be Adam and Noah as representatives of the Most Ancient and the Ancient Church.

The annual session of the Baptist Union was inaugurated at Leeds on October 9th, under the presidency of the Rev. H. S. Brown, whose opening address was mainly an appeal to the well-educated and well-circumstanced young men of the denomination to devote themselves to the work of the Christian ministry. He urged that in these days of ever-advancing knowledge, of free-thought, and of bold inquiry, it was, if possible, more important than ever that the Christian ministry should be up to the mark in an intellectual as well as in a moral point of view. There were many who would not listen to an illiterate preacher, or to one who was far behind the age, and incapable of dealing with the great questions that were continually coming up concerning the most vital doctrines of Christianity. In the ministry as in the Church it was well that the rich and the poor should meet together. It ought not to be composed exclusively of either class. In the afternoon the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon preached from the words "But we preach Christ crucified."

The Home Secretary, in reply to representations in reference to the status of Roman Catholic ministers who visit prisoners, states that while he will fully consider the case of any considerable num. ber of prisoners in want of religious ministrations, when duly presented to him, he declines to enter into any sentence giving official and general recognition of Roman Catholic chaplains. But the best remedy for this grievance will be for Roman Catholics to decline to qualify themselves for residence in prisons where their priests would not be properly recognised.

Mr. Ruskin in his work entitled "Sesame and Lilies" says: Above all, get quit of the absurd idea that heaven will interfere to correct great errors, while allowing its laws to take their course in punishing small ones. If you prepare a dish of food carelessly, you do not expect Providence to make it palatable; neither if, through years of folly, you misguide your own life, need you expect Divine interference to bring round everything at last for the best."

The Sheffield Conservative organ is responsible for the following wicked story: Last week a frequent diner took his accustomed place in a well-known restaurant. There the practice is to order your dinner, eat it, and then step up to the bar, say what you have had, and pay for it. The proprietor, you observe, trusts to your honour to be honest. Well, the frequent diner ordered his dinner as usual. In a minute "the little bill" was made out, and placed beside his plate. "How is this?" he demanded, "why am I insulted like this?" The waiter pleaded that he was simply obeying orders. Then the proprietor was called in. He shrugged his shoulders, apologized for offending a frequent customer, but added, "You see we are obliged to be very cautious at present-this is Congress week!”

Coming from the Freeman, the organ of the General Baptists, the following is additionally interesting as showing most forcibly that the denominations are awaking to the great want of the times, a practical religion. After commenting on the disclosures of the crooked transactions of the City of Glasgow Bank the writer proceeds: "Not to prolong a homily on the subject of commercial integrity, we cannot close without lifting up our protest against any sort of separation between the religious and the commercial life of our country. Religion is a life. Christianity is a practical power or it is nothing. If the principles of the Saviour's teaching

cannot be carried out it is futile for us to trust either in His Atonement or in His Gospel. If we dispense with the one, we have already dispensed with the other. Salvation that does not save from sin is a mere sentimental dream." Swedenborg wrote more than a hundred years ago, "All religion has relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good." We commend to our Baptist contemporary and its readers the writings of which this glorious motto forms at once an index and a part. He will find them permeated, we had almost said saturated, with the principles it involves, and will with us rejoice as he peruses the delineations of a religion which is a life.

"Passion' or 'Sensation.' I am not afraid of the word; still less of the thing. You have heard many outcries against sensation lately; but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation we want, but more. The ennobling difference between one man and another, between one animal and another, is precisely in this, that one feels more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us; if we were earthworms, liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much sensation might not be good for us. But being human creatures, it is good for us; nay, we are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honour is precisely in proportion to our passion. Reason can but determine what is true: it is the God-given passion of humanity which alone can recognise what God has made good" (Sesame and Lilies, pp. 36, 37). This is equivalent to saying that all a man's powers may be employed for high and good objects, or may on the

other hand be debased to evil and vile purposes. Love and hatred are both "passions" or "sensations." Both, too, have their abode in the same part of a man, but love as Christian charity is a sensation which we have no occasion to restrain, it is in fact a sensation in which we do not indulge enough.

