contained this heavenly and living principle. It must be well observed that, although Abel's offering consisted of the "firstlings of the flock," there is no mention made of any slaughter of the animal, therefore it was not such a sacrifice as was, in after time, offered up from animals slain and bleeding on the altar. Such a practice was most abhorrent from a heavenly idea of worship. The shedding of blood literally could not, for a moment, be thought of in those primeval times of the Adamic church. The slaying of the animal, and its bleeding carcase laid as an offering upon the altar, was an effect, and a proof of great degeneracy in the race at the termination and end of the church of Noah, many ages after Abel had offered to the Lord of the firstlings and fatlings of the flock.

The true perception of the meaning of an offering having been lost in the degenerate races at the consummation of the church of Noah, prior to the establishment of the Jewish dispensation, men began literally to slay the animal, and to offer its carcase as a presentation to God in their acts of worship. This they did with a view of supplying a feast for their deities, which they placed upon the altar as upon a table, in order, on the one hand, to appease their supposed wrath, and to conciliate their favour. Those who have studied Homer and Herodotus, the most ancient of profane authors, will find this statement abundantly proved in their writings; and it would appear from Dr. Mc. Gee's researches, in the "Work on the Atonement" mentioned above, that this practice was nearly universal in the age to which we have alluded. Long prior to the times of Moses the generations of men had become so external that, not only was the true meaning of the offerings in worship lost, but the true idea of the symbol was entirely perverted. Thus, in order to offer up the "firstling of the flock," as Abel had done, it was deemed necessary to slay it, and to sprinkle its blood about the altar. Whereas no such an idea ever entered into the thoughts of those who were signified by Abel. It was solely the idea. of an offering, without any slaying or shedding of blood attached to the idea, which they had when they are said to have presented the firstlings, or, as the Hebrew term involves, the choicest of their flock to the Lord. In like manner it is said in Micah-" Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, and the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (vi. 7.) Here it is intimated that children can be offerings as well as "firstlings of the flock;" but is it thereby implied that they should be literally slain, and offered up upon the altar? By no means. They are named as gifts or offerings in a purely typical sense, as a correspondence to those things which a man holds most dear and precious, as

presentations to the Lord in acts of holy worship, that sin may be removed, and that the Divine love may be received in its place. The Lord, in acts of worship, requires the inmost and the dearest affections to be offered to Him, otherwise the worship is not effective of man's real good, and consequently not acceptable to Him. The inmost and governing affection is represented by the "first-born," which, in Hebrew, is the same term as the " firstling" which Abel brought as an offering. This must always be the gift laid on the Lord's altar, otherwise the worship is only external, and not internal. But in after times, when the human mind became so very corrupt as to have lost all interior perception as to divine and spiritual things, men began literally to slay children, and generally human victims were immolated as sacrifices to their deities; and in Tophet, in the valley of Hinnom, "children were made to pass through the fire to Moloch," which horrible idolatry, as mentioned in the Word, signified the destruction of all innocence in the church and in the human mind.

How, then, did it happen that Jehovah not only accepted of the sacrifices thus slain, and placed upon the altar, but commanded so many particulars to be observed in preparing the victims for that purpose? The answer to this question has always been one of the most knotty points in theology; and which, as Archbishop Mc. Gee says, so far as he could ascertain, has never been solved. Swedenborg, however, has clearly and rationally explained it. The Lord, he says, never breaks and destroys whatever principles and forms of worship men have adopted, but He gently bends and inclines them to what is true and good in worship, and to what is proper in form. Thus, when mankind, as at the time of Moses, had almost universally adopted the practice of slaying animals, especially those of the flock and of the herd, as offerings and sacrifices in worship, thinking it most holy, the Lord did not prevent them, when He brought them out of Egypt, from the practice of such sacrificial rites, but permitted them in freedom to think of and eventually to observe the rituals of such a worship. This the Lord permitted, according to the laws of freedom, which He has implanted so deeply in our nature as to constitute our veriest human principle, which in all the operations of His Providence He never suffers to be violated. The Jews being most external men, and most "stiff-necked"— most averse from everything truly spiritual, and most sensuous and corporeal in their ideas, could not as a people think of worship except accompanied with sacrifices, and with other numerous rites and observances. Hence it was that the Lord, contrary to His own good pleasure, permitted the people of Israel to have a worship the chief

