastor of the Carmel Church, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

     The Rev. Alan Gill has resigned as Pastor of the New York Society, and has accepted a call to the Carmel Church at Kitchener.

     The Rev. Frederick Edmund Gyllenhaal has resigned as Pastor of the society in Colchester, England, and has accepted a call to the Olivet Church, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

     The Rev. Victor Jeremiah Gladish has accepted a call to the society in Colchester, England.

     The Rev. Eldred Edward Iungerich has resigned as Dean of the College and Professor of Theology in Bryn Athyn, and accepted a call to the society in Pittsburgh, Pa.

     The Rev. Hugo Ljungberg Odhner has resigned as Pastor of the Olivet Church, Toronto, Canada, and accepted a call as an Assistant-Pastor to the Bryn Athyn society and Professor of Theology in the Schools of the Academy.

     The Rev. Homer Synnestvedt has resigned the pastorate of the Pittsburgh society, and accepted the position of Professor of Education in the Schools of the Academy.

     The Rev. Hendrik Willem Boef will minister to the Los Angeles society, California.

     The Rev. Vincent Carmond Odhner will take part in the educational work of the Academy Schools.

     The Rev. Norman Harold Reuter will assist in the pastoral and educational uses of the Glenview society, Illinois.

     3. The New York Society has been compelled, for want of sufficient means, to give up regular services each Sunday. No longer being able to sustain a resident pastor, the Society has requested the Bishop of the General Church to act as Pastor ex-officio. At the request of the Society, and with the approval of the Bishop, services and doctrinal classes will be conducted twice a month in the Society by the Revs. W. B. Caldwell and W. Whitehead, of Bryn Athyn.

     No longer being able to support regular Sunday services, the Philadelphia Society has sold its church building. Weekly doctrinal classes, however, have been held at the homes of members by the Rev. Mr. Boef, whose work will be taken over next fall by the Rev. Vincent C. Odhner.

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     Owing to the death of the Rev. Ernst Deltenre, the circle in Brussels, Belgium, has been disbanded; the Book Room hitherto conducted there has been discontinued; and its official organ, La Nouvelle Jerusalem, has suspended publication.

     4. The RITES AND SACRAMENTS of the Church, as reported for the two-year period ending January 1st, 1928, show the following totals:

     Baptisms                               221
     (South African natives, additional, 140)
Confessions of Faith                         52
Betrothals                               28
Marriages                               47
Funerals                                    60
Holy Supper                               344
(Public administrations, 292; Private administrations, 52.)

     5. The DAY SCHOOLS of the General Church at present comprise seven, as follows:

Bryn Athyn, Pa.:           10 regular and 7 special teachers, and 150 pupils
Colchester, England:           No statistics available.
Durban, South Africa:      No statistics available.
Glenview, Ill.:           4 teachers, and 43 pupils.
Kitchener, Ont., Canada:      2 teachers and 14 pupils.
Pittsburgh, Pa.:           2 teachers, and 17 pupils.
Toronto, Ont., Canada:      1 teacher and 11 pupils.

     In addition, there are reported to be 314 pupils in Day Schools connected with the South African Mission. Excluding the latter, there are at present 26 teachers and 235 pupils engaged in New Church Day School work, in the General Church.

     We regret to report that the Day School formerly conducted in connection with the Burton Road Society, London, England, was discontinued in July, 1927, for lack of pupils.

     6. SUNDAY SCHOOLS OR CHILDREN'S SERVICES at present total fourteen, and comprise 29 teachers and 405 pupils. This is exclusive of Sunday School pupils in the South African Mission, who number 101.

     7. The AVERAGE ATTENDANCE at public worship in the 25 societies and circles of the General Church (including children) is: 965. (The actual membership of these 25 societies and circles is 1242.) The average attendance at the administrations of the Holy Supper is ???. The average attendance at doctrinal classes is 457.

     (Note: These figures as to average attendances do not include the South African Mission, where the figures are incomplete.)

     8. The NON-MEMBERS of the General Church who are yet regular attendants at worship or doctrinal classes (including children, young people and adults), number 414.

     None of the statistics in this present Report include the Colchester and Durban societies, as no reports have been received from these places.

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     9. It is pleasing to report that the circle in Los Angeles, California which has been holding Sunday services twice a month at the residence of one of its members, will now have regular services each Sunday, also doctrinal classes, to be conducted by the new resident minister, the Rev. H. W. Boef, who assumes his duties in the fall.

     10. The Council of the Clergy has continued its customary profitable and inspiring Annual Meetings in February of each year, at Bryn Athyn, Pa. (see reports in New Church Life, March, 1927, pp. 168-170; also March, 1928, pp. 173-177.)

     11. On the resignation of the Rt. Rev. George de Charms as Secretary of this Council, in September, 1927, the undersigned assumed these duties by appointment of the Bishop of the General Church.
     Respectfully submitted,
          WILLIAM WHITEHEAD,
               Secretary of Council of the Clergy.
REPORT OF THE EDITOR OF "NEW CHURCH LIFE" 1928

REPORT OF THE EDITOR OF "NEW CHURCH LIFE"       W. B. CALDWELL       1928

     A VEHICLE OF COMMUNICATION

     Since my report to the last General Assembly, our magazine has been published regularly, and its monthly issues may be said to constitute their own report. The editorial policy pursued, and the character of the contents, are known to you, and are open to comment and discussion. Suggestion and criticism, looking to improvement in the service performed, are at all times welcome.

     As time goes on, and our Church expands, our periodicals will be enlarged to include many new features, such as literature for the young, fiction, more illustrations, and so on. The number of writers will increase, furnishing greater variety of subject and treatment. Under present circumstances, we all have many duties, and cannot concentrate too heavily upon any one use. And so we must do the best we can. Yet the pages of the Life bring to its readers many papers which are the result of long and careful study,-valuable contributions to the understanding of the things of the church. Short articles also have their use, especially to the casual reader and the busy man. Our writers might bear this in mind, and share with us some of their thoughts in the form of brief treatments of vital subjects.

     For that is what our pages are for,-a means of shaving our ideas with others, a vehicle of communication. In my last report I stated that it was our aim "to make the Life a reflection of the current thought of the General Church, and thus to approximate that communication of thought and affection which exists in the spiritual world." In this, I think, we view the essential use of a church periodical. And so, with your permission, I will here enlarge somewhat upon the statement.

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     We are familiar with the teaching concerning the communication of all goods in the other life, whereby every angel and good spirit shares his blessedness with others. And we regard the life of the church as a preparation for that happy state.

     "Such is the angelic state," we read, "that everyone communicates his own blessedness and felicity to another. For in the other life there is given a communication and most exquisite perception of all affections and thoughts, in consequence of which each communicates his joy to all, and all to each, so that everyone is, as it were, the center of all; which is the heavenly form. Wherefore, the greater the number of those who constitute the Lord's Kingdom, the greater is their happiness; for it increases in proportion to the numbers." (A. C. 549.) Further, we read: "Not only is there a communication of another's affections and thoughts, but there is also a communication of his knowledge, to such a degree that the one spirit thinks that he has known what the other knows, although he had actually known nothing of it; thus all the knowledge of the other is communicated. Some spirits retain it, others do not." (A. C. 1390.) In the other life, therefore, the good do not keep to themselves what they feel, think and know, but give them forth spontaneously as uses to others, and receive likewise from others,-a living fulfilment of the law: "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again." (Luke 6:38.)

     In the church it is possible to approach this heavenly ideal, by the manifestation of affections, the expression of thoughts and the imparting of knowledges, one to another and each to all, thus promoting an exchange and intercommunication of spiritual goods. In the natural world, indeed, there are obstructions which do not exist in the other world, where there is free interplay of mind with mind, and transmission through spheres. Here we require ultimate instrumentalities which are less employed in the world to come. And in our modern world these ultimate vehicles are being more and more perfected, and there is an ever-increasing dissemination of ideas and information throughout the world, by the printed word, by wireless and by radio. Who knows but that e'er long the proceedings of a General Assembly will be broadcast, while practically the entire membership of the General Church "listens in." For at this day in the world we are approximating crudely the conditions of the spirit-world, where the activities of angelic thought and affection are extended even to the interstellar universe, and taken up by all who can receive and benefit. So does our Lord provide mutual blessing for all in His heavenly kingdom.

     Nevertheless, in the spiritual world, as in this, there is need for books and the printed page as vehicles of communication, as a means of permanent record and the source of information. Moses still carries the Pentateuch about under his arm; the Word, in many forms, is preserved; and the books of the Heavenly Doctrine are imparting their precious message of the Second Advent to spirits and angels everywhere. The angels write letters to those in other societies (S. D. 5563), and thus ultimate their desire to communicate and exchange ideas.

781


Those in the same society, doubtless, have less need for letter-writing, but are better able to communicate from mind to mind or by the spoken word.

     Now the church on earth is essentially a spiritual society,-an association of minds cherishing a like faith and charity, each mind active in its own degree of affection and thought, giving forth of its own measure of sphere and light to the common sphere of the whole church. Within a spiritual society such as we trust our General Church is, having a common faith and love, a common tradition and knowledge, and united by many bonds of use, there is undoubtedly a spiritual communication from mind to mind among the members, scattered as they are over the whole world. As the light of the Word in the church is propagated to the gentiles by a spiritual communication (S. S. 110), that they may not wholly "sit in darkness," so that propagation of light must be great within the church, were it is received by spiritual minds. But this spiritual communication among the members of the church is an unconscious diffusion of light, albeit powerful and effective. That there may be an actual transfer and reception of the knowledges and ideas of Revelation, there must be ultimate vehicles,-the spoken word, and the written and printed word,-sent about among those of a like faith, that there may be a clear and definite communication of ideas, given forth by one mind and received by other minds. The communication by spheres is insufficient; in fact, such a communication of sphere is only set up by those who are being instructed from the Word, and whose growing thought and affection in spiritual things make them projectors of light.

     There is probably no isolated member of the church but longs for closer consociation with others of the faith. He indeed receives a spiritual support from the sphere of the church, and is informed and instructed by the printed page, but he realizes that it is "not good for man to be alone." Swedenborg tells of a spirit who thought he could get along without any communication with others, but he was shown by experience that he could not even think without influx from some society. (H. H. 201.) We all need the light of other minds. However great the value of individual reading of the Books of Divine Revelation, and meditation thereon, we also need contact with others who are doing the same, if we would enlarge our mental horizon. Moreover, the mind that is too much alone falls into errors. We are apt to draw hasty conclusions from what we read, perhaps from one truth unrelated with others, which would be supplied by association with other readers and students. A growing mind is ever open to the reception of new light, and it is the complex of such minds that constitutes a growing church.