The crudeness and irrationality of ordinary notions about the Word of God is well shown in the following two extracts taken from religious contemporaries. The first is, "God did all the thinking in the Bible. The thoughts in the Bible are all God's thoughts." The second, which was the utterance of a Methodist minister, is as follows: "I believe the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation; and I almost believe the inaccuracies." The first statement seems to deny the fact that even a Divine revelation must have a human side, and that it may, indeed must be the suitable clothing of Divine thought, to be effectual with man. The second is degrading in the extreme when applied only to the literal sense; but we can go beyond it completely, and say that we believe the Bible, not even excepting the inaccuracies, for we know the internal sense, and that many passages in the letter are given for the sake of the spiritual and Divine truths, of which the letter is but the outward shell.

SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSONS.

JESUS ENFORCES DOING AND NOT MERELY
HEARING.

November 10th, Morning.-Matthew vii. 15-29. From verses 1520 the general subject is not merely that good deeds are the test of true motive and character, but that good is universally the test of truth. The question, Is this true? must be answered by that other, Does it lead to good? False prophets are false teachers or principles which appear true but are not so. The test of the truth of any principles, then, is in the actual good they are capable of producing; not leading to good, they are false. Neither the goods of charity (grapes) nor the goods of obedience (figs) can be derived from the falsities of evil (thorns and thistles). But good principles (the good tree) will produce good results. Verses 21-23 teach that approval before God now and hereafter must rest on doing. Profession and practice are contrasted. But the doing must be sincere, for the Lord does not know savingly those who have wrought in His service from merely selfish motives. Verses 24-29.-This sincere doing of the will of God, so far as we know it, is also the distinguishing mark between folly and wisdom. A rock is truth, and specially the Lord as manifested truth. He, then, who so does the Lord's will rests on the truth itself, and is not only stable, but capable, as a house well founded, of being put to the use designed.

JONATHAN'S LOVE FOR DAVID.

November 10th, Afternoon.-1 Samuel xx. 11-23. The love of man and woman is a common record: here is one of the marked instances of the love of man for man. Jonathan's father was his friend's enemy, and himself the natural successor to that crown which the friend was to receive. He incurs his father's displeasure— the father whom he loves; has no thought of the crown; assists David in all ways at his own risk-sacrificing, in fact, everything to him; and for what? Pure love's sake: because he loved him as his own soul, an instance of the dominance of spiritual selection over natural bonds. And it is this truly also in the spiritual sense of the Word here. Saul is the type of the natural man on its lower, earthly side; David the type of the spiritual man; and Jonathan the good side of the natural man, or the natural man seeking true order. Now the good in the natural (Jonathan) has to appear to be enemy to its own kith and kin (Saul) in order to be true to its best instincts in its love for the spiritual (David). [And so, too, is it with the genuine truths of the Word as the mediate between the spiritual and natural senses.] The lesson here is, the instinctive drawing and adhesion of the good natural powers in man to the spiritual in truth and life. There is in man an inveterate, ineradicable love for that which is supremely beyond him and yet one with him-for the spiritual and Divine; and this, too, in opposition to instincts equally natural, but lower and debasing. Just herein lies the test of true manhood every way: whichever side, too, we choose, we are but declaring ourselves-a lesson for naturalism generally. From verses 11-17 we have the promise of natural good to adhere to the spiritual; its demand that the spiritual shall not in turn cast out, cut off, or disown from its service any true, natural human power; (alas, has not this crushing out of the good of the natural been the crying practical evil of the Church!) and the indissoluble union between them asserted. From verses 18-23 we have the promise executed-the warding off of actual evil from the spiritual sphere when a new state of trial is entered upon. The arrows are the truths by which this result is achieved.

Printed by MUIR AND PATERSON, 14 Clyde Street, Edinburgh, and published by JAMES SPEIRS, 36 Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.

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96 pages, crown 8vo, sewed, 3d. ; by post, 4§d. Reflections respecting the Works of Swedenborg and the Doctrines of the New Jerusalem Church, by RAO BAHADOOR DADOBA PANDURUNG.

The gentleman above named is a man of mark in India.

