states of being? There is surely as much reason to believe that these have permanent existence after the form or state of the organism has passed away, as there is the power of physical sight in this world to see that the physical elements and forces have a permanent exist

ence.

This demands a world of life and the permanent media of living power. A world where life and its media are in the constant production of state as the real fact of existence. And this demanded world and all its powers can be the only source and sustentation of all the living forms of the physical globe. But a world implies a sun and all its forces. It implies elements and all that arises from them. And as the facts of that world can only be living states of existence, the media or elements of that sun and its world can only be contributory to, if not the actual causes of, the changes or varieties of living states or facts experienced therein; just as the various elements of this world are by their resistance contributory to, or productive of, the various forms of mechanical, chemical, and magnetic force.

66

Whilst seeming to wander a little, let it be observed that not a few have tried to find a system of ethics without the ethics of Revelation. But no one can trace out better principles for the moral government of men than those revealed and written in the Word of God. And so, if we trace out rationally the order of the world and the wonderful organisms which inhabit it, we shall be led to make a demand upon a source as difficult to find in mere physics as the source of morals. When men's minds were able to trace out this order, the Divine Love took care that the means were supplied. And now we can learn, if we are willing, that there are two different kinds of worlds and two different kinds of suns. Mere guessing and conjuring about the order of the universe may now be laid aside, and the source and characteristics of every organism from the simplest to the highest are now made known. In the marvellous work on Heaven and Hell" it is shown by Swedenborg that the spiritual world is a real world with a sun, earth, and atmosphere, and that these are the living cause and media of real, substantial, and living forms. The essence of these living forms is the state of the media or of the real substances of which they are composed, and this results because, according to the receptivity of the media, or of the subjects, life produces variety and changes of state. State in that world is thence the fact of the subject's existence. It is really so in this world, because this world really subsists from that. The difference, however, between the origin of the states in the living (spiritual) and the natural world will be seen from what has been said of the difference between mechanical force and living power. But the grand difference between the two worlds and their sources of power and their co-operation to make a universe is wonderfully demonstrated by Swedenborg in his treatise "On Angelic Wisdom on the Divine Love and Wisdom." A few brief quotations from that remarkable work shall complete this essay. At N. 83 we read, "The Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom appear in the spiritual world as a sun. There are two

worlds, spiritual and natural; and the spiritual world derives nothing from the natural, nor the natural world anything from the spiritual, for they are altogether distinct and communicate only by correspondences, the nature of which has been much shown elsewhere." At N. 85 we read, "That there is another sun besides the sun of the natural world has been hitherto unknown; because man's spiritual nature has been so deeply immersed in what is natural, and this to such an extent that he knows nothing of what is spiritual nor anything of a spiritual world." At N. 157, "The sun of the natural world is pure fire from which everything of life has been abstracted; but the sun of the spiritual world is fire in which is Divine Life. The angelic idea of the fire of the natural sun and of the fire of the spiritual sun is this, that Divine Life is in, sit intus, the fire of the sun of the spiritual world, but without, extus, in the fire of the sun of the natural world." At N. 158, "Since the sun of the natural world is pure fire and thence dead," here let it be observed that it is only relatively dead fire, the difference being in the mode of the reception of life, or between Divine Life sit intus, and the Divine life extus, "therefore also the Heat thence proceeding is dead, similarly also the Light thence proceeding is dead; likewise the atmospheres which are called ether and air, and in their bosom receive and convey the heat and light of the sun, are dead. Since these are dead, so also are all and singular things of the earth which underlie them and are called earths are dead; yet every, omnia et singula, are surrounded by spiritual things which proceed and flow from the sun of the spiritual world. Unless they were so surrounded, earthly substances could have no activity, nor be able to produce forms of use which are vegetables, nor forms of life which are animals, nor could materiality be able to supply the wants by which man exists and subsists." And from Ns. 173 to 178 we learn "that in the spiritual world there are atmospheres, waters, and earths as in the natural world; but that the former are spiritual and the latter natural." In these numbers the nature and character of both are fully explained. Thus mankind is furnished with rational knowledge of the whence of all creation, order and law both living and physical. Let us hope that the day is not distant when our natural philosophers will discover that there is none of the fish they want in the stream in which they angle, yet to satisfy themselves call some of the fish they catch by what they would have them to be, but will seek "the waters of life," where "their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea exceeding many" (Ezek. xlvii. 10). Thus shall our natural philosophers truly become "fishers of men.”

BOLTON.

M.

438

Review.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE; ITS ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION. BY LEO H. GRINDON.

WHILE the golden radiance from the New Jerusalem has long been, and still is, permeating and rendering clear and brilliant every field of science and every realm of philosophy, it is somewhat strange that there are hitherto few, if any, works either of physics or metaphysics of any permanent value produced by the New Church.

We can everywhere trace the influence of new spiritual conditions, but have had to wait long for their express embodiment and deliberate application even to those themes which would seem expressly to demand such treatment as can be perfected only where the heavenly doctrines are received and lovingly applied.

Here, however, is a volume in which an essay has been made to treat philosophically some of the most interesting themes of thought, most interesting and withal most important, as may be seen on a careful perusal of the valuable treatise itself.