     While those of one general body of the church are of like mind on the great universals of faith, they do not always see alike in particulars or in the applications of doctrine. But we come together in meetings with the aim of finding greater agreement, and all derive benefit. In every service of worship, and in every doctrinal class, there is growth in this respect. In the light of the priest, who has given much thought and study to his subject, all come to see new things, and to a greater agreement in the common thought.

782


But the priests themselves know the need of mutual counsel and interchange of ideas, that they may rise out of the limitations of individual thought, and escape from the mental pockets into which the best informed minds may fall.

     Now our church magazines, as vehicles of expression in the church, perform the uses we have touched upon. Our official organ is a means of communicating the affection and thought and the knowledge of the members, instructing, informing, extending the light wherever there are those who read, and increasing the common affection of charity and spiritual love. Incidentally, also, this extension of light has its purifying effects, clarifying difficulties, removing prejudices, enlarging the individual range of vision, and thus promoting mental growth. For there is no growth without purification,-the removal of fallacious ideas, half-truths, falsities, from the mind, that the truth may find a lodgment there. We cannot doubt that New Church Life, which for nearly fifty years has gone forth to the world with its message of sound doctrine, has accomplished far more than we can measure in instructing and clarifying the minds of New Churchmen everywhere.

     Not infrequently I meet a member who does not know what is going on elsewhere in the church, or who is not conversant with the things that are being written and talked about in the church. Like as not, he is disgruntled over some local or personal difficulty. But I cannot but marvel at his missing the opportunity to keep informed about what is going on in the church at large, beyond his immediate horizon,-how the members elsewhere are meeting their problems, and how subjects of vital interest to the thought and life are being set forth in clear light by writers in our church periodicals, in a way that will uplift the individual out of his ruts. The members who read, and who discuss what they read with others, are continually benefitted by it.

     And so, in view of the unquestioned use performed by our magazine, I can but bespeak more readers; I would at the same time bespeak more writers, well as the continuance of participation on the part of all who have been readers and contributors in the past-that this vehicle of communication may go forth an its monthly journeys to the homes of New Churchmen laden ever more richly and abundantly with the precious things which the Lord in His Second Coming would impart to His New Church.
     Respectfully submitted,
          W. B. CALDWELL.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON NEW CHURCH SERMONS 1928

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON NEW CHURCH SERMONS       Various       1928

     During the past two years this periodical of the General Church has been issued regularly on the first of each month, from October to June. These New Church Sermons are published primarily for the use of all isolated receivers and others who desire to use them in conjunction with the monthly sermon in New Church Life, for family worship or individual reading, each Sunday. They are mailed to all who make application for the same.

783


No subscription price has been placed on this periodical; but all who wish to aid in the continuance of this growing ministration of the General Church are free to send their contributions to the Treasurer of the General Church.

     We are happy to report that, during the past year, numerous evidences of the appreciation of this use have been brought to our attention. The Treasurer of the General Church confirms this. The very large proportion of isolated receivers in our body makes the progressive continuance of this use seem highly desirable.

     During the past year we have increased the number of addresses, etc., for children in home worship, without materially adding to the average size of the publication. For the coming year, we are able to announce that we have secured the valuable services of Miss Gertrude Nelson, of Glenview, Ill., who will contribute an excellent series of Biblical and other revealed stories for the young. Mr. Alvin Nelson has very generously agreed to defray the cost of the few additional pages needed to make this provision for distinctively New Church material for the children in our homes.

     We regret to add that, on September 1st of last year, the Rev. W. B. Caldwell who has ably edited New Church Sermons for some years, found it necessary to resign this use, for reasons stated in New Church Life, March, 1928, p. 186. The Bishop then appointed the Rev. W. Whitehead who has performed the editorial duties during the past year.

     We desire to acknowledge the excellent cooperation of those ministers who have forwarded sermons to the Chairman of the Committee, in response to our appeal of last fall.
     GEORGE DE CHARMS, Chairman.
     WM. WHITEHEAD, Editor.
REPORT OF THE VISITING PASTOR 1928

REPORT OF THE VISITING PASTOR       F. E. WAELCHLI       1928

     Since the last General Assembly, my work has been in three fields: the Middle West, California, and the South. In the Middle West the circles ministered to are Cincinnati, Detroit, Windsor, Erie, Youngstown, Middleport and Columbus; in California, Los Angeles, Ontario, and San Francisco; in the South, Knoxville, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Oak Hill, Miami and St. Petersburg.

     Twenty-two weeks of the year are given to Cincinnati, my place of residence; ten weeks to Los Angeles; and the remaining twenty weeks to the other fourteen places, the visits being in each case for several days, usually including a Sunday. In the Middle West at most places visits are made several times in the year. The distance traveled is about 10,000 miles.

     The total number of persons receiving ministrations in the sixteen places is about one hundred and fifty adults and sixty children, counting as children all under adult age.

     During recent years changes have been taking place in a number of the circles. There is a steady moving of families from smaller communities to the large cities; and also quite a number of families move to Bryn Athyn in order that the children may have the benefit of the Academy Schools.

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Consequently several of our circles are gradually decreasing in numbers, while some others are increasing. In the Middle West, Cincinnati and Detroit are enjoying a slow but steady growth. But the most notable growth has been in Los Angeles, California. In my report to the last General Assembly I spoke of the great need of a minister being placed there. Now this has come to pass and the Rev. Henry Boef will enter upon the work there in September. So, in this locality there is fulfilled one of the purposes of the visiting pastoral work, which is that places may be prepared for ministers.
     F. E. WAELCHLI,
          Visiting Pastor.
REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1928

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE        G. S. CHILDS       1928

     To the 1928 Annual Meeting of the General Church of the New Jerusalem (a corporation) and to the Thirteenth General Assembly of the General Church of the New Jerusalem (an ecclesiastical body): The Executive Committee has to report:

     That, at the Annual Meeting of the Corporation on June 17, 1926, the following gentlemen were elected members of the Board of Directors or Executive Committee, to serve for the term of one year and until their successors are elected:

Rt. Rev. N. D. Pendleton               Alex P. Lindsay
Raymond Pitcairn                S. S. Lindsay
G. S. Childs                         Charles G. Merrell
Hubert Hyatt                    Alvin E. Nelson
Dr. F. A. Boericke                     Seymour G. Nelson
Edward C. Bostock                    Harold F. Pitcairn
C. Raynor Brown                Rudolph Roschman
Paul Carpenter                         Jacob Schoenberger
Randolph W. Childs                    Paul Synnestvedt

     In addition, the following were elected Honorary Members of the Executive Committee:

Robert Carswell
Walter C. Childs
Richard Roschman

     That on the same day the Board of Directors or Executive Committee met, with thirteen members present, and elected the following officers:

     Rt. Rev. N. D. Pendleton, President
Raymond Pitcairn, Vice President.
Geoffrey S. Childs, Secretary
Hubert Hyatt, Treasurer

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     That on February 6, 1917, the following were elected members of the Executive Committee in accordance with the amended by-laws increasing the number of directors to twenty-five: Mr. Colley Pryke, Mr. J. Henry Ridgway and Mr. Nils E. Loven.

     That in the year 1926, subsequent to the General Assembly, three meetings were held by the Executive Committee; in the year 1927, five meetings; and in the year 1928 to date, three meetings have been held.

     That the meetings have been devoted to the adoption of the annual budget; and to the disposition of numerous financial matters presented to the Committee by the President and by the Treasurer.
     Respectfully submitted,
          G. S. CHILDS, Secretary
REPORT OF THE TREASURER OF THE GENERAL CHURCH 1928

REPORT OF THE TREASURER OF THE GENERAL CHURCH              1928

     FOR THE YEAR ENDING MAY 31ST, 1928

     The four following Statements are for the fiscal year 1927-28, beginning June 1st, 1927, and ending May 31st, 1928. They reflect the condition, as of May 31st, 1928, of all Funds owned or held in trust by the General Church.

     GENERAL CHURCH FUNDS.

     Assets     
                              
Investments                              $28,418.90
Cash          3,054.44
New Church Life Subscriptions in Arrears          39.74
Bills Receivable                         1,197.66
Total Assets                              $32,710.74

     Expense
Support of the Bishop's Office               $4,714.10
Publishing "New Church Life"               5,899.84
Publishing "New Church Sermons"               929.75
Traveling Expenses of                    
Rev. F. E. Waelchli                         515.26
Rev. H. Heinrichs                         217.30
Theological Students' Expense               538.43
Treasurer's office Expense                    1,298.60
Miscellaneous Expenditures                    73.69
Total Expense                              14,186.97
Surplus transferred to Emergency Reserve          $16,623.79

     Accountability
Endowment                              $23,701.29
Emergency Reserve                         7,750.83
New Church Life Subscriptions paid in advance     819.67
Bills Payable                              438.95
Total Accountability                         $32,710.74

     Income
Cash Contributions to                     $12,859.97
General Church                         118.02
"New Church Life" Subscriptions               1,1611.78
Interest                              1,859.28
Sundries                              138.74
Total Income                              $16,623.79

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     EXTENSION FUNDS.

Assets
Investments                              $73,189.18
Cash                                   269.60
Bills Receivable                         56.86
Total Assets                              $73,515.64
Expense
Extension Work in Europe                    $5,232.82
Extension Work in America                    2,925.00
Sundries                              234.21
Total Expense                              8,392.08

     Accountability
Endowment                              $71,878.42
Depreciation Reserve                         829.72
Bills Payable                              812.50
Total Accountability                         $73,515.64

     Income
Cash Contributions                         $178.75
Special Donations                         3,284.67
Interest                              4,348.87
Total Income                              7,807.29
Deficit Transferred from Depreciation
Reserve                              584.74
                                   $8,392.08

     PENSION FUNDS

Assets
Investments                              $67,314.06
Cash                                   1,227.26
Total Assets                              $68,541.32

     Expense
Seven Pensions                         $3,809.10
Sundries                              82.95
Total Expense                              3,892.05
Surplus Transferred to Depreciation Reserve     255.42
                                   $4,147.74

     Accountability
Endowment                              $67,615.30
Depreciation Reserve                         926.02
Total Accountability                         $68,541.32

     Income
Interest                              $4,147.47
Total Income                              4,147.47

     SUNDRY TRUST FUNDS
Assets
Investments                              $36,102.59
Cash                                   1,964.90
Total Assets                              $38,067.49

     Accountability
Advent Church Fund                         $16,788.00
Episcopal Visits Fund                    1,166.98
General Assembly Fund                    1,562.59
Orphanage Fund                         4,517.59
South American Fund                    13,057.88
Miscellaneous Funds                         1,025.00
Total Accountability                         $38,067.49

     H. Hyatt, Treasurer, Bryn Athyn, Pa., May 31st, 1928.
REPORT OF THE ORPHANAGE 1928

REPORT OF THE ORPHANAGE       WALTER C. CHILDS       1928

     To conserve the growth of the Church and to meet the desire of New Church parents that in case of their death their children should be reared in the Church, the Academy instituted an orphanage fund in 1883. This beginning was to assist a mother of five children whose father had died.

