daily performed representatives were translated inwards, and perceived above. The process of this transmutation has been already described (see pages 26-28).

XXIII-INERADICABLE POLYGAMY, JEWISH AND MAHOMETAN.

Mahomet, whose supplementary religion wrought such effective good for a multitude of nations, destroying their idolatries, did not attempt to eradicate polygamy, which was hereditary over the whole world, and his Allah, like the Jehovah of the Jews, wrought with what was possible in the fallen and corrupt nature of man, in the interest of leading all, whether Jews, Mahometans, Africans, or Hindoos, by the gradual stages of possible change, towards the New Dispensation, in which again as at first one man will have one wife here and hereafter, and naturally and then spiritually, in heaven as on earth, they twain shall be one flesh.

We put in parenthesis here that missionary effort in instructing the heathen will have to follow Mahomet as he himself followed the Old Testament, and will not succeed in propagating the truths of the Old and New Testaments, if it is attempted to extinguish Polygamy and Idol-mediumship. The reception of the Divine letter of the Word unaccompanied by the dogmas of the Church will in God's good time do its work with Polygamy, and the White man, himself charged with the Bible, will take no steps towards inducing any chief to turn a crowd of faithful hard-working women who are indispensable to his industries, out of doors into unmerited want and degradation, because, not to his or their discredit, they are his wives. Let the Africans be under Jehovah for His time, until they have those new eyes which see Jehovah as Christ. We have used the phrase Idolmediumship. It is different from idol worship, and the more the form is human to the worshipper, the more easily it may be the first step on which he kneels to the true God.

The form of God is divinely human. God is a Man. This truth, which was visible as Jehovah, and tangible as Christ, and audible in Genesis when "God said,”—for only Man says is innate in every man, and embedded in every fetish, and can be brought out to acknowledged humanity according to Christian instruction and a life according to its simple teachings.

About marriage the Lord's words to the Sadducees are not followed out. Jesus said, Ye-the Sadducees—do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the Resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. The Lord lays down the Canon for understanding this revelation: it lies in knowing the Scriptures and the power of God. They, the Scriptures, are spirit and they are life. The Resurrection is the regenerate man and woman; here, by the question, in the heavens. Neither marrying nor being given in marriage is the Sadduceeism in them. What is being as the Angels of God in heaven? The next verse "which was spoken to you by God," answers this question. The God of Abraham, is the Divine truth proclaiming the celestial marriage, the God of Isaac is the Divine truth certifying the spiritual marriage, the God of Jacob is the Divine truth proclaiming the natural marriage. The three heavens attest immortal marriage with all their songs, psalms, and acclamations. And for whom? Not for the Sadduceeans. By the letter, and by the spirit, the parties in this ecclesiastical suit were seven dead men and one dead woman. Note the initial difference between the resurrection in which they are as the angels of God in heaven, and the resurrection of the dead, and that God is not the God of the dead. But God is the God of the living. Love is the life of man, and con

jugial love the holy life in which two are one. And man and woman are man and woman for ever, married and conjoined either in the Abraham-heaven which signifies the celestial, in the Isaac-heaven which signifies the spiritual, or in the Jacob-heaven which is the natural, according to their place in Maximus Homo which is determined by the ardour and quality of their virginity and chastity here on earth. See Swedenborg's Revelation of the whole subject in his Book on CONJUGIAL LOVE, which will be the Canon for all races in the New Religion and its Churches, and will leave the Mahometan and the African to his own new and regenerating conscience confronted by the Word of both the Old and the New Testaments.

XXIV.—THE JEWISH DRAMA BECAME MORE AND MORE INEFFECTIVE.

It would appear that the sternness of Judaism was relaxed in the later stages of it, and that evil inheritance accumulated in the Jewish race age by age, as is always the case, in a falling mankind, though in no instance is there extant such. a record of it as we possess in the Bible. While it took place, sins were overlooked legally, and condign punishment was postponed, and this was written of in the Word as the mercy of Jehovah, and as accorded for the sake of David. Polygamy grew monstrous, and Polytheism was the mind of it, and lust, the offspring of the two, multitudinous, peopled Jerusalem. From one source, David and Bathsheba, it is instructive to note what the Seed of a man means. Solomon, the wisest of men, the builder of the Temple of Jehovah, murder and adultery were married as in his father David. Another subject to be opened is, that polygamy appears to have been restricted after the Babylonish Captivity. "In the post-Babylonian period monogamy appears to have become more prevalent than at any previous

In

time; indeed we have no instance of polygamy during this period on record in the Bible, all the marriages noticed being with single wives. During the same period the theory of monogamy is set forth in Eccles. xxvi. 1–27. The practice of polygamy nevertheless still existed; Herod the Great had nine wives at one time. The abuse of divorce continued unabated."-Smith's Concise Dictionary of the Bible, Art. Marriage. Thus during the period alluded to some reformation took place, whether from example of Babylon, or from compulsion there, or from new thoughts instilled into the rulers. At the same time some glimmering light about a future state was inseminated into them. Such Reformations or Revivals are known in our countries as accompanying and to a certain extent mitigating the last days of dying States and Churches. They do not give life, but for a time they recall better ages, and keep hope and Remains alive, and thus prolong mortal days against the chronic and inveterate diseases which cause THE END OF THE CHURCH or of the Empire. It was in this way that the Reformation brought the Bible out of its sepulchre in the Churchyard. It was thus that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was a death-bed for a thousand years.

But, moreover, as the Jewish Dispensation was drawing to a close, and Jehovah was leaving them to their own devices, the sense of a new freedom could not but be felt, and a new Atheism, what we call Agnosticism, concerning their guided supernatural past, must come as a paralysis upon all even external beliefs, and leave the Jewish mind open to both ethnic superstitions and philosophies. This, which modern writers generally regard as a distinct progress for Judaism, paved the way to the Romano-Judaic legality which ended in the Crucifixion of Christ.

XXV.-NEW REVELATIONS.

But spiritual reasons essential to the Jewish Dispensation governed in all these cases; reasons or causes which could not be discovered without a new Revelation. Things which are monstrous were permitted by the Lord. Hear then what Swedenborg says: "There are not any laws of permission by themselves, or separate from the laws of the Divine Providence; the laws of each are the same. Therefore it is said that God permits, by which is not meant that He wills, but that He is not able to prevent, in view of the end, which is salvation."-Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Providence, n. 234. "Solomon was permitted to inaugurate idolatrous worship of many kinds. This was in order that he might represent the Lord's Kingdom or Church, together with all the religious systems of the whole globe. For the Church established with the Israelitish and Jewish nation was a representative church; and therefore all the judgments and statutes of that Church represented the spiritual things of the Church which are its internals. The people itself represented the Church; the King, the Lord; David, the Lord about to come into the world; and Solomon, the Lord after his coming. And since the Lord after the glorification of His humanity had power over heaven and earth, therefore Solomon His representative appeared in glory and magnificence, was in wisdom above all the kings of the earth, and also built the temple. Moreover, he permitted and instituted the rites of many nations, through which the various creeds and practices in the world were represented. The like is signified by his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines; for wife in the Word signifies a Church, and Concubine a Religion aside. Many kings after Solomon were permitted to profane the Temple and the holy things of the Church, because the people represented the Church, and their king, the head of them. And as the