a Jewish humanity that could be tempted, and with a divinity

most grievous temptations of This humanity could not fail

in Him that could resist the earth, of heaven and of hell. to be assaulted by all these, for it was an opportunity for all; and it admitted all; and when the assault took place, it admitted the evil to be evil, as it was; and so held it as evil; and then the divinity confronted it in no wrath, in no anger : God is never angry with the wicked although He is angry with them every day, for His anger is Love, which when it looks upon them precipitates them downwards being of opposite essence they cannot abide His truth which is the eye of His Love. It turns them inside out and upside down, and to regain their own state, they sink away below it.

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Here we come upon that passage in the Sermon on the Mount, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you that ye resist not the evil one: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have the cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain" (Matthew v. 38-41).

In a well-meaning book by Count Leo Tolstoi, The Kingdom of God is within you, 1894, this text has been made use of to set forth "a new Life-conception of Christianity," changing man's relation to the state, to social organizations, to his fellow-man, to the guardianship of property, and to the treatment of offenders against existing law and order. Especially recommending non-compliance with military service, and non-intercourse with legal tribunals. The scheme intends external reform from the ground of written Scripture, which is to be fulfilled by exemplary courageous men leading the way into a New Age of non-resistance, which is to bring in the Kingdom of God.

In using the WORD, our endeavour has been to hold to the very letter as the pillar on which its senses stand, and Count Tolstoi is an instance of how much danger of per

version and false dogma is incurred if this allegiance to verbal reality is disregarded. The Count has altered the letter into Resist not evil by violence, taking this transcript apparently from Adin Ballou. The text is Resist not the evil one. That the evil one is literally right is shown by the number of evil persons you are straightway commanded not to resist. By violence is an addition to the text. It abolishes the meaning of the command, and sets you forth on a career and propagandism of passive resistance: whereas resistance with no qualification is forbidden. The book itself proceeds on this mistake, and whatever political or social results it may have, they have no connection with Christ's doctrine of non-resistance. Tolstoi, though (p. 65) he once mentions Swedenborg disparagingly as among sectarian founders, is unaware of the spiritual sense which resides in the words, Resist not the evil one.

The command is evidently to an enduring or passive state. It was carried out by Christ in His active life from the beginning to the end. He, the innocent, the sinless, was the most tempting prey for all the hells; the Lamb to all their wolves. He was assaulted by temptation, and He conquered by seeing and owning it: He stood as Christ and the devil left Him. Each temptation made no mark on His inherited nature, but a white record of truth made good in His newly-planted flesh. That is not our case. We fall and fall, and the mind, the book of life, is a blurred record of good and evil. If we examine ourselves we admit continual failing; evil complexions to the neighbour, selflove and its greedy demands. Our present self-love is our ground of temptation; our past life, of rebuke. This rebuke is what we are not to resist. It comes from the same source with our temptations. It is the revenge of the Evil One for not being admitted as an associate on our way. If we went boldly on we should never be rebuked, but be received in the abyss under its triumphal arches into the skeleton arms of destruction.

This is to say, that by our evils we are in sympathetic alliance with the hells, and if they cannot make us worse, whenever low states of mind and body supervene, the devil, the accuser, turns over our book of life, and reads despair to us from its pages. Shall we dismiss him? Can we say to the Father of Lies who thus tells us his evil truths, Get thee behind me, Satan? Christ commands us in this case of accusation not to resist the Evil One. This means spiritually that we should not deny our evils however brought home to us. If one side of our internal man is smitten with just accusation, help comes from the Deliverer and Saviour in exploring the other side also: both are part of the peccant life. If the enemy will legally have our coat, and make the sins under it naked, we are to use our freedom to review the faults hidden till now under the cloak. If the Satan compel us to misery over the course and journey of our past lives, we are to double the mileage of our wanderings with him, and in this good way of repentance the evil one, not resisted, disappears. Swedenborg also tells us that such self-accusation, prompted by the hells, if it becomes too sore for man, is mitigated by instant angels, who take part with the penitent, and even excuse his errors and sins, as the devils and Satans aggravate them.

