but they never carried a people successfully through a long struggle for the establishment of their rights or for any righteous cause. Indeed when we ignore the spiritual in man there seems to be no cause really worth a struggle or a sacrifice. It is the ideal in man that tempts forth his powers-makes him do and dare and suffer. That ideal he guards with sleepless vigilance. Self-respect and all other virtues have their roots in it. A little oxygen in the air, when the vital principle is absent from the body, is sufficient to pull down and disintegrate that mysterious mechanism; but when the vital principle is present it seizes upon this subtle fluid of the atmosphere and makes it feed and sustain the animal life! So a nobler force-the spiritual life in man-presses all his passions and animal propensities, that would else destroy him, into its service-building him up greater and fairer each day, even while his outward man perisheth.

We have seen men that seemed to be decomposing in a moral sense, rotting down by reason of the absence of this spiritual life. No feeling of the Infinite kept them anchored fast to the eternal rectitude, and they went gradually to decay like some old forsaken mansion-the rank ivy climbing around it, taking root in each crevice, while noisome reptiles made their home in its halls. Nay, have we not seen whole nations that seemed to be perishing, not for lack of intelligence or the means of subsistence; but for the lack of that spiritual life that can alone give hope of a future. When the poetic and prophetic faculty dies out from a people, its doom is already written! Nothing but a fresh and, we may say, a miraculous outpouring from the Eternal Spirit can save it from destruction.

We have spoken of the discipline of life, of toil and pain and grief-their relations to the spiritual in man and their suggestion of Immortality. There is a blossoming of manhood and womanhood that is peculiar to the season of youth, whose care and grief have written no line upon the face, when the countenance is fine, and sorrow has not left its baleful mark upon the blood. We rejoice in that beauty of the sublime handiwork of God. Artists seize upon its grandest specimens and take them as the models from which to sketch their still fairer ideal; but there is a later blessing that our manhood puts forth, more beautiful than this!

After the soul has been tried by care and disappointment, and time and sorrow have written deep lines in the faceeven when suffering has made the blood acrid, so that the beauty of such is quite gone-there is the putting forth of the blossoms of immortal beauty. Then it is that the man or the woman seems to have taken on something of the celestial beauty of that world towards which we are all tending being gradually clothed upon with the garments of immortality. Ah, what goodly fellowship is here! What holy content we have in their presence! Men tell us that to look upon lofty mountains gives them a sense and feeling of the Infinite. So when we look upon those long tried but now peaceful souls, we feel as one who has drawn near to the holy mountain where the mystery of godliness dwells. The creature that is capable of this growth, this ideal beauty, cannot be ephemeral, but must have within him the promise of immortality. Admitting

this one grand fact, all the mysteries of this present life, if not solved in the light of it, are yet made rational; and what is not rendered clear to the light of our feeble understandings we can calmly wait for other worlds to explain.

Z. H. H.

ART. XI.

Free Will and Necessity.

[THE article which follows had, in its manuscript form, a history to which we must here refer. It has been our rule to admit articles into the Quarterly, which in their conclusions admit or imply the final and complete triumph of good over evil, the distinctive point in Universalist theology,-and this without much regard to the data from which, or the mental processes by which, this point may be reached. In the following very able dissertation, the intelligent Universalist will find, in clear and unequivocal terms, the central

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point of his doctrinal faith, the ultimate substitution of good for evil throughout the universe of God. Possibly he will find, as we have found, principles as data for the conclusions, to which he is not prepared to assent, and phraseology in connection with assumed effects of sin beyond the bodily life, which he cannot approve. In a note to the author we suggested a change in this phraseology, inasmuch as the popular mind would be likely to understand him as asserting the notion of arbitrary punishment beyond the grave—that is, punishment over and above what inheres in the nature of sin. To this he replied, preferring not to change the words as suggested, yet making the following explicit disclaimer: I distinctly disavow all sufferings in the future life, except what are the real consequences of sin-not implying any extra tortures whatever." These consequences, however, he claims, are not "arbitrary, unnatural, or revengeful," and he avers that they "all tend to good." We also criticized the author's theory of different departments of the mind, called by him "different degrees of the mind," as violating the "unity of consciousness." His reply explanatory of his meaning on the point critisized will be found in a foot-note at the proper place near the beginning of the article. The extracts he gives from Swedenborg, whether convincing or not, are certainly curious. We commend the article as a whole, as a very able discussion of "the great problem"one which, whether or not it imparts new truth, will certainly give the careful reader, salutary mental discipline perhaps the chief good of such discussions.-EDITOR.]

