pleteness, the wonderful coherence of the several parts, insinuate an idea that it is not only the truth, but the whole truth. This impression remains till a further expansion of the mind attains to principles or phases of truth that refuse to be circumscribed within such limits. As examples we may refer to Locke, in his Essay on the Understanding, Barclay's "Apology for the True Christian Divinity," and the writings of Swedenborg. The limits prescribed by the last are of course, on comparison, the most extensive-still there are limits; because truth is infinite, and every human mind finite. Also we may lay it down as a maxim that every seer has his speciality,-out of that he is no seer.

Whoever will take the trouble to refer to the history of scientific discovery, and of all those events which indicate social, moral, and intellectual progress in the century prior to 1757, and compare them with the century after, will have evidence as good as that of a miracle in support of Swedenborg's assertion that an influx of spiritual light at that period descended on the human race. But let us take the case of another modern seer, whose speciality was purely subjective and relating to the inner life, as different to that of Swedenborg as his mind was inferior to the Swede in cultivation and natural acquirements. We allude to Jacob Behmen. Now this man was the focus of a peculiar illumination, which made a prodigious impression on his age. Let us assume 1657 as the date of this revival (though we cannot precisely fix it), and mark its ultimate effects by the English revolution, as we do the revival of Swedenborg by the more direful convulsion in France. The sect of the Quakers were the practical reformers who sustained Behmen's doctrine of the Inward Light and personal regeneration against the dead forms of apostate Christendom. The New Church are those who present the wondrous harmony of spiritual laws flowing into natural, the correspondence between the Word and the works of God, to an age somewhat more enlightened. Behmen, attempting to systematise, blunders greatly, and bewilders himself and his readers. Swedenborg is calm, lucid, unembarrassed, and wins the confidence of every unprejudiced mind. agree in one main point, the necessity of personal holiness against the dogma of salvation by faith alone. The blunders of Behmen are chiefly seen in the mutilation of his angels, in order to abolish the distinction of sex in heaven.

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But let us refer rather to those doctrines which have some support in Scripture, and yet are unrecognised by Swedenborg. Behmen insists on the existence of evil prior to the creation and fall of man. The angels were created such, and by reason of pride rebelled

Their fall was the consequence; and the effect of their fall the origin of matter from the degradation of spiritual substance. Now all this might have passed for the ingenuity of a mind in mere self activity misusing its divine light. But as the era 1757 confirms the truth of Swedenborg's spiritual judgment, the science of geology lends its aid to the honest but illiterate Behmen. What is the interpretation of those fossil hieroglyphs-hideous degradations of the human form-which mark the reptile era countless ages before the advent of man on this globe? They are armed with fearful weapons, not only to kill but to torture their victims. Death, destruction, disorder, coeval with the first appearance of animal life! Applying the science of correspondences, are not these geological monsters the embodiment of internal evils from a race of mighty but fallen human spirits, who have never existed in human flesh? Do they not indicate that the great contest between God and Satan commenced ages before the creation of man ?-that man was tempted by somewhat to himself? Evil having once commenced, must work its course through protracted ages: the reptiles diminish in power and magnitude, the nobler animals increase, animal organization assumes a higher and a higher type, till the monkey tribe mimics the human shape. Then man is introduced, as to his body the compound and perfection of all animals, but possessing a living soul, capable of intercourse with his Creator through the medium of the senses. Observe, soul alone, not spirit, is attributed to Adam. In no scripture is spirit or spiritual life ascribed to man before the fall. The first man, Adam, was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening spirit." He was created innocent, but natural innocence was unable to sustain the one simple prohibition imposed upon him against the tempter. We see here one evolution in the mighty contest-man is created to replace the fallen angels. The counterplot of Satan produces his fall. The omniscient God has left man free to fall, for the remedy is provided, probably a more complete redemption than if man had not transgressed. For "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

