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postulate, the Incarnation, assumes to meet all these instincts." passage aroused our expectations, and we were certainly surprised to find thoughts scattered throughout the pages of this work which Swedenborgians might claim to be their own. The first two chapters develop the doctrine of force, and establish the notion that the activities of nature are the manifestations of force in an infinitude of forms. Man is a centre of force. He is two-sided. He possesses two planes of activity-an exterior and an interior. The liberation of force in the exterior develops the bodily organization; hence amongst untutored races agility, swiftness, and strength are remarkable. The concentration of force upon the interior expands the intellect at the expense of muscular growth. Now, force we take to be Divine energy or power. In the physical world this assumes certain modifications, such as heat, light, electricity; in man's consciousness thought and affection are its effects. In the world of matter phenomena are produced; in the world of mind phenomena are subjected to examination, and compelled to contribute to the needs and wants of man. Now, if man use the power within him for physical ends merely, he remains in a barbarous and uncivilized state; but if he properly distribute it upon the inner and outer planes of his nature, he on the one hand acquires knowledge and increases his capacity for thought and analysis, and on the other surrounds himself with the comforts and adornments of a civilized existence. The proper utilization of this life-force by mankind will ultimately prove the doctrine of the survival of the fittest true. For doubtless in future ages savage races will be regarded as a novelty, and men will be both physically and intellectually in advance of those of our own day, because sanitary and social legislation will have passed out of their infancy, and the right education of the people will be regarded as one of the essentials of progress and order. How many superstitions will have been overthrown in those times! Perhaps the mythical character of the belief in the soul and the existence of God will have then been fully proved. May be the students of those ages will search for sepulchral monuments overgrown with thorns and weeds— marks of antiquity-with the view of interpreting strange inscriptions about angels and God. And, like the Greeks of old, we shall be regarded as people cherishing singular superstitions. Well, if the prophets of our day are to be believed, this and more will come to pass. The world will be one great scientific laboratory, and society, passed through the alembic of Utilitarianism, will, by the interaction of atoms, have developed into a perfect organization. But there have been false prophets as well as false Christs; and we could name, if we chose, certain prophets whose predictions will assuredly be found wanting. We are not opponents of science but rather lovers of it, yet we believe that all science is not gospel. The present generation has not exhausted nature's treasures. Many theories now confidently relied on may hereafter be regarded as antiquated. But we take it that there are higher aims for man than mere experimentation and observation. Man is certainly a truth-seeker from the very nature of his organization, but he is also an emotional being, and somehow philosophers cannot get rid of the fact that man's highest emotions have been directed for ages to the worship of a

Supreme Being. Our worship and our preaching may be vain and idle in the estimation of such human deities as Professor Clifford, but the gospel of Jesus Christ has satisfied more souls, and comforted more hearts, and dried more tears, and made more people happy than all the systems of all the philosophers who ever lived. The gospel of Jesus Christ has done what the Utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill never can or will accomplish. It would be a valuable thing to know how many professed Utilitarians there are, and what consolation they have found from their doctrines in the hour of need. True Utilitarianism was gospel long before Bentham's day, for God has said, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them," and, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," and this involves the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and eternal life in addition. The great stumblingblock to philosophers seems to be immortality. To common minds it is not so. With them there is no doubt upon the question. The vulgar, resting upon the evidence of their senses, believe in the existence of material things and of an external world. Philosophers are not in this happy position, for they are not agreed, one amongst another, upon this point. Some believe that the evidence of sense is weightier than metaphysical reasoning; others, because they have not a sixth sense by which to detect a substratum, conclude that there is nothing outside of consciousness. But it seems to us that idealists must go with Mr. Hume or be inconsistent, for if nothing that is seen or touched exist but as states of mind, then a man's body has no existence; and thus, according to the Nihilist philosopher, a man is but a concatenation of ideas. But the doctrine of immortality is one of the gravest and most momentous that can be discussed. For if that be false, then has not Christ risen from the dead. We do not, however, fear for the result of the great battle being fought out upon this ground. If Christians will be reasonable and unprejudiced, we feel convinced that science will be found on their side. But the advocates of science should also be reasonable and unprejudiced. Professor Tyndall, in likening the motor-nerves to so many speaking-tubes through which messages are sent from the man to the world, and the sensor-nerves to so many conduits through which the whispers of the world are sent back to the man, says that some one will remark, "But you have not told us where is the man. Who or what is it that sends and receives those messages through the bodily organism? Do not the phenomena point to the existence of a self within the self which acts through the body as a skilfully constructed instrument? Are you not forced by your own exposition to the hypothesis of a free human soul?" "Well," says the Professor, "that hypothesis is offered as an explanation or simplification of a series of phenomena more or less obscure. But adequate reflection shows that, instead of introducing light into our minds, it increases our darkness. You do not in this case explain the unknown in terms of the known, which is the method of science, but you explain the unknown in terms of the more unknown." Now the "known" which the learned man refers to are the facts of experiment and observation. But he must be aware that, in explaining nervous action by molecular motion, he reverses the scientific method, and explains the known in terms

