was a principle of independency to allow everyone to think for himself on these subjects. But it was impossible to define in what even Mr. Fyfe's orthodoxy consisted, since though in the course of the argument he had complained of his view being represented as involving the resurrection of the same body, he had next advocated the resurrection of "the same body,only changed" (!)—afterwards contended for the resurrection of the purer parts of the body, and the dissipation of the grosser,—and ultimately gave up all but a "germ." To say nothing of the previous intimation implying that our resurrection bodies might be atmospheric, electric, or galvanic, it was evidently no easy matter to misrepresent orthodoxy, since it seemed to be impossible to say what it was, and what it was not. How greatly superior were the views of the New Church, which presented a well-defined spiritual body, a view sustained both by the teachings of the Scriptures and the deductions of sound reason. At the request of the friends at Bingley Mr. Woodman delivered a lecture on "Matter and Spirit," with a view of showing the substantiality of the latter. Our space does not admit of our following out the arguments of the lecturer; suffice it to say, he was listened to with the deepest attention throughout, and it is believed a proportionate impression was made. Mr. Fyfe was there, and in reply to the argument of the real substantiality of spirit based on the descriptions of John, stated that if he believed that John intended to convey the idea of what he saw being real spiritual objects, he might be called a sceptic, an infidel, an atheist-but he should not believe him. "John (he continued, in tones allied to mockery), saw candlesticks! Are there candlesticks there? John saw a sword! Are there swords in that world?" In the same manner he referred to horses, seas, locusts, &c., which led Mr. Woodman to tell him that he was a practical illustration of the declaration,-"If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one arose from the dead." The attendance through the whole of both courses was good, which was the more remarkable, as Mr. Cooper, who lectured just before Mr. Woodman, was not able to command an audience. The numbers present at the first course reached nearly three hundred, and at the last nearly five hundred. Singularly, the parties who put Mr. Fyfe forward as their representative and champion deserted him during Mr Woodman's lectures in reply. Not more than one attended during the whole course, and he, we believe, only one evening. The leading party remarked to our friend, that he believed there was salvation to be found in our doctrines, and he thought opposition should drop. The majority of persons present were in favour of Mr. Woodman, and testified their approval, especially on the last evening, by loud applause. Mr. Woodman expects shortly to visit Windhill and Shipley (where Mr. Fyfe resides), two large villages contiguous to each other, and near to Saltaire, where another little knot of friends resides. These, like our Bingley friends, hold a Sunday evening meeting at the house of one of the friends, but they contemplate taking a small room at Windhill. We heartily wish them success, and doubt not that under the divine blessing their labours will be instrumental in building up the church. We should not omit to mention that Mr. Fyfe delivered a lecture the night after Mr. Woodman left; but as he only announced it at Mr. W.'s last lecture, our friend, who had been suffering since his return from Conference, and during the delivery of his lectures, from great and painful prostration of physical energy, did not deem himself called on, under so short a notice, to interfere with his arrangements for returning home, to secure the rest of which he stood so greatly in need. None of our friends attended Mr. Fyfe's lecture, and the only thing they have heard about it was, that he intimated his intention, if the New Church would let him alone, of being quiet, forgetting, we presume, that his attack was entirely unprovoked. Whether he will change his mind when Mr. Woodman visits Shipley time will show. REVIVAL PRAYER MEETING, HELD IN THE FREE TRADE HALL, TUESDAY THE 6TH ULT, In the article on the Revivals in various parts of the United Kingdom, now exciting so much attention, we referred to an attempt made during the past MISCELLANEOUS. month in Manchester. We subjoin the following account of the proceedings, which has been supplied by a friend who was present: "The Revival Meeting held in the Free Trade Hall was numerously attended, but its proceedings were of an ordinary character, very little enthusiasm being exhibited. It lasted three hours, and the time was spent in singing, prayers, and addresses from ministers and laymen of various denominations, including members of the Church of England. A Mr. Montgomery, an Irish corn merchant, whose purse had defrayed the expenses necessary to the convening of the meeting, gave a long address, consisting principally of his personal experience in the north of Ireland. He attempted to pledge his audience to a dedication of the ensuing Friday as a day of fasting and prayer for a similar revival in Manchester, but signally failed, very few hands being held up in answer to his proposal. The prayers illustrated the prevailing theo logy in a striking manner. Personal invocations to the Father, and especially to the Holy Ghost, were prominent, but not one petition was in a similar manner addressed to the Son. There seemed to be a great anxiety on the platform to restrain undue ebullition of feeling, and the meeting throughout was [in that respect] conducted with decorum." SWEDENBORG AND THE BLOOD. Correction of an Error in the Report in the Marylebone Mercury of the Swedenborg Society's Dinner.