that the consummate flower and pearl of Jewish womanhood was the medium of the appearance of the world's Redeemer in the world.

The Devil here always means the lusts of evil in their entirety, and Satan the loves of falsity. These collectively and organically are two mighty empires: they are hell. Foot to foot they are antipodean, opposite to the grand humanity, which being inspired with goodness and truth is the kingdom of heaven. So both the Devil and Satan are personal; being monstrous though still human forms and organizations of all the bad men and women who have lived on earth since the beginning of creation. These belong, spirit to spirit, by affinity, to our evil tendencies, and are continually near our natures; and in the degree that we will and do the evil which is in us, and which corresponds to one or many of them, they conjoin with us in most particular league, and add us to their company. After this, no justification by faith condones our sin, but only repentance, resisting the sin thenceforth, and continuing through life to resist it, and so casting out our devils and satans: the end of which when the life ends is regeneration and Salvation; as was said before.

Mary's nature is the supreme case of what the Word calls REMAINS. When races are dying out spiritually, the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, are bespoken from the Mount in the last days of an Old Church and the first days of a New Church. They are the humble and the simple, and are waiting and willing for they know not what, but for the Lord to come and help them. In their troubled lowliness a new Revelation can be made to them, and the race of man be thus perpetuated. These Remains, needy and naked, contain the old heredity still, but the Lord's gift of virtue with it; a fortune of natural good counterpoising the ancestral nature; making infancy

B

what it is, and simplicity what it is; and reigning while these states last; afterwards vanishing, but stored away for moments of awakened conscience, "Like wine put by at birth for days of age."

X-THE MOTHER OF JESUS.

Without impiety if without strict authority, we may indulge the personal mind in dwelling a little longer on this Jewess who has been the delight in good ages of the earlier Church. We read in the Word that she was espoused to Joseph, but before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. That the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. That Joseph being raised from sleep did as the Angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife. And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son; and he called His name JESUS. That when Mary came to Elizabeth the wife of Zacharias, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and lifted up her voice with a loud cry and said, Blessed thou among women, and blessed the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come unto me? For behold when the voice of thy salutation came into mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Elizabeth had conceived in her old age; and when they called her son, Zacharias, after the name of his Father, she said, Not so, but he shall be called John. Of Zacharias and Elizabeth it is said. that they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. Perhaps they were also Remains of the ancient church in the Jewish, and they were a blameless Jewish pair. And here we may recall the beginning of the ancient Church by which the race of man was preserved in that day:—And

Noah, who was a righteous man, perfect in his generations; Noah who walked with God. We also think of Sarah ninety years old, and of Abraham a hundred, and of the coincidence that Abraham, the Father of the faithful, could not believe that Sara could bring him Isaac; and that Zacharias, wanting evidence, and cross-questioning the Angel who is then declared as Gabriel, as to how he should know that his wife stricken in years should bring him John, because he believed not, had for evidence that he should be dumb and not able to speak until the birth of his son. Mary also, as in her own right, seeing she knew not a man, asked Gabriel how her conception could be? And the angel satisfied her enquiry: and she said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy Word. Then she said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden: for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. In her faith she carried to her Lord His promise of presence which He made to Abraham and to a thousand generations. All this confirms the great inheritance which the Lord condescended to assume in the infirm maternal humanity, which is thus attested by the Word. In the ordinary sense the Virgin Mary ceases after the first conception, but in that conception there is a divine declaration of her Virginity. After Jesus came into His own country and taught them in their synagogues, they were astonished and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom and these powers? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brothers, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? It is clear then from personal testimony in the Word that Mary after her declared virginity was the wife of Joseph and the mother of Joseph's numerous children. Also that all generations shall call her blessed, as she, inspired, herself said; and that she is blessed among women, as inspired Elizabeth said. But the phrase

Blessed Virgin, has no Scripture for it. Holy Virgin cannot be thought of in any Church where the Word lies open. God alone is holy. Virgin may however be used of Mary in another sense sanctioned by the divine letter. We meet this in the Apocalypse: "These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth," xiv. 4. Swedenborg also instructs us that "Virgin denotes the Kingdom of the Lord, and the church properly celestial; also the spiritual church; and that the members are called Virgins from conjugial love, thus from innocence." (Arcana Calestia, n. 3081).

XI.—MARY BECOMES A DIVINE SYMBOL AS JOHN AND THE DISCIPLES WERE.

"When Jesus on the cross saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom Jesus loved, He said unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother! and from that hour that disciple took her unto his own." Mary here in the divine letter, in its correspondential symbolism, is lifted above our humanity; but for us natural men and women she is for these moments the most pathetic of human souls: no other situation has approached it; she loses her Lord as a Son not by His death only, but by His recognized divinity, and she has a son given to her by her Lord, another son when the first must disown her. But we may not weep, for she had an infinite Redeemer and Comforter: but let us follow the Correspondence which she also is. May we conjecture that not as a Jewish representation, which was merely external without an internal, and ritual without an understanding of it, she truly and worthily personifies and so signifies and represents the great Jewish beginning of the Christian Church. John in the spiritual sense signifies what has been

revealed by the Lord through heaven to those who from charity and its faith are in the good of life. Each disciple represented a quality or characteristic of the Church: the twelve its whole spirit, soul, will and understanding. John who lay on the Lord's breast, represents good works which are the good of life-bonum vita. Peter denotes faith, James charity, and John the good of charity, or charity active in life. Mary, therefore, instead of being the mother of God, is,—not was,-representatively the Mother of the embryo Church before it was a Church, as Noah representatively is the beginning of the Ancient Church but not the Ancient Church itself. Here we no longer dwell on the Mary of the letter, the BLESSED MARY for every good man and woman who can read the Bible. The Lord was no longer the Son of that Mary. He had rejected the human derived from her, and had put off the old garment of the Jewish nature. Thenceforth, and even before by divine anticipation He comes to the Universal Church, to the First Christian Church, and to the New Church, consisting of those who hear the Word of God and do it, and whom He says are His Mother and His brethren. As the Church is the presence of the Lord on earth, and as all that is genuine in it, that is good and true, and of the Word, is Himself, so these relations are also Himself, divine and infinite; and His mercy attributes them to men and angels that human love in heaven and on earth may claim affiliation and conjunction with the Father of souls. In those who are His disciples His words are for ever, Behold my Mother and my Brethren; for whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in Heaven, he is my brother, and sister and mother.