Entered according to Act of Congress. in the year 1856, by a the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CHAS. H. CROSBY, PR., 5 & 7 WATER ST. NOTE. THE first series of my Essays was published ten years ago; and these have been written at various periods since. They are now published, after a long delay, from a conviction that it is not right to withhold what may do some good, only because it cannot do much. No systematic exposition of the doctrines of the New Church is attempted in either volume. The topics discussed with more or less fulness in these several essays are distinct and different. They are, however, connected; and there may seem to be much repetition, to hose who do not know the interdependence of the leading doctrines of the Church. That which relates to the universal Father is the centre of all truth; and other doctrines, as that concerning His Word; and that concerning Life, which should be governed by His Word; and that concerning another world in which Life is continued and developed, lie near the centre. Begin where we may, with any topic or any treatment of it, every attempt to present it accurately leads us towards these doctrines, as necessarily as the radii of a circle point towards its centre. Every essay, therefore, contains statements of these doctrines, or allusions to them. It would have been easy to have lessened the appearance of sameness; but it was thought better to permit all these views to present themselves to the mind of the reader in the same way and in the same connection in which they occurred to the mind of the writer. In one sense there is little repetition; for the same thing must present a different aspect when seen from a different point of view, or in a different relation. It was indeed thought that it might not be useless thus to exhibit the fact, that all religious truth flows from and returns to these central and universal doctrines; and to show how either of them, as its face is turned towards one or another distant or particular truth, throws upon it especial illustration, and receives from it new proof and confirmation. CAMBRIDGE, July, 1856. T. P. |