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RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, AND LITERATURE.

sages themselves, where, speaking of our coming in contact with persons and places for the first time, we have yet a strange feeling of having met them before, he says—

“They are seen by the spirit, wrapped and sublime,

Not in a former, but out of all time."*

The great poet of the sister isle, Thomas Moore, nothwithstanding the lightness and airiness which characterise the outward form of his poetry, so that it has been termed "a shower of beauty, a dance of images like the rainbow, or the spray of the waterfall tinged by the morning beam with rosy light," abounds with theosophic sentiments and ideas of which our space will permit us only to select a few examples "like orient pearls at random strung." Thus, in his "Spirit of Love," he beautifully alludes to the Divine origin of our inner ideas when he speaks of

"Thoughts whose source is hidden and high,

Like streams that come from heaven-ward hills."

And in his so much (perhaps justly) condemned poem "The Loves of the Angels," he describes those happy beings as—

"Creatures of light, such as still play

Like motes in sunshine round the Lord,
And through their infinite array,
Transmit each moment, night and day,

The echo of His luminous Word."

Here he expresses briefly, but not obscurely, the descent of the Word through the heavens, resounding along the ranks of the glittering hierarchies until it becomes on earth "the still small voice" in the adyta of the soul. But the most delightful illustration of the great truth which has been just indicated in the poetry of Wordsworth is given in "Paradise and the Peri," where the best gift that could unbar the gates of light to the lost child of heaven is, not the last sigh of faithful love, or the last drop of the patriot's heart, but the tear of repentance, caused by the view of infantile innocence at prayer. What a sublime moral! Childhood suggests the true reminiscence, and calls us back to the real preexistence, that celestial innocence which flows into our infancy as the golden dawn of the heavenly day, and remains through the night of after years within our inner heaven, like that "lovely line of light" which lingers in the nocturnal arch of summer,

* See a more specific reason for this in Swedenborg's "Heaven and Hell.”" It is a curious but well authenticated fact, that very young children, who could possibly know nothing on the subject from any outward source, have very clearly expressed the idea of preëxistence.

RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, AND LITERATURE.

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at once reminiscent of the departed day, and prospective of the coming morning.*

Even Shelley, who however infidel he may be in the letter of his poetry, is often Christian in the spirit, has, among other theosophic elements in his writings, the following brief but comprehensive sentence, "Every heart contains perfection's germ," which he explains as arising from "the impenetration of a higher and diviner nature than our own,” the source of all our higher and happier thoughts and feelings. We may also trace these ideas still more clearly in the great prose writers of the age. Thus Channing, who may be said to have initiated the union between prose, poetry, and philosophy, preparatory to their union with theology, speaks as follows:

"The germs or principles of man's whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result the soul possessed and moved by those mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bonds of its earthy prison-house, and seeking relief in unseen and ideal being. . . He who ✦ cannot by his own consciousness interpret what we have said, wants the true key to works of genius. He has not penetrated the secret recesses of the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal youth, and wings herself for her heaven-ward flight."

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His profound saying, that "the human mind contains within itself the seminal and prolific principles from which nature sprung," reminds us of the happy application of theosophy to natural science which has been made by the great Oersted, the discoverer of electro-magnetism, who recognises in the phenomena of nature the result of unseen forces, which are the activity of eternal and immutable laws, identical with the Divine ideas, or sum of thoughts, emanating from Infinite Love. Oersted's philosophy is substantially the same as Swedenborg's, and his religious views closely approximate.‡

Emerson, amidst all the kaleidoscopic changes of his philosophy, steadily keeps in view the one fair form of truth, "the lesson of the intimate Divinity."§

* The initiaments of the Heavenly region in the soul being formed at generation, this state may be properly termed ante-natal, and preëxistent.

+ See his Essay on Poetry.

See Oersted's religious views concerning the Trinity, Logos, &e., in a review of his "Soul in Nature," by the writer of this article, in Tait's Magazine for November, 1854.

§ In this writer, and perhaps in some others, we must guard against vouching for the true essence being in this fair form of truth, lest we endorse views that may be found to be pantheistic, rather than theosophic, and that confound the nobility of the soul's nature with perfection of its state.-ED.

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"Our health and reason," says he, "need the respect of this fact-the sanity of man needs the poise of this immanent force. His nobility needs the assurance of this inexhaustible reserved power. The solicitations of this spirit, as

long as there is life, are never forborne. Tenderly, tenderly, they woo and court us from every object in nature, from every fact in life, from every thought in the mind. The one condition coupled with the gift of truth is its use. The doctrine of this Supreme presence," he continues, "is a cry of joy and exultation.

I praise with wonder this great reality, which seems to drown all things in the deluge of its light. The entrance of this into his mind seems to be the

birth of man,

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The soul is in her native realm, and it is older than time,

wider than space, wide as hope and rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear are not for her, who putteth on her coronation robes and goeth out through universal love to universal power."

