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and making a sacrifice in the cause, we should strengthen the hands of our ministers, and otherwise promote the building up of the church.

The President next introduced, by a few appropriate remarks,

Mons. HARLE, of Paris, who, after apology for his imperfect speaking in English, said:-We bring to you the expression of our affection. Our work we bring with us to the Committee. After finishing the translations, we continued works thereby made of easier application. The Index was the first of these works. It would be more convenient, however, instead of the Index, to bave the passages themselves before our eyes when reading the Word. This work we have begun, and it has already prospered. The Prophecy by Isaiah was selected first, because it is more abundantly illustrated by our author than any other, except those he has systematically expounded. This work we have presented to the secretary of the Swedenborg Society. We hope it may be a step for use and for facilitating the progress of intelligence and growth in the doctrines. Another work produced by our labours is a translation of the Word. The Gospels and the Apocalypse have been produced. It is a simple translation for popular use. It is a way to the complete understanding of doctrine. This work we have brought with us.

Dr. SPURGIN followed, in a short but very earnest speech, expressing his warm attachment to the church and his extreme gratification at the meeting, as manifesting the extent of the reception of the heavenly doctrines. Every attention given to the doctrines must lead to an increased estimate of them. It is their great purpose to lead us to love others better than ourselves. It is our highest privilege to be capable of this exalted affection. The efficacy of redemption has respect to this love of others. It is to provide that by regeneration we may be led to its attainment. All our intelligence, and all our experience, when rightly directed, subserve this great purpose.

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The meeting, which was throughout of the most interesting character, closed a little after ten o'clock.

On the Sunday during the Conference time, the several congregations of the church in London had the benefit of the

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Dear Sir,- The Committee of the Missionary and Tract Society of the New Church having purchased the "remainder" of "The Future Life," ("Heaven and Hell") by Swedenborg, have decided to offer the work to the members and friends of the church, when taken in quantities, at the extremely low price of sixpence per copy.

It is known that many friends are anxious to avail themselves of the opportunity of circulating this invaluable work; and it will be well for our country friends to make early application.

It is believed that after public lectures, &c. on the doctrines, numbers of copies may be disposed of; and just now, when peculiar efforts are being made to slander the doctrines of the New Dispensation, it is most opportune that the friends of the church are enabled, for so trifling a sum, to place in the hands of their wavering acquaintances this most interesting work of the illuminated Swedenborg.

By an advertisement, it will be seen that the book is obtainable-direct, not through the trade-from the Swedenborg Society's house, or in Paternosterrow. I am, dear sir, on behalf of the Committee, yours truly,

FRED. PITMAN, Sec.

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with the principles of the valuable books which it contained; and in all his conversation on such topics, seemed to appreciate their spiritual excellence. He was well acquainted with the doctrines of charity and faith, and well knew that it is the love of being useful from those principles which forms the church for heavenly enjoyment. He told the writer that he had not his faith to seek during the illness he was suffering; he hoped he had secured it during his health; and that he was quite resigned to the Divine mercy, which, he was sure, would treat him with all the blessings which his love of goodness would enable him to appreciate and value. For several years he was a teacher of the small children in the Sunday school, and there are some of these, now grown up, and in connection with the church, who are indebted to him for having communicated to them the rudiments of reading and other useful knowledge. He was a regular and punctual attender upon the public worship of the Lord; in this particular he was an excellent example; to this duty he ascribed many spiritual enjoyments, and traced to it the attainment of a variety of religious knowledges, which he prized, and frequently spoke of with piety and good sense. By trade he was a weaver, and while enabled to work, sustained bis position, as is usual with the orderly of his class. He was for many years a member of the committee of the church, and always did his best to assist its deliberations. He was of a tranquil disposition, a lover of peace, and in every difficulty urgently advised measures for its security. He was reputed to be a good neighbour, an attentive husband, an affectionate father, and is well known to have been ardently wishful that his family should embrace, love, and live in the heavenly doctrines of the New Church. In this respect he has been fortunate, since most of his children, together with his grandchildren, in numbers not a few, have become members of the church, either at Blackburn or elsewhere. There are good evidences for believing the deceased to have left behind a high respect for him by all who knew him; and that his spiritual character was such as to stimulate the hope, and satisfy the belief, that he has

been removed from a world of difficulties and trials to one in which he will experience light, and joy, and blessing. A funeral sermon was preached for him by Mr. Rendell, of Preston, to a very full church, in which he was spoken of in terms of great esteem. R.

On the 24th of June, 1862, at the advanced age of 85 years, William Smith was called to his place in the eternal world. During nearly the whole of the working period of his life he had been in the employ of Messrs. H. and J. Hornby and Co., merchants, of Liverpool; but for many years, from old age and infirmity, had been disabled from performing any active uses as a man of labour. His truly Christian employers, however, continued to pay him his wages weekly, often visiting him; and after his departure from this world, they insisted on defraying his funeral expenses. William Smith was for upwards of fifty years acquainted with the writings of the New Church, and for some time attended a weekly reading meeting in Kirkham before he became a member of any New Church congregation.

He was one whose works seemed to follow him; for, during the last few weeks of his natural life, when he was already almost dead to this world, though still with natural scenes before his mind's eye, and natural ideas occupying his thoughts, in his spirit's wanderings, fancying himself at the occupation of former years, he was loud in his rebukes of the attempted dishonesty of others, and insisting on the just and right thing being done while superintending, in his imagination, the weighing of his masters' goods. During my visits, thinking that the mention of the joys and beauties of the other world would lead him into a happy train of thought, I sometimes broached the subject; but he was always best pleased to dwell upon the necessity and happiness of doing the Lord's will and keeping his commandments. His end here was peace, his last words in this world being "Bless the Lord!" and, according to all that man can hope from or judge by, we may conclude that his place will be one of those happy mansions prepared by the Lord for his true disciples.

