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with no prejudice against singularity, carry on the issue to the end, where all the elements of the series are justified and clear.

Among these singularities we may undoubtedly class the Book of Dreams. But when they are once seen in series, and especially when the end for which they are written is seized, namely, to elicit, for use, the correspondences of the visions of the night, viz. what they imported for Swedenborg's regeneration and work, the record, which would otherwise be flimsy, attains solidity and purpose by virtue of the current of providential education which it carries. It stands in its own place, like the first pier of a bridge based on the ground, but whose next arches will have nobler proportion, and its last sweep touches another shore. This is plainly seen in comparing the correspondences given in the Dreams with those (which constitute the great light of Swedenborg's interpretations of the Holy Word. As a matter of evidence, which we chiefly deal with here, the writer believes that no forger ever lived who could have put together such a link as these dreams are between the two periods of Swedenborg's life, which they professedly connect. The intermediating hybridness which they exhibit is beyond imitation; in other words, it was the state of no mind but Swedenborg's.

Another and similar event of series, traced adequately by Professor Tafel, is the relative place and reason of the Apocalypse Explained and Apocalypse Revealed. Here also the growth of Swedenborg's openness to the Divine light of the Word, and to the knowledge of the drama of the spiritual world, is plainly seen; and it is shown, as in the former case, to be gradual, orderly, and broad. "The great distinction," says Tafel, "between the Apocalypse Explained and Apocalypse Revealed consists in this, that while in the former work the doctrine of the internal sense is applied to the church universal, in the latter it is treated exclusively in its bearing on the New Jerusalem Church, and the relation it occupies in respect to the consummated Christian Church. This is the reason why the Author, when he saw the special signification of the Book of Revelation, suddenly ceased all his labours in connection with the Apocalypse Explained, so that this work terminates with the explanation of the tenth verse of chapter xix. This, therefore, is an occasion where Swedenborg, by the elaboration of one work, was evidently prepared for writing another, and where, in the second work, he has particularized the teachings of the first" (pp. 1000, 1001).

Remarks like these are the forerunners of a possible biography of Swedenborg, for they tend to show how the Lord dealt with him throughout his life, and develop the germ of biography uttered by himself, that the Lord prepared him for his mission from his earliest years. The stages of the preparation, and also of the attainment, are now clearly laid down, and may be studied by the careful reader. Two points strike us in conclusion. We have here the picture and substance of a great and gifted mind, advancing from less to more, often from very small beginnings to considerable conclusions; order, virtue, humility, modesty, a constant trust in the Divine Providence, and an ardent love of mankind, accompanying the way. In the second place, within this development, which is strictly and soundly natural, we have from almost the same beginnings, unknown to this gifted person,

though now visible to ourselves, an impregnation of spiritual and supernatural powers and events, which breaks out as years and works advance, and finally, in thorough order, shakes itself free from the husks and trammels of natural subjects; and the man is personally summoned by the One Personal Lord to His own high work, which was intended, and not resisted, from the first. Herein we are admitted into the very process whereby the Lord dealt with Swedenborg and raised him from a rational mind to an illuminated rational mind, prepared, in short, to enter upon the understanding of the spiritual sense of the Word. Now, besides being taken into the deep confidences and responsibilities which this knowledge implies, into this insight into the ways of God with man, the information communicated in Professor Tafel's pages from beginning to end amounts to a complete confutation of the claim which spiritists and natural men generally make to include Swedenborg in their ranks. At the end of these documents we are entitled to say that no case like Swedenborg's has appeared in mundane history. He stands generically alone. The current of his writings is eminently rational, and for the most part capable of illustration and conveyance to every simple mind and single heart and eye which sincerely wishes to know the truth. Yet that truth is obviously incapable of attainment by the unassisted reason of mankind. The inference is plain, that a Divine aid, we must say, a special Divine aid, has been supplied to the mind which brought to us these informations as the rational Scriptures of a New Church. In short, the corollary for these volumes is, that the opening of Swedenborg's rational mind and spiritual senses, and of the inner bosom of the Holy Scripture, is, as he himself says, the Second Coming of the Lord. This is the ripe consummate fruit of Professor Tafel's labours: a rational result seen in clear light. J. J. GARTH WILKINSON.

THE SPIRITUAL BODY.

