which it exists; from whence it would follow that this is a property of no subject. And this is said to be the case, because it is derived from the soul. Then will it follow that because a subject has its life by derivation from another, it has it not at all; that because it lives by derivation from another, it lives not at all. According to this mode of reasoning there is not any living finite thing; the soul, from which the body is said to exist, does not live any more than the body does. The truth is that God alone is self-existent; therefore He alone is essential life; and every created thing subsists from this only life, each superior degree and thing being a medium through which life is transmitted to the lower degrees and things; so that the soul lives from God, and the body lives from the same source; the body does not live from the soul, but from God through the soul; and the body does live as really its own life as the soul does really live its life. Created substance, when formed so as to be a recipient of life, lives the life which it receives, and life does not exist the same in any other subject throughout the universe. How, then, can anything live the life of another and not its own? It is impossible. The life of each thing is life as it is received by that thing, which is not the same with the life of any other thing, neither in this world nor in the spiritual, neither can it be; for life is modified by the subject into which it flows, and its modification, or the state of life which is affected by reception and existence in the form is its life; it is such as exists in it alone, and is its life; it is peculiar to it, existing in it only. If that is the property of a subject which is proper to it, then that life which exists in a subject and exists in no other, must be its property; therefore the life which exists in the body is the body's property.

It is stated in p. 31, whatever the body has of organization, of sensitive life, of human faculties either mental or bodily, cannot be said to be proper to it, and still they exist in it and in no other subject. Not one of the properties of the body are proper to or can be predicated of the soul. The soul has not the senses of the body; it cannot see, taste, hear, smell, or feel anything in the bodily organs of sensation; but it can see, hear, &c., in its own organs; the bodily sensations exist only in the body, and can be perceived only by the body. If we say that the soul is conscious in the body, it only amounts to saying that the body has its consciousness from the soul, which is the same thing as saying that it lives from the soul, or rather from God through the soul, as said above; so that the soul's living in the body is the body's living from the soul. E. S. says, "Man, inasmuch as he is a form recipient of the Lord's life, is an instrumental cause; but life from the Lord is the principal cause; this latter life is felt in the instrumental as its life, when yet it is

not its." A.C. 6325. Now this is said of the whole man, as consisting of soul and body; but concerning the consciousness of life in the body, he says, in 7381,—“The ideas of interior thought appertaining to man, although they are above material things, still terminate in material things; and where things terminate, there they appear to be." Life is omnipresent, but it appears to be only where it terminates, for there only is it manifested; and it is said to be where it is manifested, and it is predicated of the subject in which it is manifested.

The body of man is the man in the world, and it is the whole of him that is in the world, just as any part of the soul is the man in its degree, and each part has its own life peculiar to itself, which is the life as it exists in it from the Lord; it is perceived as its own, by itself, in itself, and cannot be cognizant to any other subject. The soul does not descend into the body, neither does the life of the soul descend into the body; but life flows in from God, and as it is received by the soul it is the soul's life, and as it is received by the body it is the body's life. Life is God's, but it is said to be man's when he receives it; and so much as the soul receives is said to be the soul's, and so much as the body receives is said to be the body's, life always being predicative of the subject in which it exists and is manifested. If this were not the case we should not be able to make any distinction between existing things, but we must predicate God of everything that has life. This being the case, and we think that it may be seen to be the case by every reflecting mind, it may be seen that whatever exists in the body is a property of the body. If we maintain that what is of the body is not its own because it is derived, then we might say with equal propriety that the body has no life at all, and that it has not even an organization; because all it has, its form as well as its properties, are derived; or, what amounts to just the same thing, that because the body did not make itself, and because it does continually sustain itself, it has no existence.

And what may be said of the body on that ground, may be said of the soul also; for the soul is only an organized form as well as the body, and if the body does not possess life, and faculties, and form as its own properties, because they are derived, neither does the soul. Though man has life only by derivation, he possesses it in himself; whether we say man, soul, or body, it is the same thing; for soul and body, which together make man, are both dependent upon God, and both live by derivation from him; and if the body lives by derivation of life from God through the soul, it does live, and the soul can do no more. Those properties which exist in the body are the body's properties, and those which exist in the soul are the soul's properties; all properties belong

to the subject in which they exist. The reader will see how much our friend is mistaken when he says" From this, I think, may be seen the erroneousness of the following statement:-' Natural substance, by formation, becomes possessed of life; matter, when formed, is only an image, a form of natural substance (i.e., organized substance) is a living subject.""

