to teach these subjects as well as they are taught in other similar institutions, or else it does not deserve the name of a college.

But would this fact alone, that it teaches the same subjects that are taught in other colleges, and that it even teaches them as well as they are taught there, be a sufficient reason to establish a separate New Church college, or would it even be right for us to call such an institution a New Church college?

This much is certain, that such an institution does not become a New Church institution simply by affixing the name of New Church college to the walls of the building in which it performs its college uses. Nor does it become a New Church college from the fact that all its governors and the members of its council, and also all the masters, profess the doctrines of the New Church; just as little as a scientific college becomes a Unitarian or Presbyterian institution from the mere fact that their professors hold either the Unitarian or Presbyterian belief. Nor does a New Church college become of the New Church by having the service of that Church performed in its chapel, and by compelling its students to attend New Church worship. All these are merely external circumstances, which have no influence on the interior workings of the college, and by draping a college in New Church garments it does not thereby become of the New Church. Nor would we on these grounds only advocate the establishment of a New Church college; for in that case we would have an Old Church college with a New Church name. No, just as little as a member of the Old Church is made a member of the New by joining a New Church society and attending New Church worship, unless he at the same time renounces in toto the doctrines of the Old Church, and in their place accepts the doctrines of the New, and unless his whole mode of thought and of life is changed and brought into harmony with these new doctrines, just as little is a college made a New Church college by being founded and administered by men believing the New Church doctrines, unless these doctrines enter into the very vitals of the institution, and produce an entire change in the material taught, and in the methods of teaching

Swedenborg tells us that theological things in man reside in his inmost, and that the idea of God is in the centre of these things; and he tells us that below theological things are ranged in order moral and political things, and the things of science, and that the nature of the lower things is determined entirely by the nature of the higher, and finally by the nature of the highest. From this it follows that the states of the Church are reproduced in their turn in society, in the state, and also in philosophy and science; that consequently the science and philosophy of the last fifteen hundred years became gradually the exponent of the faith in three Gods, and of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The philosophical equivalent of the doctrine of justification by faith alone is contained in the famous saying of Cartesius, "Cogito, ergo sum". "I think, therefore I am;" or in other words, thought and understanding is everything, and love and affection nothing; or, as the metaphysicians of to-day have it, thought distinguishes

man from the beasts, while the feelings and affections he has he possesses in common with the beast. The understanding is thus placed by them above the will; even as faith in the Church is placed above charity, and as all works are condemned as not contributing anything to salvation.

The effect of dividing the One God into three was even still more pernicious for the principle of unity was thereby removed out of theology, and consequently out of philosophy and science. The one central truth upon which depend all other truths was removed out of the horizon of the philosophers and men of science, and truth itself, because it had no longer an interior connection with the Lord, was degraded in their eyes to the power of a mere hypothesis which may be true or not, and which is true only when it stands the crucial test of the experience of the senses. If, therefore, we examine the system of science, as contained in the most approved text-books of modern times, we find the facts of science arranged into beautiful order; but the interior rational regions of science are a desert, or else are filled with contradictory hypotheses, which, however, are more or less confirmed by the evidence of the senses. It is lamentable to see the mental darkness in which the men of science grope as soon as they attempt to raise themselves from the realm of effects into that of causes; and this darkness is self-induced, because they deny at heart spiritual causes, and persist in explaining all natural effects by natural causes. How much light would be brought into the natural sciences, if scientific men would only adopt the one doctrine of discrete degrees, and everything that depends upon them. Yet this would involve the adoption of the whole New Church philosophy and theology, inasmuch as the doctrine of discrete degrees is their philosophical equivalent or exponent.

The faith-alone state of humanity is also exhibited in the systems of classification adopted in the sciences, and in the principles by which art critics are influenced. Form, another philosophical equivalent of faith, and, when insisted upon to the exclusion of substance and use, another equivalent of faith alone,—form, I say, in scientific classification and in art criticism is everything, and substance and use nothing. What, indeed, is the only principle taken into consideration by botanists, zoologists, and mineralogists in their systems of classification? Do they not put useful and poisonous plants and domestic and ferocious animals pell-mell into one scientific genus and class provided they agree or disagree in those principles of form which they hold to be distinctive? And do not art critics, in passing judgment on works of art, take into consideration the artistic execution to the utter exclusion of their use and end? The question whether the subject treated is of a heavenly or infernal character, whether it raises heavenly or infernal affections in the beholder, are points of minor and secondary consideration.

As the New Church theology places love and charity in their proper place, and as it directs the attention of mankind again to the necessity of good works-to good works which are the effects of heavenly love married to wisdom and intelligence, therefore it will introduce among

men an entirely new system of classification, and an entirely new school of art. Use, and not form, will be its foremost principle of classification; and as the whole of the spiritual world, on the principle of use, or on the basis of good and evil works, is divided into a heaven and a hell, so also the primary principle of classification in New Church science that is in that science which will be the scientific exponent of New Church philosophy and theology-will be the principle of use. "By their fruits ye shall know them;" and by their fruits will plants and beasts be judged into systems; and by judging men by their fruits the entire treatment of history, and hence of the science of man in general, will become different. Again, by the introduction of the doctrine of discrete degrees and the doctrine of correspondence into the system of nature, and hence into the system of the sciences in general, philosophy and religion, science and theology, will become reconciled, and the realm of true causes will be laid open before the believing and spiritually-minded man of science which was closed to the sceptical and sensually-minded. Any one, therefore, who should raise the question whether a New Church college is denominational or undenominational would be entirely at a loss how to answer this question, inasmuch as the contradictions separating the schools and colleges into two hostile camps would be entirely removed. Then, indeed, the prophecy of Isaiah would be accomplished, where we read: "In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria; and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria; and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land ;"-where by Egypt is meant the realm of science, or of the scientifics of nature, and by Assyria the realm of rational causes, or of rational philosophy, while by Israel is meant the genuine theology which is revealed from God out of heaven, and which sheds its illuminating light into the domains of philosophy and science.

