and the other dead. But the spiritual, which is called living, is not so called because it has anything of essential life, or of the divine, in it; but because it is derived from a living sun, and so is adapted in its essence to receive life from that sun internally into the very ground of its being. Not so the substance of the world of nature. This is derived from a dead sun, and so is not adapted to receive any life into the ground of its substantiality; but only to be acted upon by life existing in forms constituted of substance that is spiritual. But this action is not an action of life existing in the realm of nature, but of life existing in the realm of spirit, operating by correspondence, and therefore discretely, into the world of nature. When, therefore, it is said that life acts upon the substances in the world of nature, it is meant to be affirmed that because they have a dead origin, and therefore dead essences (so to speak), life cannot, by the operation of the law of correspondence, be communicated to them as substances, but only in appearance to subjects formed of them; which subjects are, by the action of life from the spiritual world, so formed as to correspond to, and bear the image of, the essential things in the spiritual world, which these subjects, formed of dead substances, manifest in the world of nature. And because they constitute the stoppers of the action of life, they seem to live; and are, when we speak according to appearances, called living.

Thus we say our bodies live, but this is only true in appearance; every particle of the bodily substance has a dead origin, and cannot, because of the operation of the essential law that gives it being, be made alive really. For, whatever new qualities or properties are, or appear to be, acquired by created substances, when they enter into the organization of created beings, must all necessarily be in subordination to that universal series of discrete degrees from which they, as created substances, derive their existence. Otherwise their very existence would be dissipated, and it would be tantamount to saying that created beings could be formed of nothing; because the divine law which gives existence to created substances would be suspended, and therefore creation itself, in relation to such substances, would be undone. For instance, whatever material substance be taken into the constitution of a man, or a horse, by being assimilated from food, cannot thereby be changed from material to spiritual, or from dead to living substance; it is dead substance still, interiorly viewed. And consequently, when the life of the soul of the man or the horse discontinues its action upon it, the whole becomes a carcase of dead matter. It falls back into its original condition,-a proof that it had not put off its subordination to the fundamental law of its being.

Matter, then, must for ever remain matter, unless that fundamental law be dissipated which stamps its nature upon it. So long as it exists within the universe which is governed by, and derived from, a dead sun, its nature must be dead. Hence we find that the body of the most lively and energetic man, and the coldest and hardest stone, are contiguous one to the other,—a proof that they exist upon the same common plane,— that the one is material as well as the other. But, if only one instance can be produced in which this fundamental law of nature is seen to be dissipated, it will be seen that, in such case, the living body and the cold stone will no longer be the common subjects of the same world of nature. And we are told that if the living power of the spiritual sun were taken away, the natural or dead sun would perish; from which it follows, that even dead nature owes its being to the activity of the living sun. I am quite aware that, our author makes a distinction in some parts of his writings between natural and material things. But this distinction has its origin in the degrees into which the substances of the natural world are divided; which, however, are homogeneous one to another. He applies the term natural to the things which are interior in nature, and the term material to those which are ultimate. But this distinction does not affect the conclusion above arrived at.

Here I am led to notice some of the statements and conclusions contained in a paper headed—“On Matter and Natural Substance," contained in the last two numbers of this Periodical. This paper is from the pen of our intelligent friend S. S., with many of whose previous papers I must own to having been much pleased and instructed. He is capable of viewing subjects of New Church doctrine and spiritual philosophy from a deeper ground than many of his brethren. But in the present case, I am forced, by the interests of truth, to differ from some of his statements, and also to state such difference in a controversial form. But I do so in the full assurance that however we may differ in our thoughts and conclusions, that will not affect our relations to each other personally, in any such manner as to cause ill feelings and bitter expressions to be given forth by either of us in reference to each

other.

At the commencement of his paper he says-" To conclude that the substance of any form is the same as it was before it was organized into a form, is to judge from the eye. and not from the mind." Now who can say that the substance of the body of a living man appears to the eye to be the same as the food which is spread upon his table? Yet if the above application of Swedenborg's words be correct, it should appear so. But in this case the judgment of the eye is just the reverse.

The fallacy is that it does not appear to be the same as to essence, though we know it must be so, because it has been built up from the same. Our friend refers to A. C. 1215; but on turning to it I do not find anything which supports his statement. I find Emanuel Swedenborg saying that "fallacy is an inversion of order, and is the judgment of the eye and not of the mind, or a conclusion drawn from the appearance of a thing and not from its essence.' But I also find him saying in the same number, "that influx is spiritual, and not physical, that is, of the soul, which is spiritual, into the body, which is material, and of the spiritual world into the natural world." Now, in the first place, it is not in accordance with the fallacious appearance of the eye that the living body is material, according to our friend's definition of matter; namely, "unorganized and inactive." Substance," says he, "is not matter because it has length, breadth, and thickness; these are predicable of all natural substance; but it is matter because it is unorganized and inactive." Here we see, according to this definition, the food may be material, or vegetable, or animal, but the human body must be natural, and not material; because it is organized. But Emanuel Swedenborg says the BODY “is material." And he, by this term, contradistinguishes it from the soul, which he says is spiritual. According to him, therefore, "natural body" and "material body" are synonymous. this, I will venture, to affirm, is general throughout his writings.

