know. But on account of its very external and sensual character, it could not conceive of any resurrection, nor indeed of any real life without the material body; therefore the Church has believed and taught that the resurrection which is spoken of in the Word, denotes the resuscitation of this body.

We will now present the doctrine upon this subject which has been revealed for the New Jerusalem Church, that we may be the better able to perceive, on examining it further by the light of reason and Scripture, which doctrine is best supported by the united testimony of these two witnesses. In the "New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine," by Emanuel Swedenborg, (n. 223-227) we read:

"Man is so created, that as to his internal he cannot die, for he is capable of believing in God, and also of loving God, and thus of being conjoined to God by faith and love; and to be conjoined to God is to live to eternity.

"This internal is with every man who is born; his external is that by means of which he brings into effect the things which are of faith and love. The internal is what is called the spirit, and the external is what is called the body. The external, which is called the body, is accommodated to uses in the natural world; this is rejected when man dies; but the internal, which is called the spirit, is accommodated to uses in the spiritual world; this does not die. This internal is then a good spirit and an angel, if the man had been good when in the world, but an evil spirit, if the man had been evil when in the world.

"The spirit of man, after the death of the body, appears in the spiritual world in a human form, altogether as in the world; he enjoys also the faculty of seeing, of hearing, of speaking, of feeling, as in the world; and he is endowed with every faculty of thinking, of willing, and of acting as in the world. In a word, he is a man as to all things and every particular, except that he is not encompassed with that gross body which he had in the world; he leaves that when he dies, nor does he ever re-assume it.

"This continuation of life is what is understood by the resurrection. The reason why men believe that they are not to rise again before the last judgment, when also every visible object of the world is to perish, is because they have not understood the Word; and because sensual men place their life in the body, and believe that unless this were to live again, it would be all over with the man.

"The life of man after death is the life of his love and the life of his faith, hence such as his love and such as his faith had been, when he lived in the world, such his life remains to eternity. It is the life of hell with those who have loved themselves and the world above all things, and the life of heaven with those who have loved God above all things and their neighbors as themselves. The latter are they that have faith, but the former are they that have not faith. The life of heaven is what is called eternal life, and the life of hell is what is called death."

Again it is said in the Arcana Coelestia, by Emanuel Swedenborg, that "man rises immediately after death, and then appears to himself in the body altogether as in the world, with such a face, with such members, arms, hands, feet, breast, belly, loins; yea also when he sees himself and touches himself, he saith that he is a man as in the world; nevertheless it is not his external principle, which he carried about in the world, that he sees and touches, but it is the internal principle, which constitutes that very human principle which lives, and which had an external principle about it or out of singular the things belonging to itself, whereby it could be in the world, and act suitably to its situation there in the performance of its functions; the earthly corporeal principle is no longer of any use to it, it being in another world where are other functions, and other powers and abilities, to which its body, such as it hath there, is adapted; this body it sees with its eyes, not those which it had in the world, but those which it hath there, which are the eyes of its internal man, and by virtue of which through the eyes of the body it had heretofore seen worldly and terrestial things; it also

feels it with the touch, not with the hands or sense of touching which it enjoyed in the world, but with the hands and sense of touching which it there enjoys, which is that from which its sense of touching in the world existed; every sense also is there more exquisite and more perfect, because it is the sense of the internal principle of man set loose from the external, for the internal principle is in a more perfect state, inasmuch as it gives to the external the power of sensation, but when it acts into the external, as in the world, in this case the sensation is rendered dull and obscure; moreover it is the internal principle which is sensible of the internal, and the external principle which is sensible of the external; hence it is that men see each other, and are in society together according to the interiors; for my conviction of the certainty of all this, it hath also been given me to touch spirits themselves, and to discourse frequently with them on this subject."-(n. 5078.)

