each other; constant prayer that the Lord will make them and preserve them one in body and one in soul. When such perfect lovers pass away into a higher state, they will come together by a cogent law; and the external garments being cast aside, they enter gladly into that state of their spiritual progress in which husband and wife can part no more. "That matches are made in heaven is not a pleasantry with the Swedish secr. 'The Lord,' he says, 'provides similitudes for all; if not on earth, where things so often arrange themselves by chance, why then in heaven, where everything comes to pass according to eternal laws,-not in obedience to the caprice of men and women. Nature exists in pairs; and God has given all creatures into life as either male or female, ONE FOR EACH,-no more, no less. In paradise there was one woman, one man. The perfect being, into whose nostrils had been breathed the breath of lives, was parted into two halves,-this half, male; that half, female; one original, one derived; each necessary to the other, part of the other; so that the two beings which had been separated might be considered as having a common life. As in the lower Eden, so in the higher Eden. In heaven there will be no bachelors, no old maids, no monks, no nuns, no pluralists, no celibates, no free lovers. Each Adam lives in his Eve, and is content in her "He for God only, she for God in him." Thus all the spirits of the just, whatever may have been their lot on earth, will meet and wed their counterparts in heaven. God has provided that for every male soul a female soul shall be born; and heaven itself knows no sweeter delight than springs from witnessing these re-unions of the blest.'" (2 vol. p. 196.) Although, however, Mr. Dixon is probably right in saying that the origin of the doctrine (in modern times) that union of soul forms the only proper essence of the marriage state is derived from the writings of Swedenborg; yet, probably, his limited knowledge of those writings prevented him from being aware that the doctrine is specially guarded by Swedenborg from being made a pretence by which loose-minded persons might be led to be unfaithful to their marriage vows, and hanker after other women under the pretext of such objects of lustful desire being their spiritual partners. The numerous examples of spiritual wife-crime given by Mr. Dixon are simply instances of persons who, according to Swedenborg's teachings, must be stigmatised as ADULTERERS covering their lusts with religious pretexts, a species of sin more deadly than common crime, a horrid form of profanation. Marriage, according to him, is the most sacred of all covenants, after. our covenant with God. The young ought to be trained to regard marriage as only to be sought by the youthful aspirants from a heartful regard for what is pure and good in each other. They should pray sincerely to be led aright in their choice, and to take every precaution neither to deceive nor be deceived in their effort to find the partner of their inmost affections and sentiments, and to be joined in a union not only for earth but for heaven. Where this is sincerely done, Divine Providence aids, and there is little room for failure. But should they not be fully blest, their covenant is still one for life, and must be faithfully kept. Where experience leads married partners to suspect that they may not be conjugially united, as Christians they will not cherish such a thought, but discourage it, for they do not know the real state of their interiors as to particulars: this is known only to the Lord. But, while they do not know their particular inward or their exact future state, they do know their duty, as persons who have vowed to be faithful and true to each other UNTIL THEY ARE SEVERED BY DEATH, is sincerely and willingly to carry out the covenant. They know their duties as Christians are to obey the Lord's Commandments, to exercise patience, forbearance, unselfishness, a readiness to oblige, and to minister to the good of others; towards all men in their several relations of life, and therefore most emphatically towards their bosom partner, the companion of their most private hours, the most potent helper of the family's weal or woe. Great ends of spiritual training are doubtless accomplished under the providential care of the Lord by permitting life-unions on earth which are not conjugial unions; and if the partners do their duties to each other, they will promote their eternal good, and the Lord will provide for their full bliss in the future. But if they are untrue to their marriage pledges or their ordinary duties, under the blinding influence of self-love making spiritual pleas as pretexts, they may depend upon it they are but deluded victims of their own passions, and will find themselves in evil states, out of which they will not come until they have paid the uttermost farthing. Marriage is the centre of all human relationships, and is the most wide-spreading of all. It affects the orderly continuation of mankind, and their education. It affects the state, property, home, and the purity and peace of society; and for all these reasons it is a covenant for life, and no Christian can tamper with its bonds. "These bonds (of wedlock)" says Swedenborg, "must continue in the world till the decease of one of the parties." "The reason why wedlock contracted must continue till the decease of one of the parties, is grounded in the divine law, and consequently also in rational law, and thence in civil law. In the divine law, because it is not lawful to put away a wife and marry another, except on account of whoredom, as above; in rational law, because it is founded upon spiritual, for Divine law and rational are one law. From the latter and the former law together, or by the latter as grounded in the former, may be seen in abundance the enormities and destructions of societies, resulting from the dissolution of marriage, or the putting away of wives at the good pleasure of their husbands, before death." (C. L. n. 276.) . It is much to be regretted that Mr. Dixon has not stated distinctly this portion of Swedenborg's views, for without that some readers may be led to suppose that those libidinous persons who are seeking to gratify their evil desires, under the pretence of finding spiritual partners, are not condemned by him; while the truth is, he has entered largely into the subject, and every departure from chaste and upright conduct is unsparingly condemned. "A Christian man," he says, "is acquainted with the Lord, hath the Word, and hath also the church from the Lord by the Word; it is evident that he hath the faculty of being capable of being regenerated, and thereby of becoming spiritual, and also of attaining unto love truly conjugial, for these things cohere together. Inasmuch as such