It is common, my friends, to deny facts because our method of interpretation is too narrow for them. Our wisdom should lie in enlarging our conception of the universe and its workings so as to include the new facts. It is such an enlarged conception which I have tried to give you here. And the more you think the clearer it will become to you, that it is useless for the quasi-scientific man to say, 1st, That he does not believe in a spiritual world and God, since personal beliefs are simply beside the point; 2nd, That your idea of these things is purely imaginary, since your conception, whether imaginary or not, is rationally legitimate and the implied facts possible; 3rd, That you have no proof of any such spiritual world or of a God, since the proof (as against him at least) consists in the thoroughgoing extension which these ideas give to his own fundamental and favourite conception of continuity; 4th, That the proof from continuity of such spiritual world and God would not prove miracles, since all you here care for is to show him that miracles are not only possible, but rational, and entirely explicable by your theory; and last, That it is useless for him to say that the facts of nature are against miracles and prove them impossible, until he tells you in what sense he means that, and can show you that it is impossible that any will-force, yours and that of the Almighty included, should act upon material objects; for he would know, and you would know, that in this last resource he was contradicting facts, the action of will-force upon material forms being one of the commonest facts of life. Your widened conception of the universe thus reveals that the spiritual principles, which this grand instrument of continuity has been used to disprove, are, by that instrument itself, shown to be its legitimate, rational, and inevitable sequence; that if modern science were only true to its deepest and dearly-valued principle, it would come nearer to the spiritual springs of being, and find therein an explanation of many things which are to naturalism alone, but as pure Sphinx-riddles with Edipus missing. THOMAS CHILD.

MAN OUGHT TO FORCE HIMSELF TO DO GOOD AND

TO SPEAK TRUTH.

"To do good and to speak truth" is to follow the life of heaven and the will of God. But the Word teaches, and our own experience confirms the testimony, that we are not inclined so to live. Following

out our own devices and desires, we do evil and speak lies. Our nature being inverted, we "call evil good, and good evil; put darkness for light, and light for darkness." Action and speech are the ultimation of will and thought, and the human race was created to will and to think freely. It was for the purpose of eternally securing human freedom that the Lord undertook the mighty and merciful work of redemption, and now, the influences of good and evil upon our souls are so controlled by the Divine Providence that we are always kept in spiritual equilibrium.

Neither hell, nor heaven, nor even God Himself, can work a spiritual change in us except with our full consent. Hell cannot compel us to confirm ourselves in evil, because its influence is held in check by the Lord through the influx of heaven. Heaven cannot force us to change

our natures, because the life of heaven is a life of freedom. The Lord Himself cannot force us to conform to His Will, because He wishes us to love Him, and all love is of freedom :

"He'll draw, persuade, direct aright,

And bless with wisdom, love, and light;

In nameless ways be good and kind;

But never force the human mind."

If, then, we have no natural inclination to do good and to speak truth, and the Lord will not suffer us to be forced in that direction, it follows that if we are to do good and to speak truth we must force ourselves. The Lord has provided for this by placing at our disposal the motive power of TRUTH. It is by and through truth that we learn the evil of our natural condition, the state to which we should aspire, and the means by which that state is to be attained. Truth itself cannot force us to do good and to speak truth-its power is rather latent than active, it is rather a leading than a forcing power. It shows us the need of forcing ourselves, and when acted upon gradually inclines us to force ourselves.

It seems paradoxical to assert that we can never be really free-free according to the original order of our creation, free with the freedom intended in our redemption, free as the angels of heaven, until we force ourselves to do good and to speak truth. Yet such is undoubtedly the case. Our whole nature, before regeneration, being inverted, our freedom is inverted, and until instructed by the Lord we do not know it. We imagine that we are living in freedom when we are enslaving ourselves by the love and life of evil. Knowing no outside power that

can enslave our wills, when we are taught, "If the truth shall make you free, ye shall be free in leed," we are apt to boast ourselves in the thought, "We were never in bondage to any man.' But the voice of the Master recalls to our minds the existence of a bondage more terrible than that of any external power: "He that committeth sin is the servant of sin." He who commits sin yields himself to hell, and becomes a slave. "Wicked spirits who are attendant upon man consider him no otherwise than as a vile slave, for they infuse into him their own lusts and persuasions, and thus lead him whithersoever they desire; but the angels, by whom man has communication with heaven, consider him as a brother, and insinuate into him the affections of good and of truth, and thus lead him by freedom. . . to be led by the devil is slavery, but to be led by the Lord is freedom " (A. C. 2890).

