And in a magic cell to hold
The gift new forests to unfold.

The autumn wind with solemn sound
Did waft this germ to distant ground,
A genial bed by valley side

Where it became the household pride
Of worthy ones who built their home,
Invited by its sheltering dome.
And its nigh offspring also throve
Expanding to a friendly grove

-

Where oft the cotter sought the shade,
The goodly matron with her babe,
A bright but yet a pensive boy,
Whom fond tree-genii would decoy
To their cool shades, to sleep, and dream
Of sunlit heights beyond life's stream,
Of mountain crags where song-birds wing,
Of living brook, and flowing spring.
And thus the life that finds its way
From heights forever wreathed in day,
Was breathed into his inner soul--
Rare thoughts befitting life's true goal.
And their calm poise within his mind
Had strength the serpent-self to bind;
And in its stead the genii wrought
An INNER-SELF, of crystal thought:
The gnomes substantial bases gave
Of precious gems from rock and cave;
The nymphs, with lilies from the lake
Were wont a fairy bower to make,
And lent their charm to many a dream
Like stately swans on fairy stream;
The sylphs their airy secrets told,
The while they shone like sunlit gold;
The salamanders brought PURE fire
Wherewith to kindle high desire,
And by the magic of their art
Instilled their vigor through each part;
And wrought an inner vesture bright
To pierce earth's gloom with living light.
'Twas thus the LIVING WATERS strove
And wrought themselves a fairy grove:
It was indeed a goodly dell,

And shed abroad a peaceful spell;
And so the people often came,

Till "Sabbath Rest" they called its name:
For here bright genii were embowered
And erst awhile the youth empowered
To teach the neighbors gathered there,
The treasure-thoughts of earth and air

Which gnome, and sylph, and genii kind
Had planted in his budding mind.
And thus they shed their crystal shower,
And made the grove a place of power.
The very birds drank of the peace,
And sought the grove with great increase;
But not a jarring chord or note

Found ut'rance from a warblers throat,-
For where the LIVING WATERS dwell
The very dust imbreathes its spell,
And pulses with a rhythmic flow
Which every mortal well should know,
And seek with an undying power,
To make the life a living flower,
From which an inner grove may rise,
Where dwell bright Genii of the skies.

JOHN LATHAM.

SWEDENBORG ON CREATION AND THE LORD.

It has come to be a scientific, as well as occult axiom, that all life proceeds from some prior life. What we call death, therefore, is simply change; life may cease in one form of manifestation, but nothing is lost, the essential principle of life is immortal and passes on in its processional spiral of expression. The centre from which life springs and to which it returns, for life moves in spiral circuits, is called God.

In a general way we say that mankind descended from Adam, but individually it would be idle to attempt to follow our hereditary line of descent; the best preserved genealogies are soon lost in the receding distance, yet none will deny but what all present life is derived from some prior life.

This applies not merely to man and animate life on earth, but to the entire solar system, and even the physical Universe in all its conceivable vastness. Only the spiritually illumined can approximately perceive or understand this prior life, and then only in its more superficial operation. We are at present incapable of tracing, and can barely conceive of its many prior universal cycles. We have a sufficiently vast undertaking to comprehend our relation to the present kalpa of the Universe and its producing cause or immediately Prior Life. Swedenborg tells us that Adam, or the people of the Most Ancient Church, conversed with this Prior Life face to face, cognizing it as Lord, God, and Father, the only true and real Man; considering themselves as men only so far as they partook of His attributes.

The term Man in its celestial and spiritual sense has a vastness of arcana not readily unfolded. It stands for the perfected Life or Lives of a prior kalpa, and those only are called Sons of Man, or Sons of God who are regenerated into its image and likeness. There is a significant conception of the universe as a single cell. This idea is truly applicable to perfected spiritual beings, and even with earthly races we observe that a well organized nation will representatively speak or act as a single man. Unity, solidarity, oneness have infinite possibilities in spirit. and the Perfected Life of the preceding kalpa was the Man, Lord, and Angel

that talked face to face with the most Ancient Church, and that representatively appeared to the Israelites as Jehovah and was known to other nations under different names. Therefore the idea of a God-man is not a mere childish myth, but one that pertains to the essential constitution of things, of life itself; but the nature of this supreme heavenly Man is not comprehended, and consequently is unduly limited, personified, and distorted.