Not long since we called attention to the Rev. Joseph Cook's Monday Lectures in Boston, America. They treat theological subjects on the scientific method. They are intended to fight scientific materialism with its own weapons; or, better still, to supply men who refuse any evidence but that of science with scientific evidence of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and other doctrines connected therewith. "It is," the lecturer observes, "more and more evident, as the training of the world advances, that everything Biblical is scientific, and that everything scientific is Biblical." In Parts V. and VI., recently published by Mr. Dickenson, London, several important subjects are discussed, among which are, The Microscope and Materialism, the Nerves and the Soul, Huxley and Dana on Evolution. There is one on the Concessions of Evolutionists, which is of great interest; but the one we propose to notice is that entitled Ulrici on the Spiritual Body. On this subject the lecturer says, "It is the belief of many that science draws near to an explanation of some parts of the mystery in the connection of the soul with the body. The late German philosophy holds the view that the soul must be conceived of as a property

or occupant of a fluid similar to the ether. Elaborate attempts to ground the hope of existence after death on the scientific certainty that atoms cannot be destroyed have often been made. This theory is German, only it is a little out of date, although Lotze once favoured it. There are two competing theories-that of the soul atom and the soul fluid. It is the doctrine of the non-atomic ether, or soul fluid, which Ulrici advocates. It is Ulrici's view that the soul is the occupant of a non-atomic ether that fills the whole form, and lies behind the mysterious weaving of the tissues. The non-atomic fluid is absolutely continuous with itself. Its chief centre of force is in the brain; but it extends outward from that centre, and permeates the whole atomic structure of the body. So far forth as this ethereal enswathement of the soul is non-atomic, it is immaterial. Matter and mind, we have commonly said, include everything. But some are whispering : "Perhaps there is an invisible middle somewhat, for which we have no name, but which is remotely like ether. Is it material? It is not atomic, and matter is. Now Ulrici so far adopts this idea as to affirm explicitly that the ethereal enswathement of the soul must be non-atomic, and so not like matter. This non-atomic enswathement of the soul is conceivably separable from the body. It becomes clear, therefore, that even in that state of existence which succeeds death the soul may have a spiritual body. If this ethereal non-atomic enswathement of the soul is to be interpreted to mean what the Scriptures mean by a spiritual body in distinction from a natural body, there is entire harmony between the latest results of science and the inspired doctrine of the resurrection."

This collection of detached axiomatic sentences is the merest skeleton of the lecture, which must be read to be fully appreciated and enjoyed. But what we have given shows the drift of it. While the scientific doctrine it teaches is in accordance with Paul's teaching, that there is a spiritual body and a natural body, it agrees with Swedenborg's teaching, that when man at death throws off the material body, he retains, as an enswathement of the soul, something from the purest substances of nature, which then form the cutaneous covering of the spiritual body. Thus is the light of the New Dispensation gradually creating for itself a scientific basis in science and in the scientific mind. And although science can never produce faith, it can provide the conditions favourable to its existence.

We recommend these brilliant yet logical discourses to the attention of our readers, especially to young men who are in the scientific stage of intellectual life.

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Miscellaneous.

The sentiment expounded in this discourse finds expression also in a paper on "The Church Congress on Nonconformity" from the pen of the Rev. J. G. Rogers, inserted in the November number of the Nineteenth Century.

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DENOMINATIONALISM.-The opening would scarcely exist; as promoting a sermon of the Baptist Union, which healthy rivalry in good works; and as recently held its autumnal session in providing one of the noblest fields for Newport, Monmouthshire, was preached the continual exercise of Christian by the Rev. Hugh Stowell Brown, charity." of Liverpool, from 1 Cor. xii. 4-6. The sermon was a powerful plea for denominationalism, or unity with variety as opposed to unity in one community and with sameness. "Not," said the preacher, "until men are constituted in mind and in feeling just alike will they be able to think exactly alike upon all points, whether of doctrine or even of fact; and God has not constituted us all alike in mind and heart any more than He has done so in stature and complexion. In one man's nature He has planted more of the logical faculty, in another more of the imaginative. Here is a man who is given to doubt, who without very clear evidence can believe nothing; and there is a man so credulous, that without any evidence at all he is ready to believe anything..

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Certainly if our intellectual and moral nature were crushed down, as they long were by the despotism of the Papal power, we should see alike, I daresay, as all men see pretty much alike when they are in the dark. I daresay we should think very much alike, because we should be afraid to think at all, and feel ourselves bound just to submit to whatever might be imposed on us by authority."