of the unknown, since molecular motion is a pure hypothesis, and, like the soul, has been seen by no mortal eye. Moreover, in his splendid lectures on light he explains the known facts and phenomena of light by the unknown vibrations of an unknown medium. The above statement of the speaker was introduced by Lange's illustration of the merchant who, by a few scrawls on a telegram, was urged to the utmost exertion for the salvation of his credit; and he remarked that "this complex mass of action, emotional, intellectual, and mechanical, was evoked by the impact upon the retina of the infinitesimal waves of light coming from a few pencil-marks on a bit of paper." Now we hold that this is a sophism, for the pencil-marks did not produce the action emotional, intellectual, and mechanical, but the ideas called up in the merchant's consciousness by the message. One might as well say that a man's appetite is excited by the waves of light falling upon his retina from a well-spread table; but, in the name of common sense, is not his appetite aroused by the recollection of the pleasure of former repasts, and of the satisfaction thence resulting? and recollection is the revival of ideas in consciousness. The existence of the soul is not to be disproved by such arguments as that adduced from Lange's merchant. The idea of immortality is deeply impressed on the nature of man, and even philosophers cannot altogether eradicate it from themselves. As our author remarks in the beginning of the fourth chapter of his work, "The idea of the immortality of the soul is far more widely spread than the idea of the existence of one or more Gods. Barbarous people standing on the lowest rung of the scale of civilization, incapable of the smallest mental advance, unable to draw inferences which are self-suggestive and to argue from palpable analogies (and this is all that is required for conceiving the idea of God), are nevertheless found to believe explicitly or implicitly in the perpetuation of life after death.”

"The conception of a deity requires some mental exertion, the conception of immortality none. Given the consciousness of personality, of a self the seat of the will, the thoughts, and the feelings, and the belief in the perpetuity of life follows at once."

(To be continued.)

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Miscellaneous.

CHURCH PARTIES.-Two interesting papers on the leading parties into which the Established Church is divided are given in the January and February numbers of Frazer's Magazine.

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The general division of the Church is into three classes, the High, Low, and Broad Church parties. They may be broadly described as giving prominence respectively to Authority, Scripture, and Reason. "Each party has, indeed, professed to acknowledge all these principles; the High Church party has reverenced Scripture, and not wholly proscribed reason; the Low Church party has appealed to the authority of the Church when that authority was on their own side, and, by asserting the right of private judgment, has opened the door to reason; and the Broad Church party has claimed to have discovered, or reasserted, the true meaning both of the Church and of the Scripture. The oldest of these parties, and, on the awakening of the religious life from the deep sleep of the last century, for some time the most influential, is the Evangelical party. To this party the Establishment furnished churches in which to worship, and stipends to the ministers who conducted the worship, but was scarcely regarded in a religious sense. The ministers regarded similarity of religious opinion and manifestations of piety and zeal as the true ground of Christian fellowship. They had no sympathy with the fox-hunting, port wine drinking clergy by whom they were surrounded, and not unfrequently found their associates in Dissenting communities and with Dissenting ministers. "Newton, when a new pastor was ordained in the Dissenting meeting at Olney, or when any special service was held, attended, as a matter of course, as rector of the parish. Scott associated on the closest terms of intimacy with Dissenters of all denominations."

The quickened life of the High Church party changed this attitude of the Evangelical section of the Church towards Dissenters. They began to vie with their High Church brethren in exalting the Church. "And here,' says this writer, "is the weak point of the Evan

gelical party in the Church of England. They are so afraid of being taunted with being bad Churchmen, that they are often even less disposed to a friendly policy towards Nonconformists than their High Church rivals, who feel that they, at least, can afford to be civil without any fear of compromising themselves. They are like a man who meets a shabby relation in St. James's Street, and who does not like to cut him, but yet is mortally afraid of his friends in the club windows seeing him in unfashionable company.'

