time for the perusal of the first article only, on Swedenborg's True Christian Religion, which is one of signal ability. A full review is promised in the next No. of the work that has recently emanated from the Roman Catholic College at Oscot, near Birmingham, entitled "Remarks on Noble's Appeal," as also of a new work in French by Oegger, formerly Vicar of the Cathedral Church at Paris, but now a Pastor in the New Church, entitled "Our Ideas of the Nature of the Divine Being in the Nineteenth Century."

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The orthodox zeal of Dr. Pond, of the Bangor Seminary has prompted him again to enter the controversial field as a defender of the faith against the insidious and dangerous assaults of the Hartford doctor, who has recently loomed up so ominously upon the theological horizon. The author of " Swedenborgianism Reviewed" has evidently a penchant for "being in at the death" of every ugly heresy which is making its appearance in these degenerate days and calling forth the ire of the fathers of the ancient regime. True, the monsters will not always stay slain; the hydra heads have a wonderful knack of reproducing themselves, but the Church champions are nevertheless bound to do battle, and, if needs be, "thrice to slay the slain." In the present work we see the clear traces of Dr. Pond's polemics-a certain faculty of making a thing appear offensive by arraying it in opposition to the commonly received dogma without condescending to argue the question on its own merits. The received tenet is sound, scriptural, and infallible of course, and nothing more is needed to convict any sentiment of mortal error than to show it up as at variance with the accredited standards. In this point Dr. Pond seems to accord very fully with the Princeton reviewer of the same work. Dr. Bushnell forgets that there are certain doctrines so settled by the faith of the church, that they are no longer open questions. They are finally adjudged and determined. If men set aside the Bible, and choose to speak or write as philosophers, then of course the way is open for them to teach what they please. But for Christians who acknowledge the scriptures as their rule of faith, there are doctrines which they are bound to take as settled beyond all rational or innocent dispute. There is a divine teaching, and its effect is to bring the children of God in all parts of the world, and in all ages of the church, to unity of faith. As an historical fact, they have always and every where agreed in all points of necessary doctrine. And therefore to depart from their faith, in such matters of agreement, is to renounce the gospel. The doctrines which Dr. Bushnell discusses and discards, viz., the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement are precisely those in which their agreement is most certain and complete. It is high time, therefore, it should be universally agreed among Christians, that the rejection of these doctrines, as determined by the faith of the church, is the rejection of Christianity, and should be so regarded and treated."

This is shutting the door of discussion with a vengeance. The rejection of the common doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, as popularly understood, the rejection of Christianity! Alas, how summarily are the receivers of Swedenborg ejected from the pale of the Church; for while we hold most cordially to the doctrines themselves above mentioned as scripturally affirmed, we do most strenuously repudiate the prevalent constructions of those doctrines which have obtained throughout the greater part of Christendom. Yet without subscribing to the symbolical formula the case with us is hopeless! With all this Dr. Pond evidently agrees, as he shows no indications that the standards can by any possibility inculcate the least error on the points in question, or that any thing opposed to them can be aught but error. Happily the adjudication waits a higher tribunal than the bar of Princeton, Andover, or Bangor.

As a specimen of the Professsor's mode of dealing with his offending brother, we give the following, from which our readers will perceive that so far as Dr. Bushnell approaches Swedenborg just so far Dr. Pond recedes from Dr. Bushnell. "Our author's next position is, that there is some mysterious correspondence or analogy,' divinely constituted, and which The mind naturally, intuitively perceives, by which terms from the outer world are prepared as signs or vehicles of spiritual things to be expressed' (p. 26). Again, the whole

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universe of nature is a perfect analogon of the whole universe of thought or spirit.' These extracts are sufficient to set forth our author's theory of language. Our first remark in regard to it is, that it is essentially unfounded. Beyond question there is a sufficient resem. blance or analogy between certain external and internal objects, to lay a foundation for the use of metaphors, comparisons and other figures of speech. No one has ever doubted this. But to say that there is a universal and divinely instituted correspondence between the worlds of matter and of mind; that every object in external nature is a type of something in the soul; and that the soul is so constituted as to perceive the resemblance and to base upon it the language of thought,-this is carrying the matter quite too far. We could as soon accept the Swedenborgian doctrine of correspondences." So also on another page; "We say then that Dr. Bushnell's theory of correspondences, like that of Swedenborg, has more in it of fancy than of fact. It has no solid foundation in truth." So much for Dr Pond's testimony to the value of the science of correspondences. As it is stark naught in Swedenborg, it is next door to absolutely worthless in Dr. Bushnell. But what are his reasons for this oracular negative. Reasons, indeed; as if a Professor of theology ever thought of giving reasons for his dissent from the grand positions of the New Church! The ratio sufficiens on this head is, that Swedenborg does not echo the catechism. This is the inexpiable offence which makes him unworthy of being reasoned with, and the contagion of which taints every sentiment and every theory that bears the least resemblance to his system. We learn that the Rev. Mr. Sturtevant of Providence, R. I., has sought and obtained a dismission from his pastoral charge in that place and is just about taking his leave for California.

