about by violent means and accompanied with bloodshed, in England they have been the result of legitimate agitation and the force of enlightened reason.

The

In the year 1826, when Mr. Noble published his "Appeal," England was convulsed from one end of the kingdom to the other by that great political agitation which carried the Reform Bill of 1832. That was followed a few years later by the Emancipation of the Slaves in our Colonies. In 1840 the Penny Post was established, which has since developed into a mighty machine, and by means of which the thoughts and ideas of the new age are being carried into every nook and corner of the civilized globe. In 1849 the law prohibiting the importation of corn was repealed, a law at once short-sighted and iniquitous in its operation, for it deprived our people, even in times of want and famine, of those supplies of food which God had so bountifully provided elsewhere. Two years later that eccentric piece of legislation the Window Tax was abolished. It may be justly described as an Act of Parliament to raise the revenue and to increase domestic darkness. glorious sunlight of heaven with which the Creator floods and beautifies and gladdens all the earth was, like the air we breathe, clearly intended to be enjoyed without money and without price, but "the wisdom of our ancestors" stepped in to mar this wise and gracious design. Of this miserable piece of legislation nothing is left except a few dummy windows in our streets, monuments of the dark and dismal ideas we are fast leaving behind. Since that time a second Reform Bill has been carried; trade has been further freed from the fetters of protection; religious liberty and justice have been acknowledged in the removal of the religious tests from our universities, in the admission of Jews to Parliament, and in the abolition of the State Church in Ireland; and last, but not least, a Bill has been passed providing for the education of the rising generation, so that in fifty years to come it will perhaps be difficult to find a young man or woman unable to read or write.

I feel that this sketch of progress is very meagre and incomplete as it is, but it would be still more so were I to leave out all reference to English Literature and Journalism. Taking our novelists as representatives of the former, the contrast is as striking and favourable as it well can be. Those of you who have time should just take a peep into the writings of Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, and Smollett of the last century, and compare their coarseness with the purity of Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens of this, and you will then see at a glance the great improvement that has taken place in the moral tone of our writers of fiction.

Then as to our Journalism, a little more than fifty years ago we had a Press that was dear, for it was taxed and shackled and gagged and muzzled, and it teemed with what was desperate in politics, dangerous in morality, and sour and gloomy and irrational in religion. But the free and cheap Printing-Press of England of today is the marvel of the age, and notwithstanding the occasional aberrations and sanguinary cravings of the Pall Mall Gazette and the Daily Telegraph on the Eastern Question, our Press is one of the greatest blessings and brightest ornaments to our country.

Well now, my friends, what is the meaning, and what the cause, of all these remarkable developments in science, improvements in our laws, spread of education, diffusion of juster and more enlightened ideas and principles, turning the world, I will not say, upside down, but turning it right side up, by enabling governments to deal more justly with their subjects, and subjects to render that respect and obedience due to just and

righteous laws, causing old things, the relics of bad and barbarous old times, to pass away, and all things to become new?

If you ask Professors Huxley and Tyndall, they will no doubt inform you that these things are the result of the action of one molecule on another molecule in the human brain, as if their molecules, or our molecules, or anybody else's molecules, could possibly evolve scientific, intellectual, moral, and spiritual ideas and results from a purely physical source. Or if you ask other wiseacres of the Materialistic school, they will no doubt assure you that all this wonderful flood of knowledge and improvement has its origin in the human mind, forgetting the important fact that the mind of man is not the fountain of wisdom, but, like the eye of his body, simply a vessel or receptacle into which light flows, and that it can no more create one single idea any more than the human eye can manufacture one single ray of sunshine.

No, my friends, these things have their origin from a far higher and diviner source than brain molecules, or mere finite self-derived human intelligence. They come from Him who is the Father of Lights, in whom we live and move and have our being-from Him whose providence guides and controls the destiny of nations, ever educing good from man-made evil and misery, and who, operating through angelic and human instrumentalities, is ever bent on blessing and ennobling the human character and race. In deepest reverence and gratitude ought we therefore to lift up our hearts and voices, and in the words of the Psalmist acknowledge that they are the Lord's doings, and they are marvellous in our eyes. ROBERT JOBSON.

THE FUTURE OF THE WICKED.

