are these proofs, that they become reciprocal and accumulative by repeated trials, as to amount, in the result, to complete demonstration; like the science of geometry,-the definitions are clear and exact, the premises logically accurate, and the conclusions exhibit results which are equally satisfactory,-they acquire strength in proportion to our critical acquaintance with these writings; and those who make them their constant study and habitual delight, are best able to appreciate the truth of these remarks.

It is not then without reason, that our author declares that the Word cannot be rationally understood without doctrine, and that there is no genuine doctrine without illumination.* And if the genuine truth can be elicited from the literal text, yet the ability to reproduce it requires distinct illustration from the Lord. Even a knowledge of the law of correspondence is insufficient without distinct or separate illumination.† Such illustrations can only be derived from clear and infallible perceptions from the divine truth of the Word itself. And from hence we may discover the degraded condition of the Church, as destitute of any correct law of divine inspiration by which the science of theology can be fixed upon terms accurately defined. Since the period of the last judgment in 1757, the progress of free inquiry has been shaking the doctrinal foundations of the Christian Church, and the greatest changes are perceptible. How numerous are the proofs that the sacred temple has been laid waste-trodden under foot by the Gentiles, so that all the * Swedenborg's Theology, 225-232.

"It may be imagined that the doctrine of genuine truth might be collected by means of the spiritual sense of the Word, 'which is learnt by the science of correspondences; but doctrine is not attainable by means of that sense, but only capable of receiving illustration and confirmation from it; for as observed above, (208.) it is possible for a person to falsify the Word by some correspondences with which he is acquinted, when he connects them together, and applies them to the confirmation of particular opinions rooted in his mind, in consequence of the principles he hath imbibed. Besides, the spiritual sense of the Word is opened to man by the Lord alone, and is guarded by Him, as the angelic heaven is guarded, for heaven is included in it.”—Swedenborg's Theology, 230.

"The mere statement of argument may not appear to carry much weight; but when it is connected with a knowledge of what the doctrines, which we believe to be those of "the New Jerusalem," are; when these doctrines are seen to exhibit all the great truths of pure Christianity in a clearer light than ever they were placed in before, and to discover with demonstrative evidence the errors of the sentiments by which their genuine lustre has been long obscured; when, together with the doctrines of pure Christianity, the spiritual sense of the Scriptures is seen to be truly unfolded, its existence demonstrated, and the Word of God proved in consequence to be the Word of God indeed :--when, I say, these truths are seen, as they may be seen, in the writings of the author we so highly esteem; every mind which duly appreciates them will be apt to conclude, that such discoveries could never have been made by any unassisted human intellect, and that the only probable way of assigning them an origin, is, to regard them as a consequence of that Second Coming of the Lord, which they announce."-Noble's Appeal, 2d edition, p. 25.

ancient landmarks have either disappeared or have been removed! The literal text has been so critically adjusted, and yet so twisted, tortured, and twirled about, as to destroy the vestiges of its divine origin; thus what is divine in the holy writings, has been swept away as by a common flood; a greater latitude of interpretation has been introduced, so that every genuine truth of doctrine has either been perverted or falsified, reversed or removed. The consummation has arrived, threatening universal desolation, as if to involve all opinions in one common ruin.

From the like cause, this great and unprecedented earthquake,-the friends of the New Church have felt similar agitations. There is a class of readers and admirers of Swedenborg whose labors seem designed to aid in the general overthrow, and to promote the cause of scepticism and infidelity in the world. They bring to the writings of Swedenborg all the fires of self-love and the loves of this world; and are willing to adopt his discoveries, as a medium for the dissemination of their preconceived views or prejudices, in favor of a false and dangerous philosophy. While admitting only a few of his phrases, and some of his distinct terms which he has so accurately defined, they pour contempt upon his mission, and upon every thing peculiar and heavenly in his doctrines. They endeavour to amalgamate his opinions with Pantheistic philosophers; all distinctions between virtue and vice are thus confounded, or mixed up together in one heterogeneous mass. The inspirations of Byron, Carlyle, and Coleridge, of Johanna Southcote, and the Mormonites, are considered as proceeding alike from the same divine afflatus ;-celestial and infernal, natural and spiritual, with them are one and precisely the same. It is thus that the works of Berkeley and Kant, and of the German metaphysicians, have opened new fields of speculation for the sport and amusement of the transcendental schools. The Americans have a like class among them. Their style of writing is peculiar, eccentric, and attractive. Carlyle and Coleridge on this side of the water, and Emerson on the other, are fair specimens of this tribe.* And what is the use of this class of writers, if viewed in

