science of correspondences between things natural, moral, spiritual, and divine. As the science of correspondences became lost, the meaning of these hieroglyphics and mythologies was inaccessible to the human mind. We will here only observe that all the spiritual and religious ideas of the very ancient people were wrapped up in the mysterious coverings of these hieroglyphics and mythologies, and that idolatries of every kind came into existence in proportion as their true meaning was lost. In that ancient period, philosophy and theology formed one system of thought, and all their mental perceptions and cognitions involved spiritual ideas, relating to the Deity, to Heaven, to the Soul, and to the precepts of life, according to which, in order to be happy, man must live. Speculative philosophy, as it is now understood, commenced in Greece several centuries before the Christian era, and was the means of preparing the way for the rational understanding of the doctrines of Christianity, when the time should come for their promulgation.

The philosophers of Greece were numerous, and every subject of mental experience and observation came under their investigation. The chief of these were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But what is called speculative philosophy or metaphysics, has relation chiefly to the higher objects of human investigation and intelligence,--things which are not the objects of the senses, but of pure intellect, such as the Esse and the Existere of all being, the nature of the First Cause, or of God, of creation, of the human soul, and its relation to God,-its immortality, its faculties, and the means of its improvement and happiness. These are the great problems which the human mind, in its search after Truth, desires to solve. In reflecting and reasoning on these subjects, the mind proceeds either boldly or cautiously. In the former case it is said, in the language of philosophy, to proceed dogmatically, and in the latter, sceptically. Both of these characteristics are necessary, to enable us to arrive at genuine Truth. The man who too boldly makes his declarations as to the results and conclusions of his thinking, is said to dogmatize; and he requires a check to induce him to think more profoundly, and to be less confident in his assertions. This check is called scepticism, which may be either negative or affirmative; if negative, it denies the subject altogether; but if affirmative, it considers the subject favourably, and with a view to adopt the truth on which it treats. Dogmatism also pretends that reason is of itself capable of attaining to a knowledge of the laws and nature of things, or that it cannot obtain to this knowledge without a Revelation, or without superior instruction and guidance. The first of these doctrines is Naturalism, the other is Supernaturalism; the Deist is of course a naturalist, but the Christian is a supernaturalist. Again, in speculative

philosophy there are two bases of operations for the mind in its thinking and search after Truth;-the one is called Realism, and the other, Idealism. The former takes for its principle the reality of things, but the latter takes our ideas as the principles of our reasoning; and there can be no doubt that the materials from which we derive our ideas.are taken from the reality of the objects and phenomena around us; nevertheless, those objects do not form the proximate basis of our thinking and reasoning, but the ideas themselves, which are the only proper materials of all philosophy and intelligence. This kind of Idealism is of course not the absolute Idealism of Berkley, in which the reality and existence of the external world is altogether denied.

We have in the systems of German metaphysics, or in the systems of speculative philosophy taught in that country, a striking evidence of the darkness and hopeless confusion into which the human mind plunges itself, when left to its own unaided resources, and is not guided by the superior light of Revelation on all subjects belonging to the sphere above our sensational experience. Thus speculative philosophy, as represented by Hegel, Schelling, Strauss, Feuerbach, Rüge, and others, whose names are now in the ascendant, cannot rise to the idea of a Personal God, who is totally distinct from nature, and yet in the closest relation with it; but if a God is acknowledged at all, the idea is Pantheism, the highest conception of which is, that the weltgeist, or the world-spirit, is the actuating soul-the universal gas-which is one and inseparable from external nature. As to Christianity, into which speculative philosophy has carried its infatuations, it is reduced by Strauss and Feuerbach, on the principles of Hegel, to what may be called Christism, which is in the same relation to religion as Pantheism is to nature. Hence, according to these philosophers, there never was any real Personal Christ, but the idea of such a being is only a myth, or fable, and not a reality; no more than the idea of a Personal God is a reality, it being only a mythology, which is dissipated as the mind becomes informed and instructed. The only idea of a Personal God is that of Humanity, in which the spirit which actuates the world is more fully developed, thus the individual man is in so far a God-Man, or Personal God. In like manner, Christianity is the purest religion, because it involves the purest love of the race; and whosoever, by its means, rises to the love of the race, is a Christ; yea, he is, it is asserted, Christ himself. Immediately that the -consciousness of the race, as a race, arises within you, the ecclesiastical, or, as Strauss says, the mythological, Christ disappears, without our losing his real being on that account. Thus, in Feuerbach's eyes, man and nature, which belongs to the complete and true being of man, are