No great gain would come of a detailed analysis of "Figurative Language." The author transcends the limits of scholastic rhetoric in his earliest pages by showing that the figurative is to be found not chiefly in the manner in which language is employed, but in the very substance of language itself; that metaphor and metonymy are not the occasional artifice merely of the orator, but the necessary outcome of such laws of thinking as everywhere and always shape and fashion our utterance of thought.

The idea that language is a Divine gift in any sense which would imply that the progenitors of our race went about with heads filled with vocables, which were infallibly employed as soon as their corresponding objects or experiences were discovered, is next shown to be as unnecessary as it is inconsonant with the principles of order. While the genuine divinity of man's words and his whole language is made to appear in its being at once a result and an evidence of the entire harmony between the whole nature of man as a spiritual being and that universe of which each one is, for himself, the single conscious centre; the harmony, that is to say, between man and that Being who is at once our Maker and Pattern, and also the Creator of the Universe, which is throughout and in every part a revealer of His Divinity.

A large portion of the volume consists of series of kindred words, so selected as to show how language, having once acquired names for the simplest material notions, can and does multiply terms expressive of even the loftiest spiritual conceptions. This, as Mr. Grindon shows, whether effected by transference of words or by their modification, or by prefix or suffix, would have been impossible but for the real existence of these genuine and natural analogies between the formal

and the real, the physical and the spiritual, which Lord Bacon calls the "respondences" and the "correspondences" of nature.

In the purely etymological part of the volume there are a few doubtful etymologies, and some certainly incorrect. Among these we notice the identification of eap, spring, with the sign of the comparative in English as in brighter; the connection of "hallelujah" with "holy" and "hallow;" of "howl" with "yule" and vλŋ and silva; and some others. These are, however, but specks on a web of beauty, and his readers will heartily thank Mr. Grindon for the new reverence for words which he will give them.

Correspondence.

(To the Editor of the Intellectual Repository.)

DEAR SIR, I enclose you extracts from a letter recently received by me from Professor Scocia of Florence. I offer them through you to the readers of the Intellectual Repository, feeling sure that the cheering news these extracts contain of the progress of New Church truth in Italy cannot fail to awaken a thrill of joy in the hearts of all those who " pray for the peace of Jerusalem" and who love the prosperity of Zion. To outward seeming the facts herein related may possibly appear commonplace and insignificant; but to the inward opened sight do they not bear testimony to the truth that the typical Babylon has indeed fallen, and that her prisoners are coming out of the darkness of their spiritual prison-houses to the light of the New Jerusalem now "descending from God out of heaven"? May we not, then, for this, as for all other indications of the fall of Babylon, either external or internal, appropriately exclaim, in unison with the heavenly invitation recorded in Rev. xix. 5, "Praise our God, all ye His servants, and ye that fear Him, both small and great.”—I am, E. H. BROTHERTON.

etc.,

Extract from Professor Scocia's Letter of July 23rd, 1879.

In my printed report for this year you have no doubt remarked the extract of a letter from the librarian of Partinico, a town in Sicily, in which he declares himself a receiver of New Church truth. I now send you two other extracts of letters recently received by me from the same librarian, which are very interesting. This Signor Poma is gifted with an intelligence not common. He is also well versed in Greek and Latin, and is the author of several valuable pamphlets which he has kindly sent me. I have forwarded him a large packet of books to form the beginning of a "Circulating Library." I work with renewed courage, and hope that the Lord will give me the consolation before I leave this world to see some substantial progress of the great work of regeneration in my dear country.-Yours, etc.,

L. SCOCIA.

Extracts from two Letters of Signor Poma, Librarian of Partinico, Sicily, to Professor Scocia.

[1st Letter.]

June 22nd, 1879.

I feel it my duty to make known to you the internal satisfaction I have experienced in seeing how certain "neophytes greedily demand from me your learned periodical La Nuova Epoca; and I, not being able to content them all one by one, have arranged to read it to them when assembled together in a room contiguous to the Public Library, which I will lend for the purpose. Amongst these new brethren there are especially to be distinguished three doctors of medicine and one priest; and with all these the mission appears to begin under good auspices. And as I think you will be pleased to hear all my news, I must tell you that another priest to whom I lent the second volume of the Nuova Epoca that I might hear his opinion on the contents, in returning it to me said that the contents were eminently moral, but with respect to the dogmas they were a mass of heresies. "Pray tell me," said I, "do they attack or deny your dogmas?" "No," said he, "but they explain them in a manner diametrically opposed to the Roman Church." I thanked him, and told him frankly that the Roman Church is a falling edifice, crushed and going to ruin under its own weight, and, I added, "you are free to believe in the dreams of St. Athanasius, but as for me I stand firm on the Word of God and on the demonstrations of its meaning by Swedenborg." We had a discussion concerning the Divine Omnipotence, but "sequitur cursum surda Diana suum.' This priest is of the school of St. Girolamo, which authorizes even lying rather than to yield an iota to an adversary.

[2nd Letter.]

July 13th, 1879.

Our brother, Signor Pardo (a worthy member of our Association), salutes you cordially. He distributed some little time ago five copies of the periodical La Nuova Epoca, and works in unison with me in diffusing the new doctrines, so that already sixteen new brethren desire to have sixteen copies of the "New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrines," and one of them also desires the "Summary Exposition." I send you the price of the treatises, and hope you will send them as quickly as possible. Amongst these sixteen neophytes are three priests and three doctors of medicine. The harvest, therefore, promises well.