take place on April 25th, 1886; in two years and three months." The editor continues: "We have only just time to get ourselves ready for it."

My pleasant rest at St. Valery, like all other good things, came to an end; and, calling at Amiens, the capital of Picardy, for a day to take a fresh view of the goodly city with its 63,000 inhabitants, at which I had often stayed to observe and admire its pretty park called the Hotoi, and its magnificent cathedral, I passed on to Paris. I was unable to go with Mr. Giles and Mr. Presland to the opening of the new Temple immediately after Conference; but as I had promised our worthy friends the Humanns, at whose expense this place of worship has been erected, that I would very shortly pay them a visit, and spend a Sunday with them, I went in fulfilment of this intimation.

The weather was wet, but I soon made an opportunity of seeing and examining the building. It is very good-looking architecturally, quite a Temple in appearance, and very pretty inside. It would hold comfortably two hundred and fifty hearers. It has galleries on two sides. There is a pretty recess behind the pulpit (or chaire, as they call it in France) coloured blue with gilded stars, and altogether has a most becoming appearance.

I pray that the best hopes of our friends may be abundantly fulfilled. The Rue Thouin in which the Temple is situated is a short street behind the Pantheon. As the stranger advances in front of the Pantheon, he should pass that building on the right, and he will come into the Rue Estrapade, then turning to his left he will come into the Rue Thouin. He will soon see the Library, with a tablet announcing the books; and next door is the Temple, with a tablet stating that it belongs to the New Church called the New Jerusalem.

The spread of the New Church in France is attended with very great difficulties, yet they are now much less than in former days. There is full religious freedom. With a slight attention to police regulations, meetings for religious purposes can be held as readily as in our own country. But as Swedenborg says, when enumerating the truths of the Word, and the importance of attending to them, Who thinks this? Is it not at this day a matter of indifference what truths a man knows, provided he is in worship? (A. R. 161). In France even this

latter proviso is little cared for. The growth of the New Church must be very uphill work.

On the other hand, nowhere have there been braver, more self-denying, spiritual, talented New Churchmen than in France. Converted priests like Pernetti, Oegger, and Ledru, even prelates, converted Protestant pastors like Jacquier of Bayonne, distinguished literary men like Richer, Baron Portal, Harlé, Le Boys des Guays, who for thirty years devoted his whole time and talents to the translation and diffusion of the Writings of Swedenborg; men of eminent benevolence like Las-Cases, Chazal, Tolnare, have held up the sacred light. But as yet the gleams are few and small, a light shining in darkness.

The French New Churchmen of the present day are equally distinguished for loving benevolence, devotion, and talent. Witness the Humanns, the friend who assists our missionary efforts every year, and the able writer at Bourges who signs himself " A Friend of the New Church" (Un Ami de la Nouvelle Eglise), whose works both on the New Dispensation and on Protestantism in general are most able and interesting. May the Lord bless them and their efforts, and give them the desires of their hearts.

THE SHADOWS OF LIFE.

A BIRTHDAY SONG TO MY WIFE, 1865.

THE shadows of life grow longer and longer,
And the friends of our youth are far, far away;

But our love, my dear wife, grows stronger and stronger,
As the forest looks richer 'mid Autumn's decay.

Let the rich boast his wealth, and the proud man his state, Bind the brow of the hero with laurels of fame;

'Mid the glow of young health, in the halls of the great, Let the gay find their pleasure, the vain ones a name:

Content with our lot, neither envy nor care
Shall poison the cup which our Father has blest;
Wealth, pleasure, and fame are oft dashed with a tear,
And in sorrow crave vainly our haven of rest,-

That rest of the heart which grows fuller and fuller
As years rolling on knit us more into one;
While their pleasures part, and grow duller and duller,
Until at the last they are gone, they are gone!

Then fear not the shadows, though longer and longer,
Which soften around us so blandly at last;

The love which on earth grows stronger and stronger
Shall brighten in heaven when earth's shadows are past.
J. W. HANCOCK, LL.B.

Book Notices.

ANGELIC WISDOM CONCERNING THE DIVINE LOVE AND CONCERN-
ING THE DIVINE WISDOM. Translated from the Latin of
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG.
Foreign.

Swedenborg Society, British and

THE Church is indebted to the Swedenborg Society for this new translation of one of the great works by means of which the Lord has made His Second Advent. The philosophical and scientific works of Swedenborg from the very first were all translated by thorough scholars. But, doubtless for some providential reason, as to the precise nature of which it is needless now to speculate, the theological works of that heaven-illumined author have often fallen into the hands of translators and revisers who, however great may have been their qualifications in other respects, could certainly lay no claim to that of exact modern scholarship. be it from our thoughts to undervalue or to speak slightingly of the labours of that succession of disinterested men who, without money and without price, have given us the Writings in our mother tongue. We only refer to the subject in order to signalize what we hope will prove to be an event of happy omen for us all, at any rate for all those of us who cannot read Latin, in the appearance of the translation before

us.

