writing upon the sky, or by certain electric flashings of light into the soul. But God works by means, and makes man do his share of work also, -God will no more put wisdom into the head of man without his coöperation, than food into his mouth, without he labours for it. Wisdom, in like manner, must be procured by the exercise of the mental powers, and then made our own by the practice of it: then, and then only, shall we taste its sweetness, and be nurtured by it. The powers of the soul as well as of the body must be trained, tried, exercised, disciplined, in order that we may reach the stature of spiritual men; and as the training of the body is accompanied with innumerable pleasures, so the discipline of the soul is calculated and intended to excite and to satisfy appetites and desires which are in themselves sources of exquisite delight. Why, then, do we presume that man is to be denied the luxury of scrutinizing and fathoming the mysteries of religion, by the humble, earnest efforts of his noble powers? Mysteries exist for the same exalted use in religion, as in science. They develop man, as he otherwise could never be developed; for if all truth were patent, then, what necessity for exertion? The mind in such a state would dwindle into inanition, just as the body of a living man that never moves from a given place, becomes flaccid in its muscles, pines, and dies for want of exercise. Mystery does not mean, in any true sense, a statement contradictory to itself. Such a statement bears witness of itself that it is false; it needs no further refutation, to a clear and upright mind, than its own announcement. Yet how many base-coin faslehoods pass current among men, under the sterling name of mysteries! Genuine mysteries are truths in disguise, friends incognito, to whom, as yet, we are unworthy of introduction, or they may not be capable of serving us just now. "The time will come when I will shew you plainly of the Father." The Parables of our Lord were mysteries, inasmuch as they concealed truths under similitude or comparison,-but our Saviour's language is ever applicable,- "What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter." Over all the glory there must be a covering, for no man can see the face of God and live. The brightness of the meridian sun is as nothing compared with the piercing splendours of the light of unadulterated truth, and man would be destroyed at once by its rays, if they were not veiled over by accommodating media. In God all is Light and Love;-Light unclouded, insomuch that every ray of truth that emanates from His essence is utterly unmixed with shade,-wherefore, as there is no spot or atom of this earth which, when presented to the sun, will not be made visible in its minutest forms, were the eye of man so microscopic as to trace it to its smallest particle,—so neither is there mystery or fact, however great or insignificant, -no proposition, however intricate its nature, but must be laid bare and resolve itself before the searching scrutiny of the Sun of Truth. Spiritual light as far transcends mere natural light, as heaven transcends the earth; how vain it is for man, then, to presume that the mysteries of religion are beyond its reach, and that man must for ever remain ignorant, even of the exalted subjects propounded in the Word of God! But as mystery, with reference to truth, performs important uses to the human mind, so also it has ever been a mighty instrument for evil in the hands of wicked men. In all ages of the world priestcraft has availed itself of mysteries, as a cloak for its designs. The fears and superstitions of the ignorant have ever exposed them to the subtle snares of men of intellect and vigour, and ancient history abounds with the recital of tragedies and horrors perpetrated under the venerated name of mystery. In the first Christian dispensation, so artfully was it employed, that at length it spread its roots deep and permanently into human institutions, and stretched abroad the arms of its authority until it encircled the whole world. The love of rule or dominion was the mainspring of its energies; but it was checked in its career when the Reformation burst her bonds asunder, and Babylon mystery, the mother of harlots, gave place to a less external form or mode of its operation; for the Reformed Church is as much enthralled, and the souls of her votaries bowed down as much by mere verbal superstitions, a reverence for certain antiquated forms of speech or creeds, as ever Popish proselytes have been by her imposing ceremonials. The time is now approaching when, we trust, that mystery will no longer be a ghost, employed to terrify into acquiescence the rational faculty of man, but a word of better import. Let it be our earnest prayer that we may be qualified, by regeneration, to solve the mysteries of faith so far as their hidden treasures may make us rich unto salvation, and aid us in restoring that image and likeness of Love and Wisdom in our souls, which by sin and transgression has become so fearfully obscured. Hulme. G. R. H. 457 SWEDENBORG'S PRINCIPIA. His Theory of the Elements of Creation partly confirmed by the subsequent researches of Priestly, Scheele, Lavoisier, and Trudaine, and by Black, Cavendish, Watt, Dumas, Boussingault, and others. [Continued from page 433.] 3rd. The atomic weight of water 9. The proportions necessary for forming water in 100 parts of its constituents, are as follows: By measure. : By weight. Hydrogen..... 11.1 or 1 Hence the gases when combined forming water, are reduced to the original bulk of hydrogen, the entire bulk of oxygen having completely disappeared. It will make no difference in the present computation, whether we infer that the oxygen has absorbed the other gas, or one half the bulk of hydrogen has absorbed the oxygen. Of this we are certain, the whole bulk of oxygen has disappeared to such a degree of nicety, that the exact bulk of hydrogen is never in the least disturbed during the combination; the original bulk of the hydrogen being 66-66 before combination, whilst the bulk of the resultant mass after combination is also exactly 66.66. In agreement with this fact of disappearance Swedenborg says, in the second volume of his Principia, "The enclosed elementaries are consumed in compounding the particle of water." p. 331. "So considerable a portion of its extremely large surface is pressed inwards as to be received by the enclosed elementaries." p. 332. We might illustrate these proportions in another form. One single inch of water would be expanded into a volume of 1987 cubic inches of gas; the hydrogen would occupy 1325, and the oxygen only 662, or, for all practical purposes, we might say one half the former. This is the same as saying in even numbers, that this single inch of water is condensed into about the 2000th part of the space which its constituent gases occupy. In weight, this cubic inch of water, at the temperature of 60° of the ordinary thermometer, weighs 252 grains troy, of which 2241 grains are oxygen, and 28 grains, hydrogen: so that, in absolute quantity of matter, there is about eight times as much oxygen in water as there is hydrogen. N. S. NO. 132.