With respect to him the Bombay Gazette of December 13, 1877, had the following paragraph: "We learn that the Right Hon. the Secretary of State for India has been pleased to send, as a present to our wellknown citizen Rao Bahadoor Dadoba Pandurung, a copy of a new and splendid edition of Patanjali's Mahabhashya,' with Kaiyyata's Bhashyapradipa' and Nagojibhatta's Bhashyapradipoddyota,' in six volumes. This erudite and elaborate work on Sanscrit philology has been got up in the ancient Hindu style, and published at the expense of the State. All the copies are intended to be offered as gifts to distinguished scholars and to learned Societies. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, in his recent_tour in India, distributed a few copies to the learned Societies and University libraries in this country. This valuable gift is a deserved recognition of the philological acquirements of Mr. Dadoba Pandurung, whose name has been intimately associated with the operations of the Educational Department from its foundation, his school works having been, as they still are, recognised as text-books throughout this Presidency."

Notices of the present work have already appeared in a number of papers, in which the literary ability of Mr. Dadoba Pandurung is freely acknowledged. From these we adduce the following. The Argus, a Liverpool paper, says, "The little work is evidently what it professes to be, the production of a genuine Hindu, who has come to the conclusion that the truth is to be found in the peculiar form of Christianity which was expounded by Emanuel Swedenborg. The style of the Oriental convert to Swedenborgianism is always simple and clear, and those who wish to obtain in a small compass a fairly trustworthy and comprehensive exposition of the doctrines of the New Jerusalem Church will find in this neatly got-up tractate just what they require." The Malvern News remarks, "This is a capital book to put into the hands of infidels, and those who believe in no hereafter. To such men there will be several nuts very hard to crack found in this work." The Northampton Mercury says, "A store of food for thought will be found in 'A Hindu Gentleman's Reflections respecting the Writings of Swedenborg." The Freemason calls it "the work of a cultivated and educated Hindu.' The Brighton Examiner has the following: The author of this little work, after relating the means by which he became acquainted with the works and teachings of a writer who is, like many others, frequently condemned without being understood, has given a lucid and brief resume of those matters. . the understanding of which is held to be essential to Christian knowledge. The remarks and arguments are worthy of attention, and the perusal will not fail to benefit."

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Shout, ye lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, ye mountains!"

T was Sunday evening, and Hettie with Willie and I were sitting in the garden arbour. The air was soft and warm for the season, while it was filled with the low murmurous sound of innumerable leaves which formed a gentle undertone to the mellow piping of the blackbird and the thrush.

"Laugh at my idea about the Immensities as you please," said Willie smiling, "but again I say, what is the harsh crabbed dogma of the creeds which we heard this morning to the everlasting voices and the majestic beauty of Nature which stream in upon our senses when we listen and watch? I return to my old thought. What other revelation can we require ?"

"To the uninstructed mind, Willie, I say once more, the 'everlasting voices' speak only of Nature. They do not tell you of a compassionate Father. They do not even tell you that you are immortal. They are silent respecting the resurrection and the life beyond. They who profess best to understand the 'voices' are seeking to blight every hope and blast every aspiration of humanity, even while they are professing to serve it. Surely you want to know that you have a compassionate Father? Surely you desire to know that your existence is not bounded by the grave, and that the ties which you may form here are not measured by a few fleeting years? Surely you desire to know that you and this sweet girl have not met as it were by accident on one of the innumerable platforms of life just for a few moments to be conscious of your own and one another's existence, to greet, to clasp hands, to kiss, and wave farewells as you are swept from one another in the foam of ages to be for ever lost to consciousness and merged in the senseless clod?"

A tear stood in Hettie's eye.

"I have given you good reason to see that I do desire to know," he said. "I am not satisfied with the negative philosophy of the day. I would hail with open arms a faith like yours; but, expound as you may, it does not come for me to welcome and embrace it."

"But it will come?" said Hettie pleadingly and looking up into his face.

"It will come," he said emphatically as he drew her closer to him and kissed her. "Do I not love you, Hettie? Well, then, you know that Milton says, love

'Leads up to heaven; is both the way and guide.' If this be so, as I have so pleasant a way and so sure a guide, I shall not miss the goal."

