according to Swedenborg's own statement, "the Lord wrote through him.

This the writer in question seems to think, for he says (p. 353, et seq.) :

"Our Lord, when He assumed hunian nature, was instructed as another man,' the only difference between Him and all others being in His power of acquiring. One essential difference between the Lord's acquisitions and those of all other men was this the Lord went on to infinite, because He had the Infinite within Him; other men can go on to infinity, because although they can never reach, they can continually go on unto perfection. The function which the apostle of the New Church was chosen to exercise required that his mind should be richly stored with the scientifics both of nature and of the Word; yet from the very fact of his being finite he must have been fallible; being progressive, he must have been imperfect. His writings, I think, afford instances of both some I will adduce.'

If the finiteness of vessels is an obstacle to the perfect reception and consequent expression of the pure Divine Truth, those vessels must have preserved this power also in the case of the sacred writers. For the influence of the spirits through whom they were inspired descended into their memory and clothed itself with the scientifics which were contained there, as we have seen above in the extract from Adversaria, iii. 6965. Yet Swedenborg expressly declares there that "the human expressions," and even "the analytical form of thought," and hence the finiteness, of the mind of him who is the recipient of inspiration, by no means interferes with the Divinity of such an inspiration. And the writer himself recognizes the truth of this statement where he says,—

"I can understand how the sacred writers could be, and indeed, could not but be, infallible; because they were the passive instruments of an Infinite, and therefore Infallible, Power. They, as I have remarked, supplied at most, the agency of the memory as a storehouse of words and facts."

Finiteness in the case of the sacred writers, according to his statement, was no obstacle to their reception of Divine Truth in its perfection; but in Swedenborg it was; for he says, "Yet from the very fact of his being finite, he must have been fallible."

But the writer retorts here that Divine Truth as revealed through the sacred writers was infallible; because they were "instruments of an Infinite, and therefore Infallible, Power." So Swedenborg was an "instrument of an Infinite, and therefore Infallible, Power;" for the writer himself declares (p. 244) that "the great event of the Lord's Second Coming has been effected through him."

Again, he says that the sacred writers were "passive instruments," and Swedenborg was not; for "he received the truths and doctrines of the Word into his understanding, and made them the subjects of rational perception, and even of rational reflection." If "passiveness on the part of man is the condition for receiving Divine Truth in its purity, then pure truth cannot dwell among the angels of heaven; for the angels are not passive but active receivers of the Divine Truth. But Swedenborg, I hold, as to his spirit was in the active state of the angels with whom he was associated, whenever he thought of what he was to write, and also while in the act of writing," i.e. whenever he was in a state of "inspiration."

24

66

SCIENCE-SERMONS FOR YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN.

Subject-THE DEVELOPMENT OF MAN.

66

WE are to talk to-day of the Development of Man, but I want first to say a word to you personally. You will see that I have changed the second heading of these "Sermons," and now address you as young men and women." In my simplicity I had thought that young people," the title under which I formerly addressed you, meant those who were neither old people nor middle-aged people, and that sermons grounded on scientific subjects so addressed would be heard, if listened to at all, by those of such third division of "people" as were old enough to understand them, that is, by young men and women. But I am informed that "young people mean children, and soberly assured that it is doubtful whether children could understand such sermons. This a ray of light, not exactly from Birmingham, but struck off in Birmingham by the contact of certain representative minds, lay and cleric, for the time being centred there. And I think your answer to this original conception will be that as yet you are in no difficulty about your identity and in little need of light upon it; but that as you and I have no wish to offend that proverbial wisdom of commonplace which is said to strain at a gnat, etc., we should quietly take out the gnat in hope that the wisdom may swallow, even if it does not digest, the whole camel of our discourse. But cela soit dit entre nous. Young people," we are now young men and women," "that we henceforth be no more children." The common feeling on the subject of the Development of Man in religious circles both in and out of the New Church seems to be one of half-acknowledged difficulty; it is not clearly seen how the facts of science and the teachings of theology are reconcileable, though it is believed or hoped that a solution does exist. Modern science makes short work of the matter, treating the theological theory of a fall from an exalted origin as a mere myth fit only to be ignored. Some religionists, moreover, who also think in this way, have solved the difficulty to their own satisfaction by compelling their theology to speak the language of science, repudiating the idea of a "fall" in every form, and speaking of man's development as an unbroken upward progress. They have grafted their theology upon science, and, as usual in such cases, have to pay the penalty in a corresponding difficulty of Scripture interpretation. On the one hand, then, we have the scientific theory of upward progress, on the other, the theological theory of declension, and between them the theology that swears by science, come what may, and makes the best of its endeavour to adjust itself scripturally thereto. Nor in the New Church are the theologians who deny a "fall" unrepresented, for we have Mr. Rodger's "Microcosm," though Mr. Rodgers would protest that it is his theology which has led him, and not he who has

