postponed indefinitely the further prosecution of the work, and as it would have been almost impossible to find a substitute for our indefatigable and accomplished agent, the Conference and the subscribers may fairly be congratulated on their decisive operations. The MSS. already secured by the enterprise and liberality of the American Committee, all of which are completed, include Doctrine of Charity. Two Indexes of a lost work on Conjugial Love. Concerning the coming of the Messiah into the world, &c. The large Treatise on the Brain. A supplementary volume of the Animal Kingdom. The American committee also paid the travelling expenses of Dr. Tafel to Europe, and his salary up to October 15th of the present year. After great consideration, the committee appointed by Conference have decided to continue the work on almost the identical terms of the American friends. They are of course unable to estimate the amount of money they will be able to collect; but as it was absolutely necessary to make provisional arrangements with Dr. Tafel as early as possible, they have ventured to make themselves responsible for the sum of about £500. During the next six months Dr. Tafel will therefore act as the agent of the committee of the English Conference. Terms of agreement have been drawn up, and accepted by the committee on the one hand, and by Dr. Tafel on the other, by which there will be secured for the English Conference 100 copies of each of the following works : The Common Place Book, omitting the excerpts from other writers. Second Treatise on the Brain. Worship and Love of God. Part III. The Divine Love. (From the Apocalypse Explained.) Treatise on Mathematics. It is quite hoped also that the important work, "The Lesser Principia," may be included; but this will depend upon the amount of money received, and also on arrangements now pending with Dr. Tafel. The committee are also extremely anxious to secure photo-lithographs of Swedenborg's copy of the Latin Bible of Schmidius, 103 pages of which are copiously illustrated by his own annotations;—their ability to do so will, of course, depend upon the liberality of the friends in Great Britain. The committee have also arranged to continue the services of the amanuensis, who is making copies of the valuable documents discovered by Dr. Tafel, and which are destined to be of such importance to the future biographer of Swedenborg. There can be little doubt that the American friends will gladly arrange with our committee for making exchange of sets of MSS. belonging to them, for those which are now being prepared for us, and thus each country will probably become possessed of photo-lithographic copies of everything known to exist of the theological and scientific literary remains of Swedenborg. The photo-lithographs destined for Great Britain will, of course, be handed over to the ensuing Conference. The biographical materials will also be equally available in both countries. When the subject was introduced at the last Conference, so earnest and heartfelt was the sympathy of the members, that within twentyfour hours of the passing of the resolutions the sum of £219, 1s. was subscribed. It is desirable to raise in Great Britain a sum of from £500 to £1000 for the purposes of this mission; and the Committee now respectfully and urgently appeal to all admirers of Swedenborg's writings to assist in the prosecution of this pressing, important, and even imperative work. The use has providentially fallen to the lot of New Churchmen at this present time to perform; and we shall not be deemed over bold in being confident that they will be found equal to the duty which their love for the truths of the New Church now renders incumbent upon them. Contributions will be acknowledged in the Intellectual Repository. E. J. BROADFIELD, Secretary, Accrington House, Accrington. JOHN HYDE, Treasurer, 8 Kossuth Terrace, Moss Lane, Manchester. R. GUNTON, 83a Guildford Street, Russell Square, London, W.C.; J. BRAGG, Derfield House, Handsworth Road, Birmingham. November, 1869. ORDINATION AND THE IMPOSITION OF HANDS. DEAR SIR,-Although, in the opinion of some of your readers, a reply to R. R. R.'s last communication is unnecessary, I will nevertheless trouble you with a few remarks, studying the greatest practicable brevity; and for this reason I shall not follow your correspondent through all his irrelevancies. 66 The first point to which I shall call the attention of your readers, is his inconsistency with himself. Referring to the passage (T. C. R. n. 146) where Swedenborg declares that the gift of illustration, &c., is conveyed to the clergy by their "ordination into the ministerial office," he contended in his first article, that the reference was to the clergy of the Old Church. In his subsequent paper, however, he denies that it has any relation whatever to ordination in the common acceptation of the term. "Inauguratio" (the word rendered ordination) he says means a beginning," and singularly contends that such is the only meaning it will bear. He argues that beginning to minister to a society confers illustration and instruction. The philosophy, that a person has only to begin to preach and the requisites will follow, will strike most of your readers as being equally novel with his rendering of the word inauguratio. He has thus asserted three propositions on this subject altogether irreconcilable. First, that the communication of the gifts and graces in question by ordination was only applicable to the clergy of the Old Church; secondly, he defines these to consist of the members of the New Church, and the laity of the members of the Old; in which case it would not be the clergy of the Old Church at all; and now, thirdly, he contends that the passage does not mean ordination, but only a beginning. From what classical authority he obtained his rendering I have not been able to learn. I will conclude by simply putting it to your readers, whether a writer who thus contradicts himself in defining the subject on which he professes to treat, is in a position to arrive at any just conclusion. The next point to which I will advert is, the assumption that I hold ordination