of the wrongs done to him, and, like a little naughty boy who is very angry, explodes in questionable language, and frantically flings mud in all directions. Having been acquainted with two or three Swedenborgians, and having found them to be calm, genial, amiable, temperate, courteous, and benevolent gentlemen, we had lapsed into an opinion that there must be some thing rare in a religion which made such excellent men, or, at any rate, which such excellent men professed. But we are sorry to find that it was a hasty and ill-founded induction; for assuredly no reader of Mr. Gorman's remarks will pronounce him to be either calm, or genial, or amiable, or temperate, or courteous, or gentle. However, we have been amused to read his outbursts of vituperation, and hope sincerely that he feels better for having thus relieved himself and put things right. In these days of general scepticism and wide-spread cynicism, it is refreshing to meet with a man who has a genuine faith-even though it be a fool's faith-and is eager to do battle for it against all the world. One of the editors of this Journal is unlucky enough to come in for some of the fiercest outpourings of the vials of Mr. Gorman's wrath. As it will probably please Mr. Gorman that our readers should have the opportunity of perusing what he has written, we give an extract from his Preface, in which he falls foul of strangely associated pair for his abuseCardinal Manning and Dr. Maudsley. In the Appendix he returns to the charge, and presents the spectacle of a brave man contending with difficulties as he labours in vain to find strong enough words to express his abhorrence, and detestation, and contempt of the feeble "maundering," "puerile fantasies," and "pestiferous influence" of the latter "boastful dogmatizer," whose "audacious and mischievous (one might be justified in saying insane) attempt" to describe "purely mental phenomena as if they were nothing but higher activities of brute matter," will be pronounced "by those who are acquainted with even the rudiments of the subject to be destitute of a single genuine conception or a single coherent sentence." Surely Mr. Gorman ought to feel relieved after this liberation of his righteous feeling of indignation, and henceforth to try to acquire something of the calm self-complacency and serene placidity of the mighty prophet whom he has taken under the shadow of his somewhat ruffled wings. The following extract is from the Preface: It is not easy to characterise, in measured language, the iniquitous attempts that have been made from time to time, in certain reviews, to defame and blacken the reputation of one who, in consequence of the vast and varied services he has actually rendered to the cause of intellectual and spiritual truth, is justly entitled to the highest regard and honour of all honest men. Certain misguided persons have had recourse to the meanest and most malignant subterfuges, in the vain endeavour to fasten upon the object of their contempt or hatred, the offensive and slanderous epithets of visionary, enthusiast, madman, heretic, spiritualist, and even impostor. So true is it that Be thou as pure as ice and as chaste as snow, Among those who have most shamefully distinguished themselves, in these most unchristian and unmanly attempts, may be mentioned Dr. Maudsley and Dr. (now Cardinal) Manning. Among the calumniators of Swedenborg, these two persons may be regarded as fitly representing the "schools of thought" to which they respectively belong. Dr. Maudsley ranks among the most daringly unscrupulous and pertinacious of those who, blinded by self-conceit, and regardless of facts, have most grossly and maliciously slandered the great name of Swedenborg. To those who possess any real acquaintance with the subject, his "criticisms " present a tissue of foul misrepresentations, arising in part from his having, in his eagerness to speak evil of one whose teachings he did not like, allowed himself to become the dupe of a wicked forgery, the so-called "Book of Dreams" fraudulently attributed to Swedenborg.* This flippant, and (regarded from a strictly Christian point of view) sometimes profane writer has, in the present instance, perpetrated a most discreditable blunder. His easy credulity, when he wished to believe, has become the occasion of furnishing a most instructive example of the folly of trusting too implicitly opinions of "experts!" Did not the common sense of mankind act generally as a counter-check to such hap-hazard modes of judging in grave and difficult cases, the class to which Dr. Maudsley belongs would soon become a dangerous and intolerable social nuisance. So much, then, for the hallucination respecting Swedenborg, of which certain apostles of mere Rationalism, and "specialists" in matters of lunacy, are the unhappy victims. The full title of this bestial fabrication is Swedenborg's Drömmar, 1744, jemte an dra hans antecknigar. Efter original-handskrifter medellade af, G. E. Klem. ming, Stockholm, 1859. Among those who were soonest and most easily befooled by this gross and palpable fraud was the author of a so-called "Life of Swedenborg," which, in common justice, must be pronounced to be a farrago of egregions folly and vanity, literary blunders, garbled quotations, and coarse calumnies, deserving of the hearty execration of all who cherish the least regard for common honesty and candour, in literary matters. This is obviously not the place to expose in detail the stupid and disgusting exhibitions of ignorant and malignant mendacity in question. It will suffice to have thus called attention to the subject, apparently for the first time; and to have indicated to the reader the true character of the so-called "Dream Book." A few words must suffice to show how intimately allied, in spirit and purpose, it is possible for two libellers of an illustrious Christian philosopher to be, who, in other respects, stand before the world so far apart. Dr. (now Cardinal) Manning, by the violence and malignity of the language he has deliberately employed, has made himself a fitting representative of Swedenborg's most bitter and unscrupulous enemies, among religious zealots. This astute and ardent champion of the most recent of the many modern evolutions of Papal fanaticism, and who so lately To his own new deity sacrificed, And was himself the victim and the priest, has had the hardihood to write thus concerning one of the most gifted of human beings: "There have been claimants to supernatural power, who have appealed to their miracles in proof of their mission, and who have taught otherwise than the Church. They are impostors; and their wonderful works are either mere deceptions, or they are done through the co operation of the enemy of God and of the human race. remarks apply to such pretenders to Divine communications as Montanus, Mahomet, Swedenborg, the Jansenists, and modern spiritists."