INQUIRIES WITH ANSWERS.

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He over

which it inherited from man's fallen nature, and in this way came the spiritual death which was introduced by sin; that "through death," as the apostle says, "He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil." This is the purification or purgation of the humanity which our Lord assumed, whereby he effected a reconciliation in His own person of humanity with Divinity, whereby also that humanity was glorified, or made Divine, as expressed in the words" He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on High." (Heb. i. 3.) Through this Divine humanity as Mediator we have access to the Father.

8. Question.-Is St. Paul supposed to be in error in 2 Tim. iv. 1, which appears to teach the commonly received doctrine of the future resurrection of the body at the last judgment? Otherwise, what is meant by the quick and the dead?

Answer. The judgment of the quick and dead, to which the apostle refers in 2 Tim. iv. 1, is the same with the judgment described in Rev. xx. 12, &c., the scene of which is the Spiritual World.

NOTE. In respect to the inquiry as to "what degree of importance the New Church attaches to the Epistles in the New Testament as now received," our intelligent and candid correspondent is referred to Swedenborg's Second Letter to Dr. Beyer (See Smithson's Documents); also to Mr. Noble's work on the "Plenary Inspiration of Scripture," Appendix 2, toward the close. Also on the Atonement, to Mr. Noble's " Appeal." On the True Object of Worship, The Last Judgment, &c., to Mr. Clissold's Letter to the late Archbishop of Dublin, entitled The Practical Nature of Swedenborg's Writings," and to his Tract on "Swedenborg's Writings and Catholic Teaching." Also on the Mediatorial Kingdom to his "Spiritual Exposition of the Apocalypse,” vol. i. chap. 2; and on the Object of Worship, to the same work, vol. iii. p. 40.—"Death of the First Witness." A. C.

REVIEWS.

UNCLE SILAS: A NOVEL.

It is not our custom to review novels; the present is an exception. We were led to look into "Uncle Silas" from a review of it that appeared in the Athenæum. The work was there spoken of in the highest terms; and it was said to have introduced Swedenborgianism, and made excellent use of the principles in the sketches of character. This was certainly a novelty in a novel, and we were curious to see what use the author had made of so new a subject. We had not far to read to find this out. One of the principal characters is a Sweden

borgian. The father of the heroine, who writes her own history, had, we learn, left the Church of England for some odd sect, and from this had passed into and settled in Swedenborgianism. The character of the old man is not much calculated to recommend his religion. Novelists have large gifts to bestow, and Mr. Le Fanu has given him broad lands and unbounded wealth, but a narrow mind and limited acquirements. He lives on one of his estates in Derbyshire with his only daughter, the heiress of his rich possessions. But he is a recluse. His own daughter, sweet, tender, and beautiful, as heroines are, saw him seldom, and then only to receive some message or command. Once a week or so she, by invitation, has an audience of him. His words are few, his aspect severe, his commands peremptory. He is an object not indeed of fear, but of awe. He never seems to have thought of or interested himself in the spiritual welfare of his daughter, or ever instructed her in the principles of his own religion, nor can we gather that he had mentioned the subject directly to her. She had read a little of the work on "Heaven and Hell," which we presume came accidentally into her hands, but that little she had been unable to understand. There is one instance, and only one, in which he plainly expresses any views or sentiments that really betray his opinions, and that, the longest address she ever heard from him. Uncle Silas was the subject of this last and longest of the old Swedenborgian's speeches. This Uncle Silas is a younger brother, and, as we hear of him and meet with him in these pages repeatedly, is a reformed rake, or rather, a converted gambler, and a believer in his brother's religion, and can talk of "the science of correspondents," but is really, as it turns out, a sanctimonious villain. Well, in the course of his long address, his elder brother says of him—

"He cares less about his children than I about you, Maud; he is selfishly sunk in futurity, a feeble visionary. I am not so. I believe it to be a duty to care for others besides myself."

There is certainly something Swedenborgian about this; the only thing bearing that clear stamp we have heard him utter, little and ordinary as it is. Behold the picture! is it like ? We should think the author who drew such a Swedenborgian knew as much of Swedenborg as the fair biographer who had "once made the attempt to read 'Heaven and Hell,' but couldn't."

But old Mr. Ruthyn is not the only character intended to exemplify Swedenborgianism. Two parsons are introduced. They appear on the stage early in the performance. Knowing that novelists, like

satirists, alter real names just so much as is necessary at once to conceal and reveal, when we suddenly encountered Doctor Bryerly, we thought we had met with a real living Swedenborgian, and that we might promise ourselves some true delineation of New Church character and some correct statement of New Church principles. When we found him described as "a tall, lean man, all in ungainly black, with a white choker, a black wig, a pair of spectacles, a dark, sharp, short visage, and large hands," we were disappointed. He was not the Dr. B. we knew. Yet he was a Swedenborgian minister, and what he said and did, and what was said of him, might be worthy of one. We read on. But we found that Dr. Bryerly, like the master of Knowl, whom he came occasionally to visit, seemed as if designed by the author rather to excite our curiosity than to satisfy it. As the reader sees only what the heroine sees and hears, we obtain through her one faint glimpse of Dr. Bryerly. He is in the library with his friend, and after knocking timidly without receiving an answer, we enter with our fair guide, and find Mr. Ruthyn sitting in his chair, with his coat and waistcoat off, Mr. Bryerly kneeling on a stool beside him, rather near him, his black scratch wig being close to Mr. Ruthyn's grizzly beard. A large tome of his divinity lore, we suppose, open on the table. The lank black figure of Dr. Bryerly stands up, and he conceals something briskly in the breast of his coat. If the Doctor's person is rather ungainly, his attitude and action are not very dignified. We would naturally suppose that these two Swedenborgians were engaged in some deep game of necromancy. No clear explanation of this strange and seemingly rather ludicrous scene is given; but we learn afterwards that the layman has a fatal disease preying upon one of the vessels near his heart, and the "minister" is also a doctor of medicine. But not to weary our readers with the few other glimpses of this preacher, from whom we expected to receive some excellent lessons, we may come at once to one in which he does speak out. His friend has suddenly fallen a victim to his disease. The Doctor hastens to the house of mourning. He does not spend much of his time in comforting the living, but takes himself at once to the chamber of the dead. The old housekeeper lights him about the house of mystery at the dead of the night to the lonely room. It is to her that he addresses himself when they have reached their destination :

