I turn to the Ap. Exp., and there I read of a former heaven, of a Christian heaven, and of a new heaven, and there also I find mention is made of a New Christian heaven (1275, 1285, 1286, 1287).

Without offering any opinion as to what ought to be the proper designation of The Church (which it emphatically is) to which we belong, I shall content myself with stating, that other appellations are used by our author, besides "New Church," "New Jerusalem," and, "the New Church which is called New Jerusalem." The following appellations, have a high and important, yea, a definite meaning, indicative also of its true Christian character, and therefore not open to the epithet of a new Jewish Church, as intimated by a former correspondent, but identified with its Great Head, the Lord Jesus Christ; viz.: "The Church of the Lord;" "The New Church of the Lord:" and, "The Lord's New Church." It is emphatically The Church, and, in its universality, the only church on the face of the earth, recognised as a church by the Lord himself; or, to use the words of our enlightened scribe, it is "His (the Lord's) New Church, which is meant by the New Jerusalem."-Ap. Exp. 870, 1305, 1306, 1313, 1316, 1319, 1321, 1328, 1333, 1336, 1354, 1355; and, Brief Expo. 71, 105.

As a lover and also a preacher of the sublime and heavenly truths and doctrines of "The Lord's New Church," the only church that is the bride and the wife of the Lamb, I have, on this occasion, cast my mite into the treasury, and am,

Yours, in the good cause,

Leeds, May, 1842.

J. C.

"THE WORD IS FOR EVER SETTLED IN HEAVEN."

Ps. 119, ver. 89.

THIS declaration has been supposed by some New Church expositors to teach, even in the literal sense, that there is a divine Word in heaven. Such a construction, however, cannot be put upon the passage, without a departure from its obvious literal sense, and, consequently, the removal of the basis of the true spiritual sense. There is, certainly, a divine Word in heaven; but that fact is not declared in this portion of our Word.

David declares, it will be perceived from the context, by these words, that in the visible heavens, every thing is "settled" and maintained in order by the fiat of divine wisdom. "They (the heavenly

bodies and the earth, regarded as one of them, or, in respect to her place as a globe,) continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants" (v. 91).

By the divine Word, is spiritually meant the divine wisdom, in which is the divine love; or the Holy Spirit of truth proceeding from the Lord, and which is the universal life of all existences, from highest to lowest.

By the heavens, is spiritually meant, 1. The internal man. 2. The internal member of the church, or the internal church.

heaven of angelic peace.

3. The

By being settled, in a natural sense, is meant the being in natural order and tranquillity; and, in a spiritual sense, the being in spiritual order and tranquillity.

The movements of the great bodies of the natural universe, called "the heavenly bodies," in their order and harmony, are strongly contrasted with the disorders on the earth's surface.

The peace resulting from the Word's being settled firmly in the internal man, contrasts powerfully with the disturbed action of the external man, so far as it has not been subjected to the internal, and thus to the Word which is there "settled," and so become regenerate.

The order and tranquillity exhibited in, and felt by, the internal member of the church, in whom the Word has acquired a settled abode, equally contrasts with the uncertainty and fluctuation exhibited in the unsettled character of the external member of the church.

But above all, how settled is the dominion of the Word in the heaven of angels! There all is peace, because there, the Word of divine love and wisdom rules every thought, and directs every act. Nothing can exist there which intercepts the sweet and harmonious course of the divine influx.

May we all prefer our internal to our external man; so shall we become internal members of the church, and, eventually, inhabitants of the angelic heaven. To this end, may we labour and study to settle in our minds the dominion of the Lord's Spirit and Word, by endeavouring to consider, in the first place, how we may best please Him, and act accordingly.

W. M.

CORRESPONDENCE A PRACTICAL SCIENCE. No. 3.

(Continued from p. 181.)

It would be tedious and almost impossible to reckon up all the numberless benefits which the steam-engine has conferred on mankind, in its practical working and results; but a few of its most important and popular applications may be mentioned. And first, as the powerful means of locomotion. The subject of change of place, or the appearance of it, in the spiritual world, was considered in a former paper, where it was seen, that this must really consist in a change of the mental states, which, exhibiting itself on outward objects, produces, by correspondence, a change of scene also. So in the world of nature, all bodily progression or travelling must be the outward effect of a variation of states in the church. And little as we may now be able to trace this immediately to its cause, yet it cannot be doubted, that the increased means of locomotion and the facilities of communication by steam, are the direct consequence of the new development of good and truth in the most external degree of life; and as they proceed from this development as a cause, so they must betoken to us that the divine spirit which "moved upon the face of the waters," is now stirring in the hearts and lives of men, and producing a more rapid, and, if it may be so expressed, continuous change of states in the human mind.

