him life.' Such doubtless is not the intention of the persons who so vehemently, and I might say, almost exclusively, insist upon the testimony of the inward feelings; but it is too often the effect of their teaching.

"Within the last few weeks, I have found one poor man who, up to the time of his illness, had led a life of the grossest carelessness and wickedness, exulting in the certainty of his salvation in a tone of boldness which would have appeared presumptuous in a long-tried and faithful servant of Christ, but in one who had no opportunity of proving the sincerity of his repentance and the reality of his faith by their proper fruits, was really appalling: and another poor man who seemed truly penitent, and looking to Christ alone for salvation, was so wrought upon by the passionate exhortations and prayers of his Wesleyan visitants, as to be rendered quite unhappy and desponding. Now, though I may perhaps, when I call upon those poor people, succeed for the time in allaying their excitement, or expelling their undue fears, all my labour is undone by the next visit they receive from these teachers. I have thought that the most effectual way of preventing the many evils that result from this most injurious, though doubtless for the most part well meant interference, would be peremptorily, but kindly to refuse attending upon those sick persons who encourage or allow it; but I should wish, before deciding thus to act, to have the well-weighed opinion of some one who has encountered difficulties of a similar kind. Such an opinion, supported by the reasons on which it is founded, would, I have reason to think, be very acceptable to many others as well as to "A COUNTRY CURATE."

ON THE PRESENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS WITH MAN.

THE presence of spirits with man, is regarded by the present Sadducean age as a by-gone superstition.

It is thought all very well to teach children that they are under the guardianship of angels, and to soothe them with the sweet lines,

"Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber,

Holy angels guard thy bed;"

but as for believing that these lines contain sober fact, to believe in any such thing is regarded by many, and those even who once felt their heavenly influence, as little better than becoming a Roman Catholic ! Hence such persons in their fancied attainment of superior manliness of judgment, are apt to show off the mock dignity of incredulity by exclaiming, with too evident self-complacency, "WE know nothing at all about the matter!"

Dear to the member of the New Church is the admonitory doctrine of the presence of evil spirits with man, and the consolatory doctrine of the presence also of good spirits. And deeply pained he feels for those whose repugnance to every thing supernatural renders it impossible for them to hearken to the message from the invisible world to man,

delivered in the writings of Swedenborg. Hence the receivers of those writings naturally feel some degree of comfort whenever they find, in any quarter, the ancient faith reviving; or any fresh agitation of the subject which promises to do something towards the removal of this pitiable kind of scepticism,—this miserably gratuitous assumption of intellectual superiority. It is under this impression that I have judged the following quotation from a Review contained in a recent number of the Congregational Magazine, may be acceptable to the readers of the Repository.

"A belief in the existence and agency of evil spirits has obtained extensive and firm hold of the human mind. Indeed, except where the mind has been perverted by a spurious philosophy, this belief is universal. We are informed by Moffat, that even among tribes where there is no idea of a God, and, consequently, no idolatry, there is a belief in a being such as we call the devil, and in the practice of witchcraft.

"The subject of satanic influence has, indeed, been carried by Baxter and others to an extravagant length. But there are certain occurrences which we have always felt difficulty in accounting for, otherwise than as the result of this influence. Here is, for example, a man of extraordinary piety, the business of whose life is to keep his heart right with God; but who, without the least occasion for it in his circumstances, and in defiance of his most strenuous opposition, and at a season when his whole soul should be inflamed with devotion, is the subject of the most impious and horrible conceptions! Here is another of high-toned piety and rigorous morals; his morals do not date their origin from the period of his conversion, but run parallel with his practical life. Before his conversion even, he was a model for uprightness in his dealings, and chasteness in his conduct and expressions; he appeared to want but one thing to render him all that we could desire, and that was supplied by his conversion to God; but the hand of God is laid upon him and he is deprived of reason, when the whole tenor of his conversation is blasphemy and impurity!

"The agency of evil spirits, as well as that of holy angels, is taught both in the Old Testament and the New; but while in the New, very little additional information is given on the agency of good angels, very much is given on the agency of evil spirits. How is this fact to be accounted for? Is it that in compassion to our fears, the full exposure of our danger from hell had been reserved till the antidote to those fears could be furnished, in a revelation of the counteracting agency of the Holy Spirit?

"The subject of evil spirits has, we think, received less attention, both from the pulpit and the press, than either its own importance, or the taste of the Church demands. As a confederacy against our purity, and thereby our happiness, so extensive that we can nowhere avoid it, so spiritual as to possess direct access to the mind, so subtile as to be able, not only to adjust its own forces with perfect exactness, but even to turn our auxiliaries against us, so powerful as to be irresistible to mere human force, and withal so malignant as to be determined on our destruction; we cannot be too well acquainted with these spirits, nor, by admonition, and suggestion, and exhortation, be too strongly fortified against them. And discussions of this subject are generally acceptable, whether they treat these spirits philosophically as substances in the universe theologically as subjects of the moral government

of God, or experimentally as antagonists of our happiness. But what is there in our pulpit exercises or our literature to meet all this?

"We rejoice, therefore, at the appearance of a volume on the subject of 'The Existence and Agency of Evil Spirits' (from the pen of Mr. Scott, the President of Airedale College, Bradford, Yorkshire.) pp. 526."

As the volume just mentioned may not be unlikely to exercise considerable influence over a large and respectable class of theological readers, a short notice of its character may not be unacceptable.