essentials of which consisted in sacrifices and in burnt-offerings,-in sacrifices as significative of worship from a holy faith and its truths, and in burnt-offerings as denoting a worship from holy love and its pure affections; for all worship must spring from these two essential elements of the spiritual and heavenly life. We say the Lord, contrary to His own good pleasure, permitted the Jews to practise such a worship, because the laws of His divine permission differ from the laws of His good pleasure, or of His essential divine love. Hence, in respect to sacrifices, He says "I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burntofferings or sacrifices; but this thing commanded I them, saying, 'Obey my voice,'" &c. (Jer. vii. 23.) Thus it was not the Lord's intention to command the people of Israel concerning sacrifices, but concerning obedience to His voice, especially to His voice as heard from Mount Sinai, when He proclaimed with a loud voice the Ten Commandments, in which no mention is made of sacrifices and of burnt-offerings. But there is still a more important reason why the Lord permitted the institution of sacrificial worship. It was chiefly for the sake of revealing His Word. The divine Truth about to be revealed had to be embodied in corresponding forms of expression, and ultimated in natural language, so as to form a wonderful medium of conjunction with the Lord, and of association with His kingdom; hence the veriest medium of salvation to the human race, and the inexhaustible storehouse of all intelligence and wisdom, to angels as well as to men. This most wonderful work had to be done, and it was done through the establishment of the people of Israel as the representative or type of a church, the worship in which church should be divinely ordained, and as to all its particulars revealed from the Lord Himself, through heaven, to the human race. The animals, as sacrifices, could typify, or represent, as in living forms, the spiritual affections, from which a most holy worship could be performed. Hence these animals were permitted to be sacrificed for that purpose, so that, in all future ages, men and angels might know the genuine principles of a true and saving worship. And now that the spiritual sense of the Word is opened, these principles may be well and clearly understood. The specific correspondence, and hence the spiritual signification of the animals, both of the flock and of the herd, will form suitable subjects for another paper.

SCRUTATOR.

ASSYRIA AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE WORD OF GOD,
AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE NINEVEH SCULPTURES.
A course of Lectures recently delivered by the Rev. T. Chalklen.

LECTURE II.

(Continued from page 17.)

THE Lord's Church is subject to various kinds of opposition, and these differ, according to the different stages in its ascending or descending course. Egypt, that had served to protect and cherish the people of Israel until they grew to a great multitude, was the earliest foe from whose power, by a Divine hand, they were delivered, by being safely removed beyond their reach, representing that the ideas and knowledge respecting natural things, though necessary for beginning the development of the spiritual mind, will, if exclusively continued in, soon induce a state of mental bondage, and an inability to rise out of the grossness of natural things, and that the deliverance of the spiritual mind from their hard, exacting bondage is not by contesting with them, but by being elevated above them. It will, however, soon find occasion for taking up arms against evils and fallacies with which it will be successively coming into collision. Amalek, Midian, Moab, the Canaanites, the Philistines, and the Syrians, were successively the powers against which Israel fought in going towards the promised land, in taking possession of it, and in dwelling therein. But, we must not linger to inquire what these all signify specifically, but hasten again to notice that Assyria represents a principle of false reasoning that comes forth against the church, ready to destroy it or bring it into bondage to itself, after having endured conflicts with all these.

When Menahem, the king of Israel, was doing evil in the sight of the Lord; when the predominating idea-the idea or thought that governs the mind, ruling over its faith and life, or, applying it to the church more generally, when the chief and ruling belief in the church is such as favours and leads to unrighteous doings, then some of the false and evil principles, the enemies of the Good and True, find their hour for the exercise of their opposing violence. But this does not take place indiscriminately; the errors that have desolated the church have always borne a relation to its condition. When it has been enveloped in ignorance and stupidity, the most senseless absurdities have served to lead away from a true faith, and take possession of men's minds; but, when intellectual

ASSYRIA AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE WORD OF GOD, ETC. 57 cultivation has elevated them above the reach of such kinds of impositions, then enemies of a less ignominious character present themselves for combat. If the mental cultivation has opened the way to the rational faculty, and the power of reasoning about religious doctrines is felt, then deceptive argumentations, false reasonings, specious intellectualisms, clever deductions from apparently well-established premises, come up in powerful phalanxes, armed to the teeth with learning and science, and decked in all the pomp and glory of self-derived intelligence, animated by a proud sense of human greatness, and ambitiously aspiring to be independent of all revelations of truth from any sphere higher than their own. These are the Assyrians, the enemies of Israel; among them are, contempt of Holy Writ, denial of spiritual reality, denial of human responsibility to any Divine authority. By their flattering appeal to men's awakening rationality they seduce those whose self-love and vanity truth has failed to subdue, to acknowledge their superiority, as appears to be represented by Menahem, the king of Israel, putting all the wealthy men of his kingdom under tribute to Pul, the king of Assyria. Such disgraceful submission to a perverted reason will not be made where the directions of spiritual truth are allowed to regulate the heart and conduct, because, in such a case, the spiritual mind will find, in the living evidences of the doctrines believed, much superior satisfaction for its rationality than can be yielded by the natural mind, even if it could range through the entire universe of nature for its confirmations; even as the king of Israel, had he faithfully served God, would have confidently and successfully opposed the Assyrian foe. The natural consequence of such defalcation on the part of the church is represented by Tigleth-Pileser, another king of Assyria, a very few years after the former invasion, coming against Israel, during the reign of Pekah, and taking some of the cities of Israel, and carrying away their inhabitants into captivity; another step towards that complete overthrow of the kingdom of Israel and the entire captivity of the people, which subsequently came to pass. Thus it is that a church, having departed from its obedience to the laws of righteousness, becomes enslaved to false doctrines, and, ultimately, to the fallacious reasonings of naturalism and infidelity. The climax of desolation is not suddenly reached, for a wise and merciful Providence is at work while such a state is approaching, preserving what is good and modifying the evil, for the purpose of bringing out from among the ruins of a fallen church wherewith to begin a New Church—a church that is to be kept free from former corruptions, and to be built up in the purity and power of spiritual truth and righteousness.