fall, or we should be devils; and to diminish it, or there would be no regeneration, nor even reform.

When it is said that Divine Providence has reference to spiritual good and happiness without reference to the means, it should be understood that Providence cares for the dignities, riches, and comfort, etc., which may or may not be conferred on men, only so far as the giving or the withholding of these things may further the attainment of love and wisdom in heaven.

Man's Book of Life is rightly described as his interior or spiritual memory; but it is wrongly stated that this "for ever retains all that he has thought, said, or done in all his life.” On the contrary, the interior memory retains only interior knowledge, the spiritual memory is spiritual in all its contents, and retains the spiritual results of all exterior instruction and experience. We are to make friends by the mammon of unrighteousness, and by external things of any or every kind; and then when the mammon leaves us, and the external perishes, the spiritual, the internal character, will introduce us to that eternal abode which corresponds to it. The Last Judgment is the revealing to oneself of his spiritual character, and it results in his voluntarily associating himself with those who are like-minded.

We do not quite understand the phrase "germ of salvation," or the statement that "regeneration begins with the implantation of the Divine germ." Possibly the meaning of Mr. Thrall is correct, but it is hidden by the figure of speech employed: regeneration is the production in man of life from a new principle, so that man no longer remains natural, but becomes spiritual, living from charity, and in harmony with Divine order, and that willingly from love, that is, in freedom; and wisely from truth, that is, rationally. When Mr. Thrall says and prints thus, "Baptism is a sign and a memorial,—a sign that the man belongs to the Church, a memorial (!) that he is to be regenerated," his exclamation mark is evidence that he has not felt the due force of this somewhat ambiguous word. A memorial may be, and usually is, a (monumental) reminder of historic event, or of great or good men passed away; but the Latin memoriale means also a memorandum or other reminder of a thing to be said or done. Baptism speaks of a fact-I

belong to the Church; and further, my having been baptized should remind me and should impress upon me the obligation to be born again.

The Lord's Supper is more than "a symbol," it is a potent means of spiritual conjunction with the Lord. The Trinity is said in this article to consist not in persons, but in functions. This is, we believe, mere Sabellianism. The true statement is, that the Divine Trinity is of essentials in one Divine Person.

Nor is it quite correct to state that "the Logos "the Word -"is not the person of Christ, but Divine truth." The Logos signifies the Lord as to Divine Truth, but is not Divine Truth, as contradistinguished from Divine Love; for these in the Divine are indistinguishably and inseparably one: the Logos, the Word, became flesh, and thus was the Christ.

The statement that "the man who was destined to make" the truths concerning the Second Advent "known, who was to correct Paul's misapprehensions concerning the Second Coming, and set all future generations right on this whole subject, was, in his own opinion, no other than Emanuel Swedenborg," deserves remark. Its tone is sarcastic, and would be fairly responded to by a similar tone; but such a tone jars on fine feeling, and would rob of force even better argument than is here. Paul was under misapprehension in supposing the Second Advent close at hand, and time has replied to him. If the whole world be in agreement in some one view, then it may seem presumptuous for Swedenborg to emulate the ancient cry, Athanasius contra mundum. But, in fact, the world has given up the whole question as a hopeless enigma, and among Christian thinkers there is no better illustration of the proverb, "Many men, many minds." Every teacher on this subject has the hope that he is to set men right for all future time. The criterion of a proffered explanation is in the fact that it does or does not explain in accordance with known facts. There is the Word of God before us, the apostolic epistles are close at hand; in these documents there is reference made repeatedly to the coming of the Son of man. This subject is confessedly one on which students differ most widely; when, therefore, a sober, serious explanation is offered, it is not to be set aside by a When the true explanation is given, it will be given by some one. May not Swedenborg be he? Nor should the

sneer.

belief that the New Church is the one and only true Church upon earth be lightly set aside. The New Church differs from all others. Its bond is love; its belief is in the Lord Jesus as our God and Father, and in His Word as Divine; and its law is obedience unto holiness of life in accordance with the Divine law. If this be not true teaching, then the New Church is not the true Church; if this be the truth, no Church is the true Church that essentially differs from this. How many true but essentially differing Churches can exist simultaneously? The so-called Churches of Christendom cannot all justly bear that title if the title belongs either to the Anglican, or to the Unitarian, or to the New Church. On the other hand, it is not the organized New Church alone that is exclusively the genuine New Church. Every lover of truth and goodness who worships the Lord and reverences the Word belongs with us to the one Redeemer and Saviour. As an apostle found that not all who were called Israel were of Israel, so, contrariwise, not all who are of the Israel of to-day are called by that name; multitudes belong to the New Church who have not yet seen that their true home is in the organization that bears this name.

