THE unity and connection of the Divine Word is truly wonderful. It is the body of God, and its harmony of parts and exquisite mechanism and adaptation to ends, calls from us, when our perceptions are awakened, the same intense feeling of wonder and delight which excites the mind when science fully reveals to us the organization of our individual existences, that "we are fearfully and wonderfully made!" bows our hearts in adoration to our Maker. But this perception of ourselves is but the basis of our perception of the Divine. We are but images. He, as the infinite and uncreated type, must ever be our chiefest wonder.

The Divine Word, as a whole, is the revelation of the Divine man. Every fibre of His being is there traced, is embodied in a material form, subject to the inspection of our senses. But if we anatomise the Divine body, tear it into parts, regard it in its separate divisions, and look upon its materiality alone, we utterly desecrate it, and come to loathe it; because we look upon it as a body without a soul.

But if we reverently look upon each perfect material part as the physical of the psychological; if the study of the body becomes to us a study of the spirit acting through the body as its organ, then does material science become the medium to us of the most holy and Divine truths. The study of the body as a body is no longer pursued; the connexion between the soul and body is a glimpse into the spiritual that elevates our minds into a new discrete degree of perception. The Psalms of David are the holy light of this new discrete degree of perception. They correspond in the physical man to the heart, the organ of the inmost life, and they are the prayers and communings of our Lord, from the inmost degree of that humanity which He assumed, with the infinite Divine life that had its influx into Him. through this inmost.

Prayer is the opening of the soul to the Divine. In the finite mind it is spiritual consciousness of the presence of the Infinite. In the Divine humanity it was the simple consciousness of an indwelling life. But the prayers of the regenerating human that was becoming Divine, are the experiences and breathings of each finite, regenerating mind. For the Lord, when He was in His infinite spiritual consciousness, saw in that holy light, the countless impurities of the human understanding that He had assumed. Hence, all the wailing confessions of sin, the invocations for help against the impurities which assailed Him, and the joy and praise of the celestial purity that was working in Him to purify these evils. How exactly thus is the finite mind affected when it looks at its human depravity, its total corruption, as it bows in the presence of the infinitely pure Divine! How it lifts itself to Him for help; how vile and weak it seems in comparison; how it loathes and hates its falses and evils, and calls

down destruction upon them in sight of that pure goodness; how it exalts itself in praise and glorification, when the glowing light of a new perception reveals the perfections of the Divine form, "shining out of Zion the perfection of beauty."

Such prayers are the symphonies of the angelic spirits associated with man. They are heavenly rythms that flow in a concert of melody within the spiritual gyres of the grand man. It is the music of

God's breath breathing into man the breath of life.

In the Divine humanity, prayer was a looking from the torn convul sions and disorders of His human natural into His spiritual universality of being; it was listening to the voices of angelic choirs, not to the hum of an earthly existence.

That the Psalms are as the heart of the Divine Word, is shown in their physical and historical connexion. They follow the second book of Kings; and these books are the histories of direful falses and evils. that reigned in the perverted will and understanding of the Lord's assumed humanity. The Divine Truth struggled painfully down from the Israel of His spiritual consciousness, in which as a Solomon He reigned, into the depths and abysses of that evil nature, which finally He perceived in the light of His inner spiritual truth to be fettered and led captive by an overwhelming principle of evil. All the kings of Israel who reigned in Samaria (the spiritual understanding of truth) had sinned that fearful sin of Jeroboam, the son Nadab, who, like profaning Uzziah, in a self-ability, from his own proprium, had stretched forth his hand and touched the ark of the Lord; and this self-ability had caused Nadab (the rational principle) to ally himself to Jezebel (self-love), and struggle against the Divine truth, which was as Elijah, teaching of the wisdom of God; and in Judah, that vile will-principle, governed kings that desecrated every vessel of good and truth in the temple of God. Here and there was some faint principle of natural good, like a Josiah, ruling in that corrupt nature, but that is gathered to the inner Divine nature, like remains in the heart of man, and the falses and evils are given over to destruction.