The Oxford movement which forty years since created such an excitement in England may be credited as the beginning of the great change which has come over the High Church party. Its leaders were men of high intellectual culture, of fervent piety, and of unquestionable sincerity. They set up the standard of the Church, and the parsons of the "High and Dry" school, whose importance was thereby magnified, rallied to this watchword. The result has been marvellous. "If a devout member of the Church of England," says this writer, "had left this country forty years ago and were to return to it now, the change which he would ob serve in all the externals of the Church would seem to him nothing short of a revolution. The cathedrals which he had left mere interesting relics of antiquity, many of them hastening to decay, he would find not only restored and embellished at vast expense, but alive and showing their vitality in ways then undreamt of. Where he left old mouldering churches blocked up with pews, he would find buildings restored to an almost painful condition of newness, bright with stained glass and seated with democratic-looking open benches; everywhere in town and country he would notice new churches thick as mushrooms in autumn, of more or less correct Gothic architecture, and giving evidence of unstinted expenditure; attached to these he would find school buildings, of a type which forty years ago would have been condemned as utterly extravagant and inconsistent with their purpose.'

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A considerable portion of the members of this section of the Church has adopted extreme Ritualistic practices, and become more fervent in raising the cry, "Hear the Church," than the Divine exhortation, "Hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches." To the question, Has the Oxford movement succeeded in instilling its teaching into the minds of Englishmen, or of English Churchmen? but one answer, says this writer, can be given. "The clergy, indeed, have largely accepted a doctrine (the doctrine of Apostolic succession) which appeals not only to the love of authority, inherent even in the clerical nature, but also to their loyalty to the Church; upon the laity it has fallen dead. Nor can it be said that the so-called sacramental system-which is a kind of corollary of Apostolical succession-has laid any real hold on the mind of the Church laity. It is true, and we rejoice to record it, that a far more frequent and far more reverent attendance at the highest office of religion has become almost universal, but this is a part of the general awakening of Church life, which may have sprung out of the High Church movement, but which is entirely independent of it, and which, indeed, extends to the Nonconformists."

DOCTRINE. It is a very common practice of those who claim to be advanced thinkers to decry doctrine. All sound thought has reference to some central principle, which is the doctrine with which it is connected, and to which it has constant relation. The doctrines of the past are no longer adequate to the intellectual necessities of the present times. Not less certainly is true doctrine a necessity. This is felt by the most thoughtful teachers, and sometimes very plainly expressed. In a letter on the special want of the Church,' having relation to the desire on the part of some of the members of the Congregational Union to remove from its membership those Congregational ministers who openly avow opinions which can scarcely be distinguished from Unitarianism, the Rev. Baldwin Brown says-"I can enter, too, into the desire to see a great dogmatist once more. Among the many influences at work upon us, that of a great master of doctrine would be most helpful-a man who could handle dogma

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with a master's power, and present in clear, intellectual forms the verities of the Christian faith in a shape which men educated in this generation would regard as belonging to them and to their times. The words of such a teacher would greatly clear our conceptions and brace our intellectual power for its highest exercise the searching the deep things of God. But the very worst use to which we could put our dogmatist would be to let him weave his dogmas as bands around our Churches. Bands quickly become bonds to growing natures."

The master required has been given to the Church, but, as has ever been the case, the Church is slow to receive the teacher which is sent. In the writings of Swedenborg the system of doctrine required will be found; and it will not be a bond limiting the exercise of thought, but a light guiding to ever-increasing perceptions of truth and wisdom.

ATONEMENT. - The one doctrine to which exclusive attention seemed at one time to be given, was the doctrine of the Atonement. On this doctrine rested the dogma of justification by faith only; and to question the popular interpretation was to remove the foundation of Christian faith and hope, and to endanger the entire structure of religion and godliness. A few, among whom seems to be Mr. Spurgeon, still entertain this opinion. Many of the most popular preachers of the day treat the doctrine, as once interpreted, with determined hostility. A discourse on the subject, by Rev. S. Cox, has recently appeared in the pages of the Christian World, under the title of "A Discourse on the Doctrine of Trust and Appropriation." After citing from the Thirty-nine Articles, he remarks-" Articles IX., II., and XXXI. tell me that I deserve God's wrath and damnation for the nature I was born with, and you might as well tell me that God will damn me for the skin I was born with, and which I have no power to make either black or white. Tell me that Christ suffered to reconeile His Father to us,' and how can I but remember that such an affirmation runs right in the teeth of the New Tes tament, which nowhere affirms that God needed to be reconciled to us, but everywhere that we needed to be reconciled to Him: as thus-All things are of

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