own crude notion of the doctrine, as if he were refuting the doctrine itself, show how little he understands of what he undertakes to disprove. Had he studied Swedenborg's writings on the subject; or, instead of following Mr. White, had he consulted the Rev. Augustus Clissold, he would have obtained information that would have enabled him to know what he was arguing against. As this distinguished writer has given a comprehensive view of Swedenborg's teaching on this subject, we cannot do better than present his summary, the length of which will be compensated by its excellence; and it will be much more profitable reading than a review of the several objections of the tract. "In the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are implied the principles of Goodness, Wisdom, and Power; the Father being Goodness, which is the Divine Essence; the Son, Wisdom, or the form of Goodness; the Holy Ghost, Power, or both in operation, agreeably to what is stated by Hooker, who says, "The Father as Goodness, the Son as Wisdom, the Holy Ghost as Power, do all concur in every particular; outwardly issuing from that one only glorious Deity which they all are. For that which moveth God to work is goodness, and that which ordereth His work is wisdom, and that which perfecteth His work is power.' "It is acknowledged that the Father, contemplated separately from the Son, is without form, and hence has neither body nor parts. Of the Son it is observed by St. Paul, who being in the form of God, thought it no robbery to be equal with God. Here the Apostle declares that the Son possesses a form, and that this form is the form of God. The ideas of St. Augustine upon this subject so nearly coincide with those of Swedenborg that we shall quote them here. Thus in Sermon 122 he observes: There is a certain form, a form which is not formed, but which is itself the form of all things formed: a form unchangeable, without decay, without defect, without time, without place, transcending all things, and existing in all, serving as a foundation upon which, and as a summit under which, all things are.' Such is St. Augustine's idea of a Divine and infinite form, which he attributes to that Eternal Word, Who, being form itself, hence gave form to the universe. Upon the principles we have stated (that there is an essential form, or that by reason of which a thing exists such as it is), this form is no other than the human; for wisdom is no other than the form of goodness, just as truth is the form of love, the understanding the form of the will, thought or idea the form of affection, which are essential properties of the human nature.

"Having now arrived at some idea of the Divine form, and seen how it corresponds to the finite human form, let us next proceed to ascertain how the Divine form may be conceived to assume the creaturely humanity. St. Paul, speaking of the Divine Word, says that He emptied Himself. How are we to understand this? The meaning of the term emptying has otherwise been expressed by that of exinanition, and has for its correlative the term glorification. It was by a process of exinanition that the Divine assumed the creaturely humanity, and it was by the process of glorification that the humanity

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became Divine. The Divinity, indeed, assumed the humanity in order that the humanity might become Divine, or be the Divine Human. The former process is that by which the Lord emptied Himself in taking the humanity, the latter is that by which the humanity ultimately became the fulness of the Godhead bodily; this state of fulness being the opposite of that of inanition. Understanding the term form,' then, in the sense in which we have defined it, as the name of that by which God is such as He is, it is evident that God could no more deprive Himself of His form than He could deprive Himself of His existence. If, then, God could not deprive Himself of His form, it is evident that, when taking our nature upon Him it is said that He emptied Himself, the exinanition must refer not to any state of the Deity previous to assuming the finite human form, but to the act of assumption; the exinanition was, therefore, the assumption of the humanity.

