existence as a check of the last resort; but a new principle will have been evolved which will practically supersede it; and we now proceed to examine that principle.

When celestial principles shall generally prevail, the prevalent desire and effort will be to turn all to use, and to promote the common good. Should an individual then do wrong, many will be the efforts of all around him to convince him of his folly, and of the insanity of disorder and immorality. Instead of having recourse to summary punishment, which, in so bad a state of society as that existing at present, is almost all that can be resorted to, or which, at any rate, cannot safely be dispensed with, every plan will be tried that can melt the heart or inform the mind, or bring healing inducements into operation, connected both with this world and the world to come. But to dream of disusing and condemning the old preservative, civil responsibility, in a state of society the farthest possible removed from celestial; to dream of imitating celestial society on earth, while heaven, its only pattern, is scoffed at; to dream of bringing into activity imaginings resembling celestial kindness and corrective care, (and borrowed, without acknowledgement, substantially from the gospels) in a most selfish state of society, without the aid of the Holy Word which was given to lead society into a celestial state; and without the aid of its divine Author;—this is surely the insanity of insanities! It is only in proportion as the celestial principles of the New Church take root and grow, by the subjugation of self-love through regeneration, that society can be expected gradually to pass from a civil-natural state, to a celestial-civil state.

We have noticed civil responsibility first, because it corresponds to religious responsibility; or, in other words, in a low state of society, the two will co-exist, and religious responsibility will be deemed a genuine truth, although, as we shall presently shew, it is only an apparent truth; but, in proportion as civil responsibility becomes celestialized, in the manner just described, the doctrine of the divine mercy disposing of all according to their state and fitness in the eternal world, will displace the common doctrine of religious responsibility, with all its difficulties.

The doctrine of religious-moral responsibility,-setting apart the counteracting and incompatible doctrine of salvation by faith only,is an apparent truth akin to that of divine sovereignty, and divine vengeance; and also, that this life is a state of probation, although it is more properly, and in reality, a state of preparation for

heaven.

While the present stage of existence is conceived of naturally, it will be thought of as a state of probation; and God will be regarded as if he had said, "I have made you to please myself; and I have given you laws by which you may know how to please me; I will hold you responsible for your actions; if you break my laws, I will punish you, and wreak my vengeance upon you." This is modern Christianity; and thus does a merely natural construction of the Scriptures, originating in a low state of the affections, lead to the formation of a merely natural idea of God, and by which he is made to resemble those cold hearted and superficial human legislators, who make civil laws merely as laws of retaliation, and not at all as laws of moral correction and improvement. Now we pronounce this notion of religious responsibility to be an apparent truth; because it rests only on such ideas of the Almighty Governor as naturally present themselves to a low and perverted state of understanding, and such as disappear to a well instructed mind, being dispelled by genuine views of the divine character. So long as man is in a merely natural state of affection from choice, and has no disposition to seek spiritual improvement in the first place, it is fitting that the literal doctrine of religious responsibility should remain in force with him; because no other doctrine would so fully correspond with his character, or operate so effectually upon his conduct. But when a man is capable of rising above the inducements of a selfish and slavish fear; when he begins to think and act under the influence of a state of spiritual affection, or of a prevailing desire for genuine spiritual improvement agreeing with the spiritual sense of the Word; when he begins to be susceptible of motives resembling infinite love and mercy; then an altogether new view breaks in upon his mind. He no longer thinks that the present stage of existence is one of probation, in which a chance is given him of falling, merely to try him; but he thinks of God as if he had said, "Out of the most pure and disinterested love, I have made you, and have so constituted you, that you may become, under my instructions, combined with my secret operations on your mind,-an image and likeness of my own wisdom and love, and, at the same time, in a proportionate degree, a conscious partaker of my own happiness. I have placed you in the lowest stage of existence in the first instance; because the order in which I have formed your mental capabilities for your good, requires that a foundation should be laid by means of the natural things of time and sense, upon which a superstructure may then be commenced on earth by regeneration, and afterwards be perfected without any limit to its progression, in heaven, for ever. If by

attending to my instructions while you are on earth, and doing all that your free and rational nature is capable of, you become fit for the happy engagements I have provided for the righteous in heaven, you will be introduced to everlasting happiness there, when you have passed out of the natural into the spiritual world. But if you disregard and disobey my commands, you will not then be fit for the happiness I have provided for you in heaven; and, out of mercy to you, I must then provide for you a place in a region of the spiritual world, where you will be very unhappy, because you will have changed, by the abuse of your freedom, all the elements of happiness bestowed upon you, into their opposites: nevertheless, you will not be so unhappy there as you would have been in heaven; for the opposition of the life that prevails there to your own state, would most exceedingly have tormented you. The preparation for heaven consists in becoming inclined to love others, and to do good to them; for by means of this state, I can do good to all by each, and to each by all; but if, instead of this state of preparation, you acquire an opposite state, then the place where you, and your like, shall be gathered together, will be hell; and because you will then have confirmed yourselves in self-love, and a love to do evil, beyond all possible cure, you will torment each other, and convert all my means of making you happy into sources of misery."

