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MEDITATIONS ON DEATH AND ETERNITY.

"Love is an invisible spiritual bond. * * * It knits together kindred souls on earth and in heaven." (p. 330.)

"Live with what is earthly, not in it." (p. 159.)

"Whatever fate may befall us, we are independent of it, in so far as we are what

we ought to be." (p. 149.)

'Purple velvet and silk are, after all, not very different from the winding-sheet in which a corpse is clothed." (p. 157.)

"One thing only is unholy, and that is sin." (p. 73.)

"It is not the loving Deity that condemns us, but our own imperfection and sinfulness." (p. 287.)

"The dying sinner is an immature, yet rotting fruit, on the great tree of life." (p. 368.)

"If any one avoid evil from fear of punishment, he is prudent, but not virtuous." (p. 200.)

"If sin be the death of the soul, then virtue, or likeness to God, must be its life." (p. 338.)

"Sin is spiritual slavery; virtue, spiritual freedom." (p. 173.)

"The spirit's nature is immortal; its joys must be immortal like itself." (p. 57.) "In the chain of the infinite universe there are no missing links." (p. 102.) "Let not a day of thy life pass by without an act of Christian love." (p. 75.) "Only he who dwells in love dwells in God." (p. 113.)

"Do thy duty; keep thy conscience clear; for all else trust to Him who knows best what is good for us." (p. 98.)

We have now, we trust, shown enough to prove that these "Meditations on Death and Eternity" are worthy of a large measure of the interest with which they cannot fail to be approached. They will please more or less, and more or less of them will please, according to the various turns of mind and phases of mental and spiritual perception which various readers may bring to their perusal; but none, we think, can fail to recognize in them, what every Christian must rejoice to recognize, the spirit of a truly Christian brother, whose light indeed may have been somewhat different from our own,-different, and yet the same, as flowing unmistakeably from the same source, albeit through other channels,-and whose heart, soul, and mind were no less unmistakeably swayed by that love to the Lord, which our Lord Himself enunciates as the sum of "the First and Great Commandment."

In compliment to the translator, we must add, that her work appears to be of unusual excellence; for it is no easy thing to render into English a work of this nature, so that, as we really believe to be the case here,— it would scarcely occur to the mind of the reader that he was reading a translation at all.

M. C. H.

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FREE WILL, A PRACTICAL DOCTRINE.

PART I.

BEFORE Commencing our remarks on free will, it may be useful to say a word or two concerning the will itself, as to its substance and form.

The will, as to substance, is the inmost of the human constitution, and its form is the form of man, or the human form.*

The inmost substance of the human form is not confined to any particular part, but extends throughout the whole as the inmost of every part, from head to foot, and therefore must be in the form of the whole.

That every human principle must be in the human form, is evident to every reflecting mind; and this is made manifest in the form of the body, which is the complex and aggregate of all interior principles. To say that the human will is in the human form, is only saying that it is in its own form; for what form can any human principle have but the human form? And, therefore, to say that the will is in the human form is equal to saying that the body is in the human form, which is useless, inasmuch as it is obvious that each existing thing must be in the form of itself.

The human body is in the human form, because it is the ultimate of these principles which in their aggregate make up the human constitution; and though the interior principles are not visible, yet, being substantial, they must have a form, and that form must be human. And this is not only the case with constituent principles, which are all substantial, but it is also the case with every affection and thought which exists in them, these being nothing separate from the forms themselves, but only changes and variations of them effected by influent life in conjunction with external things. (A knowledge of this fact being important, we would recommend to the reader a perusal of the following numbers: D. L. W. 40, 41, 42, 43; D. P. 279., sec. iv.) Hence, then, we proceed with the idea that man's will is substantial, and that it is the inmost constituent principle of the human constitution: not only the inmost of some particular vital part, as the head or the

* The substance of the will is the inmost degree of each plane, excepting the "human internal." Man has in his constitution all the degrees which exist in the whole of creation, both of the spiritual and natural worlds. These degrees exist in two orders, called successive and simultaneous, each discrete degree in successive order containing three discrete degrees in simultaneous order, which extend from centre to circumference, the centre or inmost of which is the substance of the will. In such order is each heaven, and also this world. Hence every angel, as well as every man, exists in simultaneous order—that is, as to his conscious life.

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heart, but being the inmost of man, and being also in the whole of the human form, it is the inmost of every part and principle from first to last. This being the case, it will be seen that though the first principles of the will, or the will in its beginnings, is in the brain; yet it is not as a whole confined to the brain, but in its continuations and ramifications it exists in the whole of the human form, even to the extremes of the foot hence there is a spontaneous compliance, even in the extremities of the body, with the determinations of the will. When the will determines how to act, the head does not consult with nor instruct the hand concerning its mode of action, but they act as a one-for such they are, being necessary constituents of one harmonious whole, and as such, each part acquiesces intuitively; therefore, each determination of the will is universal in the will, as each action of the body, which is from the will, is universal in the body. From what is thus stated concerning the substance of the will in its ramifications permeating the whole man, it will follow that it will be present in every part and in the whole of man, consequently, that its form will be that of man, or the human form.