66

"T. R." says "the life of a man is communicated apparently to his body. But it cannot, therefore, be called a bodily property. For it is not proper to his body." Here a distinction is made between a man and his body, meaning, we suppose, by man his spiritual part, and by body his natural part, and it appears to be quite necessary to divide the man in order to carry out his idea. Now we would ask, if the life of the body is not proper to the body, what is it proper to? Surely he will not say that it is proper to the soul, for it does not exist in the soul, and therefore is only soul and body. The body is the subject of its own life, it exists nowhere else but in its subject, or the body. But still he says that its life is not proper to it: whatever it appears to have of sensative life is not proper to it, but it is proper to the soul." Life is such as it is in the body by the body's reception of it; it is modified by the body, and is therefore the body's life. We admit that the body's life is no part of its substance, nevertheless it is allowable and proper to predicate life of the subject, which it vivifies or animates; otherwise all would be absolute life, and we could not predicate it of either soul or body, either in angels or men. Although he will not admit that life proper to the body, he does not hesitate to allow that it is proper to the soul; as if the body did not possess its own life, just as the soul possesses its life; for they are both of them only forms recipient of life, and they are parts of the same subject too, viz., man, the soul being proper to the spiritual world, and the body being proper to the natural world. It is added-" But life itself is not proper to either." From which he draws this singular conclusion-"It is therefore right to place man on a level with his image of wood or stone." Which is simply this, that, because man has not infinite life, he has not finite life; or because man is not God, he is not a man. But it is added, 66 so far as the properties of his bodily substances are concerned." The properties of the bodily substances were not the subject under consideration, but the life of the body; therefore he argues concerning one thing, and draws his conclusions concerning another. According to such a mode of reasoning, we inadvertently miss our way, and wander very far from the truth.

is

(To be concluded in our next.)

To the Editor.

THE NEW CHURCH AS A SECT.

SIR, The New Church has now assumed all the features of a sect. The outward and visible announcement to the world that another has been added to that Babel of confusion which afflicts the Christian world is, the erection of a small building of questionable Gothic, into which is seen to enter every Sunday a small and intermittent stream of members, but which for the rest of the week stands silent and deserted. A closer examination discovers that a load of debt weighs like an incubus on the few well-to-do families who attend, whilst the services are conducted either by a minister who is miserably underpaid, or by a member whose attention is already absorbed by a trade, this building-if not observed with a compassionate silence by more flourishing religious bodies around, or, if it should attract a more lively attention, regarded as the hoisting of an opposition flag, a competitive concern-is exciting a tacit feeling of opposition and antagonism unfavourable to a candid examination of the new creed.

A question arises whether a receiver of the New Doctrines should not maturely consider whether he should too hastily leave the sect in which he has been brought up. Would he not do more good service if he stayed amongst his old family connections, and then, as it were, from the interior of the citadel, communicate with the garrison, and expound, and explain and discuss his new ideas, which would be the more readily listened to, as he had as yet made no change, no outward demonstration of estrangement and breaking of old ties.

Especially with regard to the Church of England: here we have an establishment which is recognised by the State, and which, with certain errors of doctrine, and some grievous defects of administration, is yet an orderly and decorous form of worship, and recommends itself to a large part of the nation by its tolerant spirit and susceptibility of amendment. Let any man who has become imbued with the new ideas of Swedenborg ask himself, whether it is not advisable to remain in the fold of his old church, where, without exciting a spirit of hostility, he could shew the superiority of the new doctrines to the old ones. Will not such a man, if he hastily joins the New Church Society, find that he misses the old responses, the venerable church, the influential, and learned, and gentlemanly ministers, the instructed choir, and the presence of a large congregation, by their numbers exciting an influence almost electric? Must he take for granted that a church which in one reign curtailed its

articles, and in another abolished two obnoxious and intolerant services, will not in time listen to further reforms, disdaining, as it does, any pretensions to infallibility. The attempts to build up the New Church into a sect have created much trouble, and this readiness to incur debt in order to build chapels so little characterised by the decent and solemn elegance which ought to pervade temples for the worship of God; or if so characterised implying deeper indebtedness, smacks somewhat of that worldly and inconsiderate spirit almost approaching to immorality, which is now dragging Methodism to the ground.

Swedenborg, who himself punctually attended the Lutheran Church of Sweden, more intolerant than the Church of England, can hardly be satisfied, supposing him to be present in the spirit, with the embarrassment, and the distress, and the anxiety pervading the Committee of a New Church Society which has overbuilt itself—a dilemma which opens a door to future bickerings, and prompting the lukewarm to secession. If we assume thus hastily the outwards of a sect, can we promise our selves that the internals of sectarianism will not insinuate themselves into our minds ?

I am aware this will not be a very popular view, and that the ire of those active spirits who love to be engaged in organization, and to be busied in building and in borrowing and in lending, and who are not altogether insensible to the glories of leadership, and the turmoils of negotiations-to the dictation of plans and the honours of salutation in the market-place-will hardly tolerate this view of the position of the New Church, but I look to the Editor's spirit of fairness to insert even an unpopular view of an important question.

G.

REPLY.

There are two points in the above paper which require a few remarks. The first is, that of designating the New Church as a sect. The writer seems to imagine that the Church of the New Jerusalem is a sect, and, consequently, a section of the former church, which is now, as to its actuating principles, passing away. We are perfectly aware that people who know little or nothing of the New Church think that it is nothing but a sect, and that it ought to be designated by no other appellation. But those who do know something of the New Church well know that it is not a sect, and that it is erroneous to consider it as a section, or as a denomination of the Old Church. To constitute it a sect of the Old Church, it must, as the term implies, be cut off, as a shoot from the old