Enjoyment, language, beauty, all combine, This affirms all I stated,-celestial meadows, angels as lambs, the Lord as a Lamb with them : the word "Lamb" in the latter case being written with a capital. Anxious to occupy as little unnecessary space as possible, I condensed the statement into three lines of prose; but no reader could have been misled thereby, because the part was chiefly in the author's own words, was cited by name, and the description was shown to be intended merely to convey the sense of the passage. The vision is a singular one; it commences by describing what the subject of it saw after he left the body and rose "through the golden air:" then, next, "in a dream" he " was wafted through the skies; " then lastly, he "woke," and saw what I have just related. It was not a vision then; and the part just cited contains what may some day prove to be the thought-germ of a new Darwinism—one of retrogression back to animalism after reaching the highest-the celestial heaven. But was this a celestial sight, or is Mr. Harris mistaken in ascribing to his poems and his "Arcana" a celestial origin in contradistinction to what Swedenborg published as spiritual christianity? I think the "Adversaria” of Swedenborg, and certain views through Harris, place the latter of these suppositions altogether beyond doubt,-Harris is mistaken. The "Adversaria" was to a considerable extent written through Swedenborg, and he afterwards thought of erasing or destroying these portions. While writing the work his mind discerned from the same plane as that of Mr. Harris ; but, for reasons easily seen, Swedenborg from the spiritual-natural, looked at things theological, while Harris, from the spiritual-natural, looks at things humanitarian. The former during his mediumship saw the Church of the future; the latter in his mediumship sees political federations in the future. This difference is not necessarily one of discrete degree, but simply one of individuality; and the tendency of Mr. Harris's mind being towards that which relates mainly to the externals of a man's life, his state and point of spiritual vision would be many continuous degrees nearer the plane of the corporeal (see S. D. iv. 4545), than would be the case with Swedenborg. Harris would thus be the more readily drawn within the sphere of infernal spirits of the nearest opposite condition, and in the general tenor of his life would be more accessible to spirits of questionable bearing. We have but to apply this principle to his writings in order to see that "celestial" there, does really mean something much lower than that spiritual-rational of angels to which Swedenborg's perception arose after he ceased this mediumship and turned to a higher source for his doctrines. Let the reader notice first then, that Swedenborg had not written a quarter of his "Adversaria" before he showed an order of thought he should soon out-grow, but which Harris has never yet been able to get beyond; namely, that a man on the spiritual-natural plane of intellectual life can have an idea of a divided Godhead, and yet be able at times to write a celes 2 tial sense; that he shall have a belief in man's creation from a tree; that he shall have a belief in a golden age, yet hold that the fall of man took place with our first two parents; he shall affirm the doctrine of a fallen Lucifer, and shall assert the existence of infernals at the time of a personal Cain's banishment. These crudities of thought were peculiar to Swedenborg's novitiate-period, and were afterwards rejected for true doctrine obtained by orderly means. Harris still retains them, and, combining them with New Church teachings of the second advent, produces the strangest of amalgamations. Let me not be misunderstood however. There is, secondly, considerably more in Harris than these two things. There are the theories of worldsouls, spirit-stars, aromal-spheres and the millennarianism and harmonialism of the great Ch. Fourier, an author whose writings at present lie in the most unaccountable neglect, but who will assuredly, in the not very distant future, exercise upon society an influence beyond most men. This philosopher died in 1837, and an English work on his communistic system was written and published in America, by Brisbane in 1840,5 seventeen years before Harris wrote his first volume of the Arc. of Ch. There can be little doubt that Harris would read Brisbane's book, and being a Universalist minister would often hear Fourier's name mentioned in connection with the doctrine of the non-eternity of hell. Hugh Doherty also in 1851 published an English translation of Fourier's "Passions of the Human Soul" with valuable notes from Swedenborg and others. In this work nearly every peculiarity, differing from such as Harris derived from Swedenborg, may be distinctly traced; and you have only to imagine a man of Shelley-like genius taking up Swedenborg in the way I have shown,-to find such poems as the Lyrics inevitable. "The Great Republic" is a Fourierised "Queen Mab;" the "Lyric of the Morning Land" is Shelley's "Alastor" or "Epipsychidion" plus Swedenborg; while in the "Lyric of the Golden Age" you get as NewChurchmen the old-world poets-"Keats, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hood." Of this poem Harris speaks as follows: 66 Something it hath for every mental state; We are fairly justified then in asking, Can it be from a celestial perception of character that Harris locates in the same "Spirit-realm of England's 1 In the "Adversaria," the celestial sense of the word is occasionally given, and a supercelestial sense spoken of. See i. 788 and 789, item, 933, for examples. 2 Harris, A. of C. i. 254. 3 "Adversaria," i. 92. It will be shown that much of Harris's inconsistency with himself, comes from his taking up the Swedenborg of both periods. 4 The Fay-system and the fire-eve doctrine, however, is not from this writer, as will be seen further on. 5 “Social Destiny of Man, or Association,” by A. Brisbane. worthies," men in everything so different as Keats and Byron were ;-the one all spring-tide innocence and gentleness; the other so ingrained with debauchery, godlessness, and gloomy egotism? So again with Wordsworth and Shelley, the chaste, unselfish, tranquil-minded poet linked with the dreamy, morbid pantheist, whose sentimentalism was so much a thing of head, not heart, that he could wantonly throw himself into adulterous love, and leave a young forsaken wife to despair and-suicide! The strangest inconsistency of all, however, is in the first part of this poem,-the misanthrope Rousseau pointing the moral ! Taken from his sleeping, earthly body up into the "sun's dominion," to be shown "past, present, and future," -behold Jean Jacques; the man who for many years cohabited with a woman he did not marry, until old age came on, and who bore him five children, each of which, shortly after its birth, was abandoned to the foundling hospital, never afterwards to be recognized! Was