desiring that all should have an opportunity of knowing what he so highly prized, he allowed no opportunity to pass without introducing the truths of the New Church, regardless of friends or foes. He was a constant distributor of our tracts, frequently visiting the churches and chapels of his native town on the Sunday, and as the pastors and congregations retired from public worship, he would stand at the gates, and give to all who passed one of these little messengers of truth. He also frequently distributed them in the streets. His

labours have now closed upon earth, and his active spirit has been removed by Him who does all things well, to the inner sphere of use in the spiritual world. The friends of the New Church in Staffordshire feel that an earnest brother has gone up higher. STELLA.

At Nottingham, August 30th, 1863, in his 70th year, William Jackson, a receiver of the doctrines for above twenty years. The deceased was not connected with the society, but was well known to the members of the church.

TO READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

All communications to be sent to the Editor, the Rev. W. BRUCE, 43, Kensington Gardens Square, London, W. In order to insure insertion in the forthcoming Number, the communications must be received by the 15th of the month.

National Missionary Institution, and Students and Ministers' Aid Fund.-The Committee meet at Bloomsbury-street, on the second Thursday in each month, at 6-30 p.m. Members of Conference present in London are invited to attend. F. PITMAN, Sec. In the June number, £1. for the distressed in Blackburn, "from the Salamon family, in Africa," should have been "from Mr. W. L. Sammons, Cape Town." The following articles have been postponed from press of matter:-"Report of General Assembly of New Church in Scotland;" "M. Matter's Life and Writings of Swedenborg;" "The Purpose of Life, No. 2.;" several matters of local intelligence; an obituary, and some poetry.

New Church College Library.-The following books have been recently received, namely: From the Rev. F. DE SOYRES-Manuscript Memoranda on Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Hebrews, 14 vols; New Testament, Greek and English, in parallel columns, Cambridge, 1836; New Testament, Greek and English, interleaved with blank pages, 4to; Calmet's Dictionary, imperial 8vo, 1832; Riddle's Ecclesiastical Economy, 8vo, 1840; Dumesnil's Latin Synonyms, 8vo, 1819; Zumpt's Latin Grammar, 8vo, 1832; Madeley's Correspondences, 8vo, 1848; Swedenborg's Dicta Probantia, 8vo, 1845; Pamphlets-Swedenborg on the Lord's Glorification, 8vo, 1818; Scripta Novæ Domini Ecclesia, 8vo, 1835; Adversaria, 8vo (incorrect date, supposed to be 1845).-From J. VALLACK, Esq., Derby-Intellectual Repository, 8vo, 1862 (this is a continuation of a former gift of the Repository, from 1824 to the end, as above, of 1862,—all the volumes substantially bound, in all 38 vols); Minutes of Conference from 1857 to 1862, bound in one volume, being a continuation of a former gift.-From DAVID GEORGE GOYDER-Life of the Right Honble. W. Pitt, by Bishop Tomline, 2 vols, 4to, 1821; the Scriptures in German, small 8vo, 1863.-From Mrs. GALINDOLetters to the Rev. H. Ward Beecher on the Doctrine of the Trinity, by the Rev. Mr. Barrett, New York, 12mo, 1860.

DAVID GEORGE GOYDER, Librarian.

CAVE & SEVER, Printers by Steam Power, Hunt's Bank, Manchester.

OUR relation to God confers upon us most exalted privileges, and imposes upon us most onerous duties. The gift of rationality raises us above the sphere of involuntary impulse and unreflective action, and the gift of liberty makes us responsible for our actions. The capacities which belong to us as immortal beings, cannot be rightly directed by the light of nature. The light of Revelation can alone show us our relation to an infinite Creator and to an eternal world; discover to us the legitimate objects of the desires and hopes of the human heart; and enable us to build for futurity on the knowledge and experience of the present. When Revelation has brought us to the knowledge of God and of ourselves, and has disclosed to us the Lord's beneficent purpose in our creation, it evolves a new element in human nature, and creates a new and higher interest in human existence. It shows the true life of man to be within and above the changeable and evanescent life of the present; it convinces us that our present frame is but the scaffolding of that glorious fabric which we are placed in this world to build for eternity; and that our labours here are to be bestowed with a view to future and permanent, not to present and temporary, results.

This being the case, how important it becomes to build up our future being with the utmost solicitude and industry; to employ means which have been so bountifully provided for us by the Author of our existence and the Fountain of our mercies, and which have been provided for the purpose of making us fit to be the members of His spiritual household, that He may be our God, and we may be His people. Among the means

which our Heavenly Father has provided and appointed for leading us to enter into life and peace, communion with Him is one of the more interesting and important. It brings us face to face with Him who made us and redeemed us, who knows us with an infinite knowledge, who loves us with an infinite love, and who is ever ready to do for us more than we can either think or ask. But it not only places us immediately in the light of His countenance, it induces upon us a state favourable to the reception of the love and truth that flow from Him to impart life and light to the soul, as heat and light emanate from the solar orb to enlighten and vivify the dependent and revolving planets. This is the principal purpose to be answered, and that which should be sought to be answered, by devotional intercourse with God. No change can be wrought by prayer upon Him; He changes not. "He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." A change in Him, were it possible, could only be a change for the worse. He is infinite love and wisdom; and the unchangeableness of His nature, as consisting of these essential attributes, is our best security. "I am the Lord; I change not, therefore the sons of Jacob are not consumed."

