set his foot in these United States. And farther, upon my remarking to the Doctor, in reply, that this young lady must certainly have possessed some very extraordinary accomplishments, to captivate Mr. Wesley at the age of eighty-one; the Doctor immediately rejoined, that the best which could be said of her was," she was a very handsome girl." From which expression, and the manner in which the Doctor told it, I confess I was instantly impressed with an idea that Miss Eliza, with all her attractive force and transcendent beauty of person, was, notwithstanding, not over prudent or pious in thus arresting the venerable attention of this hoary and celebrated Apostle of the day.

How differently engaged, from such inerely earthly objects and sensual affections as occupied the mind of Mr. Wesley at the age of eighty-one, and during the very period of his open and declared opposition against the Heavenly doctrines of the New Jerusalem, was the mind of Emanuel Swedenborg, when he was engaged in writing his Arcana Cœlestia, his Apocalypse Explicata, or his True Christian Religion, when he arrived at the same venerable period of life?

Indeed his philosophical writings when yet but a young man, attracted the attention and commanded the respect of all his learned cotemporaries. It should be granted, however, that the profound discoveries of this great and good man, were, through the sublime illumination of his studious and retired mind, not easily to be apprehended by his too hasty and superficial readers; but to the impartial and scientific inquirers after truth, if patient enough to examine his system thoroughly, from a sincere desire to search after truth, they cannot fail of deriving the most solid satisfaction on every doctrine of revealed religion. To me, every page of his Theology contains a volume of instruction, and every sentence an oracle of truth; which, doubtless, in due time, when the prejudices of early education shall be dissipated, will be more and more admired, while modern systems shall be regarded no more.

JOHN HARGROVE.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

1. THE JUDGMENT DAY: showing where, how, and when the Last Judgment takes place. BY SABIN HOUGH, Minister of the New Jerusalem Church. Columbus, O. Siebert & Lilly. 1849, 12mo. pp. 214.

It is not purely from partiality to the views advocated by Mr. Hough, that we are disposed to think well and to speak well of this little work. It makes a higher draft than upon the favoritism of those who are friends to the author or friends to the cause. It is a treatment of the general subject in a high degree judicious, striking, and able. It is presented in lights that will be in many respects new even to New Churchmen, and that too notwithstanding the writer remarks of himself that "having but recently become acquainted with those

doctrines he cannot reasonably suppose that he has written, or would be able to write any thing, which could enlighten or instruct those who, for many years have been engaged in the study of the heavenly truths." Many such, we venture to say, will be ready to express themselves grateful for the interesting confirmations which the author has gathered round the subject and which are so well calculated to commend it to the respectful notice of candid and intelligent minds.

The justice of our remarks will be in some degree apparent from the following compend of the contents:

Part I. Sect I. The Popular Doctrine. II. That the Last Judgment takes place in the Spiritual World shown from the nature of the Resurrection. III. That the Last Judgment takes place in the Spiritual World inferred from the scientific proofs of the permanent durability of the earth. IV. That there is no probability of a General Resurrection and Judgment in the Natural World, inferred from the want of any evidence in the Word of the Lord that the natural earth will ever be destroyed. V. Apparent objections in the writings of the Apostles examined and answered. VI. That the World of Spirits must be the scene of the Last Judgment shown to be necessary in order that the end of the Divine Love may be attained.

Part II. Sect I. The nature of the Spiritual World. II. The nature and form of Heaven and Hell. The enjoyments of the former and the miseries of the latter. III. The Last Judgment in its individual as well general character.

Each of the above heads is expanded into a great variety of details, in which the argument is wrought out with decided ability and effect, and the whole constitutes a plea in support of a leading tenet of the system for which the Church may well afford to be grateful. We trust they will evince their appreciation of our brother's labor of love by a liberal patronage of the work. This is not only due to him, but due also to the generous enterprise of the young men who have assumed the risk of the publication, and that too without counting upon any thing more than a remuneration for the actual outlay. We fear the disposition evinced in this undertaking is but too slightly estimated in the Church at large. If men are willing to labor without remuneration in the cause of the heavenly doctrines, it would seem to be no more than reasonable that they should be sustained without the necessity of making personal sacrifices over and above their labor. Had the publishers of the present work felt at liberty to indulge more sanguine expectations on this score, they would doubtless have brought it out in better typographical style. Of its deficiences in this respect they are fully aware, and frankly account for it on the ground of their limited resources. We are conscious of the want of a better class of materials in getting up the volume, but we would still rather have it in an inferior dress than be without it.