Distinction should be made between temptations and trials. Temptation involves attempted seduction by some pleasure agreeable to yourself, and which ought to be resisted because to indulge it is wrong. Discipline comes in here. Trial on the other hand is the pain of self-examination, and this, wherever it springs from originally, ought not to be resisted. Treatment for cure then follows it.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth means the opposite spirit to Resist not the Evil One. It discloses that man since the Noahtic Church and before Christ had no internal reward and punishment in him, but lived as an external natural man his book of life was written out in this world, and no revelation was possible for him about another. He

worshipped the evil spirits that he knew, and called them gods; and hatred and revenge were permitted in the legal eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. These things too are

in the basis of our minds; and our difference from the old state is, that we are more capable of self-examination, and of literal acknowledgment of the Sermon on the Mount, and of the commands and precepts of Christ. The New Church which has come, and which is to come, now knows of the spiritual Word, and the Spiritual World, and of the Divine Natural Man, and will open the Eon in God's time, and lay bare every evil, public and private, with which the enemy of mankind helps the Friend of mankind in charging us. It is a truth that in our present condition, with our hearts and minds as they are, we need the Society of Evil Spirits to sustain our natures and characters, not in getting worse, but in mere existence, pending the slow process of our regeneration. If all our bad habits, which are equivalent to our evil familiar spirits, were suddenly removed, we should be remitted into a hopeless infancy on the road to annihilation, until we were revived by the corruption of evil communications. Self-love is the arm of the industry of the present world. Evil cannot be taken away except by regeneration, and most gradually. I rejoice to see that my old friend, Herbert Spencer, is aware of this troublous truth. Meanwhile the evil spirits who like strong drinks stimulate us to make our selfishness muscular and useful, whenever we determine to turn over a new leaf, and to refuse their comforts to our often infirmities, are in anger and fury, and the freshly sensitive conscience is their place of assault. Our past lives are made into frescoes on it. We are then to look on these steadily with acknowledgement of what the heart is, and in the prayer, Lord, be merciful to me a sinner, the devil will depart from us when he has performed his use. We submit to Count Tolstoi that this is a crumb of that bread which the Sermon on the Mount teaches in the Word, Resist not the Evil One.

XLV.—ESTIMATES OF THE BIBLE.

Swedenborg's dictum that it was foreseen that Christians would almost reject the Word of the Old Testament, finds confirmation on all hands in the Christian Church down to this day. Already Josephus, the Jewish Historian, and a Romanized Jew, was agnostic to the divine supernatural element in the Dispensation to which he had belonged. The first part of his standard book bears the appropriate title "The Antiquities of the Jews": whether this title was given by himself, or not. He regarded the earlier Bible narratives as a record of superstitions; and held that in his day God had forsaken the Jews, and gone over to the Romans. When he relates the miraculous passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, he says that "he tells everything as it is written in the Holy Books, and doubts whether the sea went back of its own accord, or by God's special command. Every one might think of it as he pleased." Of God's coming down to Mount Sinai he says, "Let every one believe of it as he will: he relates what he finds in the Holy Books." With respect to the declaration that God was the Author of the Law of Moses, he expresses the same unconcern. So also of what is told of Jonah and Nebuchadnezzar. "In his second Book against Apion he says, that Moses from his justice and piety might very well judge that he had God for his guide; and when he had once persuaded himself of that, he did well to persuade the people to think so too; as the Greeks pretended to have their laws from Apollo, whether they really thought so, or thought it the best way to make them received of the people." Dr. Willes, the author of "Two Discourses upon Josephus prefixed to the translation of that author by Sir Roger l'Estrange, adds to these statements, that "the disesteeming the rites and ceremonies of the Law of Moses, and setting so great a value upon the precepts of morality, are two considerable steps that Josephus made towards the doctrine of