death-my father for five-my mother for fifty years. In the year 1793, my father went with his family to New-York, and in his house, in the year 1794, I believe, was held, what I apprehend to have been the first assembly for New Church worship ever held in that city. There were present, on the first occasion, my parents, five other adult persons, and a few children. The Rev. William Hill, whose name and character I doubt not you know, and who was a friend of my father, was the officiating minister. I know the name of but one other person present, and that was Banks. How long these meetings continued I cannot tell; but I suppose as long as Mr. Hill continued in New-York, or it may have been till the ravaging fever entered our dwelling, prostrated my mother for six weeks, and, just as she was becoming convalescent, seized my father, and carried him off in a week. My father's house, at that time, was No. 340, and not very far from Peck Slip. My father also interested himself to procure some of the works of Swedenborg, as a present to the City Library. They were procured through the medium of the Rev. Joseph Proud, and sent, with a letter from him, to the president or principal of the Library. What the works were I do not know. When my mother was about to return to her native country, at the latter end of the year 1796, she called on the president, to offer to be the bearer of a letter to Mr. Proud; but he did not send. He said, speaking of Swedenborg, that he was a wonderful old man ;' and he desired my mother to tell Mr. Proud, that he would be pleased to correspond with him on any literary subject.

"Slight as the above circumstances are, I think they will not be uninteresting to you. The books you may perhaps know in the library, without having an idea how they got there. I would here observe, that I cannot say whether the library was one open to the public generally, or whether it was the library of some particular Institution. The term 'president,' which my mother used in relating it to me, would rather seem to imply the latter. At all events, it was a principal library of the city. You, sir, can perhaps inform me with certainty, what with me is only a probable conjecture, that my father's house was-or it may be, was not-the first place for a worshiping assembly of New Church Christians in your city. All that I have told you is information derived from my mother. I was too young to bear these things in mind; being only between nine and ten years old when we left America. I can, however, well recollect Mr. Hill.

"My father had a New Church friend named Mott, who emigrated soon after himself. He had been in New-York but a few days when his wife died. He soon returned to England with all his children except his eldest son William, whom he left under my father's care. Having fixed his children he returned to America just in time to be seized with the fever in my father's house and company, and at the same moment; and they died within an hour of each other. Is the name of Mott known to you in the American New Church? and, if it be so, can it belong to this William Mott or his descendants. If alive, he must be now about 66 or 67 years of age."

A letter from a Hartford correspondent of the N. Y. Evangelist informs us that ecclesiastical action is to be anticipated in relation to the Rev. Dr. Bushnell." The position of Dr. Bushnell continues to attract interest here as elsewhere. His brethren all feel great respect for him as a man of talents, and many who are intimate with him regard him also with friendship for his many personal qualities. Still they cannot forget that the truth is to be counted more precious than private friendships, and that it will never answer, before God or man, to allow their regard for an individual to hinder the discharge of their duty to the church in opposing error. At the last meeting of the Hartford Central Association, a committee of five was appointed to officially examine Dr. Bushnell's book, to confer with him personally, and report whether he had been uttering important error, and whether the Association had any duty to discharge in the premises. The committee consisted of Rev. Dr. Porter, Chairman, and Rev. Dr. Hawes, and Rev. Messrs. Clarke, McLean and

Richardson. In the composition of the committee consultation was had with Dr. Bushnell, and certain persons were appointed as a part of it, who were personally friendly to him and to previous views which he has published, so that there might be no apparent or real prejudgment of the case. The committee are to report at an adjourned meeting of the Association, in Unionville, Tuesday, the 24th prox Of course the nature of their report will be known only when it is read, and the subsequent action of the Association, it is not within my power to predict. One thing may be safely assumed, however; that they will disown and condemn all the errors charged with more or less truth upon Dr Bushnell's book. I hear of only an occasional convert or pervert to his system, though the book may gradually effect other minds."

OBITUARY.

