tation of Scripture: but also much other valuable information contained in the writings of our ancient authors: Thús, the

PEGASUS- in heathen Mythology was a winged Horse, so called from the circumstance of its being produced near fountains, as the name in the original imports. The fable of the birth of this celebrated horse, states that it was generated from the blood of Medusa, the beautiful daughter of Phorcus, who is represented as having the finest head of hair in the world, the transformation of which into snakes is related by Ovid in his Metamorphosis. This Pegasus is also called the Poetical Horse, for it is said to have opened a fountain of water by striking a rock with its hoof, and afterwards, to have fled up to heaven, where it became a constellation. The design of this fable is to point out the rise and growth of the human understanding; for a fountain of water denotes Truth in a living state, or state of activity, which truth is at first apprehended as mere science; a Horse denotes the understanding; its hoof the basis on which Science is built, viz. experimental knowledge; and when the understanding is elevated above sensual and terrestrial things, and is capable of contemplating subjects of a higher nature, viz. such as are intellectual and spiritual, it is then said to have acquired wings, and to fly up to heaven, the abode of pure intelligence. Again :

The ancient Greek poets, particularly Homer, mentions a giantic race of people called Cyclops, having but one eye, and that a circular one in the forehead.

The Cyclops, represented by the Greek poets as monsters of gigantic stature, with only one eye in the middle of the forehead, were a colony of the Egyptians and Babylonians. They were a very ingenious race of people, and introduced the refinements of the learned Egyptians and Babylonians, and by that means attained great fame among the Grecians. The Greek poets, therefore, (according to correspondence) magnified their talent of wisdom and ingenuity, into magnitude of stature, and allowed them but one eye in the middle of their forehead to denote their worship of a serpent, instead of a plurality of Gods.

With these few remarks, imperfect as they are, the great value of the Science of Correspondences will be seen; for in fact it is the Science which preeminently unfolds the principles of all human knowledge. It will accompany, guide, and assist us, whatever be our pursuit. If the mind of man be lifted up to divine contemplations, it will present to him according to the degree in which he can receive the heavenly gifts, the ends, the means, and the effects of the Divine operation. If he would turn his sight inward, to search out and discover the arcana of his own nature, the chart of

the human mind is, by this science, exhibited before him: in the language of correspondency, its lofty mountains, its fertile valleys, its rivers and its seas are all displayed; and what is of equal importance those dangerous rocks and quicksands, on which from early times, many a metaphysical adventurer has been wrecked and lost. If he delight to dive into the depths of physics, it will be a clue as well as a safety lamp, to conduct him through the dark mazes of nature's mine; showing him the mode by which her objective forms are generated, and the laws of their changes. It is indeed the only universal Science, and being universal, its effects will prove as exhaustless as they are vast; for it is the embrio, the germ from which all future truths must spring, and by which future ages will distinguish the barren fluctuations of mere opinion from the substantial beauty and fruitfulness of reason and intelligence.

From what has been offered in behalf of this subject, the great value and importance of the science of correspondences must be seen in its true light, and although the science and its uses have been for ages lost to the world, yet it is consolitory to know that it is now restored to the church for the benefit of mankind, in the theological writings of that great and good man, the Hon. Emanuel Swedenborg, the undoubted messenger of the Lord's Second Advent, and the Herald who has proclaimed the Descent of the New Jerusalem. But, perhaps, some may object and say, "If the Science of Correspondences be of such great moment, and if it affords a true and infallible interpretation of Scripture, why was it not revealed before? why was this great work left undone till the time of Swedenborg." If the science had been revealed two thousand years ago, the question "Why was it not revealed before?” might have been put then, as well as now. There must be a time for all things, and the time when any revelation takes place, is the proper time for such discovery. Swedenborg, however, in his Treatise on the Sacred Scripture, has given a reason why the science of correspondences was not revealed sooner, which may form a good answer to the above question: he says, "The reason why the science of correspondences, whereby the spiritual sense of the Word is opened, was not discovered before, was because christians in the primitive church were persons of great simplicity, so that it could not be discovered to them, for had it been discovered, it would have been useless and unintelligible. After their times, darkness overspread the whole christian world, by reason of Papal power and dominion, and they who are subject thereto, and have confirmed themselves in its false doctrines, have neither capacity nor inclination to apprehend any thing of a spi

ritual nature, consequently what is meant by the correspondence of things natural with things spiritual in the Word, for hereby they would be convinced that by Peter is not meant Peter, but the Lord as Peter, [or as a rock signified by Peter;] and they would be convinced also, that the Word even to its inmost contents is divine, and that Papal decrees are respectively of no account. But after the reformation, inasmuch as men began to distinguish between faith and charity, and to worship God under three persons, consequently to worship three Gods, whom they conceived to be one, therefore at that time heavenly truths were concealed from them, for had they been discovered, they would have been falsified, and would have been abused to the confirmation of faith alone, without paying any regard to charity and love; thus also men would have closed heaven against themselves." n. 24.

ALEPH.

To J. W. S.