It is in the light of all this that the weary heart of the assumed humanity opens itself to its indwelling Divine, that was about to appear. Hence David, who represented the Divine Humanity about to appear, wrote the Psalms; for all prayer flows from God into us. Like rays of light that glance down from the sun upon earthly objects, capable of reflecting them, are the true prayers of the human soul, for the human in itself has not light, it is dead and densely opaque; but a glory falls on it from above, and it scintillates in the brilliant rays according to its state of reception.

It was the Divine that spoke in the human, not the human apart from the Divine. But it was this opening of the interiors of the Lord that caused that purifying influx of the infinite life, that totally expunged and put off the finite life, until the pure God alone existed, and there was no longer a finite human will or understanding.

It is thus with us also. Only by the opening of our interiors to the Lord, through the constant communings of prayer, can the Divine image grow in us, until there is no light in us but His wisdom, and

no will but His love. The Divine breathings of the holy Psalms will flood us with the Light and Warmth of the Divine Life, until, earthborn as we are, we shine in a heavenly glory.

ARTICLE IV

CONCLUSION OF REPLY TO "DELTA."

We propose, in concluding our reply to your correspondent "Delta," who argues that the "use of the lot" in originating a ministry for the New Church, was unlawful--especially to vindicate the persons whom he assailed for their agency in that matter. But lest we should lose the thread of our discourse, it may be as well to say that in two former articles we have shown that he has wholly misconceived the instruction to be drawn from those passages of the Old Testament, and the Acts of the Apostles, in which this custom is mentioned. Before reaching, however, that which is our principle object, we must advert to the part of his essay in which he insists, and on the pretended authority of Swedenborg in his exposition of the Apocalypse, that they were but presumptuous and premature in their move

ment.

In

And here we must say that " Delta" has excelled himself. For, of many essays we have read, professedly based on the works of our enlightened scribe, and from the pens of his disciples, we do not remember one who has so entirely mistaken his meaning. The divergencies are so numerous and remarkable, that we are at a loss to account for them, except on a principle declared by our author himself. "Such is the nature of man's thought, that whilst he is attentive to some one particular thing, he prefers it to another, especially when his imagination claims it as a discovery of his own. this case everything tends to administer fresh proof and confirmation of his opinions, so that he is ready to attest their truth in the most solemn manner, when nevertheless they may be utterly false." (A. C. 362.) The "one particular thing" here appears to be a notion that "the sortilegists of 1788" fell into something more than an error of judgment on that occasion; and hence that which, when rightly viewed, should be their justification, is made tributary to their reproach. Take the following:

"The last judgment was witnessed by Swedenborg, in the year 1757, as it took place in the spiritual world. It is described in the seventh, eighth, and ninth verses of the twelfth chapter of the apocalypse. The descent of the Holy City is not described, except in the ninth succeeding, or twenty-first chapter, and was not witnessed by Swedenborg, even to the time of his departure from the natural world. We are prepared to show, from his latest recorded declarations, that up to the time of his natural decease, this descent had not occurred. Any one who will read the chapters intervening between the twelfth and twenty-first of the Apocalypse, will see

that a long succession of spiritual changes of state, and, as we must suppose, many momentous corresponding consequences in the natural world, are set down as happening between the two events."-N. C. Repository, Vol. iv. pp. 544.

The very title of Swedenborg's special tractate on that subject, is as follows: "The Last Judgment and the Babylon destroyed: show ing that all the predictions contained in the Apocalypse are at this day fulfilled." See also No. 44 of same work. And in A. R. 2, we read: "The Apocalypse does not treat of the successive states of the church, much less of the successive states of kingdoms, as some have hitherto believed, but from the beginning to the end it treats of the last state of the church in heaven and earth; and then concerning the Last Judgment; and after this the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem." See also A. R. 227, 387, 483, 543. The Apocalypse, then, is not chronological in depicting the progressive declension of the church from the beginning, but merely in presenting the seve ral phases of its last state, as these were successively manifested.