Far

And no doubt the good men who have preceded them, if they could look down and see the efforts which are now being made, both here and in America, to render the Writings into a thoroughly scholarly translation, would be the first to bless the work of the present translators, and of the committee who have set them to work.

A prefatory note, which is signed by J. J. Garth Wilkinson

581

and Rudolph L. Tafel, informs us that these are the gentlemen who have executed the work of translation.

This note is so admirable, that we cannot do better than quote a portion of it for the benefit of those of our readers who have not yet seen the book:

"The present translation is based upon the recommendations of the Revision In addition to Committee of the Swedenborg Society; and it is believed that in technical respects those recommendations have been fully carried out. this, fidelity to the matter and manner of Swedenborg has governed the translation. More remains to be done in the same direction even with this small work. There are phrases which are still to be solved into English idioms by the painstaking translators of the future. But at present it has not seemed advisable to put idiomatic English in the first place, and Swedenborg's forms of speech in the second. There is temptation to do so.

But whenever

the process has been attempted, the immediate result has shown that some pregnant meaning has escaped in the altered phrase. Swedenborg is ever clear and definite, and employs unusual forms of speech only for unusual purposes. To convert these forms into current English would void their intrinsic meaning."

"It is difficult to speak of language alone in introducing to some new readers, ... Yet it can be said that and to many old ones, so important a work. Swedenborg, as a mere writer, taken on his own ground of use and purpose, is The measured tread of the Writings, unheard unsurpassed in literature. by the world, and perhaps only noticed by some readers as a mannerism, is the march and discipline of the very truths of Heaven."

.

The merits of a translation of this nature can of course only fully appear as the work comes into use, and is subjected to the test of time and prolonged critical examination; but so far as we have seen, we think that the Swedenborg Society may be congratulated on the first-fruit of the new departure which they have made, and may feel encouraged to go on with it.

Opening the book almost at random, we come upon this passage, which if it be a fair sample of the rest of the work, certainly affords evidence of a great advance upon what has been done for us before in this field :

§ 158. "As the sun of the natural world is pure fire, and hence it is dead, therefore also the heat proceeding from it is dead heat, and likewise the light proceeding from it is dead. The atmospheres, too, which are called ether and air, and which receive and carry down in their bosom the heat and light of that sun are dead. Since these are dead all things of the surface of the ground in general and in particular, which are under the atmospheres, and are called earths, are dead.' But still these things, all and singular, are girded round by spiritual things which proceed and flow forth from the sun of the spiritual world. Unless they were so engirded the earths could not have been stirred into activity, and could not have produced the forms of uses, which are plants, or the forms of life, which are animals; nor could have supplied those matters through which man exists and subsists."

We will now give the old translation of this passage as contained in the octavo edition of 1875 :

"Since the sun of the natural world is pure fire, and for that reason dead, therefore the heat thence proceeding is dead heat, and the light thence proceeding dead light. By parity of reasoning, the atmospheres, -the ether and the

air,-which receive and communicate the heat and light of that sun, are dead; and being dead, all and everything of the world which are under them, and are called earths, are dead. Nevertheless all and each are surrounded by spiritual things which proceed and flow from the sun of the spiritual world; and unless they were thus surrounded, the earths could not have been actuated and made capable of producing forms of uses, that is, vegetables, or forms of life, that is, animals; or of furnishing matters for the existence and subsistence of

man,

On comparing these two translations, the first thing that will strike the reader is that the new one is much more clear. The second is that it is better English. And the third will be the question, Which is the closer to the original? We are happy to be able to answer this question by saying that the new translation is far closer to the original than the old one, as any one may see by comparing the three together. This is a very satisfactory circumstance; and indeed we believe it will be found to be almost a universal rule, that the closer to the original of Swedenborg we keep, the more readable will be the translation that we make. There are limits to the application of this principle, but the more we can succeed in applying it, the better even for the English of our translation.

The cumbrous expression, "By parity of reasoning," for instance, has no business there. It is represented in the original by the single word pariter, and it serves merely to load down and obscure the sense.

We note that the now almost famous phrase, omnia et singula, is translated in four different ways in the quotations before us, two in each. First in the old translation we have " all and everything" and "all and each," and in the new one we are presented with "all things . . . in general and particular," and "these things, all and singular." The reader can judge for himself as to which of these renderings is the best in the position in which it stands; the Revision Committee, however, ordained that this phrase was to be translated "all things in general and particular." At the same time we think that the majority of New Church scholars would prefer the exact literal rendering "all and singular," wherever it can be introduced so cleverly as is done in the case before us. "All and singular" no doubt requires explanation, but as soon as the phrase is understood, it conveys to the precise thinker a more clear and definite meaning than any other form of words in English that has yet been proposed in its place.

And now for a few words of criticism of a slightly more adverse character.

The specimen which we have quoted affords an illustr of what we think is perhaps quite a striking feature of translation. The instances seem to be numerous wilkinson