"That's well. I must look on the face as I pray. He is in his place; I here on earth. He is in the spirit; I in the flesh. The neutral ground lies here. So are carried the vibrations; and the light of heaven and earth are reflected back and

forward,-apaugasma, a wonderful though helpless engine,-the ladder of Jacob and behold the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. Why do you look frightened? Where is your faith? Don't you know that spirits are about us at all times? Why should you fear to be near the body? The spirit is everything; the flesh profiteth nothing. Remember, then, when you fancy yourself alone, and wrapped in darkness, you stand, in fact, in the centre of a theatre as wide as the starry floor of heaven, with an audience whom no man can number, beholding you under a flood of light. Therefore though your body be in solitude, and your mental sense in darkness, remember you walk in the light, surrounded with a cloud of witnesses. Thus walk; and when the hour comes, and you walk forth unprisoned from the tabernacle of the flesh, and although it has its relations and its rights (and saying this, as he held the solitary candle aloft in the doorway, he nodded towards the coffin, whose large black form was faintly traceable against the shadow of the wall), you will rejoice."

One of the principal things novelists have to study is effect. It may be difficult, therefore, to say whether the oddities of this scene are due to ignorance or invention. Who ever heard a Swedenborgian speak of the deserted tenement of clay being the ladder of Jacob, on which the angels of God ascend and descend, or by which are carried the vibrations, and by which the lights of heaven and earth are reflected backwards and forwards, or dream of drawing down upon himself the celestial influences by gazing on the face of a corpse while he prayed? Such a notion and such a practice do not seem very consistent with the principle he makes the doctor enunciate, that the flesh profiteth nothing. But one of the explanations of imagination is fantasy; and here the novelist has been trying how much he could draw upon his privileged faculty. The rest of the description we accept as a fair and eloquent delineation of our views.

If the writer has drawn largely on his imagination, not only in combining facts, but in inventing them, he has given what we hope is a true representation of the Swedenborgian's character. A confidential friend of the eccentric old man, Dr. Bryerly, who was consulted by him about the making of his will, refused to allow himself to be inserted in it as a legatee,an act of disinterestedness which the legator defeated, or rather rewarded, by adding a codicil, leaving him £3,000. On him, as one of the executors, fell the principal duties of the delicate and important trust, and so faithfully did he perform them, that the heiress, when she came of age, desired to have him near her.

"After long solicitation, I persuaded Dr. Bryerly, the best and truest of ministers, to undertake the management of the Derbyshire estates. In this I have been most fortunate. He is the very person for such a charge,-so practical, so laborious, so kind, and so shrewd."

Here is something as a set-off against this doctor's visionary religion, a substantial, temporal oversight, in place of his no doubt poorly paid spiritual pastorate. How would our own Dr. B. like to be promoted for such good offices to the bailiwick of an estate in Lancashire?

We have said that there are two Swedenborgian ministers introduced into this history. The other, whose name is not published, comes down from London to attend the mother of the heroine on her death-bed. There is nothing revealed of his services in the sick chamber, where an author who understood his subject could have done so much by his eloquence and his tenderness to shed a halo round the bed of death, and bring his readers, if they would follow him, nearer to God and heaven. Instead of this, we have another piece of fantasy, intended as a piece of Swedenborgianism. The minister goes out into the fields with the orphan child. He asks her to look through some mystic medium, and tell what she sees; and when the innocent can see nothing, he tells her he can see beyond it, and describes the vision of a house and some children playing beside it, which half-an-hour's journey changes into a reality. Something better, however, comes out of this little excursion. The parson leads the child to the mausoleum of her mother; and the following scene is presented :—

"Sit down beside me, my child," said the grave man with the black eyes, very kindly and gently. "Now, what do you see there?" he asked, pointing horizontally with his stick towards the centre of the opposite structure.

Oh, that-that place where poor mamma is?"

"Yes; a stone wall with pillars, too high for either you or me to see over. But".

Here he mentioned a name which I think must have been Swedenborg, from what I afterwards learned of his tenets aud revelations. I only know that it sounded to me like the name of a magician in a fairy tale. I fancied he lived in the wood which surrounded us, and I began to grow frightened as he proceeded. "But Swedenborg sees beyond it, over, and through it, and has told me all it concerns us to know. He says your mamma is not there."

"She is taken away! I cried, starting up, and with streaming eyes, gazing on the building which, though I stamped my feet in my distraction, I was afraid to approach. "Oh, is mamma taken away? where is she? Where have they brought her to?"

I was uttering unconsciously very nearly the question with which Mary, in the grey of that wondrous morning on which she stood by the empty sepulchre, accosted the figure standing near.

"Your mamma is alive, but too far away to see or hear us; but Swedenborg standing here, can see and hear her, and tells me all he sees, just as I told you in the garden about the little boys and the cottage, and the trees and flowers which you could not see, but believed in when I told you. So I can tell you now as I did