RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, AND LITERATURE.

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In reference to

lead man to comprehend gradually and progressively the relation of each to the other, of each to all and of all to each." the union of speculative truth and practical wisdom he says

"Vainly without the union of both, shall we expect an opening of the inward eye to the glorious vision of that existence which admits of no question out of itself, acknowledges no predicate but the I am in that I am."

He goes on to speak of—

"The intellectual reunion of the all in one in that eternal Reason whose fulness hath no opacity, whose transparency hath no vacuum, i. e., the Divine Logos which fills up the chasm between the things that are seen and the Absolute-the substantiating principle of all true wisdom which belongs to and speaks For, alike present to all, it may

intelligibly to all alike, if but the heart listens. be awakened, but cannot be given."

This, he tells us, solves the problem, namely, what is the ground of the coincidence between reason and experience, or between the laws of matter and the ideas of pure intellect. The ground of this agreement is to be sought in a supernatural essence, which, being at once the ideal of the reason and the cause of the material world, is the preestablisher of the harmony in and between both. Religion is, therefore, the ultimate aim of philosophy. The following is excellent :

"Hast thou ever raised thy mind to the consideration of existence in and by itself, as the mere act of existing? Hast thou ever said to thyself thoughtfully, It is without reference to any particular mode of existence. If thou hast indeed attained to this-if thou hast mastered this intuition of absolute existence, thou wilt have felt the presence of a mystery which must have fixed thy spirit in awe and wonder. The power which evolved this idea of being-being in its essence-being limitless, how shall we name it? The idea itself, which like a mighty billow at once overwhelms and bears aloft-what is it? whence did it come?"

After showing that it cannot be derived from the organs of sense, or from all that constitutes our relative individuality,* that it can be referred to no class of phenomena or form of abstraction, he proceeds thus:

"And yet this power nevertheless Is-in supremacy of being it is, and he to whom it manifests itself in its adequate idea dare as little arrogate it to himself as his own as he can claim ownership in the breathing air or make an inclosure in the cope of heaven."

He thus admirably sums up—

"Here do we stop? Woe to us if we do! Better we had never begun. A deeper must yet be sought for-even the Absolute will, the Good, the super-essential

*"The Divine Logos," says Coleridge, "the Eternal Word of which all creation is the echo, constitutes man's real self, of which his phenomenal self or individuality, is only the shadow."

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RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, AND LITERATURE.

Source of being, and in the eternal act of self-affirmation, the I Am, the Father, who with the Logos (word, idea, Supreme mind, Pleroma, the word containing every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Most Highest) and with the spirit proceeding is the one only God from everlasting to everlasting.”

But most important of all is his application of the foregoing teachings:

"Meditate on the nature of a being whose ideas are creative, and consequently more real, more substantial than the things which at the height of their creaturely state are but their dim reflexes; and the intuitive conviction will arise that the material world must have been made for the sake of man, at once the high priest and representative of the Creator so far as he partakes of that reason in which the essences of things co-exist in all their distinctions, yet as one and indivisible.* But I speak of man in his idea and as subsumed in the Divine Humanity in which God loved the world."+

These extracts are long, but their value is obvious. No man has had a greater influence on the philosophy, literature, and science of his age than Coleridge, and it is important to present his ideas to our readers, so as to indicate the source in the stream.

The union of religion, philosophy, and literature, so ably commenced by Coleridge, has been still further developed by the late learned and lamented Bunsen. One extract we present from his Philosophy of Universal History. Translating into philosophical language the beginning of John's Gospel, according to his view of its meaning, he says—

"Before the visible universe existed, there was in God the conscious Thought of Himself, as active Reason. This Thought was identical with God, the substance of the universe; it was God thinking Himself,—making Himself objective to Himself. This, then, is the Divine existence of the Word as active Reason.

"The creation of the universe is the manifestation in space and time of the same Thought of God in Himself. There was nothing created which has not the principle of existence in the Thought of God of Himself.