T would appear from a series of paragraphs in the Christian World of Feb. 8th that the controversy on the "Future of the Wicked" is receiving very considerable attention among the theologians of America. The most noticeable extracts given are from Dr. Talmage and the Revs. E. P. Roe and H. W. Beecher.

Dr. Talmage is, as usual, very decided and very vigorous in support of the orthodox views. He says: "Eight times the Bible speaks of God's love, while sixtyone times does it speak of His wrath and indignation, and fifty-six times, in the plainest, most unmistakable, stupendous, and overwhelming way, God says there is a hell-burning now, been burning, and all the while getting fiercer by the additional victims that are constantly being added to it. And the possibility is that some of you here in this house will spend eternity in it. Nothing but the hand of an outraged, defied, insulted, longsuffering, indignant, omnipotent God keeps this whole audience this moment from sliding like an avalanche into it."

The Rev. E. P. Roe, in a discourse on "Eternal Happiness," gives expression to more moderate views: "The man is to be pitied whose best hope for the future is that there is no hell; and yet the close observer of life detects the disagreeable truth that there are multitudes eager to snatch at every straw of evidence tending to show to their eager credulity that future retribution is but a bugbear of the theologians. It is sad to see creatures endowed as men are, and with such possibilities before them, trying to figure out whether it will be safe to continue mean, or sensual, or dishonest, or self-indulgent. I believe that theologians and Bible students do honestly differ on the subject of future punishment, and I respect the sincere and thoughtful opinions of all good men ;

but I think it will be found a practical and ugly fact that only too many will jump to the conclusion that since there is doubt and uncertainty expressed by influential men in regard to retribution after death, they can venture to take the risk and continue in their shabby moralities, thinking of God only to remember that He is very merciful, and will probably be satisfied with an occasional gush of sentiment. I do not believe that beneath the thin crust of earthly life there is a literal 'lake of fire and brimstone,' into which all who are not saved fall indiscriminately. The Magistrate of the universe is just, and both the Bible and the universal sense of justice agree that the number of stripes and moral desert must correspond. Neither do I believe in heavenly streets paved with literal gold, or with silver, as many would now perhaps prefer. Our Divine Father can, of necessity, give us but vague and partial knowledge of that unknown future, and only by imagery drawn from what is now familiar to

Rev. H. W. Beecher seems largely to agree with Canon Farrar. He seems to doubt whether the doctrine of eternal punishment is believed in as a fact, saying: "I do not believe that many men could calmly measure the nature of a single soul, and its susceptibilities to suffering, and the power of Almighty God to create suffering in that soul, and of a continued existence only for the purposes of suffering through illimitable ages, for ever and for ever, and then multiply that soul until there are no materials left on which to inscribe the figures, until the swarming myriads defy all measurement or conception of the imagination; then overhanging the mighty abyss, contemplate the writhing anguish, the screaming agony, the hideous and loathsome suffering, the brutal indignities of sulphurous demons, the carnival of animalism, and yet be able to turn and utter the first words of the Lord's Prayer, 'Our Father!' Neither is the trouble alleviated by saying that the penalties are not material anguish, but they are the torments of conscience, of anguish and despair. While we revolt at physical torment, the refined and cultured nature learns to estimate mental suffering as even more exquisite and more horrible than mere bodily torment; and to teach an eternity of conscious mental suffering, after all chance or hope of reformation is gone, shocks that true moral sense which has been created and educated by the example and the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. In short, the very nature of the atonement, as an evolution of the interior love nature of God, condemns and destroys such a vision of future useless eternal punishment as a nightmare vision of barbarism."

Questioned as to what scholars have said on the disputed texts, he replied: "During the first 400 years the three theories of restoration, of annihilation of the wicked, and of the eternal punishment of the wicked, were held indifferently in the primitive Church, and no man's orthodoxy was called in question on that ground. Of the first six schools of theology it has been shown that four of them taught the final restoration of mankind, and it has also been shown that these very schools comprised the missionary and revival men of that age; so that the energetic portion of the primitive Church, that spread Divine truth, were restorationists. That the men who wrote and thought in the Greek language and who lived nearest to the times of the Apostles did not consider the New Testament as teaching the final, conscious suffering of the wicked forms a strong presumption against the accuracy of the modern interpretation of the New Testament. The general drift of the New Testament is that a sinful life and character brings men into terrible perils in the future. But that those perils are

precisely such as men have taught, and that they are endless in respect to each individual who passes unrepentant out of life, cannot be deduced from the general spirit of the New Testament. I teach that sin is both a shame and a disgrace in this life, and an exceeding peril in the life to come, and that there are elements enough of fear to rouse up the consciences of men who need the coarse stimulant of fear to induce any moral reflection or reformation."

