Stand Lane, Radcliffe. On this occasion the Rev. James Boys, their minister, preached two discourses to good congregations; at the second service, indeed, in the afternoon, the church was quite crowded, and many were unable to obtain admittance. The collections, with donations sent afterwards, &c., amounted to near £37. The audiences comprised people of all denominations, who came forward liberally to assist the New Church brethren in this undertaking, and to whom they feel truly thankful. It may be added, that a very friendly feeling always prevails towards our brethren at Stand Lane, by the other religious parties in that neighbourhood. The new school is erected on the site of the old one, which had become far too small for their number of scholars, now 230; and it is a spacious and elegant building, the dimensions being 22 yards by 12, and 5 yards high. The style of architecture is in character with that of their handsome church. After the church services a tea meeting was held in the schcol, at which upwards of 300 were present; the speaking afterwards was on the subject of general education. The meeting broke up at eight o'clock, highly gratified with the day's proceedings, and grateful to the Lord, who, in the erection of this school, has crowned their efforts with success. ST. HELIER, JERSEY. The Rev. D. G. Goyder arrived here on Tuesday, Sept. 10th, and met with a welcome reception from the Jersey friends. In order that his visit might be useful, Mr. G. consented to deliver five lectures on the following subjects:-Thursday the 12th, Swedenborg, his character and the tendency of his writings; Friday the 13th, Jonah and his gourd; Sunday morning, On the Lost Sheep; evening, The Scriptures the Eternal Truth; Monday the 16th, How are the Anathemas of Scripture to be reconciled with the perfect love of the Lord? The subjects were well delivered, and appeared to give general satisfaction; and the attendance was good. On the Sabbath morning Mr. G. administered the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to eighteen communicants, and in the evening baptised one adult. On Tuesday evening, the anniversary of the society was held at the house of one of the members, when about one hundred persons sat down to tea. The evening was very agreeably and profitably spent; the portion of the Holy Word which had been previously chosen for the occasion was the 12th chapter of the Revelation. Mr. G. treated the subject practically, and shewed how the evil and the false in man, signified by the dragon, will oppose the reception of the good and the true, signified by the sun and the moon which were seen with the woman; others also addressed the meeting; several anthems were sung at intervals, and the friends separated at half-past nine o'clock. Mr. G. left Jersey for Southampton on the following morning; he will be long and affectionately remembered by all the friends of the Jersey Society. Marriage. Married, on the 15th October, 1850, at the New Jerusalem Church, Birmingham, by the Rev. E. Madeley, John Goadsby, Esq., of Manchester, to Miss T. B. Davis, of Edgbaston, elder and only surviving daughter of the late Mr. Francis Davis, of Egremont, Cumberland. Obituary. On the 15th of October last, Mr. Thos. S. Lowrey, of Exeter, was removed from this world to that where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. He was the oldest member of the New Church in Exeter, having been a receiver nearly twenty years. His house has been, for many years, a place of meeting for the friends of the New Church in this city, and he has generally entertained the ministers who have visited the society since his connexion with it. Mr. L. was warmly attached to the late Rev. T. Goy der, who esteemed him as one of his Cave and Sever, Printers, 18, St. Ann's-street, Manchester. AMONG the various terms and phrases of theological nomenclature, few have been more frequently the subject of controversy than the term works. It has been strenuously maintained, on the one hand, that there are no works which have any saving effect, and that therefore the only thing essential to salvation is either election or faith; on the other hand, some have insisted that works-moral works-are the primary, if not the only essential means to the attainment of heaven. Others, again, taking a middle course between these extremes, have held that moral works have a saving influence in conjunction with faith; among the latter, however, there are some who deny the saving influence of works, but allow that those who are saved by faith, will, if they have also abounded in works, gain a higher place in heaven than they could have obtained without such works; consequently, that salvation depends on faith alone, but that the relative degree of elevation and happiness in heaven depends on works. Doubtless one cause of the strange and conflicting opinions here briefly noticed, is, that their respective advocates have not sufficiently attended to the real nature of man, and the various senses in which the term life applies to him as a compound being, consisting of soul and body-of a mental and a physical organization; neither do they appear to have regarded the intimate connexion that subsists between life and works, and the important fact that the quality of the latter invariably depends on that of the former. N. S. NO. 132.-VOL. XI. 2 L With respect to life, it is first to be observed, that man does not live from himself; he lives by the momentary communication or influx of life from God, who is Life Itself, because He alone is Infinite Love and Infinite Wisdom. "Divine love forms life, as fire forms light," therefore life is the activity of love. This activity is communicated by influx to the inmost recipient forms of the soul or spirit; hence is derived to man, first, immortal or endless life, secondly, mental life, and thirdly, bodily life. So soon as he is born and breathes in the world, he is as fully the subject of endless life as at any other period, although his mental life and his bodily life are, as yet, rather in potency than in actuality; but these are gradually developed until they become fully active, at which time, life, in the above three senses, is the common possession of every man without exception. Mental life is the real human, reactive principle which constitutes man in a primary sense, including all the phenomena of the will and the understanding,-all the activity of love, affection, and thought; for mind consists of these faculties, and their activities are its twofold life. Bodily life is, in a lower degree, a reactive principle which constitutes man in a secondary sense, and includes all his words and actions; the latter being chiefly derived from the mental life of the will, and the former from that of the understanding.