or the Lord can do few or none of those mighty works in our behalf, on the accomplishment of which our eternal salvation depends (Matt. xiii. 58; Mark vi. 5). Moreover, to represent to us the energy and zeal of truth, when it proceeds from a principle of celestial charity, and is grounded in goodness of life, James and John were surnamed by the Lord, "Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder" (Mark iii. 17).

I have already remarked, that the human understanding, when individually considered, is found to be discriminated, like the other faculties of the soul, into three degrees of intellectual power and excellence. The lowest of these is the scientific principle, or the power of acquiring and retaining worldly knowledge; the next above is the rational principle, or the power of discernment and discrimination, as between various kinds of truth, and between truth and error; and the highest degree of intellectual power is that which enables man to receive spiritual intelligence, or wisdom and its perceptions.

These three degrees succeed each other, or are successively opened, by an orderly arrangement in the work of regeneration; for man is first natural, then he becomes rational, and afterwards spiritual. Without this trinal intellectual capacity, man could not be elevated above the science of the world. Hence, speaking of the church and of each regenerating member, in order to portray the threefold blessings which would attend such a union and subordination of the intellectual faculties as would prepare man to receive the light of heaven, to irradiate the whole mind, the Lord says by the mouth of his prophet, "In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land; whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance" (Isa. xix. 23-25). By Egypt, that land of mysterious wisdom, where knowledge was so extensively cultivated that it was frequented by the sages of all nations for the acquisition of science, is signified the scientific principle itself, together with all external or natural truths.10

104" Herodotus describes the inhabitants of the cultivated portions of Egypt as the best informed, or most learned, of mankind. In one of his last works Theophrastus used the same expression."—Bunsen's Egypt's Place in Univ. Hist., pp. 1, 2.

Egypt has either a good or a

"Assyria is that false state of seeming happiness, and power of wickedness, which is called the kingdom of darkness. And this is the most noble object of fortitude, to destroy the power of this kingdom within ourselves."-More's Dep. of Cabala, p. 168.

bad signification in the Word, as such knowledge is said to have been applied to useful ends, or perverted to idolatrous and magical purposes. Assyria, from its relative position to Egypt, and from the tendency of its inhabitants to metaphysical speculation, denotes the rational principle, the reasonings of which are either true or false, as the reason is enlightened from heaven, or draws its subtle conclusions from the fallacies of the world and the senses; for the reason is an intermediate and conjunctive principle between what is natural and spiritual, and, according to man's state, partakes of the quality of both. By Israel in the midst is signified the spiritual principle, or the internal of the understanding, gifted with genuine intelligence and wisdom; and in an opposite sense, the profanation of the intellectual faculties, and the truths they receive, to the vile objects of self-derived prudence, commingling them with the deceitful and lurid glimmerings of self-love. In the passage I have quoted these terms are all used in a good sense, and by a highway, which serves to connect distant countries and places, is signified the orderly arrangement and subordination which unites by correspondence every degree of intellectual excellence. Thus the mind is gradually prepared for the reception of those celestial and spiritual influences which illustrate and govern the perceptions, reasonings, and thoughts, and make man the work and inheritance of Jehovah Zebaoth,-the Lord of Hosts.

In an opposite sense, by Egypt is signified sensual knowledge, and by Assyria carnal reasoning. These give birth to false principles in extremes, which, like flies, spring from the river's corrupting filth, and become a tormenting plague; and also to false reasonings thence derived, which, like bees, when spoken of in a bad sense, suck their stores, indeed, from rich and favorite flowers, and find sensual pleasure therein, denoted by their honey-stores, but carry with them venom and a sting. When these principles are permitted to insinuate themselves into the church or the human mind, they bring with them certain desolation and inevitable misery. They are the result of the falsification and profanation of truth and knowledge in the soul, and the abuse or perversion of the intellectual and rational faculties. Hence, to describe such an awful state, and the complete and grievous desolation which necessarily succeeds, the Lord says, "It shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the

In the history of the descendants of the patriarchs, that of Egypt is always more or less closely interwoven. Pharaoh was the

common name of the kings of Egypt up to the final destruction of the monarchy by Alexander the Great.

uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes" (Isa. vii. 18, 19).105

The vast importance of this distinction of degrees will be at once perceived, if we consider that the erroneous assumption that all beings and things have proceeded forth continuously, or by degrees of continuity, from the centre to the circumference of all creation; thus, that the soul and the body, God and man, spirit and matter, are but various gradations, and that God is an all-extended substance existing throughout space, has given birth, both in ancient and modern times, to every heterogeneous system of pantheism, materialism, and secularism which infidel philosophy and an erroneous theology have invented. In order, therefore, further to assist the earnest and intelligent inquirer in his research after truth, and to enable him more clearly to comprehend this great doctrine of triple degrees, which is indispensable to a just view of the Divine character and existence, to a correct idea of the nature of the human mind, and to an accurate knowledge of the science of correspondences, and thus to a true interpretation of the Word of God, a few additional extracts are given in the APPENDIX, from the invaluable writings of Swedenborg, who has so amply and so clearly unfolded this grand subject, on which, indeed, the laws of correspondence may be said to rest, and also a few of the innumerable confirmations and illustrations from other sources.

106 See Schelegel, Phil. of Hist., vol. i., and AP- | virtue of those things which lie deeply hid PENDIX, "on the Hieroglyphics of Egypt."

"Every one may see that the historical relations of the patriarchs are such that they may indeed be serviceable in regard to the ecclesiastical history of that time, but that they are very little serviceable in regard to spiritual life, which nevertheless is the end which the Word was intended to promote. Add to this, that in some places we meet with nothing but mere names, as of the posterity of Esau (Gen. xxxvi.), and so in other chapters, in which, so far as regards the mere historical relations, there is so little of anything divine, that it can in nowise be said that it is the Word of the Lord, divinely inspired as to every particular expression, and even as to every dot and tittle, that is, that it was sent down from the Lord through heaven to man, by whom those relations were written; for what was sent down from the Lord must need be divine in all and singular things, thus not as to historicals, as being the transactions of men, but only by

and concealed therein, all and singular of which treat of the Lord and of his kingdom; the historicals of the Word are in this particular distinguished above all other historicals in the universe, that they involve in them such hidden contents. If the Word was the Word merely as to historicals, that is, as to the external or literal sense, then all the historicals which are therein would be holy; and what is more, several persons who are spoken of therein would be esteemed as saints, and it would come to pass, as in the case with many, that they would be worshipped as gods, because they are treated of in the most holy of all writings; when, nevertheless, all these were men, and some of them were little solicitous about divine wor ship, and had nothing about them above the common lot of men. Hence, then, it may plainly appear, that the external or literal sense is the Word only by virtue of the internal or spiritual sense, which is in it, and from which it is."-A. C. 3228, 3229.

CHAPTER XII.

COLORS, NUMBERS, WEIGHTS, MEASURES, MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, ETC.

“THE "THE Bible," or Word of God, in the just and forcible language

of Professor Bush, "rises under the application of a law as fixed and invariable as the law of creation itself, with which, in fact, it becomes almost identical, into a new revelation, clothed with a sublimity, sanctity, and divinity of which we had not previously the remotest conception. It stands before us the living Oracle of Truth, which we no longer separate from the very being of its Author. He is Himself in his own truth. New treasures of wisdom gleam forth from its pages, and the most barren details of history, the recorded rounds of obsolete rituals,106 the driest catalogues of names, the most

106. Heraldry is, in fact, the last remnant. of the ancient symbolism, and a legitimate branch of Christian art; the griffins and unicorns, fesses and chevrons, the very mictures or cloins, are all symbolical,-each has its mystic meaning, singly and in combination, and thus every genuine old coat-of-arms preaches a lesson of chivalric honor and Christian principle to those that inherit it -truths little suspected nowadays in our heralds' offices."—Lord Lindsay, on Christian Art, ii., p. 49.

The rich color of gold is that of heat, the color of silver is that of light; the former is applied to the splendor of the sun, the latter to the light reflected by the moon. Polished brass resembles gold, and polished iron resembles silver.-See Isa.

"Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue." Milton's Paradise Lost.