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"Now there is nothing upon which we are more liable to fallacy than in reasoning upon the Deity; and this must necessarily be the case until our affections and thoughts are of a nature and quality corresponding to those which are Divine. Thus we say the Divine Being descended from heaven to take upon Himself the form of our humanity; and yet it is clear that the omnipresent God can never change place. To say that He descended, therefore, is to say what is, in regard to place, what is not literally true, and yet it expresses a literal truth. We say that the Spirit of God proceeds from Him; yet we profess the same Spirit to be omnipresent. Here, again, unless we are careful, we fall into a fallacy. The fallacy, however, in both cases proceeds from that naturalism which cannot rid itself of the idea of space. illustrate the case by analogy: the highest natural substance we are acquainted with is the sun; and the more proximate to it are the natural things which we contemplate, the farther do we recede in our contemplations, even in the natural world, from the ordinary ideas of space and time; for the nearer that natural substances are to the nature of the sun the less fixity do they possess; and, in fine, the fewer of the properties which generally give rise to our idea of matter and space, the less, therefore, when contemplated in themselves, do they suggest the ordinary idea of motion from place to place; for they are omnipresent in their own system, and hence permanently operating in that place from which grosser bodies are said to move. Now the highest natural things, or those which approximate to the nature of the sun, are heat and light. Through the medium of these the sun is everywhere omnipresent in our system. No body can approach the sun but by successively losing its own nature and assuming more and more of the solar; no body can come farther away from it, but by partaking less and less of this nature, that is to say, by a process of privation or exinanition.

"Now that which proceeds from the sun is light and heat; by the procession of these, the sun may be said to descend, because his light and heat descend. That which proceeds from the Deity is the Holy

Spirit, or Love and Wisdom; by the procession of these the Deity is said to descend. But natural light and heat cannot proceed without a medium; that medium is the different auras and atmospheres. So the Holy Spirit cannot proceed without a medium; that medium is the three angelic heavens, for St. Paul speaks of three. Granting that the highest is the third, to which the Apostle declares he was caught up; the intermediate the second; and the first, according to this reckoning the lowest; we see how it is that, in passing through these three heavens, from the highest to the lowest, the Holy Spirit descends, and by this Jehovah Himself. Now we are told that Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, that is to say by the Divine Love and Wisdom proceeding from Jehovah as a Sun veiled over by mediums, as the sun is veiled over by atmospheres until it is attempered or accommodated to that which is to become the subject of his operations.

"But natural light and heat are dead. They have indeed an intense activity, but it is the activity of that which has no life; for life, properly speaking, is intelligent, and as such can be predicated of mind alone. On the other hand, spiritual light and heat are living; living light being wisdom, and living heat being love. But love and wisdom united constitute the human form as man, and hence the light and heat which proceeded through the heavens down to the earth possessed an essential human form-a form which was finited by the heavens, and which, according to Hooker, being nearest unto the effect, and hence proximately producing it, is therefore called power. This latter form, then, was, in his natural state of existence, the soul of Christ a form the esse of which was Jehovah, and which was to be made the medium through which Jehovah God was to be brought near to man; the soul of Christ thus comprehending within it all the heavens. Thus was the soul provided: let us next inquire with regard to the body, and the union between itself and the soul.

"It is a physical fact that the soul of man comes from his father and the body from his mother. The body, or rather the materials to form the body, was all that was provided by Mary in her womb; for the body is an organized substance, and this organization was effected, not by Mary, but by the soul, and was hence a body in correspondence with the soul. In this correspondence consisted the union between the two, soul and body being united in all subjects by correspondence. What, however, was the quality of the soul thus uniting itself to the body? Surely it was different essentially from that of man in general; because man derives his soul from a creaturely origin; nay more, he is hereditarily nothing but evil, and it is not possible for us to suppose that this evil should be inherent in his nature and yet not injure it,that is to say, not injure his intellectual and moral faculties. notorious that during infancy man is more helpless, weak, and ignorant than other animals, and that this state endures longer with him than with any other part of the animal creation. What, then, is the cause of this? Is it not to be found in that hereditary evil which has disordered the faculties of the soul, without which man would have been

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far more rapidly born into a use of his rational powers than at present, even as animals are more quickly than man born into the use of their several faculties? Now Jesus was possessed of no hereditary evil from the Father, for His Father, we have seen, was essentially Jehovah. So far, therefore, from possessing this evil, He was inwardly perfect as the Father was perfect, because His esse was the Father. Consequently, the soul born into the body was without hereditary evil from the Father; and for this reason the humanity, in its finite state, made rapid progression in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and man. "In the Person of Christ, therefore, as consisting of Logos, Soul, and Body, the order is this: the supreme principle of Divinity was in the Logos or Word; the Logos in the heavens as the spirit proceeding; the heavens in the rational soul; the rational soul in the body; the body upon earth. So that the Divinity was the essential principle of the human soul formed by proceeding.