     During the forty-five years which have since elapsed, the use has developed slowly but continuously.

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So far as possible the effort has been to assist widowed mothers, members of the General Church, enabling them to maintain their homes and their children while located where the children shall have the advantage of an Academy School.

     At the present time three widows, with nine children who are attending Academy Schools, are receiving monthly assistance amounting to a total of $2,640.00 annually.

     Contributions for the support of the use are made to the Treasurer of the Orphanage Fund Committee, which committee is appointed and controlled by the Executive Committee of the General Church.

     Referring to the last Orphanage Fund Report (1927) it is interesting to note that nearly one-third of the total contributions came through the "Orphanage Fund Boxes,"-a plan devised by Dr. Acton, Secretary of the Orphanage Fund Committee. These boxes are distributed among the families of the General Church for use at family worship and the contributions are participated in by the children, who take delight in the giving, and who are thus initiated into the support of uses of charity.

     A growing Church and the emergencies of life make almost certain the need, perhaps imminent, for largely increased expenditures in the support of the Church's fatherless children. As matters stand, we must rely upon increasing the number of regular contributors to the Orphanage Fund.

     The Treasurer of the Academy holds in trust for the Orphanage Fund bequests and gifts amounting to $4,500.00, invested in securities which yield an annual income of about $260.00. It is manifest that the support of a use of this nature should have as its basis a substantial secured income.

     In conclusion, therefore, it is respectfully urged that the members of the General Church, in any prospective wills, give consideration to the use of the Orphanage Fund. Also, it is suggested that in any existing will, much and continuing good may be accomplished simply by the addition of a codicil naming the Orphanage Fund.
     THE ORPHANAGE FUND COMMITTEE, (Signed)
          WALTER C. CHILDS,
               Treasurer.
REPORT OF THE ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH 1928

REPORT OF THE ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH       C. E. DOERING       1928

     The resources of the Academy both in personnel and means have been taxed to the utmost to carry on all her uses.

     Four full years' work were done in the Girls' Seminary, four in the Boys' Academy, four were carried in the College by combinations and alternation of courses, and one year in the Theological School. In all, one hundred different courses were offered each year to the students in the four schools.

     Since the last Assembly in 1926, 22 young ladies received the diploma of the Girls' Seminary, 17 youths received the diploma of the Boys' Academy, representing in each case four years of work successfully completed. Eight young women and nine young men each received the Junior College Certificate, representing two years of college work successfully completed.

788


One young man received the degree of Bachelor of Science, representing four years' work successfully completed in the College, majoring in the sciences and mathematics. Four young men, having successfully completed the course prescribed for the Theological School, were granted the degree of Bachelor of Theology. The Academy also conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Theology on Dean Iungerich, in testification of his earnest labors for the Academy and his attainments as a scholar in those departments of learning which are of peculiar interest to New Church Schools.

     The increase in attendance at our College is encouraging in that it augurs that more young men and women are desirous of receiving a thorough grounding in the religion and philosophy of our Church before entering upon their life's work, and to have that training which shall prepare them to enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith, which is to be the peculiar characteristic mark of the New Church.

     Besides the regular curriculum the students have been occupied with considerable extra curriculum activities of educational value. Notable among these are the editing and publication of the Voice of the Campus and the Academy Year Book, which were published in 1927 and 1928 respectively. These give an idea of the students' point of view, and convey in a limited degree something of the atmosphere of the schools from their viewpoint. This year all the schools above the Second Grade of the Elementary School took part in presenting a representation of the story of Joseph in action and song, that served as a project for handwork of various kinds, and for the study of history, music, Hebrew, and religion. Much interest was stimulated, and a knowledge of and affection for the Word was engendered. About two hundred children and young people took part in this representation. The remains implanted by the sphere of reverence for what is holy, and learning to act together in choirs, with the ability to sing many passages from the Word, cannot but result in lasting impressions for good to all who took part, for all were deeply affected by the sphere. Not only they, but also the five hundred spectators were held entranced as by a charm, and were so moved that there was not the slightest desire or impulse to any levity.

     Sports, such as football, baseball, volley ball, and tennis, were other curriculum activities which have done not a little to weld the student body into a unit, and they have inspired them with manly virtues and patriotism for the school. Then too the Clubs have been a splendid training ground for learning parliamentary procedure and for discussing subjects of peculiar interest to the student. This has been particularly so of the College Club or Gymnasium, which is composed of the men of the Theological School and College, who have organized under the guidance of Dr. Acton, for the purpose of discussing topics of vital importance to them, in the light of the principles of the Doctrines of the Church, thereby getting valuable training in viewing things in the light of universals.

789




     PHOTOTYPING AND PHOTOSTATING

     At a former Assembly the Academy reported the completion of the phototyping of the Theological Manuscripts of Emanuel Swedenborg, undertaken by various New Church bodies under the direction and supervision of Mr. Alfred Stroh. Since then the Academy has had photostated the miscellaneous MSS. and letters, which were not included in the 1910 contract nor in the Photolithographs. The Academy has also cooperated with the Swedenborg Scientific Association in reproducing by photostat process the Scientific MSS. of Swedenborg, not hitherto reproduced. These so far amount to ten large folio volumes, or about 5,000 photostat pages.

     Dr. Acton, in a report to the Swedenborg Scientific Association in 1927, said "In a sense the work thus far done completes the photostating of Swedenborg's Scientific Works, but it does not complete the reproduction of the volumes as written by Swedenborg. In the photolithograph work done some sixty years ago, parts of manuscripts were taken and photolithographed in different photolithograph volumes. Sometimes also these parts were more or less rearranged, and in cases where there were notes or memoranda on fly leaves or cover pages, these were frequently omitted. As one who has had much experience in the study of Swedenborg's manuscripts, I would urge upon the Association the continuance of the work of Photostating until all of Swedenborg's Scientific Manuscripts have been reproduced exactly in the form and order in which he wrote them." This recommendation was approved and the Academy is cooperating with the Association in this.

     The same comment is partly applicable to the photolithograph reproduction of the Theological Manuscripts. These should be reproduced in photostat form so that future students of Swedenborg may have the opportunity to study Swedenborg's manuscripts in the order in which he wrote them and with all his notes and comments on the title pages. While the photolithographing Process was a wonderful thing sixty years ago, it cannot be compared in exactness with the modern processes, and the reproduction should be done while the manuscripts are still accessible. Another advantage the photostat process has is that copies can be reproduced at any time and the original manuscripts need not be disturbed.

     LIBRARY

     The Library and its uses have been growing slowly with the rest of the institution. At the recent meeting of Faculties and Board the Librarian reported that of the 42,550 volumes in the library, 9,463 volumes, or over 22 per cent., are editions of Swedenborg or collateral literature. Of these, 2,229 volumes are listed as the Star Collection, which is to include one set of every edition of the Writings that has ever been published, and it is not for circulation. 3,000 volumes of Swedenborg are in circulation, and 4,234 volumes are other Swedenborgiana. In addition to the above, the Library has been adding to its collection the literature of Swedenborg's time, and works referred to by him, until it now numbers upwards of 2,500 volumes. This is an invaluable collection to every student of the philosophy of Swedenborg, in that the study of these works helps him to have a truer historical conception of the development of Swedenborg's principles, and for this reason the Academy is endeavoring to make the collection as complete as possible.

790




     Housed in the library building is the Museum. This also has grown in size, and in usefulness to the students in all the different schools. It has added much to their interest in the subjects they are studying. Not only has it been of use to our own students, but it is also being noticed by old church scholars During the year just past a few archeologists from European and American institutions have come to study our collections.

     PUBLICATIONS

     As there is before the Assembly a separate report of the publications of the Academy, presented by the Academy Book Room, I need not duplicate what is there said, but I would like to say a few words about the Journal of Education. The Academy has not been able financially to again put it back on a quarterly basis, but we have come up from one number to two numbers a year. These two numbers give information about the schools. They contain the Catalogue of the Schools, annual reports of the work done during the year which are presented at the Joint Meeting of the Faculties and Corporation, and to some extent give an opportunity to put in permanent form the Literary productions of our professors and teachers, the result of their studies along New Church educational lines, which are of great value to their co-workers, and which some day may serve as sources from which distinctive New Church text books may be written. Even now they serve a great use, being mostly original studies, and our students are referred to them for their supplementary reference reading.

     SCHOLARSHIPS

     This report would not be complete without some word in regard to scholarships, particularly as the members of the Church have been called on for so many years to contribute to a scholarship fund. The funds contributed have enabled many young people to receive the benefits of an education which has awakened in them an affection for the spiritual things of the Church.

     Forty-eight students, or a little more than one third of our enrollment of 125 in the upper schools, last year received help through stipends or scholarships, which required funds amounting to $15,064.50.

     The Academy contributed nearly 76 per cent. of this or $11,412.50. $3,161.50 of this sum came from Trust Funds held by the Academy for scholarship purposes, but the largest part, $7,652.00, came from appropriations from general income, and was included in the Budget. When it is considered that tuition is only $100 a year, and board and room are furnished at cost, one can realize what the Academy is doing to encourage New Church parents to send their sons and daughters to its schools. Of the above $15,064.50, the Sons of the Academy contributed $2,625.50, approximately 19 per cent. of the total, collected by the Sons in small amounts from the members of the General Church. Theta Alpha contributed the balance, $1,025, 7 per cent., collected from their own membership.

791




     In addition to the above, it should be noted that students have had opportunity for employment, for only in a few cases is full board and tuition given. During the past year students have over 18,750 hours of service, which is estimated at a value of $6,662.50.

     So many students are benefitted by means of the working scholarship plan, in which the Church, through the ex-student organizations, is cooperating with the Academy, and the Academy also is benefitted in that the more students we have, the stronger is the school sphere, and the teachers are inspired to do better work, for it takes students as well as teachers to make a school.

