our Lord was, "On earth peace, good will toward men ;" and yet, the Lord says, "Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." In the spiritual light, these angels and the Lord are both seen to be in harmony. The Lord is indeed the Prince of Peace; and yet He is a God of war and of vengeance. But his warfares and vengeance are not against men, but against their evils. Thus He comes to send the sword of truth that we may have peace through victory over our evils. For without the truth we can never know peace.

Again, it is written in the Holy Word that, "It repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and" that "it grieved Him at His heart." It is also written, that "God is not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent." Now, how could Infinite Wisdom, Goodness and Perfection grieve? How could He who knew all things from the beginning, and does all things right, do anything to repent of? How could Infinity and Immutability— He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever— how could He repent? His ways are not as our ways, nor are His thoughts as our thoughts. It is an apparent truth that God repents and grieves; those emotions can be felt only by man; and when mentioned in reference to God they mean His mercy. The very essence of true repentance and grief are mercy and compassion, These heavenly emotions belong to the Lord.

In order to bring the letter of the Word down to the states of wicked men, God is often represented as being not what He really is, but rather, what He ap

pears to them to be. For this purpose He is represented as possessing the depraved passions of men; is said to be angry, wrathful and revengeful. And it is often asked by persons who begin to see that those qualities cannot belong to a Being who is Love, why the Word was so written. And we answer, It was for the wisest and best of purposes. It was so written that it might be capable of teaching poor, natural, fallen, wrathful, revengeful man the way of life and salvation. To teach another we must come to his state, to the sphere of his understanding, to his language and mode of expression. Now, an angry man will believe those angry with him, who oppose him. He who will get angry at his children for disobeying him, or seek persecution and revenge upon those he thinks his enemies, would suppose that his God would do the same and he would think it right that God should be angry and punish his enemies. This man, God comes to, in his Holy Word, according to his state. He warns him to "Flee from the wrath to come," and threatens him with damnation in hell. At the same time He kindly tells him how to avoid these evils. He commands him not to steal, covet, and so forth. Now, the natural, wicked man knows it is wrong to steal, or deceive. He would punish any one that would steal from him. And in seasons of mourning, sickness, or other afflictions, he hears the Holy Word preached, and his own character comes up before him in a light which makes him shudder. He is afraid of the wrath to come, because he feels guilty and thinks he deserves it, and in a spirit of repentance,

he begins to amend his life and plead for mercy. Here, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." But as he progresses, he gets the love of God which casteth out fear, and he now finds that God was not angry, but loved him all the while; that it was his own opposition to God which made it appear as though God were opposed to him, and which is the reason why the Word was so written.

The words which the Lord speaks, they are spirit and they are life. But, for the natural man to see and understand anything of that spiritual life, they must be brought down into man's common words, as vessels or symbols through which they can be apprehended by analogy. And though those words have a literal meaning, and may give a correct literal history of events in this world, yet they also teach, by correspondences, a spiritual history of things in the world of mind. The human words are so selected and arranged by divine wisdom as to contain this spiritual sense. And in many instances, the literal events mentioned are only appearances, not realities, and are given for the sake of the spiritual sense.

We should bear in mind, that we are in a world of appearances, that the real world is out of sight; that in this world we, to a great extent, speak according to appearances. If we did not so speak, we could not be understood by the generality of mankind. looking through miles of space, and of mountains and the spread-out landscape; and so it appears; while the reality is, that the image of the landscape is brought by the light, and pictured upon the

We speak of beholding the

retina of the eye. We have looked through no space. We see not beyond the skin of our eyes. So, we speak of hearing the thunder from the clouds; but the drum of the ear makes the noise. We speak of the blue arch of heaven, the vaulted skies, the revolving stars, and the setting sun: but there is no arch there; the stars are stationary bodies; and the sun does not set. We talk of the colors of objects; but the colors are from the varied positions of the rays of light. Things have no color. And the Holy Word speaks of such things, according to appearances, because men's states require it.

Now to come to the reality of even these natural things we must have science. What do we know of nature without science? And yet, God's Word comes to us, clothed in the habiliments of nature. It treats of invisible things. It teaches the nature and character of the Invisible God, of our own invisible being, and of the laws of the invisible world; so that "The invisible things of God, from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." But the Word cannot possibly teach this without science. The invisible things of God cannot be seen through the things that are made without the science of correspondences, any more than we can understand the planetary systems without the science of astronomy. For, as we cannot understand the deceptive appearances in God's book of Nature without the deductions of natural science, so, neither can we understand the apparent discrepancies and contradictions in God's book of Rev

elation without the spiritual science of correspondences. And all who rightly study the Word by that science, alike receive the true doctrines of the Word, with as much certainty and harmony of sentiment, as they can the problems of Euclid, or any other scientific deductions.

We have endeavored, in this discourse, to advance some reasons why the Word of God must have a spiritual sense, and to show that dark and contradictory passages can thereby be reconciled and made plain. The age has now come, when the free inquiring mind demands a reason for what it is required to believe. And such irreconcilable contradictions, as those we have cited, are causing many religiously disposed minds to begin to hesitate, and doubt the divine origin of the Bible. And thus, insinuating skepticism steals in upon their hearts step by step, till the blessed Word loses, to them, its divine sanctity and power. What a consoling and joyous thought then, that there is now an opportunity for such a mind, to become rationally convinced that there are no contradictions in the blessed volume, that all its parts are harmonious and consistent, that there is a glory and beauty beaming through the letter of every page and sentence, at the sight of which the scoffer becomes dumb, and the sincere skeptic opens his mouth in humble praise and adoration of the blessed Jesus, and hugs the Holy Word to his bosom as heaven's best gift, and man's unfailing treasure! "Whoso is wise and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord."