Died, at Doncaster, on the 2nd of May, 1846, aged 67 years, Elizabeth, the affectionate wife of Ambrose Gleadow, Esq. Mrs. G. was an ardent and sincere recipient of the doctrines of the New Church, and was greatly delighted in hearing them set forth, either by public preaching or in private conversation. During her residence in this neighbourhood, some years ago, Mrs. G. was a highly esteemed member of the Salford Society. Her amiable disposition, unaffected humility, and engaging manners, impressed a lasting memorial of her worth in the bosoms of a select circle of friends. For some years past, it had been her lot to reside at places too remote to allow her the opportunity of enjoying communication with any society of the New Church. This want she endeavoured to supply, as far as possible, by studious attention to the works of the enlightened Swedenborg, and those of subsequent New Church writers. Mrs. G.'s health had for some time been seriously declining; and, latterly, she suffered much from the effects of a violent cough, by which her delicate frame was almost rent to pieces. After gradually sinking for the space of eight or ten days, her happy spirit suddenly quitted its frail mortal tenement. Mrs. G. was most faithfully devoted to the interests and comforts of the partner of her joys and sorrows, to whom the loss of her, humanly speaking, must be felt as a most severe bereavement. But, while we sympathize with him, let us be consoled with reflecting upon the virtues and graces of the deceased's past life; and with the cheering hope which that reflection inspires, that her immortal spirit, having quitted the turmoil of earth-born cares, has entered into "the joy of her Lord," and become the happy participant of the numberless beatitudes of angels. D. H. At Gateshead, February 2nd, 1846, Mrs. George Miller, aged 29 years, a member of the Newcastle Society of the Lord's New Church. Our departed sister was a long but very patient sufferer from the complaint with which she was afflicted; and, notwithstanding the distance she was from our temple of worship, it seemed to be her greatest delight to offer unto her adorable Lord her morning and her evening thanksgiving and praise, for she might be seen often at church when you would have supposed she could not be able to walk home. But it was the same spirit which animated her before her illness, when her attendance on the public worship of the Lord was an example to the members of the society worthy of imitation; and the benefit she experienced was evinced from the constant desire she had, even to her departing hour, of "going to the temple." She is now, we trust (from the exalted virtues which she manifested while here), enjoying that unalloyed worship of the angels in that temple in heaven which is "the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb;" for "blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." On the 20th March, 1846 (at the house of her beloved daughter, Mrs. Johnstone, of Handsworth, near Birmingham), Mrs. Ann Faraday departed from the natural into the spiritual world, in the 78th year of her age. Mrs. F. was introduced to an acquaintance with the heavenly doctrines of the New Jerusalem, about the year 1792, being at that time a young widow, and continued faithful in the profession of them through the remainder of her life. Soon after her reception of the doctrines, she married the Rev. W. Faraday, with whom she lived in most affectionate intercourse to the period of his decease, in 1817. For several years she had been in a declining state of health; and the decease of her excellent and most dutiful son, the late Mr. Samuel B. Faraday, appeared to hasten her own removal. During her probationary course, she bore many and severe trials with peaceful resignation to the Divine will, and which, being attended with purifying and humbling influences, were thus overruled to the promotion of her eternal welfare. ERRATA IN INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY FOR JUNE AND JULY. Page 212, line 21, for "feminine abstraction" read "funereal abstraction." Cave and Sever, Printers, 18, St. Ann's-street, Manchester. M. THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF THE LAWS OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD, AND THE NATURAL, AND THEIR INFLUENCE IN THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MIND. A Lecture delivered before the General Convention, in Boston, June, 1845, by Sampson Reed.* [Extracted from the American New Jerusalem Magazine for April.] THE history of Swedenborg's life, previous to his illumination, is in the highest degree remarkable. His vast erudition on all subjects; his simplicity of character, and apparent forgetfulness of himself, together with his profound reverence of God; his insight into the causes of things, and their true relations to each other, which resulted in the most brilliant discoveries without his seeming to be aware of them; his universality of mind, which reached from the playful and the poetical, to the most profound knowledge of subjects the most abstruse and difficult; his freedom from the bondage of the religious tenets of his day, without the taint of scepticism or infidelity; are perhaps, in themselves, sufficient to make him the most remarkable man of any age. It is evident that the whole course of his studies and of his pursuits was such, under Providence, as to fit him for the great work to which he was afterwards called. As the same things which were useful in preparing Swedenborg to write, must be useful in preparing others to understand what he has written, we cannot but regard a knowledge of the natural world and of the natural sciences as of great importance in their relation to the New Church. And we are confirmed in the same conclusion, when we look abroad into the world, and witness the changes which have taken place during the last century, and remember that their great purpose was the * This gentleman is the author of the popular treatise on the "Growth of the Mind.” N. S. No. 81.