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ADDRESS OF CONDOLENCE

TO HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY, OUR BELOVED QUEEN, ON THE

REMOVAL INTO THE SPIRITUAL WORLD OF THE LATE PRINCE
CONSORT.

From the General Conference of the New Church.-(Minute 160.)

"May it please your Majesty,—

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We, the General Conference of Ministers and other Members of the New Church, signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation, at our fifty-fifth Annual Meeting, held at the Church, Argyle-square, King's Cross, London, on August 12th, 1862, and following days, unanimously desire to approach your Majesty with sentiments of the deepest respect and affection, to offer our sincere condolence on the occasion of the removal of the Prince Consort, your beloved husband, into the Spiritual World. The active life by which he was distinguished here—a life ever devoted to the promotion of all that elevates, refines, and enobles mankind-forms a ground of inmost assurance that the same essential characteristics will follow him into that higher sphere of usefulness to which it has pleased our Heavenly Father to call him. In the kingdom of our Lord, which is a kingdom of uses, the beneficent disposition of the late Prince will find new fields for exercise, freed from the counteracting influences which obstruct the efforts of the best and wisest here below, the satisfactions resulting from which constitute the highest happiness whereof the spirits of the just made perfect are capable.

"We could not earlier give expression to the feelings of devoted affection and loyalty which we entertain to your Majesty's person, from the circumstance that our meetings are held only in August. We, nevertheless, beg your Majesty to believe that our condolence is not on that account the less sincere, and that our sympathy is founded upon that loyalty to your Majesty's throne taught in our religious principles, which declare that orderly government is essential to the welfare of the human race, and which enforce conscientious and willing compliance with whatever is necessary to give it strength and stability.

"We deeply sympathise with your Majesty under the bereavement which yourself and your Royal Children have sustained, in the removal of one whose true worth was becoming more widely known and appreciated, not only by this country, but by the whole civilized world. The loss, however, great as all must feel it to be, is only apparent. It is consolatory to know that death cannot divide souls whom God hath joined together; and although His Royal Highness is removed from

your sight, his spirit is even nearer to those he loved than when he was on earth, where the veil of the flesh interposed: now he can influence from within, and thus in a more direct and powerful manner than while visibly present here. When it is further considered that his example, in conjunction with your own, in your duties within the sacred precincts of the domestic circle, will survive both him and yourself, and that such example, as it has confessedly been beneficial to your people, will likewise promote the happiness of your children, whilst his memory, as a devoted husband, a wise counsellor, and a loving father, will be long cherished by the nation over which you reign;—we feel that your Majesty has, in the midst of your deep affliction, sources of consolation which cannot fail greatly to mitigate your grief, especially when it is remembered how great is the gain which your truly noble Consort has experienced, through having been called by his Divine Master into a world where the soul rises, with all its human sympathies and affections, and exists, not as an intangible abstraction, but as a substantial, spiritual embodiment of all the virtues and graces it acquired here, purified from the infirmities of the flesh.

"In conclusion, we commend your Majesty, and the several members of your royal family, to the protection and blessing of our Heavenly Father, the Lord Jesus Christ; trusting that, in His good time, when you shall have fulfilled your exalted duties in this earthly sphere, you will rejoin your beloved partner in closer union in the Heavenly Kingdom, and with him share its nobler duties and its more enduring joys."

MATERIALS FOR COPY HEADS.

I.

The Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is God of Heaven.
All who enter there, must love, obey and worship Him.
The angels worship God, by doing good to others.

II.

Heaven is not from man, but wholly from the Lord.
Good and Truth from Him, make heaven in the angels.
The angels dwell in the Lord, and the Lord dwells in them.

III.

The angels believe and say that Life has only one source.

For all its Good and Truth, the Lord should be adored.

In Heaven they attribute all to Him, and nothing to themselves.

IV.

Love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour make Heaven.
By these every angel enters into conjunction with the Lord.
And they prompt every angel to desire his own good to be another's.

V.