"The universe thus created continues to have the principle of Life in this Selfconsciousness; this principle of substantial existence is also the intellectual principle in man. In the progress of history, this divine principle manifested itself as intelligence, as the enlightening principle,―the principle of progress and development; but the selfish principle in man opposed itself to that divine principle.

"God's eternal Thought of Himself became personal in finite existence,-in a Man, conscious of His divine nature. In this Man that divine Word lived amongst us; and we beheld in Jesus divine glory and truth. He alone, therefore, could declare to mankind the true nature of God, for the primitive lived in Him constantly and perfectly."

* "In Him all things co-exist" is the proper translation of Col. i. 17.

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+ Compare the above passages from Emerson and Coleridge with what Swedenborg says on Spiritual ideas" and "Universals," in different parts of the Arcana. Coleridge also asserts the symbolical character of Nature.

RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, AND LITERATURE.

One other passage on the subject, under the head of Creation:

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"Creation is not an act performed once for all, either eternally or in a given moment of time. Although it must be founded on eternal thought, it continues in time as the finite evolution of the Divine Being and Thought through immediate finite agency. But, on the other hand, this realisation of God in the finite, supposes the infinite process of Creation by the antithesis of Will and Reason in the Divine Being; or, to speak theologically, the eternal generation of the Word, which is the Son in the highest, that is to say, in the infinite or ideal sense. The primitive antithesis in God (God and Word), applied to the creation in time and space, or considered with respect to the demiurgic process which terminates in man, may be denoted as that of Father and of Son. The Son may in this respect, also, be called the eternal Thought of God."

...

Our materials are far from being exhausted; but what has been produced will, we presume, suffice to establish our position. A mighty influence is abroad, silently and unseen breathing new life into the world. Not long shall literature, philosophy, and science be alienated from religion; those precious gems, once more restored to the crown of life, shall become transparent in its light, and transmissive of its beauty.

And now we bid our readers farewell for the present, respectfully hoping that we have in some degree ministered both to their pleasure and profit during the period in which we have claimed their kind attention. It must, we think, be cheering to find that from the earliest times of Christianity there have been faithful witnesses, handing down with more or less purity the great truths of theosophy, or "wisdom concerning God." Each witness, in his generation, has pointed out and registered one or more stars in the spiritual firmament, burning on with hopeful and prophetic radiance through the night of ages, until a sage arose who indicated the arrangement of the heavenly splendours in a glorious constellation of divine order, which, as daily observation shows, is sheding an increasing and auspicious light on Religion, Philosophy, and Literature. J. B. W.

DIVINE INSPIRATION.

No. III. CURSORY THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS READINGS OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.

In these days of search after Biblical manuscripts and of minute inquiry into various readings, it is of importance that the New Churchman should bear in mind the real place and value of Verbal criticism in determining the text of Holy Scripture. Ernesti, we are told, was a philologist: the meaning of Scripture he regarded as the same with the

meaning of words, and he therefore inquired into this meaning as a critic and grammarian. This Ernesti is referred to in a Memorable Relation of the True Christian Religion, art. 137, where it is said that

"In contradiction to the opinions deemed othodox by his church, he has in his great haste robbed the Lord of His Divinity, and suffered his pen to open a furrow in which he has thoughtlessly sown the seed of Naturalism, by writing as he did against the worship of our Lord and Saviour."

