[substance] may be had from correspondence; for the subject here treated of in the internal sense is concerning the influx of celestial good into spiritual good. This influx is what is signified by the mouth of the head of the robe, and is described by the work of a weaver and of a coat of mail; and to that influx from the heavens corresponds the influx of life with man from the head through the neck into the body, and since it thus corresponds to it, the texture of the neck is of strong nerves, and below the texture is as it were a circular [assemblage] of bones, by which the influx is rendered secure from all hurt; hence, as was said, an idea may be formed of the singular things contained in this verse, namely, what is signified by the mouth of the head in the midst, by the brim which is round about it, by the work of a weaver, and by the mouth of a coat of mail, which is to it, lest it should be rent. It is to be noted, that all representatives in nature have reference to the human form, and are significative according to their relation to it."-A. C. 9916.

"And beneath, upon the hem of it, thou shalt make pomegranates," &c. Heb. rimmon. The term " pomegranate" is compounded of poma, apple, and granata, grained, from its resemblance, when opened, to an apple full of grain. It grows wild in Palestine, and in other parts of Syria, as well as in Persia, Arabia, Egypt, and the southern parts of Europe, and in some portions of England. The fruit is the size of an orange, flattened at the end like an apple; and when cultivated is of a beautiful color and highly grateful flavor. The rind is at first green; but in August and September, when the fruit is ripe, it assumes a brownish-red color, becomes thick and hard, yet easily broken. The inside of the pomegranate is of a bright pink, with skinny partitions like those of the orange, filled with a subacid juice and a great multitude of white and purplish red seeds. The flower, which is of a scarlet color, is peculiarly beautiful, and it is probably to the flower that allusion is had, Cant. iv. 3, where the royal bridegroom compares the cheeks of his bride to a "piece of pomegranate," though others understand by this a section of the fruit itself, the cheeks being called in the Talmudic language, the pomegranates of the face. The annexed cut will give an idea of the form of the fruit and flower of this plant, both which are among the most striking objects of the vegetable world.

cient Assyria, where it was held sacred and entered into the symbols of the heathen worship, as is plainly to be inferred from its giving name to an idolatrous temple, 2 Kings v. 18, called "the house of Rimmon," i. e. the Pomegranate. In Persia the heads of sceptres and honorary staves were formed in the shape of a Pomegranate. It was also held sacred in Egypt; and in all countries where it was not to be found, the poppy, which also abounds in seeds, was chosen in its stead. Both were dedicated by the pagans to the generative powers, their numerous seeds rendering them an apt emblem of prolific properlies. Hence at marriages the bride was crowned with a chaplet in which were inserted the flowers of pomegranates and poppies as an omen of fruitfulness. But whatever were the peculiar notions of the ancients in regard to the symbolical import of the pomegranate, they were doubtless at a great remove from the spiritual sense ascribed to it by Swedenborg, according to whom they denote the scientifics of good. "The reason why pomegranates were set in the borders of the robe was because borders signified the ultimates or extremes of Heaven and the Church, and those ultimates or extremes are scientifics. The scientifics of good and of truth, signified by pomegranates, are doctrinals from the Word, which are scientifics, so far as they are in the memory, which is in the external or natural man. But when they enter the memory, which is in the internal or spiritual man, which is the case when the life is formed according to them, then the doctrinals as to truth become things of faith, and as to good, become things of charity, and are called spiritual." Their being set upon the borders of the robe denoted that their place was in the extremes, where the natural principle is, for the extremes of the spiritual kingdom are things natural. The pomegranates, therefore, sustained the same relation to the robe which the scientifics of good and of truth do to the spiritual principle in man.

"And bells of gold between them round about." By this appurtenance to the robe was signified "all things of doctrine and worship derived from good passing to those who are of the Church." By "passing to those who are of the Church," is to be understood their being participated in by the people. The reason of this is, that by means of the bells, the people heard and perceived the presence of Aaron in ministering, as by the people are signified those who are of the Church, and by the ministry of Aaron, all things of doctrine and worship. These bells were arranged alternately with the pomegranates on the borders of the robe, because the holy things of doctrine, the scientifics of truth and good, are in the extremes, where also and whence is hearing and perception.

