ment: otherwise it would degenerate into what is merely sensual and worldly. In this instance, your powers of fancy shine not alone; her rays omit no false glimmer, like a feeble spark enkindled but for a moment, to become only the more overshadowed by darkness. Here is a ray of fancy darting from reason; which I trust, like a refulgent lamp, will continue to illuminate your young mind; that thus in yourself, your life and conduct, you may ever realize the picture you have painted."

Brighton.

M. D. G.

OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE AND THE COMPOSITION OF

THE BLOOD GLOBULE.

THE success we have reason to anticipate in our examination of a subject, depends entirely upon the mode in which it is conducted. A wrong method of examination we have no right to expect to be successful; if, therefore, in our enquiries into a subject, our attempts have repeatedly failed, we ought not, in consequence, to resign the pursuit, as if the subject itself were beyond all possible reach of investigation; but should rather bethink ourselves, whether or not the examination has been conducted on right principles. With regard to the subject of the blood, there is, perhaps, none which requires such a union of science and philosophy. By science, I mean the knowledge of effects; by philosophy, the knowledge of causes. Life is not an ultimate effect; it is a cause, and approximates, perhaps the nearest, to the highest cause of any with which we are acquainted. With regard to the science of the blood, it is admitted to be extremely imperfect; because the effects or phenomena it presents, have been very inadequately investigated, in consequence, in a great measure, of the difficulty naturally attending the subject. With regard to the philosophy of the blood, it must of course be imperfect, if the science be imperfect; for, if philosophy treats of causes, and science treats of effects; if also we cannot arrive at causes, except through the medium of the knowledge of effects; it follows, that the philosophy of the blood must partake of the imperfection of its science. Unfortunately, however, the study of causes has been too much neglected; nay it has been confounded with the study of ultimate effects; so that the terms philosophy and science have been used as terms synonymous, though they are perfectly distinct; indeed, as perfectly distinct as effects and causes. Thus we hear the terms, "Natural Science,"

Continuation of the Last Judgement, first published in 1763, n. 1720. But the most ample account of the world of spirits will be found in Swedenborg's Treatise on Heaven and Hell, n. 421–535.

But it is said in Rev. xx. 11, "And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it; from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away; and there was no place found for them." In the next verses is described the judgement and its consequences. We have already shewn that by this and similar passages of the Word, the visible natural heavens and earth are not meant; and we may be sure that the real heaven of angels is not meant; that, therefore, there are a heaven and an earth which admit of destruction by the execution of the last judgement. Till 1757, multitudes of spirits, from the commencement of Christianity, were permitted to associate with each other, by the externals of the church and religion, and in some measure with good spirits; and by correspondences to form themselves into imaginary heavenly societies, and thus into imaginary heavens. This state continued while their interior principles of evil could be concealed; and they had an apparent elevation in the spiritual world, answering to the phantasies by which their imaginary heavens were created. When these increased to an extent inconsistent with a state of equilibrium, necessary to the freedom of the human mind, or so far as to intercept the true light of heaven from shining into the minds of the men of the church on earth with whom they were associated, and to bring about a universal destruction of faith, by first destroying charity, through the falses of a spurious faith; then the Lord made his appearance for the execution of the last judgement. His appearance with his angels was correspondent to a more direct influx of truth in its omnipotent power into the minds of all, so as to explore the true character of all, both good and evil; and as all the outward appearances in the imaginary heavens, and on the apparent earth on which they were founded, were produced by the abuse of correspondences, but had no reality in them, when divinely explored, they at once fled away on the manifestation of the divine presence; and no place was found for them; that is, the peculiar state by which they were produced; they were no longer allowed to associate with the good and with heaven, by the externals of the Word, of worship, and of religion; all things relating to which they had falsified and profaned. They were no longer allowed, because they were no longer able; the preparations for their final judgement having rescued the good of the simplest character from their power to deceive, and so to enthral them by their deceptions as to keep them under their dominion.

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

E

Being no longer able to make use of religious pretences for the gratification of their wicked purposes, they were ready to rush into every sort of wickedness and enormity; and did so rush, regardless of any religious obligation: so that all the correspondences by which the appearance of heavens had been fabricated, instantly vanished or fled away; and they sank down into hell, into the lake of fire and brimstone, as being truly correspondent to their infernal lusts, suffocative of the life of every species of goodness.

13. That such a judgement may from time to time be executed in the spiritual world, without the consciousness of the inhabitants of the natural world: but the time of every general judgement is the time for a new dispensation of divine truth, after some manner, for the formation a New Church; as every Last Judgement becomes necessary, and is effected at the end or consummation of a church, when there is no genuine faith, because there is no genuine charity.