We here see what was the leading doctrine of the Lutheran church which Ernesti threw aside, and why, therefore, as his only alternative, he betook himself to mere verbal criticism; for the Divine Humanity of the Lord is the first principle of the spiritual sense of Scripture, without which indeed that sense does not exist. When Hagenbach, therefore, blames Ernesti for being too much of the critic and grammarian, and approves of what he calls Swedenborgianism for penetrating from the literal into the spiritual sense by means of the law of correspondence, he does not seem to be aware nevertheless of the importance of doctrine in this respect, as a guide to interpretation; for it will be found, we believe, to be an invariable rule, that where critics and grammarians are insisting only upon the literal sense, there is a tacit or open denial of the doctrine of the Lord's Divinity in some respect or other. This is one reason why Swedenborg has said so much to put us upon our guard against critics and their verbal criticisms. In the Spiritual Diary, for instance, he observes of critics that they do not understand the Scripture any better, nay indeed they understand it much less, than those who are not critics. Thus :

"2040. Sometimes it has been shown me, that critics or those who have been most highly skilled in any language, such as the Hebrew, as also compilers of lexicons and translators of Moses and the Prophets, have understood the latter much less than those who were not critics. For looking into the meaning of mere words carries with it this evil, that the mind becomes drawn away by the senses, and sticks fast in words; so that when critics have caught at some signification of a word, they have done so without regard to the sense of the passage, which sense they can strain and force into coincidence with the signification of the word; which, when once the signification of the letter is taken for granted, they are wont to do in a thousand ways. This has been shewn to me by living experience.

"2041. Hence it follows, that not only do they understand spiritual things so much the less, because they stick fast in material ideas or in words, but, when reading the Word of the Lord, some may even be seduced from the truth, as when, from attention to the words alone, they seize upon some other than the true sense and defend it, and turn it any way from a principle of self-love. For the signification of the mere word being granted, they proceed to distort the sense of the passage accordingly, which may be done in a thousand ways. Hence spiritual ideas becoming

mixed with material become falsified; a mixture which in the other life operates as an obstacle and injury to the individual; for the falsities which inhere in material ideas have to be dispersed."

The importance of the subject must be our apology for introducing to the reader another series of acticles from the Spiritual Diary to the same effect. Thus on the quality of critics in the other life Swedenborg further observes:

"1950. There were with me those who, in the life of the body, had been much and indeed very much given to the study, not even of the real meaning of words, but of words only, thus who had applied themselves to the art of criticism, many of whom also have laboured in the translation of Sacred Scripture; but I must confess that when they were present, everything that was written and thought by me became so obscure and confused that I could scarcely understand any of it; indeed my thought was held as it were in prison, because all thought they determined to words, by abstracting it from the true meaning of the words, so that they thoroughly wearied me, even to the excitement of my indignation, when nevertheless they considered themselves to be wiser than others; although persons out of the lowest order of the common people, and even of the class of infants, were much wiser than they, and understood more intelligently the meaning of what was thought and written. Thus the real nature of human erudition or wisdom is evident from this, that it is much inferior to the wisdom of the lowest class of people, and even of children, for the learned have closed up the way to interior things.

"1951. Such persons also, although most highly skilled in languages, the Hebrew for instance, both have been and are much more hallucinated in the translation of Holy Scripture than such as have not been critics and have not understood grammatical forms, as might be demonstrated by numerous examples; although a different opinion is commonly entertained.

"1952. The thoughts of critics, and of those who have much laboured in the study of language and grammar, have on former occasions been represented to me as closed lines in which is contained nothing.

"1953. The case is similar with those who labour in controversies; for they propound to themselves and feign innumerable things, such as on the one hand difficulties, on the other agreements, with their own theses or propositions; and thus more and more close up the way to the interior sense, or to the understanding of what is true and good, and therefore also to wisdom.

"1954. For the more that men keep in view the true meaning of words, the less do they attend to the mere words themselves; as may be known to every one from common conversation, and from reading various authors; so that the more any one attends to the mere words of the speaker or writing, the more does a perception of their meaning perish; as may be ascertained by any who will give attention to the subject; and the degree of this perception will vary according as the attention is given to the true meaning of the words, or to the mere words themselves, as it has been very frequently granted me to know by living experience, in the case of spirits who have themselves confessed it to be so.

"1955. Similar is the case in regard to controversies: truth perishes in the same degree in which the mind is intent upon them, unless the mind be guided by some general truth which serves as a thesis, or as that which it is the object to defend.