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376, Swedenborg says "It is common in all divine worship that man should first will, desire, and pray, and that the Lord should then answer, inform, and do; otherwise man does not receive anything divine. We frequently read in the Word that the Lord answers such as call and cry unto Him; also, that He gives on being asked. But yet the Lord gives them to ask, and what to ask; therefore the Lord knows it beforehand; but still the Lord wills that man should ask first, to the end that he may do it as from himself, and thus that it may be appropriated to him."

The subject is inexhaustible, but the time is not. I must hasten to conclude. I have pointed out collateral uses of prayer, as a most valuable means of "initiating into knowledges;" of instructing others impressively, and of impressing eternal truths upon ourselves. I have adverted to its direct instrumental use, as a means whereby effects are gained from the Lord that cannot be gained otherwise. I have not had time to speak of the reinforcement which enlightened prayer gives to a conscientious discharge of all civil, moral, and religious duties; though surely nothing can tend more to keep alive that principle of rectitude which is part of charity, than the practice of frequently placing oneself purposely and consciously in the presence of, and in intercourse with, the Great All-seeing. Nor have I had time to allude to the comfort of a habit of free prayer, when once thoroughly formed, as only it can be formed, by persevering practice. "What is more easy," asks Swedenborg, in the last book the good old man published, (T. C. R. 563.) "than for a man of pious habits to pray to God; and yet what is more difficult where the person has been long a slave to habits of impiety?" But when it has become easy, and heart and thought go up as it were spontaneously at every little pause in daily life, to renew what Mr. Mason calls "frequent, sweet, and intimate communion" with the Lord Jesus Christ, then how great the happiness it yields! Loneliness, which is an irksome, and sometimes a frightful, thing to many, is not so to the pious, because it gives a fresh opportunity for talking with the Lord. And even in the most alarming crises of life, the man who knows, by frequent experience, the delight of prayer, feels that he has a Friend to talk to secretly at all times, and in whose society to be comforted;

"And so he quite forgets his fear,

And leans upon his God."

Does prayer, which brings this comfort and support, play only an insignificant part in a life of use? If prayer can excite internal things, and keep external things in a state of holiness, so that they can be

entered by the Divine influx; if it can initiate man into knowledges and prepare him to receive things celestial; if it can "raise man, for the time, above the evils of his nature, and the door is then opened for the Lord to enter;" if by prayer, "new states of innocence, charity, and faith are implanted, and preparation is made for the establishment, within us, of the kingdom of heaven," surely prayer must be highly, signally, conducive to a life of charity.

"Prayer," says Swedenborg, "is discourse with God, and at the same time a certain internal intuition of those things which are the objects of prayer, to which corresponds a certain similar principle of influx into the perception and thought of the mind of him who prays, so that there is a kind of opening of man's internals towards God.” (A. C. 2535.) In prayer, at its height, there is, he tells us, "a something resembling a revelation which is manifested in the affection of the person praying, as to hope, consolation, or some internal joy." How greatly, then, how grievously, must we, if we neglect to be men and women abounding in prayer, lose inward revelation from the Lord; deprive ourselves of a hope which would animate us to a hundred enterprises of Christian use; miss a consolation which would support us amidst many a discouragement that might otherwise damp our zeal! And how must we many a time fail to experience a joy that would not only prove to us that the moments of real earnest prayer are "rich in blessing," but would fill us with a strong sense of the reality of the Lord's being, and with deepest gratitude and liveliest regard for Him who is thus practically and experimentally known to us as, and proved to be, no mere cold, abstract essence called Goodness and Truth, but indeed and of a verity our living and loving Saviour and Lord! In view of considerations like these, I cannot but conclude that prayer is of very serious importance. I cannot doubt for a moment that prayer which, as has been shown, brings down angels from their heavens-prayer for which those ministering spirits wait, to liberate them according to the laws of divine order, and enable them to be sent forth to minister gladly to them who shall be heirs of salvation-must form a part, an essential part, of a life of genuine Christian use; and that to pray is really "to do good." On which account I pray most ardently, that upon me, upon you, upon all the societies of His New Church, the Lord Jesus Christ would, in addition to all His other precious gifts, and to enhance and intensify the value of them all, "the praying spirit breathe."

H. S. S.

69

THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS.-No. VIII.

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

THE subject of the Origin of Evil is one which has engaged the attention of the deepest minds in all ages. And no wonder. How a God of goodness could permit the existence and wide prevalence of evil and unhappiness in the world, has been justly regarded as the greatest of mysteries, and as the most interesting of all questions in theological philosophy. This question we shall endeavour, under the light of the New Church, to answer. But in order to see the truth clearly, it is necessary first to clear away the rubbish of error which has gathered about this subject.

By some philosophers, in ancient times, it was thought the easiest solution of the problem, to suppose that evil had always existed; thus, that there were two co-eternal powers in the universe, Evil and Good. Some who held this view, as for instance the ancient Gnostics-in particular the Manichæans, against whom Augustine fought so stoutlymaintained that this eternal evil principle was matter itself, and that, since man is a compound of matter and spirit, hence there is a perpetual warfare between the two parts of his nature. This view, however, was found, on reflection, to involve even more difficulties than those it professed to remove, and was especially obnoxious to the charge of leading man to despair, by taking away all hope of improvement. If evil had eternally existed, and was inherent in the very nature of things, then there was no prospect of removing it, and man was doomed to an eternal struggle with a hostile power,-a gloomy prospect indeed.

