E'en thus the countless orbs, that shining roll Upholding fiery suns and planets, as they sweep Matter is dead; nor is there life in suns, Nor rolling planets ;-though each mass inert If worlds are dead, whence comes the ceaseless life Life comes from God-through all the heavens it flows, A living influx fills the farthest bounds Of all creation, and the power gives Whatever with our outward eyes we see, Far higher realms of sentient life and force, F'en man himself the highest form of life, LONDON, February 1875. C. H. A. Reviews. THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED. From the Latin of Emanuel Swedenborg. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. London: Trübner & Co. THIS is a new translation of the work; it was made by the Rev. T. B. Hayward, and revised by the Rev. John Worcester, and approved by the General Convention. Reliance may therefore be placed on its accuracy, to which we bear willing testimony. It is beautifully printed, and forms a handsome work in two volumes, of a size more handy than the octavo in which the work has hitherto been issued. It is called the Roach edition, having been printed, wholly or partly, from funds bequeathed to the Convention by a lady of that name, which no doubt makes the price considerably lower than it otherwise would have been. LA SAPIENZA ANGELICA SULLA DIVINE PRovidenza, Swedenborg. Per Emanuele Traduzione dal Latino dal Prof. Loreto Scocia. THE readers of the Repository are aware that by the self-sacrificing labours of Professor Scocia, aided to some extent by the friends in England and America, several of the works of Swedenborg have been brought before the Italians in their own language. Italian being a lineal descendant of Latin, and much nearer to it in terms and idioms than any living language, it is a favourable medium for conveying the meaning of the Writings to those whose vernacular it is, as well as to all who understand it. Professor Scocia is an accomplished scholar, and does his author justice. The present work is printed in the best style, on fine paper, and is altogether a beautiful volume. Our readers may be reminded that by purchasing such a book they are aiding the whole effort of the excellent man who, at great pecuniary sacrifice, is devoting his whole energies to the cause of the New Church in Italy, both by his translations and by his preaching. DE L'ESPRIT ET DE L'HOMME COMME ETRE SPIRITUEL. THIS is a translation of the Rev. Chauncey Giles' work on "Spirit and on Man as a Spiritual Being." The translator appears under the modest title of V. K., but we understand it is by an accomplished lady who desires to introduce a work she justly admires to her countrymen. Although intended for French people, those who read the language of France will find it an agreeable companion in the idiom into which she has so well rendered it. 185 Miscellaneous. SWEDENBORG.-A correspondent has he could not be suspected of dishonesty, sent us the following account respecting Swedenborg which appears in the Popular Encylopædia or Conversations Lexicon. The work has been before the public some years, but has been much improved in later editions. We give our correspondent's communication as an evidence of the improved tone in articles of this kind. Some mistaken apprehensions are too obvious to need correction. "There is an interesting article on Swedenborg in the Popular Encyclopedia or Conversations Lexicon, published by Messrs. Blackie and Son. It commences with the statement that Swedenborg was the most celebrated mystic of the eighteenth century,' and gives a very complete biography of him, and in reference to his Economia Regni Animalis, says it contains the application of the system of nature unfolded in his philosophical works to the animal creation. The principle of a necessary emanation of all things from a central power is the basis of this system, which is ingeniously unfolded, and illustrates the extent of the author's reading. It is explained particularly in the Principia Rerum Naturalium. Swedenborg was first introduced to an intercourse with the spiritual world, according to his own statement, in 1743, at London. The eyes of his inward man, he says, were opened to see heaven, hell and the spiritual world, in which he conversed not only with his deceased acquaintance, but with the most distinguished men of antiquity. That he might devote all his life to this spiritual intercourse, he resigned in 1747 his office in the Mining College, which he had hitherto discharged with punctilious exactness, and refused a higher appointment that was offered him. The king still paid him his full salary as a pension. With no occupation but to see and converse with spirits, or to record celestial revelations, he now resided alternately in Sweden and England. The theological works which he wrote at this period he printed at his own expense. They found many readers; and while he was an object of the deepest veneration and wonder to his followers, his statements were the more mysterious to the rest of the world because and exhibited in other respects no mental aberration. All respected him as a man of profound learning, an acute thinker, and a virtuous