One of the chief things to be known and kept in mind when reflecting on man's free will, is that man is only a form recipient of life, having no life in himself as an inherent principle;—that he is only a created form, consisting of finite substance, and receives his life momentarily from God, the Creator, the only Source of life.

Man, although only a recipient of life, consists of all the degrees of substance in creation, both natural and spiritual, that part which consists of the substance of this world being called body, and that which consists of the substance of the spiritual world soul. These two parts are not two separate bodies, but they are two parts of one constitution, which as a whole, being altogether only a recipient of life, may with propriety be denominated one body, the parts which are distinguished by the two terms soul and body being only two discrete degrees in one whole. All created substance is in itself void of life, spiritual as well as natural, both soul and body living only by the reception of life; and, as a recipient of life, the soul is nothing more than body: it consists of spiritual degrees of created finite substance arranged into the human form, and is therefore, like every other created thing, only a form recipient of life, consequently only body. But though man of himself is void of life as an inherent property, yet he possesses it by continued communication, or by influx from God. Still that influx of life does not, and cannot of itself, give man consciousness, not even of his own individuality, nor of existence in any degree whatsoever. The influx of

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life from God is by an internal way, and this, though it is the cause of the existence of all things, yet of itself alone it is unproductive. It is as the heat and light proceeding from the sun would be in the atmosphere without an earth to operate upon and to produce. Man is not a subject of free will by reason of his being a form recipient of life, nor by virtue of the reception of life immediately from God; but his will and thought, and the existence of all his powers, depend upon something else for manifest and conscious existence. If we suppose a case in which man received only immediate life from God, and admit the possibility of his existing after birth, he would have no more conscious life than a tree, or any other vegetable.

The soul, as well as the body, receives its immediate life by an internal way; and it is this life which gives man all his powers. But still these powers do not become existent as conscious principles only in conjunction with external things: previously they may be said to be in potency, but they do not become actual before man is supplied with forms from without. Therefore, the Creator has provided means in both soul and body by which they can receive impressions from external objects, and by those impressions experience a consciousness of the existence of the things surrounding, just as though the things themselves were in them, in the body sensibly, and in the soul consciously. The means which are provided in the body are the organs of sensation, and those in the soul are similar organs of its own substance, and each is susceptible of impressions from objects consisting of substance which is of the same degree as that of the recipient subject; and whilst the body is acted upon by the things of this world, the soul is acted upon by the things of the spiritual world, yet with a difference which we need not describe here.

The following remarks concerning involuntary affections and thoughts, being the objects on which man's will is exercised, being of the utmost importance to the understanding of free will as a practical doctrine, we invite the reader's particular attention to them.

The effects which are produced upon the soul are from attendant spirits, and are the affections and thoughts which enter the mind involuntarily; and those produced upon the body are all those wellknown sensations of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. All these effects are as objects in the soul and body, each bearing the form of the thing which produced it; and they are the objects on which the will is exercised in choosing, both as to things good and evil, and without which the will would have no choice at all; for it chooses of the things which are in itself, and choice, like sight, never goes out of its subject,

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though the contrary may appear to be the fact. It appears to the external man that the things which surround him are the only objects of choice, and that the affections and thoughts are unsubstantial and transient,—that they come and go of their own accord, and it matters but little to him what may be their quality, if he can only possesss the substantial things by which he is surrounded in this world. And although this, to the merely natural man, appears to be an important truth, yet to the spiritual man, who is looking forward to the realities of a life after death, these things are but of secondary importance, and those which concern eternal life are the primary ones. The only things with man as objects of choice, which are in immediate relation to eternal life whilst he remains in this world, are the involuntary affections and thoughts which are produced in the mind; these are spiritual in their origin, and they stand in relation to man's eternal destiny in the spiritual world, either in heaven or hell; they are therefore to be regarded as of the utmost importance. Our attention to them cannot be given with too much circumspection; and our choice of them cannot be made with too much diligent thought and care, seeing that our everlasting happiness or misery is involved in our decision as to whether the good or the evil shall become our own.

The involuntary affections and thoughts which are the primary objects of man's choice, are substantial; and though it will necessarily appear strange to one who has not reflected upon the subject, it is nevertheless true, that their substance is that of man's soul; and their quality is good or evil according to their origin. Notwithstanding the origin of those affections and thoughts, as to their quality and existence, being out of man, their substance is one with that of the soul in which they exist. They are presented as objects of man's choice, and are accepted or rejected by the determination of the will. And surely the quality of those affections and thoughts which man chooses and makes his own by voluntary determination and appropriation, must be of the greatest importance; these principles are in man, and they are transient or permanent with him according to his approval or disapproval of them; they give quality to his soul, and they are the only source of his good or evil.

Those mental principles, which are presented involuntarily for man's acceptance or rejection, may be compared to presentations from heaven and hell, and ought to be regarded as such, for such they are; and man must accept one or the other; he cannot receive both, neither can he refuse both, nor can he stand neutral between them; he is necessitated to choose one or the other. They are presented to him as objects of