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treatment of a subject usually so dry and repulsive; it was a picture of nature so wide and free, as the most impassioned poet could not have surpassed. He decided peremptorily for the analytic against the synthetic method, and claimed to confine himself to rigid experience. [Mr. Emerson briefly referred to the various novel doctrines announced in this work, which our limits will not allow us to particularise.] Swedenborg having conceived the idea that certain books of the Old and New Testament were written symbolically, devoted the later years of his life to the extrication from the literal of the universal sense. He held that the cause of all things in heaven and earth being representative, is, that they exist from an influx of the Deity. But this design of his, which, if adequately executed, would be the poem of the world, in which all history and science would play an essential part, was narrowed and reduced by the theological direction which his inquiries took; and the whole field still remains open. Yet the interpreter, whom mankind must still expect, will find no predecessor who has approached so near the true problem as Swedenborg. His perception of nature is not human and universal, but mystic and Hebraic. He fastens each object of nature to a theologic notion; thus, to him, a horse signifies carnal understanding; the sun, love; the moon, faith; a field, doctrine; and a city, heresy; an ostrich means one thing, and an artichoke another. But the scripture of nature is not of so private an interpretation; the slippery Proteus is not so easily caught. If asked to account for that unquestionable fascination which Swedenborg exerts over a class, and a growing class, of the best and purest minds, he (the lecturer) would say it is, that Swedenborg is a man of genius, and served religion by his genius. To the withered traditional church, yielding only dry old criticism, he let in the light of nature; and the worshipper, accustomed to receive into his understanding certain cold verbal results, is overjoyed to find himself a party to the whole of his religion; that his religion thinks for him, and is of universal application. Of course, that which is real and universal in Swedenborg, cannot be confined to the circle of those who sympathise strictly with his genius, but will rapidly pass into the common stock of the wise and just-thinking in the world. Under certain limitations, which always attend him, he is, of all the moderns, the strictest and faithfullest idealest. He abounds in golden sayings, which express, sometimes with singular beauty, ethical laws; as when he says that in heaven the angels advance continually to the spring-time of their youth, so that the oldest angel appears the youngest. Again, love, and not the wish to be prominent, constitutes heaven; for, to wish to be greater than others, is not heaven, but hell. But still his books have no melody, no emotion, no humour, no relief to the dead prosaic level. His system of the world wants central spontaneity; it is essentially dynamic, and lacks power to generate individuals; it is mechanical power without life. It requires for his just apprehension, almost a genius equal to his own. Every ardent and contemplative young man, at eighteen or twenty, ought to read once these theological books of Swedenborg, and then throw them aside for ever. The vice of Swedenborg's mind is its theological determination; nothing, with him, has the liberality of universal wisdom-I speak of course of his theological writings; his scientific works are not at all open to this objection; they are, I suppose, of a value not yet at all estimated. His cardinal position in morals is, that evils should be shunned as sins. More true and healthy to shun evil as evil. Another dogma growing out of his limitations, is his belief in evil spirits, devils. That pure malignity should exist, is an absurd proposition; it is atheism. Man, wheresoever thou seest him, in brothels, gaols, or on gibbets, is on

his way upward to all that is good and true, Everything is superficial and perishing, but love and truth only; the largest is always the truest sentiment. Swedenborg has rendered a great and double service to mankind, which is as yet far from being exhausted; which, indeed, is only now beginning to be known. By the science of experiment and use, by science in a sense that fools and sages can both acknowledge, he apprehended and published to man the laws of nature, and, ascending by just degrees from the grossest external phenomena to their summits and causes, he was fired with a rapture of piety and love at the harmonies he saw and shared, and abandoned himself to his joy and worship. This was his first service. If the glory was too bright for his eyes to hear,—if he staggered under the trance of delight,—the more excellent then the wondrous spectacle of the realities of being which beam and bless through him, and which no infirmities of the prophet are suffered to obscure. And he renders a second passive service to man, not less than the first, perhaps, in the great circle of being; and, in the retribution of spiritual nature, not less glorious or less beautiful to himself. (Applause.)

Immediately after this lecture, it was advertised in the Manchester papers, that a lecture would be delivered on the following Sunday, by the Rev. J. H. Smithson, in reply to Mr. Emerson's statements and objections. A brief and condensed portion of this lecture was reported in the Manchester papers, the substance of which shall, in a more extensive form, here be adduced:

The Rev. J. H. Smithson, minister of the New Jerusalem Church, Peter-street, replied, on Sunday evening, before a crowded congregation, to the recent lecture of Mr. Emerson on "Swedenborg the Mystic." Having taken as a text the last verse of the 16th chapter of St. Luke, he commenced by laying down the principle that to love and to do is the chief characteristic of all genuine religion. Every man has his peculiar mission upon earth. Every one occupies a station, under the wise dispensations of Providence, which no other could so adequately fill. But although the variety of missions is so great, they may all be brought under one idea,-that of being mediums and channels of goodness and truth to one another. Thus from the great Fountain of Good, every man is intended to be a medium of good to his neighbour, his family, his country, and the world. This is the peculiar mission of every one, which is realized by active usefulness governed by the great and all-commanding principle of religious and spiritual truth. The muscles, nerves, and fibres of the body are innumerable, but each has its own appointed office of use to the entire system: just so with the great body of the human race, each is destined to be a peculiar medium of good to the whole.

