may be seen a camel with its rider giving chase to the Assyrian horsemen, a most spirited delineation of the subject. It is a thing to be remarked, that the animals appearing on the sculptures as distinguished by the Assyrian as their own, or as worthy to be so represented, are just those which in the Holy Word are to be found spoken of as animals of Assyria; and that such animals as are shewn upon the sculptures as being among the spoils or tribute coming from other nations, or as possessed by the routed foe, are such as when mentioned in the Word in connection with Assyria, are spoken of, not as belonging to Assyria, but unto the other nations. Thus in the prophecy just noted, the camels named are called the camels of Kedar. Nebuchadnezzar, in his degraded state, is likened unto a wild ass; and Israel taken captive by Assyria, is compared to a wild ass. In the prophecy of Daniel, the kings of Media and Persia, by whom Babylon was afterwards conquered, were represented to the prophet in his vision as a ram with two horns; and the king of Grecia as a rough goat. In the 50th chapter of Jeremiah, Israel and Judah are said to have been lost sheep, whose shepherds had caused them to go astray upon the mountains, who had been devoured by all that found them; and they are exhorted to remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he-goats before the flocks.

The sheep is the representative of the principle of charity, or the love of the neighbour. The sheep being caused to wander by their shepherds, and to go astray on the mountains, signifies that by means of false doctrines the affections of charity had been deprived of the necessary support and resting-place which truth afforded them, and consequently they had been lost and annihilated by the predominating principles of selfish and worldly love. By their removing from Babylon and the land of the Chaldeans, is signified that the love of the neighbour or the affections of charity are not to be restricted in their exercise by the influence of the profane and domineering falsities meant by Babylon and Chaldea, but are to go freely forth, depending on the Lord, who promises the destruction of this evil principle, and the delivery of the good.

The prophet, lamenting the condition of his people in 5th Lamentations, that they had given the hand to the Egyptian and to the Assyrian to be satisfied with bread, says, because of the mountain of Zion being desolate, the foxes walk upon it, which signifies that when the church looks for spiritual support and nourishment, or for the supply of its essential principles, to the external acquisitions of the natural thought, or to the reasonings of the natural mind, it will decline from its primitive truth and righteousness, the result of which will be that the high and holy

principle of love, love to God and the neighbour, will become desolated, and instead of the affections belonging to it, the destructive and insinuating falsities of self-love will find free range for their spoliating activities. There are other animals named in the prophets when Assyria or Babylon in a state of desolation is the subject, as the bittern, owls, satyrs, dragons, cormorant, stork, and caterpillars, animals distinguished either for their choice of habitation amongst ruins and desolations or for their destructive qualities; the bittern or heron and the owl representing those falsities which are congenial with disorder and the absence of goodness, and that shun the light of truth; satyrs and dragons, the monstrous lusts that delight to revel in the hidden recesses of a depraved mind, where the sense of righteousness or the dictates of conscience will not molest them; the cormorant, the evils or falsities that glut their depraved appetites upon the slaughtered affections, thus converting into nutriment for vile propensities what should have been the living forms of goodness; the caterpillar, with the palmer worm, locust, and canker worm, the sensual grovelling earth-bound thoughts, greedily destroying all the growing intelligence of the mind tending to spiritual wisdom.

The great fish which swallowed up Jonah signifies that degree of truth which is of the lowest sensual kind. Jonah's being sent to Nineveh to cry against it, because of its great wickedness, represents the divine truth addressed to the rational faculty of man, to shew and denounce the contrariety of its perverted condition to the righteousness of God. By his fleeing from the presence of the Lord, and going another way, is represented the unsuitableness of the divine instructions for reaching the rational thought, owing to the disordered condition of the proper faculties of the mind for receiving them, and communicating them to the rational principle. By his being cast into the sea, is signified the rejection of the divine truth. The Lord's providing the great fish to swallow him, represents the Lord's mercy in providing such a form of low sensual truth as could receive and preserve the divine truth, and adapt it to the purpose of restoring the rational man to spiritual obedience, as the affliction which Jonah suffered in the fish's belly made him a willing messenger to the Ninevites. Their repentance at the subsequent preaching of Jonah represents the efficacy of the divine truth when so accommodated to the natural mind. Jonah was, therefore, a sign of the Lord as the Son of Man, for by his descent into the natural world, by assuming the human nature, all the requisite accommodations and mediums were provided for reaching down to man in his perverted condition, and so bringing him up by repentance and regenera

tion back again to a truly rational and spiritual condition. In Hosea 7th, "Ephraim is called a silly dove, without heart, calling to Egypt and going to Assyria," signifying the perverted state of the spiritual man losing his confidence in divine truth, and applying to the low thoughts and perverse reasonings of his natural mind. The signification is similar in the 11th chapter, where it says that "they shall tremble as a dove out of Assyria." (To be continued.)

THE SOCIAL POWER OF THE PULPIT.

Extracts from "Meliora, a Quarterly Review of Social Science." July, 1858.