Hettie blushed and smiled. "That I am desirous to know," he continued, "I will show you by the progress I have already made. Man 'is in little all the sphere.' Therefore in the Bible the sphere is the symbol of Man. The cultivated portions of The cultivated portions of the sphere are symbolical of the cultivated states of man. Hence gardens, vineyards, fields, typify the mind fitly ordered and arranged by Divine Power. The uncultivated portions of the sphere symbolize uncultivated man. The forest, therefore, denotes the Spirit grand and gloomy with its own growths, and the wilderness a state compara- |

tively wild, void, and barren. That is what I understand you to mean, Mr. Romaine?"

"Precisely. You see the allegory or metaphor of the Bible is resolvable to a law. That law is Divine in its origin. In accordance with it God produced the universe and the Word."

"Let us carry the law a little further," said Willie. "Am I to understand that Elevations and Depressions in the surface of the sphere are also symbolical?"

"Certainly. A moment's consideration may show you that mountains and valleys would not be spoken of in so extraordinary a manner in the Scriptures if they were not symbolical.

"The mountains being natural elevations would of course correspond with spiritual elevations?" he asked.

"Yes. They correspond with the elevated states of the Church or of the soul."

"A very opportune suggestion, Willie. She wishes us to rub it in our hands and to eat it. You see, it requires

a little rubbing; for, naturally speaking, mountains and hills cannot bring peace to the mind, and they are not associated with righteousness."

"No; it is obviously metaphorical," said Hettie. "Well, what is the highest state of the Spirit?" "A state of love to God," said Hettie.

"Yes, my dear, and that is what brings peace to the people.' The love of God includes every virtue moral and spiritual. On the contrary, the love of self includes every vice. The latter is productive of all the crimes and woes that disfigure society. War, murder, robbery, all spring from the love of self. The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, springs from the mountains, from the love of the Lord, the highest of all Christian principles."

"And the little hills?" asked Willie.

"Why, they are the minor principles associated with our neighbourly duties. The 'little hills' are the moral and social eminences established in righteousness. They are the high virtues we see in everyday life connected with our citizenship, which exalt every faithful man in the eyes of his fellows."

"And of every blessing," said Hettie, turning over the leaves of her Bible. "Thus in Isaiah xxx. 25 it is written, And there shall be upon every high mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.' I suppose that is all symbolical, Mr. Romaine?"

"Quite so. The day of the great slaughter and of the fall of the towers is a state of victory over Self and its great strongholds. In this state the love of God and of every neighbourly duty sends forth rivers and streams of blessing into society. But that is only one of many passages of similar import. Take, for instance, this in Joel iii. 18, And it shall come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drop new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk.' This of course means that when the lofty principles of charity and faith prevail among men they will give forth all kinds of pleasantnesses. Then there are the hill of the Lord' and God's 'holy mountain,' the hill whence the Psalmist says his 'help cometh.' That *Psalm lxxii. 3.

these denote spiritual elevations, and are referable to heaven and its virtues, is obvious to all."

666

As I spoke Hettie read Isaiah lv. 12: 'For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing.' That is poetical, as Mr. Norton would say," she continued, "but if it is nothing but poetry, it is a very extravagant metaphor."

"Yes, as extravagant as that of the Psalmist, who described the mountains as skipping, and the hills as hopping. The breaking forth of the mountains into singing before Israel is descriptive of the grand harmonies given forth by the heavenly eminences of love and charity before the progressive march of the Christian, while the skipping and hopping denote the life and movement emanating from everything high and Divine."

"I think," said Willie, "there can be little doubt that you have established the correspondence of the mountains and hills. What do you say to the valleys?"

"The same law is of course applicable to the valleys as to the mountains. Where the mountains signify the lofty states of love and charity, the valleys signify the low states of sensual faith and reason. Thus, for instance, it is written, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.' You do not suppose that this had relation to any place in the natural world through which the Psalmist had to pass?"

"Certainly not," said Willie readily.

"Then it must mean a mental state. It had evidently reference to a dark and comparatively deathlike mood of the soul. It describes a condition of doubt and gloom induced by the fallacies of the senses. All Christians have to undergo it. You yourself have been in it. You are not yet through it. You have felt the chilliness and dulness and oppressiveness of your scepticism. But you are not alone: the Divine Father is with you. In a wonderful way He has put into your hand His rod and His staff to support you through this state and to aid you out of it. This girl," I added, laying my hand on Hettie's arm, "has learned to lean on it. You who are to tread by her side will learn to lean on it too. Even now this rod and this staff is within your grasp, and is giving you comfort."