compelled his theology, to regard a "fall" as a theological myth and no positive human fact. But with many the difficulty remains, nevertheless they believe in a "fall," they would also believe in progression, and yet they do not see how the two things are compatible.

Now, I would have you notice one small fact which those who go in for progress pure and simple are apt to overlook,—the fact that there is not and never has been any such thing. Scientists themselves do not hold the doctrine; they, on the contrary, everywhere recognize the palpable truth that man's progress, though in the main upward, has been indisputably chequered by retrogressions. And with the facts of history before us, it is truly difficult to see how any one can speak otherwise. Did not the ancient monarchies, every one of them, pass into decay? So thoroughly did they "fall," morally and physically (and I do not speak of them as conquered powers), that their very civilization itself has ceased from the world's knowledge, and become as to its nature and extent a matter of dispute. Need I remind you of the decay of science and art in Egypt? Need I remind you either of the title by which a famous historian distinguished his work,-— "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"? or again, of the fate of the world-renowned and highly-cultured Greece? or yet of the decline of the Mexicans? or, lastly, of the temple-building Indians of central America, the rude hordes of Asia, and the savage tribes of Africa and Australia? "We know," says Tylor, in his "Early History of Mankind," "by what has taken place within the range of history, that decline as well as progress in art and knowledge really goes on in the world. Is there not then evidence to prove that degradation as well as development has happened to the lower races beyond the range of direct history?" and he proceeds to show that there is. Tylor, as we all know, is one of the most uncompromising advocates of development, and yet his idea of it includes retrogression. Human development, from the scientific point of view, means simply progress on the whole, an idea which not only rudely puts aside any paper-theory of pure ascent, but leaves room for a well-pronounced and unmistakable "fall." This being clearly understood, we are prepared to face the questions, Do the natural facts as known to us make for development? Does the genuine interpretation of Scripture warrant our belief in a "fall" in the early history of the race? If development be scientifically true and a "fall" theologically assertible, how are the scientific truth and the theological assertion to be harmonized?

1. Do the facts speak for development?

We to-day are in a more advanced stage of progress than our ancestors of a century ago. They also were further advanced in art and knowledge than the ancestors of a like period; and so on, backward, to the beginning of the Christian era. From that time to this, an immense stride in progress has been made; so great, that Luther, the Crusaders, Augustine, or Paul, if they returned to the earth as they left it, would be among an unknown race, and as men that dreamed, did the good old hills and the abiding sky not persuade them it was still

the world they had left. The meaning of this fact is progress and civilization, advancement from a lower to a higher condition of human existence, or, in one word, development.