     CONCLUSION

     From the very brief account of some of the Academy's uses, but more from the detailed reports as published in the Journal of Education you will see that the Academy is more and more fully carrying out the purposes for which it organized, and which are stated in its Charter in Article II., that "The Academy of the New Church shall be for the purpose of propagating the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem, and establishing the New Church signified in the Apocalypse by the New Jerusalem, promoting education in all its various forms, educating young: men for the ministry, publishing books, pamphlets, and other printed matter, and establishing a library."     
     Respectfully submitted,
          C. E. DOERING,
          Dean of Faculties.
ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH TREASURER'S REPORT TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1928

ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH TREASURER'S REPORT TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY       L. E. GYLLENHAAL       1928

     The financial status of the Academy may best be shown by presentation of our reports of Assets and Liabilities at the end of the fiscal year, 1921, and a digest of our income and expenditure for the same year. It may be well to indicate to the members of the General Church the nature of the funds listed below as Trust Funds. These are funds given to the Academy for specific purposes. It will be noted that the largest is the Pension Fund for the benefit of Academy teachers. The following are funds, the income of which is available for scholarships:

C. F. Browne Memorial
Vera Pitcairn Memorial
Fred Synnestvedt Memorial
Roy Wells Memorial

     The income of the Glanville legacy is devoted to education in England. The income from the Andrew Czerny Memorial and the Dill Memorial is for the use of the Theological School. The DeCharms Hall Maintenance Fund is held for the maintenance of the building used by the Bryn Athyn Church school, and the Building Fund is for certain specific budding in the future.

792




     A comparison with the reports of former years will show that the amount of these funds has been augmented by virtue of the fact that the income has not been used but invested for the benefit of the fund.

     It may be well to call to the attention of the members that the value of equipment as reported, is the value on which depreciation has been taken annually, but an actual appraisal today would indicate that it could not be replaced for twice the figure at which we carry it.
                    
Assets.                                                  Dec. 31,1927
INVESTMENTS:
A. Bonds                              $1,760,242.92          
B. Stocks                                         88,138.01
C. Mortgages                                        55,000.00
D. Secured Loans                                   24,892.00
E. Real Estate                                        80,915.35
F. Notes                              
G. A. Inn, F. & E.                          1,439.99
                                                       $2,010,828.27

Sinking Fd Power Hse Garage                3,808.00
Sinking Fd                               3,858.90
                                                       $7,666.90

     EQUIPMENT:
Buildings                               241,660.22
Furniture and equipment                              48,424.36
Grounds                               22,921.85
Accessions                               67.218.67
Power Plant                               40,753.52
                                                       $420,978.62

     FLOATING ASSETS:
Accts Receivable                          16,633.34
Cash                                    7,692.18
Unused Insurance                          3,557.09
                                                       $27,882.61

     TRUSTS INVESTED:
Browne, C. B., Memorial                     19,502.50
Building Fund                                        73,256.70
Czerny Andrew Memorial                         1,000.00
deCharms Hall Maintenance                         20,000.00
Dill Memorial                          1,000.00
Glanville Legacy                                   18,955.00
Pension Fund                               162,008.25
Pitcairn Vera Memorial                     24,804.50
Synnestvedt Fred Memorial                     2,350.00
Wells Roy Memorial                                   6,477.50
                                                       $329,354.45
                                                       $27,96,510.85
                         
LIABILITIES                              Dec. 31,1927
Accounts Payable                          14,245.97
Interest on Securities                               15,618.41
                                                       29,882.38

793




     TRUSTS:
Browne, C. Jr., Memorial                              22,538.50
Browne, Interest                                   1.095.68
Building Fund                                        74,788.75
Building Interest                                   898.96
Czerny Andrew Memorial                         1,141.00
Czerny Interest                                   134.17
deCharms Hall Maintenance                         20,000.00
Dill Memorial                                        1,000.00
Dill Interest                                              39.05
Glanville Legacy                                   18,788.00
Glanville Interest                                   1,297.48
Pension Fund                                        161,344.75
Pension auxiliary Savings                         918.50
Pension Interest                                   1,805.81
Pitcairn Vera Memorial                              24,804.50
Pitcairn Interest                                   604.73
Synnestvedt Fred Memorial                         2,350.00
Synnestvedt Interest                                   435.01
Wells Roy Memorial                                   6,889.12
Wells Roy Interest                                   595.50
                                                       341,147.24
ANC Net Worth                         2,425,501.23
                                   2,798,510.85

     The following digest of our report of Income and Expenditure for 1927 will serve to show how our funds are received and expended.

     INCOME

Receipts for the year 1927:
Interest on Securities                          119,055.14
Tuition                               24,058.10
Board                                   11,175.00
Contributions                          6,880.50
Income from trust fund for deCharms Hall           1.000.00
Bank Interest                                         399.80
                                   $162,688.54

     EXPENSES
Expenditures for the year 1927:
Salaries for teachers and office force                    79,787.57
Salaries and Expense, Library                         8,273.12
Operation of Dormitories                              24,154.98
Scholarship and Stipends                              7,652.50
Investment expense                                   2,835.79
School and Publication expense                     7,434.31
General Maintenance (includes all repairs to
buildings, janitor service, heat, light, taxes,
insurance, fire protection, etc.)                         28,819.75
                                                       $158,958.00
Income unexpended                                   5,808.54
                                                  $162,566.54,

     It will be noted that after defraying all expenses for operation, we had a balance of $5,608.54 of this amount the following was expended for items increasing our capital account:

Accessions for the Library                          1,539.39
Furniture and Equipment                          2,728.22
Sinking Funds                                    1,110.00

     making a total of $5,375.61, leaving us a net balance of $232.93.

794




     The Academy reports for the last two years since the Assembly at Kitchener have shown very little variation. In fact the 1927 report seems to indicate what is the minimum for operating our schools with the present teaching force and proper attention to maintaining our Plant.

     Since the reports submitted to the last General Assembly, the Academy has received, in bequests and donations from various sources, the sum of $63,765.56 and has received in contributions $15,923.81. The contributions have been used for current expenses and in most cases given for specific uses, such as the publication of various works, special stipends, and a considerable amount for photo-stating Swedenborg's works. The bequests and donations have been added to the Capital Account and the income only used for the Academy.
     Respectfully submitted,
          L. E. GYLLENHAAL,
               Treasurer
REPORT OF THE MANAGER OF THE BOOK ROOM 1928

REPORT OF THE MANAGER OF THE BOOK ROOM       WILLIAM H. ALDEN       1928

     The one object and center of the use of the New Church Book Room, is the sale of the Theological Works of Emanuel Swedenborg, in which are contained the Lord's Revelation for the establishment of the New Church in His Second Coming.

     And yet, strange to say, there is today, nearly two hundred and fifty years after Swedenborg's death, no adequate and complete edition of his works in the English language. The Rotch Edition, with ample means, was worked over for a period d twenty-seven years and includes only the writings which Swedenborg himself published; the London Edition is revised from time to time by different minds; the Edition of the Swedenborg Foundation in New York has known the touch of various translators, of differing degrees of ability; these two indeed included, in addition to the Writings published by Swedenborg, the Apocalypse Explained and some smaller works, but still are not complete; the Academy has added to the list Conjugial Love and the Journal of Dreams, the latter not otherwise published, and De Verbo, which also appears in the Rotch and Swedenborg Foundation list. It is to be hoped that the work of translation will yet be undertaken by a competent scholar, preferably of the Academy training, and a complete and uniform edition put forth.

     Similar remarks might be made respecting the translation of the Word. The Authorized Version as published by the Oxford Press is employed by the Academy Book Room and is more satisfactory than any other edition available. There are in progress negotiations looking to the use of the Winston Edition which has the advantage of the indication of the proper names, but the negotiations do not offer probability of successful conclusion. In this matter of translation of the Word, great as is the desirability of a New Church translation, scholarship is lacking, and in addition, lack of time with those of the Academy who might undertake it.

795


The Marchant Fund of sixty thousand dollars is actively at work in Convention and Conference in the preparation of a New Church translation, but the work is hampered by the supposed necessity of doing the work by committee, in fact by two committees, one in the United States and one in England, and such method does not offer hope of success. Until the Church can be induced to employ one man for the work, and trust him, without the petty supervision of a committee, I would venture the prediction that the work will not be done. Here as in the case of the Writings, there is work for the Academy to do, which I believe only the Academy can do satisfactorily.

     Secondarily, the Academy Book Room carries and offers for sale the Collateral Writings of the New Church.

     To these special and central uses the Academy adds the uses of the supplying of books and stationery for the needs of the Schools of the Academy, a use which increases year by year with the growth of the work of New Church education, there carried on.

     For the performance of these uses the Academy has a place of Book Room business where visitors may be received and books shown, and information given to inquirers, whether in person or by mail. These uses demand the personal attention of the Manager and his assistants.

     Among the publications of the year under review, must receive primary mention the translation of the work hitherto known as the Adversaria hitherto available only in the Latin in which Swedenborg wrote it. This work was not published by Swedenborg, but prepared in manuscript, apparently with intention of publication, but afterwards put aside for the publication of the Writings as published, and was apparently a preliminary attempt at the exposition of the spiritual sense, which was perfectly carried out in the Arcana Coelestia. The Explanation of the Adversaria covers with more or less fulness several books of the Old Testament. The translation which has been made by Dr. Acton was mentioned in our report of last year. Now completed, it is at this date ready for distribution as to the first volume, covering in some 600 pages the first twenty-eight chapters of Genesis. The Second Volume is approaching completion in manuscript, and Dr. Acton anticipates the completion of the translation of the third volume before his departure for a year's absence in Europe. The whole work has been prefaced by a scholarly introduction traversing the whole period of Swedenborg's life prior to his illumination and call to the work of Revelator. Dr. Acton clearly sets forth in this introduction the progress of Swedenborg's mind, the wonderful manner in which the mind of the man Swedenborg became the mind of Swedenborg the Revelator. Not among the least of the marvels of all this is the fact that not until the actual office was entered upon, did Swedenborg become aware of the mighty work which lay before him.

     The complete work, in seven volumes, which has been renamed with the title found among the manuscripts of Swedenborg, "The Word of the Old Testament Explained," will occupy in the translation and printing some three and a half years. The Church is indebted to the Rev. Theodore Pitcairn, who is bearing the cost of the publication.

796




     Another notable book of the year is The Mythology of the Greeks and Romans, a posthumous work of the late Rev. Carl Theophilus Odhner. This work appeared in the pages of the New Church Life in the form of articles running through a period of several years. These articles have been gathered together, and shaped into a book under the editorship of the Rev. Messrs. William Whitehead and William H. Alden. The work deals with the ancient mythologies in a manner entirely different from that of the scholarship of the world outside the New Church, indeed, in a manner impossible to that scholarship. For these myths so-called are shown to be, by Mr. Odhner's graphic pen, personifications of principles of correspondence handed down from the time of the Ancient Church. This significance has been lost for many ages to the world at large, and these stories have been held to be simply stories of the imagination. Mr. Odhner has clothed them with the form and color only to be found in their spiritual content.