DIED, in this city, on the 8th of August, Mr. HORACE FULLER, aged 47, merchant, after a protracted illness of many months. The disease which at length resulted in freeing the spirit from its clay tenement was of slow and gradual progress, and left the mind so comparatively at ease that he had much time for reading and reflection. A kind Providence, at an early stage of his illness, directed his thoughts to the grand truths of the New Church, and the interest and ardor with which he pursued his inquiries into the doctrines there unfolded, has probably seldom found a parallel. As the nature of his disease was not such as to indicate to him a fatal result, he read, and received in freedom, and the delight with which he drank in the precious revelations laid open to him, and which were to him as cold water to a thirsty soul, enabled him to say that the last few months of his life, passed upon a sick bed, and often in great distress, were the happiest of his life. The fact, however, that he was providentially prevented from carrying out his new truths into a new life, and evincing by appropriate" uses" the sincerity of his faith and charity, gave him occasionally moments of uneasiness, but those who had the high privilege of access to his bed-side and of listening to his conversation, will not hesitate to bear witness to the most cheering and comforting tokens of a profound conviction of truth and of an earnest longing to "bring forth the fruits meet for repentence." Their spontaneous testimony to this effect would naturally utter itself in the exclamation, "Thou hast done what thou couldst." Such calm and rational conviction, such thorough self-exploration, such humble acknowledgement of hereditary evil, such ready reference of all good to the Lord, such patient and quiet submission under suffering, such tender solicitude for the spiritual welfare of others, and such generous benefactions in the way of ultimating his good wishes, all conspired to give assurance of the integrity of his spirit in regard to the grand concerns of eternal life. If anything were previously wanting to the satisfaciton of friends on this score, it could scarcely fail to have been completely supplied by the sweetness and serenity of the closing scene. His end was emphatically peace. His breath may almost be said to have expired in song, so elevated and exquisite were his comforts in partaking of the Holy Supper a few hours before his departure. It would be easy to give still stronger relief to the bright points in the portraiture of our friend and brother now entered within the vail. To those who were acquainted with the innate nobleness of his nature, with the magnanimous qualities so strikingly imaged forth in his symmetrical form and open countenance, and with that delicate sensibility which added the charm of almost feminine delicacy to the strength and dignity of manhood,-to all such it was easy to see how beautiful was the exhibition of the New Church character when grafted upon such a native stock. But as we know that all eulogistic strains on this score would have been repugnant to the sentiments of their subject, we consult his impulses rather than our own in paying the present tribute mainly to the memory of what he was made by the transforming power of the truths and goods of the Lord's New Church.

DIED on the 28th day of July last, at the residence of Mr. James M. Wattles, in this city, Mrs. ELIZABETH BEARDSLY, aged sixty-five. Within a few years past she had embraced the faith of the New Jerusalem. She was formerly connected with the Episcopal communion, but being of an inquiring mind and earnestly desiring to see the grounds of her faith in a rational light, she found in the New Jerusalem what she had before sought in vain. She embraced the Lord the Saviour Jesus Christ as the one God, and was in the earnest endeavor that her faith should be united to charity, and that they should be one in keeping the commandments. She left a numerous family of children and grand-children, to whom in a very uncommon degree she was endeared, and many of whom from her bright example, have been induced to turn their thoughts towards this supposed new faith. And we may well believe that she may be more useful to them in the sphere where she is, than while in the world.

THE question whether the oracles of the prophets announce the literal return of the Jews to Palestine, and their re-establishment in that land, under a covenant of peculiarity, as a people distinguished above all others by the nearness of their relation to God, has been long debated in the Christian Church, and may there still be said to be sub judice. From the confident tone, however, of Mr. Lord in the affirmative, one who had paid but little attention to the subject would be led to conclude that it was a self-evident proposition, and that there must be an unwonted stretch of presumption in cherishing a contrary opinion even for a moment. That this has been the case to a wide extent in Christendom he could only account for from the fact, that the true laws and canons of interpretation as laid down by Mr. L. have been but recently promulgated to the world, and he would therefore find excuse for their temerity in the plea of ignorance. what apology can be offered for the audacity of the Newchurchman who flatly denies both the soundness of the premises and the truth of the conclusion, is not so obvious. Meantime, while sentence is suspended, he hopes he may be favored with a hearing in the attempt to develop the grounds of his dissent from the dogma so categorically propounded. In so doing he will no doubt seem to lay a ruthless hand upon much of the romance of the theme, and to make havoc of the devout expectancies of many minds which have nourished so kindly an interest in the descendants of Abraham, those " tribes of the wan

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dering foot and weary breast," as the poetry of pietism has been fain to denominate them, notwithstanding the stern testimony of truth would operate as a powerful styptic to the effusion of a very tender sympathy in their behalf. The course of our discussion will lead us, moreover, directly athwart the track of the most majestic march of Mr. L.'s rhetorical, logical, and hermeneutical forces, and in the very outset a collision is inevitable with the vanguard of his line of argument in the principles laid down in the following paragraphs.

