The New Church is essentially different from all other churche: because it is a celestial church, and the type of its intellectual bein, can only be found in a loving woman. Her simple love of the Di vine Wisdom makes her receptive of ideas; hence she arrives a truth, not by logical conclusions and mathematical deductions, bu by interior perceptions. With her science confirms truth. But truth itself is a simple and definite revelation from the Divine man she loves. For this reason the New Church is most peculiarly a form of charity. In her feminine grace and perception she is a being of love, and wordy discussions and rude attacks from her gentle bosom upon any earthly form, are wholly out of place. The Bride of Heaven looks with a serene lovingness upon mankind, and utters pure truth and loving words, not to coerce the mind of man, but to draw him gently by the cords of love into a conviction of the truth. Every individual member of this Celestial church should take its character from the whole. We are possessed of truths above the attainments of human reason. It is vain to reason with an unregenerate man of our truths; he can only deny them, because in the light of reason he cannot possibly see them. But we should be full to overflowing of our beautiful truths; to pour them into the ears of all who desire them, for from desire or love is awakened intellectual perception; and no New Church member in this world is unlinked with the human race by external ties of relationship and friendship. Our Lord has thus placed us that we may become mediums of good and truth to others; our whole lives should be devoted to awakening the most kindly and gentle affections in those who surround us, that through their love for us they may desire to know our inner thoughts and feelings, which we will communicate to them openly as New Church doctrines, for it is not permitted to us by persuasive arts to insinuate truth. No. Openly and avowed, as members of the New Church, we must live, that all men may know the form of our faith, and not be beguiled into a partial reception of it, and afterwards profane it by rejecting it when they find that it is not a brilliant speculation of the imagination, but the simple revelation of a fact.

It is good for us to come out and stand apart from all churchesnot that we may oppose them or overcome them, but that our faith may not be suffocated. For, had the early Christians remained in the Jewish church to listen to the teachings of the Rabbis, that the Messiah was yet to come, and that the man Jesus was an impostor, could their faith have grown upon such spiritual nourishment? The spirit of man is formed by the truths that he hears; and can the Newchurchman, who believes in the trinity of a personal God, listen to the teachings of the old church as to three Divine persons, and have his interior man to grow? No; in accordance with the laws of order he must be dwarfed; he cannot attain to the full stature of For this reason our Lord has provided us with an altar and a sanctuary, to which we can bring all the offerings of our hearts and minds, and from which we can receive the precious gifts of our brethren. The church in its humanity has a will and understanding. The male principle in it is the understanding, which is to set forth

a man.

truth, to be loved by the feminine principle, the will. Through the understanding of the man of the church, the spiritual meaning of the Divine Word is to be revealed, because man through erudition attains to so full a knowledge of the literal sense of the Divine Word. The woman of the church receives this revelation of the spiritual meaning into her warmest love, and plants it as seed in the tender minds of infants and children. Thus, as by the action and reaction of the heart and lungs in the individual man, does the church live and grow. And the church is the only true man of the earth, it is the image of God upon the earth. It is the form receptive of the Divine Life which holds this world in connection with the Infinite Life. How high and holy then are its duties to mankind, and how like the interior organs of life should it work-so quietly, unseen, and unobtrusive, and yet its life-giving effects should pervade the universe-and, like these unseen organs of life, it works not by the will of man, but by the will of the Creator. God is its soul, and every infinitesimal vessel should hold itself open to the Lord. How beautiful it is to Newchurchmen to sit calm and still, amid the storm of demagogic commotions, which rages in the external, and feel that all their light and hope and strength flows from within; to realise that the humblest human soul that turns itself in a trusting love to the Lord, is aiding in bringing down the light and freedom of hea ven to the oppressed and troubled.

It is not for us to look without and mingle in the strife and turmoil of agitated actors. We must work as well as they; but our work is different, as different as is the use of the red blood in the human organization from that of the nervous fluid; we act within to give life to the external.