Love to the Lord is shewn by keeping His commandments.
The angels show neighbourly love, by performing uses.
And each can love another better than himself.

VI.

Heaven is distinguished into the Celestial and Spiritual kingdoms.
They are distinguished by love, that reigns in each:

Celestial-Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
Spiritual―Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

VII.

The Celestial have the law inscribed upon their hearts.

It is their delight to give utterance to the truths they hear.
They are nearest to the Lord, and are therefore best and wisest.

Poetry.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

(Suggested by a Sermon by the Rev. D. G. GOYDER, preached in Argyle-square Church, 25th May, 1862.)

"The Shepherd knows the sheep!"

Oh! tender Love Divine !

Through mirkest hours Who watch dost keep,—

The helpless sheep are Thine!

"The sheep their Shepherd know!"

How should they not know Him

From Whom their joy, peace, comfort flow,

When earth-lights all wax dim!

Thy "sheep from other fold,"

Good Shepherd! haste to bring!
Let them, too, prove what bliss untold
From following Thee doth spring!

For, ah! how many rove,

Facing life's ills alone,

Knowing nor trusting that great Love

By which we all are known!

MARY C. HUME.

HOME. PRESTON.

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MISCELLANEOUS.

As mentioned in the notice to correspondents last month, we received from Mr. Foster, of Preston, a report of Dr. Brindley's lectures in that town, and of the writer's discussion with him. The report was much too long for insertion as it was; and having learnt that some lectures were being delivered on the subjects of the Doctor's orations, we thought it best to make one report on the whole. There was one reason that induced us the more readily to adopt this course: as the Doctor travels from town to town, and lectures on the same subjects, he no doubt makes the same lectures do duty in every place he visits; and as his sayings and doings have been reported more than once in these columns already, it would, to say the least, be a needless repetition to retail his scandalous sayings and doings over and over again; besides, it seems to be a question in the church how far it is desirable to notice, and consequently to report, his sayings and doings at all. A man who is either so ignorant or so cunning as to class Swedenborgians with infidels and Mormons, can, we should think, be neither a very worthy opponent nor a very dangerous enemy. We do not say that it is wrong to oppose him on the platform. One who can get a clergyman to act as chairman at his performances, must seem to an audience to have some claims on their attention and confidence; and any one who can undeceive them will render some good service to the general cause of truth and consistency. But if this cannot be done effectively, it had better not be attempted. A special talent is required for the purpose. It is not enough that a man be intelligent, nor even that he be a good public speaker; he must, in addition to these, be a good public debater. One who has not this special talent can have small chance of success with so practised and unscrupulous a disputant as Dr. Brindley. If Mr. Foster was listened to with "breathless silence," and extorted from the lecturer an acknowledgment of his superior acquaintance with his subject, his effort must have had some positive use. But however able his vindication may have been, there is little of it in the report he has sent that would be new to the

readers of the Repository. One argument for the excellence of Swedenborg's works generally, and for the purity of his "Conjugial Love" in particular, should have had some weight with an audience composed chiefly of members of the Church of England: that they had been translated by one of the most saintly men that ever adorned the ministry of that or any other church,-the Rev. John Clowes, rector of St. John's Church, Manchester. If the moral and intellectual force of such a testimony was not sufficient to neutralise that of the lecturer, it must have been because of that unhappy partizanship which too often deadens the conscience as well as perverts the judgment. One other good service rendered by Mr. Foster was in exposing a bit of dishonesty. The lecturer had quoted a passage from the Writings, which he denounced as denying the efficacy of faith in the matter of justification;— Mr. Foster pointed out that the whole force of his argument was destroyed by restoring what he had ingeniously left out, the little word alone, as if Swedenborg made no difference between faith and faith alone.

Since this report reached us, another has been sent from the same town, giving an account of the Doctor's visit, and stating further what measures the society there had adopted for counteracting the effects of the lectures.