This Perfected Life of a prior kalpa became the Primal Splendor, the Spir. itual Sun of this, the Divine Man of the heavens, the Father, Creator and Lord. To all things of the present universe, this Spiritual Sun is the supreme and original Life. It is perceived by the intelligent or spiritual principle of man as the uncreated light. It manifests itself to the affections or the celestial principle as veritable God-man.

These considerations seem necessary as supplying a missing link in the chain of thought that is requisite to the more profitable study of Swedenborg by certain schools of thinkers. While Swedenborg had a most remarkable illumination and understanding regarding the principle of unitized life in the heavenly soci eties of our planet, and also that these, though seemingly so complete of them selves, were each nevertheless but a particular organ or function of the universal heaven; he failed to philosophically define the Over Life of the previous kalpa which so wonderfully fills and rules the heavens not only of our solar system, but of those of the entire universe He clearly perceived the representative capacity of heavenly societies to appear as a single man even though composed of millions of individuals, and by special influx to speak through spirits and even mortals in a personified manner, and that the one controlled would speak and, for the time being, know no otherwise than that he was himself the mighty spirit who was speaking, and even thinking of it afterwards as a transient exaltation of his own individuality. These manifestations he seems to have well understood, and that a society could speak and manifest in proportion to its magnitude, function, and quality; neither did he account this as the power of a single spirit save in a representative capacity. But when the mighty Sun Society of a prior kalpa spoke or appeared as the Lord, such was the celestial intensity and manifestation of very LIFE that it was not surprising that he did not perceive its representative nature. Indeed it is non-essential other than for philosophical consistency, and to remove the stumbling-block which this proves to many, thus enabling them to understand the works and words of Jesus, the annointed, in their representative significance and not in a merely limited personal sense.

We have no desire to shock the religious sensibilities or prejudices of those who regard Christ Jesus, in a personal sense, as the Lord God of heaven and earth. That he is representatively such we are prepared to admit, conceding him to be that point or cell of the universal nature where humanity began to take on Divinity. His difference therefore is one of priority and degree, rather than one of kind. Were this not so, how could mankind participate with him in the 30n-ship and glory of the Father. The title of Lord is His in a lofty representative capacity, as of one who fulfilled the conditions and embodied the concentric and culminating thought, aspiration and ideal of ages on ages. The race had experienced many a divinely illumined thought, and enjoyed countless heavenly visions, but in Him the volatile became fixed, the ideal became a reality of flesh and blood in which the human nature took upon itself new qualities; converging forces celes

tial and terrestrial, gave birth to a new type, a "first fruit." It may possibly have taken the coursing electricities of the Divine Thought a million years to out-work through humanity such a distinctive and crowning type, a Man who fulfilled not only the spiritual but the celestial conditions.

The seed of each new type, it should be borne in mind, is within itself, as most abundantly indicated in Genesis. Therefore a new type being once produced, its almost unlimited multiplication is a relatively simple matter and hence the significance of the " raising up" of Jesus as the Christ. Do we not continually see the proneness of mankind to do honor to those who embody the higher ideals of the race in either Church or State. Such persons are invariably representative in their capacity though perhaps in but a small degree at first. And in the same ratio that they are truly representative do they serve an important Divine function. Through their spiritual intuitions the Western World has, with an ever increasing measure of unanimity, accorded to the man Jesus the most lofty and exalted title of Lord; as the recognized necessary and long-promised nucleus of the heavenly kingdom from which a new and higher order of planetary and universal life should proceed. Swedenborg defines his position on this subject as follows.

power

"IN the following work, by the LORD is solely meant Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, who is called the Lord, without other names. He is acknowledged and adored as the Lord throughout all heaven, because He has all in heaven and earth. He also commanded His disciples so to call Him, when He said, · Ye call me Lord, and ye say well, for so I am,' (John XIII. 13.) And after His resurrection His disciples called Him Lord. Throughout all heaven they know no other Father than the Lord, because He and the Father are one, as He Himself said: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. Philip saith, Lord, show us the Father. Jesus saith unto him, have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me has seen the Father and how sayest thou then, show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me'" (John XIV. 6, 8-11.) Swedenborg gives the following general explanation regarding the styles in which the different portions of the Bible are written.

