share of the work in fishing whenever that occupation is alluded to in the Gospels.

In conclusion, let us not forget what is narrated concerning these two disciples Peter and Andrew when they received the call from the Lord. We read that "they straightway left their nets and followed Him." Let us then forsake all those doctrines and forms of religion which do not acknowledge the Lord as their Great Originator and as their Great Centre. Let our faith be a living faith in Him as our only God and Saviour from sin; let our obedience consist in a willing surrender of all our powers to His service; then, come what may, all will be well; the Lord will make our cause to prosper; He will enlarge our hearts and purify our thoughts; He will cause a rich increase of love and faith to take deep root in our souls, and thus will be brought to a successful issue that great work of regeneration which He has begun within us. LAURENCE ALBUTT.

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS

BELIEF.

II.

THE two quotations which closed our previous paper may be profitably expanded. That the cessation of the sensuous functions, together with the disintegration of the material form, marks the consummation of man is a doctrine neither popular nor consoling. To some thinkers may be a source of satisfaction and comfort, but ordinary minds will not away with it.

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Even wild and savage races who know nothing of revealed truth firmly believe in the future existence of man. Their faith doubtless rests upon strange and indefinable ideas, yet their belief is firm and immovable; it is seen in the solemnities and mysteries of their funeral rites; it is observed in their sacred veneration for the dead. If we trace back to the Aryan of remote antiquity we find that death for him was hedged in with singular terrors and fearful obligations. "The den," says a historian," which the primitive man defended for his mate and his offspring with the instinctive tenacity of a brute, would have remained a den for ever if no higher feeling had been marked in the mind of its possessor. This impulse was imparted by the primitive belief in the continuity of human life. The owner of the den had not ceased to live because he was dead; his power to do harm was even greater than it had been. If the disembodied soul cannot obtain the rest which it needs it will wreak its vengeance on the living, and it cannot rest if the body remain unburied." 1 Among such people annihilation was an impossible con ception. For them the present and the future were Cox, General History of Greece, p. 7.

linked in inseparable union. But whence sprung the universal and deeply-rooted idea of continuity? We believe that it is a fact of man's nature of which he cannot rid himself. We hold that not even a mind trained in the schools of science and philosophy can conceive annihilation. Every sane man believes implicitly in his own personality. He feels that it is involved in all the anterior facts of his consciousness, for he finds in his memory the indelible record of his past existence, and this both inseparably connects him with the bygone and differentiates him from every other individual. He, then, who can conceive the extinction of personality will have no difficulty in doing the same for consciousness.

But let any person try to perform either or both of these mental feats and we venture to assert that he will most signally and completely fail. Nevertheless it may be argued that even the universality of a belief does not amount to a complete proof of the truth of that which is believed. Formerly the sun was believed to revolve around the earth. Not a century since all swans were believed to be white. But it is to be remarked that the first of these is a relative and the latter a contingent truth. That things which are equal to the same things are equal to one another, that two straight lines cannot inclose a space, are necessary truths whose contraries are inconceivable. The existence of a material universe is also a necessary or intuitive truth; for we cannot," says Locke, "conceive how simple ideas of sensible qualities should subsist alone, and therefore we suppose them to exist in, and to be supported by, some common subject." That the soul or mind is an existent thing, relative to each man, we take to be a necessary or intuitive truth parallel with the preceding. "The qualities which we perceive by our senses must have a subject, which we call body, and the thoughts we are conscious of must have a subject, which we call mind." 1 Upon the above proposition we will make the following observations: That there is a subject called body or matter can never be demonstrated directly, since we know its qualities only. Yet no man, except in moments of philosophic ecstasy, doubts its existence. He who believes in the fact appeals to the law of causation. He who doubts is bound to prove that sensuous phenomena are not the result of a cause. Again, that there is a subject called the mind or soul cannot be established directly. But upon him who doubts rests the burden of proving that annihilation is a possible law. He who maintains that he cannot believe in the existence of the soul, because nothing whatever can be known of it, ignores all the facts of his consciousness, and lays himself open to the retort that he can know nothing even of matter itself beyond its properties. It might, however, be answered, perhaps, that the existence of matter or substance is rightly believed in because it can be seen and felt; nevertheless it could be demanded of anyone to make good this assertion by proving that an apple placed in a box, and thus removed from the sphere of his senses, is an existent thing. Moreover, we would 1 Reid, Essays on Intellectual Powers, Essay vi.

