seen, by the forehead, becomes profane, signified by the leprosy, (Lev. xiv. 9,) the eyebrows were commanded to be cut off, to signify that before a new and regenerate state of life can be formed, a new ultimate must be procured. The new ultimate can be procured by actual repentance, whilst we are in the church on earth, because then we are in the ultimates of order; but it cannot be procured when by death we leave those ultimates and enter into the spiritual world, for the Son of Man hath power [only] upon earth to forgive sins."

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The eye is the noblest part of the countenance; it gives life and light to every feature. It is the direct correspondent to the eye of the mind, which is the understanding, So great are the uses of this organ, that if injured or lost, the man loses nearly all the charms of life, and is plunged not only into darkness, but into a kind of death, in which most of the enjoyments of life perish. Every one has a perception that the eye corresponds to the understanding of the mind. In poetry this analogy is most frequently employed. The eyes of God are represented as a "flame of fire," to denote his all-searching truth and wisdom. That the eye corresponds to the understanding is evident from what the Lord says:- "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee." Here, literally, the eye cannot be meant, as it cannot, itself, be a subject of offence. But the eye of the mind, or the understanding, can, when it thinks evil, be a subject of offence. Thus the evil thought is the offending eye which we are required to pluck out and cast away. As evil thoughts, if cherished, and especially if practised, are sinful, we at once see how important the precept of our Lord is, and how powerful the language by which it is conveyed. The correspondence, also, is easy to discern. As the understanding sees, when a man thinks in his spirit, from the will and its governing love, so the eye is said te proceed from the heart, (Mark vii. 22,) to teach us that in our final state, the understanding, however in this life we may sometimes think above the evil states of our will, and consequently be able to understand divine truths for the purpose of our reformation, yet in our final state the understanding is only the will projected as an existere from its esse, or as a form from its essence, and must think in accordance with the impulses and states of the will. This is not the case here, because a man whilst in the world may have a two-fold thought; one kind of thought when he is in his merely external, and in company with others, and another kind when he is in his spirit or in his true self, and at home by himself, or with his most intimate friends. This we know is the case with dissemblers, flatterers, sycophants, and hypocrites, who often speak one thing of

their neighbour to his face, and quite another thing behind his back. How diabolical this state is we need not stop here to explain. Suffice it to say that the backbiter and the slanderer can never enter into the Lord's kingdom. (Psalm xv.) If we are wise to look to our spiritual interests, or to our well-being and happiness in eternity, we shall take care to avoid and abhor this double-minded state, and become sincere, cleansing first "the inside of the cup and the platter, that the outside may be clean also.”

The eyelids are also mentioned in a few passages of Scripture, and have their own peculiar meaning. "I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob." (Psalm cxxxii. 4, 5.) Here the eyelids denote the external, whilst the eyes signify the internal perception of divine truth. Thus the spiritual instruction of the passage is, that all the energies, both internal and external of the soul, should be devoted to the worship of the Lord.

All things in the body have a twofold organism, and for the most part exist in pairs. This duality is universal, and speaks to us of a great fact. This twofold principle in the Creator is the divine Love and Wisdom which constitute His divine Nature, which, as a duality, is impressed upon all things in creation, and especially upon the human form. Hence we so often read of the right and the left; as, if thy right eye, or thy right hand, or right foot offend thee, &c. Again, "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." The right side denotes good from which truth is derived, and the left side signifies truth from which good is derived, and the union of the two signifies the union and harmony of the Good and the True in all its perfection. When, however, mentioned distinctly as in the cases above, they have the signification already stated; but when mentioned in contrast, as when the Divine Judge is said to place the goats on the left hand and the sheep on the right, we behold the left in opposition to the right, in which case the left loses its good signification and assumes one which is sinister; that is, left-handed or perverse. The great importance of knowing the true meaning of right and left will be obvious even from one passage in Scripture. It is said of Jesus, that "when he ascended into heaven he sat on the right hand of God." (Mark xvi. 19; Col. iii. 1.) Now, unless the signification of the right hand in this passage is known, the reader may easily imagine that the Lord, when he had ascended, sat literally on the right hand of the Father as a separate Person. And this, we doubt gross and erroneous

not, is the idea which commonly prevails. But how

this idea is may be evident from the fact, that it inculcates in the

Whereas

minds of most who entertain it, two objects of worship. when the symbolic meaning of the right hand, especially when predicated of God, is known, the passage inculcates one of the most important truths of the Gospel. As the right hand signifies power, it follows that when predicated of God, it signifies all power, or omnipotence, and for Jesus to sit on the "right hand of God," is to enter into the possession, as to his Humanity, of Divine Omnipotence, according to his own declaration-" To me is given all power in heaven and on earth." (Matt. xxviii. 18.) This also is evident from Mark xiv. 62, Luke xxii. 69, where it is said that He will sit on the right hand of the power of God." In this as in many other cases, the Word cannot be understood without the guidance of genuine doctrine. For without that guidance we should be led to form ideas as grossly material respecting the object of our worship, as were those of Nicodemus respecting regeneration. (John iii. 4.)

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(To be continued.)

THEOLOGY, INTELLECT, AND IMAGINATION.*

DIALOGUE V.