:

"There are in general four different styles in which the Word is written. The FIRST was in use in the Most Ancient Church, whose method of expressing themselves was such, that when they mentioned earthly and worldly things, they thought of the spiritual and celestial things which they represented, so that they not only expressed themselves by representatives, but also reduced their thoughts into a kind of series, as of historical particulars, in which to give them more life, and in this they found their greatest delight. This style is meant when Hannah prophesied, saying, 'Speak ye what is high, high, let what is ancient come forth from your mouth (1. Sam, II. 3.). Such representatives are called by David, 'dark sayings of old. From the posterity of the Most Ancient Church Moses received what he wrote concerning the creation, the garden of Eden, etc., down to the time of Abram. The SECOND style is the historical, occurring in the books of Moses from the time of Abram, and afterwards in those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, in which the historical facts actually occurred as they are related in the letter, although all and each of them contain things altogether different in the internal sense. The THIRD style is the prophetical which took its rise from that which was so highly venerated in the Most Ancient Church. This style however, is not connected, and in appearance historical, like the Most Ancient, but broken and interrupted, being scarcely ever intelligible except in the internal sense, -in which are contained the greatest arcana, succeeding each other in a beautiful and orderly connection, and relating to the external and internal man, the various

states of the church, heaven itself, and, in their inmost, of the Lord.

The FOURTH

style is that of the Psalms of David, which is intermediate between the prophetical style and that of common speach. Here the Lord is treated of in the internal sense in the person of David as a king."

The following extracts from the first chapter Volume I. of "Arcana Celestia " will give our readers an insight into Swedenborg's treatment of the subject.

"Man before regeneration is called earth, void, and empty. The faces of the abyss are the lusts of the ungenerate man, and the falsities thus originating, of which he consists and in which he is totally immersed. Such men when seen from heaven appear like a black mass destitute of vitality.

"The things over which God moves, are remains or hidden knowledges which never come to the light, or day, until external things are vastated. These are called the faces of the waters."

"Evening in a general sense signifies all things that are of man's own; but morning whatever is of the Lord. David says: 'He is as the light of the morning, when the sun ariseth, even as a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining after rain (II. Sam. XXIII. 2-4.)"

"The morning is used in the word to denote every particular coming of the Lord; consequently, it is an expression which has respect to a new creation." "When the earth, or man, is prepared to receive celestial seeds from the Lord, and produce something good and true, then the Lord causes some tender thing to spring forth, which is called the tender grass: then something more useful, which again bears seed in itself and is called the herb yielding seed, and at length something good which becomes fruitful, and is called the tree bearing fruit, whose seed is in itself."

"The progress of faith with those who are created anew is as follows. At first they have no life, for it is only in the good and true that there is life, and none in' evil, and the false: afterwards they receive life from the Lord by faith, first by faith of the memory, which is scientific faith; next by faith of the understanding, which is intellectual faith, lastly by faith in the heart, which is the faith of love, or saving faith."

"Love and faith in the internal man are like heat and light in the external-corporeal man, for which reason the former are represented by the latter. It is on this account that luminaries are said to be set in the expanse of heaven, or in the internal man a great luminary in the will, and a less in the understanding."

"By the sun being darkened and the moon not giving light is meant the obscuration of love and faith."

"Life never exists without love, there is no kind of joy but what flows from love. Such, however, as the love is, such is the life, and such the joy; if you remove loves, or what is the same thing, desires, which have relation to love, thought would instantly cease, and you would become like a dead person. Selflove and love for the world have in them some resemblance to life and to joy, but they are altogether contrary to true love, which consists in a man's loving the Lord above all things, and his neighbor as himself; it must be evident that they are not loves, but hatreds, for in proportion as any one loves himself and the world, in the same proportion he hates his neighbor, and thereby the Lord. Wherefore true love is love towards the Lord; and true life is the life of love from him; and true joy is the joy of that life."

"The celestial angels, by virtue of the heavenly love with which they are influenced from the Lord, are in all the knowledges of faith, and enjoy such a life and light of intelligence as can scarcely be described; but, on the other hand, spirits who are only skilled in the doctrinals of faith without love, are in such a coldness of life, and obscurity of light, that they cannot approach even to the first limits of the entrance into the heaven."

"After the great luminaries are kindled and placed in the internal man, and the external thence receives light, then the regenerating person begins first to live."