We know of no wiser or more sententious saying in the whole literature of this long and vexed question, than Dr. Hartley's compendious aphorism," Philosophically speaking, there is no such thing as free-will; practically speaking, there is." Not that there is any real contradiction between the philosophy and the practice of the subject, but an apparent one only. Taken in the whole-in the infinite, we are compelled to view the universe, with its Creator, one inevitable movement; whereas, in the parts-in finite, individual relations, the complications and intervolvements are such that the origin of actions appears to be so fully with us, and is so much with us, that all the phenomena of moral agency, responsibility, sin, praise and blame, reward and

punishment, exist with the utmost practical efficiency and sufficiency. Thus, as frequently stated, both sides of this great subject are conspicuously and wonderfully true,--both free-will and necessity, but not, of course, in a sense that man has power to originate a single motion, alone and disconnected from all other existence. Necessity, in a certain form, is true as a purely intellectual thesis; free-will is true to the utmost extent of all practical efficiency, which does not, as we shall see, require that we should be able to originate, independently and non-necessitously, a single mental

movement.

In the outset we would call attention to one truth which is seldom considered in its fulness, which throws great light on the whole subject. It relates to the degrees of the mind, for the most correct conception of which, we confess ourselves indebted to the Swedenborgian philosophy. It will be found, we apprehend, that one great secret and mystery which is ever felt to be attending all contemplations of this subject, pertains to these degrees, and to a proper discrimination of the action, re-action, and interaction between them. Now, this is what the common philosophy and the speculations of nearly all theorists, are particularly lame in. They have no systematic doctrine of the degrees of the mind. It is here that Swedenborg outreaches them entirely.1 In

A criticism of the Editor to the effect that the doctrine of the "different degrees of the mind " seems to violate the "unity of consciousness gives us occasion to explain, somewhat in detail, the meaning we attach to the phrase. These "degrees" are, of course, all connected into one, but have their connection, as Swedenborg would say, by correspondence rather than by continuity; or are "discrete" instead of “continuous” degrees; or as we have sometimes said, they are distinguished by compound continuity instead of single continuity. We subjoin a few extracts from Swedenborg:

"The three degrees of the mind are named natural, spiritual, and celestial. When a man is born, he first comes into the natural degree, and this increases in him by continuity, according to his knowledge, and the understanding he acquires by it, to the highest point of understanding called rationality. Nevertheless, the second, or spiritual degree, is not hereby opened. This degree is opened by the love of uses, derived from intellectual things, that is, by the spiritual love of uses, which is love towards the neighbor. This degree likewise may increase by degrees of continuity, to its summit, and it increases by the knowledges of truth and good, or by spiritual truths. Nevertheless, the third, or celestial degree, is not opened by these, but by the celestial love of use, which is love towards the Lord; and love towards

recognizing the distinctions of the natural, spiritual, and celestial degrees, and their subdivisions, we come to a clearer idea of what the nature of that freedom is which men feel so powerfully. It is common enough to say that the reason must control the senses, and the spiritual nature the animal, but in the fuller and more systematic distinctions of Swedenborg, we are able to state this truth more exhaustively and completely. Thus, if these degrees did not exist, as substantially separated from each other as the apartments of a house, but the mind was one conglomerate, indiscriminate the Lord is nothing else than committing to life the commandments of the Word; of which the sum is, to flee from evils because they are infernal and diabolical, and to do goods because they are heavenly and divine. These degrees are thus successively opened in man.

"So long as a man is living in the world, he knows nothing of the opening of these degrees in him, because he is then in the natural or ultimate degree, and thinks, wills, speaks, and acts from it; and the spiritual degree, which is interior, does not communicate with the natural degree by continuity, but by correspondences, and communication by correspondence is not felt. Nevertheless, when he puts off the natural degree, which is the case when he dies, he comes into the degree which was opened in him in the world; if the spiritual degree was opened, into the spiritual degree, and if the celestial degree was opened, into the celestial degree: if he comes into the spiritual degree, after death, he no longer thinks, wills, speaks, and acts naturally, but spiritually; and if he comes into the celestial degree, he thinks, wills, speaks, and acts according to that degree, and as the communication of the three degrees with each other is effected only by correspondences, therefore the differences of love, wisdom, and use, are such that they have nothing in common by anything of continuity."-Divine Love and Wisdom, 237, 238.

"The knowledge of these degrees is of the greatest utility at this day; for many, in consequence of not knowing them, stand still and stick in the lowest degree, in which are the senses of their body, and on account of their ignorance, which is intellectual darkness, are incapable of being elevated into spiritual light, which is above them. Hence naturalism invades them, as it were spontaneously, as soon as they enter on any investigation and scrutiny concerning the human soul and mind, and its rationality, and more so if they inquire concerning heaven and the life after death." Treatise on Influx, 16. Every man has an inferior, or exterior mind, and a mind superior, or interior. These two minds are altogether distinct; by the inferior mind, man is in the natural world, together with men there, but by the superior mind he is in the spiritual world with the angels there; these two minds are so distinct, that man, so long as he lives in the world, does not know what is performing with himself in his superior mind; and when he becomes a spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not know what is performing in his inferior mind." Apocalypse Explained, 527.