The author adopts the vulgar Miltonian error, that all evil spirits were created angels of light, and therefore all evil spirits are called by him fallen angels. But while to this extent he gives credence to the existence and agency of spirits, he is a decided disbeliever in the possibility of witchcraft; he resolves the Divine commands against witchcraft in the Old Testament into commands against the pretence of it; and he resolves the account of the raising of Samuel by the witch of Endor into a piece of jugglery, and says, that the sacred writer in giving the account of what took place, used popular language merely, and wrote the transaction as it was believed to be, and not according to the reality. But it is some consolation that even this rash assumption is a step towards the New Church discrimination between genuine and apparent truths.

Concerning the demoniacs, and the possessions of men by evil spirits, mentioned in the Gospels, he feels compelled to adhere to the obvious sense of the Gospel narrative of facts, and he rejects the Unitarian theory of Mr. Farmer, (that possessions by devils mean nothing more than common bodily disease,) not only as unfounded, but involving serious charges against the Lord and his apostles. He maintains that although Satan does tempt mankind, he cannot compel the adoption of error, or the commission of sin. He observes rather sagaciously, that

as Satan is not possessed of omniscience or ubiquity, he carries on the work of temptation, to a great degree, through the instrumentality of those evil spirits who are called his angels.

Although we may regret that the agency of evil spirits contended for by this writer, is the agency of a description of spirits purely imaginary, and not the agency of the really existing evil spirits, that is, the souls of the deceased wicked, yet we may still regard it as a step towards the truth, that the agency of evil spirits of any kind, and not merely of one only called Satan, is admitted at all. A person with this belief is in some degree predisposed to admit the spiritual intercourse of our author, and much more so than the sort of character described at the commencement of this paper, who hates the very idea of all spiritual existences.

OBSERVER.

ON THE USE OF ORGANS AND OTHER MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS IN DIVINE WORSHIP.

SIR,

To the Editor of the Intellectual Repository.

From my signature you will anticipate the expression of a prejudice against the use in worship of what an eminent Presbyterian clergyman in London designated a "Kist of Whistles." I am against the use of organs or other instrumental music in the New Church, and on grounds which, I hope, you will be satisfied require some consideration.

I am not aware that our revelation of the spiritual sense of the Word, and states of another life, mentions that instrumental instruments are used in divine worship in the heavens, but on the contrary, in explaining the apparent worship with harps mentioned in the Apocalypse, (v. 8, and xv. 2,) he cautiously warns us that harps were not actually used, but that the utterance of the confession and worship of the angels in descending to the spiritual world is heard as the sound of harps.

The Jews employed various instruments of music in their worship, and we have particularly mentioned in Psalm cl., "timbrels and dance, stringed instruments and organs;" but these with their other rituals were all representative, and were abrogated on the change to Christian, spiritual worship. The only representatives given to us for observance, are water in the sacrament of Baptism, and bread and wine in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. We never read in the New Testament of the use of instrumental music; indeed, it will not be denied that such observances were introduced after many other mere externals had gained admittance into the Church.

The sound of instrumental music has in it no spiritual affection, nay, it is not even animated or living. In the little observation and experience I have had, I am not aware that first-rate vocal singers have instrumental music as an accompaniment, this only being resorted to by an inferior class as a supplement in aid. But first-rate vocal performers cast off such accompaniments, although the pieces they sing, and affections excited, are only of the natural degree. The natural, however, is far superior to the inanimate, and thus good vocal music admits of no such association. But how much less can there be consociation of the inanimate expressions of a dead instrument, with celestial and spiritual affections. Possibly with many in their ordinary states of feeling and affection in devotional exercises, the sound of an instrument may be an

arouser, but I apprehend that any one when in his most elevated states, as when singing a hymn at the Communion Table, were he attending to his affections and perceptions, would conclude that the sound of an organ, or other instrument, to accompany him, would be very discordant, nay, would amount almost to profanity.

In the spiritual world, or probably in the lower heavens, organs may be occasionally used in sacred worship; certain it is, however, as I have shewn from the Apocalypse Revealed, that they are not used in the higher heavens. Well we know, that if an angel of the higher heavens were to descend and join in the worship and state of those in the lower heavens, he would immediately lose his high angelic standing and state. Now, we of the New Church should be in the states of worship of those in the higher heavens, but if by worship suited to merely natural states we lower our standing, do we not create disorder, fall from the superior state which, with so much care, the Divine Being in his providence has been preparing us for, and counteract the dispensation which the Lord is endeavouring to institute among us? Were the practice general, would not the evil be general also? Nay, would not this be only a beginning of such perversions? Probably we would soon have our altars with incense flying around us out of incense-boxes during our prayers, in conformity with a passage in the verse from the 5th of the Apocalypse before referred to, with such other observances.

Among persons in a merely natural state, I have little doubt that the music of the organ, harp, and such instruments, is of use, particularly as tending to elevate or soothe the natural feelings; but how it comes to be relished in the celestial and spiritual worship of the New Church is an enigma. Probably the favourers of such practices have little of celestial or spiritual about them, or at least they at times, like the disciples on the mount of transformation, feeling it an over-exertion to be long in these states, willingly succumb, and fall into a state merely natural.

Fine music I greatly admire; I am enraptured with it, but I know no music finer, more elevating and delightful, than that of a congregation or society singing a psalm or hymn,-it is truly heavenly. On such an occasion, I cannot think of having my enjoyment marred by the sound of any inanimate instrument whatever.

Yours, &c.,

EDINENSIS.