Here we have the doctrine of the New Church concerning the resurrection in Swedenborg's own language. The same is taught also in many other parts of his writings. And according to this doctrine we perceive that every man has a spiritual as well as a material body. The spiritual body is real and substantial-the very man himself not subject to death or decay; the material body is the clothing of the spiritual, and needful as an instrument to enable it to perform uses in this natural world. When the natural body dies, the real life of a man is by no means interrupted; but, if he be a good man, he then lives more truly than ever. He is removed to the world of causes, and enjoys a state of existence vastly superior to that which he enjoyed while connected with the material body. He is then elevated into a world which is a discrete degree above the natural, wherein every thing is much more real and perfect than it is in this world, and he has his senses greatly refined and exalted, and his capacity for knowledge and enjoyment vastly increased.

Thus, according to the doctrines of the New Church, the death of the natural body is no suspension or interruption of the life of man, but is a change which is

needful to our further progress and to the fuller development of all our faculties. We do not lie down to sleep, may be for thousands of years, and then to resume our worn-out earthly tenements, but we rise immediately in a spiritual body to a state of greater wakefulness than before.

Now we regard this doctrine as quite consistent both with reason and Scripture; while that of the Old Church appears to us contrary to both.

Those who receive the Sacred Scriptures as the Word of God, believe that the Author of revelation is also the Author of nature; and that these two volumes cannot therefore conflict, but must be in perfect agreement with each other. Now where throughout nature's vast domain do we discover any thing that bears an analogy to the commonly received doctrine of the resurrection of man's material body? We behold around us living creatures undergoing various transformations in their mode of existence. For example, we see the creeping worm passing through several successive states in the progress of its development, until at last it emerges from the stupid chrysalis a beautiful winged butterfly, joyous and happy, sporting among flowers and buoyant as the sweet breeze that it sails upon. But never does it resume the exuvia which clothed it while a worm; for useful as that covering was, when in the infancy of its being it crawled upon the earth, it needs it no longer now that it can fly in the air. And no where in nature do we find an example of a creature that has its conscious life suspended by casting its slough, or that ever resumes the envelope which it has once rejected. But what a beautiful illustration of the New Church doctrine of the resurrection is this instance of a butterfly rising from a worm!

And while the doctrine of the New Church upon this subject is so well supported by analogical reasoning, that of the Old is as plainly contrary to all analogy; for it is plainly contrary to all that we know of the perfect order of Divine Providence, that the particles which compose our material bodies so useful to our spirits here in the natural world, should-after they have performed

their appointed use, been rejected, resolved into their original elements, and scattered to the four winds of heaven-be re-collected, and again become the dwellingplace of the spirits that now animate them. And if this be contrary to the laws of divine order, we may affirm (and that without limiting the omnipotence of God) that it is impossible, and will never take place; for God can never act contrary to his own divine order, and is therefore omnipotent only according to order.

But there is another still stronger objection which reason urges against the doctrine of the resurrection of the material body. It is a thing well known among philosophers, and admitted by all, that our bodies are undergoing a gradual and constant change in respect to the material particles that compose them; so that we have not now precisely the same bodies that we had a year ago; and in seven years from this time, all the particles which now form our bodies may be rejected and replaced by others entirely new. If therefore the body of man, in respect to the specific atoms that compose it, is entirely changed once in seven years, at the age of seventy a man will have had not less than ten different bodies. Now which among this number will he have at the resurrection day? Some say, the body which was laid in the grave, or that which the man had at the time of his death. But it is plain that this would be giving some a very great advantage over others, and without any apparent reason; for the soldier, or the suicide even, who dies suddenly in the full vigor and bloom of life, would rise at the judgment day with a much better body than those who have died of a long and emaciating disease.

Moreover it is known that the body, which is laid off at death, after a while decays and becomes wholly dissipated. And philosophy teaches us that the particles which compose it enter into new combinations and help to form new bodies. Indeed this must be the case unless we admit that these decomposed particles remain idle and of no use, which is a thing contrary to all we know of the economy of God; for the kingdom of God in the natural as well as in the spiritual world, is a kingdom