around us. The New Church has a peculiar and a great work to do, and such as she only can perform: it is, to make known the great truths of the New Dispensation, to spread them abroad in the world as far and as fast as they will be received. It is our duty, therefore, having this great charge upon us, to give all our attention to it, and not employ our time on things that are comparatively indifferent or of less consequence, and such as can be done by those who have not the light of the New Church. This is a reason why we should not employ our precious time on the Lord's Day in giving mere secular instruction, which can be given by others as well as by ourselves, but should bend all our efforts to our peculiar work of communicating the new spiritual principles and truths. And for the same reason, the children who are subjects of instruction should be the children of the members themselves, because it is in such minds that the seed can be implanted with the certainty, or the strongest probability, of its being received, growing, and bringing forth fruit, because what is sown will be watered and nurtured by the favourable influences at home, whereas the same seed cast into the minds of children who are under no such influences, would fall, in great part, as it were, among thorns and briars, that will overshadow and choke it, so that, in most cases, little or no effect, comparatively, will be produced. Thus our time and labour, if not entirely lost, will be at least spent far less usefully and profitably than if it had been employed in teaching such minds as would receive all that was given, as would be the case, in general, with New Church children. Experience bears testimony to the correctness of this view.

But it may, perhaps, be asked, Why not do both? Why not instruct our own children and others too at the Sabbath school? Certainly, if it be found practicable; teach as many as you can-do as much good as you can. How far, however, such a combination is practicable may be a question-too extensive à one to enter upon here. This only is the point which it is desired to bring forward at this time, namely, that, if both objects cannot be effected, if the choice has to be made between imparting Sabbath school instruction to our own children or to those of others, then is it not clear where the path of duty lies? Is it not our duty first to take care of those whom the Lord has expressly given us the care of? and this, not only for our own sakes, not merely for our children's sakes, but as the most certain and efficient means, in the end, of spreading abroad the knowledge of the truth, and of extending the borders of the Lord's church and kingdom; because, as before shown, the minds of children growing up under New Church influences are,

from their surrounding circumstances, in a far more receptive state, and the labour spent upon them will be much more effective.

There remains one point more to be noticed, and with this the present remarks will be concluded. It has been urged as an objection to the practice of the children of members attending a Sabbath school, that they should be at home with their parents on that day, and that they will be more benefited by the sweet influences of the family circle, than by any other kind or mode of instruction. To this objection it may be replied, that the duties of a properly ordered Sabbath school will not interfere with this use in any material degree. As before remarked, the Sabbath school should be regarded as the children's church. Its tasks, therefore, should not be hard and laborious, or its hours wearisome by their length, as those of a week-day school often are; but the exercises should be short, and occurring only once in the day. An hour and a half on the Sabbath afternoon is sufficient. And to save the time and fatigue of going long distances to the place of meeting, as would be the case in large cities, where the members reside far from the church, the exercises of the school may commence soon after the close of the morning service-beginning, for instance, at one o'clock, and continuing till half-past two. With this plan there would be no additional walking required either of children or teachers,-the children accompanying their parents to church in the morning, and returning home after the exercises of the school are over. It may be added, that this plan has been acted upon with much success in the Sunday school connected with the New Church society in Glasgow, and the benefit resulting both to children and parents is marked.

In conclusion, dear friends, permit me to observe, that in offering these views on the subject of the proper constitution and exercises of New Church Sunday schools, as seeming to me the manner in which I could best occupy the pages of this address, and fulfil most usefully the task you allotted me,-I beg to be considered as simply presenting such thoughts as have occurred to my own mind on an important subject, and with no wish to obtrude them improperly upon others, but with the single end, I trust, of seeing the glorious truth of the New Dispensation most effectively spread abroad, that thus the Lord's "kingdom may come, and His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

May the Lord's presence and blessing be with you in your deliberations! T. O. PRESCOTT.

Glasgow, May 10th, 1849.

249

ON THE COLOUR OF THE BLOOD.

DR. POND, in his work on Swedenborgianism, states that Swedenborg is in error when he says that the redness of the blood corresponds to love, for that "modern physiologists have discovered that the redness of the blood is owing to the presence of iron in the system." Mr. Haydn, in his very excellent reply to Dr. Pond's "Observations on the Facts and Philosophy of Swedenborg," shews how manifestly the Doctor confounds a correspondence which we claim to be an efficient cause with a physical cause; but according to the discoveries of modern physiologists, the Doctor is also wrong in the physical cause, which is evident from the following extract from Kirke's and Paget's "Hand-Book of Physiology," published last year, embracing all the most modern discoveries in the

science.

First, premising that there is a peculiar principle in the blood called hæmatine, which contains a large quantity of iron, and is found in the red globules only. The mode in which the metal exists, is not yet determined by chemists. It is evident that the iron is in a peculiar state of combination with the other elements of this principle (hæmatine), for if this be exposed to the action of diluted sulphuric acid for several days, no loss of its iron takes place, though the acid would dissolve an oxyde of iron or decompose a carbonate.

