this! What a large share of ruinous and fatal disaster is ever breaking in upon us from that sphere of mental and moral lawlessness which prevails among selfish and abandoned spirits, and which is here ultimated into similar disorder! Correct the evil here, and it would not flow in upon us from thence. But so long as selfishness, in the shape of hot-headed haste, avarice, vanity, and ambition, continues to reign in this world, so long will it be prompted and ministered to from the world of spirits and so long will there be plot, contrivance, intentional and unintentional evil, flowing in upon us from invisible sources, to make more complicate the vast but permissive dispensations of God. Take, for instance, the great calamity on the Amboy, N. J., Railroad, a few years since, whereby about fifty persons were sent prematurely into eternity, by the carelessness of man. The cause was the leaving of a drawbridge open. But now let us suppose that whole company of operatives - stockholders, officers, tenders, conductors, engineers, passengers, neighbors and all to have been good and true men; then, in case any danger should have existed, some one either the bridgetender, the conductor, or some available person in the vicinity— might have been impressed with sufficient spiritual power to have removed the danger and prevented the accident; or, even, the danger might not have existed at all. But an evil sphere prevailed-a sphere of self-interest, carelessness, animal passion and headlong enterprise. A like sphere prevailed of necessity in the world of spirits; and the parties concerned, by a more stupendous connection than they were aware of, were run into destruction. True, seen from the other side, it was not as it seems to us here. The destruction of physical life is regarded by God as a mere circumstance. We mourn over mangled bodies and sudden departures; but life, immortal life, only went coursing all the more rapidly through the eternal spaces; and the conclusion is just, that the time had come when it was best for He every one of these persons to close his earthly career. whose complicated thought includes infinity saw it all from eternity the day, the hour, the number of persons, every minute particular. But it was disorderly, and as such it ought not to have been. One great object of Providence in permitting these things, is that we may learn wisdom by experience, for it is seen that we can learn it in no other way. And in every shock of terror that comes thus appallingly to human sympathies, in every shipwreck, collision, explosion, fire, on sea or land, involving such havoc of human beings, it is intended to be taught us more respect for those calm, quiet, and harmonious laws, which make the music of the spheres, both spiritual and natural, and would, if obeyed, prove the harmony and safety of all human operations. In concluding this chapter, and for the still more emphatic enforcement of a lesson so practical in little things, and so conducive to trust, we cannot omit an allusion, still more direct, to that changeful and fickle thing-the god Fortune. It is so wonderful and capricious, and yet so apparently knowing in many of its freaks, that it is no surprise at all that the ancients recognized the little deity, and even built a temple in honor of its power. To them it was something; and to many others it is. Even gamesters, and men of no religious principle at all, have been known to declare that, according to the doctrine of chances, such and such a thing could not have happened; for be it known, that the arithmetic of this doctrine is reduced by science to somewhat of remarkable precision. Take, now, the following passages from Swedenborg : "During several years I have attentively observed whether fortune was any thing, and I have observed that it was, and that prudence in such case availed nothing: all, likewise, who have long reflected on the subject, know and confess this, but they do not know whence it is; scarcely any one knows that it is from the spiritual world, when yet it is thence. * "Take dice or playing cards, and play, or consult players; who of them denies fortune? for they play with it, and it with them, wonderfully: who can act against it, if it is steadfast? does it not then laugh at prudence and wisdom? is it not, while you shake the dice and shuffle the cards, as if it knew and despised the shakings and shufflings of the joints of the hand, to favor one more than the other, from some cause? Can the cause be given from anywhere else than from the Divine Providence in ultimates, where, by constancies and inconstancies, it acts wonderfully with human prudence, and at the same time hides itself? "On a time, when I was playing at a common game of chance with dice, in company, the spirits who were with me discoursed with me concerning fortune in games, and said that what is fortunate is represented to them by a bright cloud, and what is unfortunate by a dusky cloud; and when a dusky cloud appeared with me, that it was impossible for me to win; and also from that mark they predicted to me the turns of fortune in that game: hence it was given to know, that what is attributed to fortune, even in games, is from the spiritual world; much more what befalls man as to vicissitudes in the course of his life; and that what is called fortune is from the influx of Providence in the ultimates of order, where it so exists: thus, that Providence is in the most singular things of all, according to the Lord's words, that not even a hair falls from the head without the will of God."-A. C. 6494; D. P. 212. CHAPTER XXI. DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN SORROW AND AFFLICTION. "For till the bruising flail of God's corrections Through the transmuting process used by fire, AND so it is that we are all, more or less, subjected to the terrible ordeal of suffering. But after so much which has been said of it already, in the chapters on the regenerate life, we shall not need a long matter here. There are a few things, however, which still remain to be said, and there is one thing which it is well to bear prominently in mind concerning this whole subject. It is that suffering is not the orderly way of perfecting any man. And nine-tenths of the wonder and mystery connected with our great afflictions would disappear at once, could we only make the distinction between what is from order, and what is from disorder. Every thing that God does is indeed of order on his part, but He himself is compelled to the "order of disorder" by the sins and follies of men. The great object to be attained by our whole discipline on earth, is the highest state of the soul's regeneration. And if sin had never entered the world, divine Truth, with an unsuffering earthly experience, would have been the sufficient and orderly means to that end of good. But now, the sins and iniquities of men have made necessary an immense amount of human suffering. Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." (Isa. 48: 10.) That is, in the language of correspondence, not with truth alone, but with suffering. How much of it is necessary! Trials and afflictions which eat into the very soul and life, and destroy for the time being all peace of mind and body; which lay whole families prostrate under the awful blows of the divine displeasure; and which roll their surging billows, ages long, over desolate nations, and deluge the whole world with calamity; alas, there would be none of it, were man but a pure and sinless being! It would be no more needed on earth than it is in heaven. Nor is it by any means an arbitrary infliction as it is. It breaks forth by correspondence from disorderly human states. Not indeed that those who suffer most, sin most; this is far from being the case; but still, if there were not some disorderly conditions existing, either hereditarily or actually, all such suffering could and would be spared. It should be particularly observed that the law which here operates is not always of sin and punishment; many times it is so; and a great proportion, both of our physical and mental suffering, can be traced directly to laws violated on the part of the sufferers. But when it is not so, the causes must be looked for somewhere in the ancestry. We belong to a fallen world,one of the most fallen, and most corrupt, if not the most, there is reason to believe, of all the universe. We are the ruins of many generations. Sin undoubtedly was the first cause of all the suffering in the world. The early, unfallen inhabitants of the earth were not sick, nor weighed down with a load of mental sorrow. We may, of course, reasonably suppose them to have had their little trials, their cares and anxieties growing out of their human and dependent conditions, the rearing of their children, and attention to all their worldly and heavenly |