Asked whether a plain, unlettered man, reading the Scripture, would derive from it the idea of future, eternal, endless misery? Mr. Beecher said: "Yes; just as the old Jews naturally inferred from the Old Testament that the Messiah was to be a temporal prince rather than a spiritual force, and yet they were wrong; just as the disciples believed that Jesus would come again in their lifetime, and that they should not see death until the kingdom of God had come in a physical and literal sense, and yet they were wrong; just as many good men still believe in the Second Advent into this world of Christ, and of the transformation of all society relations by the coercive power of His Omnipotence. In short, the universal tendency has been to materialize the Scripture; to create a material hell and a material heaven; to bring to bear upon the ineffable themes of spiritual existence the attributes and laws of time and matter and space. The kingdom of heaven,' Christ said, 'is within us;' it is not a physical state; it is a condition of the soul. The kingdom of darkness is a spiritual condition, and heaven and hell are words which cover the psychologic condition of the universe. Plain men naturally tend to literalize and materialize the figures of the New Testament; all the worse for them, for the Master declared, 'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.'"

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With these conflicting views before the world, it is highly necessary that every possible effort should continue to be made to bring the teachings of the New Church prominently before the teachers and preachers of our day. Nowhere else will they find satisfactory solutions of the great problem-solutions which, while checking the tendency to materialize the teachings of the Word, prevent the unfortunate tendency to "explain away" the reality of Scripture teaching.

THE REV. DR. POPE ON CURRENT CONTROVERSIES.

HE President of the Wesleyan Conference has recently addressed a lengthy letter to the younger ministers of the body over which he presides, in which he reviews in an earnest and devotional spirit some of the leading controversies of the day.

He exhorts them to strive after a threefold perfection of which the Scriptures speak: (1) The perfect surrender and abandonment of all we have and are to the will of Christ; (2) carrying out the principles of entire consecration into all its daily details; and (3) perfect release from sin. It is somewhat difficult to see exactly how these various stages of perfection differ from each other; they appear, as a matter of fact and of Scripture teaching, to be each involved in the other. When we surrender all we have and are to the will of God, our hearts and minds and lives are consecrated to the Divine life, and we walk in the perfect law of liberty, following the

Lord.

Dr. Pope next turns to the subject of ministerial fidelity to Christian doctrine generally, congratulating his brethren that their fidelity to the faith is guarded in

two special ways: (1) by certain formularies or standards to which they have given their adhesion; and (2) by the living authority of the Conference, which protects those standards and interprets them. "You have reason to be thankful," he writes, "in these days of dissolving confessions and shifting views and desperate reconciliations, that Providence has brought you under the bondage of a definite creed, the only peculiarity of which is its emphasis upon one or two of the grandest privileges of the Gospel. . . . It is no small advantage to the cause of truth in Great Britain, and therefore in Christendom, that there is such a body as the Methodist Conference, with its living spirit faithful to its ancient traditions; as keen to detect as it is strong to suppress any serious deviation from its standard of orthodoxy in all who are subject to its authority." If Dr. Pope is right in his supposition that the "ancient traditions" of Methodism constitute "the faith once delivered to the saints," he is quite justified in placing such a high value upon their definite creed. But what if these "ancient traditions" are akin to "the traditions of the elders"? Definiteness of religious belief is greatly to be desired when accuracy can be secured at the same time.

