borg, there can never be two Churches in existence at the same time. The end of one dispensation means the birth of a new one, for the human race would perish if no Church existed. The human race would perish, because the Church in all times is the channel of communication with the Divine Being who is the only source of life. Thus, in the Jewish Church there was no direct communication with the Divine Being, but through the medium of priests and prophets and ceremonial observances which then had a positive use and real significance. The condition of mankind at that time permitted of no other access to God. The birth of the Lord into the world inaugurated an entirely new era, and from that day Judaism ceased to be the central pivot of humanity: it was no longer the moving force to which the world looked for guidance. A man was born who, with Divine precision, laid down principles and carried them out into life; who taught that love to God was only possible when it was shown through love to our fellow-men, and that the disposition to self-sacrifice was the true evidence of discipleship with Him.

The only Church then in existence centred in Him, and all the world's after progress depended upon the degree in which His principles were accepted and His example was imitated. It will be recollected how soon the beneficent influence of this Church was partially neutralized by the intrusion of the love of power and of dominion. Human pride at once suggested that the only fitting embodiment of the Church's teaching was in a powerful organization which, should take captive, not the hearts of men for the purpose of leading them to good, but which should take possession of the kingdom of this world, and through the exercise of political power and brute force should force upon all men the acceptance of the Christian verities. Human arrogance supplied the one thing further needful, viz. a priesthood which claimed to be the vicegerents of God upon earth, and which virtually stood between man and his Maker.

The struggle between Good and Evil continued through nearly 1800 years; and although the high behests of Christianity were borne aloft by brave and intelligent men in all ages, yet the hardened hearts and seared consciences of the bulk of those who claim to have the Church in their keeping, rendered it powerless to control the selfish passions of men, and reduced the world in

many of its aspects to a condition of almost impossible obtuseness to the calls of religion. At this juncture, we have from the graphic pen of Swedenborg, in his work on the Last Judgment, a description of the world of spirits, which makes it clear that that world, like the Church in the external world, had become an almost impassable barrier to heavenly influences, and the fulness of time having arrived, judgment was accomplished on the existing order of things, a new relationship of mankind with the Lord was established, and the New Church was instituted by the absolute dethronement of the old and the substitution of the new as the great factor in the direction. of the world's impulses and energies. This description in Swedenborg's work on the Last Judgment should receive the careful perusal of every one interested in this Centenary; it will require a large amount of affirmative and reverent study to realize all that it portrays, but I believe it will recommend itself to the matured judgment of those who wish to know the full import of the descent of the New Jerusalem.

The meaning, I think, will be found to be that the Lord now reveals Himself directly to every man through the spiritual sense of the Word, and that in proportion as man prepares himself to receive it, Divine light will flow into his soul and help him to grow continually more and more into the Divine likeness. All intermediaries have been swept away for ever. Man and his Maker are in direct relationship with each other. The imagination can hardly realize the mighty impulses which at once came into operation throughout the whole world under these circumstances. The good and wise in every community would feel themselves strengthened and invigorated by the new but unknown influences of which they were fitting recipients; and every institution opposed to human progress, however hoary its traditions, would find its battlements invaded and its strength departing.

It would be vain to attempt any description of the wonderful advance which has been made in the last 130 years in every department of human progress. I do not mean merely material progress, though that has made many other and many better things possible, but in higher conceptions of duty, in more thoughtful arrangements for the comforts of the poor, in the determination that every child shall have the opportunity of

receiving a thorough education of his faculties, in the disposition to redress all political and religious inequalities, and to manifest kindly and sympathetic feeling for the sorrowful and the oppressed. All these beneficent influences over the feelings and actions of men come undoubtedly from the New Church, which is the only existing Church, and the only source of true spiritual energy.

But it will at once be recognised by this description, that the New Church is not bounded by the confines of any religious sect, and that its powers are not dispensed at the hands of any priesthood.

Every man who has cultivated the spirit of self-sacrifice, who strives to conform his life to the will of God so far as he understands it, and who reads the Word in an affirmative and childlike spirit, will have the Lord for his guide and teacher, and will be in the best sense of the word a member of the New Church.

And now to return to December 5, one hundred years ago. The earnest men who met on that day rightly felt that the publication of the works of Emanuel Swedenborg was a matter of immense importance to the world; and the organization which eventually arose out of that meeting, and which we have inherited, has borne a conspicuous part in the publication of those works, not only in the English, but in several foreign languages. But the New Church, like its predecessors, was soon the prey of a spirit of discussion.