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There is another point on which Behmen and Swedenborg support each other, but which, I think, is not well sustained by Holy Scripture, namely, the eternal duration of sin in that portion of the human race who do not accept Christ's salvation. But is it not the object of Christ's redemption to make an end of sin, or will the remedy fall short of curing the disease? If two-thirds of the human race remain under the dominion of Satan, and one-third redeemed, on whose side is the victory? It appears that we are much in the dark both as to what preceded the creation and fall of man, and what will be the ultimate destiny of the

human race. Thus I admit the truth of Swedenborg's views within the limits of his own gift, while I believe there are many truths on which other seers may be illuminated above and beyond those limits, similar to the views above cited, which I do not state as decided convictions, but should be glad to see them noticed by your intelligent correspondents.

On the second advent of the Lord Swedenborg does not come up to the full sense of Scripture prophecy, nor yet to the requirements of this fallen world, on which Christianity has as yet scarcely produced an effect comparable to that of a drop in the bucket. I accept his revelation of the judgment in the spiritual world in 1757, and from it I infer that there will be a similar descent of the Lord in power and glory into this sphere of nature. Otherwise, what becomes of the many prophecies and warnings of our Lord and the apostles, of the sudden judgments which, like the deluge, will one day come upon the world,-of those who “shall be changed in a moment, caught up in clouds, i. e., in multitudes, to meet the Lord in the air"? &c.

In short, whoever regards the present condition of the world, and the utter inadequacy of the purest doctrine and the most sublime theology to effect man's regeneration, may find more reasons than can be found in Scripture to apprehend an external as well as an internal coming of the Lord.

CATHOLICUS.

REPLY.

As we have always desired that our correspondents should exercise the utmost scope of thought and of free rational inquiry in respect to the subjects discussed in this Periodical, suited to the objects for which it has now so long been established, we have inserted the above from our inquiring friend.

The first point which is supposed to relate "to truths beyond the system of Swedenborg," is the existence of certain geological animals of a supposed ferocious and venomous character as types of evil, and as correspondences thereto, ages prior to the creation and the fall of man, from which Swedenborg, contrary to Behmen, dates the origin of evil and of hell, and the consequent existence of ferocious and venomous animals upon the earth. Now, this supposition is contrary to facts, for it has not yet been proved that these animals, such as the ichthyosauri, or fish lizards, and others of that class, were either venomous or ferocious; it is true that they were voracious, but voracity is not, like ferocity, an evil quality. It is also true that they were of prodigious size, but magnitude does not, by any means, imply an evil nature. In order, then, to prove that these animals were types of evil arising from the supposed fall of angels, it is necessary to demonstrate that they had an evil and a noxious nature, or that they were either ferocious or venomous, or both.

Again, the tribe of geological animals called megatheria was herbiverous, feeding upon grass, herbs, and the foliage of trees. But this class is not ferocious, in the proper sense of the term: when attacked some of them might, in self-defence, manifest something analogous to ferocity, but not such as characterises the tiger or the wolf. Nor are they venomous. It is, therefore, quite a mistake to suppose that because these animals were of a huge size, voracious, and to our view hideous in their appearance, they were therefore of evil origin, and betokened the existence of either moral or physical evil.

An intelligent view of the order of creation, such as Swedenborg has given, will aid us in thinking rightly on this subject. God has created all things from "first principles by ultimates." He Himself, together with the spiritual sun in which He lives, is the very first principle from whom all things come, and the terraqueous globe is the ultimate or last principle, by which all things intermediate, especially in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, have been created. In the order of creation those things which are next to the ultimate first appear. Thus in the oldest substances discovered by geologists, which are the oldest limestones, are found the lowest forms of life, as tubipores, belemnites, amonocrites, nautilites, and worms. In argillaceous schists of primary formation are found the same, and in addition corallites, echmites. fishes, leaves, reeds, &c., which are higher forms of life. In the lowest secondary sandstone are found the preceding, together with still higher formations. Again, in the coal strata there are still higher formations both of animals and plants, and in the red marl or sandstone there are all the preceding, together with crabs, amphibia, and fishes. Thus there is a regular gradation of formations receptive of life from God, up to the Mammalia, and lastly to Man, who, as having a rational soul, consisting of spiritual and celestial degrees receptive of life from his Maker, can in acknowledgment and adoration refer all things to Him, and by faith and love be conjoined with Him, and live for ever in a state of continually increasing wisdom and happiness.