O. C. I expressed to you, in a former conversation, the satisfaction I derived from reading the opening of the spiritual sense of the Book of Genesis in the Arcana, and my surprise at the indifference to these lucid explanations manifested by the Christian world; but, on reflection, I think that the interspersing of them with those extraordinary narrations of the author's intercourse with spirits is calculated to prejudice the explanations. I cannot but entertain a wish that those astounding accounts had been withheld.

N. C. That wish has often been expressed; but I conclude we should do well not to indulge it, not only because those "memorable relations," we believe, were inserted under the leading of Divine Providence, but also because we perceive that it is expedient that those whose sensuous states cause them to feel repugnance to such narrations, should thus be beneficially deterred from reading the Scripture explanations mixed up with them, for the right appreciation of which their state of mind is not as yet prepared, as evidenced by their repugnance to regard the

narrations as true.

* Omit the redundant words, "I mean," in line 22, page 412 of the vol. for 1852. DIALOGUE IV.

O. C. But here I am struck with an apparent anomaly. You speak of a sensuous state of mind as being therefore opposed to the acceptance of these narrations: why, the reason assigned for rejecting them which I have heard is, their sensuous character, which makes them better suited for Mahometans than for Christians.

N. C. This seeming anomaly will disappear when it is considered, that the sensuous think sensuously both of the internal spiritual things, such as the explanations of the Word contain, and of things external, which are extant to the senses in the spirit-world, such as the narrations contain; while the spiritual-intellectual think spiritually of both the internal and the external; and, indeed, also of material objects, because the spiritual think from spiritual to natural, essence to form; while the sensuous think from natural to spiritual, or from form to essence, which is an inverted order of thought. The order of thought with the spiritual brings down light from the internal to the external; but the inverted order of thought with the sensuous, clouds the internal with the obscurity of the external. Those who can appreciate rightly the narrations of the spirit-world, think of them from a right knowledge of the interior principles which govern the appearances presented; but those who are ignorant of the interior principles, materialize the appearances by their material thought of them, and then they cry out sensuality and Mahometanism!" But this is altogether the fabrication of their own sensualized imaginations.

O. C. The very parties you judge as thinking sensuously of “heaven and its wonders," it appears, are so desirous of thinking spiritually of them, that they run to the opposite extreme of reducing them to nothing at all, by concluding that there are no outward things in heaven, and even that spirits have no substance or form, but are a sort of formless essences. They cannot see that a thing of which no idea is conceived, and the idea of nothing, are identical!

N. C. Very true. Such is the inconsistency of those who are unacquainted with the true nature of spiritual existence. But you will observe that their judgments, agreeably to your accurate description of them, are merely negative. They are content with denying that every predicate of outward things in this world, must be inapplicable to a spiritual world, either in reality or appearance, because, as they say, they are totally different. They affirm nothing whatever of heaven, of those who are there, or of what is to be found existing there, by means of some (to us) unknown kind of consciousness or experience. So I remember long since hearing a public discussion in a literary institution of the question, "What is the difference between mind and matter?"

and the conclusion sagely come to was this, that matter is material and mind is immaterial, or, in other words, that matter is matter, and mind is not matter. If, then, these sensuous spiritualists,-sensuous because ignorant of real spiritual things and ideas,-affirm that spiritual existences have no sensible properties, and this is all that they can or do affirm, they only thus confess their entire ignorance of spiritual existences altogether. They are like a person who, when asked to describe the properties of a vegetable, should attempt to conceal his ignorance by merely replying, "They are not the properties of a mineral." Real knowledge is and must be affirmatory in its character. A denial of alleged properties without assigning any others instead, is a mere confession of ignorance. And in the same manner, young conceited professors of infidelity fancy that they shew their knowledge by blotting out, as merely chimerical, the whole spiritual knowledge deemed by others imperishable realities, and putting nothing in their place. Negative knowledge, when it is put forth as something, only shews the really ignorant state of the sensuous upon all the points on which they can present only mere denials. Real knowledge must affirm something concerning that which really exists; and with non-existences, or no ideas, it is not at all concerned.

O. C. But do you think it possible that those who deny the existence of any thing in heaven extant to the senses, can really believe what they say? Can they have any pleasure in the anticipation of an eternal vacuum which must of necessity reduce their minds to a state of eternal vacancy

?

N. C. They cannot believe what they declare, I conceive, themselves being witnesses, as their own inconsistency shews: for while they deny that the soul has any substance or form, they believe that the blessed sing with harps in their hands, gazing on the dazzling splendours of the beatific vision. Thus they believe the blessed have no form, and yet that they have hands, tongues, ears, and eyes. They believe that they have these members of a human form while they think the Scripture declares it; but they do not believe it while they are trying to think spiritually of heaven in their own way. They think with Watts,"There is a land of pure delight where saints immortal reign;" and "there everlasting spring abides, and never withering flowers," and also, that " Death, like a narrow sea, divides that heavenly land from ours;" they believe all this while they read the well known hymn which declares it, but they deny every word of it in order to convict Swedenborg's narrations concerning heaven's paradises of Mahometanism, affirming that only Mahometans, and not Christians, believe in any such things! N. S. No. 158.-VOL. XIV.

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