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remark that the existence of the soul, and consequently of spiritual substance, is involved in the greater question of the existence of God, and he who will undertake to disprove the latter will perform a task which, although often attempted, has yet never been accomplished. Now with the question of immortality is intimately connected the interesting subject of the origin of religious systems. "The world," says our author, "in all ages has teemed with religious beliefs of the most diverse forms of ceremonial expression, strangely contrasted in system and opposed in dogma. Here the priest smears with human blood the idol which will be overthrown to-morrow. The gods of one nation are the devils of their neighbours. Here priests sacrifice children in flames to a god, and there men shelter and feed orphans as a work acceptable to a deity. These transfix their flesh with skewers, those indulge their every lust, and both from a religious motive. One worships an ideal of beauty, another an ideal of ugliJacob leans on his staff to pray, Moses falls flat on his face. The Catholic bows his knee, and the Protestant settles himself in a seat." Now although religious customs, beliefs, and modes of faith are apparently widely differentiated one from another, still in the diverse systems of the world we have evidence that in the breast of man there are emotions which can find satisfaction only in the adoration and worship of a supreme ideal. The mode of display of the religious sentiments and of systemal dogmas are generally correlated to the idiosyncrasy of races, and therefore when any theological system is examined, the task will not be fairly accomplished unless the mental constitution and emotional peculiarities of the particular people who profess that belief be considered. Amongst civilized peoples religion becomes divested of a deep emotional character, and frequently degenerates into mere intellectual exercise or ceremonial routine. But with Orientals the understanding is often overborne by zeal and an allabsorbing devotion. Religious fervour carries the Hindoo even to the yielding up of life, while the average Englishman regards religion as a tame piece of business which must be followed for the sake of family and decency. Now although religious systems are divided one from another by great gaps, yet there is good reason to believe that they have all diverged from a common root. In this circumstance they resemble languages-some are highly symbolical, but incapable of expressing the higher generalizations of thought; while others, as the ancient Greek, can set forth the finest conceptions of poetic fancy and the profoundest speculations of philosophy. Yet all the IndoEuropean languages are dialects of a primitive tongue now unknown. "The people who spoke this tongue must have lived together as a one great community more than three thousand years ago. Tradition as well as the evidence of language points to the north-eastern part of the Iranian tableland near the Hindu Kush Mountains as the original abode of this primitive people." Now as the Indo-European languages may be traced to a common stock, so we believe can the religions of 1 Morris, Outlines of English Accidence, p. 9.

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the world. There seems to have been a period when the development of the religious idea and sentiment had reached its culminating-point : the law of self was in subjection, and the law of God was dominant ; the intellect delighted in a divine symbolism, and love became active in uses. Man was celestial, and the faculty of perception was fully developed. "They had continual perception, so that when they reflected on what was treasured up in the memory, they instantly perceived whether it were true or good. This high degree of spiritual development was evolved, it should seem, from a crude primitive condition. "This and the preceding chapters," says Swedenborg, "to the verses now under consideration, treat of the most ancient people, and of their regeneration: primarily of those who had lived like wild beasts, but at length became spiritual men; then of those who became celestial men, and constitute the most ancient Church." 2

Again, in the second chapter, No. 81, he remarks, "This chapter treats of the celestial man as the preceding one did of the spiritual, who was formed out of the dead man ;" and he goes on to explain "that a dead man [spiritually] acknowledges nothing to be true and good but what belongs to the body and the world, and this he adores." Now our author, whether from independent thought or by help of Swedenborg, has struck upon a similar idea, for he says, "At first man is conscious of no existence save his own; he is like the brute, selfcentred and self-sufficient, he is his own god, he is an autotheist." But when the point of culmination had been attained, the decline of the celestial star commenced. Then began falsification of primal truths, and consequent branching out of belief into numerous heresies. Then also the corruption or extinction of the science of correspondence, the science of the correlation of visible things and spiritual states, Nature was personified, and in her various objects and phenomena ideals of worship were sought. Polytheism then became an established fact. But as polytheism was the result of the loss of the science of correspondence, so was it a means of preserving amongst men a belief in the existence of and a reverence for the supernatural and higher powers. Idolatry, it doubtless was yet not the gross form which it subsequently assumed. The Greek worshipped and sacrificed to invisible beings who were thought to govern the Cosmos and dispose the affairs of men. But Nebuchadnezzar commanded his subjects to bow down to a golden image on the plain of Shinar. Greek besought Jupiter, the king of heaven, in his prayers; but the Hindoo bows down to and reposes confidence in idols of wood and stone. Still in whatever form we find either polytheism or imageworship, they evidence an important fact, that by such crude but significant means the idea of a personal God in some form or other has been perpetuated amongst uncivilized peoples. "Idolatry," our author says, "is the outward expression of a belief in a personal God. The formation of the idea of a personal God is, and must be, 1 Arcana Cœlestia, No. 125. 2 Arcana Cœlestia, No. 286.

The

the making of an image, though not necessarily of a graven image." Now we often find that those who shun one extreme of belief, betake themselves to the other; this, it should seem, was the case with the framers of the Articles of the Established Church, and evidently is with many who believe them. For by those Articles the personality of God is annihilated. He is defined as a being without parts or passions. But who can conceive a personal God without attributes or form? 66 The Articles of the Church of England," says Mr. Gould, "forbid us to hold that God has parts or passions like ourselves; but if He is to be worshipped, every prayer must be a departure from this injunction." One would conclude from the said theological proposition, so celebrated and so obscure, that its framers either forgot or ignored the existence of Jesus Christ, God manifest in human form. He came that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly, through the Divine human as the Word made flesh. It was this grand divine manifestation that destroyed the influence of paganism and polytheism in Europe within the course of a few centuries. The grand conception of a personal deity is the burden of prophecy, and the corner-stone of true theology. The human mind can worship nothing of which it can form no conception. "The nature of man,' says Swedenborg, "is such that he is willing to worship that of which he can have some perception and thought. This feeling is common to the human race. Hence the Gentiles worship idols in which they believe."

(To be continued.)

THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD.
"I will come again."

BY THE LATE REV. J. HYDE.

SECTION III.-GOSPEL CITATIONS OF FIRST ADVENT PROPHECIES:

MATTHEW.

Do the evangelists claim literal and verbal fulfilment of First Advent prophecies? The inquiry is interesting, and cannot fail to be instructive.

The first of such prophecies is cited by Matthew (i. 22, 23), where the birth of the Saviour is claimed to be the fulfilment of Isa. vii. 14 : "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." That particular prophecy, however, forms part of a series. Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, had gone up against Jerusalem, where Ahaz was reigning over Judah, to war against it. Isaiah was commanded by the Lord to go to Ahaz to comfort him in his distress, and he predicted for Ahaz and his people