it during this period the "Solitaire was carried heavenwards, or was it at that later time when-coming over to England on a visit to David Hume-his mind became so completely the prey to cankering suspicions, that he could neither eat nor sleep, and-fearing assassination from some secret foe-hastened madly back from our shores? Alas! there is nothing celestial in this, except the beautiful truths taken from Swedenborg, and only too frequently placed upon the wrong poet's lips. If we turn to Mr. Harris's so-called celestial sense of the Word, the case is not at all improved. In his two volumes of the A. of Ch. he gives us four chapters, and of these the first is idealistic cosmology, and therefore pertaining to the plane of spiritual-natural thought; the other three are idealistic socialism, and consequently of the same plane. Fourier's discourse on "Analogy from the Aromal System" in vol. ii. of the work on the Passions, is altogether similar in character, so is Swedenborg's last work previous to his call, namely, the treatise on the "Wisdom and Love of God;" such also is the case with the lengthy description of the spheres and their world-inhabitants in A. J. Davis's "Nature's Divine Revelations." The outcome is the same in all, but Harris makes his details a result of unfolding correspondence, whereas the others speculate or describe without doing this. Deprive the three chapters in Harris's "Apocalypse" of everything taken from Fourier and the doctrinal writings of Swedenborg, and where the residue was not relating to cosmology, you would just have the unripe "spiritual-natural" sense of the latter, and with both, the mind would be carried to the one theme-the remotest civilisation of the future; Swedenborg called it the Church, Harris calls it the seven Apocalypti Churches. As a last test are these politics such as would become celestial beings? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Take for example the following, the perfect man of the future : "Through pivotal men, in the lapse of ages, the Divine Man shall reconstruct humanity. They will not all be men of peace. Some will wade through blood like rivers, and will display the terribleness of the lion, while within they have the heart of a lamb" (A. of C. i. 751). Very different" celestial" this, compared with that of the Master Himself: "Put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matt. xxvi. 52)! As if De Quincey's theory of "Murder as one of the fine Arts" had been ultimated into a living principle, we read elsewhere in Harris :- "The man of Sardis takes delight in developing a sphere that tears to pieces whatever is selfish and competitive. The man of this type will be terrible in presence to his opponents, for there will proceed through him a divine overbearing of ill. Each will move among men as a last judgment in first principles. They will grind and reduce opposition as millstones grind corn. Such is the sharp and penetrative quality of the breaths of the man of this type, that few will care to meet them more than once in opposition. It must also be mentioned here, that these respirations have a singular quality; proceeding forth against the adverse and the wicked, they interpenetrate their bodies between all the joints of the bones; they afflict opposers with a cold trembling; they take out courage from the heart; they produce, if opposition is continued, paralysis, loss of memory, and a general impotence of the frame" (A. of Ch. iii. 573). Here is a sphere for new Cromwells and Torquemadas! Alas for any poor Servetus that should ask mercy from a "fire-breath" Calvin of this brotherhood of the new life! It is unnecessary then to continue this portion of the subject; enough has been adduced to show that while the peculiarities of Harris-being acquisitions from without and not discoveries from within – are no ground on which to rest his claim to "celestial" angelic intercourse; the level of his philosophy, the plane of his perceived correspondences, his occasional dualities of doctrine and the social attitude in charity of his Apocalyptic federation of the future with its pivotal men-are precisely such as would be affirmed by an earnest, intelligent, religious poet of the first order, but in the spiritual-natural degree of life. "TAKE YE AWAY THE STONE." "TAKE ye away the stone," the Saviour said, While those who did their part rejoiced to see For Faith to work and feel its liberty, Which else through cankering ease fails like a blighted tree. To-day a goodness weeps which is not ours It weeps, speaks forth, inspires-for Satan's powers "See how within this grave the spite of Hell, Leagued with Adultery, Drunkenness, Fashion, Lies— 'Neath weight of circumstance and custom fell Have shut our brother down,—dead by guilt's cruel spell !" Yes; here to-day Heaven's goodness-slighted, lone— Weeps, then commands, "Take ye away the stone! Is Thought the end for which Time's course is run? R. M'CULLY. Review. THE TWO GREAT BOOKS OF NATURE AND REVELATION, pp. 501. GEORGE FIELD. 1870. WE had intended at an earlier period to have reviewed this excellent work, but circumstances led to the fulfilment of our desire being somewhat deferred. The book is too noble a contribution to New Church literature to be passed with a slight notice, and therefore we were compelled to wait for the leisure to give such an account of it as its thoughtful and comprehensive character deserved. We now take the pen with pleasure, to afford our readers the opportunity of becoming acquainted with one of the most admirable efforts to bring ancient and modern learning to enforce and illustrate the spiritual sense of the early chapters of Genesis, and the leading principles of divine truth. The work is in the form of twelve lectures, containing Mr. Field's researches over a wide domain and for a long period, embodied in a style clear, attractive, eloquent, and convincing. The New Church student will find in this work a crowd of citations from authors ancient and modern, so completely proving the position that the science of correspondences was the cherished knowledge of antiquity, and the foundation of all their allegories, myths, and hieroglyphics, as to be really overwhelming; while modern science is equally laid under contribution by the talented author. He shows the knowledge of the present enlightened age to be as much a support to true spiritual teaching as it is destructive of old rude conceptions of the middle ages, conceptions which arose from assuming that to be earthly science in the Bible which was intended to be a revelation of heavenly wisdom. We cannot conceive how any candid mind, whatever its previous unacquaintance with the principle may have been, can rise from a careful perusal of Mr. Field's labours without being convinced that the long-lost science of analogy is the real key to ancient learning. The programme of the first lecture will give our readers a conception of the wide elaboration the writer |