Alluding to the scientific difficulties now so commonly brought forward against religious teachings, Dr. Pope counsels that science must be heard, but with ears preoccupied and defended by a firm faith in the truth of Holy Writ. Speaking of the theory of evolution, he urges that "it is our wisdom to wait until the hypothesis is disencumbered of difficulties that seem fatal to it. Meanwhile it is equally our wisdom not to be alarmed at anything which scientific reason may enforce upon Christian faith." This attitude is certainly a wise one, and its adoption will prove that though many ancient traditions may have to be ultimately surrendered, the real teaching of the Word will remain unmoved by all the assaults that may be made upon it. While upon this point, Dr. Pope says, "Our Lord we are pledged to hear; we have staked our reason, our faith, our hope, our all, on His lightest authentic word." This sentence involves a great deal. Is it defensible? If it means that we are to surrender our reason to a creed supposed to be founded on the Lord's words, we demur to the principle altogether. The Lord Himself never asks us to surrender our reason, but to use it, and sanctify it. "He that heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart;" and again, "Come, now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord" The right interpretation of the Lord's words is often a matter of very great importance. We must bear in mind, that however infallible the words of the Lord may be, we are very liable to misconstrue them. Hence even His own disciples often misunderstood His meaning, and He had to warn them. "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." And the Apostle Paul, in writing to the Church at Corinth, was constrained to say, "Our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Therefore, while we gladly value the right, we have to set our Master's Word in the placeif need be of all other evidences whatsoever, we must use the reason He has given us, under the guidance of His Spirit, to come to a right understanding of His Revealed Truth, feeling the utmost confidence that His Word and His Works, rightly read, teach no opposite lessons. It is right that, as religious men, we should insist upon scientific doubters proving their positions; it

is equally right that, as scientific men, we should insist upon religious teachers examining again and again the foundations of their beliefs in the light of the new age, and this not sceptically, but reverently, as willing to believe in all that God has written in the Book of Life, and in the Book of Matter, and the result will be the strengthening of our faith in the Divine Author of every good and perfect gift.

Speaking of the special difficulty on the minds of men at the present moment, that of the eternal penalty of sin, he believes that it "is closely connected with a more or less implicit or explicit misconception of the Atonement." In his opinion "we have to decide between two doctrines concerning the great Reconciliation: one, which makes it a Divine expedient for moving upon man's enmity, and removing his selfishness by giving him a Divine-human Exemplar of the evil of sin; and the other, which makes it also the revelation of a process of unsearchable mystery in the heart of the Holy Trinity, a reconciliation of God to man rendering possible the reconciliation of man to God-in short, an Atonement in heaven before the Atonement on earth." Dr. Pope regards the former of these theories as calculated to lower the whole tone of the New Testament, and to give an undefinable reality to its current language concerning the Saviour's relation to human sin and Divine justice. But with the exception of quoting a few phrases" just for the unjust," etc.-he brings forward no Scripture warrant for the theory that the Atonement consisted in first reconciling God to man. There is no such doctrine in the Bible; it is a remnant of ancient tradition, a perversion of the teaching of Holy Writ.

Passing from the Atonement, Dr. Pope deals at great length with the question of what he calls "an eternal judicial visitation of sin." Upon this topic he argues, "St. Paul's antithesis gives the rule of interpretation: the things which are seen are temporal; the things which are not seen are eternal. By that rule eternal punishment cannot be a temporal and unenduring doom." After discussing the meaning of various passages bearing on the Annihilation theory, he concludes his remarks upon this subject of the eternal punishment of sin in the following weighty words: "You have often heard that the doctrine of an eternal penalty of sin rests upon a rigorous interpretation put upon some isolated passages. To this assertion you must close your ears. Though it is made by eloquent preachers, and in high places, believe it not. It is simply not true. However severe individual texts are, and however impossible it is to escape from their force by any artifice of exposition, they do not alone support the tremendous doctrine. It pervades the whole system of Gospel truth, which, whether spoken by the Author of all Gospel to man or by His accredited apostles, assumes everywhere a great alternative issue of probation. native issue of probation. Life is the day of a possible salvation, during which therefore one thing is needful, and all else, as it were, superfluous. At the great day every man will receive the things done in the body;' this most striking phrase, which occurs again and again, and is indeed the formula linking time with eternity, the season of reaping with the season of sowing, seems to me to determine this dread question. Everywhere we have broad antitheses and counterparts. The most comprehensive of these of course is that of 'eternal life' and 'eternal punishment;' if the former signifies a perfect pantheistic absorption into God, then the latter signifies a perfect return into nonentity; if the former signifies an unchanging and consummate life in God, then the latter signifies an unchanging and consummate separation from that source of life. that source of life. Throughout the Scriptures there are

only those within and those without. It would occupy pages to trace these counterparts. The more carefully they are traced, the more clear will be the result, that while the race of man is saved, individuals of mankind, like individual evil spirits, will be unsaved for ever."

