house for Him. "But will God indeed dwell on the earth! Even the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee, how much less this house that I have builded?" Having thus placed before his own mind and that of the congregation the greatness and goodness of the Being he was addressing, he sends up his supplications for those blessings and that mercy which the Lord's sinful and dependent creatures continually stand in need of. Besides the general prayer that the Lord's eyes may be open towards the house night and day, and that He would hearken to His servant and the people when they pray towards the holy place and forgive, there are several particular petitions which include the various circumstances of their national life. Most of these refer to cases in which the children of Israel, by sinning against the Lord, have brought calamities upon themselves; and the Lord is intreated, on the repentance of His people, to forgive their transgression, and restore to them again the privileges and blessings of which they had deprived themselves. The subjects of these petitions are as suitable to other peoples as they were to the Jews; for most of the circumstances to which they refer are, in the present state of human nature, too much the experience of all the nations of the earth at this day. They refer, for the most part, to war, famine, pestilence, and disease. And as these are all attributed to the sins of the people, repentance and prayer are the necessary means of deliverance from them. Sin is the sole origin, and often the immediate cause, of human suffering. But there is one important difference between the Jews and other peoples, both in ancient and in modern times. The Jews were a representative people, and their outward experience exactly represented their inward state. This is accurately described in the prayer of Solomon. There was another reason for this immediate connection, in the case of the Israelites, between sin and suffering. They represented the Church, and their legal sins and natural sufferings represented those which are spiritual. There is not always in this world an absolutely necessary connection between sin and suffering. Some sin without suffering, and some suffer without sinning. But in spiritual things this connection is absolute, and the result is immediate. Sin, the moment it is consummated, brings its own calamity with it. For sin is a violation of Divine order; and as Divine order is the complex of the laws by which the universe was created, and by which it is governed, a violation of Divine order introduces an element of discord and weakness, and so far shuts out the sanctifying and protective influences of heaven, and exposes us to the corrupting and destructive influences of the kingdom of darkness. The prayer of Solomon supplies instances of this. In the second petition he prays :-" When Thy people Israel be smitten down before their enemies, because they have sinned against Thee, and shall turn again to Thee, and confess Thy Name, and pray, and make supplication unto Thee in this house: then hear Thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of Thy people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which Thou gavest unto their fathers." On certain occasions, when the Israelites sinned, they were punished by some one of the nations, which represented

the particular evil, or kind of evil, of which they had been guilty. And this took place in order to represent that when we sin we lose the power to resist our spiritual enemies, and become a prey to the spirits of evil, who afflict us through the very evils they tempt us to commit. The prayer to the Lord to forgive is expressive of a sincere desire to have the evil removed, for this is the real meaning of forgiveness,-and the prayer to bring them into the land which the Lord gave to their fathers is to restore the soul to the state from which it had fallen.

So with the next petition: "When the heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against Thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess Thy Name, and turn from their sin when thou afflictest them then hear Thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of Thy servants, and of Thy people Israel, that Thou teach them the good way wherein they should walk, and give rain upon the land, which Thou hast given Thy people for an inheritance." That which is shut up is the heaven of the inner man, the spiritual degree of the mind. When the interior of the mind is closed by evil, no truth can descend from it, or rather through it from the Lord, to the natural mind below, so to make the life fruitful in good works. "For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater: so shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth, it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I send it." The Word of the Lord, His truth, is the rain that cometh down from heaven, that watereth the earth. When the heaven is shut up, and there is no rain because we have sinned; if we turn toward the Holy temple of the Lord's Divine Humanity, and turn away from our sin, He will "rain righteousness upon us."