The simple truth that prayer is not intended to act upon and produce a change in the mind of God, but to react upon and produce a change in the mind of the worshipper, is an important and a highly practical Yet to see it in its own clear light, and derive from it its real practical advantages, there are some collateral truths that must be considered in connection with it.

one.

The fact that God knows no change produces an entire revolution in the popular notion of the purpose of divine worship, since for many ages, worship, both by prayers and sacrifices, has been offered with a view in some way to propitiate the Deity. This view, erroneus though it be, had no doubt its uses in times of obscurity. It impressed the minds of men with a sense of awe, in contemplating and approaching God as the great Avenger of evil and the Rewarder of good, and served to repress and remove iniquity. But the removal of an error does not of itself open the mind to the unclouded perception of the truth; on the contrary, the mind is liable to pass from one extreme to another, and frequently does so, till the balance is restored by a proper view of the entire subject, and not less so by the substitution of right for wrong principles, as well as true for spurious or erroneous views. Because God is love itself and mercy itself, and cannot be rendered more loving or merciful by the prayers of His creatures, the mind may be led to adopt the mistaken and dangerous notion that prayer is of little importance, if not of doubtful utility. The very idea that devotion is designed

to produce a change in the mind of the worshipper, may present the act of devotion as something artificial, and seem even to involve a practical inconsistency, in praying to God while we should be striving with ourselves. So long as we enter upon the contemplation, and especially on the practice, of devotion under the direction of a cold intellectuality, we are little likely either to appreciate or realise the uses of prayer. The right feeling is still more necessary than the right view. It is not sufficient to the performance of true worship to remove the false dread of its Object, we must have something of the true love for Him. We must have not only the truth but the spirit of devotion before we can become real worshippers, or, perhaps, before we can see the necessity or advantage of worship at all.

This want or defect of the devotional feeling, no doubt, lies at the foundation of neglect or laxity in the performance of our public or private worship. It may be asked, how is this feeling, where it is absent, to be created? how, where feeble, to be strengthened? We cannot create or destroy, strengthen or enfeeble, any affection by an instant or direct effort of the will. All good affections come from heaven, and enter through the soul. But although we cannot will affections into existence, nor have them communicated from without, we can use the outward means and inward cultivation by which their Divine Author can impart and strengthen them. Habits cannot create affections, but they are among the means by which Divine power can produce or impart them. It is a law of divine order that the receptacle must be provided before the gift can be received. God bestows the gift; man must provide the receptacle. The widow's oil could only be increased by divine power; but she herself had to supply vessels to contain it, and it continued to flow while there was yet a vessel to receive it. Where there is none of the oil of love in the inner man, the vessels of truth or duty in the outer man must remain empty. But it is to be assumed that every one whose religion is more than a name has some of this oil of love; and where this oil exists, however little of it there may be, the supply of the outward receptacles will secure its constant and indefinite increase. If we would have the spirit of devotion increased, we must provide the means of receiving it, and allow it to flow copiously and continuously. But what are those outward means, those necessary receptacles, which the worshipper supplies, but the form and the habit of outward or actual devotion? Yet even these are not of man, but of God; for they are commanded or ordained by Him, and only employed by His appointment. If, therefore, we would receive an increase of the spirit of devotion, we may do so by earnestly and faithfully engaging in

the outward exercise, not regarding it as a mere observance, or doing i as a reluctant duty, but performing it in sincere obedience to a Divine command. Supposing that the Christian disciple will do this as a duty if he does not as yet perform it from love, let us see what uses public and private devotion are intended to subserve.

No one, whether or not he has any acquaintance with the laws of mutual spiritual connection, and of the reciprocal spiritual influences that prevail among similar minds, can be ignorant of the influence they exert over each other, and the power which masses of human beings, when actuated by a common object, unitedly possess. If this is the case in natural and temporal affairs, still more must it be in spiritual and eternal. When the true worshippers of the true God are assembled together with one accord in one place, the devotional sphere, with every other of a heavenly nature, is strengthened, and the outward conditions of reception are rendered more complete. The devotional feeling is excited, the affection of spiritual brotherhood is increased, love to the Lord is exalted; the minds of the assembled worshippers are directed simultaneously and desiringly to the same objects, through the same utterances of language; and they, for the time, to a greater or less extent, think and feel and act as one. It is this which tends to render public or social worship so powerful as a means of improvement, in exciting and strengthening the principle of worship in the heart. It is not difficult to see how such outward means tend to promote the primary end of worship, the preparation of the mind for the reception of the gifts and graces which on these occasions we ask in prayer. But there are benefits which may result, by our means, to those also for whom we are then accustomed to offer our petitions to the throne of mercy. We pray for others as well as for ourselves,—for the prevalence of order, political and spiritual, and for the right direction of those by whom that order is outwardly sustained. It would express but half the truth to suppose that these petitions were simply the means of expressing our own good-will towards those persons and objects that are included in our devotional service. Our prayers, if sincere, have a more positive and

extended use than this.

There is a spiritual law, that thought produces presence, and love conjunction. Nor are these means of presence and conjunction confined entirely to the parties themselves; there is a chain of connection, formed of all good thoughts and feelings, according to their affinity, that exists in earth and heaven. Heavenly thoughts and feelings have an extension into heavenly societies, and the spheres of these heavenly societies are brought nearer to us and around us when our minds are