"And it shall be upon Aaron to minister; and his sound shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord, and when he cometh out." By his "sound being heard," is denoted the influx of truth with those who are in the heavens and in the earths, as receptive and perceptive. Hence also influx, for the things which are received and perceived must flow in. The word rendered "sound," is in the original "voice," and voice implies annunciation; and that which is announced, is the Divine Truth, that fills all things of Heaven, and constitutes all things of the Church. By "going out

and coming in," is denoted every state of good and of truth in worship, inasmuch as all things of worship with the Israelites were representative of internal worship, and internal worship is from good and truth, or from the affection of goods, and from the faith of truths.

"Lest he die." That is, lest the representative perish, and thereby conjunction with the heavens cease. The internal state of the Jewish people was not such that a genuine Church could be established among them, but they could still act as the representative of a Church, and their rites and ceremonies in these circumstances would serve as forms into which a conjoining influx from Heaven could flow. This, however, required that the prescribed ritual should be very exactly observed, as otherwise it ceased to be receptive of the appropriate influx, and those engaged in it incurred the peril of being suddenly cut off, like Nadab and Abihu, who offered strange fire before the Lord. In like manner if Aaron had ministered in any other than the commanded costume, he would have died, not, however, as an expression of Divine wrath, by a direct judgment from Heaven, but by reason of his falling under the power of the hells, which would have him at every advantage when the breach of the established order of representation had thrown him out of the pale of the Divine protection.

(To be continued.)

G. B.

ARTICLE IV.

THE INFINITE AND ETERNAL.

"THE infinite and eternal are the Divine itself." It is not in space that we look for infinity, nor in time that we look for eternity: as well, were it, that we should measure the duration of the sun of this planetary system, by the changing seasons of this rolling earth, which, were it blotted from the face of creation, would still leave the sun in its untouched glory; or, as well were it that we should attempt to bound the capacity of the sun for sending out rays of light, by counting the beams that have already spread forth their creative light and heat to revolving worlds.

In itself is the light and heat of the sun, even though its planetary system were not. And in the self-existent, uncreate Divine is the infinite and eternal, without respect to the times and spaces of crea

tion.

But from the great type of the spiritual sun, which has been hung in our material heavens, as a daily revelation to our senses of the oneness of God, of his fixedness of form and state, and of how He is omnipresent and omnipotent-of how from Him are times and spaces -and yet in Him are neither time nor space; let us turn to man who, as being created in the "image of God," reveals Him to our conceptions.

spiritual

C

TO

Man is a substance and form: essentially a one, but his oneness or individuality is not a simple substance or form; it is a complex of innumerable varieties. And if we remove the exterior envelope of the physical man, we perceive, by the most transitory glance, the vast combination of veins, arteries, sinews, nerves, bones and flesh which constitute the substance of man, and the minute and every varying organs that go to make up his form; and when science is brought to bear upon these generals, the thought and perception of man is lost in a maze of particulars. The most minute investigation cannot enable him to fathom the countless things of his physical being, for even as he counts, the being grows and changes with every pulsation of the heart, every respiration of the lungs. There is an enduring oneness and fixedness of form, combined with a ceaseless change. But when, from this shadow of the infinite and eternal in the physical man, we ascend to the spirit-world of causes, and perceive the ceaseless ebb and flow of thought and feeling that animates this ever varying complex human form, the image of a spiritual infinity and eternity is revealed to us. The endless complex and variety of feelings, and their consequent thoughts, that have swelled the heart and animated the mind of man, are so vast and unfathomable, so incomparably greater than the number ultimated in his outer acts, that we readily perceive that the finite man carries his infinity within him; and that if he should for ever go on in an endless course of action, he could never exhaust his capacity for feeling and thought. The more forms of beauty the artist executes, the more he dreams of; the more of science that the thought of a man is occupied with, the more boundless becomes his field of observation and combination. Feeling produces thought, and the new forms of thought react upon the sensations of the soul and become new subjects of affection. Thus must it be in the Divine feeling and thought. The love of God prompts him to create; the created forms thrill His sensitive being with the delights and pleasantness of love; hence the love of his soul with its creative power is for ever called into action by its preceding action.