"Another error into which those who have treated of these predictions have fallen, is the assumption that besides the natural meaning with which they are fraught, as interpreted by the proper laws of the language in which they are expressed, they have also another and higher signification, which is denominated their spiritual import. This view is held, indeed, by the Christian world generally, and has been for a series of ages. It was the theory of Origen, Theodoret, Jerome, and other early writers, and of Cocecius and Vitringa, especially, among the moderns, and is the basis of a large share of the current interpretations of the ancient prophets. No theory however could be more groundless, or lead to a worse perversion of the prophecies. Language neither has, nor can have any meaning except that which is either literal or figurative. The power or use of certain words, literally to express certain thoughts, is not inherent in them, or founded on their nature, but is the result of arbitrary convention. It is because men, for reasons of convenience, have chosen to appropriate them to their several offices, and use them as they do, that they are indebted for their import; not to any intrinsic adaptation more than any other accents of the voice, to represent such meanings. No word, therefore, can possibly have a literal signification, except as it acquires it by convention and usage. But besides their literal meanings, words have no import except that which is figurative, nor is there any principle except that on which they are figuratively used by which they can attain another meaning. If a word is employed without a figure to denote two things that differ from one another, then it has two literal meanings. If it has two meanings, only one of which is literal, or is employed to signify two things, only one of which it denotes literally, then by the defini tion it is appropriated to a use that differs from its literal signification; and that is the precise peculiarity of the use of a word by a figure. It is accordingly by a metaphor that all the terms employed in the Scriptures that have obtained what may be called a spiritual meaning in addition to their literal import, have acquired their new signification. Thus, the words redeem, ransom, regenerate, 'create, renew, and other kindred terms that are employed to denote the work of Christ, the agency of the Spirit, and the effects of his influences, have obtained their spiritual meaning by a metaphorical use. Not an instance can be found in the Old or New Testament of the use of a word in both a literal and spiritual sense, in which the spiritual does not lie in the mere metaphorical use of the literal. It may, indeed, be said with truth, not only that it is not possible, but that it is not conceivable, that a signification should be given to a word that is not either literal or figurative. If it is not figurative, then its meaning must be assigned to it arbitrarily, not because of any relation which that which it denotes sustains to something else. If it is not used arbitrarily, but because of some relation which that which it is employed to signify sustains to something else, as, for example, that which it literally denotes, then it is used figuratively, as that is the precise peculiarity of the tropical use of a word. The theory of a spiritual sense of words, therefore, in contradistinction from both a literal and a figurative sense, is demonstrably false.

"This consideration proves the utter impossibility, also, that, in any instance, all the terms of a prophecy should have even a figurative sense; inasmuch as we have already shown, it is an invariable and necessary law of figures, that

the names of the subjects to which they are applied, should be used literally. The figure lies wholly in that which is affirmed, or declared, not in that of which the affirmation is made. On the supposition, therefore, that all the prophecies of the Old Testament, respecting the Israelites, have a spiritual meaning, the Israelites themselves, and not any other people, must still be the subjects of that which the spiritual meaning denotes, as certainly and absolutely as though the prediction was literal. There is no possible or conceivable process by which the names, Israel, House of Jacob, Judah, or Jews, when they are the subject of the affirmation, can mean anything else than what they literally denote, the descendants of Jacob, the Jewish people. These writers are accordingly wholly mistaken in the supposition, that the spiritual meaning, which they ascribe to the ancient prophecies, is a meaning of their words; or is indicated by their language, in distinction from the agents, objects, acts, and events, of which that language treats. Their theory really implies, that those agents, objects, and acts, are representative of other agents, objects, and events, of an analogous species; and that they fill the office, therefore, of prophetic symbols, and are to be interpreted on the same principles."-(Theol. and Lit. Jour. No. V. p. 26-28.)

It is evidently the policy of our author to draw a circle round his opponents, as the Roman Popilius dealt with Antiochus of old, and to demand submission to terms before their stepping over it. He would hem us in within the magic ring of his symbols and figures, and extort a concession that no word can have a signification that is not either literal or figurative. The thing, he affirms, is not only not possible, but not conceivable. To this peremptory requisition we demur till we are informed as to the extent of meaning which he would give to the term figurative, and the legitimate authority of the laws by which its application is to be determined. His object evidently is to exclude a truly spiritual or internal sense from the province both of the literal and of what he denominates the figurative use of language, and yet with a very anomalous kind of consistency he admits that such words as redeem, ransom, regenerate, create, &c., have a spiritual import, but holds that this is wholly due to their metaphorical use. This, however, leaves his real drift somewhat dubious. Is the spiritual sense a metaphorical sense, and nothing else? If it be, it is undoubtedly a figurative sense, for a metaphor is a figure. If the spiritual be something distinct from a metaphorical sense, though arising from it, in what does the distinction consist? But we need not multiply interrogations. The inference is plain enough, on the whole, that his theory sinks the spiritual entirely in the figurative. "Not an instance," he says, can be found in the Old or New Testament of the use of a word in both a literal and spiritual sense, in which the spiritual does not lie in the mere metaphorical use of the literal.” If this does not imply that what he would denominate the spiritual is identical with the metaphorical, we could have wished the author had been somewhat more luminous in his phraseology. We assume then that according to Mr. L. the literal and the figurative comprehend all the actual and possible senses of language, and as his definition of figurative senses utterly excludes what Origen, Cocceius, Vitringa, and still more Swedenborg, have termed a spiritual sense, therefore the assertion of such a sense is according to him altogether groundless and idle.

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