The doctrines of man rock on the heaving billows of the sea of life, like some cumbrous unwieldy ship in which a horrid mutiny has taken place, but some faithful sailors look to the golden orient and behold the Captain of their salvation throwing out cords by which they may draw the wretched ship to a land flowing with peace and plenty. Eagerly they seize these cords, which are as streams of golden light flowing into praying souls. While such humble and

faithful workmen are on board, the ship cannot be lost.

As Newchurchmen, we must cultivate our warmest affections for our church. We must regard it not as an hierarchy to attain worldly ends, but as a consociation of love, that we may act in unity of purpose. The church is a holy marriage union, in which good and truth meet; hence all jars and excitements are as truly out of place among the members of the New Church as they would be in a beautiful conjugial union of man and woman; as they would be in the organs of life. Let us seek the health of the man of the earth by looking away from ourselves, and resting all of our thoughts and affections upon our glorious Divine soul, who will transmit the purity, beauty, and tender, loving grace of His life, through us, to the body, in which He seeks to clothe Himself upon earth-that through that body He may bless the earth, and crown it with all the joys of Heaven.

ARTICLE V.

"THE ETERNITY OF EVIL AND THE HELLS."

Muca as has already been said on this subject, there is nevertheless left unexplained the very point or item which seems to give so much offence to Universalists and others, who, strong in natural loves, and at the same time tenaciously holding to their own erroneous conception of what Infinite love and mercy is, cannot entertain the idea of an Eternity of Evil and of the Hells. The extract of a letter on page 570 in the last volume of the Repository, goes indeed far in the vindication of truth, but it is by no means so conclusive to the mind which is firmly imbued with the idea of a "final restoration," as the writer thereof seems to think, for though such a restorator may well perceive and also freely admit, that a man can grow and continue and confirm himself in evil and therefore in misery, unhappiness and insanity, and that he makes it all his own by his own free will, love and consent, yet such a person can for all this not see, that a God of infinite mercy, love, wisdom and power has not means enough in store to turn even the greatest sinner backward and make him see and abhor his evils, especially when he reads in Swedenborg's description of Heaven and Hell of the enormous vastations and punishments, which some of the blessed had to undergo before their admittance into their happy mansions or state. Such a person therefore requires a further elucidation of this momentous subject, and charity truly entitles him to ask for it, whilst it is the duty of the Church to give it, not in authority but in charity also. The concise answer to the point in question may to the unpreju diced mind be summed up in the last sentence of this article, but as the elucidation is to be given to minds laboring under strongly cherished prejudices, by the which even they think to offer a greater share of honor to the great Father of mercies, the God of Love, therefore we must endeavor to come down to their own plane, so that we may be able to make them see and apperceive the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, the Redeemer and Saviour of the whole world.

The whole tenor of Swedenborg's theological writings doth clearly show, and the general and manifest experience throughout the present century doth conclusively prove, that by and through the growth in goodness and truth of the Grand Man, there did, and further on there will, take place a continual amelioration in the general condition and state of the human race at large, and consequently also in the evils and falsities-the miseries and insanities-of the opposite part of the Grand Man. The present despotic demonstrations in Europe, and the insane productions of certain clairvoyants on both sides of the Atlantic, seem induced to indicate and prove the contrary; but the first are most probably permitted by a wise Providence to oppose and keep in dread or subjection that torrent of infernal liberty which separated from Religion as its true basis, wills not that the Divine,

Man Jesus sit upon the Throne, and whom it will not obey, and in virtue whereof it desireth to overthrow by and by all the thrones established under the title "by the Grace of God;" whilst those productions of the clairvoyants are not the less calculated to effect the very same end, thus unitedly establish on this earth the kingdoms of the devil and of Satan.

