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of Swedenborg. Here I would request this so-called Doctor, that if he visits us again with a repetition of his lectures, he will have the candour to inform his audience at the commencement that Swedenborg is not the author of "Essays and Reviews."

The whole affair may be illustrated by the following supposed case. If I were to take a treatise by some eminent physician, on the morbid condition of certain parts of the human frame, and, having collected an audience of those most remarkable for length of ears and thickness of the cranium, excluding ladies and children, proceed to expatiate on the most indecent passages, carefully citing the page and paragraph of each quotation, the case would be similar. Suppose then I conclude this exhibition in the words of this so called "Dr." that I would not belong to such a “sneaking, nasty, dirty" community as the medical profession, and accuse the worthy physician of the two rather incompatible qualities, insanity and imposture. Just so, your seer, in writing on the fearful nature of sin and its consequences, and assuming in common with the divine teaching of our Lord, that sin and disease have a common origin, amplifies the subject by details which to those whose minds and consciences are defiled, are a never-failing incentive to profane ridicule.

The Bible, as being the highest spiritual book, is in this way most open to the attacks of infidels. Hence, our Lord warns us against casting pearls before swine, exposing spiritual truths, veiled it may be in the natural sense by symbolism of the character above described, to the filthy and prurient intelligence of the merely carnal mind. Who, being an infidel, could not read the story of Lot and his two daughters, the deceitfulness of Jacob, the cruelty of his sons, or the crimes of David, and exclaim to such an audience-" Yet this is from a book which professes to be the standard of all religion and virtue, David also is termed 'a man after God's own heart'--Oh! don't suffer your wives and daughters to read such a book."

Now, during the last twenty years, I have read, if not every line, at least every important work of Swedenborg, and can bear my testimony that never, in any part of his doctrinal works, or visionary experience, does he countenance the slightest compromise with sin. On the contrary, the manner in which he everywhere, and with so great diversity of argument and illustrations, insists on conformity in body, soul, and spirit to the holiness of that everlasting law, given forth from Mount Sinai, is oppressive to the spirit, as demanding a responsibility too great for human nature to sustain. Awful indeed is such teaching to any believer who can for a moment form an idea of the infinite holiness of God. Here, then, comes that glorious doctrine of the atonement, trans

lucent through every page of Swedenborg's Commentary on the Holy Word. That too placed upon the corner-stone of all true theology—the divine and human nature of our Lord,—that in the glorified person of the Lord Jesus Christ "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,"that the Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Saviour of the New,that the same God who is the Creator of the world, is also the world's Redeemer. All this has nothing whatever to do with the personality of Swedenborg: whether you prove him a saint or a sinner, that divine truth will eventually extinguish all error, if the Apocalypse be a revelation from God.

It is the oldest maxim of this old world, to tolerate anything rather than the truth. It is not profaneness, nor heresy, nor obscenity, nor insanity, impure dreams, or spurious visions, that excite this wrath against Swedenborg, and this terror at his name. It is because he has rescued from the accumulated falsity of centuries, what no man without divine illumination could have done that glorious truth, the central gem of the apocalyptic vision-that God is to be worshipped in the glorified humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, symbolized by the Lamb receiving the adoration of all the hosts of heaven.

Scores of times have I heard it affirmed by various sects, that Swedenborg denies the Atonement, yet, when I turn to his doctrinal writings I find it affirmed in almost every page, and that too with a grandeur and reach of thought in striking contrast to the parrot-like repetition of a mere formula, or the dogmatic declaration of a creed. He repeatedly affirms that there is no possibility of approach to God, on the part of man, but through that once crucified but now glorified humanity of the Lord Jesus. Knowing this, and having in my small measure been enabled to form an ideal, through the writings of this seer, of the stupendous nature of that great redemption by Jesus Christ, signified by the words atonement, propitiation, intercession, mediation, or whatever term may be used to assist our apprehension of an essential truth, I have just as much respect for such cavillings as I have for the jackdaws that chatter on the roofs of our cathedral.

Leaving the science of correspondences, and all that elaborate psychology, and philosophy developed by Swedenborg, however valuable, to take care of itself, let the New Church take its stand on that one doctrine alone, and they will experience the truth of what is spoken in the Apocalypse of the Two Witnesses :-"A fire shall go out of their mouths and consume the adversaries of this faith."

Having compared your author's exposition with the so-called orthodox .writers, I cannot but lament the darkness and confusion in which