The remainder of the letter deals with various questions relating to the efficient discharge of ministerial duties, and the fatherly counsel conveyed is such as cannot fail to be of use to the large and influential body for whose special use the epistle was written.

Though we can trace the presence of the "old leaven" in many of the arguments and expressions used by Dr. Pope, his letter must be regarded as a valuable contribution to the pending controversies. It is free from bigotry and bitterness, its author being evidently impressed with the sacredness of the subjects touched upon; and though not likely to convince doubters, it will probably be useful in indicating the necessity of approaching the discussion of religious topics in an affirmative spirit. Above all it shows that even those who so highly reverence their "ancient traditions" cannot help recognising the necessity for dealing carefully and cautiously with the newer phases of religious thought.

UNITY IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. S a commentary on the "unity" in the Church of England claimed by The Church Quarterly as a mark of her spiritual claim to be considered a Church, we subjoin a few extracts from The Church Times of March 1st.

Referring to the Bishop of London: "Unless Bishop Jackson can be induced to reconsider his policy, as he was in the case of All Saints', Margaret Street, it will be the merest idiocy to give any bishop so much patronage as a third-rate crossing-sweeper's station in the Seven Dials."

Again: "When the Bishop of Carlisle, who in one year has given four of the best livings in his official patronage to four friends, who altogether can only reckon three years parochial service in the diocese, asserts that he has bestowed the preferment on account of their merit, there is some proof that he presumes upon a credulous audience."

Referring to the Declaration of the York Convocation. on the subject of confession: "The Declaration is not a synodical one; and if it were, it would not in the slightest degree hamper the growing practice of confession as it actually exists in the Church of England. To borrow an expression from the late Baron Alderson, Convocation might just as well have recited the ballad of 'Chevy Chase,' for any real relevancy that their resolution has to the question."

Again, referring to the Archbishop of Canterbury's desire to yield to the wishes of the Dissenters on the Burials question: "We are very sure that if Archbishop Tait had wits enough to see the real meaning of the move, he would be its firmest opponent; for the measure of his disbelief in the Church is also that of his passionate ardour for the Establishment, which he has done more to weaken and imperil than any other living man."

Part of a letter addressed to the Bishop of Gloucester appears, in which the Bishop is accused, in connection with his recent" Charge," of (1) adopting an "ungenerous tone;" (2) making "a monstrous and manifestly unfair comparison;" (3) "pandering to popular prejudices."

THE REV. H. W. BEECHER ON SWEDENBORG.

N the special number of the Christian World Pulpit, containing the sermons by Canon Farrar on Future Life Questions, there is a sermon by the Rev. H. W. Beecher on "The Background of Mystery." One purpose of the sermon seems to be to insist upon the truth that "men learn, and must learn, of God, of the Divine Government, and of the future, through their own experience." In arguing out this idea he illustrates it in these terms: "If God is unknowable, then to all practical intents He does not exist. . . . And as to loving a God that is inconceivable, unthinkable, unknowable, it is preposterous. . . . If you proclaim an immanent Divinity, a kind of soul of the world, that has reason, though not anything that we understand by reason; that has justice, though not anything that we understand by justice, and that has goodness, though not anything that we understand by goodness, what a confusion you throw men into! If, when I say, 'I love the truth,' there is no correspondence between my sense of truth and truth as it exists in God, then the term 'truth' is perpetually blinding and enslaving me."

Bringing these thoughts to bear upon the question of Divine Justice, he argues that the background of mystery in the Divine Nature is not so much from the fact that His justice is different from ours, as from the fact that it is developed beyond ours.

We can only learn new things upon the basis of our present knowledge, and hence it happens that though "spirit-life must be incomprehensibly different from life in the body; yet you will take notice that whenever spirit-life is interpreted to us by spiritual teachers it is done by bringing back to us human forms, human thought, and human action. The whole literature and lore of spiritualism, in our day, is a confession that men cannot understand spirit. It frees man from bodily conditions, and throws him into a higher sphere by imagination; but then he is just the same that he was, only he seems to be made up of cloud instead of good honest flesh and bones; and he thinks, and hears, and feels, and talks, and walks, just as he did before."

