forms of the consciousness, laws which we have shown to be destructive to every thing to which they have been applied. Instead of representing, as they should, the modes of existence and manifestation in God, which must, as even these theorizers themselves allow, furnish the only legitimate foundation of Philosophy as well as of Theology, they only represent the most external natural modes of the human consciousness, which cannot suggest or even represent the spiritual. Having described the various forms which have been constructed by the Understanding in its attempt to describe or to represent the threefold form in which God, as well as all things created by Him, must exist; and having shown that they do not even represent any spiritual idea, but are antagonistic and destructive to the idea of the Spiritual,— we will proceed to describe conceptions which have been founded in intuitions from the sentimental region of the mind, and therefore are really representative of a spiritual order of experiences.

Separate from the form of Tri-personality realized by the Church from legitimate sentimental conceptions, illegitimate conceptions have been realized which are founded in destructive sentimental intuitions, by which a form of tri-unity is produced. Both Emanuel Swedenborg and Jakob Böhme appeared to recognize opposite absolute principles and spheres of being, which they termed Divine and Infernal. In his work entitled "Heaven and Hell," Swedenborg described, in the most particular manner, phenomena which he supposed to be incidental to these opposite spheres; and the following most extreme and monstrous statement, in which all Divine, Infernal, and Phenomenal manifestations are referred to God, was made by Böhme, whose religious conceptions, like those of Swedenborg, represented inversions of spiritual truth, but were more rational and intuitive: "The Holy Deity, being Triune in Nature and in Substance, has a Threefold Life, and manner of Working; whence the Divine Essence is manifested in Three distinct Principles, which cause and comprehend all possible Kinds, Degrees, and Powers of Being, Life, and Operation, and show forth themselves in the existence of, 1. The Dark World, or Hellish Nature; 2. The Light World, or Heavenly Nature; and 3. This Created Mixed World, or Temporal Nature." Notwithstanding all this, both Swedenborg and Böhme were pantheists of the extremest kind; recognizing "the Divine Wisdom, the Divine Love, and the Divine Proceeding," as the original source of all possible manifestations: and, although it seems incredible that such opposite effects as heavenly and hellish natures

should ever be referred to the same absolute cause, it is an interesting example of the manner in which Falsehood, through an abuse or perversion of language and an inversion of legitimate ideas, makes that which is one appear as opposite and antagonistic, and then confounds these apparently opposite things, so that they cannot be distinguished; giving to the most complete intellectual insanity the appearance of the greatest profundity, and to a complete inversion of legitimate supernatural phenomena the appearance of a genuine Christian manifestation. Both Böhme and Swedenborg appeared to recognize opposite absolute spheres, in Heaven and Hell; but their statements in relation to these spheres were purely fictitious and deceptive, and calculated to confound the idea of such an opposition with that of natural good and evil : and this may be seen, because they in reality recognized only one absolute substance and cause, and failed to recognize any ground separate from this for a phenomenal universe. This confounding the Infinite with the Finite, and the Absolute with the Phenomenal, is clearly illustrated by the following statement, which was intended by Swedenborg to be an explanation of his theory of Being and of Creation: "From those things which are said in my works concerning the Creation, it is evident that God first made his Infinity Finite by substances emitted from Himself, from which exists his proximate encompassing Sphere, which makes the Sun of the Spiritual World; and that afterwards, by means of that Sun, He perfected other encompassing spheres, even to the last, which consists of things quiescent; and that thus, by means of degrees, He made the world finite more and more. These things are adduced in order that human reason may be satisfied, which does not rest unless it sees the Cause.'

The statement of Tri-personality, upon which the theology of the Church is founded, is necessarily unitarian and naturalistic in character; and it is therefore governed by the natural law of Unity, which is productive of diversity and discord, for the reason that it has not been possible for her to recognize opposite universal spiritual causes. The Church, however, does not, like the Pagan philosophers, conceive one original person or substance as the supreme cause of all things, and derive from this person, either by emanation or by creation as secondary causes, the second and third persons in her trinity. She posits at the commencement Three Persons, co-eternal, co-essential, and in every respect equal;

"True Christian Religion."