to consist merely of the laying on of hands. To form this conception, he must either not have read my papers, or read them backwards, or has read them without candour; and yet on this assumption a considerable portion of his argument is based. Had he for instance read with ordinary attention the following passage, he could not have fallen into so egregious an error, and for the quoting of which his misrepresentation must be my apology: "It is, however, to be borne in mind that there must be a state of preparedness to receive, and a reciprocity grounded in the sincere love of truth, otherwise the gifts cannot be conveyed. Neither are they to be understood as being transmitted from the one person to the other, since that would be physical influx which would be an impossibility. The influx comes not through the hands of the other, 'but from heaven, where alone are perceived consociations as to the affections of truth.'" (See A. C. n. 10,023.) "When, therefore any one is sincerely desirous of entering into the ministry from a spiritnal love of its use, and the Church accepts him, there is in the ordination service and the imposition of hands a completeness which serves as a fuller basis, where the angels can be present, and, as ministers in the Lord's hands, convey those graces which are suited to the requirements of the priestly office." (See the May Number, p. 247.) Had your correspondent exercised but a moderate degree of care, it would have saved him from occupying your space with, and inflicting on your readers his remarks about ordaining blockheads, &c. It would also have saved him from confounding the laying on of hands on Paul and Barnabas, when sent on a mission from Antioch, with ordination. And, above all, it would have spared him the profanity of asserting that, if laying on of hands meant ordination, Aaron and his sons ordained the bullock when they laid their hands on it! His remarks on Tole are characterized by the same recklessness of assertion. "It ought (he says) to be known to the user of this quotation (the one referring to the ordination of the twelve apostles) that the Greek word étoiŋσe, translated "ordained," has no such meaning as he now attaches to it in the whole Greek literature. Why (he continues) he should have used this is not easy to imagine." He then goes on to state, that although it has been used in the New Testament some hundreds of times, it is not elsewhere rendered ordain. Yet, he says, it may after all mean ordain in the sense of "to appoint," but this very seldom, its primary meaning being "to do." In a subsequent portion he adduces instances of several other words in the original having been rendered ordain in the Authorized Version. 66 In the first place, I remark, that he has not informed us what the sense is in which I have employed the word which so greatly excites his astonishment. I observed (see the number for April, p. 192) that, as regards the use of the word 'ordain' in the Authorized Version of the English New Testament, it is too vague to afford any assistance in our present inquiry, standing as it does as the representative of no less than ten verbs in the original Greek. Even in the two examples (Mark iii. 14, 15; John xv. 16) quoted above, the word 'ordain' represents two; in the first, Toew, to do, being used in its collateral sense of, to cause to become; and the other Tonμ, to set, to place, to lay, being employed in its derivative sense of, to appoint, to constitute." Does your correspondent mean to deny that these words have such meaning? If he does, he may correct his mistake by reference to the first reliable Greek lexicon at hand. If he means that I have asserted the meaning of either of them is the laying on of hands, he must have read my paper with his vision distorted. I have neither made nor dreamed of making such a statement. But a person who has not bestowed sufficient care to avoid giving three contradictory views on the very subject on which he is writing, cannot be expected to exercise any great effort in understanding the sentiments of those against whom he employs his pen. There is no need to warp passages from their legitimate meaning to prove the importance of imposition of hands, abundant direct evidences of the fact being supplied in the pages of Scripture, as has already been shown and will be further evident in the sequel. I next offer a word on "illustration" in its general application to the members of the Church. Your correspondent quotes the passage, "Every one is illustrated by the Lord from the Word according to his affection of the truth" (A. C. n. 9382), from which he argues that no one is illustrated by the laying on of hands. I am not aware that it has ever been affirmed that any one was; most certainly it has never been affirmed by me; what I said, and what I still say, is that which Swedenborg has said that "the clergy are particularly gifted with the graces of illustration and instruction, and that their ordination to the ministry (which, as I have explained above, involves much more than the mere laying on of hands, this being only one part of it) conveys those graces." Besides the graces of illustration and instruction are not synonymous terms with being illustrated or instructed. The graces of the clergy consist of the excellences proper to the ministerial office, one of which is the capability of receiving that form of illustration suited to the requirements of such office, and of adapting what is so received to the instruction of others; illustration itself comes from the Lord alone. But here again, had R. R. R. endeavoured, as he ought to have done, to have arrived at a correct knowledge of what I had previously written, he would not have floundered among so many misapprehensions. For in my paper on "The Operation of the Holy Spirit in its Relation to the Clergy," in the July number (p. 358), the following remarks with reference to illustration occur: "Speaking on this subject, Swedenborg further explains that 'influx and illustration are effected when man looks upwards towards the Lord, in which case he is elevated as to his interiors by the Lord to heaven, thus to the Lord."" |