purity, elevation, and power which no other heathenism has possessed. The sun has set; but its twilight may repel the night, and endure in the darkening west, until it mingles with another twilight rising in the east, and there promising the advent of another day. It must be remembered, that the New Church has already existed more than a century. In conformity with the universal law of causation and creation, when it came forth from the Divine Creator of all things it existed first in the heavens, and by derivation from them it comes to this world, and seeks to construct a New Church here, and seeks to make this as wide and as perfect as possible; but it is not possible for this church to be wider or more perfect than the state and receptivity of men on earth permit. Freedom of thought is its foundation, and its rigorous and absolute condition. And, therefore, of those who receive this influence, no two persons receive it in precisely the same way, or to precisely the same extent. But all they who receive it in any way, may conveniently, although not quite accurately, be arranged into three classes. One of these consists of those who unreservedly acknowledge the New Church, and make a profession, or a declaration, of their desire to belong to this church in thought and in affection, in belief and in life. A second, and perhaps a larger class, embraces those who in a greater or a less degree receive some portion of its truths, knowing their origin and acknowledging their value; and stop there. A third class, and probably very much the largest class, consists of those who are indirectly, and in various ways, affected by the influences which are forming the church. The visible church on earth, through the writings of Swedenborg, or preaching, or collateral books, or otherwise, exerts a considerable influence around it. The church in the heavens and in the world of spirits exerts a far more potent influence upon the minds of men. In either way, or in all of these ways, the church reaches now a vast number of persons. Its influence upon the science, the philosophy, the literature, the dogmatic theology, and indeed the whole thought of thinking men, is now very great. And much of its effect is manifest to those who are able to recognize this influence, and refer it to its true origin. But the larger part of those who are affected by this indirect influence are not distinctly conscious of the effects it has produced upon their own minds; and many of them, the larger part probably, are wholly ignorant of their origin. While making use of truths which they value exceedingly, they hold in contemptuous indifference, or positive denial, the church from which in fact they came. Hence, it may well happen,-if any persons not avowedly of the New Church read these pages, - that they may think great injustice is done to them and to the age in which they live. They may acknowledge that they find here something that is true and valuable; and then they may say it is not new to them. One will say I am Orthodox, but I do not hold what is here called Orthodoxy. Another may say, I am a Rationalist, but I do not hold what is here called Rationalism. And therein they may say what is true. All the answer I am now disposed to make to such persons, is, that if they will look back an hundred years, they will find it very difficult to discover anywhere the principles which now prevail in their own minds. They will, — some of them at least,―admit this; and then say that herein is the evidence of the life and progress of the church, and not of its decay and death. Nor should I be able to persuade them that this unquestionable improvement is due to the new influence which has taken the place of one that has passed away. Nor have I any desire to persuade them of this, otherwise than by offering what I regard as the truth for their voluntary acceptance, or by suggesting its possibility for their own consideration. I am glad they have learned what they have learned; and I am sure that when they are ready for more, more will become visible to them. As we are endeavoring to show what we mean, when we say that the first Christian church has come to an end, and that a new Christian church has come, we would first say a word upon the relation of these two churches; and it will be little more than this. As it was an error to consider the end of the first Christian church as meaning the death and extinction of all that constitutes a church in Christendom, so it is an error to suppose the new Christian church comes to occupy vacant ground, and to substitute for an old thing which has died and gone, a new thing which only fills the emptied space. We must remember that Christianity came not to destroy but to fulfil; not to discard the remnant of what had been, and require entire forgetfulness of it as the condition of reception of the new gift, but to recall, resume, and revive, all the truth that had ever existed on earth, and give to it new life and power; to liberate it from the corruptions which had begun with encrusting it, and enfeebling it, and ended with eating into its very heart and killing it. So the New Church comes to annul nothing of an earlier Christianity; nothing of the yet earlier dispensation which the first Christianity embraced and vivified; nothing of the still earlier gifts from God to man, which the Jewish dispensation had adopted and confirmed. All of these things, all of everything before it which was good and true, this New Church adopts, embraces, and declares to be its own; and its function as to all preceding truth, is only to liberate it from the falsities by which it was obscured and perverted. All of this truth, and every portion and element of this truth, it comes to make more clear and certain than before. It comes to bring truths together which before were solitary, and in their separation feeble. It comes to systematize all of them into one whole; to define each of them by its exact relation to others; and to give to each of them the light and power of the whole. The fact that Christianity thus adopted and confirmed every truth then existing in the world, has enabled opponents of Christianity to urge that it told nothing new. In the different Scriptures which preceding ages have regarded as sacred, and in the writings of wise men, each one of the distinctive teachings of Christ is shown to have been anticipated, sometimes by clear statement, and sometimes by mere suggestion. But the proper answer to this objection—an answer not always given by the advocates of Christianity-would be, that nowhere but in the Gospels were all these scattered rays gathered together. Nowhere else are they so connected as to form a system of truth, and by this new wholeness, cast upon the mind a blaze of new light, and upon the heart a new warmth. So it will be, and has already begun to be, with our new Christianity. It is even now intimated, and in the impending conflict between the new and the old, which cannot be much longer delayed, it will be often said, that there is in Swedenborg nothing absolutely new. But a few days since, I read in an article upon the history of mysticism, the remark that it was an error to suppose that the fact or law of correspondence between the spiritual and the natural worlds was first declared by Swedenborg. The writer showed that this has been quite a common doctrine |