But man's life is civil, moral, intellectual, and spiritual. In each of these great provinces of life there have been distinguished mediums of good to the human race. Cromwell, Hampden, and Washington have been mediums of civil and political good. Good can only exist and flourish in freedom; those men were the mediums of civil and religious liberty. They overthrew the throne of the despot; they broke the rod of the oppressor; they said to the nations,-Be ye free! and civil and religious freedom began to flourish.

Copernicus, Bacon, Newton, and Locke, were distinguished mediums of philosophic and intellectual liberty, life, and truth. They emancipated the mind from

the slavery of mental darkness, delivered it from innumerable fallacies in science, and from the numerous evils which error and fallacy always have in their train. In all this the elevated mind can discover the finger and the workings of Providence. Whatever may be the convulsion, the suffering for the moment, good, universal good is divinely intended. No birth was ever yet without its labour and its pang; joy and gladness, however, invariably follow. We rejoice in a new life. Again; in moral and religious life there have been distinguished mediums of good to mankind. God effects nothing but by mediums; this is the economy and the order of his Providence. Every ray of light is conveyed to us through a variety of media; every morsel of bread is provided by a wonderful variety of means; every garment we wear is the result of numerous means skilfully adapted and employed by the hand of experience. In like manner our intellectual, religious, and spiritual life is developed, born, nursed, fed, clothed, and preserved in health, strength, and happiness, by an infinite variety of means. The Word of God is the great storehouse of these means; the bread of life, the robes of righteousness, the health of salvation, and the joys of happiness, are all thereby provided and enjoyed. In proportion to the vigorous employment of means will be the attainment of ends. This is another law of the divine Providence, and a universal law of our being. In the loftier province of religious and spiritual life, extraordinary men have been employed, as mediums of Providence, to awaken the millions from the sleep of ignorance, to deliver them from the yoke of superstition and bigotry, to arouse them to perception and feeling concerning their higher and eternal interests, to overthrow the throne of Satan, and to diffuse the light of Truth throughout the empire of darkness and falsehood. Such mediums were Wickliffe, Luther, Knox, Wesley, and others;-all suited to their generation and the times in which they lived. The medium must always be accommodated to the state and spirit of the age. The pure ray of the sun must be accommodated, through suitable media, to the new-born eye, or to the vision weakened by disease. But who would declare that such men, useful as they were, are the highest mediums of God's truth to man? Did they not emerge from the dark ages of our race, and partake very strongly of the peculiarities of their generations? Compare the rational mind now with what it was then. Is there not now a mighty development, and an immense increase of rational activity and life? Is not every thing now, even in theology, submitted to the strictest intellectual analysis? Are not intellectual freedom and rational inquiry the great characteristics of the age? Are not the fountains of science, which in the age of Luther were scarcely known to exist, now open in every city and town, and almost in every village of our country, and of the civilised world? Is progress and improvement in every province of our natural life to be the order of the day, and shall the religious and the spiritual life remain in the darkness and quiet of the tomb? Is the natural life to be clothed in purple, and to fare sumptuously every day at the banquets of science, and our spiritual life to remain at the gates full of sores, and dressed in the worn-out garments of an antique, decrepit, and effete theology,-- a theology which has no more relation to the pure truths of God's Word, than the Ptolemaic fallacies of the universe have to the pure truths of astronomy. Is Gallileo to be imprisoned and racked, because he taught the true system of the heavens ? Can Swedenborg be long treated with scorn and neglect, because he taught under the guidance of a Special Providence the true system of the spiritual universe, because he has taught the true system of theology from the Word of God, because he was gifted with a power from on high to open the eternal

realities of the spiritual life, and to present them in the simplest and most striking form to the human mind? Truth forbid! The highest interests of humanity forbid! You admit Luther and others to have been distinguished mediums of truth and good to mankind, and when the claims and labours of Swedenborg are properly considered, you will admit that he has been a still higher medium of conveying truth, and of awakening the powers of the soul to a loftier, purer love of goodness from God, than any human medium hitherto employed. Let me not be mistaken; we do not mean that there should be a new revealed Word from God. The Scriptures already contain a full revelation of the will and wisdom of God. Nothing, therefore, can be required as an addition to it. But what we require is, that the eyes of our understandings should be more opened, that we may, according to the apostle, see with 'spiritual discernment,' that is, more interiorly and more clearly its divine teaching, and thus have a theology which, as to improvement and spirituality, shall stand at the head of the sciences, as its proper place, and outshine them all in the splendours of its light. Did not Paul require Ananias as a medium in the Lord's hands for the opening of his sight, before he could see the true nature of the Lord's kingdom? And why may not another Ananias be employed, in the person of Swedenborg, to remove the scales of ignorance and fallacy from our mental sight, that we may now have a more clear and rational view of revealed truths, and of the spiritual realities of the eternal state?