From this we hear the thrice-told tale of Dr. Brindley's stereotyped lectures and proceedings. The work on "Conjugial Love" is, as usual, the prominent subject of one or more lectures; and one of the tactics of the lecturer affords too convincing an evidence of the truth of one of the statements which that admirable work contains. As an inducement for men to flock to this lecture, it is announced that they will be treated to selections from the work, which are too impure for the ears of any chaste woman, and therefore ladies are excluded. That very book reveals the secret of this scheme and its success. It tells us that masculine, unlike feminine intelligence, is "fond of licentiousness." And how strikingly do we see this evidenced in the response to this appeal, as well as in the appeal itself! "The audiences were large," says our informant. Men rush

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eagerly to gratify their prurient appetites on what men themselves would think it a shame and a degradation for any woman even unwittingly to taste. And who are these eager listeners? They consisted, for the most part, of the adult portion of the Sunday schools of the Established Church." What a spectacle is here! A man openly pandering to the baser side of the master passion of human nature, in that sex in which the passion is most susceptible of being violently inflamed, at that age when it is least under the control of reason, and in the absence of that gentler sex who exercise so salutary an influence in checking its licentiousness! And the man professes to do this in the sacred cause of religion and virtue! His prac tice bears upon its front the falsehood of his profession. Were he a friend to the religion and virtue whose champion he proclaims himself to be, he would follow a different course.

And what is the work which has excited his virtuous indignation, and called forth his disinterested efforts? The very work of all human productions which has the power, and is destined to have the effect, of restoring to the church that chaste conjugial love which lies at the foundation of all spiritual and moral purity, while its opposite, the scortatory love, over which this teacher of the people loves to gloat, lies at the foundation of all spiritual and moral corruption, and the prevalence of which infests our social communities with a stalking pestilence. That work stands alone in its anatomy of this love of loves, both in its healthy and morbid condition; and because the author applies the scalpel with a firm as well as skilful hand, and lays it open in its deepest ground and in its minutest particulars; shewing, in the clear light of truth, the beauty and freshness of the love in one condition, and its ugliness and loathsomeness in the other; this lecturer seizes, in holy zeal, on these demonstrations, which are rightly to be regarded as the truths of pure spiritual and moral science, intended to advance the highest interests of humanity, and distorts them, for purposes apparently of worldly profit. If this peripatetic teacher is anxious to show the immoral nature and tendency of the work on " Conjugial Love," why does he not appeal to the practice of

those who have adopted it as their text-book on the subject? We claim no exemption from the hereditary corruptions of our common nature, or the frailties of our common life; but if our principles are so impure, our practice cannot surely fail to afford abundant exemplification of their impurity. Though not very numerous, our community is sufficiently large to furnish the means of a fair average of results. If this book is so corrupt and corrupting, those who take their conjugial creed from it are likely to base their conjugial practice upon it. If he cannot penetrate into our domestic circles, and see how New Church pairs agree with and treat one another, he can follow us into the world, and see how we compare with others who have the advantage of a purer system of spiritual ethics. How many of our creed live in concubinage, or have been guilty of bigamy, or have appeared in the divorce court, or live in a state of voluntary separation from each other? We believe that in these respects the most anxious scrutiny will leave us at least no worse than our neighbours, and if any better, let our creed have the credit of it.

But the fact is, the man is a professional lecturer. He does not, we fear, lecture for a faith, but for a living. If this be so, it is not for his interest to find that we are not so bad as he tries to make our theological creed and our moral code to be. It is obviously his interest to create as much excitement as possible; for people will pay for excitement who will not pay for information, nor even for truth. One way of producing an excitement is to get up a discussion. People generally do not care so much about hearing both sides of a question, as seeing those on opposite sides display their gladiatorship to afford them lively amusement. One of his tactics therefore is, to challenge the "Swedenborgians" to debate the question with him. There is a previous question which the members of the church have to debate with themselves. It is for his own interest he gives the challenge: is it for the interest of the truth for them to accept it? Several societies have decided that the severest defeat they can inflict upon him is to leave him alone. The Preston friends, as a body, determined to adopt this policy, if not principle.

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