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to the created universe in a manner feebly represented by that in which the sun exists to the earth, and generally to the solar system. This is the only proper centre and spring of thought to the human mind; and a philosophy based upon these principles will contain all the elements of living truth, and form, when developed and brought forth, a palace of intelligence and wisdom for man. The other centre of thought is the Ego of man, his egotism or selfhood in all its forms of manifestation,— his self-life, his self-sufficiency, his self-activity, his self-confidence, and his self-derived intelligence. To make the Ego, or the self-love, the starting point and centre of our mental activity in speculative philosophy, is to go directly counter to all the laws of order,-it is to think from appearances only; to be caught in the cobweb of fallacy and delusion, to clutch at shadows, and to spend our energies in building castles in the air; it is to make man every thing, and God a mere abstraction, existing only in the developed states of the human mind. Thus Fichte, who although an independent thinker, followed more or less the path of Kant, has in this fashion given us his notion of God. 'God," says he, "is the moral order of the world; as such we can know him and only as such. For, if we attempt to attribute to him intelligence or personality, we at once fall into anthropomorphism." But what is a deity to whom we must not attribute intelligence and personality, but who must be received only as "moral order"? Can such a deity be any thing but a mere abstraction? Can this idea present a being who is an intelligible object of faith, love, and worship? Impossible. The great dread of the German philosophy is anthropomorphism, that is, the transfer, in our thoughts, of God, of any idea taken from man; or the thinking of God as a man, not as a man like ourselves, but as a man possessing all the infinite perfections, the finite types of which are in man as the "image of God." And yet this is the only true mode of arriving at the true idea of God. This idea is rational and Scriptural, and forms the groundwork of all genuine intelligence. It is Scriptural, because it is declared by the apostle that Jesus Christ was in the form, morphe, of God; (Phil. ii. 6.) it is rational, because the mind, in its unsophisticated state, cannot think of God but as a person or a man, and the most loveinspiring idea of God is that of a divine Father, which is inseparable from the idea of him as a divine man, all good, all wise, all powerful, and every where present. We now see that the grand idea which must form the basis, yea, the all in all of a true system of philosophy, is the DIVINE HUMANITY,* or Jehovah, in a glorified human form in the person of Jesus Christ.

* See this idea strikingly shewn in Mr. Wilkinson's "Science for All," pp. 40-48.

But this mere abstraction, to which the philosophy of Kant opened the path, and which Fichte more fully developed, has been still more clearly brought out by Hegel, whose philosophy at the present day prevails among the Germans. What Fichte called "moral order" (moralische ordnung), Hegel called "world-spirit" (welt-geist). "This world-spirit is more or less developed in every man; he comes out and is only known in science (wissenschaft), and this knowledge alone constitutes his true existence." Here, then, we have the rankest pantheism. The ultimatum, therefore, of German speculative philosophy in its relation to Deity is this, that that which we call God is nothing but human consciousness brought out in scientific development; and that the only standard of moral order is the self-acting principle which actuates our consciousness, and brings it out in its effects; this selfacting principle can be nothing else than our self-love,-thus self-love is the moving principle and the standard of moral order! May we not say with the Apostle, that such speculators, "professing themselves to be wise, have become fools"?

Now, let us see in conclusion what effect all this speculative philosophy has had on the German mind in its relation to Protestant theology. The Lutheran theology carried in its bosom the seeds of its own speedy dissolution. It came forth, as expressed in its formulas, as the antagonist, yea, the enemy of reason. Luther being appealed to as to the province of reason in its relation to theology, declared (in his usual gross style) that "reason was the devil's harlot,* and that he would have nothing to do with her." The consequence was that reason in the province of theology was to be "kept captive under obedience to faith." But the mind in its activities can only live in its rational life. † Close the eyes of its reason in respect to theological science, as involving the great realities of human existence,-the things which concern our peace, and the man sinks of necessity into the province of the natural and the sensual; he can only rise into the regions of the spiritual and the heavenly by the wings of intelligence. "Give wings to Moab, that he may flee and get away." (Jer. xlviii. 9.) But by depriving him of the use of his understanding in relation to spiritual things as revealed in God's Word, you deprive him of his wings. The bird of Paradise, or the spiritual rational, sinks to the earth, loses all its beauty and innocence, and must inevitably perish. The German mind, therefore, was debarred from rational speculations in this direction, and it was shut out, as we have

* Die Vernunft ist des Teufel's Hure, &c.

See the proper use of Reason in its relation to Faith clearly explained by the Rev. Mr. Clissold in his recent Reply to the writer at Oscott. pp. 39–77,

seen, from all speculation as to the civil and political life. But can the mind of a civilized and educated people be thus long imprisoned? Will it not strive to break its fetters, and manifest a hostile spirit against the creeds, on the one hand, which prevented its higher rational tendencies from free inquiry, and against absolutism and despotism on the other, which obstructed its investigation into the laws of civil order and government? Thus the Germán mind, in order to escape its prison-house, has sought refuge in rationalism. Reason, fettered and enslaved, will conduct to rationalism. This is a form of thought, or mental activity, which finds its resources in itself. From its own substance, as it were, it engenders and weaves, not unlike the spider in constructing its web, its own system of thought, of intelligence, and religion. With this system it goes forth, and bends and twists facts and phenomena into fitness and harmony therewith. Like the bed of Procrustes, if the weary traveller who visited his abode was too tall or too short for its dimensions, he had either to be stretched, or in some way to be shortened, to come into its compass. Thus a celebrated speculative philosopher, on being told that facts were against his theory, exclaimed, "So much the worse for the facts!"

But as the effects of rationalism in Protestant Germany have been described from German documents in this periodical,* we forbear entering upon the subject again. Suffice it to say, that the time of the end, so often asserted by Swedenborg, is fully come. "Lo, they have rejected the Word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?" There are two tombs in which, it appears, the Old Church is buried. The one is Romanism, and the other Rationalism. In the former a heap of externals without any internal principle of life, covers the dead; "a whited sepulchre, but inwardly full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness"-Babylon has conquered Israel and led him captive. In the latter, Assyria, the type of the rational, has triumphed; it has besieged Jerusalem, and its inhabitants are dying of famine and by the sword. But amidst all this confusion and desolation there is a new opening into a serener and happier state. There is still a citadel, a tower, and a fortress, where security, in these troublous times,

* See the number for April, 1846, pp. 144—152, in which there is a description of a large public meeting held at Cothen, in Upper Saxony, in May, 1845; at which 46 clergymen and 350 laymen signed a declaration in favour of rationalistic views of the Scriptures, and of theology against the Augsburgh Confession and the established Protestant Church of Germany.

Those who wish to see this more fully demonstrated are referred to an American work, A Discourse on Religion," by Theodore Parker, Chapman; or to De Wette's Einleitung in diè Schriften des Alten und Neuen Testaments.

can be found. The doctrines of the New Church afford this security and consolation to every truth-seeking mind. How thankful ought we to be when we reflect, that of the Divine Mercy we have the means, if we cultivate our privileges, of rejoicing in the light of every thing which a speculative philosophy can desire, and an enlightened theology can procure! SCRUTATOR.

FOLLOWING THE LORD IN THE REGENERATION.

MEMBERS of the New Church alone are rationally interested in their individual regeneration, for they only have a rational idea of the meaning of the term. With the sections of the professing church now under the eclipse of error, "pardon" stands for every thing relating to salvation, for he that is pardoned, it is thought, needs nothing more in order to obtain heaven. Pardon, on the contrary, is seldom mentioned by New Church teachers, because it means, with them, merely the beginning of the Christian race,* and not, as generally thought, the winning of the prize. They assume that every one who claims to be thought rational, has commenced the Christian life, and they therefore apply themselves to urge their hearers onward in a zealous continuance in that course, which, at the same time, is the way of repentance, and the way of regeneration. With this serious impression, it is no wonder that the passage occurs frequently in their public instructions, which speaks of following the Lord “in the regeneration."

The whole passage is as follows:- "And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me in the regeneration,+ when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."-(Matt. xix. 28.)

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On turning to the parallel passage in Luke xxii. 30, we thus read:'Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." If the words in the former passage,

* See the Manchester Tract No. 55, "Forgiveness of Sins not to be Confounded with Salvation."

Swedenborg has quoted this passage in A. E. n. 253, 270, and 851, always putting the comma after the word “regeneration,” thus settling the accuracy of the common version, which, as will be seen presently, some learned writers impugn.

"in the regeneration," have a similar application to the words in the latter passage," in my temptations," the "regeneration" spoken of by the Lord must mean the regeneration (which, for the sake of a needful distinction, we describe by the word "glorification") of his Humanity; because it was "in His temptations" that his Humanity was regenerated or glorified, when he was ministered unto by the spiritual apostles, the truths of his Holy Word, which is exemplified to us in the narrative of the temptation in the wilderness.

If this view be accurate, of which there can scarcely be a doubt, the reference to Matt. xix. 28, which is usual with members of the New Church, and frequently as if it did not refer to the Lord's, but only to man's "regeneration," can only be justified by the analogy subsisting between the Lord's "regeneration" or glorification and man's "regeneration." According to the literal sense, it cannot be meant that, at the time the words were spoken, the apostles personally had then followed the Lord in pursuing their own individual regeneration, because they had not then received that enlightenment into genuine Christian truth, nor had they received the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which alone regeneration can be effected. The Lord promised, indeed, that they should be baptized with that baptism of temptations which his own baptism had prefigured, (and by which his own "regeneration" was being effected) and drink of his own bitter but purifying cup, but this could not have taken place when the words in question were uttered. It is certainly true that the Lord's faithful disciples do now follow the Lord in their temptations, and their individual regeneration, (See Romans viii. 17) for they follow Him in respect to his temptations, and his regeneration or glorification: so that the word "the," before "regeneration," (in Matt. xix.) stands very conveniently to point to the Lord's glorification, here called "regeneration," on the one hand, and man's regeneration, which is the resemblance of it, on the other.

As to the apostles literally sitting on the thrones of judgment at the Lord's second coming, we know that this was said by the Lord according to the language of analogy, and that as it was the truths of the Word which ministered to the Lord in his temptations, and followed, or attended upon him, in his regeneration, so it is they only by which the state of all men can and will be judged in the world of spirits. The twelve tribes of Israel signify all the church in their complex.

It may be observed that Dr. Campbell, instead of "in the regeneration," reads "at the renovation," thus giving a sense to the original word which it never has in any other place, and meaning thereby "the times