-We extract the following from the correspondence of the Marylebone Mercury of July 2nd:"To the Editor of the Marylebone Mercury." "Dear Sir,-In your late notice of the Swedenborg Society's dinner, you kindly alluded to the chairman's observations upon Swedenborg's vast attainments in science, which so eminently qualified him for his theological career as an expositor of the spiritual wisdom contained in God's works and Word alike. He gave us an instance, among many, of Swedenborg's discoveries, the scientific fact that the heart's substance is supplied with blood, not according to a mode universally taught, that makes a cause depend upon its effect, but according to the order of true philosophy, which maintains the subordination of 479 NEW PUBLICATIONS. The Good News of God: Sermons by Charles Kingsley, Rector of Eversley. London: Parker and Son, West Strand, pp. 379. These sermons are aimed directly at the life, and their object is to inculcate the great principle of the Gospel, which is love to God and man. All the great duties of the Christian life are affectionately and earnestly impressed upon his hearers, and religion is made, as it should always be made, a matter of the life, and it is clearly shown in this interesting and edifying series of practical sermons (thirty-nine in number), that the life of religion is through faith in God, to shun and abhor sin, and to do good. There is, however, not every thing that we could desire in these sermons; there is still in the author's mind the old Athanasian dogma of three persons, and not the true doctrine of one person, whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily." (Col. ii. 9., John xiv. 9, 10.) O that the clergy would receive the true doctrine of the Lord, and behold Him in His "Glorious Body," or divine humanity as one with the Father! Then would their light break forth as the morning, and their health spring forth speedily; and righteousness and peace would be established in the land. "in We could adduce from every sermon some most useful and delightful extracts, but we have space for the present for only one, from the Discourse on Repentance: "Hear sermons if you will; read good books if you will; but bear in mind that you know already quite enough to lead you to repentance. You need neither book nor sermon to teach you those Ten Commandments which hang here over the communion table; all that books and tracts and sermons can do is to teach you how to keep those commandments in spirit and in truth: but I am sure I have seen people read books, and run about to sermons, in order to enable them to forget those ten commandments; in order to find excuses for not keeping them; and to find doctrines which tell them, that because Christ has done all, they need do nothing; only feel a little thankfulness, and a little sorrow for sin, and a little liking to hear about religion, and call that repentance, and conversion, and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. "Now, my dear friends, let me ask you as reasonable beings, Do you think that hearing me or any man preach can save your souls alive? Do you think that sitting over a book for an hour a day, or all day long, will save your souls alive? Do you think that your sins are washed away in Christ's blood, when they are there still, and you are committing them? Would they be here, and you doing them, if they were put away? Do you think that your sins can be put away out of God's sight, if they are not even put out of your own sight? If you are doing wrong, do you think that God will treat you as if you were doing right? Cannot God see in you what you see in yourselves? Do you think a man can be clothed in Christ's righteousness at the very same time that he is clothed in his own unrighteousness? Can he be good and bad at once? Do you think a man can be converted-that is, turned roundwhen he is going on his old road the whole week? Do you think that a man has repented that is, changed his mind-when he is in just the same mind as ever as to how he shall behave to his family, his customers, and everybody with whom he has to do? Do you think that a man is renewed by God's Spirit, when, except for a few religious phrases and a little more outside respectability, he is just the old man, the same character at heart he ever was? Do you think that there is any use in a man's belonging to the number of believers, if he does not do what he believes; or any use in thinking that God has elected and chosen him, when he chooses not to do what God has chosen that every man must do, or die? "Be not deceived. God is not mocked. What a man sows, that shall he reap. Let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as Christ is righteous, and no one else." Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin, by the Rev. A. Clissold.-We understand that a second edition of the letter to the Archbishop of Dublin, by the Rev. Augustus Clissold, will be published about the 1st of November. The letter has been nearly re-written, and much enlarged, in order to meet the objections which have been made. Indeed it may be almost called a new work. Marriages. On the 7th May, at the New Jerusalem Church, Brightlingsea, by Mr. John Hyde, jun., Mr. Marcellus Richardson, to Miss Sarah Ann Scarlett, both of Brightlingsea, Essex; and Mr. James Sawyer to Miss Fanny Bryant, both of Brightlingsea.-On the 8th of May, at the same place, by Mr. John Hyde, jun., Mr. Samuel Sparling to Miss Emeline Fleming, both of Brightlingsea.