But it might perhaps be asked, impatiently, by a Socialist, "If this be the genuine truth, why is not this recorded in the literal sense of the Scriptures, instead of the absurd and unjust doctrine of religious responsibility?" It is answered; because no man, such is the necessary constitution of a finite creature, can be capable of seeing and appreciating genuine truths, until he has prepared himself for them by the practical improvement of apparent truths, by acting according to them during those earlier years of his life, which precede the period of regeneration, and to which they are adapted by infinite goodness and wisdom. He that does not improve the less perfect, is not prepared for the more perfect view; and hence, when such a one is become a man, he may possibly throw off childish views,-not, however, to adopt the wisdom of maturity in their place, but to seize upon some form of the ravings of infernal insanity.

Thus then it appears, that in a celestial state of society, and also of the individual, the harsh-sounding doctrine of religious responsibility, as arising from a supposed arbitrary decree arbitrarily persisted in, is succeeded by the mild doctrine of the paternal providence of Infinite Love and Wisdom, operating according to the very nature and

fitness of things. And, to recur to our former simile,—in the same manner as the moon disappears before the sun, so the good of the former state is not displaced or destroyed, but is exalted and perfected, inasmuch as the man who, when he formerly felt his responsibility, trembled and submitted, now feels it his highest and most valued privilege to become prepared for heavenly uses and delights; and hence he labors with earnest cheerfulness, in hope of the period's arriving, when he shall" enter into the joy of his Lord!"

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We wish we could thus relieve the minds of all who cannot understand the abstruse subject of religious responsibility, or moral accountability, by opening to them the parable of the talents, so as to let them see, that while God seems to reckon with us, according to the literal sense, as an austere man ;” in the spiritual sense, he is seen as providing for all hereafter with an infinite tenderness, agreeably to the express declaration of the Psalmist, " Also, unto thee, O Lord, belongeth MERCY; FOR thou renderest to EVERY [whether good or bad] according to his work" (Psalm lxii. 12). Thus the judgement of every one according to his deeds, resolves itself, under the influence of genuine truth, into the exploration of every one's ruling quality, as resulting from the formation of his character in the world, by the practice of good, or of evil. To think of God as dealing with us according to what WE DO, is the view of the natural man; but to think of God as dealing with us according to what WE ARE, is the view of the spiritual man; and as the regenerate man, while in the world, has active within him both a spiritual and a natural mind, he will necessarily sometimes take the one view, and sometimes the other; for so far as he thinks from his natural mind, the idea of apparent truth will present itself; but so far as he thinks from the spiritual mind, he will think in the light of genuine truth.

It is scarcely necessary to add, that the actual result to man, in respect to his final destination, is the same, whichever view he may take of moral responsibility, whether according to apparent, or genuine truth. The difference lies only in the superior refining, exalting, encouraging, and consoling effect of genuine truth upon minds to which it is congenial, which it never can be to the bigot, or to the mysterymonger. No believer in the New Testament will feel inclined to abandon the apparent truth and its moral influence (because he will be withheld from doing so by fear) until he is prepared to receive a spiritual influence more pure and powerful. The mist of fear must rest on the mind's surface, until the sun of love rises from above, or within, to dispel it. The violent disruption of apparent truth, as proposed

by the infidels, without a substitution of genuine truth for it, would be the destruction of all good, of every kind and degree!

It is, however, in this world of appearances, as impossible to dispense with the practice of speaking of moral responsibility according to the appearance, as it is to dispense with speaking according to the appearance of the sun's apparent motion. It is sufficient that, on reflection, the mind should make the following just discrimination, The natural view, or that of apparent truth, sees God as doing that only which he wills to do, and which he could alter if he so pleased; but the spiritual view, or that of genuine truth, beholds Him as doing all that infinite power can do for every one, being himself bound by the laws of his own divine order, that is, the laws of his own immutable perfection, to that particular course of proceeding in the government of his providence, which he has revealed by genuine truth from the Word, as the course of Infinite Love, and Infinite Wisdom.

SIMPLEX.

ON MIRACLES, CONSIDERED AS EVIDENCES OF THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY.

WHEN the Lord appeared on earth, his acts were a continuous series of miracles. Their ultimate design was, doubtless, to typify the spiritual operations which he was at the same time, and which he has since been, in the act of performing on the souls of all, who, obedient to his voice, shun evils as sins, and live in the practice of virtue. As however, divine wisdom, in its operations, always has in view every useful end to which those operations, as means, may be made subservient, it cannot reasonably be doubted that the Lord's miracles were also designed by him, to serve as collateral evidences of the religion which he was then ushering into the world, to such minds as were incapable of grasping more internal species of proof.

But the modern advocates for Christianity, not able to discover its divine origin in the sphere of holiness which pervades the whole of the New Testament Word, because, probably, they did not feel it, set themselves about erecting the merely collateral evidence afforded by miracles into demonstrative proof. I am, here, putting the internal sense out of the question. For, independently of that sense, the evidences of the divine origin of the Word, arising from the contents of its literal sense, have forced themselves on the minds of even unbelievers-witness Rousseau's Vicaire Savoyard in his Emilius.

N. S. NO. III.-VOL. I.

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