This great work of ultimating the principles of New Church philosophy and theology in the natural sciences, and of remodelling thereby the whole of their structure; the great work, therefore, of opening a highway out of Egypt into Assyria, and from Israel into both these countries, is the work of a New Church college; and unless it takes an interest in this work, and does everything in its power to promote it, it does not deserve the name of a New Church college, but that of an Old Church college; yea, in the eyes of the Lord it appears as a pretender, which professes to be of the New Church, while, from head to foot, and down to its very skin and bones, it is of the Old Church, and inculcates Old Church principles, that is, principles which are essentially false, and opposed to the very name in which such a college prides itself.

Well may a governor of the New Church College and a member of its Council pause and ponder when he reflects in what an important, yea, Divine, work he has, by accepting office, pledged himself to engage.

By the very fact of his becoming an officer in a New Church college he thereby pledges himself to carry out and to support the uses of such an institution, and if he shirks his responsibility, by making light of his duties or by denying them altogether, he thereby declares his own unfitness to be an officer in such an institution.

If the officers of the New Church College declare publicly the nature of the work in which they have engaged, and if they declare their determination to devote themselves, to the best of their ability, to the performance of this important work, then the members of the New Church will account it a privilege to assist them with their means, and the College will never be stinted in its resources. But if the New Church College puts on a mere appearance of a New Church, while essentially to all intents and purposes it remains an Old Church, institution, its attitude before the Church will always be more or less that of a beggar.

From all that has been said it appears very plainly that a New Church college, such as it ought to be, is an impossibility at the present day; for we neither have the professors nor the text-books that are essential for the performance of the work of a New Church college. In fact, it appears very plainly, that if the New Church College at all desires to become what its name implies it must form its own professors and write its own text-books, and this appears a well nigh hopeless task. Yet it is not so hopeless as it may appear at first sight; and where there is a will there is also a way.

What is there to prevent the New Church College, in addition to the work which it is carrying on at present, from resolving itself into an Academy of Sciences, for the fixed purpose of ultimating the truths of the New Church in natural science? There are many men in the Church eager to co-operate with the authorities of the College in such a noble undertaking. What is there to prevent the New Church College from publishing annually its Transactions, as is done by other learned and philosophical bodies? This is a work which requires to be done in the present embryonic state of the New Church College; and unless the College rises to the importance of this work, it will never be anything else than an Old Church institution, which bears the name of a New Church college, but in which there is nothing of the New Church save its name.

Let the New Church College educate its own professors and write its own text-books, and then let it establish a school in which the natural sciences are taught as they appear in the light of the New Church, and let the methods of instruction be accommodated to the spirit and the teaching of the New Church; ie. let the natural sciences be used as a means of developing the rational faculties of the pupils, and not as a mere means of filling up their memories; and then such a school, however small it may be, will be of the New Church, and it will be a true embryo of a New Church college.

It is not a mere Utopian idea, that of establishing a New Church Academy of Sciences in connection with this institution, and it is one

not so very difficult of execution as may appear at first sight. The New Church has had heretofore its men of science; it has had its Brayley in England, its Portal in France, its Chauvenet in America; it has also had its philosophers, among whom ranks in the first place the late Dr. Immanuel Tafel; its philologists, among whom is the foremost now living, the brother of Immanuel Tafel, Leonhard, residing at present in America. Then, again, there are the former members of the Swedenborg Association, whose object it was to publish the philosophical and scientific writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and there are the editors and contributors to the New Church Quarterly -a quarterly publication which could well be put at the side of all the other quarterlies. There is J. J. Garth Wilkinson, Elihu Rich, and Wornum; there again is Mr. Wallis of the South Kensington Museum, all of whom we might enlist in our undertaking; again, all over Great Britain, in France, Germany, Sweden, and America, yea, even in Russia, we will find men who would account it an honour to be our corresponding members, and who would gladly send us their contributions. There is not the least doubt in my mind that if the officers of the New Church College would organize to-morrow, yea to-night, a New Church Academy of Sciences in connection with their College, they would receive responses from all parts of the world where Swedenborg's name is known, and where men are anxious for the New Church to make a determined stand against the spirit of scepticism and materialism which is devastating and unchristianizing all the fields of science.

Much talent is even now latent in the New Church which is only waiting for an opportunity to enlist itself in such a work. The cultivation of the sciences and philosophy has an attraction in the eyes of all rational men, and if our Academy of Sciences would go systematically to work, and resolve itself into theological, philosophical, philological and scientific sections, we would no doubt find men who would work with a will in each of these four sections. The principal work, however, of a New Church Academy of Sciences, especially at the outset, would consist in gathering from the Writings of the Church the true principles for our guidance in the study of the natural sciences. An acknowledgment of the Doctrines of the New Church as a Divine Revelation would have to be made the sine quâ non of membership; for what would it profit the New Church College if the Academy which it is nourishing would lead it away from the Doctrines of the New Church, instead of confirming it in them; for then it would be a failure indeed, and all its work would have to be done over again.

The work of studying the writings of the Church, again, and establishing their true meaning, would enable the New Church College at the very outset to accomplish satisfactorily the work deputed to it by the General Conference, viz., that of training its young men for the ministry. As the main requisite for educating New Church theologians is a knowledge of the Doctrines themselves, and as our text