We have much to learn as to the nature of freedom and liberty. The Republicans of 1789 imagined that the best way of promoting "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," was to cut off the heads of their political opponents. Well might the accomplished Madame Roland exclaim at the sight of the statue of Liberty, which stood near the scaffold, "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" The atheistic idea of FREETHOUGHT is, that man should not regard himself as fettered by any law higher than that of his own likes and dislikes. "The man who reflects is a depraved animal" (Rousseau). The Church of Rome is to-day demanding the "freedom of the Church "—her idea of sweet freedom being that the Pope and his cardinals and priests should be recognised as superior to the civil law. With some people freedom is contended for as if it meant their right to control other people, or to annoy other people. This is exemplified very clearly in our social surroundings. There is no greater slave and social pest than the habitual drunkard; yet how many of such resent all attempts to persuade them to reform themselves, and all efforts to lessen the evil by legislative enactment by a loud outcry against interfering with the "liberty of the subject." We need to remember the sentiment of the poet

"He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,

And all are slaves besides."

The only freedom worth contending for is the freedom that harmonizes with the dictates of truth and right. The so-called freedom of the evil man always tends more or less to interfere with the freedom, or

U

the comfort, or the interest of other people, while the freedom of heaven seeks and tends to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us. We should therefore remember, "That man ought to force himself to do good and to speak truth" (A. C. 1937). If we do thus we shall become free, eternally free. Swedenborg explains this matter of self-compulsion very clearly. "In all self-compulsion for good there is a certain freedom, which is not so plainly perceived during the act of compulsion, but yet it is within. Thus, in the case of a man who willingly subjects himself to the hazard of losing life, with a view to some end, or who willingly undergoes a painful operation for the benefit of his health, there is a willingness, and consequently a liberty, in so doing, by virtue whereof he acts, although the hazard and the pains, while he is in them, take away the perception of such willingness or freedom. The case is the same with those who compel themselves to good; there is within a willingness, consequently a freedom, by virtue of which, and for the sake of which, they compel themselves, viz., there is the motive of obedience to those things which the Lord has commanded, and the motive of obtaining the salvation of their souls after death; in which there is a more inward motive still, though the man is ignorant of it, that of regard to the Lord's kingdom, yea, to the Lord Himself" (A. C. 1937). "When man becomes regenerate, then he first enters into a state of liberty, being previously in slavery; for he is a slave whilst under the dominion of lusts and falsities, and at liberty when governed by the affections of the good and the true” (A. C. 892). SEDAN.

A SUPPOSED MISTAKE OF SWEDENBORG.1

In the continuation concerning the Last Judgment, No. 60, Swedenborg speaks of Louis XIV., and the number concludes thus:

"I saw him as if descending by steps; and, after he descended, I heard him saying that he seemed to himself as if he were at Versailles, and then there was silence for about half an hour, which having passed, he said that he had spoken with his (great) grandson the King of France (Louis XV.), concerning the Bull Unigenitus, that he should

1 This article, by Professor Parsons, is from the first number of the new series of the American New Jerusalem Magazine, the appearance of which we hail with satisfaction, and to which we wish all possible success.

desist from his former design and not accept it, because it would be detrimental to the French nation. He said that he had insinuated this into his thought profoundly. This occurred in the year 1759, on the 13th December, about the eighth hour of the evening."

The "

There has always been a difficulty about this statement of Swedenborg, because this Bull was issued by the Pope at the urgent instance of Louis XIV., and by him enforced as law in France, forty-six years before he gave this advice to his successor. Mr. White, in his Life of Swedenborg, Vol. II., p. 449, cites the passage, and says in a note to it, "Swedenborg seems to be in a maze here; the Bull Unigenitus against the Jansenists was issued by Clement XI. in 1713; Louis did not die till 1715. The Bull was therefore promulgated in his own reign.” An investigation of the facts of history shows that they are in exact accordance with Swedenborg's statement. maze" is not his.1 Jansenius, a Dutch theologian and a Catholic, attempted a reform in the Church to which he belonged. His doctrines concerning grace, election, predestination, and the like, were founded upon the writings of St. Augustine, and were similar to those of Luther and Calvin, and opposed to the doctrine of meritorious works, as held by the Catholics generally, and especially by the Jesuits. Jansenius died in 1638; but his views were adopted widely, and they who held them were called Jansenists. They, without leaving the Catholic Church, resisted the claims to an absolute supremacy of the Papacy and the priests. Of course they were violently opposed, especially by the Jesuits. In 1660, Louis XIV., who was much under the influence of the Jesuits, declared at a national assembly of the clergy that he regarded it as his religious duty to exterminate Jansenism. But in despite of his efforts Jansenism grew.

The conflict between these parties was intensified when one Quesnel published a work on the New Testament which was decidedly Jansenist, and became very popular. The Jesuits attacked it, and Louis XIV. induced Clement XI. to issue the Bull Unigenitus, which was so called, like other Bulls or Papal decrees, from its first word. This Bull condemned Quesnel's book, and declared that it contained one hundred and one false and heretical propositions. It was issued in 1713, and as a large portion of the French clergy and people, Car

1 In making this investigation I have consulted many authorities. The most important of them are Sismondi's History of France, Lacretelle's History of France in the 18th Century, and De Tocqueville's Reign of Louis XV. The fullest detail of the circumstances will be found in the work first named.