OBITUARY.

Mrs. ELIZABETH GAMBLE departed this life at the residence of her son Jacob Gamble, in Indiana County, Penn. on the 23d January last, aged seventy-nine years. She was the daughter of Thomas Doyle, of Lancaster County, and niece of Major John Doyle, who was in the service of his country during the entire period of the Revolutionary war, and lost an arm at the storming of the redoubts of Yorktown, Virginia. She had a brother who was a Captain in the same service, and was promoted to the rank of Major in the late war with Great Britain. Through the instrumentality of one of her sons she became, about two years ago, an ardent and sincere recipient of the Doctrines of the New Jerusalem Church, which were a source of joy and consolation to the last moment of her departure for the world of spirits. She had kind friends among her neighbors, who were mostly of the Methodist, Lutheran, and Calvinistic persuasion, and, as is common in the neighborhood where she lived, frequented the house of mourning and sickness, with the view of extending their sympathy, kind offices, and religious consolation. In connection with the Holy Word, she exacted frequent reading, by those present, previous to her death, from the works entitled "Heaven and Hell," "True Christian Religion," "Noble's Appeal" and "De Charm's Discourses." The number of people that visited her house every day during her short illness was about fifty. Some were much astounded with the new views of Truth thus presented to them; others again expressed a conscious belief of the Truth of the Doctrines, and of their Heavenly tendency upon the mind, but could form no rational conception of the "modus operandi" in which they were given to mankind, and some looked dubiously at each other, occasionally proposing questions which were answered with such perspicuity by her sons, and in so much excellence of spirit and truthfulness of manner, that a contest arose among them, about who should have the first perusal of the books. Though this aged sister suffered much from her disease, she yet preserved a serenity of mind and her wonted cheerfulness of spirits to the last. On being gently chided by her daughter-in-law on this account, she replied that she felt no gloom, nor terror in view of her fast approaching dissolution. Thus departed this life, one, who in her better health, together with her sons were sneeringly pitied, as insane, and stigmatized as infidels, not because of their departure from the paths of moral rectitude and religion; but by reason of their rejection of the prevailing dogmas of the present day, which proved inadequate to their moral wants and spiritual well-being, for Doctrines, which gave them a higher estimate of the living and eternal Truths of the Holy Word, afforded them higher views of the Majesty, the Goodness and Wisdom of its Author, and of their duty to Him and their neighbor.

Ir is a trite observation that while the forms of matter are continually changing or perishing, the matter itself is persistent in its nature. The chemical elements of our bodies existed before the creation of man, and will probably enter again at some future period, into combinations of vegetable or animal structure. But the spiritual form which vivifies our organization has never before been connected with matter, and never will be again after the dissolution of its present tie. It is itself an organized substance which will exist forever in its appropriate sphere, never to be decomposed into simpler elements. During its brief sojourn in the lowest plane of nature, it constructs for itself, out of the crude materials without and below it, and appropriates to its own uses, the wonderful organization we propose to consider. The mechanism of the human body has been carefully and successfully prosecuted, and its Physiology or the interpretation of its Anatomy, is at present the most interesting and the most progressive of the physical sciences. But there must necessarily be a terminus to the discoveries of the dissecting knife and the microscope. There is a plane or part of our being which the natural eye can never detect, and which natural instruments can never investigate. This spiritual element must correspond to its natural medium, and a knowledge of the human soul must confirm, modify, or extend our conceptions of the human body. Swedenborg has supplied us with this desideratum, and, as he avers, from personal experience during a special intromission into the spiritual world. On his Psychology then and its accordance with Human Physiology depends much of the credibility of his mission. This Psychology is directly derived from a consideration of the true nature of the Supreme Being. He does not shrink

from an explanation of what the Biblical records mean when they assert that man was created in the image and likeness of God. When the Creator and his last and highest work are viewed in the proper light, a distinct outline of this resemblance should be clearly traced. Theologians have been involved in many inconsistencies and led to many false conclusions by applying analogically to the Divine nature the attributes of our human nature perverted and fallen as is its present condition. Swedenborg begins at the right extremity of the question and having made us acquainted with the Creator, he shows us his true reflection in the spiritual and natural worlds, in the human spirit and in the human body.

It is a fundamental axiom of New Church theology, that the Divine Essence is Infinite Love and Infinite Wisdom conjoined. Love is the motor and Wisdom the determining or directing power in the work of creation. Most narrow and superficial is the view that God created the universe in a definite space of time, and left its subsequent management to certain Laws of matter upon which he had impressed an outward momentum. That influx of spirit into matter which causes the evolution of every form is perpetual. Moreover it is progressive, and the budding of a flower or the birth of a new being is more wonderful than the fixing of the sun in his central position, and ranging the planets in their orbits. The spiritual world is an outbirth, projection, or spiritual proceeding from the Divine Essence--and is not an ethereal expanse or an ideal phantomland but an actual, infinite, and eternal substance organized into an endless variety of forms. This is the plane or sphere in which all forces originate, all forms are developed, all sensations are experienced, and all the phenomena of life are presented. That these things seem to occur in the natural world is an appearance only-a specics of optical delusion. Matter in itself has no form, no substance, no force, no life. It is an inert basis which is moulded into transitory organization by virtue of correspondence with spiritual forms. Every object we see is a spiritual-natural substance; such is the human body. All of these spiritual-natural organisms are receptive of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, and derive their animation in the natural world therefrom. Thus God alone is the source of life; he alone is life. All things exist from him and represent him. They represent him more accurately and truthfully according as their structures or forms are more fully adapted to the reception of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. The human spirit is most fully adapted to such reception, and accordingly it is the highest of forms and the image of God. Premising thus much we proceed to the consideration of the human body, and for greater clearness we will divide our remarks into separate captions.

1. Of the Human Body as receptive of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.

The gradual passage of matter from the gaseous to the liquid, and from this to the solid condition, was alluded to in a previous communication, and the orderly evolution of specific forms pointed out. But the Divine Life flowing into inert materials imprints also the duality

of its nature upon these, and we find accordingly a grand law of symmetrical development. St. Pierre, a fanciful but gifted writer, suggests that the original forms of the two continents of our globe, the Eastern and Western, were perfectly symmetrical, and that traces of this wonderful symmetry are still visible amid the changes which violent disturbing causes have effected. This curious speculation may provoke the anger or contempt of the critics, but it shows how deeply the author was impressed with a sense of the all-pervading character of this law of symmetry. The remarkable forms of crystals have been long admired and the elementary substances, the pure metals for instance, crystalize in the simplest, most regular, and symmetrical manner. But it is only when we study the development of the organic germ, that we see the duality of organization in its true light. The three laminæ of the embryonic ovule to which we formerly referred, produce the same organs on the two sides of a median line, each side being a perfect repetition of the other. This symmetry in the vegetative or nutritive layer which contains the stomach, liver, spleen, intestines, &c., is nearly obliterated at a subsequent period by the disproportionate growth of other organs and the supervention of functional changes. Its primitive occurence, however, is fully established by microscopic investigation. In the second or vascular layer the law of symmetry is much more fully sustained, but nevertheless, there are occasional but generally unimportant deviations. In the third or nervous layer, in which the animality of the organism peculiarly resides, the duality of structure is beautifully presented. If we draw a line between the hemispheres of the cerebrum and cerebellum, through the centre of the lips and tongue, down the middle of the spinal column to its termination, we divide the body into two halves, of which the nerves, muscles, and bones are precisely identical in shape, size, position and peculiarities. In connection with this astonishing fact, Cruveilhier, the distinguished anatomist of Paris, remarks, that he has examined many deviations from this symmetrical development, particularly of the cranium, and that such deviations were invariably found in idiots and lunatics. The cause of such idiocy or lunacy is readily perceived when we remember that the manifestation of influx is determined by the form into which the influx is received. An unsymmetrical lens will distort all objects we survey through it, and in the same manner the Will and the Understanding acting through perverted media will produce phenomena which we characterize as idiocy or lunacy. But the principle of duality is not lost sight of here. We reserve the consideration of it, as displayed in the sexes, for a future communication. In the formation and arrangement of the great organs of the body which execute the main functions of natural life we detect the agency of the same principle. Influx can only take place into organic forms prepared for and corresponding to it. The Divine Love and Divine Wisdom must have corresponding organs in each of the three planes of animal life, in and by which they may animate, sustain, renovate, and perpetuate the living body. Accordingly we find in each of the three lamina we have described, two organs of prime importance. In