While on this subject of publishing N. C. works we cannot refrain from putting before our readers the following very appropriate remarks by a writer in a late No. of the Intellectual Repository. "And here we cannot but perform an act of justice to the various writers who, at great labor and frequent loss, have advocated the cause of the New Church. We venture to affirm, that greater and more disinterested devotedness to a cause has never been exhibited than by these deserving, but not always duly appreciated individuals, even within the New Church. With an almost certainty of loss, they undaunt

edly set to work, and, in order to benefit others, they render their publications most costly to themselves, while they are least so to their purchasers. They have been accustomed to compress, generally, the largest compass of readable type, into the smallest quantity of paper. They knew beforehand that New Church people are so satisfied with possessing a "Swedenborg Library," that they are by no means liberal book-buyers, beyond the writings themselves; and especially, perhaps, the remark applies to the always employed and successful money-getters among them, who have "no time for reading," and therefore require very few books, while they have as little time to talk about the truths of the church to persons who are "without," and are, therefore, little interested in getting books to lend. But still the discouraged authors have persevered. All honor to their disinterestedness and truly benevolent zeal !'"

2.--GOD IN CHRIST. Three Discourses delivered at New Haven, Cambridge, and Andover, with a Preliminary Dissertation on Language. BY HORACE Bushnell. Hartford: Brown and Parsons, 1849. 12mo. pp. 356.

This work of Dr. Bushnell, so long awaited, by different parties, with the anxiety of fear and hope, has so recently made its appearance that we have not as yet found time for that careful examination of its contents which we intend. We can therefore do little more at present than chronicle its issue from the press. We shall hope in another number to make our readers somewhat acquainted with the new phase of orthodoxy which looms up to view in this remarkable book and which has a decided squint at least in the direction of the New Church. Meantime we give from the Independent newspaper the substance of a critical notice of the work, understood to be from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Bacon of New Haven, one of the editors of that paper. "Of the three discourses, the first is on the Divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity; the second is on the Atonement, or the relation of Christ's life and death to the salvation of men; the third is entitled 'Dogma and spirit, or the true reviving of Religion.' The second discourse is the one which will be read the most, and will be the least satisfactory to the great body of evangelical ministers and Christians. In the third, many things are well said, which needed to be said, and which having fit utterance, will make their own way, in time, to thousands of devout and believing hearts; and yet this discourse, notwithstanding the incomparable beauty of many passages, seems to us the least powerful of the three-and, we will add, the most deficient as to definiteness of conception and representation. We hope that his views will be read, and considered, and discussed, not as put forth by the leader of a party or the founder of a yet newer 'school,' but only as the views of a single, earnest, independent thinker, who is responsible for himself alone, and is willing to bear that responsibility.

"But while we hope and pray that there may be no controversy about this book-no parties divided off against each other, as Bushnellists and Anti-Bushnellists-we have no doubt that its appearance will be the signal for a new examination and discussion of the great subjects which it handles. In all the theological seminaries, old school and new school, the professors of what the Germans call Dogmatik, will denounce it ex cathedra; otherwise, they will be

untrue to their vocation. But in all the seminaries, little knots and elubs of students will read the book, and will talk about it; and however earnestly they may reject its theory of the Trinity and its theory of the Atonement, some of them will get some new ideas quite out of the beaten track; their minds will be quickened, and their hearts too; and they will be led on, unconsciously, toward those simpler, less rationalized, and more Scriptural views of the Gospel, in which the universal Church is to find at last its union, its rest, and its life. Pamphlets and volumes will be issued-we might venture to guess as to where the first will come from-showing the "dangerous tendency" of such speculations; the theological quarterlies will do their office; religious magazines and newspapers will swell the hue and cry; but notwithstanding all this, and without any defender or any party rallying for its support, the book will be making its way and will be performing its mission. The book will be read. Within three months every minister's meeting in New England will have had a review of it, and a discussion of its merits. The book will not be admitted as an orthodox authority. The accepted orthodoxy of New England will not be shaken. The new and peculiar theories of this book will obtain, among the orthodox, only a limited and qualified acceptance. But there are ideas here which have the vitality of truth, and which will germinate, slowly or rapidly, in many a mind. In the end it will be found, if we mistake not, that this book has left its mark upon the age and upon the history of Christianity."

3. THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCES ELUCIDATED, and shown to be the True Key to a Right Interpretation of the Word of God. BY REV. EDWARD MADELEY. London, J. S. Hodson and W. Newbery. 1849. 8vo. pp. 184.

We have in this work from the pen of Mr. Madeley, of Birmingham, England, unless Mr. Noble's treatise on Plenary Inspiration be an exception, the first formal and elaborate treatise on Correspondence which the New Church has produced. In the various collateral and illustrative volumes to which the system of Swedenborg has given rise-in sermons, reviews, essays, tracts, prefaces without number-the subject has received elucidation in a multitude of points, but we have never before been favored with a work devoted of set purpose to a scientific development of the doctrine. The task could not, perhaps, have fallen into more competent hands than those of Mr. Madeley, judging from the manner in which he has accomplished it, although his aim has been rather that of illustration than of confirmation. Without omitting the distinct state of the fundamental principles on which the whole science rests, he has at the same time labored another point more fully-we mean the accumulation of instances designed to exhibit the truth of the general law. In this he is judicious and happy, and he has moreover fortified his main positions by a range of research and a copiousness of authority which we had scarcely thought to exist. The whole is presented in a style clear, easy and chaste, equally removed from tameness on the one hand and ambitiousness on the other. It is a work of a pleasing complexion, and that promises to wear well. We should for ourselves have preferred perhaps a more philosophical mode of treating the subject, that is, by tracing its principles back to

the very psychology of man's nature, and showing somewhat in detail how inevitably the doctrine of Correspondence follows from the constitution of spirits as related to an outer world. We should prefer also, as the work has swelled so far beyond the ordinary dimensions of a Lecture, to have had it broken up by divisions into heads and chapters, which would have left a clearer impression of its contents on the mind of the reader. But these are abatements of little weight against the sterling merits of the work. We cheerfully invoke for it a wide acceptance, and only regret that demand for New Church works generally is so dull among us as not to warrant its immediate republication, for the author's benefit, on this side of the water.

MISCELLANY.

The ensuing letters, from a miscellaneous correspondence, will be read with interest, as indicating the progress of the New Church cause in different quarters of the christian world. They were not designed for publication, but as the personnel and the locale are carefully suppressed, we presume the writers will not deem any confidence betrayed. The first is from a venerable clergyman of another denomination received several weeks since and which was replied to simply by sending a number of N. C. pamphlets, such as seemed best calculated to meet the point of his inquiries.

REV. AND DEAR SIR,

Jan. 8th, 1849.

"The Principles of Nature, her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind. By and through Andrew Jackson Davis, the Poughkeepsie Seer and Clairvoyant!" You are probably aware of such a work. Have you reason to believe that in the getting up of this work there has been no imposition? Did Davis when in a clairvoyant state utter what is there ascribed to him? Were any of the parties concerned previously tinctured with Swedenborgianism? Have you reason, from independent sources to believe that there is, in fact, what Davis contends for, such a thing as "independent clairvoyance ?" Do all who enter that state agree in their testimony?

Did Swedenborg work miracles, or prophesy? Did he admit that Moses, Jesus Christ, and the Apostles performed the miracles, or did the works, ascribed to them in the Old and New Testaments? Does Swedenborg give any ground of faith in his revelations except his own declarations and what is contained in the nature of his communications? Are there any external evidences of the truth of his testimony? Does the "New Church" believe in eternal damnation? Do Swedenborgians interpret the account of the creation as given in the first Chapter of Genesis by the language of correspondence a day for an infinite time? What reason can be given for this but the necessity of so understanding Moses in order to reconcile his account with the facts revealed by the science of Geology? Is then any independent reason for such an interpretation! If you will be so good as to answer the above you will greatly oblige one who is sincerely but feebly searching for truth.

Yours, &c.

After a lapse of several weeks the following communication was received, enclosing one from the writer's son, which we insert below.

REV. SIR,

Feb. 24th, 1849.

I accept your favors with thankfulness. The volume you speak of I shall be happy to receive. For three months to come, should I live and be well, I expect to have but little spare time to devote to the study of the writings of