In this connection there is one of those references to Swedenborg which display only a partial acquaintance with his real teaching, and are therefore calculated to convey erroneous impressions concerning the faith of the New Church.

Swedenborg has a whole world in which men are divided into classes, tribes, groups, in the other spheres, and all goes on there as it does here, except that they have a sort of effluent bodies-bodies that you can see through, as it were. Diaphanous, translucent creatures, they are, with material bodies of a little finer form than those which they inhabited on earth, though substantially the same. So nearly identical are they with their former selves that their very mistakes and errors have come with them. them. Now and then Swedenborg hits the truth exactly. He relates that in one of his visions he saw in heaven, or rather in the other life, a man who had been dead twenty years, and did not yet know it! It goes far to confirm my faith in Swedenborg; for I see such men among us in our day. They are dead, and have been for years, and do not know it, though everybody else knows it! According to Swedenborg the other life is a reproduction of this life with merely a little poetic fringe about it."

It is quite a mistake to suppose that Swedenborg teaches that man exists in a material body after death; on the contrary, he teaches that when the material body is cast off at death it will never be resumed. The bodies

of the spirit world are real, but they are spiritual bodies, differing from material bodies as mind differs from matter. In this idea Swedenborg's views are founded upon the express teaching of Holy Writ. The form of the spiritual body is similar to the form of the natural body, but the substance is essentially different. The people of the spirit world are quite identical with their former selves, because they are their former selves, the identity of man having a spiritual basis, and not a merely material one. Their mistakes and errors go with them into the next life, because these exist in the spiritual part of their being, and not in the body at all.

According to Swedenborg this life is but a shadow of the life to come. The "poetic fringe" consists in this, that the desires of men's hearts will be fully revealed and find free expression, each one living in a condition corresponding to his own interior state, that there all things will be real, and things be just what they seem.

says,

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

In speaking of the "Sermons for the Times" the Dover Express "We trust this publication will meet with many readers." The Southampton Times remarks that "The Son of Man in the midst of the Seven Golden Candlesticks' (Number 1) is an excellent pioneer sermon, and should those which follow be as good the publishers will have rendered valuable service in the dissemination of healthy religious literature." Other notices have also been given by the press speaking much in the same tone.

We understand that Mr. J. R. Boyle, who has been for some time at Horncastle, has accepted an invitation which the Hull Society has gi ven him. We hope that his efforts will in this larger field meet with full success.

During the month of February the Leeds Society enjoyed the services of Mr. R. Gunton, who, besides officiating in the church upon each of the four Sundays, delivered two weekday lectures in the People's Hall, Marshall Street, Holbeck, one in the Temperance Hall, Wordsworth Street, Kirkstall Road, and one in the church. The attendance at the lectures, particularly those at Marshall Street, was satisfactory. Questions were asked and answered at the conclusion of each lecture, and "Silent Missionaries" sold to the number of about 100, besides other works, which were offered by the Yorkshire colporteur. The Sunday services were a source of much pleasure, and the congregations, especially in the evening, were good.

The Rev. Dr. Tafel delivered his annual lecture in the literary and scientific course, at the New Church College on February 26. This year he chose for his subject "The Use of Natural Science to the New Church. The lecture was very rich in ideas, and teemed with passages from the writings in support of its various positions. Those to whom the subject is interesting, and they are many, will be glad to learn that it will probably appear, but with many alterations and additions, in the new American serial, Words for the New Church. We will therefore only present briefly a few points. The lecturer began by defining Natural Science as dealing with the things of the natural world, and the New Church as dealing with the things of the spiritual world. But as the one rests on the other, and through it exerts its power, it is requisite that their true relative positions should be known. Scientifics are like riches, either good or evil, as they are applied, but are in themselves neither true nor false. They become true when examined in the light of heaven, and false when examined in the light of nature. A fact of nature when illuminated with a corresponding spiritual truth becomes a natural truth. From natural facts examined in the light of the world there can only be constructed hypotheses, but no truths. All natural science which denies spiritual causes and sets up nature instead of God tends towards hell, for the intelligence and wisdom which it forms are false. The lecturer compared the position of the Church at the present day to the children of Israel in bondage to the Egyptians, and said that it was the mission of the New Church, because a true Church, to spoil the Egyptians of their riches, of their vessels of silver and gold, and to make them vessels of spiritual truth. This work can only be accomplished by Divine assistance; but there is a science, the science of correspondences, which will enable the New Church to break in pieces the hypotheses of merely natural science, which never aspires to trace the causes of things without going astray; for correspondences are natural truths, in which, as in a mirror, spiritual truths are shown.