Railroads are fast extending themselves throughout the more civilized portions of the world, and effecting that free communication of feelings and interests, as well as of traffic, which binds men together by mutual benefits, whilst it gives rise to that equal dependence of each upon all, which cannot fail to unite mankind in one mighty bond of brotherhood, which is the interest as well as the intent of a diversity of nations and communities on earth. The facilities, indeed, of transit from place to place, seem to create travellers, since they break down, as it were, the barriers of time and space, and bring the most distant parts of the country comparatively near together. Nor will this be a source of wonder, when it is remembered that it is these material fallacies of time and space in the mind which have so long clogged and bound down man's spirit, and checked his advancement in the states of interior wisdom and life, since they formed an insurmountable obstacle to his rising above the appearances of outward nature to a knowledge of the world within; and it was to remove these hindrances to his heavenward progress, that our enlightened author chiefly wrote and laboured, that by giving him a key to visible

and natural objects, he might learn that they are but appearances,* and thus mount above his sensual perceptions, into the region of thought and spirit contained within these. And here we see, on the face of nature herself, the effect of the truths he taught, as well as the evidence that the human mind is now indeed emancipating itself from the thraldom of matter, by which it is ever encompassed, and to which it has so long been the slave.

Again, if we regard the method by which this important improvement in the means of communication amongst mankind has been effected, we find that the chief and most extensive labour has been the straightening and levelling of the ways, by the removal of hills and the filling up of valleys. And who can look on this extraordinary process now carrying on throughout the country, without calling to mind the words of Isaiah? Nay! let it not be thought too literal a view of the subject, if we regard this preparation as the direct natural fulfilment of the prophecy, that "the mountains and hills shall be made low, and the crooked places straight, and the rough places smooth, before the Lord," at his coming. For though these predictions, in their primary and essential signification, must refer to the spiritual preparation in the human mind for the Lord's appearance, and the establishment of his kingdom on earth, we are taught to believe, that every part of the divine Word has also a literal and external sense; and, inasmuch as all spiritual progress in man and the church cannot but produce its own proper effects on earth, we may surely look upon this development of advance in the natural world, as the real proceeding effect, corresponding with the progress of mind, and thus the literal fulfilment, though not the object of the prophecy.

In connexion with this subject is the new impulse given to navigation in all parts of the world, by the application of steam power to the propelling of vessels. A few years ago, the passage between the old and new continents was tedious and most uncertain in duration. With the assistance of steam, a sea voyage is now reduced to as much certainty and uniformity as land-carriage; and with equal, if not greater

* We beg to remind the writer as well as the reader of this paper, that E. S. nowhere in his writings states, that the objects of nature are "only appearances." The following passage from D. W. 160, is very instructive and decided as to this point: "Forasmuch as the lowest substances of nature which constitute earths, are dead and are not changeable and various according to the state of the affections and thoughts, as in the spiritual world, but unchangeable and fixed, therefore there are spaces there, and distances of spaces; such things are in consequence of creation closing there, and subsisting in its rest: hence, it is evident, that spaces are proper to nature; and forasmuch as spaces in nature are not appearances of spaces according to states of life, as in the spiritual world, they also may be called dead." See also D. P. 46.-ED.

security to life and property than before its introduction. The writer heard with much interest, and watched with intense anxiety, the first attempts at crossing the great Atlantic, independently of the winds and currents; and it was with feelings of mingled triumph, delight, and gratitude, that he witnessed the success of what was then deemed a daring and hazardous adventure. Triumph-pardonable in a New Church man, whose study it should be to see in all events, which take place around him, an evidence of the spiritual changes which are effected within the Church: triumph-inasmuch as this taming and subduing of the hitherto resistless power of the broad and mighty deep, was to him a convincing proof that the rational faculties of man by the knowledge of good and truth, were gaining the ascendency over the stormy ocean of sensual feelings and passions, with their vain reasonings, which had so long ruled with undisputed sway in the human breast, and were reducing their proud waves, in some measure to the controul of the divine power, ever present within the mind: delight, that he could thus witness as it were, experimentally, through their effects in the kingdom of nature, the progress of those glorious views, which are built and depend on the knowledge and application of the good and the true in the natural man: and gratitude to the Lord, who was seen in all these events to be hastening His second glorious advent, not in nature or the things of time and sense, but in the spirit and the glory equally present within his Word and his works, to which these correspond, and of which they are the external effects.

And if in this contest of man's rational powers, carried on with the elements on the bosom of the deep, some failures and losses have been experienced, and the mighty ocean has claimed its victims, it but proclaims in a voice of warning that the sensual activities of the soul, even in the Lord's Church, are not wholly subdued, but, though kept in check by the divine power within, will often rise rebellious to the renewed will, and assert their dominion over the natural mind, till the conflict of earth is over, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

In the construction of the steam-engine and other machines for the use and benefit of man, it may be observed that iron is almost the only material used: and we cannot fail to admire the astonishing beauty and perfection, as well as the great delicacy to which the casting and working of this hard and apparently intractable substance has been carried. Do we look for the reason, we may find it in the state of the church; for the operations of divine grace on the heart are