Neither is the Last Judgment alluded to in any part of the twelfth chapter. In the interval between the judgment performed by our Lord in person (John xii. 31) and the year 1757, the spirits symbolised as "the dragon" had been permitted to form imaginary heavens in the world of spirits, and in conjunction with the lowest heaven, "because they externally resembled Christians." (A. R. 865, L. J. 66-71, Con. L. J. 16-19.) When these had increased so as to intercept the true light from the minds of men on this earth, their disper sion became necessary. But before their final consignment to their own place, "they were cast down to the earth" in that world. And this event, preparatory to a greater, is what is described in Rev. xii. 7-9, and in A. R. 548-552, Con. L. J. 23. "Destruction was effected after visitation, for visitation always precedes. The act of exploring what the men are, and moreover, the separation of the good from the evil is visitation; the good are then removed, and the evil left behind" to be judged. (L. J. 61.) And several chapters of the Apocalypse are taken up in describing symbolically the progress of this exploration in the Reformed Church. Four chapters farther on, we read; "And there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven from the throne, saying, 'It is done;' in Apocalypse 16, 17, signifies "that thus it was made manifest by the Lord, that all things of the church are devastated, and that the Last Judgment is now at hand." (A. R. 709.) But this general judgment proper is not described until we read the 20th chapter from 11-15 verses. (A. R. 865–874.) The idea, then, that any long interval was to elapse between the Last Judg ment and the descent of the New Church derives no support from this part of the book. But the event predicted as immediately succeeding, is the formation of a New Christian heaven (xxi. 1), and following thereafter, if not contemporaneous therewith, the descent of the Holy City, and the consequent formation of a New Church on earth. (Vs. 2, 3.) Its full development (Vs. 5, 10, 24, and Ch. 22) of course will be a work of time. This simple statement, sustained by plain references, is sufficient to take the wind out of "Delta's" sails. But we

will enlarge more on this head, when we have corrected other and more glaring mistakes.

It is well known, that the original doctrine of the Reformed Church was, that man is justified and saved by faith alone, without the works of the law. And this is the faith of the dragon (Rev. xii. 3; A. R. 537). But being opposed to the numerous plain precepts of the Scripture enjoining good works, it was in the nature of "a deadly wound" (Rev. xiii. 3) which must be healed. This was done by a modification of the doctrine which asserts that "good works are the necessary fruits of faith." In this form it was accepted by many of the laity, who thereby gave their power and strength to the dragon, who is the same with "the beast which rose out of the earth" (Rev. xiii. 11). The real faith of the Dragon, however, remains the same. There are then in the Reformed Church, two classes of believers ;— "the learned rulers of the church," who adhere to the former tenet, and "the people of the church," "to whom these things are not known, because not understood by them" (A. E. 765). Now, when the woman, spoken of in the 12th chapter, brought forth her man-child, and the dragon stood ready to devour it, or when the New Church declared its doctrine, which was received with difficulty, on account of this sinister influence on the minds of men-" the child was caught up to God, and His throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there" a certain time. "We do not read," says "Delta," "that her child accompanied her, but the contrary is implied." We should rather suppose the reverse; for says Swedenborg:

"When doctrine is not received, the church is not, for the church is from doctrine." (A. E. 730.) "Without doctrine, a church is no more a church than man is a man without members, viscera, and organs; thus from the mere covering of skin, which only figures his external shape or form; nor any more than a house is a house without bedchambers, parlors, and useful furniture within; thus from the bare walls and arched roof." (Coronis, 18. See also H. D. 243, 254.)

And the child's being "caught up to God and His throne," does not imply its withdrawal from men, which we know historically was not done, but "the protection of the doctrine by the Lord from the dragon, for the use of the New Church; and its being guarded by the angels of heaven" (A. R. 545); which we also know has been strikingly verified. And the woman's flight into the wilderness, does not signify the retirement of the church to some special locality, as a means of safety, but that "at first it was confined to a few, while provision is making for its increase among many" (546, 517). After this is related "the war in heaven," when the dragon and his angels were cast out into the earth, by which is signified (not the Last Judg. ment, as "Delta" has it, but) "that he was cast down into the world of spirits," which is intermediate between heaven and hell, "from whence there is immediate conjunction with men upon earth;" which occasions joy in heaven," but a warning to men to beware of his machinations, which are now more pressingly dangerous than before. But during this interval, the "wings of an eagle" were given to the