* "How serpentine are the foldings of the line of beauty in the poetical fancies of some writers." "A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious sense in men, as if blasted with excess of light. The trances of Socrates; the union of Photinus; the vision of Porphyry: the conversion of Paul; the aurora of Behmen; the convulsions of George Fox and his Quakers; the illumination of Swedenborg, are of this kind. What was in the case of these remarkable persons a ravishment, has, in innumerable instances in common life, been exhibited in a less striking manner. Everywhere the history of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and Quietist; the opening of the internal sense of the Word, in the language of the New Jerusalem Church; the revival of the Calvinistic Churches; the experiences of the Methodists, are varying forms of that shudder of awe and delight with which the individual soul always mingles with the universal soul."-Emerson's Essays, ix. Essay.

relation to the New Jerusalem and its heavenly doctrines ? The perusal of their works is amusing, but they leave no fixed principles either of goodness or of truth in the mind; pretty and ornamental as the shells which are intermingled with the sand and the mud upon the sea shore for multitude, yet they are devoid of life and light; their genius sparkles with poetical brilliances and trifles light as air,-as the glow-worm glistens in the midnight darkness, and yet the spectator admires them without any clearness of vision or distinctness of thought; for they unsettle the mind, and remove it from its proper moorings; they snap the cable by which the anchor is fixed and preserved; they attract us into their little barks, and carry us off into the boisterous and tempestuous ocean, and left finally helpless, without a rudder, compass, or pilot to assist our course in the fearful and desolating storm. From a view of the whole, we involuntarily exclaim, -ecstacy-rhapsodybombast-flights of enthusiasm-the ebullitions of self-conceit-the offspring of self-derived intelligence, or of proprium-" these are thy gods, O Israel, before whom ye fall down and ignorantly worship."* The constant agency of Divine Providence, in the supreme direction of all human concerns, by fixed and established laws of order, in the

"The New Church teaches, that to be wise, man should look from himself; Transcendentalism teaches him to look always to himself. The New Church derives from that great act, wherein the infinite love, and the infinite wisdom, and the infinite power, of our Lord, were equally and fully displayed, not only a reason for the deepest humiliation, not only a ground for humble and unlimited hope, but a truth which will fill with light our understanding, that lies open to it, as a sun illuminates a world; while Transcendentalism holds itself above all this, declares that the mind of man is self-luminous, and gropes or dances over the face of things as if it were a living and conscious will-o'-the-wisp flitting over a desolate and murky waste. The New Church declares, that, as the renunciation of self-love is the beginning of all goodness, so the renunciation of the pride of self-intelligence is the beginning of all true wisdom; but with Transcendentalism, the pride of self-intelligence is itself the beginning and the end of all wisdom. I, (says one, who is its hierophant in this region, (I, the finite, worship in myself the infinite.' And so it always is, though not always so expressed. Its whole religion is self-worship.'"-New Jerusalem Magazine, vol. xiv. p. 386. Boston, 1841.

In confirmation of the above, it may be added, that the like effects have been observed in England. About five years ago, a disciple of Kant and a friend of Coleridge, one who professes to have sounded the deep abysses of the darkness of this intricate philosophy-was in conversation upon this subject, when it was gently hinted to him, "that the doctrines he inculcated, in their inmost ground, were pantheistic." The thought gave a sudden impetus to his poetical imagination, and he exclaimed in rapture and delight, "I am Jehovah!!!" Seeing the persons present were struck with shame at the impiety, or rather the insanity of the remark, he endeavoured to soften it by this reiteration, I am a God!! yes, I am a God!! Here the great secret, the quintessence of this metaphysical species of Freemasonry is discovered in the climax and terminus of this transcendental effervescence of selfconceit and consummate folly. Does it not smell strongly of the fire and brimstone, the lava ever issuing from the bottomless pit? And what a comment upon the state of the departed is described by E.S. in his memorable relations. (See Swedenborg's Theology, 35-77, &c. &c.) Some of Kant's disciples profess to receive or admire the writings of our Author, while some members of the New Church are equally proud of the embraces; but let them beware, for they are the embraces of a Judas, who would sell their Lord and Master for thirty pieces of silver.

