being and yet three persons, we mean that there are three persons, properly speaking, so united as to be truly one being."

This is the doctrine which Dr. B. affirms to be reasonable, and the reasonableness of which he attempts to show ; but upon carefully scanning his argument we find it simply amounts to this, that nobody can prove that it is not reasonable. The following paragraph contains the sum total of his showing in a brief compass. "Is it then against fact? Now all that can be said here is, that so far as we have seen or known human beings, it is a fact that one person is always one being, and without revelation we do not know any other order of created beings. Now it is reasonable to say that it is a fact not observed by us, by the light of nature, that one being should exist in three persons. But it is not reasonable to say that it is against fact, unless we assume that we know all facts in all worlds, for if we admit that there may be in other worlds facts not observed by us in this world the very thing in question may be one of those facts, and to assume that it is not is to beg the question. If God chose to create a mind different from the human mind, could he not do it? It so happens that among men every mind has unity in essence and person. But suppose that God should wish to create a mind, one in essence, and yet existing in three persons, each able to think, feel, choose, and love, and each equal to the rest-can any one say that it is impossible? If mind has an essence, who can deny the possibility of its existing thus ?" This will probably strike our readers as a very enlightened specimen of reasoning, and fairly upon a par with the position that, for aught any one knows to the contrary, God could create another being in every way equal to Himself. What would a christian man reply to such a bold and blasphemous supposition? Would he think for a moment of arraying against it a logical process of refutation? Would he not say that it outraged, in the most horrible manner, what Mr. Morell calls the" intuitional consciousness?" So in the present case; the very primitive perceptions of the human mind, when not sophisticated by the dogmas of the Catechism and the Creed, repudiate at a glance such a Trinity as Dr. B. here sets before us, and which he would fain dignify with the title of rational. How much more rational is Swedenborg's powerful protest against this doctrine in the following paragraphs from the "Canons." "What rational mind, when it hears that before the creation of the world there were three Divine persons called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, does not say within itself when thinking on the subject, What is meant by a Son's being born from God the Father from eternity? How could he be born? And what is the Holy Spirit proceeding from God the Father through the Son from eternity? And how could he proceed and become God by himself? Or how could a person beget a person from eternity, and both produce a person? Is not a person a person? How can three persons, of which each is God, be conjoined in one God, otherwise than in one person? And yet this is contrary to theology, and that to this How can the Divinity be distinguished into three persons, and yet not into three Gods, when yet each person is God? How can the Divine essence, which is one, the same, and indivisible, fall into number, and consequently be divided or multiplied? And how can three divine persons be together and take counsel with each other in the non-extense of space, such as was before the world was created? How could three equalities themselves be produced from Jehovah God, who is One, and thence Sole, Infinite, Immense, Increate, Eternal, and Omnipotent? How can a trinity

of persons be conceived of in the unity of God, and the unity of God in a trinity of per sons?-besides that the idea of plurality destroys that of unity, and vice versa. . . A Trinity of persons is not only above reason, but against it; it is against reason that three persons should have created the universe; that there should have been three persons, and each person God, and yet not three Gods but one, and then three persons and not one person. Will not the future New Church call this age of the Old Church benighted and barbarous, as worshiping three Gods? Equally irrational are the various

That the Divinity before

inferences deduced from the Trinitarian dogma. the world was created was believed to consist, according to the Nicene council and the churches afterwards, of three persons of which each was God, and the second born from the first, and the third proceeding from the other two, is not only above comprehension, but contrary to it, and the faith of a paradox which does violence to the rational understanding It is a faith in which there is not anything of the church, but is rather a persuasive of the false, such as obtains among those who are insane in matters of religion." On the whole we fear that our seeker for deliverance from "suspense," will resort in vain to the orthodox doctors, and would recommend to him to turn his inquiries in the direction of the New Church.