The Divine soul is never weary of creating forms of use and beauty with which to delight and serve its innate capacity for love. Worlds are created, peopled, and adorned out of the fulness of the love of God; the universe is His embodied thought, but it is not the limit of His capacity for thought, and must for ever grow, like the thought and feeling of a wise man. Every new creation adds to the perfection of the universe, to its beauty and order, as every new thought of wisdom and feeling of love perfects the mind of man.

If we take a man of the earth, whose soul is full of a gushing love, and whose thought is ever active to ultimate this love for the good of others, is it possible for him ever fully to realize all his intentions. and capabilities? No; they must for ever grow and develope into warmer intentions and more expanded views; because, the more he acts, and through this action opens his interiors to the influx of life from the Lord, the more he becomes an image of the infinite; and in this image how plainly we perceive that the infinity is within the man, and not without him. We perceive that the infinity of his love

and the consequent perpetuity of his thought are the man himself; where, then, shall we look for the infinite and the eternal, but in the Divine Himself? All our perceptions of the vastness, and variety, and perpetuity of the creation must converge to that one heart and mind from whence they proceeded; and when we behold the "works of the hands of Jehovah," our soul bows in adoration, and we can only exclaim in rapture, "Lord! how great is thy goodness, and how great is thy beauty."

The organization of man-the image of God-reveals to us, that all sensation and perception exist in the man, and not out of him. We perceive that the sight of the eye and the hearing of the ear are substances and forms, which must be acted upon by things external to themselves, that delight may be felt within themselves. Through this revelation we realize how the infinite Divine Substance and eternal Divine Form has an absolute necessity for subjects, which are external to Himself, upon which to expend His thought and feeling that He may in Himself perceive blessedness and delight. Let the eye, so delicate and sensitive to forms of beauty, and the ear, so finely attuned to the vibrations of harmony, be shut off from all external impressions, and where is the delight and pleasantness of these susceptible substances? The more delicate and perfect, and the more highly developed is their organization, the greater is the necessity, and the more intense is the desire for these external impressions.

The substance of the Divine love is the most perfectly organised, the most susceptible thing in the universe; with an infinite capacity for blessedness, an endless power of enjoyment, God must seek out of Himself forms which react upon His capacity to love. Thus the love of man, though he is a dead form, acted upon by the indwelling vi tality of God, is as essential to the happiness of God, as is a beautiful form to the delight and enjoyment of the eye. But in the love of God there is not the least atom of self-love. He loves us wholly extraneous to Himself, even as the eye delights in the form of the flower, wholly without and external to itself. We cannot add to God, any more than the substance of the flower can add to the substance of the eye. On the contrary, the slightest atom of the pollen of the flower would rack the eye with all the agony of disorder.

But while man is wholly without, and immeasurably removed from, the pure, infinite and delicately susceptible substance of the Divine, he yet acts upon the sensitive love of God, awakening in it its own selfexistent capacity for blessedness. Oh, man! when it is given to thee to minister to the happiness of the Infinite, how great a joy and use is revealed in thine existence; and how, like a blooming and odorous plant, thou shouldst rise to the great Master who hath planted thee by the waters of life, that He may delight Himself in thy beauty and fragrance! That God lives for thee, and thou livest for God, is the harmony of conjunction throughout the creation. It is as the mar riage of the eye with form, which it adorns with its own indwelling light, and of the ear with sound, which it attunes by the harmony of its own delicate organization.

Ba

Fare,