* If man had never fallen-if sin had never entered into the world-his human development would have proceeded according to the laws of order; it would have been the successive growth, the bud, the flower, and the fruit of heavenly intelligence and love. But man, by a wilful recession from the order of his creation, became the originator of evil in mind and in act, the certain consequences of which were, a distortion and perversion of his mental forms, an inversion of order, a turning of life into death,- "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die"-and thus the acquisition of a defiled perverse nature, and the hereditary traduction of the evil tendencies of that nature to the future offspring of the race. Another certain and awful consequence was, the commencement or formation of hell as the final abode of those who, subsequent to the fall, quitted the natural world in a wicked and unrepentant state, and who therefore could not live in heaven, even were they permitted to enter. The commencement of evil and hell, was the origin of all that is opposed to God and heaven; hence proceeded that spiritual sphere or contrary * We here speak of the mental life and the bodily, as re-active principles, because they are merely such when viewed in their relation to God, who is the alone active power; but viewed in respect to man only, his mental life is the really active human principle, and the life of the body the re-active. influx commonly called "infernal influence," and, in Scripture language, "the devil, going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." It is also called "death," as being in direct opposition to the sphere or influx from the Lord and heaven which is truly "Life." The former, though deadly, is congenial with our fallen nature, the latter with the inmost unfallen forms of the soul, and with the "remains" which the Lord in mercy implants within us from the period of birth to that of maturity. Between these two opposite spheres, and thus between heaven and hell, every man is placed during his probation in the world; that is, each sphere enters into, or acts upon, what we have before called the mental life common to all. By the continual and merciful operation of Divine Providence, these spheres are so regulated and controlled as to be held in exact equilibrium, and hence the mental life is preserved in a state of real liberty; thus man is free to think, free to will, free to determine, respecting all things spiritual or natural, in relation to his present or future existence, consequently, free to choose life or death; the Lord therefore declares to every man, See, I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil; therefore choose life." (Deut. xxx. 15, 19.) 66 It is in the exercise of this freedom that the mental life acquires a specific quality, which is either heavenly or infernal. If man (being conscious, and acknowledging that God gives him the power every moment) determines, as of himself, to resist, shun, and put away whatever he knows to be evil or sinful, and to think, will, and act-believe, love, and do, in accordance with the will of God as revealed in His Word, and for His sake, the Lord then gradually elevates his mind above the evil tendencies of his fallen nature, conjoins him as to his spirit, with Himself, and consociates him with angels. Thus his mental life acquires a new quality, and becomes, holy, heavenly, spiritual, and eternal life; this holy quality enters into every work of his moral and civil life, and dwells therein as a cause in its proper effect, as a spiritual essence in its correspondent form, as a soul in its own body, and man is then restored to the image and likeness of his heavenly Father. But, on the contrary, if, in the use of this freedom, man resolves to follow the impulse of his fallen nature, and yields to the sphere of influence that reaches him from the kingdom of darkness, he then determines in favour of what is evil and false, and against what is good and true; persevering in such a course, he resists all the divine influence, rejects the love of God, and cherishes and exalts in his heart the unholy principle of a defiled self-love; he turns away, with indifference or contempt, from the love of heaven, and eagerly follows the allurements of an inordinate worldly love; he does nothing for the sake of God and his neighbour, but everything for the sake of himself; and such being the principle that reigns in hell, therefore his mental life. gradually acquires a confirmed evil quality, and becomes infernal life, which is, in reality, spiritual death. Whatever his works may then be in the sight of men, the quality of his mental life is their real soul and essence; and since every thing receives its proper denomination from its essence (when that essence is known), it is evident that the Lord, who alone knows the essence of all our works, will give to every work of man its proper name, when we appear before the judgmentseat of Christ, that every man may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." (2 Cor. v. 10.) 66 Moral life, then, or "the works of the moral law," may be from two opposite origins-the Lord and heaven-or self and the world; therefore a work, apparently the same as to moral aspect, done by different men, may be to one man what Jesus Christ will call "good," to the other "bad," consequently, to one saving, to the other condemnatory, for He saith, "Cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also." (Matt. xxiii. 36.) When man's observance of the moral law is from the latter origin, he has no love for the moral works in themselves, but makes use of them as means to an end, which is, that he may raise himself above others in power, or surpass them in amount of wealth; and it may be that he has a further end in view which is equally selfish, that of attaining exalted dignities in the world to come; such morality, however, is the Jewish counterfeit, not the Christian coin. But that which has the Lord and heaven for its origin, is genuine; it is done from a pure principle of religion, in the fear of the Lord, and for the sake of our neighbour's good. This morality is disinterested, having heavenly life for its soul and essence; it is spiritual as well as natural, therefore all its works have a saving influence and effect upon the worker. The morality of the young man who said to the Lord, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" appears to have been a strict and uniform obedience to the Ten Commandments, for when the Saviour directed his attention to them, he said, “Master, all these have I observed from my youth." No doubt he had kept them according to the Jews' standard of observance, hence it is said, "Jesus beholding him loved him." But he had not kept them as a Christian is required to do-in the spirit as well as in the letter, in motive as well |