To the Editors of the New Jerusalem Magazine. GENTLEMEN,

I am very far indeed from agreeing with your Correspondent, J. W. S. in his commendations of the Letter which was inserted in the Chester Chronicle of the 9th of December, and regret much that you should have given a currency in the pages of your Magazine for February, either to that or to the remarks with which it is accompanied. Your Correspondent will, I am sure, pardon me when I say, and I say it with the highest respect for the singleness of his intentions, that such papers are calculated to do more harm to the cause which he endeavours to advocate, than the most unsparing attacks of its revilers. These are easily refuted, but who can ward off the consequences which must result from the mistakes of its friends? Were those consequences of little moment, or were these the only instances of misrepresentation, I would have abstained from noticing them; but they are of the greatest moment, and unfortunately belong to a numerous family, bearing a common resemblance, and that as little like their supposed parent as need be. It is painful to offer any thing but praise where the intention is manifestly good; and if I had nothing to complain of but the loose disjointed way in which the positions are tacked together, so unlike the master-stile of him, who is irresistible, hardly less on account of the truths which he proclaims, than for the method which pervades, and for the logical arrangement which appears in every part of his writings, VOL. I.-No. 3.

G

if I had nothing else to complain of, much as I might regret the hasty and untutored zeal which they display, I should not have troubled you with these remarks. But I have other, and more serious objections to urge. It is to the observations of J. W. S. that I wish particularly to direct your attention, because I find that they present a very defective view of the doctrine they profess to explain and recommend-a view which naturally leads to conclusions as contrary to the truth, as the errors of either Arius, or Socinus. Your correspondent is doubtless acquainted with the ancient heresies of Noêtius, and Sabellius, and would perhaps feel hurt at the imputation of advocating their tenets. And yet such is the fact. His positions, not telling the whole truth, are precisely those to which a Noëtian or a Sabellian would heartily subscribe; and of themselves might as well lead to an heretical view of the subject as to the heavenly truth of the New Jerusalem. Indeed his very expressions favour Sabellianism, and are not those of the messenger of the New Dispensation. Where, give me leave to ask, are we enjoined "to direct our faith, our prayers, or our worship" to an INCARNATE GOD? I will venture to reply, No WHERE. The very phrase, INCARNATE GOD, is abhorrent from the whole scope and tenor of those writings, and can only lead, or rather mislead the mind to a conclusion that there is but little, if any, difference between the truths we profess, and the gross conceptions of Sabellius, for what is the meaning of those words, INCARNATE GOD? When rendered into ordinary language, nothing more than this, God in the FLESH, or God assuming an infirm fleshly tabernacle for the Redemption and Salvation of mankind. Is God STILL in the flesh then, that we are to direct our prayers to an INCARNATE GOD? Is He, as to the Humanity so assumed, still in a state of Humiliation and Exinanition? Still subject to the assaults of the Hells? And is not the Divine victory yet complete, that we thus degrade him to the condition of a mere man, giving Him flesh and blood, those gross elements, which we know cannot enter into the kingdom of Heaven, far less be consubstantial with the Divine Being Himself? I must confess that I am shocked when I meet with phrases such as these, in works which on other grounds are entitled to admiration. Liturgies, tracts, defences, how many are infected with the leaven; how many by such phrases, misdirect the minds of the uninstructed to the Infirm Humanity, or God Incarnate, instead of conducting them as they should do, most carefully and studiously, to the DIVINE-HUMAN of the LORD, "OUR FATHER in the Heavens!"

Possibly all this may appear very strange to your Correspondent; and he may be disposed to interrupt me with the assertion that I

' had mistaken his meaning; that he too believes the finite human form, which appeared before the eyes of men, to have been utterly put off, and that he directs his prayers to the Divine-human. I am happy that it is so, but then I would beg leave to ask why he made use of that more than equivocal expression, Incarnate God? And why, in the attempt, most inclusive as it appears to me, to prove that our Lord Jesus Christ was the Infinite and Eternal Jehovah, did he not once mention the doctrine of the Lord's Glorification? Why leave the mind of the reader, who may possess no better information on the Doctrines of the New Church than what this, and productions such as this afford him, why leave him with the false impression that by Jesus Christ that same Humanity is meant, that self-same being who was despised and rejected of men, and who suffered on the cross? Why make use of that gross expression, the Divine Body, repugnant as it is to the repeated declaration of our great author, that not only the rational mind of the Infirm humanity, but that the sensual mind and his whole body became Jehovah; and that not by any transmutation, but by putting off all the finite faculties and powers which were derived by birth from the finite mother. But, no! not one word is said of the Divine Glorification; not a single intimation that it is pre-eminently the doctrine of the New Church, distinguishing it from that spurious and heretical tenet which asserts that there is no distinction between the supposed three persons of the Godhead, but at the same time maintains that all the Godhead dwells bodily in the humanity of Jesus Christ, derived by generation from the Virgin Mary.

To me, Gentlemen, this slurring over, this total omission of the Doctrine of the Lord's Glorification, in works professing to give an account of our chief tenet, and to set it in contrast to the gross errors with which the Christian world is overwhelmed, is a melancholy sign of the times we live in. The compass of the Lord's Church which should point invariably to the Divine object of its worship has, with many, lost a portion of its magnetic virtue, and when they launch their barks to convey a knowledge of the truth, and conviction to those who dwell in distant climes, the whole course of their reasoning is devious, and as unstable as the seas over which they are driven.

Who that reads in the Holy Scriptures of Jesus praying to the Father, of his enduring temptations, of his hungering, declaring that the Father was greater than He, of his suffering death upon the cross, can believe that Jesus and Jehovah are one and the same Divine Being, unless it be explained that the infirm finite form was not Jehovah, and that the Humanity which endured