the real sum and substance of religion." What, then, becomes of the immortality of the human soul, and of its eternal interests? Following out the same train of thought, these, which to the generality of people are the greatest realities of human existence, come to nothing, as is evident from the following teaching of Strauss, Feuerbach, and Rüge, in ́a small work lately published, entitled, "The Triarier," p. 71:

"Where there is no time, (as is said by these three wiseacres,) there is no individuality, there is no sensation, and vice versâ. If, therefore, you ascribe to an individual in the dark region beyond the tomb, which is entirely abstracted from time, an individual existence, sensation, or eternal joy, you only follow your own imagination, in which every thing which, in reality, in truth, and intelligence, is impossible, becomes possible. Further, if you believe in a life after death, in which you will be the same individual as you were here, the same personal being, and the same subject you were here in this life, you must needs put this life after death, in a spatial locality, inasmuch as individual beings must exist in space. Hence arise many weighty considerations. There cannot, in any intelligible way, (as Feuerbach would fain shew,) be two kinds of space, nor can there be localities out of space, within which we, as living subjects, are contained, as space essentially belongs to our life itself. In order to escape this dilemma, the stars have been considered as the dwelling-places of departed souls, and thereby the life after death has been removed at least to an apparent distance from the life before death. For it is alleged, 'How could prodigious worlds of such immeasureable extent exist in vain ?'"*

The great fallacy which pervades this reasoning is the groundless assumption, amounting to a petitio principii, that our existence in time and space is the only possible mode of existence.

The ipsissima verba of these philosophers are as follows:-"Wo keine Zeit, da ist kein Individuum, wo kein Individuum, da ist keine Empfindung, und umgekehrt. Wenn du daher in dem dunkeln Jenseits, wo von aller Zeit abstrahirt wird, dem Individuum individuelles Dasein, Empfindung, gar ewige Wonne 'zuschreibst; so folgst du nur der Einbildung, in der alles möglich ist was im Wesen, in der Wahrheit, im Begriffe unmöglich ist. Ferner: Wenn du ein Leben nach dem Tod annimmst, in welchem du dasselbe Individuum sein wirst, was du hier warst, dieses persönliche Wesen, dieses Subject, das du in diesem Leben bist, so musst du dieses Leben nach dem Tode an einen Ort verlegen, Individuen müssen räumlich existiren. Daraus entstehen sehr bedenkliche Umstände: es konne (macht F. geltend) doch begreiflicher Weise nicht zweierlei Räume geben, ́noch Räume ausser dem Raum, innerhalb welches auch wir Lebende enthalten sind; der Raum gehöre wesentlich zu unserem Leben selbst. Um dieser Verlegenheit zu entgehen, habe man die Sterne zu Aufenthaltsörtern der Abgeschiedenen bestimmt, und dadurch das Leben nach dem Tode wenigstens in eine scheinbare Entfernung vom Leben vor dem Tode gerückt, Wie könnten auch, meinte man, so ungeheure Welten von unermesslicher Grösse . . . umsonst sein ?"

The readers of this Periodical will probably be astonished to hear that these ideas, as the results of speculative philosophy, are those which prevail in the philosophic schools of Germany at the present moment. They will also have remarked, that as Christian theology has: been brought under the influence of this abominable philosophy, the Christian church itself has indeed come to its end. For what human traditions and false dogmas had not completed, a negative and pantheistic philosophy has accomplished. Speculative philosophy, in the time of Plato, was infinitely superior to what it is now; there was much spiritual reality in it, derived from some knowledge of truths and realities relating to the spiritual life of man; but now in every thing beyond the mere sensuous perceptions of the mind, little else than a dark negatism prevails.

