words, 'that a man appeared to me in the midst of a strong and shining light, and said, "I am God, the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer; I have chosen thee to explain to men the interior and spiritual sense of the sacred writings." He believed that he was chosen to establish a new dispensation of doctrinal truth, and 'that all those passages in Scripture which are generally supposed to refer to the destruction of the world. by fire, and the final judgment, must be understood (according to the doctrine of correspondence) to mean the consummation of the present Christian Church, and that the new heavens are the New Church in its internal, and the new earth the Swedenborgian or New Jerusalem Church in its external form.'

"This church, he claimed, was spoken of in the Revelation of St. John. Upon the strength of this claim, he denies the authenticity of a large body of the Sacred Canon, since its internal sense was not disclosed to him.

"I cannot admit these claims.

ISRAEL KNIGHT.”

CHAPTER IV.

CONCLUDING CONVERSATION.

"I HAVE now traversed the whole sea of Swedenborgian literature," said Israel to his friend Stilwell, "and my remarkable perseverance at least deserves honorable mention, if not a first-class medal." The other eagerly inquired his present opinion of the founder of the Church of the New Jerusalem.

"Shall I tell you just the few simple impressions I bring from those books?"

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Certainly; I want nothing less than candor."

"My opinion is,” renewed Israel, "that Swedenborg would come under the category of men whom Mr. Locke describes in his 'Enthusiasm.' The subjective states of his mind passed unconsciously into the objective. He thought that he heard the voices of the other life while yet he was talking to himself, as do we ourselves, sometimes, on awaking from a confused dream. To be more special: Emanuel Swedenborg had been disappointed in love by death, as one of his biographers avers. It is bad for an intense man, independent in fortune, to be disappointed in love. If he had been poor, this incident would have made him great; as it was, it made him mentally dazed. Witness his work called Conjugial Love.'"

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"Think now of the excellence of many of his writings which you may understand," rejoined Stilwell, very seriously.

"His style is immoderately diffuse. The story of 'The Locusts' illustrates it."

"Bear in mind that Swedenborg wrote in an age when men took time to think calmly, and to express those thoughts with equal deliberation."

"But contrast this style with that of the Bible! Verbosity is never the attendant of perspicuity. The strongest and grandest thinkers of all ages have been most concise, as flavors of the greatest power and rarest value are also most highly concentrated. The Inca Atahuallpa of Peru was more profoundly imimpressed by the name of God written upon the finger nail of the Spanish soldier, in proof of his power, than if he had displayed a volume. The Inca was ignorant. Likewise are we. Angels only

can tolerate extension. God alone dwells in infinity. But one step bridges the sublime and the ridiculous."

"It is true," continued Israel more gravely, "that with all the discounting points in these works, they have a decided value as a contribution to the religious literature of the world. I admit what you said, that these views have tinged those of many a modern theologian of other churches."

"Why then refuse to admit that Swedenborg founded a new dispensation of Christian truth? He teaches that there are three senses in the Word—the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural. Before he wrote, the natural and the spiritual were only but faintly understood.

And these indeed were not really understood, only seen as in a deep, dark shadow."

"There lived before Emanuel Swedenborg's time, good men who died well," said Israel. "How

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much more might they have achieved and enjoyed, had they possessed the rational views of our faith!” continued Stilwell. "And what they did achieve and enjoy was on a similar principle or continent of belief, though as yet unconfessed and unknown. How many difficulties attending the explanation of the Christian religion are cleared away by our philosophy! In the language of another: This faith has nothing to fear from the progress of knowledge in any of its branches. The advance of science never can expel the Deity from his own universe, while we believe that preservation is continual creation. Discoveries in geology have no terrors for us. We do not believe that the world was made out of nothing or in six natural days; nor do we undertake to account for a literal flood which covered the highest mountains, or the ark which floated upon its waters, and the difficulties connected with it. Modern views of astronomy - with which all the eloquence of Chalmers cannot reconcile modern views of the atonement- are but part and parcel of our faith.""

"Here appears a discrepancy of correspondence," said Israel. "I was deeply interested in Swedenborg's view of the most ancient church being designated under the name of Adam or Man; of the preservation of the doctrinals of faith of this church under the name of Cain, and this explanation of the words that a mark was put upon him, etc.; of the later compilation

of doctrine under the name of Enoch, which being destined for posterity, was described as 'God took Enoch;' of the new or ancient church under the name of Noah, fragments of the word of this church being found in the books of Moses, allusions to which are in Numb. 21: 14, 27; but when I came down to the Divine manifestation in the person of the Lord upon earth, I was unreconciled according to his own laws of order and correspondence. In short, if Adam and Cain and Noah were not real personages, but representative names, why was not Christ? If the one had no real entity and historical personal verity, how could the other have had? I conceive a great difficulty in establishing a dividing line between the allegorical and the real. I have no doubt that much in the Bible is allegorical; and in that way I have explained those expressions which seem inharmonious with revealed. truth; but when you strike under this head so much as does Swedenborg, an insurmountable difficulty arises to my view."

"You will bear in mind," said Stilwell, "that our view of the trinity as explained heretofore, is not like that of the churches who nominally accept this doctrine. We claim a far stronger correspondence here to the Invisible or Celestial sense in the natural letter of the Word than anywhere else."

"But will you say whether such a being as Jesus Christ, Man or God, or both, ever existed on the earth according to the version of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?" inquired Israel.

"Certainly; we believe the Gospels, though we explain them by divine correspondence rather than by