These degrees of formations for the reception of life from God must not be considered as running one into another by continuity, which is the fallacy of the work on The Vestiges of Creation, &c., but each higher degree is perfectly distinct and separate from the lower, and has within it something_peculiar and characteristic which the lower degree does not possess. This is the case from the lowest formations to the highest, which is man, who, especially as to his spiritual formation which is within his natural form or body, is the end of creation, in which God rests from His work, and pronounces everything He has made to be very good."

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Thus all formations respect the end, that is, man for whom they exist, and the end for which man exists is the formation of an angelic kingdom or of heaven, in which all creation terminates in glory and happiness, or in the fullest reception and manifestation of which finite forms are susceptible of life from God. Thus the finite is the image of the INFINITE, and from the finite, properly understood, we can form an idea correct, as far as it goes, of the INFINITE. But as man has what animals have not, a rational soul, consisting of a spiritual and celestial degree

receptive of life from God, he requires other knowledges and truths and influences than what nature can supply for his development and formation, called regeneration, for heaven. Hence the necessity of God's Word, as a Revelation from Himself, in which those spiritual knowledges, truths, and influences are conveyed to man, without which he could no more be formed for heaven than a seed could be formed into a plant or a tree, without the sunshine and the rain from heaven.

As all things have been formed from the very lowest to the highest in respect to man, as the end for which they exist, it follows that the lowest formations have relation by correspondence or analogy to his corporeal and sensual principles, which are the lowest, in his constitution. Thus the lowest formations in which life would appear have relation to his corporeal, the next higher formations to his sensual, the next to his natural, in which the rational is somewhat developed, which is the purely natural as distinguished from the lower degree. The highest formations correspond to his spiritual and celestial degrees, as also developed in the natural. We say in the natural, because everything in the natural world is correspondent to something in the external of man, who as a microcosm is an image of the macrocosm, or of the great world around him. And as the natural world is created to be as it were a theatre, representative of the Lord's kingdom, so everything in man's external is by creation formed to be a representative of something in his internal, which, when man is regenerate, is also a kingdom of God," (Luke xvii. 21.) the image in miniature of the kingdom of heaven itself. Again, as creation is an outbirth from God-for, says the Apostle, all things are out of God," (Rom. xi. 36.) so all things from lowest to highest have supremely a relation, by correspondence, to Him. Thus the lowest formations have relation to the divine corporeal in God; for that God has a divine corporeal principle, called flesh and bones," is declared in Luke xxiv. 39. From eternity God had this principle in potency, but by incarnation He assumed it actually, and glorified it. These primary formations, therefore, are the types of divine corporeal things in God, from whom they have come. God has also a divine sensual principle represented by the "brazen serpent," (John iii. 14.) which is its type. All things, therefore, even the very lowest, are representative of things in God as well as of things in man, who is created to be the "image and likeness" of God.

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The doctrine of Forms teaches us how to think of these primary formations, some of which, on account of their prodigious and monstrous appearance, have been construed by our correspondent and by others into the forms of evil. But this is by no means the case. They are not necessarily the forms of evil. A corporeal essence must have a corporeal form corresponding to it. This form is the most remote from the proper human form, but it is not on that account a form of evil. It has, indeed, senses, but in a very imperfect condition, nevertheless emulating and putting on as far it can the human form, and this because man, to whom it bears a relation, and because God, from whom it comes, are in the human form. But every feature of the forms of these lowest animals will appear to those who do not understand the subject hideous and monstrous, and as the form of some evil, but not so to those who have a