     We are indebted also during the past year for the publication of the only Catechism of the New Church now extant, with the exception of that of the Rev. C. Th. Odhner on the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer.

     The title is First Elements of the True Christian Religion, and the book is a simple exposition of the essential doctrines of the New Church for the young. The author is the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner. We have said that with a single exception it is the only Catechism of the New Church extant, and this is a simple fact, all those of previous issue having been suffered to go out of print.

     The missionary volume, The Book Sealed with Seven Seals, by the Rev. Theodore Pitcairn, has been revised and reprinted in a new and attractive edition. Written in a novel style, handsomely printed, it has found a wide use in the Cathedral Book Room.

     The Philosophy of Ancient Britain, by Sir John Daniel, though published outside the technical bounds of the Church may properly be classed as a book of the New Church. For the author finds, in the philosophy of the Ancient Britons, a kinship with the knowledge of correspondences familiar to the Ancient Church, declared by Swedenborg to be the knowledge of knowledges. The book throws new and unsuspected light upon the religion of the Druids which has been hitherto utterly misunderstood and given a false and malign significance, not at all deserved.

     Another memorable book of the year is My Religion by Helen Keller; for Miss Keller, cut off from the accustomed avenues of sight and hearing in obtaining knowledge, has nevertheless gathered a wide culture, graduating from Raddiffe College, and, well-known in the world of literature, has through the wonderful promptings of the Divine Providence found an interest in and acceptance of the teachings of the New Church. The book is an affectionate and simple exposition of the doctrines of the New Church, and should find in its wide sale an opening to many minds not otherwise accessible to the teaching of the New Age.

     Another children's book, of interest to the New Church because written by a New Church woman, Miss Amena Pendleton, is a translation from the French of Eugenie Foa. It is a charmingly told tale, the title is The Mystery of Castle Pierrefite.

797




     The Book Room has received from England a set of attractive pictures in color, fully illustrating the Bible, Old and New Testaments. These pictures are one hundred and sixty-seven in number; the price for the set is $5.00. Another series, also excellent, in large part different titles from those received from England, has been received from Thomas Nelson & Sons. These are sold singly for five cents each.

     Topics from the Writings, by the late Rt. Rev. W. F. Pendleton, appearing serially in the pages of the New Church Life, is being prepared for the press, and will be offered for sale in book form in the early fall. These will make a book of some two hundred and forty pages. This book should be invaluable to the student, presenting as it does the ripe work of a finished scholar and earnest thinker. It will be fully indexed and will give an answer to many troublesome questions.               
     Respectfully submitted,
          WILLIAM H. ALDEN,
               Manager of the Book Room.
DISCUSSION OF THE REPORT OF THE EDITOR OF "NEW CHURCH LIFE." 1928

DISCUSSION OF THE REPORT OF THE EDITOR OF "NEW CHURCH LIFE."              1928

     Rev. F. E. Gyllenhaal: I would like to say a few words in regard to the Report of the Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE. This is a most important magazine, and since it comes to us in England, I think it might be of particular interest for the members here to have the opportunity of discussing it and expressing to the Editor some of their thoughts about it. Let me quote from his Report: "Suggestion and criticism, looking to improvement in the service performed, are at all times welcome. . . . The Life is a means of sharing our ideas with others, a vehicle of communication of the thought of the Church." Now the Life was commenced (in 1881) as a medium of communicating the news and life of a society of the Church, particularly the life of the young people then resident in Philadelphia. We are taught that theological things should occupy the highest plane of the mind, and so this instrument of communication of thought throughout the General Church-a journal which goes to every General Church society, and to many people who are isolated receivers-now devotes itself particularly to the high, indeed the highest, thought of our leading thinkers in the Church. Everyone of us can congratulate the Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE upon his splendid selection of articles. I have very much appreciated the very many thoughtful and interior articles that have appeared in its pages. However, I would like to offer some constructive criticism. I wish it were possible to have more shorter articles, and perhaps a greater variety of subjects. Those who have read the Journal of Education have undoubtedly noted that we have had therein some splendid articles and very long ones. I speak of that journal because I think that that is where the long articles belong. There are some subjects, undoubtedly, upon which we cannot express ourselves except in a number of pages; the subject itself demands it.

798


Why not, when we consider that it is in connection with the infinite Divine Truth revealed to us in the Lord's own words? Yet we must remember that the NEW CHURCH LIFE goes to so many places, to so many people, that the needs of all should be kept in mind.

     Just one word more,-and I hope that the Editor will take it as constructive criticism. I think there are many of us, especially those who reside hundreds and even thousands of miles from Bryn Athyn, who have not the advantage of reading all the journals of the New Church, and also of getting the representative thought of the whole Church. I think it would be of interest to us all to have brief reviews of New Church thought as expressed in other journals. The former editor of the Life,-the late Carl Theophilus Odhner,-produced many very interesting reviews. I would also call attention to that publication which has not appeared for many years-The New Church Quarterly, which contained many excellent reviews. I put these criticisms merely as suggestions to the Editor, and I may add that I am very greatly appreciative of NEW CHURCH LIFE. I will leave it for others to continue the discussion.

     Rev. Albert Bjorck: I am not able to add any criticism of the Editor's report, because I really have nothing to criticize. I can, however, say that in the isolated position in which I am, I continually look forward to the arrival of the Life, and I do not understand how anybody in the Church can do without it. To me it is one of the best New Church journals that have ever been published. I remember, when I first became interested in the Academy, I succeeded, through Mr. Odhner, in getting copies of the Life for a good many years back, and I remember the avidity with which I read these back numbers, month after month, as I received them, and especially at that time the sermons by Bishop W. F. Pendleton. I thought the contents of the Life were really strong then, though I find just as much value and help in the Life now as I did then. I would suggest nothing more than a more generous contribution by the Church in subscriptions to the Life; for the more we read it, the more the best thought in the Church will become common property among us.

     Mr. A. H. Appleton: I have taken the Life for many years, and I hope to continue so doing. I have thoroughly enjoyed the articles that have come along from time to time in the Life, and especially those concerning the various uses in the church and schools. It brings us near to Bryn Athyn in thought and understanding, in desire and affection for all those things that are being carried on there. I feel myself that, if this periodical did not come, bringing this light, we should not be in the position we are to understand either the necessities or the use for which the work is being carried on. To my mind, there is a very definite work being carried on there, by which the Church is sustained. There is the foundation upon which, for many years, all in the Church have been nourished, even those in England who are far from Bryn Athyn. The uses there are the things which extend and will extend the Church all around; and in that work, it seems to me, is the best of everything that has come from the Revelation which is given by the Lord.

     So it is with this Assembly, in which we have met together tonight. I am very thankful to those, our priests, who have agreed to come to England to hold this Assembly with us.

799


It is a great treat to hear them over here, and to see and hear about the work of the Church that is being carried on. It is a great use for the building up of understanding in men's minds. We are taught that there is an interior and exterior mind, and that the interior mind must be trained to think from truths, and this we do by cultivating affection for the Writings and for the uses carried on by the Church. I feel that the Church, as an instrument of thought, has come down from the Lord, in order that there may be an extension of knowledge concerning the uses of the Church, and that men's minds may be brought forth in affection and love for the Church, when wk acknowledge this from an affection of truth for its own sake. I have been a subscriber to NEW CHURCH LIFE almost from the beginning, and have thoroughly enjoyed the articles. Still I do not think it should stand in the way of our reading the Writings themselves, but its use is that we may understand more interiorly the great end for which the schools and all the institutions of the Church are working.

     Rev. Richard Morse: I would speak on behalf of our Australian New Church friends. Three copies of the Life come into my home, and they are received with very great affection. I might almost call it the life-blood of our society. It brings the news of the activities of the Church from all over the world. The first copy of NEW CHURCH LIFE Came into my hands twenty-eight years ago, and that copy had the effect of altering the whole trend of my life, and enabled me to see the Revelation, which we all love so much, in quite a different light than previously. I had always regarded it as a Divine Revelation, but the idea that that Revelation must necessarily be the Word of the Lord to establish His New Church had never entered my mind. Of course, I had believed before, and it had always been my aim to see what is true, and to put it into my life as being the only way to fulfill the Lord's purpose, which is an angelic heaven from the human race.

     I always feel a great affection for the Editor of the Life, because he is the mainspring in each issue. I had the same feeling for the Rev. C. Th. Odhner when he was Editor. I wish to bear this testimony, that in Australia the Life is received with very great affection. I do not wish to sit down before I have made that testimony.

     Mr. Stanley E. Parker: As one physically separated from the life of the Church, I would just like to say how very much we, in my home, appreciate the receipt of the Life. It has colored the whole teaching of the Church for us during the last few years, more than any other periodical I have ever come across.

     Rev. Victor J. Gladish: I would like to say some words about NEW CHURCH LIFE. There is not a great deal that we can do to suggest improvements. The main thing is to make the Editor feel how much we appreciate the Life in the Church as a whole, how important it is to everyone. He knows that it is performing a great use, but he can be encouraged in his work to a considerable extent if he hears from a number of people. There is one thing, perhaps, that could be done to stimulate interest in the Life, and that is, if someone could find a subject that would be a little more controversial, and let his conception of it be known.

800


In the past it used to be said, when things were slacking up a little, "Start a fight!" In general, I wish to say that Mr. Caldwell, the Editor, handles it in such a very fine way, and gets whatever there is in the Church to get, that everyone enjoys reading it.

     Rev. W. B. Caldwell: I wish to thank Mr. Gyllenhaal for the constructive criticisms he has offered. His desire for more short articles is shared by me, but it is not always easy to get such short articles. When our ministers undertake to write on a subject, they like to treat it thoroughly, and that means a long article which the editor is not free to cut down. Realizing this need of shorter articles, I have, for the most part, kept the editorials short.

     With regard to the reviews suggested my Mr. Gyllenhaal, I think it would be an improvement to have more such reviews of the articles that appear in other magazines of the Church. I read or scan all the journals of the New Church, and have endeavored to review the things which are of greatest importance, but have not always been able to accomplish all that I would like in this direction, owing to the pressure of other duties.

     I would like to take this opportunity to thank the friends in England far their liberal contributions to our pages in recent years. At times these have come so generously that it has been a problem to find space for the offerings of American contributors!
DISCUSSION OF THE REPORT ON "NEW CHURCH SERMONS." 1928

DISCUSSION OF THE REPORT ON "NEW CHURCH SERMONS."              1928

     Rev. E. E. Iungerich: I should like to express my deep appreciation of the work that is being done on New Church Sermons. I think such appreciation is very general in the Church, especially among those who are isolated, who are thus able to have regular instruction and regular services. My own reading of these sermons convinces me that a very high class of work is being done in them, not only in the sermons themselves, but also in the editorial work thereon. I would like to see something in the nature of (say) a ten years' volume published, containing the sermons of the past ten years. The volume should have an index, so that it would be easy to find what texts have been treated. I think that would be very useful to our Church. The form of the pamphlets is satisfactory, as they are small, and can be put in the pocket; on the other hand, it is not easy to keep a collection of them. If an arrangement could be made to have them published in book form, I think it would be a very valuable service to our Church.