We have received a copy of the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Illinois Association of the New Church, held at Chicago, Oct. 6th, 1849. We have gleaned the following items of intelligence which will not be without interest to our readers. The presiding minister, Rev. J. R. Hibbard, says in his report:—“ In viewing the present state and prospects of the Church, within our bounds, though in some places the motion may seem retrograde, yet upon the whole, we have reason to rejoice and be hopeful. As near as I have learned, there are about 125 adults in this association who have been baptized into the New Church, and rather more than that number of receivers and readers who are not baptized, but whose feelings and sympathies are with us. Of baptized children and youth there are quite as many as of baptized adults; and of children not baptized, but whose parents sympathise with us there are as many more. So that in this State, far enough South to include Springfield, there are about five hundred persons old and young who look to the New Church for instruction. This, compared with the number a few years ago, is not discouraging. And when we remember that there are now more professed receivers of the New Church verities, within the narrow bounds of this association, than there were in the whole christian world sixty, or, at farthest, seventy years ago, we certainly have reason to rejoice at the progress truth has made; and from the past draw encouragement for the future. And while we thus mark the slow but steady progress of the visible church, may we not know that her's is no summer growth to perish by the frosts of autumn? but though, like the cedar, she slowly spreads her branches to the sun, they are ever-green;-though slowly she rears her head towards heaven, her life is as eternal, and her roots as firmly fixed as the everlasting hills-the mountains of Lebanon on which she grows."

The following is the report from a Society located at one of the most important points at the West:

"The Chicago Society commenced its legal existence Sept. 7, 1843, as a Society under the Statutes of this State. Previous to that time, meetings had been held in the house or room of J. Young Scammon, nearly every Sabbath, for worship. The meeting, however, consisting only of Mr. Scammon, his wife, and from one to two or three persons besides. The usual number present did not exceed three in all. The first Newchurchman in the place was Mr. Scammon, who settled here in 1835. Mr. Vincint S. Lovell,

now residing at Elgin, who received the doctrines through Mr. S., was the next receiver. The Society, when legally organized, consisted only of Mr. Scammon and wife, and Mr. Lovell. It remained a legal Society, gradually increasing in numbers, and holding regular meetings for worship in either Mr. Scammon's office, or a room provided for that purpose, until Feb. 25, 1849, when the legal society was consecrated as a religious society, by the Rev. J. R. Hibbard, and the ordinance of baptism administered to all the members present who had not before been baptised.

"The only constitution or articles of faith are the following declaration which is subscribed by each member:

"We whose names are hereunto subscribed, have formed ourselves into a religious society, under the name of The Chicago Society of the New Jerusalem, and have adopted as the platform of our union, the three essentials of the church, as contained in No. 259 of Emanuel Swedenborg's Treatise on the Divine Providence, as follows:

"There are three essentials of the church. The acknowledgment of the Divine of the Lord; the acknowledgment of the Sanctity of the Word; and the life which is called Charity.

According to the life, which is Charity, every man has faith; from the Word is the knowledge of what life must be; and from the Lord is reformation and salvation.

"The society have procured and neatly fitted up a convenient room in the Saloon Buildings, a central situation in the city, for the meetings of the society. Meetings for worship are regularly held at this place every Sabbath morning at 10 1-2 o'clock; and in the afternoon we have recently been trying to hold a small Sabbath school and Bible class. The number of scholars in the Sabbath school is only about half a dozen.

“We have for several years past had the preaching of the Rev. Mr. Hibbard for a portion of the year, and his services have proved so very acceptable that we have now made an arrangement to have him reside among us with a view of devoting his entire services to us as pastor of our society. The society now consists of twenty-one members who reside in the city, and three others who reside elsewhere."

We should hardly perhaps have given insertion to the following from the Springfield Republican, but from the fact, that the lady clairvoyant alluded to is the same that our readers will recollect to have seen an account of in our notice of Mr. Haddock's work on Psycheisin and Somnolism in a previous No. of the Repository. As to the intrinsic truth of what she affirms respecting Sir John Franklin and his ships, as we form no opinion ourselves, we have none to propound to our readers. As they have all the data before them that we have, we leave them to judge for themselves of the degree of credit to be attached to the statement. "MESMERIC ANNOUNCEMENT.-Sir John Franklin has been seen by a clairvoyant of Bolton, England. This discovery was issued several days before the vessel arrived which brought the news which we have already given our readers of that unfortunate navigator. The clairvoyant was uninstructed, and unable to read and write, but when asked to point to the place on the map where she had seen Sir John, she put her finger on the north-west side of Hudson's Bay. She says that it is Sir John's expectation to be in England in nine and a half months. There are three companions with him. Some of his men are frozen in the snow, and parties of them are following on. She visited Sir John Ross's ships, and says that they are frozen into the ice, and that he can't turn his ship round. When asked to show where he was on the map, she pointed to Banke's Land. She expressed great astonishment that clocks varied so much between the points occupied by the two navigators, and said that a watchmaker should be sent to repair them. She described the person of Sir John Franklin, and mentioned, respectively, that he was bald. The account of this mesmeric announcement is authentic, and occurring before the arrival of the vessel which brought the news, occasioned much speculation, and has lost none of its interest since it has in a measure been verified." From subsequent notices in the English papers, we find the fact of these announcements abundantly confirmed, and that they are continuing to attract more and more attention even in the highest circles.

