seconds the demand, and the sin continues. What is to be done? Denunciation has been tried. Severe laws have been tried. They were tried in England under the Commonwealth, and they ended in the wild licentiousness of the reign of Charles the Second. Mr. Cook's second letter closes the correspondence on his part. The only portion relating to the discussion which we have not given, appears in the following extract from the Committee's final letter:-" We cannot reconcile ourselves to a conclusion of the correspondence without entering our protest against one statement which occurs in the otherwise unobjectionable tone of your letter. The passage in question is this: 'I look upon Swedenborg's views as practically if not adequately condemned by Swedenborgians themselves, in that no Swedenborgian pretending to respectability, according to English or American social standards, could put those errors into practice.' In our letter we proved beyond the possibility of doubt, and that not by appeals to matters of opinion, but by simple references to passages in the volume under consideration, that the suggested permissions have no reference whatever to, and are not addressed to, those whom you designate by the term Swedenborgians. Surely you are bound, both by your own assumed critical standpoint and by your honour as a Christian gentleman, either to demolish our premises or to disprove our conclusions,—not to ignore, as you have done, both the one and the other." The questions discussed in this correspondence are of the utmost importance, have long occupied, and will long continue to occupy, the attention of earnest and thoughtful men who seek to promote the moral and religious improvement of the age in which we live. It is truly said by Mr. Cook, such questions are not to be "skipped." We shall contribute nothing towards the improvement of the fallen and erring by closing our eyes to the existence of the evils we deplore and desire to correct; and we shall accomplish very little by the adoption of mistaken methods of procedure. The system advocated by Mr. Cook has long been the prevalent practice of Christian communities; Swedenborg suggests "a more excellent way." His way is founded on a deeper insight into the nature of sexual relations, and the general providential treatment of evil-doers. It is matter of common observation, that we can only know the quality of an evil from the good to which it is opposed. To see the direful nature of sin we must be lifted above it. Occupied by its lusts and surrounded by its influence, we live in an atmosphere of fallacy, and fail to discover its true nature. It is not from the natural love of the sex that we can discern the pre-eminent purity and beauty of marriage love. Conjugial and scortatory love are the opposites of each other, but this opposition does not appear to the natural man. In external enjoyment they seem to be the same. To the natural man the excitement and the variety give the appearance of a higher delight and more rapturous enjoyment. It is in the internal that this opposition appears, and it is only as men become internal that they can truly discern and fully realize the diametric opposition and inexpressible hostility of these two conditions of life. Every affection of the mind, like every fibre of the body, is composite. To the sense and to the conscious experience, it is simple and uncombined; but in reality it consists of innumerable affections combined, if good, by an infinite wisdom, into a form of beauty, and a source of refined and inexpressible delight; if evil, conglomerated into a mass of seething filthiness, and gross, deceptive, and unsatisfying pleasures. It is by thus opening up the interior character and quality of these contrary and opposite conditions of the life that Swedenborg lures his readers to the chaste delights of the spirit, and makes manifest the exceeding sinfulness of the sins of the flesh. But in the effort to correct these fearful evils with which society is afflicted, we may not overlook the general providential treatment of evil-doers. The Supreme Ruler in the affairs of men and the movements of the world, is the Omniscient and Omnipresent God. His will is infinitely benevolent, and His government is one of infinite compassion and mercy. He is "the charioteer of the black horses as well as the white," only in the sense that He appoints good to all, but permits evil to those who abuse His gifts. God is in nature, and He governs nature; but He governs it according to laws of wisdom which recognise the freedom of the human will, and permit the reflection of its abuse in the objects by which we are surrounded. He wills good, yet He permits evil; but He controls the evil, curbs its violence, and overrules its influence to the final security and elevation of wisdom and holiness. In His treatment of the fallen, He exhorts, persuades, attracts by His love, but does not compel by resistless force. He gives the laws whereby the evil may be overcome and the soul purified from its defilement, but He does not compel obedience. He does not infringe the liberty of the will. He does not violate the freedom which He has constituted the most essential element of human nature and the ground of human character. He seeks to lead men in liberty according to reason, and, in the final issue of things, to make the wrath of man to serve Him. The permitted development of