"THE pulpit in our time is in different circumstances from those it has ever before experienced. The printing press has taken up much of its ground, and made society less dependent upon its teaching. The press has been gaining, while the pulpit has been losing in popular power. This is not because the press has usurped the place of the pulpit, but because it has sustained its work with more ability, and is suited more to the worldly pursuits and desires of men than the pulpit. Accustomed to read well-written, intellectual, and instructive periodicals and books, whose style captivates, whose themes interest, and whose thought elevates, people cease to admire and to listen to preachers of feeble mind and listless manner. It is also not to be denied that much of preaching is too academic and dry, or too weak in intellect, and coarse. Clerical education has lacked an element which brings the religious teacher into sympathy with the common people, and it has ignored the art of speaking, which is ever an effective aid of popular instruction. The want of education has also injured many who occupy pulpits in this land, and has made the intelligent desert them. People complain that most of the preachers whom they hear are simply good men, who do not command the attention of the thoughtful, and do not excite thoughtfulness.

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The pulpit needs higher intellect. The theme with which it is occupied is worthy of the noblest thought-has the loftiest elevation and the most extensive range, and grasps the two eternities of the past and the future. It has the most varied topics of creation, providence, and redemption in all their relations to the welfare and conduct of man, and to man as related to God and his brother. It has a text-book made to hand, within whose ample revelation there is a store for suggesting, illustrating, and applying instructive thought. It has abundant scope for argument, invention, persuasion, and appeal in discoursing upon the

doctrines and duties revealed in the Scripture. It has the purest motives and the most sacred interests to urge to the faithful discharge of its office. It has radiant promises to encourage the greatest success. But it must possess a stronger intelligence and a warmer sympathy to make it effective. This is an age of active thought. Its intelligence sees clearly, and is capable of apprehending close and pointed argument; but it cannot wait for prolixity and circumlocution. It has cultivation to appreciate the beauties of style and the graces of eloquence; but its every-day experience is against the affected, the histrionic, the start and stare theatric.' Its earnestness in 'worldliness' can understand the burning zeal of the preacher on 'other-worldliness;' but a boisterous oratory, or even a graceful utterance, will not atone for a want of intellect. Light and love-those attributes so eminently characteristic of the Scriptural delineation of God-must together adorn, in a higher degree than is commonly found, those who, in the name of the Highest, address their fellow-men. Greater light must come from the study of the oracles of God in their relation to the present condition of society, and greater love from the baptism of fire-ever capable of meeting the earnestness of any age."

THE LORD'S HARVEST, AND LABOURERS IN THE

HARVEST.

THE future prospects of the ministry is a subject which has forced, and is still forcing itself, on the attention of the church; and the question,-why so few of late years have entered its ranks, becomes more pressing as the veterans in this service are, one by one, called away from their labours in time to their higher destination in eternity. A word or two on a subject of so great interest may probably not be unacceptable to your readers.

The attention of the writer of this article has long been drawn to the matter, but the immediate occasion of his writing on it at the present juncture is the following observation in the interesting report of Dr. Bayley's visit to Norwich and Brightlingsea in your last number:"This whole visit adds to my previous conviction, that the fields are again white for the harvest of the Lord's Second Advent. Oh, may He send forth labourers quickly into His harvest! Oh, may He fill the hearts of the best young men amongst us with the humble but earnest prayer, Lord send me!"

It

may seem somewhat ungracious to offer what even by implication might seem to cast disparagement on, to all appearance, so successful

an effort to make known the New Church truths; and the writer, in the incidental remarks which follow, once for all disclaims any intention of doing so there are, however, two points which in his opinion are, to say the least, liable to misapprehension. In the first place, to speak of Norwich as a scene where "the fields are white for the harvest," but waiting for labourers, is not correct. More than thirty years since, Mr. Noble made a visit to that city, where his lectures, though not so numerously attended as those of Dr. Bayley reported in your last number, met with an equally enthusiastic reception, several in the audience requesting him to publish them, and promising to take copies. It was these lectures, moreover, which excited the opposition of Mr. Beaumont, and led to the production of the most complete defence of the New Church which has yet appeared-"Noble's Appeal." Since that time, besides the early lay labourers, the society has had the ministerial offices of the Reverends Thomas Goyder, J. Wynn, Robert Abbott, and D. G. Goyder, who, I believe, is its present pastor. To speak, therefore, of the fields being white, and waiting for our best young men to put in the sickle, is an injustice (though I am persuaded an unintentional one) to those who have thus laboured for years previously.

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Without casting any doubt on the use of missionary efforts, than which nothing could be further from the writer's intention, it may, nevertheless, be affirmed, that to estimate the progress of the doctrines by the numbers collected at a time of excitement, or when subjects of more than average interest are treated of by a popular lecturer, or even by the expressions of approval that may be heard on the occasion, would be to calculate on fallacious data. The writer of this paper has known many large congregations attracted by such subjects, even in old societies, when the stated minister has been the lecturer, and many approving sentiments expressed by strangers, without, so far as appearances go, leaving any permanent result; and it may be asked, How many of the fifteen hundred which attended some of the Norwich lectures have been, or are likely to be, garnered in the New Church of that city?

Let it not be supposed that these remarks are intended to depreciate these efforts; of their value the writer is but too well convinced. All that can be reasonably expected from them is, that they should be instrumental in familiarizing the doctrines to the public, and the public to the doctrines. At the same time some truths probably find entrance into the minds of some of those who listen, and like the leaven hid by the woman in the Gospel, in the three measures of meal, gradually leaven their thoughts and conversation, and circulate among others, thus giving a new tone to, or at least modifying the mental activities and perceptions,