among Christians who marry a plurality of wives, commit not only natural adultery, but also at the same time spiritual adultery, it follows that the condemnation of Christian polygamists is more grievous than the condemnation of those who only commit natural adultery." (C. L. 339.) What Swedenborg says respecting those married partners who are so utterly incompatible that, from real causes of extremely bad conduct on one or on both sides, they cannot tolerate each other and live together, and have not religion enough to continue in a chaste and single life, they are to be regarded on social and but remotely on religious grounds. Where such a person is wanting in self-denial, and takes a female as a secondary wife, and lives quietly with her, deviating no further from the order of society, this-which is the kind of moderated concubinage which Swedenborg would tolerate lest worse evils should happen-is that kind of permission which all civilised nations are compelled to make either with or without law, and which the wise man regards not as Christian conduct, but as defensible on moral, social, and civil grounds, as avoiding the most ruinous forms of lust and the destruction of social order. But, if Mr. Dixon is only scantily competent to describe accurately the views of Swedenborg, to which he so frequently refers, he is even less acquainted with New Church history, and draws largely upon his fancy in dealing with the conversion of Professor Bush and the story of Andrew Jackson Davis. The Professor was no doubt a notable convert. scholar, an able writer, a devoted lover of truth. He was a profound His reception of the doctrines of the New Church produced a profound and wide impression, and led to inquiry with many others; yet it is simply exaggeration to say that "when he became a convert to the Swedish gospel, the whole world of New York ran after him." (Vol. II., p. 244.) Still worse is the description of the New Church societies and their ministers-by one who evidently knows next to nothing about either-as a "few obscure zealots, with unlettered priests." To say that "Bush, as a man of learning, was disliked by the illiterate priests, and he repaid their hate with open scorn and contempt," is simply to indulge in rash and reckless assertion. There were no such feelings as here described on either side. The leading Boston men to whom Mr. Dixon especially refers, were chiefly college-trained and of eminent abilities. The supercilious remarks of Mr. Dixon, affecting such men as Dr. Worcester and his brothers, the Reids (Sampson and Caleb), Professor Parsons (afterwards Chief Justice), and many, very many others, can only be excused on the plea of the innocence of ignorance. Professor Bush was a man of bold and decided character. He had his own idiosyncrasy. In his zeal for the astonishing truth he felt he had embraced, he was less cautious than those who had longer enjoyed New Church light. Hence he brought some views with him which his more mature brethren could not endorse; and he took up strongly cases with which their cooler judgments were not satisfied, as that of Davis the Poughkeepsie seer. He lived to discover that he had been mistaken and his brethren were right; but never was there from either party anything approaching to hate or contempt. This portion of Mr. Dixon's work is the least satisfactory; and we cannot but hope that he will take the means of mastering the facts of the case, and remove from his volumes such unworthy blemishes as those in which he speaks of men, whose very system is one of universal good-will, as being afflicted with "the bigotries of Salem Chapel," and sneers at those who were only too well-informed to be carried away by the crude though magniloquent and pretentious rhapsodies of Andrew Jackson Davis. Mr. Dixon, indeed, himself fully justifies the cooler judgment of the more mature New Churchmen at length, when he writes: "Professor Bush introduced to the American public a new and native seer, in Andrew Jackson Davis, then a young fellow of twenty. Bush spoke of Davis in the highest terms; pledging his word that the young prophet was an honest man, in possession of the noblest spiritual gifts. In a short time Davis quitted his patron, and set up for himself as a rival prophet, producing the great 'Harmonia,' and other bulky works, the substance of which was taken from Swedenborg. When Bush saw reason to think his young friend no better than a rogue, he took up his parable against him; but the shoemaker of Poughkeepsie beat the professor of Hebrew and oriental literature in New York, and the high movement in favour of a more spiritual science which began among the poets of Brook Farm, and grew among the professors of Boston and New York, fell away into the widely-popular, but in no way intellectual societies which find their gospel in the great 'Harmonia,' their leaders in Home and Chace." (2 vol. p. 248.) There is a curious chapter in the second volume respecting the sister who was the companion of the apostle Paul, alluded to in 1 Cor. ix. 5; and another on the ancient agapæ, or lovefeasts. There is also a chapter well worthy of consideration on the Spanish worship of the Virgin, being a continuation of the ancient worship of Ashtaroth in that peninsula; and another on the introduction from Spain, into the church, of the practice of celibacy among the clergy, enforced at last by Hildebrand in the eleventh century. Altogether, the work is a very interesting and suggestive one, although it is only calculated to excite inquiry, not to satisfy it. We trust it will be overruled to induce many to ask who is the Swedenborg to whom the author so often alludes, and what are the tenets which are here introduced from so many sides. MISCELLANEOUS. NOTES ON SOCIAL & RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. "ECCE HOMO."- This book, which has engaged so much attention in the religious world, is the subject of an essay by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, in the January and February numbers of "Good Words." It is a cheering sign of progress, when laymen of high culture and extended influence take up the subject of religious truth, and show an intelligent and sympathetic acquaintance with its highest and most important teachings. The central truth of the Christian revelation of the entire Word, indeed-is God-Man,-a Divine Human Saviour, "Emanuel, God with us." This great truth seems, in the opening pages of the work which Mr. Gladstone has reviewed, to be rudely assailed. The author proposes to himself an examination of the life of Christ, as set forth in the Gospels, seeking from their light to discover the true character of the Messiah. The commencement of the work could not fail to be very distasteful to those who were accustomed to think only of the Lord as |