--VOL. XI. 2 M It may be seen from the above table, and indeed is now generally admitted, that water is constituted of precisely two volumes of hydrogen combined with one volume of oxygen, or by weight, eight out of nine parts are oxygen, and the remaining part is hydrogen; or, according to the atomic theory (to be considered in a subsequent paper), of one atom of each of these elements. The atom of water, therefore, upon the hydrogen scale is 9. This is the identical number given by Swedenborg in 1721, in his "Principles of Chemistry," as the equivalent of water; it was certainly given at a time when water was believed a simple uncompounded substance, and about sixty-three years before the atomic weight of water was known to be represented in the scale of atomic weights by the number 9. We are prepared to combat the idea that this equivalent was assumed by him as a random but lucky guess, a priori. By a process of reasoning, the entirety of which we cannot pretend to enumerate, but which may be found in the above-named work, he arrived at the important conclusion that the equivalent of a particle of water = 9. There would be no paucity of means to arrive at this result, according to the line of investigation evidently adopted by him, and inversely introduced in his work on Chemistry. There would be no end to the instances inviting him to the adoption of this equivalent for water. Indeed, the line of investigation is so peculiar, so strictly founded upon geometrical data, that we cannot really detect the slightest possibility of his adoption of any other equivalent. We will enter into a brief discussion of the reasons which determined the adoption of this equivalent, with a view to set at rest the idea of guessing. The hydrogen scale has this substance as the basis of measurement, because it is the lightest of all known substances. Its equivalent is therefore 1. Since the proportional numbers merely express the relative quantities of different substances which combine together, it is in itself immaterial what figures are employed to express them. The only essential point is, that the relation should be strictly observed. Different chemists have adopted a series of their own, which was considered by them as more simple than any other. For example, Dr. Thomson makes oxygen 1 as the basis of his series. Dr. Wollaston fixes oxygen at 10. The celebrated Berzelius has oxygen at 100. Whilst several other chemists, as Dalton, Davy, Henry, Turner, and others, have oxygen at 8; consequently, hydrogen will be given in this scale at 1. Any one of these scales may easily be reduced to the others by an obvious increase or diminution of the corresponding equivalents, as the case may be. Now in page 31, Principles of Chemistry, where Swedenborg first gives his weight of the water particle, he assumes the volume of fifth finites, or oxygen = 1, which is the same as Dr. Thomson's scale of equivalents. This volume he regards as occupying half the space of the particle of water. Hence he says, "The internal cavity is half of the space." Page 31. Swedenborg must certainly be considered as having adopted a similar scale to that of Dr. Thompson, in which oxygen = 1, for we have already, in a former article, proved the identity of his fifth finites with oxygen: but the reason which induced him to adopt the ratio or scale now in general use, first suggested by Dalton, we will endeavour to explain. In Section IV., page 31, Swedenborg is attempting to estimate the comparative weights of a water particle and the saline particles filling the interstitial spaces of water. He there developes a statement, involving his method of investigation, his scale of equivalents, and the ground-work of the whole superstructure of his Principles of Chemistry. If the reader can only master this paragraph, he may go steadily along with its author through the entire work, without much difficulty and doubt. "Demonstration.-Let the matter (fifth finites or oxygen) in the particle of water 1. According to the theory of water, page 16, the internal cavity of the particle is half of the space; consequently if it be filled with the same matter (or the whole particle be oxygen), the weight of the particle will 2. Since then the weights are as the spaces, viz., 3:1:2:, the weight of the interstitial matter, compared with the weight of a particle of water assumed as equal to 1, will be as to 1, or as 2 to 3. "If, again, the more subtle hard matter of the fourth kind (or atoms of a particle of oxygen) insinuate itself into the interstices of this matter, I maintain that this interstitial substance, or one cube with two triangles, will then weigh to a particle of water as 10 to 9. "Demonstration.-Let the aforesaid matter be as 2 to 3; also, let the internal cavities of (each of) these particles (called fifth finites or oxygen) occupying half the space, like the cavity in the particle of water, be filled up: in which case the weight will be double the foregoing, or as 4 to 3. Now, since the ratio of the weights is according to the ratio of the spaces, it will be as 3: 1 :: 4 : ; to which, if the 2 be added, it becomes 2 + , and thus when compared with the weight of the particle of water, taken as 3, it will be, is to 3 as 10 is to 9." Page 31. = Now, is it not evident, that Swedenborg's adoption of 9 as an equivalent for water, in the scale of atomic weights, originates in a numerical necessity? Strictly speaking, the number was not selected, but forced upon his adoption. It took up the position in his scale, as an equivalent of water, irrespective of every thing but arithmetical necessity. Conjecture and lucky guessing can lay no claim to the discovery of this important theoretical principiate in Swedenborg's system of che |