27. Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah,

28. Obel, Abimael, Sheba,

29. Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab; all of which were so many nations of the families of Heber, adopting so many kinds of rituals. (It is, however, impossible to say what kinds of rituals are here signified, since they are determined according to the worship to which they have relation; and unless the worship be first known, nothing can be ascertained concerning its rituals. Nor would the knowledge be of any use, supposing it could be ascertained; since none of the names of these nations occur in other parts of the Word.)

30. And the worship belonging to these nations extended its domain from the truths of faith to the goods of charity.

31. Such were the derivations from the internal worship of the church of Shem, according to its differences in respect of charity and faith, in general and in particular.

32. These are the kinds of worship which prevailed in the men of the Ancient Church in particular, according to their capacity of being reformed; and hence came all the kinds of worship which prevailed in the church in general, as regards both good and evil, from the commencement of the Ancient Church. (This chapter, moreover, contains the principles of worship which prevail in every church; and thus comprehends more than man can possibly believe or conceive. Such is the Word of the Lord.)

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW CHURCH.

To the Editor,

SIR,-Allow me with all possible brevity to make a few notes on two critical papers, by S. M. W., in the December and January Intellectual Repository, reflecting on some remarks of mine on the covers of the May and July New Churchman.

In the first place, it is a mistake to suppose that I refused to allow my readers to be addressed in opposition to the opinions I advanced. Any one may see this by reference to the numbers of the New Churchman. It was I who was attacked and opposed, and I simply stood on the defensive. As you, Mr. Editor, well know, there must be a limit put to discussions somewhere, or our magazines would be filled with them; and whatever might be the personal gratification of the controversialists in such a result, it is certain it would alienate and disgust the greater mass of readers. It must also be plain to everybody that the

New Churchman has no accommodation for papers of the length of

S. M. W.'s.

In the New Churchman it was said that,

'Swedenborg, when writing the Arcana Cœlestia, was not in a position to speak of the future of the New Church. The Arc. Col. was written and published between the years 1749 and 1756 ; the last volume being issued a year previous to the Last Judgment, in 1757. Writing at that period, and judging from analogy, it was but natural for him to think that the New Church would be raised up among the Gentiles. It had ever been so before, and thinking analogically, it would be so again. But there is no analogy between the New Church and the churches of the past. We are expressly told in the Arcana Celestia that all churches have commenced in charity and declined in process of time to the doctrine of faith, and at last to faith alone being saving. Now no one believes that such is to be the fate of the New Church, which is to exist to all eternity, 'the crown of all churches.' The New Church commences in true doctrine, grows in charity and celestial love. It was the reverse with previous churches; they were at their best in their beginnings."

"The statements made by Swedenborg in the Arcana Calestia, in reference to the establishment of the New Church among the Gentiles, and the departure of the church from Christendom, he never repeated in any of his subsequent writings. Swedenborg's illumination was undoubtedly progressive, and it was not given him to see how the New Church would come until the Last Judgment had been effected."

These sentences contain the substance of my remarks in the New Churchman. Let us now see what S. M. W. has to say against them.

He makes a very good abstract of the passages bearing upon the subject in the Arcana Calestia, and then goes on to quote passages from Swedenborg's later writings to confirm them. These passages teach nothing but this, that the Gentiles receive true doctrine more readily than Christians, and enter heaven more easily; facts which I have not the slightest inclination to dispute. But granting ready reception of the truth, and easy entrance into heaven, what then? Does that prove capacity to form, and lead in the Lord's New Church-the New Jerusalem? No doubt the simple mind of some servant of a Luther or Melancthon, would more readily receive the truth and enter heaven than the master; but when the great round mind of the master is brought by vastation, or by other means, into the truth, does not the old superiority remain? I think so. And in a relation somewhat similar do the Gentile nations known to us stand in comparison with the great peoples which are considered as forming Christendom. When the church was transferred from the Jews to the Gentiles, it was transferred to the finest nations the world held. But were the same process to be repeated now it would be the transfer from the best races to the worse, which I can never believe in Divine Providence possible.

One of the passages quoted by S. M. W. from L. J., 76 (it also occurs in T. C. R., 840, and Con. L. J., 76), does anything but prove his assertion that " a new church is always born from among those who were of the preceding church, and is afterwards transferred." It is said in L. J., 76, that " the doctrines of the New Church are orally dictated by angelic spirits to the inhabitants of Africa." Now here is a church established independently of "the New Church born from among those of the old." How, then, S. M. W. proves his point by such passages it is difficult to see. Perhaps it was this communication of the truths of the New Jerusalem to the Africans that led Swedenborg to say in A. C., 9256, that" the church at this day is now being transferred to the Gentiles." But if this African church was to be the germ of the universal New Church, what need was there for Swedenborg's labours? It is one of our pleasing beliefs that the New Church will embrace the whole human race, thus standing in contradistinction to the churches of the past, which were only sectional. I cannot but think that the Lord, in thus operating upon the Africans, who may be looked upon as the will of humanity, or as I have heard it suggested, celestial remains, and by Swedenborg upon the nations of Europe, or the understanding, is dealing with the whole human race as He does with an individual in regeneration.

There is but another of the extracts S. M. W. gives as confirmatory of the sentiments conveyed in the A. C. by Swedenborg in relation to the New Church that I need say a word about, and that is the passage from the Last Judgment, in which some angels say,

"They have but slender hope of the men of the Christian church, but much of some nation far distant from the Christian world."