"The goodness and the truth of the Bible," said Hettie softly and with much emotion, "will aid us both through the valley of shade. My valley has been a thoughtless indifference; yours a thoughtful confidence in the sufficiency of worldly knowledge."

There was a touching sadness in the tone of her voice, but at the same time it was suggestive of a settled confidence and trust.

We

"Then you know," I continued, "there is the valley of dry bones seen in vision by Ezekiel, which bones afterwards lived. This valley evidently denoted a low mental state full of dry scientific facts, which, however, by Divine forces breathed into them may possess vitality. It would take a long time to refer to all the passages in which mountains and valleys are plainly metaphorical, the one of high and the other of low mental conditions. Let me, however, remind you of one important fact. read often of the mountain of the Lord's holiness and of God's holy hill, but never of the valley of God's holiness nor of His holy valley. On the contrary, while we read of the mountain of the Lord's house, to which in the last days the people are to go up to worship (Isaiah ii. 2), we read of the valley of the Son of Hinnom where they burned their sons and daughters in the fire (Jer. vii. 31); while we read of the mountains that bring peace,' we read of the valley of slaughter;' while Zion is

commanded to get up into its 'high mountain' (Isaiah xl. 9), the Ammonites are warned not to glory in their valleys (Jer. xlix. 4). Indeed, scores of passages might be quoted to prove that the mountains denote those heights of spiritual and moral rectitude to which we attain by obedience and effort, and that the valleys on the same principle denote those low conditions in which we indolently abide, and where we exclude ourselves from the rays of the Divine Sun."

Mr. Morse sat for some time in silence, as if he were revolving the points I had put before him. At length he said, "Is it the case that the mountains and valleys always have the precise correspondence which you have indicated?"

"There are of course the opposites,” said Hettie.

"I am glad you mentioned it," I returned, "as otherwise you might have had a wrong impression. There are cases in which mountains signify those spiritual eminences of which the worldly man is so proud, and in that case the valleys denote the lowly virtues in which the Christian delights."

I was interrupted by the entrance into the garden of our aged friend of the cottage, who brought a message for Hettie from his sick daughter, who, he said, seemed to have undergone a great change since we were with her in the afternoon. Hettie immediately prepared to depart with him, Willie and I promising to call for her later in the evening. As she went out of the garden with the old gentleman, the twilight was stealing over the earth, all the western sky being grand with crimson and orange clouds. The scene was so beautiful that we lingered long in the open air after she was gone, quietly pacing up and down the gravel-walks. As if by tacit consent we kept an expressive silence till the tints in the sky changed, faded, vanished-till the stars came out one by one-till the moon grew to be a blaze of glorytill the beauty of earth was hidden and the splendour of heaven was alone visible-till all the grove was hushed, and one sweet voice alone palpitated among the boughs and touched and thrilled our souls with the magic of its melody.

Awaking at length as from a trance, I said, "Hettie will be waiting: let us go. Is it not strange? The change which has brought darkness on this little garden plot, and hidden its beauty, has revealed to us the vastness of the universe, and shown us all that glory."

THE

LIFE AND DEATH.*

HE Fernley lecture of 1878 was preached by the Rev. G. W. Olver, the talented and highly respected Principal of Southlands College, Battersea. This Fernley lecture is an interesting institution connected with the Wesleyan Conference, its origin being a bequest by Mr. Fernley of Southport for the purpose of securing the delivery annually of a lecture on some important topic connected with Christian evidences. To be chosen a Fernley lecturer is doubtless considered a high honour by the ministers connected with the Wesleyan Conference.

Probably owing to the interest then being taken in the Future Life question, Mr Olver was requested to take up that topic. He tells us in the preface that he found that his conclusions upon that subject would fall short of the generally accepted belief, yet he accepted the responsibility. Rejecting alike the annihilation and

*Life and Death, the Sanctions of the Law of Love. The Eighth Fernley Lecture. By the Rev. G. W. Olver, B. A., Principal of Southlands College, Battersea.