Yellow was in high esteem among the ancient Indians; red, among the Egyptians; purple, among the Syrians and Romans; and white, among the Jews.

"Colors had the same signification amongst all the people of high antiquity. This conformity indicates a common origin, which attaches itself to the cradle of the human race, and finds its greatest energy, or active life, in the religion of Persia. The dualism of light and darkness offers, indeed, the two

types of the colors, which became the symbols of the two principles, the benevolent and malevolent. The ancients only admitted two primitive colors, white and black, from which all others were derived; in like manner, the divinities of paganism were the emanations from the good and the evil principles.

"The language of colors, which is intimately connected with religion, passed from India, China, Egypt, and Greece to Rome; it was again revived in the middle ages; and the painted windows of the Gothic cathedrals find their explication in the books of the Zend, the Vedas, and the paintings in Egyptian temples.

"The identity of the symbols supposes the identity of the primitive creeds. In proportion as a religion is removed from its principle, it degrades and materializes itself; it forgets the signification of colors, and this mysterious language reappears with the restoration of religious truth.

"In mythology, Iris was the messenger of the gods and of good tidings, and the colors of the girdle of Iris, the rainbow, are the symbols of regeneration, which is the covenant or conjunction between God and man. In Egypt, the robe of Isis sparkles with all colors, and with all the hues which shine in nature. Osiris, the all-powerful god, gives light to Isis, who modifies it, and transmits

trivial specifications of dates, places, and enactments, once touched with the mystic wand of the spiritual sense, teem with the riches of angelic conceptions. The cosmogony of Genesis becomes the birthregister of the new-born soul. The garden of Eden smiles in every renovated mind in the intelligence and affection emblemed in its trees and fruits and flowers. The watering streams are the fructifying knowledges and truths of wisdom which make increase of the spiritual man. The Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Life, the wily serpent, are all within us and within us all. The scenes transacted in the paradisiac purlieus are more or less the scenes of our own individual experience, and the narrative ceases to be looked upon merely as the chronicle of events that transpired thousands of years before we were born."-Reply to Dr. Woods, p. 66.

The prismatic rays of the sun are clearly divisible into a trine, for there are the calorific rays, the colorific, and the chemical, having relation to love, wisdom, and use. Colors, as well as all other phenomena and appearances of nature mentioned in the Word, are representative, and allusions to them are very frequent. They derive their innumerable tints and hues from the refractions and reflections of the rays of heat and light from the sun, in various degrees of intensity, combined more or less with darkness, or blackness, and shade. A beam of light refracted and reflected by a prism on a dark screen, or by drops of water descending from a dark cloud, at a known angle, will exhibit an appearance of seven distinct hues, as in the rainbow. There are, however, but two fundamental elements of color, red, which is derived from the flaming light proceeding from the heat, and white from light. All colors are modifications of these

it by reflection to men. Isis is the earth, and her symbolic robe was the hieroglyphic of the material and of the spiritual worlds.

"The painted windows of Christian churches, like the paintings of Egypt, have a double signification, apparent and hidden: the one is for the multitude, and the other is addressed to mystic creeds.

| banish all doubt on this subject."-See Receuil de Thevenot.

"The selam, or nosegay of the Arabs, appears to have borrowed its emblems from the language of colors; the Koran gives the mystic reason of it. The colors,' says Mahomet, 'which the earth displays to our eyes, are manifest signs for those who think.'-Koran, chap. xvi. This remarkable passage explains

wore, conceived as a vast hieroglyphic. The colors which appear on the earth, correspond to the colors which the seer beholds in the world of spirits, where everything is spirit

"Symbolic science, banished from the church, takes refuge in the court; disdained | the chequered robe which Isis, or Nature, by painting, we find it again in heraldry. The origin of armorial bearings is lost in antiquity, and appears to have originated with the first elements of writing: the Egyptian hieroglyphics, like the Aztec paintings, indi-ual and, consequently, significative. Such cated the signification of a subject by speaking emblems or arms. It is sufficient to consider the Mexican pictures, and the explanation of them which has been preserved, to

is, at least, the origin of the symbolical meaning of colors in the books of the prophets and the Apocalypse."-Portal's des Couleurs Sym boliques.