again their natural colour. Now this could not have been, unless the particles of bone coloured with madder had passed off, and had been replaced by other particles of bone fresh formed from the blood: which proves that the matter which forms even our bones is constantly changing. Hence all the matter of our bodies is incessantly passing off and being replaced by fresh matter. And it is calculated that a thorough change of matter takes place in every one's body about once in seven years. It is on this principle that medical men ground the necessity of revaccination every seven years. For my part, if I may be allowed to express an opinion on a subject that comes so little within my own province, I would say, I do not think their doctrine true. For I hold that, since the Lord's advent, disease is in the forms, not in the substance, of the body; and, as we have seen, the form of the body remains, however much its substance has changed. Hence I believe that the vaccine form, when once induced, always remains, notwithstanding any periodic changes of substance which the body may undergo.*

* The fact that vaccination loses its power is owing, I apprehend, either to a spurious virus being used, or to the vaccine matter becoming modified by passing successively through many human bodies. It is manifest that the vaccine matter must lose some of its salutary power every time it passes through a diseased human body: for inoculation with the scab from this human body must have a less sanative effect than the infection taken by dairymen immediately from their kine; and this effect must be less and less in proportion to the number of the diseased human bodies through which the virus has passed. But I presume the effects of the vaccine matter must also be weakened by passing through a healthy human body. For a human body made relatively more healthy by regeneration, and especially the body of an innocent child, must modify the vaccine matter in the same way that the orderly body of a cow modifies the human small pox. The reason why the same disease is lighter in an animal than in a human subject must be, that mankind have perverted the order of their nature, which the subjects of the mere animal kingdom have not; so that, when a disease, generated by human corruption, is made, in the divine economy, to pass through an animal body, the virulence of that disease is abated. And when the matter of this disease, so modified by the orderly animal body, is introduced into the human body, prone as this is by hereditary taint to disorder, it cures, or prevents, or causes to appear in a milder form, the similar and more virulent human disease by substitution. But, as the orderly animal body modifies the human disease, so must the healthy and relatively innocent human body modify, that is, weaken by a kind of dilution, the vaccine matter. For every time the vaccine matter passes through the human body, it becomes more assimi

In the same way the forms of baptism and the holy supper, and all other religious forms of faith and practice, remain in the spiritual body of man, although his material body is decomposed and wholly merged in elemental nature.

Now we must presume that the Lord's body, when on earth, was subject to the same law. And therefore we may conceive, that, as the particles of his material body, even to the bones, passed off, in the progress of his divinely spiritual-natural life, they, instead of being replaced as ours are by other material particles, were replaced by particles of divine substance; and these divine particles, coming into precisely the same relation to one another which the material particles before them had held to one another, would necessarily preserve the same form, although they were of a totally different substance; and thus they would form to the Lord's divine essence a body, even to the very bones, altogether like that which they had replaced: so that, when appearing to his disciples after his resurrection, he could say to them, "Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." And this explains the fact that he could live for many days without eating material food, as his disciples were under the necessity of doing, because he had "meat to eat which they knew not of." For he received gradually a divine substance, which supplied and satisfied his body in the daily wastage of its material particles, while the bodily wants of his disciples had to be satisfied with fresh supplies of material substance. Hence he could live and act in a divinely natural sphere of use, without feeling the sensations of material hunger and thirst, which ordinary men must needs feel and satisfy while inhabitants of this terrestrial sphere.

This illustration will, I presume, enable you to see that it is

lated to the human form, so as to lose its properties of a distinctive animal disease. And if vaccination is to be kept efficient, each human subject must be vaccinated with matter directly from the cow, and not by matter which has been made to pass through an indefinite number of other human subjects. This custom of vaccinating children with matter taken from other children is also exceptionable, because, as I imagine, a more healthy child may, in some cases, be incommoded by scrofulous and other morbid forms derived from a less healthy one.

not absurd, but highly rational, to suppose the Lord did in fact, when on earth, put off a material, and put on a divine, humanity. And in a clear discernment of this fact, we have a groundwork for an explanation of the whole difficulty before us. For it can now be seen, at a glance, that, while this process of putting off the one and putting on the other was going on in the Lord, he was subject to alternate states, which would give rise to very different appearances; and a due consideration of these appearances, will satisfactorily account for all the relations of his human infirmity and inferiority to the father which the Bible contains, without invalidating the position, that he is, notwithstanding, the very and the only God. Hence we have dwelt, at considerable length and with some minuteness, upon this subject, reserving for another occasion our application of it to the removal of the difficulty in question.