It is rather surprising to find in The Spiritualist for Feb. 8th, a quotation by Colonel Elcott attributing theosophical ideas to the New Church. He informs an opponent, quoting from Blavatsky's “Is Unveiled,” that he will find in a report of a recent discourse by the Rev. Chauncey Giles, one of the lights of Swedenborgianism, that the doctrine of soulless men is a dogma of the New Church. "These creatures," says the preacher, "with all their graces, rich attire, and brilliant accomplishments, are dead in the eyes of the Lord and the angels, and when measured by the only true and immutable standard, have no more genuine life than skeletons whose flesh has turned to dust. Here it is plain enough that the preacher was speaking of men or women who are spiritually dead, not of soulless men; and there is as great a difference between a dead soul and no soul as between a dead body and no body: the one exists, the other does not. We may add, further, that a dead body is one in capable of being affected by spiritual forces, but only by material ones; and a dead soul is one that is incapable of being affected by the life of heaven, but only by the life of hell; the latter, therefore, is a living death.

The Hackney and Kingsland Gazette of Feb. 20 contains a sermon by Mr. S. B. Dicks, preached at the New Jerusalem Church, Buttesland Street, Hoxton, on Jephthah's vow. It forms No. 1138 of a series of sermons issued in this paper under the general heading of "Our Local Pulpit," and we understand that arrangements have been made for the issue of a dozen of Mr. Dicks' sermons in the paper. The fact that so many sermons, by various ministers in the district where the paper circulates, have appeared in its "Local Pulpit," shows that it is a feature which its readers quite appreciate. We therefore look forward to an accession of readers of our views, who would probably never be listeners to them by attendance at either Buttesland Street or any other of our churches. Mr. Dicks, after discussing the proper rendering and meaning of the narrative, says, for the reasons adduced, "We hold that the narrative does not of necessity lead to the belief that Jephthah's daughter was slain in sacrifice, but that she was dedicated in perpetual virginity to the service of the Lord in the sanctuary.'

The preacher then goes on to make the following spiritual application:"The Ammonites, enemies of the Jews, are representative of those spiritual adversaries who assail the Jew, who is one inwardly, in all ages of the Church. These adversaries are those subtle and deceitful reasonings and false persuasions which close the mind against the worship of the true God, and lead man to the profane worship of self and sin, a worship which is not complete in its iniquity until every principle, high and low, has been offered up in the fires of evil lusts to the monster of iniquity here represented by Molech, at whose horrid shrine the children of its votaries were sacrificed.

"Jephthah, a Jew, and warrior, represents the man of the Church undergoing the process of the removal of this internal evil which before regeneration rules within the mind. The battle undertaken in the strength of the Lord represents the spiritual conflict during the time of temptation; while the victory is clearly symbolical of that inner triumph over self and sin, the result of fighting the good fight of faith. Every evil must be combated from its opposite good, thus the love of falsity must be opposed by the love of truth; the love of self-glory by the spirit of humility, and so on through the long chain of evils and virtues which on the one hand afflict and on the other hand bless our common humanity.

"This is why the combat with Ammon, the sacrificers of their children, was followed by the offering up or dedication of the daughter of Jephthah to the Lord.

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Daughters in a good sense are representative of good affections, and the daughter of Jephthah specifically corresponds to that ardent affection for the truth which comes forth from man's spiritual house, his will, when the state of temptation is over and the victory secured. And that this affection for what has been a source of strength to us in the conflict should not be cherished by the spiritual Israelite for his own glory, is revealed to us in the circumstance of the offering up of his only daughter by Jephthah to the service of the Lord."