     Rev. F. E. Waelchli: The New Church Sermons are of value to all, but they are of special value to those who are isolated. Among the isolated in the field in which I work, they are received with great appreciation, and are used in many of the families. Services are held every Sunday in the family circle, and this publication is used for the sermon. A valuable feature is that Lessons, Hymns and Prayers are provided for each sermon. These also are used. We know that, in the New Church generally, there are many isolated people who think it well to attend the services of some sect of the Old Church, and we know that very generally the result is that the Church dies out in that family.

801


With our own isolated people generally I think that is not done. The family gathers together to have a New Church service of its own; so we may see how helpful these sermons must be.

     My visits to the circles in my field are not very frequent, as there are so many, covering a large area. Many of these circles, therefore, meet every Sunday, or every other Sunday, and some leader of the circle takes the service and uses the sermons in New Church Sermons. I should have mentioned yesterday evening that one very great use of Church Extension, which we as a Church are performing, is the sending out of these New Church Sermons to all who desire to have them. In America, we have very many isolated members. I do not know how it is here in England. From what we have heard, I should judge that there are very many in Sweden, who, however, would not be able to read a sermon printed in English. There can be no doubt whatever of the very, very great use that is performed by the publication of the New Church Sermons.

     Mr. Colley Pryke: I also welcome the opportunity to praise the use which the New Church Sermons pamphlets are performing. I am very glad to testify to the value of that use. I am by no means alone in that, as I have been surprised and very pleased at the affection with which subscriptions to the General Church are accompanied by some small donation to New Church Sermons. Spontaneous donations of that sort are a real testimony of appreciation.

     Rev. Elmo C. Acton: In the past, from time to time, the New Church Sermons have contained articles for children, and I have found such articles very useful in my children's services. I find it difficult to get something that will hold the interest and affection of children. I have used the stories by Miss Amena Pendleton, as I believe has been done in other societies. I tell them, of course, in my own language, and the children are delighted with them. I have also used the Memorable Relations which were adapted and printed in NEW CHURCH LIFE in 1900-1901. The children were also greatly interested in these. And I think this feature of publishing a story for children in the New Church Sermons will be a great advantage. And I would suggest that ministers in the Church have that in mind, and send such material to the New Church Sermons. A great use can be performed in that way.

     Mr. Appleton: I would like to add my testimony to the value of the New Church Sermons. I consider them a part of the missionary use. I have had the pleasure of lending them to others, and they were very much appreciated. I would also say how much I have appreciated them myself. The articles for children have been put in such a simple way that they are very useful, and impress themselves on the little ones. I hope that feature will be continued; and I very much hope the Sermons will be continued, because I have heard very affirmative expressions from those who have read those sermons, including my own family.

     Rev. Victor J. Gladish: It might not be out of place for me to say a word about the work that Miss Gertrude Nelson is going to do,-something along the same lines as Miss Amena Pendleton's book. It is to be included with the New Church Sermons in the form of Bible stories and other stories for the young. This will incur greater cost; so voluntary subscriptions will be very much appreciated.

802


Miss Nelson has written for NEW CHURCH LIFE in the past, and a number of you may have read her articles in The Bulletin. She is a writer of ability, and recently decided to make this her particular work, spending all her time thereon. This is something that has been relatively untouched in the Church heretofore. It seems to me that a big step is being taken here. I have not seen any of the stories yet, but I feel sure they are going to be of great good to children of New Church parents.

     Mr. Stanley E. Parker: I would like to say how much I appreciate the New Church Sermons. Indeed, as one who is used to leading in the service, I should be quite unable to hold the service as I do without the sermons which are provided in these pamphlets.

     Rev. J. M. Lima (interpreted by Dr. E. E. Iungerich): I cannot let this opportunity pass without bearing my personal testimony to the great value of these sermons. They form a great treasure-house to be drawn upon in Brazil, and are very frequently translated and preached in our own church at Rio, and are also published in our journal. They bring the thought of the Church within reach of all the members of the New Church in such a way that they will never forget them.
TWENTY-FOURTH CHICAGO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY 1928

TWENTY-FOURTH CHICAGO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY       G. A. MCQUEEN       1928

     HELD AT GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS, OCTOBER 12-14, 1928.

     Once again our District Assembly has come and gone, leaving behind the usual benefits of increased interest in the spiritual things of the church. With all the existing counter attractions of the natural man, it is not very difficult to imagine what would happen if these annual visits of the Bishop were to cease. This coming together of the local and isolated members of the General Church provides the opportunity for a common reception of spiritual things on every plane of life,-affectional, intellectual, and social,-and the church is able to see and participate in the results of the study of our clergy, thus making it possible for the thought of the church to "flow together."

     The meetings opened with the Banquet on October 12th. About two hundred persons, including members of Sharon and Immanuel Churches and some visitors, sat down to an excellent repast provided by the ladies of the local society. During the meal the Glenview Orchestra under the direction of Mr. Jesse Stevens played a variety of lively and pleasing tunes.

803




     Instead of the usual address, the Bishop spoke from notes; and here, at the very outset, the meeting was furnished with an illustration of the ability of our priesthood to "bring forth things new and old" from the treasures of the Word. He dealt with the subject of "Personality," referring to the various meanings which have been associated with the word "person," and which are still prevalent in these days of the consummated church. He concluded his remarks by giving the meaning of personality as revealed to the New Church. The present writer dare not attempt an adequate account of this address, but it will no doubt be available in printed form. Several ministers and laymen made brief speeches expressing their appreciation of the address.

     Similar was the reception given a paper on "The Lord as the Word " brought before the meeting on Saturday evening by the Rev. W. L. Gladish. Here was a subject that has been much in the thought of the church during recent times. The way in which Mr. Gladish traced in brief outline the descent of the Divine Truth from the Lord through the heavens, and its resting in the various planes of the mind, until it reached the very ultimate form of the Word, was most helpful and enlightening. This was followed by a paper on "The Duty of Attending Worship," by the Rev. Gilbert H. Smith. He dealt chiefly with the question as to whether it was obligatory for members of the church to attend whenever it was possible for them to do so. The paper was of a practical nature, and while not attempting to impinge upon the freedom of members of the church, it presented a very strong case for the regular attendance of every member. As the meeting consisted of those who were already regular attendants, there was general agreement with the teaching given. It was suggested by one of the speakers taking part in the discussion which followed the paper that it might be useful if those who seldom came to church could be visited privately by the minister, as they were just the people who could not be reached by papers at church meetings.

     On Sunday, October 14th, a large congregation was present at morning worship. The Bishop preached the sermon, which introduced the mind to an interior understanding of the Lord's words in the Gospels where it is stated that He was unable to perform, miracles at certain places and times. The discourse showed that it was during the states of exinanition when in temptation that the Lord experienced the limitations of the infirm human, and that it was only when filled with power from on high that He could perform miracles.

804


The Holy Supper was administered, the Bishop being assisted by the Revs. W. L. Gladish and G. H. Smith.

     On Sunday evening a very enjoyable Musical Service was held in the church, during which the Bishop gave an impressive talk on "Why we sing the Te Deum." The Rev. G. H. Smith, intoned the quotations from the Writings when the 45th Psalm was sung by the choir. Mr. Jesse Stevens conducted the choir, and Miss Edith Goerwitz presided at the organ. The following is the order of the service:

1.      Sanctus: Prelude (Gounod).
2.      Choir: Procession, Coronation March (Meyerbeer).
3.      Opening of the Word.
4.      Prayer.
5.      Te Dominum.
6.      Violin Interlude.
7.      The 45th Psalm (Whittington)
8.      Solo: "If with all your hearts."
9.      The 25th Psalm.
10.      Flute and Violin Interlude.
11.      Reading by Bishop N. D. Pendleton.
12.      Gloria (Gounod)
13.      Benediction.
14.      Recessional Hymn.

     On Monday afternoon the Bishop addressed the ladies of the Assembly on the subject of "The Reception of Truth by Different Religions and by the Individual." Afternoon tea was served, and a very happy and useful time was enjoyed.

     On the evening of the same day there was a Men's Meeting conducted by the Sons of the Academy of the Glenview Chapter, which also includes the members living in Chicago and neighborhood. Mr. George Fiske presided, and at the suggestion of the Bishop put before the meeting for discussion the subject of "The Calendar Reading of the Writings." As copies of the September NEW CHURCH LIFE had just arrived, containing a very full report of the discussion which took place at the Assembly in London, a feeling of revived interest pervaded the meeting.

805


Speeches by the Rev. Norman Reuter, the Rev. G. G. Starkey, and Rev. W. L. Gladish, based upon the published report, furnished a very good idea of the mind of the church on this subject, as represented at the meeting in London. After a number of laymen had expressed their views, the Bishop spoke, and, among other things, said that he had from his youth been convinced of the spiritual value of the calendar reading of the Writings. The custom. had prevailed in the early days, but, because of a falling off in readers, the calendar was dropped for a time. Now he was convinced it would be well to start again. The question was brought before the Council of the Clergy, as to whether it was not the duty of the church to provide this means for the daily reading of its members. He believed it was a spiritual duty, just as daily prayer and Sunday worship was a spiritual duty. The committee appointed to formulate the plan had decided to Publish a new Calendar on January 1st for use during the year 1929. His own idea was that it would provide a bond of union between the members of the General Church. There would be spiritual gyres of thought and unity of thought. The idea was not confined to family worship, but that all members of the church might become individual readers of the Writings. He would like to see everyone read as a duty to the Lord. A great many people may join the movement, and some may not keep it up, but every day it lasted would be a day to the good. It is pleasant to say that at this meeting there was a very general desire to participate in this effort, and thus to cooperate with the priesthood in this matter.

     In concluding this brief report of our District Assembly, one is led to compare it with others which have preceded it. While there was ample opportunity for social intercourse, there was also manifested a distinct willingness to look for the spiritual import of the things provided at all the meetings. It will he seen from this account of the proceedings that the subjects which came up for consideration were matters of vital importance to the growth of the New Church as a spiritual church. This, we believe, is what all our ministers are working for; and, viewing the meetings from this standpoint, we may say that the Twenty-fourth District Assembly was a great success.     
     G. A. MCQUEEN.