"The peculiar colour of hæmatine depends less on the iron than on its other constituents, for, as Scherer and Mulder have shewn, hæmatine may retain its colour after all the iron is extracted from it. Therefore the changes of colour produced by respiration, and the contact of gases with the blood, cannot be referred to any change in the state of the iron in the hamatine. It is, indeed, very doubtful whether the rapid change of colour which is effected in respiration, and on the contact of various gases, can be referred to any chemical changes whatever in the hamatine; much more probably it is due to changes in the form of the blood corpuscles, and their consequently different modes of reflecting and transmitting light. For, first, the changes of colour produced by carbonic acid and oxygen mixed with a solution of the colouring matter of the blood are very slight; they are generally scarcely perceptible, and when they are seen they are slowly produced, or are not more than may be explained by the action of the gases on some corpuscles still suspended in the solution. Secondly, the same changes of colour as are produced by carbonic acid and oxygen acting on the corpuscles may be produced by distilled water and strong solutions of alkaline salts. A black clot of

blood becomes at once scarlet by washing it with salt, and is not blackened again by carbonic acid; a scarlet one is made black by washing it with distilled water, and is only very slowly reddened again by the contact of oxygen. Now, the changes thus produced by salt and water acting on the corpuscles are not produced by the addition of the same substances to a solution of hæmatine, and are not connected with any chemical change in that substance or in the corpuscles, but they are connected with alterations in the shape of the red corpuscles; for saline solutions, if denser than the liquor sanguinis, contract and shrivel up the corpuscles, making them deeply biconcave; and distilled water has the contrary effect, swelling out the corpuscles, and making them thickly biconvex or spherical. Changes corresponding with these are produced by the contact of oxygen and of carbonic acid with the corpuscles; the former contracting them, and making their cell-membranes thick and granular; the latter dilating them, and thinning, and finally dissolving their cell-walls, and effecting these changes in a degree which, however slight it may appear in a single corpuscle, is enough to account for the change of colour in a mass of blood. Herein, then, is a sufficient explanation of the changes that the corpuscles undergo, without supposing any immediate chemical alteration in the hæmatine; an alteration which should take place as well in a solution of hæmatine as in the corpuscles.

The opinion that the instantaneous change of colour which takes place in blood exposed to the action of oxygen or carbonic acid is due to a physical rather than a chemical alteration in the corpuscles, is quite consistent with the probability that the corpuscles are chemically changed by the longer action of those gases dissolved in the blood. It appears that entire blood will absorb much more oxygen than either serum or liquor sanguinis alone will; as if it were chiefly with the corpuscles that the absorbed oxygen combines. If this be true, we may conclude from the whole that the oxygen, by first contracting the corpuscles and thickening their walls, makes them so reflect light as to appear, in mass, bright red, and then chemically combines with them; and that carbonic acid, by dilating them and thinning their walls, makes them reflect less light, and appear, in mass, nearly black; but we have no means of determining how large a portion of the oxygen inspired combines with the corpuscles, nor whether that portion combines with the hamatine or the globuline, or equally with both."

66

Swedenborg says, in the "Economy of the Animal Kingdom," 86, Colour, then, as we learn from phenomena, is a certain discrimination of light and shade, and a certain determinate ratio and analogy thence arising in those extremely minute objects which do not come distinctly

within the visual perception. For in objects of this kind, the eye cannot discern between luminous and shady rays; wherefore it apprehends only the general image of the discriminations and differences, as represented under the beautiful appearance of colours. White and black are two opposites, as light and shade, the modifications of which are the intermediate colours.

"It is well known that nothing produces with greater distinctness and nicety the different ratios and forms of shaded light than the volatile, urinous, alkaline, and sulphurous salts, as so many triangular, prismatic, and quadrangular corpuscles, which, when they dispose themselves throughout any compages in an orderly arrangement, give rise to a general modification of colour, either red, green, or yellow; and hence results the pictorial or scenic effect which is distinguished and comprehensible only by a general visual perception.

88. "This is more particularly true in the case of the blood, between the compages of whose parts interpose the volatile salts, from which the red colour receives all its modifications; a colour which is heightened and vivified in proportion to the interposition of similar minute particles in the less compounded blood or in the spirituous fluid which is enriched in proportion to their quantity; and is obscured in proportion as the congeries is disarranged by the intermixture of heterogeneous and opaque substances that confound the discriminations of light and shade.

89. * * * * "From the most volatile ethereal salts, however, colour does not arise, these rather serving to insinuate the first principles of colour, and to impart a strength and brilliancy to objects. The plane oval particles, says Leeuwenhock, as quoted by Gulielminus, are colourless, or quite transparent. If, however, a number of them be placed one upon another, they exhibit a reddish tinge. (n. 32.) For when they are in a state of mutual conjunction, immediately urinous or volatile salts of the second order interpose themselves. Whence Boerhave observes, that the globules of blood, when divided into their component parts, present the appearance of a pellucid yellowish serum of various shades." (n. 31.)

After shewing that Leeuwenhock and other microscopists state that every globule of blood "is declared to be compounded of six smaller ones," he proceeds to the construction of the sanguineous particle in the following order:-"1st. Let there be given a most spirituous fluid, the nature of which we shall investigate in our remarks on the brain. 2nd. Let the extreme volatility of this fluid be tempered by ethereal elements (n. 53, 92) and to speak by analogy, let these two be as it were amalgamated in such a manner as to leave remaining both the fluidity and the