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'common' arrangements of the world, and to lay less proportionate stress upon occurrences which are rare, because all are found referable to a central spring, rendering none more peculiarly strange than another, and taking even from the strangest that seeming of an interference' with law, or of 'suspension' of law, which at first is all our thought. The brute is scared by the lightning, and the untutored mind is aghast at the storm; both are unobservant of the stars and their movements, while all these things are to the intelligent as much a part of nature as sunrise. How small a part of what men call the laws of nature' is open even to the profoundest philosopher! How many wonderful processes are going on in secret which we know nothing of! How many are there which this age was first acquainted with; how many that we are ignorant of will be discovered when our memory shall be no more! Because familiar with a certain number of these laws of nature,' we are apt to look upon ourselves as admitted into the sanctuary of the temple, when in reality we are only in the porch. No man knows the laws of nature' in their total, if he cannot point out the law which explains miracles, or rather the mode or formula of the law. The law itself, or in principle, is Rejuvenescence. Wrought by Him who 'upholdeth all things by the word of his power,' the miracles, whether judicial, creative, or restorative, were acts uniformly bearing a definite and positive relation to the highest and heavenliest condition of things, the everlasting Eden of Life. They were indications to man, that by his moral degeneracy he is in an abnormal state; that sickness, want, evil, are the unnatural condition; that the state of Nature is Excellence, Youth, Life; that these, as we have said before, are the one grand, comprehensive idea of the universe, and other things mere accidents and phenomena of their history and promotion. A miracle,' says Dr. Cumming, 'is not, as some have tried to shew, contrary to nature, but is above and beyond what we call nature. For instance, when we read of our Lord's healing the sick, and raising the dead, we hear it said that it is contrary to nature. It is no such thing. We call it contrary to nature, because we Sickness is not natural; it is an unnatural

say that sickness is natural.

thing-a discord in the glorious harmony. So with death. Death is the unnatural thing, and the natural thing is putting an end to death, Healing the sick, and they are the bringing

and bringing back glorious and everlasting life. raising the dead, are the perfection of nature: back of nature to its pristine state; the restoration of the primæval harmony, the augury of future happiness; they are demonstrations to us that all the prophecies which describe paradise are possibilities.

Every miracle of our Lord is a specimen of that new genesis under which there shall be no more sickness, but wherein former things shall have passed away, and all things shall be made new.”*

Is there no difference, then, between a miracle and the natural laws, as they are called? Yes: but it is not a difference implying, as usually supposed, the putting forth of a greater amount of divine power; it is a difference only in the manner of the manifestation of that power, or consisting in the new shape or formula in which that power is put forth.

It was the salvation, or spiritual rejuvenescence of which the miracles were signs, rather than the miracles themselves, which was predicted by the prophets; that is, they were foretold as to their spiritual significance rather than as to their physical performance. This is evident even from the context. When, for example, Isaiah says, that at the coming of Christ, 'the wilderness shall rejoice and blossom as the rose;' and continues, that 'the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf be unstopped, the lame man shall leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing,'—it is evident that the expressions refer to the soul rather than to the body, or the passage would be inconsistent with itself: for Christ did not come to plant flowers in desert places; certainly he did not work any such miracle; he came to waken the slumbering virtues and graces which are the flowers of the soul, and correspondingly, not to relieve physical disease primarily, but to give sight and hearing, and health and strength, to the spirit. If the prophecy is to be taken literally in the latter part, it must be taken literally in the former; and that would require that the desert should have put forth sudden flowers, which was not the case. True, under the influence of Christianity, lands, for ages lying waste, have blossomed into corn-fields and gardens; but this is only an outward and sensible indication that the prophecy has received its proper spiritual fulfilment. The miracles of physical healing were wrought simply because of their value as representatives.

What maladies of the soul are specifically represented by given diseases, it is easy to perceive. Those which are mentioned in the Bible, furnish a clue to all. Leprosy, for example, corresponds to profanation; or the knowledge of what is right, but contempt and neglect of the prac

* Foreshadows, vol. i. Lectures on the Miracles of our Lord, as earnests of the Age to come. p. 9. See also 'Characteristics of Miracles,' in Kitto's Journal of Sacred Literature, January 1852.

+ Certainly, St. John tells us that there were many other miracles which Jesus did, of which no record was made; but we may be sure that one of every different species was recorded.

tice of it.

Reverence for divine truth, and obedience to it, is the very first step in regeneration; hence, the first person cured after the sermon on the mount was one afflicted with the disease in question. The next was one 'sick of the palsy;' the condition of the paralytic exactly represents the infirmity of the human will. Further illustrations may be seen in the Rev. Isaac Williams' Thoughts on the Study of the Holy Gospels,' and in Dr. Duncan's excellent little work, God in Disease, or the Manifestations of Design in Morbid Phenomena.'

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Because of the correspondence we are considering, our Lord is called the great Physician and the Saviour. The former name signifies one who restores to a state of nature; the latter, the healer or health-giver. 'Salvation' is derived from the Latin salus health, salvus healthy, which in French reappears as sauf, the proximate root of save. Salvation, accordingly, is that which, as the work of God, saves or heals our souls. Hence the cry of David-O Lord, heal my soul! and the prayer of the prophet-Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved. Jesus Christ, as the Sun of Righteousness, is said to bring healing on his wings. Etymologically, 'heal' and 'save' are the same word, as readily seen by grouping together the several collateral forms, as 'whole,' and the Greek oλos. The hale man is he who is whole; health is literally a state of wholeness. Primarily, the words heal and save thus mean to make sound or entire, as when a wound is healed, and the new skin grown over. The numerous sad pictures in Scripture of the depraved moral state as one of wounds, laceration, and bleeding, give to these words, as there used, an unspeakable beauty and appropriateness. How sublimely is it ascribed to the Lord, that He healeth the stroke of their wound!' It is on the same great principle that we speak in familiar discourse of a healthy tone of feeling, a morbid imagi nation, sickly sentimentality, ill-nature, ill-temper; also of being sick at heart, ill at ease, cured of bad habits. Prudent, well-timed words, Homer calls yns, healthy. (Il. viii. 524.) Derived from the same primitive root as heal and save, through another channel, and denoting the same idea, are the words solace, console, consolation. An incurable grief, the wound of heart that remains open till death, Ovid beautifully calls vulnus inconsolabilis. (Met. v. 426.) Life and health, or wholeness, imply unity, integrity, perfection; hence we find the earth, 'the firm, round earth,' called solum, and whatever is like it in its integrity, solid, whether material or spiritual. We speak of a solid understanding as Horace of mens solida, a fixed resolution. (Odes. 3, iii. 4.) To consolidate is to make perfect or entire. The idea of such entirety is the ground of the adjective solus, alone; and reappears also in Atos, or Sol,

the sun.

Helios, or the sun, was the same as Phoebus Apollo, the god of day and of light, the father of Esculapius, the god of medicine, if not the god of medicine or healing in his own person. For though in later times there were as many as four Apollos distinguished, this was probably but in keeping with the tendency of the Grecian mind to change the several attributes of a deity into as many distinct gods. The primitive idea was the sun, the fountain of light; to this, as a matter of course, followed life and health; and by another beautiful perception, the same deity presided over music, one of the soul's chief comforters and healers, whence its medicinal fame from time immemorial. The poets,' says Lord Bacon, 'did well to conjoin music and medicine in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man's body, and to reduce it to harmony.' Apollo was the pagan aspiration after Christ: one of his surnames was owryp, Saviour. His worship, his festivals, his oracles, all had more weight and influence with the Greeks than those of any other deity they worshipped. They would never have become what they were without the worship of Apollo; in him was the brightest side of the Grecian mind reflected. He who is the True Light, the Light which is the life of men, reveals himself also as healer of the nations, in his lovely song of one that playeth well upon an instrument.'

SUMMARY OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE BOOKS OF GENESIS AND EXODUS, AS DERIVED FROM THE ARCANA CELESTIA.

[The following summary of the internal sense of Genesis, is drawn up by an intelligent friend from the Arcana Calestia with great care, and presented to the reader as a most important means of spiritual instruction and edification. With the Divine Word before him, the devout reader may, by this means, rise in his meditations to contemplate spiritual and heavenly things, and to see his internal and his external man, and his various mental states, in the light of heavenly Truth; and thus, if "spiritually minded," may receive much of the "spirit and life" of the Word, and be more interiorly conjoined with the Lord, and more closely associated with His Angelic Kingdom.-ED.]

THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
Chap. I.

CONTENTS. Of the Spiritual Man, as formed out of the Dead Man, who is not yet a Church, but is about to be formed into a Church by six successive states [Enl. Series.-No. 13, vol. ii.]

D

of regeneration. Of the first state, which includes the state of infancy and the state immediately before regeneration, to ver. 5. Of the second state, when a distinction takes place between the things which are of the Lord and the things which are proper to man, to ver. 8. Of the third state, which is that of repentance, to ver. 13. Of the fourth state, which is when the person is affected with love and illuminated with faith, to ver. 19. Of the fifth state, when he discourses from a principle of faith, and thereby confirms himself in Truth and Goodness, to ver. 23. Of the sixth state, when, from a principle of faith, and thereby of love, he speaks what is True and does what is Good. 1 In the most ancient time, God created the internal man and the external man.

2 And the external man, before regeneration, had nothing in him good or true, and thick darkness overspread the lusts of his concupiscence, and the mercy of the Lord brooded over the remains or knowledges of truth and goodness which were hidden and treasured up within.

3 And God said, Let man begin to know that goodness and truth are somewhat from above, and not from man's proprium.

4 And God saw this knowledge, that it was light from Himself, who is essential goodness; and he distinguished between this knowledge and the knowledge derived from man's proprium, (to which evil seems like good, and the false like truth.)

5 And God called the former day, because it is of the light; and the latter he called evening, because it is of darkness. And in the progress from the darkness of the external man to the light of the internal, this was the first state.

6 And God said, Let there be an internal man-hence a distinction between the internal and the external; consequently between the knowledges which are in the internal man and the scientifics which are of the external man.

7 And God made the internal man, and distinguished the scientifics which were below the internal from the knowledges (or goodnesses and truths) which were above, (and from the Lord alone.)

8 And God called the internal man heaven. And in the progress from the darkness of the external man to the light of the internal, this was the second state.

9 And God said, Let the truths and goodnesses of the internal man descend from within, and be gathered together outwardly as scientifics into one place, (viz., the external memory,) and let the external man appear as distinguished from the internal.

10 And God made the external man to be a recipient; and the gathering together of his knowledges and scientifics were his external memory. And God saw that this ordination of things was good.

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