Intelligence has just reached us of the removal to the spiritual world of the Rev. Thomas Goyder, New Church minister at Chalford, England, in consequence of a paralytic shock.

It is very easy for us to conceive that Mr. Lord and his adherents will be ready to charge upon us a very unsatisfactory, if not evasive, mode of conducting the present discussion, because we do not meet his arguments in all points precisely upon the ground on which they are urged. He would fain have us step forth upon the very arena which he has chosen, and consent to the code of combat which he may please to read out to us. As he has been at great pains to elaborate an imposing system of figurative interpretation, so he would demand of us that we shall agree to recognize that system as sound, and to abide by the results to which it may logically bring us. He has apparently no idea of any other style of biblical strategy than that which he has adopted, and no conception that his asserted laws of figures and symbols are not to be regarded as an infallible criterion of whatever interpretation of the prophetical Scriptures may be proposed. But the train of remark to which our preceding articles has been devoted has probably conveyed a hint, at least, that we deem his whole tropological system a mere mass of arbitrary technics devoid of one particle of authority in determining our construction of the import of Holy Writ. By what we are forced to deem a species of hallucination or "hariolation" (to adopt a term of Prof. Stuart's) Mr. L. has wrought himself into the belief, that a correct theory of metaphors, symbols, similes, etc., will afford an infallible clew to the deepest arcana of the Spirit speaking through the Word, which is in

our view a phantasy little less extravagant than if he had supposed that the kingdom of heaven might be opened and entered by an iron key. It is a species of self-imposition effected by virtue of the spell of names; and such is in fact the case in regard to a great portion of the so-called learning both of the past and present. It is little else than sporting a grand array of names and fancying that we come thereby to a truthful knowledge of things.

Mr. L., for instance, has a series of articles in his Journal, entitled, "A Designation of the Figures," occurring in several consecutive chapters of Isaiah, of which the whole drift is to discriminate, specify, and classify the different rhetorical figures, as he would term them, occurring in the prophet. We give a specimen, slightly varied in the form of presentation.

Is. ii. 1. "All nations shall flow unto it." A metaphor in the word flow. Nations cannot flow in the same manner as a river runs. The expression is used to denote that as a river glides in a perpetual current to the point where it enters the sea, so the nations are to go in a continuous line, as it were, or in great numbers, habitually, to the Mount of the Lord's house.

Ver. 3. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." A metaphor in the word go, as the law and word of Jehovah did not literally go from Jerusalem, as persons travel from one place to another.

Ver. 4. "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people and they shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." A synecdoche, the species put for the genusswords and spears for such instruments generally as shall be in use at the period when the prediction is to be fulfilled, and plough-shares and pruninghooks for the implements generally of husbandry.

Ver. 5. "O house of Jacob." A metonymy in the use of house, in place of the family residing in it.

Ver. 11. "O house of Jacob, come ye and let us walk in the light of the Lord." A hypocatatasis, as walking is to the body what the exercise of its faculties is to the soul.

Ver. 7. "There is no end to his treasures; there is no end to his chariots." Two hyperboles in the use of the word end.

Ver. 19. "Go into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, for the glory of his majesty." An apostrophe.

Ch. iii. 1. "For behold, the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water." Hypocatastasis in the use of stay and

staff.

Ver. 8. "For Jerusalem totters, and Judah falls." Metaphors in the use of totters and falls.

Ver. 9. "They declare their sin like Sodom." A similitude.

Ver. 13. "The Lord standeth up to plead; and standeth to judge the people." A hypocatastasis. It is not metaphorical, inasmuch as the altitude and act ascribed to God are possible to him, and appropriate (?). That visible attitude is put in the place of the analogous acts by which he was about to vindicate himself, and manifest his judgment of the people.

Now in all this, what real accession is made to our knowledge? Certain names are bestowed upon certain forms of speech. But what then? Do these names develope the rationale, the philosophy, of the peculiar usages of language which are thus denominated? What