-On July 7th, at the same place, by Mr. John Hyde, jun., Mr. William Minter, jun., to Miss Mary Berry, both of Brightlingsea; and Mr. Joseph Munford to Miss Eliza Ann Minter, both of Brightlingsea. On the 23rd of June, at the New Jerusalem Church, Accrington, by the Rev. E. D. Rendell, Mr. Frederick Noble Heywood to Miss Harriet Spencer, both of Accrington. On the 21st of July, at the New Church, Bedford-street, Liverpool, by the Rev. R. Edlestone, Mr. Philip Henry Jones, nephew of Richard Gillaird, Esq., of Landown Park, Liverpool, to Helen Jane, daughter of the late William Thompson, Esq., of Manor House, Oxfordshire. On the 6th of August, at Argyle-square Church, London, by the Rev. Dr. Bayley, Mr. Richard Webb, of Islington, to Miss Emily Victoria Kennerley, of St. Pancras. On the 6th of August, at the New Church, Henry-street, Bath, Mr. Wm. Francis, jun., of Liverpool, to Caroline Victoria, daughter of Mr. E. Bowen, of Bath. On the 10th of September, at the New Jerusalem Church, Summer lane, Birmingham, by the Rev. Edward Madeley, Maria, youngest daughter of the late Mr. T. P. Bragg, of that town, to Mr. Chas. A. Faraday, third son of the late Mr. S. B. Faraday, of Fenton, Staffordshire. CAVE & SEVER, Printers by Steam Power, Hunt's Bank, Manchester. "He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; butter of kine and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats; with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink of the pure blood of the grape."-Deut. xxxii. 13, 14. THE grand and only object of the Eternal in communicating His sacred Word to man, or in interfering in any way with mundane affairs, is the regeneration and salvation of mankind. All that we know of the trifling importance of all merely temporal interests, the pettiness of all temporal anxieties, the narrowness of our merely temporal range of thought and action, or the transitory term of natural life itself; and all that we know, too, of the character and nature of the eternal Jehovah, prove to us that this design is the only one that is worthy of omniscience to conceive, or of omnipotence to accomplish. Man's days in this natural and material world are all numbered, and the prophetic "threescore years and ten" by very far exceed the average of our natural life. Millions die in infancy, millions more before they are twelve years old, and nearly one-half of the world's inhabitants never attain the age of manhood or womanhood before they pass the tremendous portal; their bodies return to dust, and their spirits are heralded into another state of being, to play their parts in other acts of the great drama of existence. And even those who remain,—who live out to their fortieth, sixtieth, or eightieth year, or more,-who dwell on till they seem to be relics of a past century,-who pass through all the stages of perception, and memory, and passion, and reason, and care incident to [Enl. Series.-No. 71, vol. vi.] 1 H 482 THE PROCESS OF REGENERATION. this sphere of being, on looking back at their old objects of pursuit, are forced to confess with the preacher, that "all has been vanity and vexation of spirit." As the boy looks back with a strange mingling of pity and contempt at the pursuits of his childhood, so the strong man regards the pursuits of his youth; and so, too, the old man views almost the whole bent and tenor of his life. Time has worn off the tinsel from the gew-gaws of earthly ambition. Possession has revealed the hollow mockery of his passionate aspirations, until he has grown palled with satiety of the very objects he desired and obtained. The longings after fame, or wealth, or power,-for earthly distinction and temporal success, have waned away in their attainment, for their attainment has shown him how empty and unsatisfactory they really are. He has learned by experience, what reason would have taught him years before, that it would be unworthy of the Infinite to interfere in mundane affairs, to subvert temporal dynasties, to crush and crumble earthly sovereignties, to overwhelm one natural system or establish another, if He had no further object in view than the mere external result He had accomplished. Convinced as we all must be of the action of an ever-present providence of God, ruling in the smallest things, in order that it may rule in the greatest, still, unless we can discover some higher purpose than mere natural objects pervading its operation, our observations do not exalt our conception of Deity; they do not come up, indeed, to what our deep intuitions tell us that God must be and do. And to precisely the same results shall we be brought, by considering how short is the longest life on earth, compared with that future and eternal existence for which we are destined, and toward which we are hastening. One single grain of sand, compared with all the grains of sand that bestrew our globe; one single globule of water, compared with all the drops that constitute our streams, and seas, and oceans; one solitary leaf, compared with all the leaves that have bloomed and fallen upon our world; one atom of matter, compared with all the atoms that compose the natural universe of worlds, are more in proportion than the longest natural life is, in comparison with the eternity that belongs These natural things, however vast in number, and not to be computed by our finite capacities, are still limited in that number, because bounded in dimensions, while that eternity is uncircumscribed and limitless. Our present natural existence is, therefore, only "an atom in the balance laid against infinity." The infinite and eternal God, consequently, in all His interferings with His creatures, must have for His object not the petty and paltry concerns of this narrow and re to us. |