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been considerably indebted to the writings of his illustrious cotemporary for many truths which he took and wrought out in the crucible of his own philosophical intellect, and presented them to the world as the clear deducitons of a rational psychology; whilst Swedenborg presented the same truths to us long before as they were revealed to him in the spiritual world. In common language, the one is called a philosopher, the other a visionary-which latter term is frequently used in a depreciating sense when compared with that of the former. But the real difference between them is, that the one is brought into circumstances in which he learns and understands hidden truth without much difficulty, the other has to wade his way to the temple of truth through the labour, darkness, and doubt of his erring reasoning powers. Why should any of them in their method be depreciated ? Both are God's missionaries upon the earth, and as such they are good and useful in the great world of improvement and progression. H. C.

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No. IV.

(Concluded from page 463.)

BUT we have now to make clear the distinction that exists between verbal and personal inspiration,-between the plenary inspiration, or full Divinity, that belongs to a writing dictated from God, and that partial inspiration, or, as it should more properly be termed, illumination, which has occasionally been bestowed upon men. This distinction, which is most important, has in general been overlooked, or rather not understood, by commentators on Scripture. They have spoken of the inspired writers, rather than of the inspired writings; they speak of Moses, David, and Isaiah as men whose minds were in a certain manner acted upon by the Spirit of God, and yet who retained their own proper characters, and wrote from their own thoughts. Now, this we have shown to be an error. The persons who were made use of as instruments for uttering and writing down the Divine Word, and whose names are attached to the various books of Scripture, were, as we have shown, mere penmėn, writing by simple dictation,-merely putting down what they heard a voice utter. So far as the mere writing was concerned, a child could have done it as well as they. The reason that men were selected-men, too, of power and character-was because most of them, as Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as the Evangelists, had to be preachers and apostles as well as penmen, and were compelled to utter the Divine

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testimony in the midst of a wicked and violent people. Yet it is to be understood, that the state of their own proper minds and individual characters was entirely distinguished from the nature of the message which they were sent to utter and to write down. In proof of this, men were sometimes selected whose personal characters were not good, who were wilful and disobedient. Look at the case of the prophet Jonah, for instance. No one could call him a "holy prophet," in view of his personal character; yet what he was commissioned to write is as fully and truly the Word of God as any other part of the Sacred Writings, and has its Divine and internal sense. From this single case, it may be perceived how entirely the inspiration of the prophecy or writing is to be distinguished from the character of the man who was its utterer or writer.

With the writers of the Divine Word, then, there was not, properly speaking, any personal inspiration at all. And this fact, as before shown, Divine, namely, that it passed

is the very thing that makes the Word through no human mind, but merely was uttered by a human tongue, or written down by a human hand, in obedience to an audible dictation. This is expressly declared in these words, uttered by David, in his character as the "Sweet Psalmist of Israel:"-"The Spirit of the Lord," says he, "spake by me, and His Word was in my tongue,"*on his tongue, be it observed, not in his mind. But personal inspiration, or illumination, as it should rather be termed, is an enlightenment of the man's own faculties. It is a greater thing for the writer, but infinitely less for the writing; for it causes what he utters to be still the word of man, not the Word of God; and between these there is an infinite distance, as between what is human and what is Divine. What is uttered or written from mere personal inspiration or illumination contains no internal sense capable of being opened to spirits and angels; hence it is not a medium of connection with heaven as the Divine Word is. It may be truth, even truth without error; but still it is finite truth, not infinite. All that it contains appears on the face of it; it may teach lofty wisdom, yet still finite and human. Whereas the Divine Word, that which comes by dictation directly from the Lord, is in every sentence infinite and inexhaustible, capable of being opened more and more, and of sending forth deeper and deeper truth for ever. Hence, not a jot or tittle, as is declared, of the Divine Word can fail or pass away; for it is eternal as the God from whom it comes. It may here be remarked, that what Swedenborg claims for himself * 2 Samuel xxiii. 1, 2.

is not inspiration, but illumination;-a peculiar illumination and illustration of his own rational faculties, giving him an interior discernment and perception of spiritual truths, and particularly of the internal or spiritual sense of the Divine Word. This mental illumination, however, was, again, a distinct thing from the opening of his spiritual sight, by which he was enabled to look into the spiritual world. Both of these gifts were necessary to the accomplishment of his mission, which was both to lay open and expound the internal sense of the Word, and at the same time to make known to man the nature and condition of the world of spirits, heaven, and hell. This being the character of Swedenborg's writings, human, rational expositions of the Scriptures, and explanatory accounts of the state of man after death,-though containing essential and most interior truth, they are still human writings, because they proceeded from or through a human mind. They therefore have no resemblance to, and bear no comparison with, the Holy Word, which having passed through no human mind, but being given by direct dictation from the Lord, is purely Divine and infinite, not only in the matter, but in the manner, and in every word and letter.