member of society. His moderation and his independent circumstances make it impossible to suppose him actuated by ambitious or interested views; his unfeigned piety gave him the character of a saint who lived more in the society of angels than of men. In those trances, during which, as he said, he conversed with spirits, received revelations, or had views of the invisible world, he seemed like one in a dream; his features were stamped with pain and rapture, accord, ing as heaven or hell was opened to him. In common life, he exhibited the refinement of polished society; his conversation was instructive and pleasant; his personal appearance was dignified. To the day of his death he was fully persuaded of the reality of his visions and divine inspirations. This faith became at length a fixed principle in his mind, which was every day more detached from sublunary things. When this illusion (?) had once gained ascendancy over him, his own prolific mind, and the writings of earlier mystical theologians, furnished him with materials enough to form such a spiritual world as he pleased. His description of it, even in the minutest point, bears the stamp of the age in which he lived, and those views of the external world which he had gained as a natural philosopher; his spirits converse with a distinct individuality, and the family likeness of his interpretations of the Bible with the explanations and allegories of the earlier mystics is everywhere obvious. But whatever we may think of his revelations, his purposes were praiseworthyto collect à church of religious persons, and preserve them from the irreligious and demoralizing systems of the age, by the diffusion of his religious and edifying works. In the moral parts of his writings we meet with the purest doctrines, and with passages of peculiar religious elevation; and though he wrote in a bad style and in careless Latin he deserves rather to be classed among the religious poets than among theologians. The stories of his pro He say, 'In order to found My Church and consecrate her to Me, in order to guide her as her Head and to instil My life into her members, I must have a kingdom of this world, yea, must be King of kings, with the right of examining the laws of all nations, and of declaring whether subjects may obey them, with the right even of deposing princes and absolving from the oath of alle giance?' He never said this; on the contrary, when the tempter presented to His Spirit, as a thing to be desired, all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, accompanied by the betrayal of His mission, He said,Get thee hence, Satan (Matt. iv. 10). There came to Him one of the people, and said VATICANISM. The Pope, in the exercise of his high authority, has issued an encyclical to the German bishops, in which he declares null and void the recent acts of the German Parliament affecting the Romish Church. This has led to the publication of a Protest by certain Roman Catholic members of the Prussian Chamber, and to more stringent legislation against the Papacy. Bishop Reinkens, the Bishop of the Old CatholicMaster, speak to my brother, that he congregations, has seized the opportunity to address a pastoral to the priests and laymen who continue in the Old Catholic faith. The pastoral is remarkable for the prominence it gives to the teaching of the Scriptures, and the firmness with which it resists the pretensions of the Papacy. We give from it the following extracts :- "The foundation of the Church is One -'Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ' (1 Cor. iii. 11); the corner-stone is One, in whom the holy temple is builded and framed together' (Eph. ii. 20); the Head of Christendom is One (Eph. v. 23), the Mediator between God and man is One (1 Tim. ii. 5); the High Priest, Whose priesthood is unchangeable, is One (Heb. vii. 24); the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls is One (1 Pet. ii. 25); the Lord is One (Eph. iv. 5): and that One and only One is Jesus Christ. He alone is the source of all renewing in the Spirit, and the pattern of the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness' (Eph. iv. 23, 24). "Whosoever, then, in His Name speaks to the people, whosoever claims to be His Apostle and imitator, must so act as He acted, and, as in everything, so also in the position towards the worldly power must be like unto Him. "Did then Jesus, our Peace, Who came to break down the middle wall of partition between the peoples, to slay their enmities and to reconcile all to God and to one another (Eph. ii. 13-19),—did He ever, or anywhere, mix Himself in politics, in order to attain His end? Did divide the inheritance with me.' That is to say, he demanded that Jesus should busy Himself with the settlement of civil matters; but the Lord said to him, Man, who made Me a Judge or a Divider over you?' (Luke xii. 13, 14). Earthly possessions He neither distributed by judicial decision nor adminis tered. When the people, misled by a false conception of the promised Messiah, desired to make Him a king by force, He withdrew Himself, departing into a mountain Himself alone (St. John vi. 15). When Pilate asked Him, Art Thon the King of the Jews?' He gave him a plain answer- My kingdom is not of this world; if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is My kingdom not from hence." His kingdom, therefore, has nothing to do with a political empire: He keeps up no army to fight for Him. Pilate drew from Christ's answer the right conclusion, Art Thou a king then?' and the Lord answered, "Yea,' and then declared that His kingdom was the kingdom of truth, to found which He was born and came into the world (St. John xviii. 