The connection between the spiritual and natural evils, which are the subjects of Solomon's prayer, tends to give us a deeper and more solemn impression of both. The natural evils against which that wise king prays, come, indeed, more vividly before us, because they are the objects of our external senses. And even if we do not see them, we can realize them almost as effectively as if we beheld them. War and famine are such terrible calamities, and not unfrequently terrible compeers, that they oppress the heart as well as haunt the imagination. The feeling excited is, however, very different in one case from what it is in the other. War we regard as the creation of man, famine we look upon as a visitation of God. There is much truth in this broad distinction. War is no doubt for the most part the direct result of human passions. Famine is no doubt for the most part the result of climatic conditions. Still in both cases there is an overruling Providence, whose purpose it is to bring good out of evil, that is, to turn the evil into a means of correction, and if possible of leading to penitence before God.

Within a brief period we have witnessed on a gigantic scale these two

greatest of human calamities, by which at least a quarter of a million of our fellow-creatures, many of them after agonizing sufferings, have been hurried by an unnatural death into eternity, and yet this vast multitude of victims represents not half the number of those personally involved in those calamitous events. What do these events teach us? what is our duty with regard to them? One of the great lessons these events teach us is to use our best endeavours and all available means to prevent their recurrence. We can neither alter the course of nature nor change the heart of man. We cannot, therefore, arrest the evils at their source. But although we cannot, in such cases, act directly upon the region of causes, we can upon the region of effects; although we cannot act upon the internal, we can upon the external. This is where we have to begin-with the correction of our own evils. We have first of all to cease to do evil. This, it is true, is an effort of our own. But communities make laws to deter its members from committing crimes against the commonwealth, and against each other. War is a crime against the community of nations, and against humanity; and nations and men should unite to prevent it. A time will no doubt come when national claims and quarrels will be decided by the peaceful but powerful voice of national councils. To hasten the time when this will be the ultimate appeal for the settlement of all national differences should be the prayer and the effort of all peace-loving peoples. When Christendom becomes truly Christian, wars of course will cease, and famines will be unknown. This is the great and certain remedy for all the evils that afflict societies and nations. But we do not leave evils alone till we remove their primary cause. We assail them where our power can reach them. We stem the torrent though we cannot arrest it at its source. EDITOR.

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THE SPIRITUAL CLAIMS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. It is the duty of members of the New Church to give a patient and serious attention to any arguments which in good faith are brought forward against its teaching, or, as in the present case, against its very existence. The Spiritual Claims of the Church of England" is the title of an article in the Church Quarterly Review for January 1878. It contains none of that abuse which has occasionally tainted the cheap literature of the day, but is a deliberate and formal statement of the principles upon which the Church of England is opposed to Romanism, Irvingism, Swedenborgianism, and Mormonism. The editorial staff of the Church Quarterly have the repute of being immediately connected with the Cathedral of St. Paul's; and as we have in this case to deal with men of piety, learning, intelligence, and, as it is to be hoped, of impartiality, we may trust to their representations as containing the real ground upon which the Church of England is said to be opposed to the New Church, and, reciprocally, the real ground which the New Church is said to occupy in its relation to the Church of England. Notwithstanding the ability with which the article in question is written,

and the source from which it proceeds, we venture to say that, in relation to the New Church, it by no means gives utterance to the voice of the Church of England. The argument against us is just such as prevailed before the Oxford Tracts for the Times were written; but since that period the voice of the Church has been gradually changing its tone, as we proceed to show. Speaking of the Revival which, in the present age, has taken place in the Church of England, the reviewer observes :—

"No one who will compare the Church of England as it was when this century began, and as it is now, can fail to recognise a change so great, deep, and salutary, as is inexplicable on any theory save that of Divine suggestion and aid. It is impossible to match and parallel this revival by any similar movement discoverable in any of the other religious bodies of the country. Whatever may have been the growth of any one amongst them in numbers and material prosperity, none of them has exhibited the same humility in acknowledging shortcomings, the same zeal in pursuing amendment, the same revival of spiritual vitality in every muscle and vein." (P. 310.)

In what this marvellous Revival consists the reviewer has omitted to tell us, and therefore we are bound faithfully to supply the deficiency; in so doing we are helping to dissipate the general ignorance which prevails upon this subject, while we acknowledge with the reviewer that the remarkable statements we are about to adduce refer to "a change so great, deep, and salutary, as is inexplicable on any theory save that of Divine suggestion and aid."

