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HERE AND THERE.

So mournfully we lay her to sleep,
With solemn step and slow;
And yet we smile awhile we weep,-
Hope mingles with our woe.

Cold clay to clay! and dust to dust!

The loved, the loving lies not here,
In marble stillness on the bier;
Angels received her spirit home,-
Angels lovingly bade her come.

Cold clay to clay, and dust to dust,

'Twas mercy laid her low!

We know that she lives, for life cannot die;

Faith struggles with fear, we joy as we sigh,-
Trustingly! so trustingly!

If weeping souls in shrinking fear,
Alone could see the picture HERE,
'Twould crush us with despair.
Help us, O Lord, with heavenly light,
To read Death's loving secret right,
As angels see it THERE!

RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, AND LITERATURE.

No. XIII. PROGRESSION.

J. H.

Ir is a palpable fact that the progress of science during the century which has elapsed since the time of Swedenborg, has been more rapid than it was through all the centuries that preceded. And this progress has been characterised not only by an almost marvellous accumulation of facts, and a vast number of brilliant discoveries, but also by a tendency to ascend to immutable and universal principles, thus investing science with a certain degree of spirituality, harmonising it with a higher philosophy, and thence with a genuine theology. In this paperin which is the application and winding up of all that has appeared in the foregoing articles-we shall indicate a similar progress in Religion, Philosophy, and Literature; and this, not merely in quantity (for the increase of religious knowledge and activity, as well as of philosophical speculation and literary compositions of all kinds, is too patent to require any proof), but likewise in quality. The ideas which, from the time

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that the great divine and seer of the New Testament uttered his sublime enunciation of the Logos, have passed from age to age in the Christian church, till they found their culmination in the teaching of Swedenborg, have ever since his time been permeating in almost geometrical progression the religious, philosophical, and literary productions of the entire period up to the present day.

In reference to religion, we know that it was just after Swedenborg appeared as a religious teacher, and announced a new era to the world, that John and Charles Wesley commenced that wonderful movement which had an effect, both on the church and society, such as can scarcely yet be calculated. Let us analyse the religious ideas that constituted the secret of their power. Did they not find the old theology powerless, and were not their hands, as it were, tied so far as they were fettered by it? Was not the universality of the Divine Love and of Redemption the distinguishing feature of their preaching which caused so many to be filled with immediate peace and joy, as at the same time to "avoid evil and do good"? And in close relation to this primary truth, there is a theosophic element discoverable in the writings of John Wesley and his excellent fellow-labourer, Fletcher, as well as in the hymns of his brother Charles. Thus J. Wesley speaks of redemption as not only a universal manifestation of Divine love to man, but specifically as uniting every man with the Logos or Eternal, who is present in his soul as the seed or beginning of life, which Fletcher terms "initial salvation." These good men, especially Fletcher, had some beautiful views of the spirit world,* as well as remarkable glimpses of the internal sense of the Scriptures; and these views continued to hold a very conspicuous place among the first generation of the Methodists. It must be confessed, however, that in the course of some time, a counter current, as it may be termed, of Puritanical doctrine set in, which for awhile turned aside the purer waters of theosophy, which must now be sought for in the channels of philosophy and literature.

And, first, as to philosophy: Kant the celebrated founder of the German school, a cotemporary of Swedenborg, but whose long life

* See the account of a beautiful dream by Mr. Fletcher's servant, quoted in "Noble's Appeal," article "Heaven and Hell." For Mr. Wesley's theosophic views consult his biography by Dr. Coke.

+ The writer can testify of this, from an acquaintance with many of the survivors of this generation. It is not a little remarkable that, while Mr. Wesley's theosophic views are to be found in his early biographies, they entirely disappear in the later. Compare his Lives by Coke and Watson.

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extended into the present century, began to rise above the sensuous philosophy of his day, by recognising three distinct regions of the mind, ruled by immutable principles, which he terms "imperative forms of thought;" the lowest of which-space and time-he assigns to the sensuous region of the mind as its formative principles; the higher belong to the understanding, the seat of general notions; and the highest and most universal of all, which he styles ideas as our cognitions of the Infinite, the Eternal, and the Absolute, have their place in reason, the superior and most elevated region of the mind, which only requires to be divested of the subjectivity ascribed to it in this author's system, in order to be identified with the Logos. His disciple, Fichte, supplied the wanting link; for though at first carrying his master's notions into the phantasmal world of subjective idealism, his philosophy afterwards assumed a more objective character, making not man—as at first—but God the centre of his system. And he has evidently a glimpse of the Logos, in "the divine idea of the universe underlying all outward phenomena," and having a most intimate union and presence with all human souls, the recognition of which is the beginning, as its realisation is the progress and completion, of a happy life.* Schelling asserts a similar belief when he speaks of reason as impersonal, i.e., not the property of any individual, but of all men, which we cannot be said to have, but rather it has us, where we have an immediate recognition of the Absolute, "in whom all things have identity or appear as one."t Jacobi, however, is the most explicit and satisfactory of all the German philosophers on this point :

