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THE

INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY,

AND

NEW JERUSALEM MAGAZINE.

VOL. X.-ENLARGED SERIES.

1863.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY THE GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE NEW CHURCH,

SIGNIFIED BY THE NEW JERUSALEM IN THE REVELATION:

AND SOLD BY

C. P. ALVEY, 36, BLOOMSBURY STREET, W.C.

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ALL time speaks to us of eternity; but there are seasons which are more especially suggestive of our nearness to it, and which remind us of the duty and the wisdom of an earnest and timely preparation for it. The commencement of a New Year naturally disposes the serious mind to reflect on the year that has passed, with the view-which is the object of all rational retrospection-of drawing from the experience of the past some lessons of wisdom for our use in the future. The present season reminds us that another period of our probationary life has passed away, and calls upon us to inquire what we have done to make it a season of improvement.

Time was given for the sake of state, to which it corresponds. Unless we regard state as the end and purpose of time, we do not recognise the divine aim in our temporal existence. So far as regards our purposes in life, time and state should run parallel. We should increase in wisdom as in years. This is Heaven's law in relation to human progression. It is the law which the Lord himself obeyed when He, as the Eternal, came into this world of time. Having assumed a humanity subject to the laws of time, He made time the servant and the measure of state. He increased in wisdom as in stature, or in years, and in favour with God and man. His was the true pattern of human progression. The mind should grow with the body, and the spiritual advance with the natural life. So far as we wilfully fall short of this, we practically disbelieve God's purpose in giving us time. Unless we employ time to advance our spiritual interests, we are neither faithful to God nor to ourselves. Time rolls on independently of our

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