The old adage, "where God builds a church, there the devil builds a chapel," holds still good, and the productions of hell will ever and anon keep pace, in their degree and order, with the revelations from heaven; but with the latter are always given higher degrees of light for the understanding, and of freedom of the will, and at the same time also a stronger influx of good into the affections thereof; thus always a fresh outpouring of the Holy Ghost; whilst then, on the other hand, the fires of the infernal loves which produce such emanations of falsehood are to some degree deprived of their virulence and power, and are permitted to pass off in smoke, by their being allowed to give free vent to their evil affections and thoughts by open, unre stricted publication thereof; when they can and will be met and overthrown by statements of truth or by logical arguments. Thus men of all the various degrees of good and evil learn to bear one with another, and learn also freely to submit to law and order, whence it seems to be clear and evident, that the dispositions, states and conditions-thence also the misery and unhappiness of the evil minded portion of the community-are modified and mitigated, and not heigh tened. But this amelioration of the states and conditions of the human race will by and by spread over the whole face of the earth, and will be established, and increase for all generations to come, and at the same time it will most assuredly have also a retrospective effectupon all and singular the ages and generations which ere this have passed over into eternity; the inhabitants of the various heavens will, not only in consequence of their own free willed reception of the orderly influx of good and truth from the Lord, become daily more good and wise, but they will also have a continuous better footing therein, by their own transmission to, and by their reception of, such divine influx by the inhabitants of the earth; for Swedenborg informs us, that the angels did complain and lament, that on account of the unbelief in the Word of the dwellers on earth, and by the extinction of charity amongst them, they, the angels, have no foundation under their feet whereupon they might rest. Just as the inhabitants of the heavens and the men of the church on earth shall continually increase in goodness and truth, and consequently also in society and in hap piness, even so will the states of the ungodly on earth and of the wicked in the hells be modified, and their miseries be abated, for like as the Grand Man of heaven will grow in numbers and stature, so also the Grand Man of hell will have a similar increase; but the states of the new comers from earth being continually more and more ameliorated by their having become more disposed and qualified to submit to and live under the existing laws of God and man, and under the order and regulations of society, there will be no need whatever to have applied to them in Hades such tremendous torments and vastations as were in former times often needfully ap

plied to wicked spirits, in order to reduce them to such states of submission as to render them fit to live peaceably with their miserable fellows in their own infernal societies. What then and there had to be gained by punishments, is now and will henceforth be gained on earth by the progressive states of society at large, in virtue of and by the stronger influxes from the heavens, so that, without doubt, the various hells which yet will come into existence, will have throughout a milder aspect; and as, according to order, the new hells or hellish societies will always be established on the tops or in the inner degrees or circles of their old corresponding ones, these will thus at the same time be continually farther and farther removed, or sink down to the extremities or uttermost boundaries, or, perhaps more correctly said, the boundaries will be farther and farther extended by them; by their sinking deeper they will be farther removed from the presence of Him who sitteth upon the Throne and the Lamb, which presence it is that causes their torment, as it is written by St. John the apostle, who heard them cry out, " Ye hills fall upon us and ye mountains cover us," and, as Swedenborg testifies, "that they hide themselves in the clifts of the rocks before the divine sphere and dare not to put forth a finger from the fear of torment;" thus also each new society being upon the top of an old one, will serve that as a covering and mediating means to absorb, weaken, and modify such tormenting influx of life and light; thus also, the deeper they sink, or the farther they are removed to the extremity, just so much more they lose, or are deprived of their sensuous life, and thus of their real or actual misery, and torment. Here we must consider the true import of the words misery, unhappiness, insanity, as they are commonly used and understood, and as they are applied and understood by Swedenborg himself, for whenever Swedenborg applies any of these terms, he applies and understands them in the feeling and language of the good spirits and angels; and to them the farthest removal from the source of life and light is the greatest misery, but in the feeling and language of the devils, just the very opposite is true; the farther the space, and the more blockup from and against the hateful tormenting influx, the greater the insensibility and quietness, till at last, sensuous life is at a stand still. There and with them death is indeed cast into hell, and even there the wicked cease from troubling, for these beings will be mere dead cadaverous forms of life,-life unconscious but not extinct, but able to be recalled again any moment it pleases the Lord of life and light to open such hells for any purpose whatever. A sober reflection on those states and on this sort of misery and degradation of the unhappy in hell, and the increase thereof, will surely convince any unprejudiced mind that a transformation of death into life, of evil into good, is utterly impossible, and which will be still more apparent by taking into consideration, that the wicked arrive at their unhappy states after they had undergone all their respective various torments of Hades requisite for their vastation, but with no other consequences, than to throw out of their own free accord all their Remains of Good and Truth which but tormented them, but by which alone man

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