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And

Our friend says-"We must always judge of substance from its essence, which is known from its properties. If we neglect to do this, and call everything matter which has material properties, regardless of those superior ones by which it is characterized, then we shall place a man on a level with his image of wood or stone, both having material properties." Now here is either a great discrepancy, or I do not think rightly. That we ought always to judge of substance from its essence, which is known from its properties, I admit; but then, I should say it is right, according to this rule, to call anything material which has material properties. That which may be reckoned as the property of anything is what is proper to it, and not common to other kinds of things. Now the essence of matter is deadness, or inertness. Emanuel Swedenborg says "the fire of the natural sun is death itself." This dead essence of matter is known to man from its dead properties, its fixedness, and the like. But that seeming life which matter acquires, when taken into the body of an animal, or a man, is not a property of the matter at all. The life of a man is communicated from his soul apparently to his body. But it cannot therefore be called a bodily property. For it is not proper to the body. Even the appearance of life which the body enjoys, is

common to the soul. But life itself is not the property of either. It is therefore right to " place a man on a level with his image of wood or of stone," so far as the properties of his bodily substances are concerned. For whatever the body has of organization is not proper to it; it is derived from the soul, and that continually; and whatever it appears to have of sensitive life is not proper to it, but is also the property of the soul. And whatever it has apparently of human faculties and powers, mental or bodily, are all continually derived from the Lord's presence in the internal of the soul. Therefore, none of these can be said to be proper to, or to be the properties of a man's body. But material inertness, and fixedness, are not common to the soul and spiritual substance, nor to the life from the Lord either. Therefore these ARE true bodily properties. And they stamp the body a material body, howsoever it may "appear to the eye and its judgment" to differ from the image of wood and stone, as to the essential nature of its substance. From this, I think, may be seen the erroneousness of the following statement of S. S., p. 540:—“ Natural substance, by its formation, becomes possessed of life. Matter, when formed, is only an image; a form of natural substance is a living subject." If our friend had said, "appears to be a living subject," we could have agreed to his statement. Every one who weighs the subject aright must conclude that the body does not think, because it is material, but the soul, because it is spiritual. The soul of man, on the immortality of which so much has been written, is his spirit, for this is altogether immortal. It is the spirit which thinks in the body, because it is spiritual, and that which is spiritual receives what is spiritual, and lives in a spiritual manner; but to live in a spiritual manner is to think and will. All rational life, therefore, which appears in the body, belongs to the spirit, and nothing of it to the body; for the body, as was said above, is material, and materiality-which is proper to the body-is added, and almost, AS IT WERE, adjoined, to the spirit, in order that the spirit of man may live and perform uses in the natural world; because ALL THINGS IN THIS WORLD ARE MATERIAL, and in themselves VOID of life. Now, since what is material does not live, but only what is spiritual, it is manifest that whatever lives in man is his spirit, and that the BODY only serves IT as an instrument subserves a living, moving force. It is said, indeed, of an instrument, that it acts, moves, or strikes; but to believe that these are acts of the instrument, and not of him who uses it, is a fallacy." H. H. 432.

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"These observations are made in order that the rational man may be convinced that man, viewed in himself, is a spirit, and that the corporeal frame which is annexed to him, for the sake of performing functions in the natural and material world, is not the man, but only an instrument for the use of his spirit." (435.)

Although I have found it necessary, for the sake of the interests of truth, to object to the above-mentioned and several similar statements

contained in our friend's article, and also to some conclusions derived therefrom, yet I find many things therein in which I quite agree, and which have been very usefully introduced, to prevent us from following that tendency which is too common amongst us, of thinking too meanly of the human body. The human body is indeed the most marvellous work of God in the natural creation. I also quite agree with our friend that we ought to think of the body from its essence, the soul. But I do not agree when he says the same in relation to the substance of the body; yet quite fully when it is said in relation to its uses.

1

It is quite true that we ought to think from essence to form, from cause to effect, from soul to body; but when it is said that “ we must think of substance from organization," it does not appear clear to me that such a statement is true. God has created two universal kinds of substance. These are known by universal predicates. The one is apprehended as living, the other as dead. Now, when the dead substance is organized by the action of life from a subject constituted of the living substance, I can see that I ought to think of the thing organized, as to its use, from the essence of the living substance which has formed it. But then, I cannot see that, when my mind is turned to the dead substance of which I know it to be composed, I ought not still to think of this from the law by which I know it to be governed, that thus I may avoid the fallacy into which I should otherwise fall, of supposing that "substance in its unorganized state is one thing; when organized by an essence it is another." The human soul is the essence of all the organism of the body, and of the uses for which the body is formed; but it is not, therefore, the essence of the substance of which the body is formed. If the son became the essence of the substance of which the body is formed, the body would never die! And it is because the LORD'S SOUL gave to HIS BODY, as to its substance, an essence of a like quality with the Divine Essence, or soul, that the Lord's body could not be dissipated. But more of this in a future paper.

Our friend has quoted Swedenborg's statements in relation to the natural mind of man, which are exceedingly interesting. They show that, when Emanuel Swedenborg speaks of the natural world and all its subjects in relation to their connection with, and life derived from, the spiritual world, he uses the term "natural." But when he speaks of the substance of the natural world, he uses the term "material.” And, because the purest parts of material substance, or of the substance of the natural world, can be held to eternity in connection with the life of the spirit of man, and so constitute the basis of his immortality, he speaks of these by the use of the term "natural," in contradistinction