constitution of the divine government, proceeding through a chain of causes and effects, from first principles unto their ultimates, is taught in the theology of Swedenborg; in which he resolves these mysterious phenomena, by the development of their coherence and harmony with the succession of interior causes and effects to which they are related, in perfect agreement with the discoveries of all former revelations. We see the end from the beginning, as preparatory to a future end, connecting the past with the present and the present with the future, not only with the external world, but with the invisible realities of an eternal and spiritual state of existence, to which we as individuals are more immediately related. The superior degrees of illumination thus opened to the contemplative mind in connexion with man's future destiny, in his purification and regeneration for the virtues and uses of an endless life in the higher states and beatitudes of eternity, lead us to the anticipation of the most important discoveries of the divine attributes, to the love, the wisdom, and power of God, coöperating with the reciprocal affections implanted in the soul of man, both as to will, understanding, and outward operation in all the qualities and uses to which they as recipients are made subservient. The seasons of the year, and the different changes to which they give birth, with all the objects, forms, and qualities in the material world, and the varieties of which they are susceptible, are thus analogically instructive. No change, or variety of contrast or of opposite, but what possesses a distinct impression, a constant and unceasing variety, which is equally instructive and admonitory, and calculated to elevate the soul from earth to heaven, and to open its secret recesses to a reception of the virtues and graces of a divine life. The end of the world or of the Church, or the consummation of the age of the first era of the Christian Church, as being applicable to the present time, is to be the crown or ultimate of all prior dispensations; it is to issue in a more perfect state of the Church on earth than has hitherto appeared; it is prefigured as the "New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." But the preparatory scene by which these signal changes and striking manifestations are to be accomplished, may be slow in their operation, and very different from what our sanguine expectation may have pictured to the mind by some indistinct perceptions of these magnificent objects; they may yet have many steps of preparatory ages of cloud and darkness, of stormy wind and tempest, with the desolating earthquake.* In the meanwhile let us chant this

"For in the whole circle of imagination, there is nothing greater or more sublime, more solemn and awe inspiring, than the thought of God entering into judgment with the sinful race of men. This very solemn thought, however, has its bright and pleasing side, and in this resembles the moon, whose face towards the

canticle: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled; though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most high." (Psa. xlvi. 1—4.)

ALEPH.

MATERIALS FOR MORAL CULTURE.

(Continued from page 323.)

CXX.

WHEN smarting under a sense of injury, pity for the aggressor is a much safer guide to the judgment, than the feeling of "wild justice," as resentment and revenge have not unaptly been termed. Pity descends from heaven, but anger and resentment have their origin far distant from the abodes of light. Hence it is that pity exclusively possesses that clear vision which is required to discern the real merits of a case on both sides. Before we allow a feeling of resentment to arise, it would be well, in the first place, to regard the supposed aggressor with pity, not of a contemptuous kind, but heavenly pity; and then it would not seldom be discovered, that there is really nothing to pity; and this would lead to the further discovery, that nothing has happened to justify resentment, nothing with which we can legitimately quarrel, even on merely natural grounds. If professed Christians would thus habitually act upon the Divine law, "Bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; and pray for them that despitefully use you," they would annihilate by far the greater number of causes of discord amongst them. Where there is nothing in an act to call forth pity for the doer of it, there can be nothing in it to constitute a just ground for unfriendly contention. Apply this rule, and all cases of unintentional offence would at once be excluded; and how very large a proportion of the causes of strife are of this description.

earth is at one time dark, at another bright and luminous. For even in his judgments God manifests his goodness, even in the solemnity of the Judge the love of the Father is displayed. We shall acknowledge this, if we contemplate the judgments of God as a purification of the sinful world. But let us to-day so contemplate them, that they may appear to us as thunder-clouds, which together with the destroying lightning send down fruitful rain; and that the gentle feeling of confiding love may mix with the solemn awe of our veneration.”—Baker's German Pulpit, p. 63; 1829.

N.S. NO. 59.-VOL. v.

3 F