33-37). "In like manner He taught His first disciples, whom He gathered unto Himself, to distinguish His kingdom from the kingdoms of this world. They dreamt at first the dream of the Messianic Majesty outshining and subduing all kingdoms of the earth. Building upon Old Testament narrative, their conception was of the material weapons of earthly kings, combined with fire from heaven and legions of angels in the ser CREMATION.-Advantage has been taken of the public discussion of this subject to call public attention to the doctrine of the New Church on the subject of the Resurrection. An interesting tract on the subject has been published by Mr. Speirs, at the Swedenborg House, Bloomsbury Street. This publication has been favourably noticed by several of the public prints, and thus brought more fully to the notice of the general public than would be the case while confined to New Church sources of publication. WEEKLY OFFERTORY.-This mode of vice of the Messiah. But the Lord declared that He did not need for His purpose battling legions of angels, yea, that they would obstruct Him in the fulfilment of His mission, in the drinking of His cup (St. Matt. xxvi. 53, 54). When a city of Samaria refused to receive Him, the sons of thunder, James and John, spoke in their wrath, Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? But He turned and rebuked them' (St. Luke ix. 53-55). All material force, which is used in the service of His kingdom, has an opposite effect, it ruins souls and destroys the contribution to Church uses, which is kingdom. When, at the arrest of the making rapid progress in the Established Lord, the Apostle Peter, who a few Church, is becoming introduced into hours later was to fall so deeply and some of the leading societies of the disgracefully in spiritual conflict, drew New Church. It has been adopted, with the material sword, and smote off the success, at Argyle Square, and also at ear of Malchus, the High Priest's Camden Road and Devonshire Street. servant (St. John xviii. 10), Jesus On its introduction to the latter society, said to him, Put up again thy sword a circular was issued to the Congregainto his place, for all they that take the tion from which we give the following sword shall perish with the sword' (St. extracts:-"The very general adoption Matt. xxvi. 52). If we call to mind of an Offertory during Divine service by the general tenor of the declarations and the various Communions of the Christian laws of the Old Testament, then there Church, and the experience of its success is contained in this, according to the by our brethren in Argyle Square and connection, a prophecy and a threatening Camden Road, led to the appointment for the Church. He who desires to re- of a Committee to consider the advis present her cause by the worldly sword ability of its use in Devonshire Street. brings her to ruin." The report of the Committee recommending the practice was laid before the monthly meeting, held on the 16th inst. It was then resolved-"To have an Offertory every Sunday morning and evening, in lieu of all other collections, beginning on the 7th March.' After describing certain special uses to which the offertory on certain Sundays would be devoted, the circular continues"We commend the adoption of this plan, as having the high sanction of antiquity. To the Israelite of old it was said, 'And they shall not appear before the Lord empty every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee' (Deut. xvi. 16, 17). CORRESPONDENCE OF FIRE.-A correspondent of the Rock introduced this subject under the title of "Symbols of the Holy Spirit." Among these symbols is fire, but," says the writer, "fire more frequently points out the justice of God." This letter led to other correspondence, one of the letters being manifestly of New Church origin. In this letter the writer says:-"If your correspondent will take the trouble to refer to those passages in the Bible where 'fire' is mentioned, he will find that in a good sense love is signified, but when evil fire is referred to, self-love. Water is the beautiful figure of truth; and hence the constant references to fire and water signify the hallowing influence of love and the cleansing power of truth.... The 'unquenchable fire' and 'fire of hell' do not indicate specifically the 'justice of God,' but are vivid representations of the evil passions and lusts that consume the depraved." Give unto the Lord the glory of His Name; bring an offering and come into His courts' (Psa. xcvi. 8). To the early Christians it was recommended by the Apostle of the Gentiles, Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him' (1 Cor. xvi. 2). 'Now, therefore, perform the doing of it. . . |