Step now over the boundary line of the Christian era into the Ancient World. At our feet are the Greek and Roman Empires, one gone as a power in the world, the other going. They have both been great; but was their greatness always with them, or was it attained? Surely they rose to that greatness from an origin lowly enough,-the one from an obscure and barbarous tribe on the banks of the Tiber, who gained their wives by stealing them; the other from four restless semi-barbarous hordes of Thessaly who possessed themselves of the Grecian Peninsula. Looking still backward into the ages of the ancient world, we see the five great monarchies of the East in their power and splendour, and before and coincident with them, stretching into the long, dim past, the ancient Egypt with its priestly lore and quasi-scientific culture. We sometimes hear these races of the old world called civilized. The name is a misnomer: they were not civilized, but barbaric. And here is the essential difference between the old and the present, marking too, as it does, the vast stride in development from the ancient to the modern worlds; the race is in civilization now, but it was from barbarism it came. Look at the fact as we will, twist it as we may, grant as much splendour and science to these peoples as we honestly can (and they have been sometimes credited with a great deal too much), the fact is nevertheless written on the ancient world's face which tells of an essential difference between it and us; and the name of that fact is Barbarism. It was the life of Him Who is known to the world as Jesus Christ that made the difference and brought the life of civilization to light. Here is the indelible witness of history to the development of man. And, think you, did these barbarians differ in their mode of origin from Greece and Rome? Their possession of power was not an inheritance of decline, but a gradual growth in attainment by struggle and conflict. From the old Chaldean hordes of central Asia to the advancing, subtler, keener Assyrians, the more cultured and powerful Babylonians, and the comparatively refined and elevated Persians-the crown of the ancient peoples till Greece despoiled them, only to be despoiled in turn by the more powerful Romans-is one long line of rude barbaric advancement. The remotest ray of history falls on the beginning of barbarism. But what before?

Is there any evidence which can carry us safely still further into the remote past? That evidence exists,-evidence which brings us to the dawn of human life; and that life is Savage. Nor have we now only to do with human life on the completed earth; we are carried back to the commencement of the earth's superficial formation, and clear out of that period into the Recent geological ages. Before the earth came into its present comparatively finished condition, while the geological strata were still in the course of formation, man lived; so completely is the old conception cancelled of Paradise as the abode

of the first man. If it were Paradise, surely it was a strange one, a Paradise of caves and lake-dwellings, with wolves and hyenas for society, and with rude flint implements to ward off their undesirable advances. The evidence for the existence of primeval man in this savage state is world-wide: it is found in the delta of the Mississippi, in China and Japan, deep down on the banks of the Nile, in the Swiss and other lake-dwellings, in the caves of France, and in those of our own country, of Derbyshire and of Torquay. The strata in which their bones are found, the rude flint implements they used, and the marked advance on these in the remains of succeeding times, their contemporaries the extinct wild animals found with them,-all point us to the irresistible conclusion that the first men lived and died in a state of savagery.

In the geologic ages, long antecedent to the period of history, man lived as a savage; at the dawn of history we see him emerge from the northern fastnesses of Asia as a rude barbarian, this second great period of his life being but a progress into, and subsequent decline from, a more splendid and cultured barbarism; and finally, in these last ages we see him pass onward into civilization, a fact and state of life wholly modern, and datable from the period of the life of Jesus Christ on the earth. Savagery, barbarism, civilization,—this looks like progressive development, or we mistake the facts.

Moreover, this plain story of progress has been supplemented by many considerations drawn from various sources, from language, the art of counting, mythology, religion, and the rites and ceremonies of the different peoples. In language progress is found from the gestures, signs, cries, imitations of natural sounds, artistic productions of parts of speech (lengthening of vowel sounds, for instance, to indicate what moderns call the degrees of comparison), and metaphorical usages of savage men, through the simpler languages proper of primitive peoples, to the more complex, highly-wrought and scientific forms of classic and cultured times. In the art of counting, similar traces are discerned; savages count on their fingers and toes, one hand being five, two hands ten, hands and feet twenty, with combinations of these numbers, in tribes further advanced, on to once five, twice five, etc., once ten, twice ten, etc., from which natural arithmetic arose, they say, our decimal system of numeration, which in turn shows signs of giving way before the more perfect duodecimal. In mythology, some see a parallel development from the crude myth of the savage to the elaborate symbolic conceptions shown by barbaric and even by civilized nations. In religion, too, development is traced by science from the fetishism of the nature-worshipper, by which every inanimate thing is endowed with a spiritual counterpart and believed to be alive, through that Polytheism which has been the at least exoteric religion of so many nations, to its ultimate stage of development in the Monotheism of Judaism and of some forms of Christianity; which last, it is said, is to pass, as its highest reach, into that most abstract of all abstractions, the worship of an inscrutable power or impersonal cause.