Now comes the great question,-can all the essential problems of speculative philosophy be satisfactorily solved? Can the human mind come to a position in which it can with satisfaction and certitude contemplate the great subjects of its rational inquiry, and thus dwell in a mansion of intelligence and peace? For nothing short of this will satisfy the requirements of the human mind. We reply to these questions by asserting that Swedenborg has solved these essential problems, and satisfied these urgent requirements of the Truth-loving mind.

According to Schelling, one of the most acute and renowned of speculative philosophers, "the highest problem that reason can contemplate is the Nature of Absolute Being, and the manner in which all finite beings are derived from it." This problem involves the knowledge of Deity and of the Creation. This great problem requires the solution of a variety of other problems, in order that it may be comprehended. First, the nature and determination of the Esse of the Absolute. Schelling defines this Esse as Grundwille; that is, the essential element of the will-principle; but he does not define the element itself. Swedenborg, however, defines the Esse, and tells us that it is Love, which, as it is the essential element of God, so it is, either in a good or bad sense, the essential element of man, and forms the inmost activity of his life, and determines its quality. This quality in God is infinite Goodness, but in man it may be either good or evil, as he by his freedom determines it.

Secondly, an Esse is nothing except it exists; that is, except it has an external manifestation, (or Form,) which is its Existere. Swedenborg clearly defines the Existere, and determines its relation to the Esse. Thus as the Esse in God is infinite Love, so the Existere of that Esse is infinite Wisdom, and the relation between them is the same as

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between the heat and light in the sun, and universally as between an essence and its form, a soul and its body. Thus Love is the Soul and Wisdom is the Form of God; (Phil. ii. 6.) or in Scripture language, the Father is the Soul and the Son is the Form, or Glorious Body of that Soul. In this way genuine philosophy illustrates a true theology, and brings it home to the understanding and the heart of man with seven-fold power. This clear definition and determination of the Esse and Existere, and of their mutual relation to each other, is the basis of all intellectual and spiritual philosophy, yea, and of physical philosophy also, since every object, whether spiritual, intellectual, moral or physical, has its esse and its existere, or its essence and its form.

Nor

But it is not sufficient in intellectual philosophy to determine the Esse and the Existere, it is also requisite to determine a third thing, which is the Procedere, or the Use which the thing performs in the system of creation. This Swedenborg beyond all other philosophers has done, first in the Absolute or in the Deity, and then in every thing proceeding from the Deity, for every thing in creation has its Esse, its Existere, and its Procedere, or its essence, its form, and its use. can any thing be thoroughly known until it is known as to these particulars, or rather, essentials of its being. Thus the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or the Divine Esse, the Divine Existere, and the Divine Procedere, form the three Essentials, or the Divine Trinity in One God; and in order to know God, it is indispensable to know Him as to these three Essentials. Hence a Trinity (not of Persons, but of Essentials constituting one Person) is not only Scriptural, but grounded in the nature of things, and thus eminently philosophical.

The problem on the human soul has been the next great question in philosophy to determine. We cannot, however, here enter upon this, and upon the other great topics of intellectual philosophy, such as cosmogony or creation, and the order established by the Creator, degrees, correspondences, influxes, or the mode by which the Deity sustains and preserves the created universe. All this, together with innumerable other points, are clearly explained by Swedenborg. From the want of a knowledge of these essential points, the speculative philosophers whose results respecting the immortality of the soul we have recorded above, are groping in dreadful darkness, and spreading in every direction mischiefs and evils most destructive to the mental and spiritual life of man, and to the cause of true philosophy and religion. Swedenborg has placed all the essential problems which speculative philosophy has endeavoured to solve, upon an immovable rational basis; that is, he has based them upon the laws of God in nature, as analogues and correspondences