But the teaching of Divine Revelation has swept away these murky phantasies, by assuring us that evil is not eternal-that there is but one eternal and original Being, and He essential goodness. To assert this great truth in strong terms, is the object of such emphatic passages as that in Isaiah xlv. 7:-"I am Jehovah, and there is none else: I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." Here we have it distinctly declared, that evil is not an eternal and self-existent principle. How a God, Himself good, could "create," or permit to come into existence, such an opposite quality as evil, would, it is true, still remain to be considered; but, at least, the reader of this passage had learned one fundamental principle sufficient to overturn all such erroneous theories as that just described. A similar truth is taught in the first chapter of Genesis, where it is declared, that when the work of creation was

finished, all was "good" and "very good," thus implying that no evil was then in existence. We who live in an age when this doctrine has been long settled, and in universal acceptance, can have no idea of the light and comfort which these declarations of Scripture have brought to thousands and millions of minds of the ancient world, at a time when the notion of the eternal existence of evil was a belief widely entertained.

But while the Scriptures thus inculcated the great and important truth, that there was but one Source of all things, nevertheless their manner of accounting for the way in which sin first came into the world, in the narrative of the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge, and the Temptation by the Serpent, was so strange, that, taken literally, it left the mind in almost as much darkness as it found it. The question still recurred-Was not the temptation itself proof of evil already existing? was not the tempter, whoever he was, already evil, since he suggested something in opposition to the Divine commands? And how could it be conceived that a serpent, an irrational brute animal, could thus speak in human language, and suggest a wrong thought to the minds of Adam and Eve? Many of the early Christians, as Origen and others, justly looked upon this account as an allegory, and not to be taken literally. But as they had no certain key to the allegory, the mind was still left in doubt and darkness. Others, and indeed the generality of the Christian world, received the narrative as literally true, but sought to explain it by the presumption that the serpent did not speak of itself, but that it was Satan or the Devil that spoke in or through it. This, of course, implied an evil being, namely, "the Devil," already in existence; and in this view, men were as far from an elucidation of the "origin of evil" as ever.

Now this, be it observed, was a mere assumption—that it was the Devil in the serpent that spoke and tempted Eve. Scripture says no such thing. But this seeming to be the only intelligible way of accounting for a dumb animal's speaking, and especially of its speaking something evil, it seemed to be taken for granted by theologians, and became fixed in the common mind as a settled truth. And when a great poet, Milton, taking up the common idea, enlarged upon it, embellished it, and, by the power of imagination, particularized the scene of the temptation, having previously described in a picturesque way the manner in which the Devil entered into the serpent, men have become so impressed and filled with the idea, that they take it for Bible truth, forgetting that it is only a poet's fancy. It is true that

in the Apocalypse (xii. 9.) the Bible speaks of "that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan." But calling the serpent "the Devil and Satan," is a very different thing from saying that there was a previously existing Devil, that entered into the serpent. Besides, the subject here treated-of is not the temptation in the garden of Eden, but a prophetic description of the combat between Michael and the dragon in the spiritual world, which dragon is what is here called "the Devil and Satan." The true reason why the serpent is called the "Devil and Satan" is, because the serpent (as we shall presently show) is the emblem of the sensual principle of man's mind, and when that principle becomes disordered, it is in a peculiar degree the residence of man's evil propensities and false persuasions; and the evil thus dwelling in the sensual mind is what is meant by the "Devil," and the false thence derived is what is meant by "Satan." As Swedenborg clearly shows, there is no such being as a personal Devil or Satan; they are merely names for the principles of evil and falsity, dwelling in the minds of wicked men after death.

But, it being taken for granted that there was a devil in the serpent, the question then recurred, how the supposed devil came into existence? And the conclusion was, that he was a fallen angel. A strange idea this, if we reflect upon it. If it was hard to conceive how man, created good, should fall into evil, how much more difficult to understand how an angel could fall. An angel, according to the Scriptural idea, means a being fixed and established in good unchangeably, a part of that heaven which is eternal—a willing and loving messenger and servant of the Divine Being. In fact, the very phrase "fallen angel," involves a contradiction. A being who had within him any principle or inclination which could cause him to fall, would not be an angel; he would still be but a frail human being. The distinction between an angel and a man is, that the latter is still in the probationary period of existence; he has not yet formed a settled character; he has still his choice to make between the right and the wrong, that is, between that which is according to order, and that which is contrary to order. In the exercise of his free will, necessary to him as a human being, he has yet to decide whether he will follow the laws laid down by the All-wise One for his guidance, or whether he will act in opposi tion to those laws, and thus pervert the proper order of his nature. If he chooses the former course, then, little by little, under Divine guidance and with Divine aid, his character is moulded into a form of good, into the form of heaven, into the image of the Divine Himself.

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