The ruling spirits of those meetings were men of determined character, who soon passed on from the original object of their meetings to the founding of a self-perpetuating priesthood, and only a short time elapsed before they claimed for that organization the title of the New Church signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation. Of course the attempt to gather the great universal influences of the New Dispensation into this small focus has lamentably but fortunately failed. Whether our organization succeeded or otherwise, makes comparatively little difference to the inward progress of the Lord's New Church amongst men. Its agents are myirads,-in every sect, in every movement, in every department of human life. And yet I feel that our organization may fairly claim to have rendered no inconsiderable service to the cause of truth, in

keeping the public attention drawn to the Writings of Einanuel Swedenborg, and making them easily accessible to all who desire to read them.

The year 1783 is memorable also for the accession to the small band of Swedenborg's admirers of the Rev. John Clowes. By this learned and pious man, most of the theological works were translated, many reading centres were organized, most of which have developed into Societies; and it is remarkable that of the 5000 registered members in Great Britain, one-half are still to be found in Manchester and the surrounding towns. The Rev. John Clowes believed, however, that the message of Emanuel Swedenborg was for the whole world and for all Churches, and that receptive minds would be everywhere found to imbibe his teachings.

We have lately heard too much from our pulpits about dead Churches, and all the ills that abound in the world are attributed to their influence. There are no dead Churches to be met with, if the term be applied to any corporate body of Christian worshippers; and yet dead Churches abound amongst us. Every individual man, whose evil life renders him incapable of receiving good influences from the Lord, is to all intents and purposes a dead Church; but I dare not claim that we, as a religious denomination, have not our full share of these nonreceptive specimens of moribund Churches.

The paper by Mr. Hughes was followed by a short address by Mr. SAMUEL SMITH on "Early Reminiscences." Mr. Smith spoke of having been, in the commencement of his religious life, a member of the Church of England. He owed his first gleams of the new light to the explanations which reached him through Mr. (now Rev. Dr.) Bayley. He joined the Salford Society some fifty years ago, when the Rev. David Howarth was the minister. He gave some description of the singularly calm manner of Mr. Howarth's delivery. He dwelt also on the universality of the New Church, and the use of the organization. in the preservation intact of the doctrines as they have reached us through Swedenborg, and in bringing together, for their greater comfort and advance in spiritual things, the similarlyminded.

The Rev. CHARLES H. WILKINS on "The Perpetual Newness of the New Jerusalem."-A hundred years ago the message

VOL. III. NO. XXV.-JANUARY 1884.

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of the New Church was unmistakeably new. The New Church came inviting men to the worship of a New God, and to the study of a New Bible. The God to whom it pointed was a God utterly unlike any God that had ever been preached before: a God who was a Divine Man; that Man the Jesus who took children in His arms, and sat down to eat with publicans and sinners.

The Bible which it brought was a Bible open in heaven as well as on earth, circulated among angels as well as men, and as necessary as a fount of wisdom to one as to the other. But the message that was new a hundred years ago is practically as new now as it was then. We rejoice to read the stirring sentences of teachers like Ward Beecher and Alexander Maclaren and Baldwin Brown, but do these great men ever plainly tell their people that the Divine Humanity is the one only Object, the only possible Object, of worship? And is not the teaching of the New Church concerning God and the Bible as new at this very hour, for the great majority of our fellow-Christians, as it was a hundred years ago? But a hundred years hence, what then? When at last the day of our triumph dawns, and all Christians are New Churchmen, what then? Shall we still be legitimately called the New Church? We may be newer then than we are now. We may know the Divine Man more intimately, we may be more familiar with the spiritual sense of His Holy Word. Our minds may be more deeply opened to the influences of His blessed heavens. We may be more fully inspired with His living Spirit. And if this be true of this Church a hundred years or a thousand years hence, this Church will be newer than it is to-day; newer than it was a hundred years ago; newer, because more vitally related to that One Fount of life to whom no oldness ever comes. Like the angels, the true New Church grows younger and newer the longer it lives.

Mr. FRANCIS SMITH on "The Blessings of the New Dispensation."— A dispensation is described as a system of principles and rites enjoined, as the Mosaic, the Gospel, or the Christian dispensation. The system of spiritual truth given by the Lord through His servant Emanuel Swedenborg, is a system of principles and rites enjoined; and as it discloses things previously unknown, and is adapted to the growing wants of the age, it is called the "new dispensation."