806


DIRECTORY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM 1928

DIRECTORY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM              1928

     OFFICIALS AND COUNCILS.

     Bishop.
Right Rev. N. D. Pendleton
Secretary.
Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner

     Treasurer.
Mr. H. Hyatt.

     Consistory.
Bishop N. D. Pendleton
Rev. Alfred Acton                         Rev. F. E. Waelchli
Rev. C. E. Doering, Secretary                Rev. W. B. Caldwell
Rev. Homer Synnestvedt                Rev. E. E. Iungerich
Rt. Rev. R. J. Tilson                     Rt. Rev. George de Charms
Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner.

Executive Committee.
Bishop N. D. Pendleton, President
Mr. Raymond Pitcairn, Vice President
Mr. Goeffrey S. Childs, Secretary
Mr. Hubert Hyatt, Treasurer
Dr. Felix A. Boericke                     Mr. Alvin E. Nelson
Mr. Edward C. Bostock                Mr. Seymour G. Nelson
Mr. C. Raynor Brown                Mr. Harold F. Pitcairn
Mr. Paul Carpenter                         Mr. Colley Pryke
Mr. Randolph W. Childs                Mr. J. H. Ridgway
Mr. Alexander P. Lindsay                Mr. Rudolph Roschman
Mr. Samuel S. Lindsay                Mr. Paul Synnestvedt
Mr. Nils E. Loven                         Mr. Victor Tilson
Mr. Charles G. Merrell

     Honorary Members.
Mr. Walter C. Childs                     Mr. Richard Roschman
Mr. Jacob Schoenberger.

807


CLERGY. 1928

CLERGY.              1928

     Bishops.

PENDLETON, NATHANIEL DANDRIDGE. Ordained, June 16, 1889; 2d Degree, March 2, 1891; 3d Degree, October 27, 1912. Bishop of the General Church. Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church. President of the Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
DE CHARMS, GEORGE. Ordained, June 28, 1914; 2d Degree, June 19, 1916; 3d Degree, March 11, 1928. Assistant Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church. Dean of the College, Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
TILSON, ROBERT JAMES. Ordained, 2d Degree, June 19, 1892; 3d Degree, August 5, 1928. Pastor of Michael Church, Burton Road, Brixton, London, England. Address: 7 Templar Street, Camberwell, London, S. E.

     Pastors.

ACTON, ALFRED. Ordained, June 4, 1893; 2d Degree, January 10, 1897. Pastor of the Society in Washington, D. C. Dean of the Theological School, Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
ACTON, ELMO CARMAN. Ordained, June 14, 1925; 2d Degree, August 5, 1928. Pastor of the Durban Society. Address: 125 Musgrave Road, Durban, Natal, South Africa.
ALDEN, KARL RICHARDSON. Ordained, June 19, 1917; 2d Degree, October 12, 1919. Principal of the Boys' Academy and Housemaster of Stuart Hall, Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
ALDEN, WILLIAM HYDE. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, May 30, 1886. Instructor, Academy of the New Church. Manager of the Academy Book Room, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
BAECKSTROM, GUSTAF. Ordained, June 6, 1915; 2d Degree, June 27, 1920. Pastor of the Society in Stockholm, Sweden. Address: Svedjevagen, Appelviken, Stockholm.
BJORCK, ALBERT. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, August 17, 1890. Address: Calle de Los Banos, 15, El Terreno, Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

808



BOWERS, JOHN EBY. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, May 11, 1873. Address: 37 Lowther Ave., Toronto, Canada.
BRICKMAN, WALTER EDWARD. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, January 7, 1900. Address: 419 South Evaline St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
BROWN, REGINALD WILLIAM. Ordained, October 21, 1900; 2d Degree, October 12, 1919. Professor and Librarian, Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
CALDWELL, WILLIAM BEEBE. Ordained, October 19, 1902; 2d Degree, October 23, 1904. Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE. Professor of Theology, Academy of the New Church. Address: Bryn Athyn; Pa.
CRONLUND, EMIL ROBERT. Ordained, December 31, 1899; 2d Degree, May 18, 1902. Address: Bryn Athyn, Pa.
DAVID, LLEWELLYN WARREN TOWNE. Ordained, June 28, 1914; 2d Degree, June 19, 1916. Address: 20 Willow Street, Kitchener, Ont., Canada.
DOERING, CHARLES EMIL. Ordained, June 7, 1896; 2d Degree, January 29, 1899. Dean of Faculties, Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
ELPHICK, FREDERICK WILLIAM. Ordained, February 7, 1926; 2d Degree, June 19, 1926. Superintendent of the South African Mission. Address: P. O. Box 78, Ladybrand, Orange Free State.
GILL, ALAN. Ordained, June 14, 1925; 2d Degree, June 19, 1926. Pastor of Carmel Church, Kitchener, Ont. Address: 316 Park St., Kitchener, Ont., Canada.
GLADISH, VICTOR JEREMIAH. Ordained, June 17, 1928; 2d Degree, August 5, 1928. Pastor of the Colchester Society. Address: 28 Capel Road, Colchester, England.
GLADISH, WILLIS LENDSAY. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, June 3, 1894. Pastor of Sharon Church, Chicago, Ill. Address: 5220 Wayne Ave., Chicago, Ill.
GYLLENHAAL, FREDERICK EDMUND. Ordained, June 23, 1907; 2d Degree, June 19, 1910. Pastor of Olivet Church, Toronto, Ont. Address: 2 Elm Grove Ave., Toronto, 3, Ont., Canada.
HARRIS, THOMAS STARK. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, April 8, 1897. Pastor of the Society in Arbutus, Maryland; Visiting Pastor of the Abington, Mass., and Meriden, Conn., Circles. Address: Halethorpe P. O., Maryland.

809



HEINRICHS, HENRY. Ordained, June 24, 1923; 2d Degree, February 8, 1925. Pastor of the Society in Denver, Colorado. Address: 543 Delaware Street.
HUSSENET, FERNAND. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, October 10, 1909. Pastor of the Society in Paris, 84 Avenue de Breteuil. Address: 31 Rue Henri Regnault, St. Cloud, Seine et Oise, France.
IUNGERICH, ELDRED EDWARD. Ordained, June 13, 1909; 2d Degree, May 26, 1912. Pastor of the Pittsburgh, Society. Address: 7437 Ben Hur St., Pittsburgh, Pa.
LEONARDOS, HENRY. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, August 5, 1928. Pastor of the Rio de Janeiro Society. Address: 25 rua Sachet, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
LIMA, JOAO DE MENDONCA. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, August 5, 1928. Pastor of the Rio de Janeiro Society. Address: 25 rua Sachet, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
MORSE, RICHARD. Ordained, 1st and 2d Degrees, October 12, 1919. Pastor of the Sydney Society. Address: Dudley Street, Hurstville, Sydney, N. S. W., Australia.
ODHNER, HUGO LJUNGBERG. Ordained, June 23, 1914; 2d Degree, June 24, 1917. Secretary of the General Church. Assistant Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church. Professor, Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
PFEIFFER, ERNST. Ordained, June 20, 1920; 2d Degree, May 1, 1921. Pastor of the Society at The Hague, Holland. Address: Laan van Meerdervoort 229, The Hague, Holland.
PITCAIRN, THEODORE. Ordained, June 19, 1917; 2d Degree, October 12, 1919. Assistant Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church. Instructor, Academy of the New Church. Address: Bryn Athyn, Pa.
PRICE, ENOCH SPRADLING. Ordained, June 10, 1888; 2d Degree, June 19, 1891. Professor, Academy of the New Church. Address: Bryn Athyn, Pa.
ROSENQVIST, JOSEPH ELIAS. Ordained, June 19, 1891; 2d Degree, June 23, 1895. Address: Skanstorget 7, Gothenburg, Sweden.
SMITH, GILBERT HAVEN. Ordained June 25, 1911; 2d Degree, June 19, 1913. Pastor of the Immanuel Church, Glenview, Ill.
STARKEY, GEORGE GODDARD. Ordained, June 3, 1894; 2d Degree, October 19, 1902. Address: Glenview, Ill.

810



SYNNESTVEDT, HOMER. Ordained, June 19, 1891; 2d Degree, January 13, 1895. Professor, Academy of the New Church. Address: Bryn Athyn, Pa.
WAELCHLI, FRED. EDWIN. Ordained, June 10, 1888; 2d Degree, June 19, 1891. Visiting Pastor, General Church. Address: 232 Worthington Ave., Wyoming, Ohio.
WHITEHEAD, WILLIAM. Ordained, June 19, 1922; 2d Degree, June 19, 1926. Professor, Academy of the New Church. Address: Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     Ministers.

BOEF, HENDRIK WILLEM. Ordained, June 17, 1928. Minister of the Los Angeles Circle. Address: 8471 Blackburn Ave., Los Angeles, California.
CRANCH, RAYMOND GREENLEAF. Ordained, June 19, 1922. Address: Bryn Athyn, Pa.
ODHNER, VINCENT CARMOND. Ordained, June 17, 1928. Minister of the Advent Church, Philadelphia, Pa. Instructor, Academy of the New Church. Address: Bryn Athyn, Pa.
REUTER, NORMAN HAROLD. Ordained, June 17, 1928. Assistant to the Pastor of the Immanuel Church, Glenview, Ill. Address: Glenview, Ill.

     Ministers in the South African Mission.

MCANYANA, MOFFAT. Ordained, August 12, 1928. Address: Mayville, Durban, South Africa.

811


CONCLUSION OF THE ASSEMBLY REPORT 1928

CONCLUSION OF THE ASSEMBLY REPORT              1928


NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office a Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor                    Rev. W. B. Caldwell, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager          Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address and business communications should be sent to the Business Manager.

     TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
In the United States, $3.00 per year; Elsewhere, $3.25 or 14 shillings; payable in advance
Single Copy          30 cents
     The very full record of the Thirteenth General Assembly is brought to a conclusion in our present issue with the publication of the Reports of Officers and Committees of the General Church, containing accounts of our uses which are of interest and importance to all members and friends. These Reports were distributed in pamphlet form at the meetings in London, but are now reprinted for the benefit of the many who have not yet had an opportunity to peruse them.

     While great care was exercised in preparing the Assembly Report for publication, our attention has been called to a few errors which are noted below, and for which due apologies are offered:

     CORRECTIONS.

     In compiling the Roll of Attendance, there was an accidental omission of the name of Mrs. James S. Pryke, of Northampton, who was present throughout the Assembly.

     The Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer asks that the following changes be noted in his address and speech as published in the September number:

     Page 570, line 21: Instead of "who have come to my notice" read "who have come to notice." Page 572, line 9: Instead of "and this" read "for instance." Page 576, line 4: Instead of "they are merely curiosities" read "they are merely very curious, because anachronical and paradoxical, sects." Page 582, line 32: Instead of "I was not thinking" read "I was thinking." Page 582, lines 34, 35: Instead of "But I was referring to" read "But on the other hand I was speaking also of."