by which she recognizes three distinct persons which cannot possibly be conceived as One God, and consequently recognizes three distinct Gods as the objects of her worship: so that the theology of Christianity becomes in the Church, but particularly in the Church of Rome, where to this is added the worship of Saints and of the Virgin Mary, as decidedly polytheistic as the mythologies of Paganism. This statement of Tri-Personality by the Church is a purely religious conception, constructed to meet the peculiar requirements which a representation of Christianity in the forms of religious dogmatism demanded, and for which the letter of the Scriptures furnished very inadequate materials. Being unable, from the natural position occupied by her, to realize a rational conception of God, of Man, and of Christ the Mediator, through the intuition of spiritual laws; and having realized, as natural substitutes for them, intuitions of supernatural phenomena representative of these laws, or of the spiritual phenomena which correspond with them, she was obliged to incarnate these intuitions of phenomena, which are realized through the religious sentiments, in natural psychological phenomena and individual experiences, which, although representing these phenomena from an external, must have contradicted them from an internal, point of view, because the natural life is opposite and destructive to the ideas thus represented. This incarnation was necessary, because these phenomena had to be recognized by her as spiritual laws, and had to be connected with what was familiar to the individual consciousness in order that they should be comprehended and made the foundation of supernatural thought in forms that could be recognized and appropriated as laws of the individual life. In the construction of a system of theology by the Church from these religious intuitions, as interpreted by psychological and individual experiences which were external and natural in character, it was necessarily realized in correspondence with the common consciousness of the time; and as this was comparatively barbarous, - for the reason that a consciousness corresponding with supernatural thought was now in its infancy,-and was realized through a one-sided development of the Sentimental Nature in forms corresponding with universal laws as interpreted by external natural conceptions of justice which were rude and vindictive in character, the conception of tri-personality upon which the theology of the Church had to be founded partook of an irrational and comparatively barbarous character, - a character that has been defended only upon the ground that it is above all

human comprehension, and is to be discerned only through a spiritual perception which is not subject to any intellectual criticism. As the theology of the Church was realized through the means of sentimental and not of rational intuitions, the statement of tri-personality by her did not partake of a metaphysical character, and therefore did not establish any specific relationship between the three persons constituting the Godhead, as had been done by the ontological philosophers, but only the relationship that exists between these several persons and the human soul, and the office which belongs to each in the creation, salvation, and regeneration of man. It is true that the nature of these persons became the subject of extensive discussion among the early fathers of the Church; but this was because it was found very difficult to show from a natural point of view how God could be three, and at the same time one; a fact that it was necessary for them to believe, and therefore necessary that they should explain: and besides this, in their time, religion and philosophy were very closely connected, and thus metaphysical and theological questions were more or less discussed together, notwithstanding there was no correspondence between them, but a perfect antagonism. Many of the early fathers of the Church, by whom Pagan philosophy and Christian theology were confusedly mixed, were in this way led to adopt in whole or in part the theory of Plato with regard to the three divine hypostases, because this was the best metaphysical statement with regard to God, or to Absolute Being, that could be found. In this case, however, their belief as philosophers had no connection whatever with their belief as churchmen; for, while the poetic statement of tri-personality by the Church furnished a suitable foundation for the construction of a system of theology harmonious with or truly representative of Christianity, this Pagan metaphysical statement was wholly unsuitable for any such purpose; because, being perfectly unitarian and naturalistic in character, it necessarily leads to a pantheistic fatalism that is destructive not only to Christianity, but to all natural morality. These Pagan tri-theistic statements were, therefore, as we are informed by Dr. Cudworth, opposed by the more sound and orthodox portions of the Church, as "including Arianism, Socinianism, or Deism, and thus favoring Atheism."

The poetic statement made by the Church of the doctrine of Tri-Personality, as the ground of their theology, included three persons, co-eternal, co-substantial, and in every respect equal, designated by the names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and

the union of ontological laws with psychological phenomena, were led either to the conclusion, that the Absolute lies beyond the limits of human cognition, and that our knowledge is consequently confined within the limits of sensible experience; or to the still more destructive conclusion, that absolute and phenomenal-being and non-being are the same, and therefore that the apparent is also the real. Before we proceed to state the Laws of Representation and of Succession which are suggested by our statement of the Law of Tri-Personality, we will consider the general subject of Correspondence, that we may be able to separate those correspondences which are fanciful, and therefore false and fictitious, from those which are truly representative; and that we may also be able to separate even these from the spiritual laws and forms of correspondence, upon which alone Philosophy can be founded.

Correspondence is the law of Incarnation by Representation, according to which all production is realized, and through which the Phenomenal becomes an image or external representative of the Absolute, the Natural of the Spiritual, and the External of the Internal; so that even "the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,- even His eternal power and Godhead." Physical representation thus becomes the ground of all consciousness, and of all expression through which the consciousness is communicated; Language being constructed to represent this relationship between internal or mental, and external or physical phenomena. We cannot therefore but perceive how indispensable to the discovery and comprehension of truth a knowledge of these relationships must be, but especially a knowledge of the laws which govern them, and through which we can therefore separate the true from the false and fictitious; and it is to the decline of this knowledge, which has resulted from the development of the mind from within outwards, so that little except that which is fanciful and false remains, that we are to ascribe the great depreciation that has taken place both in Art and in Philosophy. Now, although "the invisible things of God" are to be "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made," we are not to suppose that natural phenomena can lead to a knowledge of spiritual things, but only that they will help us to incarnate the spiritual phenomena of which they are the representatives, when the Spiritual Itself shall be realized from the most internal point of the consciousness. Nothing can be more opposite than these natural and spiritual things, not only because the natural life of