Then evidently alluding to the African nation, already spoken of. But of the Gentiles, as we generally think of them, Swedenborg expressly say's, after the Last Judgment,

"The state of the church will be dissimilar hereafter; it will be indeed similar in the outward form, but dissimilar in the inward. To outward appearance divided churches will exist as heretofore, their doctrines will be taught as heretofore; and the same religions as now, will exist among the Gentiles."—L. J., 73.

Now, what church is this but the Christian church which is to have its internals changed whilst it maintains its former externals, whilst the Gentiles remain in their old religions? It was hardly fair of S. M. W. to pass over this passage and then to use the following L. J., 74, in the way he does.

The angels spoken of by Swedenborg in the treatise on the Last Judgment had " slender hope of the men of the Christian church." In

the True Christian Religion, 846, we find another set of angels who indulged in more cheerful thoughts. These "angels were greatly rejoiced to hear that it had pleased the Lord to reveal the doctrine of correspondences, which had lain so deeply hidden for thousands of years. It was done, they said, with this view, that the Christian church, which is founded on the Word, and is now at its end, may again revive, and derive its spirit through heaven from the Lord."

In addition to the imperfection of S. M. W.'s quotations he gives one, as I think unfairly. Let us look at A. R., 547, at length:

"It is of the Lord's divine Providence that the church should at first be confined to a few, and that its numbers should successively increase, because the falses of the former church must first be removed; for before this, truths cannot be received, since truths, which are received and implanted before falses are removed, do not remain, and they are also rejected by the dragonists; the like happened with the Christian church, which increased successively from few to many. Another reason is, that a new heaven is first to be formed, which will act as one with the church on earth; therefore, we read, that he saw a new heaven, and the Holy Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Apoc. xxi., 7 and 8. It is certain that a New Church, which is the New Jerusalem, will exist, because it is foretold in the Apocalypse; and it is also certain that the falses of the former church are first to be removed, because they are what the Apocalypse treats of as far as chapter xx."

In T. C. R., 784, the statements in this passage are repeated. It is said,

"In proportion as this new heaven increases, in the same proportion the New Jerusalem, that is, the New Church, comes down from that heaven; so that this cannot be effected in a moment, bnt in proportion as the falses of the former church are removed."

Now S. M. W. quotes A. R. 547 in this style :-" Because the falses of the former church must first be removed, E. S. says, the like happened with the Christian Church, which increased successively from few to many." Now, Swedenborg says nothing of the kind. He simply states that the New Church will increase from few to many, as did the Christian Church. He never could mean that the Christian Church depended upon its progress on the removal of falses of doctrine among the Jews; a truth which he again and again teaches in relation to the progress of the New Church, its progress depending on the removal of falses in the Old. That Swedenborg teaches that the New Church cannot be established on earth until evils and falses are removed out of Christendom, I take the whole of his writings subsequent to the Last Judgment, when he could alone speak with knowledge of the New Church, to witness. What can more emphatically express this fact than these words:

[Enl. Series.-No. 26, vol. iii.]

K

"In proportion as the new heaven increases, in the same proportion the New Jerusalem, that is, the New Church, comes down from that heaven; so that this cannot be effected in a moment, but in proportion as the falses of the former church are removed."

S. M. W. says Swedenborg is here speaking of the New Church in so far as it will exist among those in Christian lands. For this suggestion I can point to no other refutation than the passages quoted themselves. If, as E. S. says in L. J. 73, Gentiles are to remain in their religions, and Christians are to have their internals changed, we have no great reason, according to Swedenborg, to look immediately for a wide extension of the New Church out of Christian lands, except in Central Africa, where a New Church is established, to all appearance as independently of that New Church which Swedenborg was sent to initiate, as if it were in the planet Jupiter.

Swedenborg, we discover from his correspondence, was frequently questioned as to the future of the New Church. In a letter to Dr. Beyer dated Stockholm, February, 1767, he writes:

"How soon the New Church is to be expected. Answer. The Lord is preparing at this time a new heaven of such as believe in Him, and acknowledge Him to be the true God of heaven and earth, and also look to Him in their lives, which is to shun evil and do good; because from that heaven shall the New Jerusalem descend. I daily see spirits and angels, from ten to twenty thousand,. descending and ascending, who are set in order. By degrees as that heaven is formed, the New Church likewise begins and increases. The universities in Christendom are now first instructed, from whence will come ministers; because the new heaven has no influence over the old clergy, who conceive themselves to be too well skilled in the doctrine of justification by faith alone."

Again, writing to Beyer from Amsterdam on March 15, 1769, he says,

"I am now much enquired of, respecting the New Church, when it will take place?-to which I answer: by degrees, as the doctrine of justification and imputation is extirpated; which may probably be effected by this work.”

Here speaking of the Brief Exposition of the Doctrines of the New Church. I would now ask the reader, if Swedenborg believed that the "New Church would be first fully established among the Gentiles," what he meant by writing in this manner to Beyer, who was well versed in the heavenly doctrines, and who had been introduced to a society of angels? If Swedenborg had thought, as S. M. W. would fain have us believe he thought, he would have written,—

"Dear Beyer, Few, very few, will receive the doctrines of the New Church in Christendom. A New Church is always born from those who were of the preceding church, and is afterwards transferred to the Gentiles. Therefore be not discouraged, or surprised at the slow progress of the truth.

We must look to