812


Church News 1928

Church News       Various       1928

     PITTSBURGH DISTRICT ASSEMBLY.

     October 19-21, 1928.

     The first session of the Pittsburgh District Assembly was held at the church rooms on Wallingford Street on Friday, October 19th, at 6.30 p.m. This was a banquet at which Bishop Pendleton presided. After the Pastor had spoken a few words of greeting and welcome to the Assembly, the Bishop Rave an address on the subject of "Personality," in which he dwelt briefly upon the contrast between the stress laid on this subject by the world and the teaching of the Writings that men should lift their thoughts above time, space, and personality. He then developed the idea that our abstract and spiritual thinking must always rest upon the concrete, and that even our most elevated contemplations of God are to be based upon the concrete imagery of Him as a Divine Man, and rest ultimately upon the Gospel narratives of the "Word made flesh."

     The Rev. Gilbert H. Smith, in his comments upon the paper, drew a lesson in regard to our looking from essence to person, and not the reverse, in our relations with one another in church work. The Rev. E. E. Iungerich drew attention to the Bishop's statement that the Lord had permitted the Christian Church to believe in three distinct persons in the Godhead, lest the idea of our Lord as a Divine Person lapse, and regarded this idea as an illustration that should encourage us to have patience with the backwardness of one another. So long as a few in a society are striving to perform the church uses faithfully, we need have no anxiety as to its eventual success as a New Church enterprise.

     Brief remarks in regard to elevating out thoughts as to our concept of God as a Man were made by Mr. Jacob Schoenberger, Mrs. Silas Walker, and Mrs. E. E. Iungerich.

     At the conclusion of the discussion of this subject, Mr. Smith gave a graphic account of his motoring the Bishop from Glenview to Pittsburgh, and explained how educative it had been to both of them to learn what "blinkers" were, not to mention other delightful expressions only appreciated in this center. Mr. S. S. Lindsay was moved to an eloquent eulogy of Pittsburgh in general, of the General Church Society in Pittsburgh in particular, and of its projected development in the near future. Mr. Smith then warmly congratulated the society upon the possibilities, artistic and otherwise, of the site that has been purchased for a church building. This banquet was a most pleasing occasion, and there were seventy-six in attendance.

     The Pastor and Mrs. Iungerich gave a tea for the members of the society and visitors on Saturday afternoon, October 20th. After informal chats and refreshments we adjourned to the new property, where the Rev. G. H. Smith immortalized the visit by taking motion pictures. We have had so much fun poking around the old house, we shall miss it when it is torn down. It is an interesting old place, though rather homely from an architectural point of view.

     Bishop Pendleton conducted Divine Worship and preached on Sunday morning, October 21st, being assisted in the service by the Pastor. The Holy Supper was administered at the dose. Eighty-one persons were present at this service.

     There were nine visitors at the Assembly: Bishop N. D. Pendleton, Bryn Athyn, Pa.; Rev. Gilbert H. Smith, Glenview, Ill.; Miss Janet Richey, Blairsville, Pa.; Mrs. Sharp, Salem, Ohio; Mr. and Mrs. Harrold, Leetonia, Ohio; Dr. and Mrs. Renkenberger, and Mrs. McElroy, of Youngstown, Ohio.
     E. R. D.

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     MR. NELS JOHNSON.

     AN OBITUARY.

     Mr. Nels Johnson, who passed into the spiritual world at Glenview, Id., on October 7th at the age of eighty-one years, came to America from Sweden when a young man. Most of his life since then has been in connection with the landscaping industry as a planter and keeper of trees, and much of this, his life's work, was devoted to the beautifying of the parks of the city of Chicago. He became superintendent of one of the parks, and lived to witness the good results of his earlier industry. It was a great joy to him to drive through the parks and look upon the flourishing trees, most of which had been planted under his direction.

     When the time was ripe, he was introduced into the reading of the Writings of the New Church, and became devoted disciple of the Lord in His Second Coming. He became a deeply read and intelligent student of the Doctrines, although from the days of a rather austere and frugal boyhood he had had scarcely any schooling. This lack of previous education he always regretted, though it may have been the very condition necessary to his growing into such an appreciation of the teachings of the New Church. A sympathetic heart and an honest mind were all that was needed to develop in himself by his own reading that devotion to the truth of heaven which we knew him to possess.

     "Uncle" Johnson was man of decided opinions, perhaps of strong likes and dislikes, but never of prejudice or uncharitable judgment. A man of square-dealing himself, he was averse to anything that savored of dishonesty. Yet, humble in what he considered his own failings, he had a wide sympathy for others. He was kindly disposed and generous, helping many a friend in need, and giving strong encouragement and moral support. A regular and faithful member of the church in Chicago for many years, his loyalty was always deeply felt and appreciated by the pastors who presided over the society.

     He was a very devout man. Although deprived of his own family life,-his wife having preceded him to the other world many years ago,-he never became embittered or expressed any but the most genuine trust in the Divine Providence. As a lover of children, he was never happier than when they were responsive to him. He also took much interest in young people, and assisted more than one to attend the Academy Schools.

     In Providence, his departure for the higher life was as he would have desired. Quickly and quietly the Lord took him. And he was well prepared to go. No better praise is possible than to say that "he was a good man." And they who love the Lord's Church on earth will come into His heavenly kingdom.
     GILBERT H. SMITH.

     LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

     Los Angeles wishes to be considered as permanently on the map. Mr. Waelchli's visit this year marked a turning point in the life of the group of New Church people in this part of the country. He introduced to us the Rev. Hendrik Boef, who has been sent by the Bishop to fulfill our need for a resident minister.

     Mr. Waelchli's first Sunday with us was a most happy reunion. Although about-half of the people live over forty miles away, everyone who could possibly come was there. Sunday school and service were held in the morning. A picnic lunch was then served and a most pleasant time spent visiting around with each other. We were doubly happy in having with us Mr. Harold Pitcairn and Mr. Geoffrey Childs from Bryn Athyn. During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Waelchli gave us a most interesting account of the General Assembly in London. He also presided at a short business meeting when he told about the new uses into which the Circle would come upon its organization into a Society.

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     Sunday school and services were held the following two Sundays, at the latter of which Mr. Beef was with us for the first time. On this Sunday, also, a double baptism was administered for the two babies of the Society, Violet Grisham, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Grady Grisham, and Jane Klippenstein, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Klippenstein. The Sacrament of the Holy Supper was also administered to the adults present.

     During the week Mr. Waelchli was kept busy visiting around at the various homes. Class was held once a week in the different localities and as many as possible attended, and benefitted from the intensely interesting and instructive talks which Mr. Waelchli always gives.

     The last Sunday was also a big occasion, with a record attendance of 47; but all hearts were more than a little sad to realize that the short time was about over. We again made a day of it, serving lunch after the morning services. A business meeting was held in the afternoon, when Mr. Waelchli went more explicitly into the uses and organization of a Society. There was considerable free discussion on the problems peculiar to this particular group. An executive committee and pastor's council were chosen to assist Mr. Boef, and we felt that our new life had begun. For that reason we did not feel quite as desolate when Mr. Waelchli left as we have in previous years, knowing that he left behind him a leader who would carry on the work which he has so ably been doing here for the past years.

     Our new minister has already proved himself a real leader. The church services have taken on a new dignity and order. Chancel furnishings are being procured; a choir is being organized to improve the singing; a ladies' guild has been formed; and other uses are rapidly coming to the front.

     Everyone is full of enthusiasm for the work, and this was well shown at our first society social. This was in the form of a Hallowe'en party had at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Davis. Everyone went in costume, and there were many clever and original ones, ranging from a black mammy to a Spanish Don (Mr. Boef with a beard). There was not a dull moment during the evening. All are pulling together, and we are looking forward to our new life and its many uses with as much enthusiasm as our minister, if that be possible. He has already won our deep affection, and we are with him heart and soul.

     WASHINGTON, D. C.

     During the year's absence of our pastor, the Society is holding meetings but once a month, the Sunday service being held in a Hall at 1811 H Street, N. W. There were too few of us for a September meeting, owing to the absence of several members, but on October 14th the Rev. R. W. Brown preached for us, and the spiritual food which we received was hungrily absorbed, as we had been without services for three months. Mrs. Brown accompanied him, and they had time for a little sightseeing around our beautiful capital, as well as giving us an opportunity for a social visit with them.

     Our November meeting was conducted by the Rev. Homer Synnestvedt. He is an old friend whom we always like to welcome, and we especially appreciated his coming at a time when Bryn Athyn was filled with the Charter Day visitors and spirit. But he brought some of that sphere with him, and we enjoyed having him here. We are looking forward to other enjoyable meetings with these ministers or others who may be sent to us.
     E. H. G.

815


ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS 1928

ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS       HUGO LJ. ODHNER       1928




     Announcements.


     The Annual Council Meetings of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and the Philadelphia District Assembly, will be held at Bryn Athyn, Pa., from February 4th to 10th, 1929. The Program will be published in the January issue of New Church Life.

     Visitors.

     Those who expect to come to Bryn Athyn to attend these meetings are requested to notify Miss Florence Roehner, Bryn Athyn, Pa., in order that provision may be made for their entertainment.
     HUGO LJ. ODHNER,
          Secretary.

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DAILY READINGS from the Word and from the Writings 1928

DAILY READINGS from the Word and from the Writings       HUGO LJ. ODHNER       1928

     1929

     A CALENDAR outlining Daily Readings for 1929 will be sent to every member of the General Church before the New Year opens. The readings from the Writings are taken from various small treatises, most of which have never before been covered by our Calendars, and need to be known more widely in the Church. In a convenient form they are all found in the Posthumous Theological Works, published in two volumes by the Swedenborg Foundation, 18 East 41st Street, New York. The whole of the first volume will be used, and a few readings from the second. No other corresponding compilation is in print, but some of these small works are separately Printed by the London Swedenborg Society, namely, Coronis, Consummation, Canons, and Charity. The Academy Book Room will carry the two volumes of the Posthumous Theological Works in stock, the Price being $1.00 per volume, postpaid. We would suggest that orders be sent promptly to ensure delivery before January 1st.

     Copies of the CALENDAR can also be obtained by any who are not members of the General Church, by application to Mr. H. Hyatt, Bryn Athyn, Pa.

     A Department of Notes on the Calendar Readings will be carried monthly in NEW CHURCH LIFE, beginning with the January issue.
     HUGO LJ. ODHNER,
          Secretary of the General Church.