As one of the results of the Oxford Tracts for the Times, there was formed, in the year 1857, a Society consisting of members of the Roman Catholic, Oriental, and Anglican communions, entitled an Association for Promoting the Unity of Christendom, and amounting, in 1864, to somewhat more than seven thousand. The acknowledged total destruction of Catholic Unity had awakened an alarm for the very existence of the Catholic Church; the object of the Association, therefore, was to restore catholicity to the Church, by restoring its unity. But how was this to be effected? First of all, by humbly acknowledging, as the reviewer says, its shortcomings. This acknowledgment appears in a series of Sermons by members of the Association, the majority of whom were members of the Church of England; and of these some hundreds were clergymen. The Sermons themselves, in order to comprise the whole of Christendom, are dedicated to Pius the Ninth, Sophronius, Ecumenical Patriarch of New Rome, and Charles Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury. These sermons, however varying on subordinate questions, were published as advocating the great principles which the Association acknowledges, and upon which they are prepared to act. The following are statements referring to the gradual decline of the original Apostolic Church down to the present day:

:

"As we trace the history of the infant Church in the Acts and the Epistles, we find that the danger of division was one which was constantly threatening it. Still, although there were many disputes, there was no very serious schism. This only occurred when the Church had become, so to speak, popular. It was the multitude of the fish that were enclosed that

caused the net to break. As the Church grew wealthy, and it became respectable to be a Christian, primitive faith and fervour waned, discipline relaxed, and schism followed as a matter of course. And when we look around us now at the present day we see the sad result of all this. What a picture does the Church of Christ present to the world now!" (Vol. I. p. 295.) "The fact of the Church being now visibly disunited is an infallible proof that she has fallen away, somehow or other, from the true and only centre of unity, and that there have been deflections, to the right hand or the left, in the way of subtraction or addition, from the ancient Faith. I say not where. Let all and each look to themselves." (Vol. I. p. 288.)

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"At first the rulers of the Church guarded their flocks from the vain fancies and dangerous inventions of men, and cast out of the Church those by whom they were maintained; whilst within its boundaries the same doctrine was everywhere professed, and communion and fellowship existed among all its members. But in process of time corruption found its way into the sanctuary itself. Doctrines and practices unheard of in primitive times came to be regarded as necessary to be believed and observed by all who hoped for salvation. Its rulers grew arrogant and imperious, and strove to exercise lordship not only over their flocks, but over each other. And so the Church became divided. First, the West was separated from the East, and then, in the course of ages, we in England were divided from both, whilst whole nations, which had hitherto adhered to the Church, remained in its communion no longer, but formed religious societies of their own. Now, though human motives entered largely into these proceedings on all sides, it is not to be denied that they were mainly occasioned by the sins and shortcomings of Christians. But what a fulfilmert is this of the Saviour's prayer! the rock which He had established for the support of His people split up into shivers and fragments! the vessel which He had provided to convey them to the haven where they would be, wrecked and shattered, so that there remained but boards and broken pieces on which to get safe to land! Still, we may be thankful that the remaining parts of the ship are furnished with all things necessary to bring us in safety to the place of our destination; that though some of them are deficient in what is desirable, and others are encumbered with what does but impede their course, yet, if we will but abide faithfully in the portion wherein we find ourselves, we shall arrive in time at the promised harbour." (Vol. I. p. 125.) "It was not till the love of many had waxed cold that heresies and schisms began to abound; and when, many centuries later, the great division of East and West rent Christendom asunder, there was little in the general demeanour, whether of pastors or people, to recall that glow of early devotion which had constrained their very persecutors to take note of the first disciples that they had been with Jesus. The preaching of Francis of Assisi brought a season of repentance, and the promise of a second spring. But soon a yet darker age succeeded, and the prophet voice of Savonarola was impotent to break the deep gloom of the fifteenth century, and restore a society rotten to the heart's core with moral depravities, and honeycombed with secret unbelief. Then the flood-gates were opened, and the Reforma