* These Considering the principles, spirit, and motives of the "faction" to which this writer has so ardently attached himself in the Church of his choice, the epithet he here deliberately employs to characterise Swedenborg conveys a slander of the deepest dye. The charge of religious imposture involves the most odious and awful form of human guilt. And yet this most horrible charge is unblushingly preferred by a victim of modern Vatican spiritual sorcery, in manifest violation of truth and charity, against one who, in reality, ranks among the most upright, pure-minded, and marvellously gifted of human beings, and who was specially endowed with "a spirit divinely touched to fine issues !" It ill becomes Cardinal Manning, under any circumstances, to make use of the term "impostor," seeing that he has blindly delivered himself over, soul and body, to the service of a religious system, undeniably based on known and confessed forgeries and imposture. In the case of Swedenborg, the Cardinal's language transgresses the limits of all decent and honourable controversy. His violence stands in striking contrast to the moderation and justice of other enlightened members of the great religious communion of his adoption. Impelled by a fierce spirit of proselytism, blinded by the false glare of his own perverse imaginings, and led by fallacies which have their origin in one of the most malignant forms of religious prejudice, this wily propagandist and champion of "Vaticanism," or the new form of Christian "Essays on Religion and Literature," p. 310. Gentilism, may plume himself on having obtained a complete victory over the absent object of his false and slanderous expressions. But Swedenborg, also, has something to say concerning religious imposture. Like another Abel, in presence of another Cain, "he being dead yet speaketh." Those who are attracted by Mr. Gorman's seductive advocacy to read Swedenborg's Tractate, should not overlook the authority on which its principles rest. There is a spiritual world, in which spirits and angels dwell, and a natural world, in which men dwell; and this is a truth which, up to the incarnation of Swedenborg, had lain concealed from mankind. For no angel had ever got leave, or, if he had, had thought it worth while, to come down to the natural world to teach it orally, nor had any man been able to ascend to the spiritual world and to look in and see how things were going on there. "Lest, therefore, owing to ignorance of the existence of such a world, and to a wavering and unsettled faith respecting heaven and hell resulting from this ignorance, mankind should grow infatuated to such a degree as to become atheists of that type which refers all things to Nature as their source, it has pleased the LORD to open the sight of my spirit, and to cause it to ascend up into heaven, and also to go down into hell, and to display to its view the distinctive character of each." Thus it came to pass that the Lord at length had compassion upon mankind, and sent unto them a prophet, whose name was called Emanuel Swedenborg, presenting him with an unlimited supply of return-tickets to heaven and hell. In him the Lord Jesus Christ made his second coming for the institution of a new church, described in the Revelations under the figure of the New Jerusalem. When we have to do with those who are inspired from heaven, criticism and scepticism are necessarily put out of court; they have clearly no place in the discussion of a privilege which no one else from the beginning of the world has had, and which no one, therefore, is qualified to gainsay. "I once heard from heaven the voice of one saying" says Swedenborg: Who, then, can say him nay? We are not of that number who think that Swedenborg was a blasphemous impostor, for we hold that his sincerity may be made good at the cost of his sanity. But what shall we say of Mr. Gorman, M.A., of Hertford College, Oxford? When we find a man of his presumed education pouring out in shrill hysterical clamour all the abuse which he can command upon those who smile at Swedenborg's insane pretensions, and refuse to accept the fantasies of a monomaniac as revelations from God, we know not well how to express the mixed feelings which the spectacle excites. See how Mr. Gorman's evil speaking has corrupted good manners; for we were tempted to exclaim "Call you this thing a man? Aye, in the common category it passes for such." Effectual Reform in Man and Society.-By HENRY TRAVIS, M.D.-Longmans and Co. The author begins his book by saying, "that the time is come when that which men have in vain endeavoured to realise during the past, in the formation of character, and in the attainment of happiness, may be accomplished. Each generation has hitherto been very badly educated, because it has been born into a world in which all its predecessors have been badly educated comparing that which has been and is with that which should be, and is to be. And this inheritance of evil, from generation to generation, must continue until the knowledge is obtained by which the change from evil to good will be produced; or by which men will be enabled to effect this change, and in which it will commence." How, then, is this large promise of speedy amelioration to be fulfilled? By the acquirement of new knowledge and of new or greatly improved feelings; these being first acquired by a few otherwise intelligent men and women, who become the agents for propagating them to the mass of the population. And how are these new feelings to be acquired? By the devlopement of the social rather than the self-regarding feelings-in fact, by following the good old rule to do to others as you would have others do unto you. And the new knowledge required is a knowledge of the causes that have produced evil in the past, and of the causes and means by which good instead of evil will be produced in the future. All which appears to be true enough, though we do not see anything new in it. Men have known theoretically what they should do to one another for many, many ages; but they have not succeeded yet in realising that they are members of one body, of one social organism, and that when one member suffers all the members suffer with it. But they are slowly learning the lessons which nature teaches in its own stern way. Those who fare sumptuously and live in great houses are taught the duties of humanity to their less fortunate fellows, by the contagious character of the fevers which miserable habitations and bad food breed. The |