The next page or so of the article is directed to the lessening of any favourable impression that may have been made by the on-the-whole-satisfactory epitome of New Church teaching. As there is one sun, with unnumbered partial reflections of the universal luminary, in the ripple of the brook, in the wave of the sea, and in every dewdrop, and all these differing as more or less bear witness to the one light of heaven; so there is one Divine Word, the fountain of light for men below. And if Swedenborg more fully than another reflects its clear shining, his claim is not justly assailable on the ground that even heretics and many of the generally orthodox have now on one point, now on another point, borne testimony like his to the great source of our spiritual knowledge. I suppose that no honest student of the Word ever rose from its study having learned only to misunderstand and to misinterpret it. On the other hand, we may doubt whether, since John laid aside his pen in Patmos, there has been a man whose writings have approached the level of those which we are learning more and more to prize. We agree, of course, with the concession made in the article which many of our readers will peruse, that " to affirm that Swedenborg

was in advance of his own or the present day, on these and other subjects, is in effect to say that Jesus and Paul, and every great teacher and reformer, have been in advance of the majority of mankind;" but we wonder what is referred to when it is further said that "it is hard to find fault with him even where he grows absurd. For him to discern, as he does, some hidden meaning even in the commonest material object and most trivial incident of biblical history, or to invent a material symbol for the simplest truism, is perhaps more incongruous than harmful.” Here we pause and hesitate, for it is hard also to find fault with Mr. Thrall under certain circumstances. For Swedenborg to be charged with inventing symbols is incongruous with the whole transparently simple character of the man. The unfounded charge will be harmful to him who makes it, and to all who receive it. It will indeed be matter for regret if such a man as Swedenborg should be found guilty of supposing that he discerned kings which were non-existent, but for him really to discern, as Mr. Thrall says he does,-for him to discern "as he does," hidden meanings where they lay unsuspected by others, would be reason for our attending closely to his explanation of material objects or biblical incidents.

One blot is apparently hit when the reviewer quotes thus: "No one has hitherto even conjectured that there is any spiritual sense in the Word." But over against this must be set facts which show that this is not to be understood with absolute precision. "Hitherto" is a word of wide meaning, which must be limited by such statements as we find in the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem concerning the Sacred Scripture. In section 20 we are told that correspondence was familiarly understood in most ancient times; that the book of Job, not part of the Divine Word, distinctively so called, is full of correspondences. In section 23 we are assured that this knowledge was retained by the magi, the "wise men," at "the Lord's First Advent." Then in A. C. 4923 we learn of the mystical sense believed in by Jews and by some of the Christians who did not fully know its nature. Thus it is clear that the "hitherto" is by Swedenborg limited in its force. Then, further, it is an affirmed law of Divine Providence, that the Lord in revealing the spiritual sense to those who are grounded in genuine truths from Him, does so by means of such things

as a man knows already, not giving new knowledges to serve as the basis of higher spiritual understanding; and hence, unless a man were omniscient, any and every man would have his limited area of knowledge beyond which mistake will be no marvel to him or others. This applies to Swedenborg, who makes no claim to Divine instruction on facts of either physical science or of the history of opinion in the Church. Swedenborg might as well be unaware of all that Origen wrote, as he tells us he was of the writings of Mr. L(aw ?).

Those who have studied the condition of the Church when Swedenborg wrote, though they remember the position ascribed to Charity in the Church of Rome, and in the many bodies which dissent from that communion, will see in this no reason for suspecting any exaggeration in the declaration that "the doctrine of Charity . . . is at this day among the things that are lost."

46

Mr. Thrall says that Swedenborgian theology seems to throw itself fairly on its own merits, and challenge the fullest examination and criticism; but ungraciously hints that this "" seems is a pretence, for "Swedenborg assumes to be the only final authority in the interpretation of Scripture." Indeed! Whence does he obtain his interpretation? If from the Lord, and that through the Word, surely the final authority is the Lord teaching in man and by His Word. But Mr. Thrall illustrates the kind of examination and criticism which he would himself employ, when he ventures "to say that the very essence of" Swedenborg's "claim directly contravenes Christ's own plain statement that no man hath ascended into heaven at any time." If Swedenborg's claim be incompatible with this utterance of the Lord,-if the ascending into heaven be a thing for which men may not hope,-then the Master Himself, in saying that where He is we may be, has left behind Him a vain hope entertained in his dying moments by Stephen, first of millions who have hoped to "ascend into heaven;" so is the claim of Paul to have been in the third heaven, in Paradise, a groundless claim, and his apostleship is liable to be impugned; so is the claim of John the revelator incompatible with the same saying of the Lord, and the Apocalypse will be liable to assault as founded upon fiction.

We pass by an astounding mistake founded on the assumed identity of the inmost in man with man's internal, on which