ingenuity and learning have involved this simple doctrine of the Atonement. Some writer says,-"There are two kinds of ignorance: one into which we are all born, the other is only to be acquired by careful study and the reading of many books." It is true that this word atonement occurs only once in the New Testament, yet it seems to be the most tortured by those who know the least about it. Though it is called the ancient doctrine of the church, scarcely a year passes without some new atonement being constructed, by some very eminent and very respectable clergyman or dissenter. Between the old Wesleyan atonement, so popular with the multitude, because based on the merest naturalism, the baldest construction of the exterior sense of the Holy Word, and the more refined hypothesis of Dean Trench, there may be some six or seven. These, however, nearly all agree on one point. True to the decree of the Council of Nice, they all make it, not the glorious result of the three-fold manifestation of one God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but a transaction between three gods as three distinct individuals, mistaking the apparent truths of the literal sense for essential spiritual verities. There is a splendid work on the Apocalypse, by the Rev. Augustus Clissold, a clergyman of the Established Church, in the course of which he demonstrates, by a vast amount of research in ecclesiastical lore, that the view of the Atonement developed by Swedenborg from the Word, is in perfect harmony even with the orthodox doctrine of the Anglican Church, being the same as that taught by the Apostles and the best writers in Christendom for the first three centuries of the Christian era. About that time commenced the process so destructive to sound theology, of attempting to destroy one heresy by another in the opposite extreme. So then the charge of novelty belongs not to Swedenborg, but to the constructers of atonements on the idea of three distinct persons in the Godhead. So true it is, that, however excellent may be sound learning and orthodoxy in forming the priest, truth is quite another thing, requiring an altogether different discipline of the heart and intellect for its perception, and is too often at variance with both the former. Hence the ceaseless antagonism between priest and prophet, from the days of Aaron to the present time. Before I leave this allusion to Augustus Clissold, let me congratulate Mr. Brindley that neither his intellectual calibre nor his moral attainments are such as to qualify him to break a lance with that learned and courteous champion of Catholic Christianity.

In justice to Mr. Brindley, I must however confess that on one point at least he got the upper hand of Swedenborg. For, while asserting that he had read every line of that author, he affirmed that Swedenborg

denies the doctrine of original sin. If so, the lecturer in his own person *is a living proof to the contrary; for, if a man can read every line of such a writer, and then stand up in public to vilify and abuse him, he manifests a depravity of heart and perversity of intellect so inherent and irradicable, that the purest doctrine of Holy Writ is not able to reach it. What can this be but original sin? and that too of a very awful character, as may appear from the following considerations.

It has ever been the way of God to impart the gift of prophecy or interpretation of divine Revelation, not to the many but to the few, for the benefit of all. A large extension of His gift is promised to these latter days in revelations, in dreams, and visions:-"Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." On the other hand, by the testimony of our Lord Himself, it has ever been man's way, through corruption of the truth by an evil heart of unbelief, to persecute if possible to the death these gifted instruments-"For it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." In further illustration of this truth, and indeed a very substantial testimony, that of Swedenborg's description of the state of Christendom, anno 1757, is very similar in the year 1861. I may cite the following. I am informed, and only wish that information might prove incorrect, that the Dissenting body of this city have expelled from their community three lay preachers, for simply believing and asserting that doctrine of our Lord's Divinity, and denying that error of the Council of Nice, already adverted to. Nay, further, that a subscription was raised, amounting to £20., to hire a person to come over and vilify the character of that great and good man whose writings were the instrumental cause of opening the eyes of those preachers. They truly acted on Scripture precedent, for when our Lord had opened the eyes of the man who was born blind, the respectables of that day turned him out of the synagogue.

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Now Swedenborg's testimony respecting Christendom in 1757 amounts to this, that the old Christian Church had come to its end through the extinction of charity and faith, and was now to be superseded by that New Dispensation described by the apostle John in that glorious vision of the Holy City descending from heaven to earth. If men are to be cast out of a Christian community for teaching that the same God who created the world is also the world's Redeemer, I can only add my mite to the weight of that testimony, and say that the end of the Old Dispensation has indeed arrived, and the sooner it is succeeded by a new one the better.-I remain, Sir, yours, &c., CATHOLICUS.

111

THE DIVINE BENEVOLENCE IN THE LITTLE THINGS OF NATURE.-No. III.

BY LEO H. GRINDON.

THE most populous part of the empire of Nature is that which is occupied by the various tribes of Insects. The little creatures which bear this name are the most diversified and splendidly-adorned of living things. Their histories are so romantic as to exceed the wildest dreams of fancy; their habits and customs embody everything that we are accustomed to witness in the larger animals; their instincts are prophetic types of the utmost ingenuities of human reason, as brought to bear upon what ministers to our physical comfort and welfare. Many kinds furnish substances of singular beauty and excellence, such as honey, silk, and the rich crimson dye called cochineal; others are so destructive, when unchecked in their ravenous appetites and in their territorial invasions, that the result of years of peaceful growth is ruined by them almost before we are aware of the attack. And yet we are apt to pass by insects as worthless and insignificant;-we look with pleasure, it is true, upon the lovely wings of the butterfly, and upon the bees, resting on the honied bloom, or as they work at their amiable task with that beautiful assiduity which makes them a lesson to us all, if we would "improve the shining hour;"—and the sight is a fascinating one, even to the incurious, when on a warm summer's day the brilliant dragon-flies dart like winged javelins of polished blue steel among the tall grasses, and meadow-sweet, and willow-herbs that hide the margin of many a rural stream and river. But other insects, so far from being objects of interest, are for the most part disliked and hated, and it is thought very little harm to suppress them summarily with the sole of the foot. When insects are positively injurious to man, and when they infest his dwellings, of course they must be treated like other vermin. There is no more cruelty in putting certain little flat-pattern creatures to death, or in catching, if we be sharp enough, the nimble members of another race for the same purpose, so that we may thereafter "be at rest," than there is in the trapping of foxes, or the destruction of poisonous serpents.

Intelligent and kind-hearted interest in the wonderful little beings which it has pleased the All-wise to sow in such vast multitudes upon our planet, by no means requires endurance of such kinds as are offensive; our true course should be to consider the endless miracles of beauty or of adaptedness to particular purposes, which we find in

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