evil is doubtless one of the means whereby the charity of His children is to be largely exercised, and the feelings of compassion and mercy, so essential to the truly Christian character, brought to a ripened maturity. By the unhappy development of evil in the minds and lives of the wicked, the evil tendencies of our nature are also made manifest, and the ground secured in the minds of the fallen of a deeper humiliation and an intenser clinging to the Saviour as their only refuge, security, and hope. The providence of the Lord is thus over all His creatures. It is not extended in mercy to the saints, and oblivious of the requirements of evil-doers. The laws of permission have relation to correction and improvement. At this point Mr. Cook and Swedenborg part company. The terrible afflictions which often follow transgression are, in Mr. Cook's view, the inflictions of God's wrath and fiery indignation. In Swedenborg's view, they are the natural consequences and open revelation of the nature of transgression, and permitted for its chastisement and correction. In relation, therefore, to the evil, and to the treatment of the evil, they occupy totally different positions. Mr. Cook's position is compelled repression, which all written history, both sacred and secular, shows to be impossible. Swedenborg's position is amelioration and correction, which the same history shows to be difficult but not hopeless, and which, with advancing Christian culture and civilisation, is slowly but certainly entering into, and largely influencing, modern legislation. Mr. Cook demands, under threatened penalty of everlasting curse, instant surrender and entire conformity to the law of truth. Swedenborg displays the beauty of the law, and seeks to lure and attract to its observance those who have departed from its order, its purity, and its delights. But he recognises the strength of passion, the pressure of heredity, the terrible force of habit, and the difficulties which surround the position of the licentious; and while holding up the law therefore with greater power, because with more enlightened exposition than Mr. Cook, he yet exercises a larger compassion, and recognises all the conditions of moral life as under the wise guidance of a benevolent permissive providence. That Mr. Cook, to whose system of thought hissing and scorn, loathing and curse, gibbets and hulks are the suggested remedies, should fail to understand the milder treatment of Swedenborg is not surprising. That men of Christian culture should so largely share in these violent and merciless sentiments we may regret, but cannot prevent. We need not, however, be disturbed by their hostility, nor impatient of results. Time is on our side. Those who have watched the progress of legislation and the development of more merciful feelings during the past half century, will not despair of the ultimate prevalence of systems of treatment for the cure of these terrible maladies of lust, and its kindred evil, intemperance, of wiser and more beneficent kind than unmeasured curse and bitter contempt and scorn. But whatever may be the suggested remedies for these terrible evils, there is only one source of cure. The biblical critic calls in question the narrative in the Gospel of the woman taken in adultery. We question the criticism; and if the narrative is taken as an example of the Lord's treatment of the erring, no contrast could be greater than this example and the suggested remedies of Mr. Cook. The answer of the Saviour gives the root principle of cure-"Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." The beginning of regeneration is departure from evil, but the progress of regeneration is in the interior opening of the mind to the perception of truth, the culture of the love of purity, and the perception and delight in true order, which plants heaven within the soul, and fits us for a heavenly inheritance in the future, by making us heavenlyminded in the present. It is the great recommendation of Swedenborg's doctrine of Marriage, that he clearly shows its relation to this great change in human character. EDITOR. Book Notice. NOVUM TESTAMENTUM. This work is published in Paris, Librairie Swedenborgienne, rue de Thouin, 12. Price 10 francs. It consists of the four Gospels in Latin, with a running commentary also in Latin from E.S., somewhat in the fashion of the four Gospels by Mr. Clowes, but all from Swedenborg. In addition, under each verse there is a reference to every place where it is referred to in Swedenborg, including the three series of Adversaria. Its value to a scholarly student is inestimable; and it should be possessed by every New Churchman who reads Latin. The basis of the work was laid by Messrs. Le Boys, des Guays, and Harlé ; but it has been completed and published by that indefatigable and modest gentleman who has of late years published so many valuable treatises under the name of A Friend of the New Church. We heartily commend the work to all our learned readers. THE RICHES OF NATURE. THE simplest joys that Nature's bosom wears, The sun that gilds the glowing arch of day, Is but a semblance of Jehovah's love The image of His wisdom set on high; Each lowly flower that drinks the evening dew, The birds that carol in the shaded wood, Sing truths as sweet as ever mortal knew. The earth with all that decks her form, Throughout the world the pulse of God beats warm, |