C. G. M.

CAVE & SEVER, Printers by Steam Power, Hunt's Bank, Manchester.

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THE formal sanctity with which the Sabbath was observed in the Jewish Church was not intended to be followed in all the rigorous exactness of the letter under the Christian dispensation. The law of the Decalogue relating to the Sabbath was indeed partly moral and partly economical. In this respect it differed from all the other commandments of the two tables. All the others are absolutely and permanently binding, both in the spirit and in the letter. That relating to the Sabbath is wholly binding in the spirit, but only partly in the letter. That part of this law which is moral, and therefore absolutely and permanently binding, is that which commands us to "remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy;" but the part which is economical, and not absolutely binding, is that which requires that no manner of work shall be performed, either by man or beast. The expositor of the New Church divides therefore this commandment into two portions, as I have indicated, giving the weight of his enlightened authority to the positive duty of remembering the Sabbath-day to keep it holy, and to the liberty which the church enjoys of observing the economical portion of the law according as the necessities and uses of life may require.

But on so important and delicate a point as that relating to the observance of a Divine law, and that law one of the Ten Commandments, it may be proper to state precisely what the author says on the subject. In the Arcana Cœlestia (9349), he divides the laws, judgments, and statutes delivered from Mount Sinai into three classes :-" Those which ought altogether to be observed and done; those which may serve for use, if people are so disposed; and those which are abrogated." In the [Enl. Series.-No. 106, vol. ix.]

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438 first class, consisting of those which are altogether to be observed and done, he places that part of the commandment relating to the Sabbath which is contained in Exod. xx. 8:-"Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy." The rest of the commandment, prohibiting all manner of work, he places in the second class, consisting of those statutes which may serve for use, if people are so disposed.

THE CHRISTIAN AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE JEWISH SABBATH.

It may perhaps appear to some that this division of the commandment introduces a dangerous principle, which makes it difficult to determine where duty ends and where liberty begins, and which is likely to end in loosening, if not breaking, the bonds of Sabbath observance. The principle, as applicable to this law only of the ten, I shall have occasion to advert to; and only observe here that the division of the commandment into moral and economical is conducive to the more perfect observance of its essential part. On the other hand, when equal importance is assigned to the essential and the secondary parts, and the smallest breach is supposed to involve a violation of the whole, the sense of duty becomes blunted, and a general neglect of the sacred duties of the day is likely to become habitual. I am inclined to think that the indiscriminating strictness with which the observance of the Sabbath is enforced, is not without its share in causing the evil which is so often a matter of lamentation and complaint.

The Christian may at once keep the Sabbath spiritually and employ it rationally. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” As a day of rest it is an inestimable blessing. It was intended as a day of refreshment for soul, and mind, and body. No doubt its religious use is its highest use. The soul is the real "man" for whose use it was eminently designed. But a sound mind in a sound body is the perfection of health, and the exercises which may be required for this combined object are not inconsistent with the character of the Christian Sabbath. We are perhaps too much inclined to regard this sacred day from a Jewish point of view. This is at least, I think, a too common practice among many who strive after a strict religious life. And it is somewhat remarkable that the ceremonial part of this commandment is that on which the evangelical portion of the church lays peculiar stress; even those who maintain that the law is not now a condition of salvation being yet most strenuous in insisting on a strict observance of the Sabbath.

On this, as in many other things, men are indeed liable to run into extremes, some being disposed to make the Christian like the Jewish Sabbath, others to confound it with the ordinary days of the week. In the New Church we have the right principle to guide us. To keep holy the Sabbath we recognise as a duty required by the Decalogue itself;

The Intellectual Repository, October 1, 1862.

THE CHRISTIAN AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE JEWISH SABBATH. 439

and this duty can only be discharged by an especial devotion of the mind to the services of religion, making the day a special time for religious instruction and the exercises of charity. The Sabbath should no doubt be carried into all the days of the week, as religion should be carried into all the business of life; but this does not destroy, but rather confirms, the distinction between them; and the knowledge and observance of this distinction is most conducive to their union.

The true sanctity of the Sabbath does not demand a rigid observance of the command to "do no manner of work." Yet where the essential principle is acknowledged, that the Sabbath is to be kept holy, there will be a desire and endeavour to make everything economical conform to the chief end, and to carry the principle into every department of the household, that all its members may enjoy an institution which was designed for all.

The principle which is applicable to this law only of the ten, by which it is divided into the moral and the economical, is grounded in this circumstance. Under the Jewish economy the Sabbath was typical as well as legal. It was a day of natural rest, but it represented a state of spiritual rest. All the other commandments as well as this have a spiritual sense, but this alone had a ceremonial character. It was a type of that "rest which remains for the people of God," as well as a day of complete repose for the people of the Jews. This was the reason that the day was commanded to be képt with such an entire cessation from every kind and degree of labour, and by every one, the native and the stranger, the free and the bond, and by man and beast. For this cause the Sabbath was hedged about with so many prohibitions, and its desecration denounced with such severe penalties; and that its strict observance was to be rewarded with so many and precious blessings.

The six days of labour and the seventh of rest, that come so often and so prominently before us in the Old Testament, have for us a deep spiritual interest when regarded in their typical character, as embodying the whole circle of our religious life and experience, a circle of which labour forms a necessary and large part, but ever terminating in a state of tranquillity and joy. The "labour" of the Christian life which terminates in rest, is not the daily work in which we engage as the duty and the support of life: it is the toilsome labour of resisting the evils of our nature; while the "rest" to which it leads is the peace of mind which succeeds the inward tribulation of the yet unconquered passions and unsatisfied desires. The Sabbath is said to have been instituted for man, that he might imitate his God, who performed the work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh. The work of

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