We shall finish these quotations in our next, and bring our subject to a close.

THE WAY TO BE HAPPY,

Be Good to be happy:

Sin ever brings pain;
For vice to seek pleasure

Is labour in vain :
The heart void of goodness
Can never know rest-

From sin joy is distant

As East from the West.

Be Good to be happy:
Right yields its reward;
Wrong's evil endeavours
No joys can afford ;
True Wisdom is ever
Revealing to man,-
Good is a life-blessing,

And sin a life-ban.

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MEMOIR OF M. LE BOYS DES GUAYS.*
BY M. HARLE'.

(TRANSLATION.)

WHILST studying those heavenly doctrines of which he had just made the unexpected discovery (in November, 1834), M. Le Boys des Guays was engaged with ardour in spreading the good tidings around him at St. Amand. Very soon, the public attention being excited, he was encouraged to open his house on Sundays for worship, conducted by himself, and for the exposition of the doctrines of the New Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. A certain degree of toleration, which prevailed at that time, favoured the establishment of this form of worship, to which the perseverance of a small but faithful nucleus has given now the force of an accomplished fact. The declaration which, according to the law, had to be addressed to the civil authority, bears the date of the 18th November, 1837. At the same time he had entered into communication with several old disciples of our doctrines, his new brothers in the New Church, M. de Tollemare, of Nantes, the friend of Edward Richer, and the editor of his great posthumous work on The New Jerusalem; Major de Fossa, and Captains Frâiche, Paillard, and Purvis, of the 23rd Regiment of the Line (old companions of Captain Bernhard), and others, as M. Blanchet, conseiller de préfecture at Tarbes, who had received from this zealous propagator the knowledge of the doctrines, the seeds of which he scattered in every place where his regiment sojourned. With their concurrence, M. Le Boys des Guays undertook the publication of the Review of the New Jerusalem, the first number of which appeared on the 21st of March, 1838.

At Paris, the worthy Hartel, an old medalled soldier, a pensioner of the Russian campaign, responded to the appeal, and followed according to his ability the example of M. Le Boys, by becoming the devoted agent of the Review, and by opening his modest dwelling to a small number who met for private worship, where he rallied some scattered members of the dissolved congregation of M. Brousais. One of these members, M. Portal, master of the requests petitions to the Council of State, contributed to the Review by furnishing it with eloquent articles,

* A rectification is necessary to explain a discrepancy which the attentive reader may have remarked in the first part of this notice, pages 81, 82. The 18th of October, 1794, being the exact date of the birth of M. Le Boys des Guays, it was not his eighteenth but his twentieth year that was exactly completed on the last day of the battle of Leipzig.-A. H.

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MEMOIR OF M. LE BOYS DES GUAYS.

opening up the fruitful path of philological studies enlightened by the revealed teachings of Swedenborg, and applied to the confirmation of his explanations of the spiritual sense of the Scriptures. Having recently been introduced by M. Portal to a knowledge of our author, and having passed from the practice of painting to the study of his doctrines, I furnished especially the translation of the English and German biographical documents, whilst pursuing the studies that would enable me to bring to M. Le Boys' assistance the aid of a more useful form of coöperation. Our friend, the only responsible signatory of the publication, bore at once the weight of the principal management and that of advancing the expenses of the enterprise. These were never covered, and the deficit went on from year to year, until the tenth of the existence of this publication; it was then, in 1848, that it had to be suspended.

Nevertheless, the devoted labourer only took this important step with the resolution of dedicating with so much the more energy all his time, and all the resources he could command, to the translation and publica- tion of the original works of Swedenborg. Already there had appeared, sheet by sheet with the numbers of the Review, and on its budget, five volumes of the Arcana Calestia, besides two others printed at the expense of a friend of the doctrines (a retired Spanish priest, residing in France, Don Lino de Zaroa), and some of the minor works, published partly by means of subscriptions.

Some of our friends may remember that, as M. Le Boys des Guays used to relate, he one day proposed this problem to himself: In how many years, with full employment of his time, and with perseverance, could he accomplish the translation of all the theological works of Swedenborg? Immediately collecting the original volumes together, he counted the number of pages that remained to be translated; he then divided the total which he thus obtained by the number of pages he could translate in a week, whilst proceeding with his other accessory works, a number which he already knew by an experience of several years. This calculation, made in 1843, gave him, as the result, the period of seven years. And indeed, in 1850, all was translated. In this same year, 1850, the renewal of the labours of the press was signalised by the appearance of a new volume of the Arcana Calestia and several of the minor works, then followed the treatise on Heaven and Hell, published at the expense of a new donor, who subsequently contributed liberally to the completion of M, Le Boys' task.

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