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"The senses," he says, supply the facts; the conclusions of science are the productions of intellect. But the reflective understanding is conversant with a higher order of ideas; a source of inward light corresponding to the outward senses in connection with which the understanding is placed; from which it receives truths with equal certainty as from the latter it receives the power of the immediate perception of spiritual truth; the foundation of religion and morality; the medium of communication between the understanding and the invisible world, just as the senses are between that and the visible world. Here glimpses of the first fact, first good, and first true are given to man in the contemplating spirit. This power or faculty is reason. As the senses bring knowledge to the understanding in sensation, so the reason brings knowledge to the under

See his "Nature and Manifestation of the Scholar" passim.

+ There is no doubt that Schelling regarded his theory of Impersonal Reason as identical with the Johannine doctrine of the Logos, when in his later years he explained his philosophical system in harmony with Christianity, as did also his eminent disciple Hegel, who probably, if intelligible, would be found to hold a similar view.

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standing in feeling. Those truths which are given us in feeling (the intuitive perceptions of reason) we call ideas. These ideas are the foundation of freedom and virtue, of our knowledge of God, of wisdom, and of art."*

We may recognise in this extract the beginning of the transition from true philosophy to genuine theology, and also in the following words of the great modern philosopher of France, Victor Cousin :—

"The highest degree of knowledge is intuitive; it is in many cases, as for example, the true, the beautiful, the good, &c., not founded on the senses or consciousness, but on reason. Whenever we interrogate reason concerning itself, we perceive that it is not in our power; it intervenes independently of our will. Reason is manifested in us although it is not identical with us.

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Reason is impersonal. Whence then comes this wonderful guest? What is the principle of this reason, which enlightens us without belonging to us? The principle is no other than God, the first principle of everything."

This is implicit; identifying reason with the Logos, as indeed he does explicitly in other parts of his writings.†

But we must now refer to literature, in which we can equally trace a most remarkable progress of similar theosophic ideas. Soon after the death of Swedenborg, a voice from the realms of higher thought "startled the dull night" of materialistic Unitarianism, when Anna Letitia Aiken (Mrs. Barbauld) tuned her gentle harp, awaking the Divine echoes that slumber in the flowery caves of childhood. In her beautiful descriptive poems, and her admirable hymns for children, that well-remembered and loved little monitor of our early youth, we may easily trace the upward struggle of her mind through the prejudices of her education and age to the path of the dawn. Space, however, will only permit the following passage (from her Summer Evening's Meditation), a dial of truth in a garden of beauty

"This dead of midnight is the hour of thought,

And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars;

At this still hour the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there

Of high descent, and more than mortal rank,—
An embryo God; a spark of fire Divine

That shall burn on for ages."

The New Church reader cannot fail to note the striking resemblance between the "reason" of Jacobi and the "internal man” of Swedenborg; the "understanding" of the one placed between "reason within and sense without," exactly answering to the "rational principle" of the other, intermediate between the internal and external man.

+ The philosophy of Cousin is not only identical with that of Swedenborg in many of its salient points, but it expresses, as it were, in a lower plane, some of the leading truths of his theology.

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And this Heavenly guest in the inner chamber of her spirit-no uncertain expression of the Divine Logos-she saw reflected in all outward nature

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"Emblazoned high

With golden letters on the azure sky;

Nor less the mystic characters I see

Wrote on each flower, inscribed on every tree.

In every leaf that whispers to the breeze

I hear the voice of God among the trees.

But perhaps there is no poet whose writings contain so many theosophic gems of purest ray serene" as Wordsworth. We must, however, content ourselves with a few passages from his "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," the very title of which is profoundly suggestive of one of the most important, original, and delightful of the copious teachings of Swedenborg implied by the simple but comprehensive term-Remains. Did that far-seeing spirit know that a child born just two years before his death would thus (more wonderful if unconsciously) become the poetic herald of his teachings to future generations?

"Not in entire forgetfulness,

Nor yet in utter nakedness;

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God that is our home.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy;

Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;

And yet he sees the light, and whence it flows.

He sees it in his joy!

The youth who farther from the east

Doth travel, still is nature's priest;

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended.

At length the man beholds it pass away,
And fade into the light of common day."

The notion of preëxistence is presumed in these lines, but that is a form which the great truth of our early connection with heaven has taken in its transmission from primeval times to the sages of Ind and Magna Græcia, and most likely arose from the presence of thoughts from a higher sphere (by reason of this connection so often referred to) in our consciousness, and, coming from an eternal into a temporal sphere, often cause our natural notions as they blend with them to assume the appearance of having occurred to us in a former period. A similar explanation is given by the more philosophical of the Indian

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