We may grant the truth of this proposition; because the two worlds, though in a sense connected together as the soul and body, are yet so different in their natures as to have nothing, properly speaking, in common. They are connected together as soul and body by correspondence; every natural product having a specific spiritual cause, as its essence or soul; whence it derives its peculiar nature, form, and use; whence also it becomes its representative in ultimate nature, and perpetually subsists from connexion with it, as the instrumental cause of its existence. There is, indeed, in the spiritual world, a great similarity of many of its forms to those of the natural world; but they are essentially different, being altogether spiritual, both as to substance and form. It is the world of mind, of love, of thought; every form in it is a form of some love, affection, and thought; every motion and change, in any of their characters, is the immediate effect of a change in the thought and affection they exhibit; so that the whole spiritual world, without, to the senses of spirits, is in a manner so identical with them, as to be truly considered as a one. Matter, in all its motions, is, properly considered, mechanical and insensible. It cannot be sublimed into thought, or even to the immediate subject of thought; for, although in its gaseous form or state, it is capable of wonderful effects, yet there is in it no approximation to thought or will, or any thing like an act of the mind. The matter of animal bodies, in this respect, is similar to matter in general. In it, properly speaking, there is no thought, no mind; though it admits of motion and change, by the mind it invests, as a medium of outward life in the material world.

Nothing, then, can be more distinct than the world of nature and the world of mind; though so created as to be to each other as soul and body, by correspondence. Matter is, properly speaking, altogether insensible; and its sensibility in animal existence is only an appearance, and not a reality.

The mind in the body, is the subject of all sensitiveness; and, though the sense appears to be in the body, and of the body, yet this is only an appearance. This may be so far demonstrated, that the intelligent can have no reasonable doubt of the fact. It is indeed supposed by them that the brain is the subject of sensitiveness; but this may some day be demonstrated to be a fallacy. It is, no doubt, the mind's primary material organ, by which it is sensitive of many changes in the condition of its whole material clothing, whether effected by its own action, or by the contact of things without it.

Those who have not thought upon these subjects from scientific intelligence, may be surprised that the limbs might be mutilated, without any pain being felt in the mutilated parts, if the nerves communicating between the parts and the brain were first divided; therefore a man might have his toes, his feet, his fingers, and his hands cut off, without pain, if the nerves communicating with these parts and the brain were divided.

Although the mind is the immediate subject of all, and even of bodily sensation; and although it is, even while in the body, an inhabitant of the spiritual world, and associated with spirits, and so associated as to be greatly influenced by them: yet, it is so ordered by Divine Providence, that it shall not be generally sensible of that association, while clothed with its material body, in the present world. Man would be unable to exercise the functions of both mind and body, were he cut off from his spiritual associates; and yet he is ignorant, as to any sensibility he has of them, that there are spirits, much less of their association with him. He knows nothing of their characters, of their mode of life, or of their exchange with each other of ideas, by conversation, or by any other mode of communication, in association with him. The spirits immediately associated with him, will most resemble him in character; for the immediate association of spirits with men, is regulated by this principle; and as we are insensible of the doings of those who are most closely connected with us, it will hence follow that all possible sorts of changes in the spiritual world, and therefore the last judgement upon myriads, may take place without the consciousness of men in this world, though so closely connected with it by correspondence. Nay,

we are far from knowing consciously much that passes in our own spirits, while the most important changes are effected in them, such as our eternal happiness depends on. We have given to us a region or degree of mind, in which we have consciousness, and the power of acting according to reason; but in proportion as we employ our canscious powers for good or for evil, arrangements are going on of a regenerating or degenerating kind, in the formation of our everlasting characters, of which we have no consciousness. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth; and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the spirit' (John iii. 8). This is not only true of the spirit, but of the body too; for diseases, as well as renovation to health, in many instances, commence and are matured unconsciously.

Although men in the world are unconscious of the general last judgement, in the spiritual world, at the time of its occurrence, yet their eternal interests are deeply involved in the event; and results follow in this world of the most momentous kind, as connected with them, and calculated to promote them. In the first place, the preservation of the earth, and of the human race upon it, is involved in the event; for, if the Lord did not execute a last judgement in the world of spirits, upon those accumulated therein, in whom evil predominates, though professing to be of the Lord's church, and by whose instrumentality evil prevails over good, no flesh could be saved; and destruction, with respect to this world, would be universal. In the second place, after the removal of the crews of those wicked spirits, whose infestations extended, in a degree, both to the heavens and the earth, the Lord can reveal himself anew in greater splendor and glory, that is, more in his true character as apprehended by men and angels; for the nearer the ideas of men approximate to the truth respecting the Lord's true character, the greater is the splendor and glory in which he appears. That in this new revelation of himself, in the third place, the Lord provides for the commencement and establishment of a new church, as in every general last judgement, there is an end or consummation of a former church; for, if a church on earth did not become first perverted in doctrine and life, there could never be such a dangerous accumulation of spirits as to require a general last judgement of the magnitude we have described.

We have intimated, in several places, that the churches have an end as well as a beginning; and that, at the end of a church, a general last judgement is requisite. This will be the case till a church be formed under a dispensation of divine truth, in which all things of