"Such is the ladder which reaches down from heaven to earth, at the foot of which he who reposes may say, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I know it not ! How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!"

Long as this extract is, the outline it gives of the great mystery of the incarnation loses something of its clearness from the omissions we have been compelled to make to bring it within the limits of an article. It is, however, sufficient to show that, so far was the Lord's assumed humanity from being a human body without a human soul, it comprehended in itself all being, from Jehovah Himself, dwelling in the inaccessible light far above all heavens, down through all degrees of finite intelligences as they exist in all the angelic heavens, and even in the middle state or world of spirits, to man upon earth. In the Person of Christ the indwelling Deity was thus clothed with humanity in its widest possible extent. His Humanity contained, in the largest and most perfect sense, a human soul, with all human faculties and all human thoughts and affections. In His life the Lord, therefore, passed through all human experience. And as in coming forth from the Father and coming down to earth, He took upon Him all that constitutes humanity, even to its ultimate degree and form in the womb of the Virgin, so in the glorification of His Humanity, by which He ascended where He was before, did He perfect humanity in all its degrees, and thus effect the purpose of the incarnation by bringing Himself, through His glorified Humanity, into a new and closer relationship with His creatures, both on earth and in heaven.

This view of the subject obviates all the objections which the writer of the Norwich Tracts makes against the New Church doctrine of the sonship of Christ, and solves all the difficulties which those may have who approach the subject with no foregone conclusion. The objections of this new opponent strikingly evince the poverty and shallowness of the prevailing ideas of Christians on this great Christian truth, ---the manifestation of God in the flesh. The present writer has no just idea of the Lord's assumption of humanity, and none whatever of

His glorification of the humanity He assumed. So completely is it hid from him, that he regards the terms "Divine Human as mere jargon. It is true that this applies to not a few eminent theological writers in his own church-we do not mean in his own sect. Some writers speak of the Lord's Humanity as Divine; but, as Mr. Clissold observes, even they do not regard the Lord's Humanity as intrinsically Divine, but only as claiming Divinity by virtue of its union with the Divine. The author of the Tracts seems to believe the Lord to be still in a body of flesh, such as He had in the world. Jesus indeed said to His disciples after His resurrection, "Handle me, and see; a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have." But this body of flesh and bones could appear to the disciples and vanish from their sight at the Lord's pleasure; and could appear instantaneously in their midst, the doors being shut of the room in which they were assembled; and could ascend into heaven, into which flesh and blood cannot; and still more, could ascend far above all heavens, into the inaccessible light, where nothing finite can enter or live. But the writer finds a refutation of the doctrine of the divinity of the Lord's humanity in a passage of St. John's second epistle. Swedenborg teaches that the Lord cannot at His Second Coming appear to the natural sight of men, because He is now in a glorified humanity. Thus," says his assailant,. "Emanuel Sivedenborg shows himself one of the predicted antichrists. 'For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Christ is coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist”” (7). In a note the writer says, "Our translation has 'come.' But it is the present participle, and is translated 'coming' in Matthew xxiv. 30." The writer thinks this "coming" relates to the Second Coming of the Lord at some unknown distant period of time. But in this he is mis-taken. The present participle does not mean the Lord was about to come, but that He was then in the act of coming. Alford understood it as teaching the great truth of the incarnation without reference to time; so that the Apostle there expresses the same thought as in his first epistle (iv. 3). Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world." On this mistaken criticism Swedenborg is pronounced to be antichrist!

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SWEDENBORG AND THE LORD'S SECOND COMING.

II.

Difference between the External Inspiration of Swedenborg and of the Prophets.

It is sometimes maintained that Swedenborg could have been inspired only internally, and not externally, because he wrote in the.

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