Among the writings contained in the Book which we call "The Bible," there are examples of both kinds of inspiration, the verbal and the personal, or, as they should rather be termed, of plenary inspiration and of mental illumination. The book of Proverbs, for instance, belongs to the latter class; the Psalms to the former. And the difference may be at once perceived from the style alone. In reading the Proverbs of Solomon, you perceive yourself to be perusing a book of profound practical wisdom, the composition of a mind enlightened and elevated to a high degree; but when you understand the meaning of the literal sense before you, you know all that is there. The sense is plain, because the writing is human; it is from a mind like our own, only more profoundly enlightened. The water is clear, because comparatively shallow. But in reading the Psalms, you feel yourself sailing over an ocean; your eye may penetrate a little way beneath the surface, but you do not see to the bottom,-you cannot, for it is fathomless; the waters seem less transparent on account of their very depth. Every part of the Proverbs can be understood by any person of ordinary mind; but much of the Psalms is, in the letter alone, nearly or quite unintelligible.

A similar distinction may be observed in the New Testament between the style of the Epistles and that of the Gospels. The Epistles are simple and intelligible, though containing deep truth and great know

ledge of the human heart, abounding in excellent practical lessons, and sometimes glowing with apostolic fervour,—as is the case, for instance, with the famous chapter on Charity, in the Epistle to the Corinthians.* Still you feel them to be human compositions, expressed in ordinary language, such as is common between man and man. (And it is, no doubt, in consequence of this greater plainness, that the Epistles are the favourite resort of preachers at the present day.) But open the Gospels, and at once you find yourself in another region of thought and feeling altogether. The lofty, solemn style at once impresses the reader with a perception of their superhuman character. "And the high priest answered and said, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said; nevertheless, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." On reading such words as these, you feel yourself in a Divine presence; there cannot be familiarity here; this is not the style and language of man;-you are again sailing over an ocean; you are gazing into the blue depths of heaven!

That the Gospels were not written by the Evangelists from their own mind or memory, a very little reflection will show. Those books, be it observed, are not mere statements of historical facts, such as might have been seen and remembered; but they contain, also, long discourses, such as the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, and detailed conversations, such as occurred between the Lord and the Jews, as recorded in John. Now these, it will be at once seen, could never have been remembered with any accuracy, as any one may satisfy himself by trying to recollect the language of a discourse which he may have heard but a week or a month ago. And this will be the more evident when we consider that the Gospels were not written till some thirty years after the Lord's crucifixion (the Gospel of John not till sixty years after). How could the writers have possibly remembered the Lord's exact words after that length of time? And no one will for a moment suppose, that these unlettered fishermen ever thought of such a thing as taking notes of these discourses and conversations, after the custom of modern times. Moreover, two out of the four Evangelists, namely Mark and Luke, were not of the number of the twelve Apostles, and themselves probably never saw or heard the Lord at all. It is evident, therefore, that if the Gospels are accurate and reliable statements of what the Lord did, and especially of what He said, they could never * 1 Corinthians xiii. + Matthew xxvi. 63, 64,

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have been drawn from the writers' own minds or memories, but must have been written by instruction from above, that is, by inspiration. But this could not have been mere personal inspiration or illumination; for this being merely an enlightenment of man's own faculties, cannot introduce anything into the memory, but merely illustrates what is already there. The Gospels, then, must have been written by plenary inspiration, that is, as already explained, by dictation, in which process the very words are uttered in the writer's ears, and he acts merely as a penman. All parts of the Scripture that have an internal sense must be of this character; and the Gospels have such an internal sense, and thus, like the books of Moses, effect communication with heaven.

In our English Bible, the important distinction which exists between those books which are plenarily inspired, and thus have an internal sense, and those which have not, does not appear in the arrangement; they are mingled promiscuously together. Not so with the Hebrew Bible; this distinction is there carefully observed. The books that are not plenarily inspired are thrown together into an Appendix at the end, and are entitled Hagiographa. This distinction must have been of Divine appointment and providence; for the Jews, who knew nothing of an internal sense in any of the books, could not have made this distinction themselves. It is to be observed, moreover, that from some cause they have classed two of the plenarily inspired books with the Hagiographa, namely, the Psalms and the Prophecy of Daniel; but they have been careful to admit none of the uninspired books into the higher division. When, however, the first Greek translation was made, commonly called the Septuagint (which was done at Alexandria, in Egypt, about two centuries before the Christian era), the distinction between the two classes of writings was not preserved, as it ought to have been; but they were mingled together,-reference being had, in their arrangement, merely to chronological order. Thus, for instance, the book of Ruth, which is one of the Hagiographa, was thrown in next after Judges, because the facts mentioned in Ruth belong to that period in the Jewish history. So, also, the Proverbs of Solomon were arranged next after the Psalms of his father David; and so on. Thus the infinitely more important distinction of character and class was sacrificed to the comparatively trifling matter of chronological order. And in this arrangement, our English translators have followed, not the Hebrew original, as they should have done, but the Septuagint translation.

The books which, as Swedenborg shows, have an internal sense, and