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The preacher finds reasons for denominationalism in the scriptural representations of the Church, as branches of the vine which are various, trees which are of various kinds, etc., and in the uses which it promotes; and is not quite sure whether we shall all be exactly of one and the same mind in heaven. But, ," he continues, "whether advantageous or not, here these diversities are, and I must say I rather rejoice in them, as furnishing that variety which meets the wishes and tastes and wants of men who are very differently minded; as encouraging the exercise of that free and bold thought which is one of the glories of our intellectual nature; as calling forth such an interest in religious matters as otherwise

"A great deal was said," says Mr. Rogers, in the course of the deliberations of the Congress as to the strength of the forces arrayed against Christianity in the present age, and the magnitude of the work to be done even in this Christian country. Yet the Canon (Curteus) can rejoice in the probable extinction of communities which are certainly doing something against the common foes, and rendering some help in labours which are far too weighty for any individual Church! The rumoured jealousies between Turkish commanders are nothing compared to this. Does the Canon really believe that the annihilation of Dissenting systems would only serve to increase the glory and power of the Anglican Church? Vain imagination! The men, to whatever church they belong, who expect that England, to say nothing of the wide world beyond, can be subdued to their favourite system, are living in dreamland, and fail to see how impossible it is to secure uniformity of religious system while there are such diversity of human intellect, and temperament, and feeling. Had a similar prediction in relation to the Episcopal Church been uttered in the Congregational Union it would have been received with derisive scorn or indignant reprobation. Nonconformists have learned that there are tribes and languages in the intellectual as well as the physical world, and that these need to hear, every one in his own tongue, the wonderful works of God if the kingdom of Christ is to be established over all. They marvel at the way in which the miracle of Pentecost is continually reproduced in this adaptation of the Gospel to the infinitely varied spiritual necessities of men, and,

conscious that they have their own work confined himself to this course, no to do, rejoice that there are other observation would have been called for systems which meet the case of those to from us. which theirs may be unsuited.”

"THE SPECTATOR" ON SWEDENBORG (from a Correspondent).—In a review which appeared in The Spectator on October 20, 1877, respecting a work by Mr. F. A. Binney on "The Religion of Jesus compared with the Christianity of To-day," the writer says:-"As for the Christianity of to-morrow, he seems to expect that it will consist of a selection from the moral maxims of Christ; sup plemented by imitations from, and to be given by, the Spiritualists.' In an appendix Mr. Binney gives a long list of works in which such imitations are to be found; but the examples of them which he himself gives seem for the most part to be taken from that very remarkable book, Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell, a storehouse of ideas from which modern spiritualists seem to borrow freely, without the excuse of any real kinship with the author of them. This last sentence points to an important truth which other reviewers might do well to recognize; and it is gratifying to know that a journal of such very high standing as The Spectator has marked the distinction which must ever be

drawn between the position occupied by the Seer of the New Church and those who, in direct opposition to his warnings and protests, seek to commune with spirits which, for aught they know to the contrary, may have no other delight than in lies and deceptions. It is well for every one indeed to remember the fact that Swedenborg refrained from publishing as truths anything that did not come to him from the internal perception which was given him from the

Lord alone.

SWEDENBORG THE MYSTIC.-The following letter from the Auxiliary Missionary Society appears in the People's Friend of November 7th :-" Sir,-Our attention has only recently been called to the articles in your issues of the 15th and 22nd August last, entitled 'Swedenborg the Mystic.' In this age of free thought and discussion it is, of course, open to every writer to present to his readers the life and writings of a public man as he himself conscientiously believes and understands them; and had the author of the articles in question

"But he has attacked the moral character of Swedenborg's life and writings in his remark, Swedenborg was no better than he should have been in this matter'—marriage—' He_was never married, but did not live alone.' "Such a statement we entirely deny, and challenge the writer of the article to produce any evidence of his assertion. During the whole of his long life of eighty-four years Swedenborg was free from the slightest suspicion of such immorality as the article insinuates. From a long acquaintance with Swedenborg's writings we can positively say that there is no proof whatever of such a statement, and the evidence furnished by the letters and testimony of Swedenborg's contemporaries show him to have been a man of a remarkably pure and innocent life. His 'Rules of Life' [a copy of which is inserted] are worthy of imitation by all, of whatever creed,

and consistent alike with Divine teach

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ing and his own statement, That all religion hath relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good.'

"The writer in your journal continues:-"We cannot afford to quote concubinage, of which, amongst other some of his remarks on the subject of things, he says, "That this [some unquotable passages] is the truth I have heard in the spiritual world, even from kings there, who, when on earth, had lived in concubinage for good reasons.' If this passage be put forward to give the reader a fair idea of Swedenborg's teachings on the subjects of marrage, it totally fails in its purpose. Swedenborg enforces in most forcible language the marriage of one husband with one wife as the only form compatible with Christianity, and insists that genuine marriage would be destroyed were polygamical marriages permitted with Christians; and the terms in which he further insists that infidelity to the marriage vow is equally fatal to its existence are no less emphatic. And as to his remarks on the subject of concubinage, Swedenborg everywhere condemns it as an evil, but states that it is permitted by the Divine Providence to exist for the prevention of the still greater evils of adultery and social disorder. And his main principles have

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