A course of lectures was being delivered in Manchester, on a series upon what the lecturer called "Representative Men," and Swedenborg, styled "the mystic," was one of the lecturer's characters. All who heard that lecture would remember that the manner in which Swedenborg's claims were urged upon the serious and solemn attention of the public was extremely impressive and eloquent. We, therefore, take the opportunity of expressing our sincere obligations to the eminent foreigner, whose celebrity had preceded him into the old world, and who, as soon as he had landed on our coasts, directed the first efforts of his distinguished manner and style to the bringing forth of the claims of Swedenborg. Some of the statements and positions which the lecturer advanced, must, however, be reviewed.

Swedenborg was described as a mystic. A mystic is an individual who sees obscurely the objects of his contemplation. He has a perception that there is something interior and spiritual, but his perceptions are dark, and in some cases visionary. Hence a mystic is synonymous with a visionary. In this sense, the sense in which mysticism is generally understood,—it was quite inappropriate to treat Swedenborg as a mystic, because throughout his voluminous writings he everywhere disclaims mysticism. The mystic takes us into the clouds, but Swedenborg takes us above the clouds. The state called by the lecturer, after the Greeks, muesis, which implies the shutting of the outer eyes, supposes that man has inner eyes,—the eyes of the spirit, which, by divine interposition, may be opened, and, as we know from Scripture, have been opened. Thus the seers of old, Samuel, Elijah, and others, had their inner eyes opened for divine purposes of good to mankind. The possibility, therefore, of this state cannot be denied if we believe the Scriptures. Nor does such a state suppose, as the lecturer implied, "the accompaniment of disease." Were the disciples diseased when the Lord opened their eyes that they might know Him? Were the prophets diseased when their eyes were opened to see the objects of the spiritual world?

The lecturer referred to that feature in the intellectual system of Sweden

borg called "universal symbolism," or the science of correspondences, by which was meant, that all things on earth are the images of something in the spiritual world. This was an ancient belief universal in the golden ages of humanity, and is the key to the proper interpretation of Scripture. But Swedenborg, said the lecturer, “had failed by referring this magnificent symbolism only to the Word of God, and in not considering it of universal application." Here the lecturer was greatly mistaken, and proved that he had not read Swedenborg on this important subject. It is true that he employs it chiefly as the means of interpreting the Scriptures; but he demonstrates that there is not a single object in nature, even to the leaf on the tree, the scale on the fish, and the grain of sand, which does not correspond to something in the spiritual world. The lecturer considered Swedenborg as confining himself to narrow limitations, when he applied this symbolism to the interpretation of the ephod, the curtains of the sanctuary, the candlestick, the oil, the ark, &c. In the remarks which the lecturer here made there appeared to lurk a denial of the Word; but surely every Christian would be delighted to see lessons of divine wisdom brought out of these things, as well as of every other subject recorded in the Holy Word, and, at the same time, to see the Scriptures on this head vindicated against the attacks of infidelity.

"Swedenborg's perception of nature," said the lecturer, "is not human and universal, but mystic and Hebraic. He fastens each object of nature to a theologic notion; and thus, to him, a horse signifies carnal understanding; the sun, love; the moon, faith; a field, doctrine; and a city, heresy; an ostrich means one thing, and an artichoke another." Now all this is rank mysticism in the lecturer, and plainly shows that he has not studied a single work of the author. Swedenborg's cosmogony is not mystic and Hebraic; but he places the Word and works of God in harmony with each other. As theology is the highest science—the science of God, it is our duty to fasten a theologic notion to every object, and to look up from nature up to nature's God; and this Swedenborg, more than any other writer, has enabled the student of nature to do.

In what sense Mr. Emerson could assert that Swedenborg," of all the moderns, is the strictest and faithfullest idealist," we cannot understand. Certainly not in the sense of the Berkleyian or of the German schools, who consider that idealism in "its strictest sense," denies the absolute existence of the external world, and resolves all reality into mere ideas. Here again the lecturer shews how little he has studied Swedenborg.

"His books," said the lecturer, "have no melody, no emotion, no humour, no relief to the dead prosaic level." The style of his theological works is certainly different to that in which he wrote the "Animal Kingdom," and which the lecturer so highly extolled. But his style is always suited to the subject on which he writes, and this, we know from rhetoric, is the especial beauty of all composition.

"His system of the world," said the lecturer, "wants central spontaneity; it is essentially dynamic, and lacks power to generate individuals; it is mechanical power without life. It requires for its just apprehension, a genius almost equal to his own." This, again, is rank mysticism. What can he mean by "central spontaneity ?" Swedenborg considers the Deity as the centre, and that every thing proceeds spontaneously from Him;-He being the centre and source of all life, and the only dynamic power of the universe, all the mechanical forms of which, in their infinite variety of structure and modification, are set in motion and preserved by Him. Would Mr.

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