But, by way of transition to our next discourse, we will, in closing this, just observe briefly, that, "in consequence of the Lord's having at first a humanity from the mother, which he put off by successive steps, the Lord, during his abode in the world, was alternately in two states; the one a state of humiliation, or exinanition, and the other a state of glorification, or of union with the divinity which is called the father." He was in the state of humiliation at the time and in the degree that he was in the humanity from the mother; and he was in the state of glorification, at the time, and in the degree, that he was in the humanity from the father. In the state of humiliation, he prayed "to the father, as to a being distinct from himself; but in the state of glorification, he spake with the father as with himself. In this latter state the Lord said that the father was in him, and he in the father, and that the father and he were one; but in the other state he underwent temptations, and suffered the cross, and prayed the father not to forsake him ; for the divinity could not be tempted, much less could it suffer the cross." (Doc. of Lord, 35.)

It was, therefore, in this last state-his state of deepest humiliation, that is, this state of fullest conformity of his external humanity to his indwelling divinity, that he exclaimed in

62

our text, My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" The Lord, thinking and feeling in infirm humanity, was tempted to believe that he was not one with the Divinity. It was the deepest temptation, because it was a consciousness in the lowest corporeal principle. But at the very time the Divinity within was putting off the last vestiges of material humanity, and as these vestiges passed off, it seemed to the Lord's consciousness in that humanity as if the life within was deserting it, when in reality it was leaving the life within, by ceasing to have any further connection with it. But as the Lord's consciousness in infirm humanity ceased by the last vestiges of that humanity passing away, he came into a fuller consciousness of life in another and purer humanity, which was fully correspondent to his divine essence. And as he came into this divine human consciousness, which could not be tempted with any further doubts as to his entire divinity, he perceived his trials were completed; and, perceiving this, he cried again with a loud voice, "It is finished, and, bowing his head, gave up the ghost." Thus passed away his mere natural life. But his dying to mere natural life, was his rising to divine natural life. Yet, though he became more truly alive, still the appearance was that he died; and the scoffing crowd railed at the apparent fallacy of all his claims to, and professions of, divinity, and exulted in the feelings of self-justification which his apparent death produced"Now Satan triumph'd; 'now,' he cried, Who shall my power oppose!' But when the Son of Mary died, The Son of God arose.

"He finish'd with his dying breath
Redemption's grand design;

His human bore our sins to death,
And then arose divine."

SERMON XIV.

JOHN, X. 17, 18, 19.

"I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received from my father."

THE Lord spake these words in reference to the life which was distinctively his own as the human form of God. They denote that the human nature of the Lord acted of itself, or by its own power, from the divine nature within it. For the Lord says, "This commandment have I received from my father." They imply that the Lord put off the material humanity which he derived from the virgin mother, and put on a divine humanity from the divine essence, which was the father within him, by his own proper power. The laying down his life de. notes his putting off the human proprium which he had received in hereditary transmission from the mother; and his taking his life again denotes his putting on a human proprium from the divine essence. The one process constituted his various states of humiliation or human inanition; the other, his various states of glorification or divine impletion. This text, therefore, leads directly to a renewed consideration of the topic with which we closed our last discourse.

In our last discourse, we took a universal and particular view of the new-church doctrine concerning the Lord. We especially regarded this doctrine in its respects to the Lord's putting off the infirm humanity which he had assumed from the virgin Mary, and putting on a divine humanity by production from the divine essence within him.