-VOL. VII. 2 B establishment of this Church. The natural sciences have been steadily advancing, far beyond their history in any previous period, while some of them have been brought into existence, as it were, entire. Let us consider, for instance, the science of geology. Recent discoveries in this department so far transcend all previous knowledge, that it may almost be said to be a new science. The earth is made to tell its own history; and not only this, but the history of the vegetable and of the animal kingdoms. And this history reaches so far back into the past, that days or years or centuries will not suffice as a measure of the period which has elapsed; but it is divided into great cycles, which present to the imagination a picture almost as boundless, in respect to time, as do the discoveries in the starry heavens, by means of the telescope, in respect to space. We are enabled to read, as in a book, the throes and heavings of the earth; its preparation by fire and by water, and by an almost endless succession of productions in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, before it could be made a fit habitation for man. First appeared the very lowest form of vegetable life, and successively and by slow degrees those which were higher. The creation of the animal kingdom reveals the same universal law. Commencing with the lowest class of living creatures, and ascending through an innumerable series, at length Man appears, to crown the work of creation; the end and the accomplishment of that for which all else had been called into existence, and to which it had tended, as if by a will and instinct of its own. It is said to have been ascertained that the human brain, in the successive periods of its formation, assumes the appearance of the brain of all grades of animals, from the lowest to the highest; thus presenting, as in a mirror, the tendency in the lower forms of life to emulate, rise into, and sustain the higher. And as there was in the first work of creation, so there continues to exist from the Divine, in its ultimates-in the mineral kingdom-an effort to produce new and higher orders of existence, and thus return through the forms of vegetable and animal life up to man, and through man to Him who is the "Alpha and the Omega,-the beginning and the ending,-the first and the last,"-" who sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers." This tendency of all things to return to the fountain of life from which they proceed, is caused by the Divine Love, the essence of which is to produce conjunction with itself. "There are," says Swedenborg, "always two forces, which keep everything in its connection and in its form-a force acting from without, and a force acting from within, in the midst of which forces is that which is kept in connection and form; thus also man is kept in his connection and form, as to singular his parts, even the most minute."-A. C. 3628. As the atmosphere, or the sphere of the natural world, braces and supports the body, and holds all its parts in connection, so the outward force or tendency of which I have spoken supports the inner life. Without it this life would have nothing on which it could act, but would flow through and be dissipated. The discoveries in geology and other kindred sciences, while they shake the foundations of the former Church like an earthquake, only serve to reveal and to establish those of the new. But when Swedenborg was called to reveal the internal sense of the Scriptures, all his previous preparations were crowned with the opening of his spiritual senses. He became conscious that he was an inhabitant of both worlds; for the inhabitants and objects of both were made manifest to him. The great end for which he had been led to cultivate the natural sciences, was not that his memory might be filled with a heap of knowledges, but that his rational mind might be perfected; and the end for which this was perfected, was that he might rise above the natural world into the spiritual, and not only see and describe such things as the prophets had seen and described, but understand them rationally. He was instructed in the laws, and, so to speak, in the sciences of the spiritual world, as he had previously learned the sciences of the natural. He not only saw spiritual things in the light of his understanding, but he saw and touched them in their outward substantial forms. His writings possess, in consequence, a fulness and depth and power wholly unlike those of any other man. All must have been struck with the manner in which the truths and doctrines which are revealed, are interspersed throughout with things heard and seen in the spiritual world. The latter always form an accompaniment to the former; and our reception must be imperfect, so far as we do not perceive the perfect harmony between the two. But this is not all. The truths themselves are presented to our view with a degree of distinctness which would have been utterly impossible under other circumstances; for there is no abstract truth which can be comprehended by the human mind, without assuming, more or less remotely, the ultimate form of a sensual image. Swedenborg affords, perhaps, the most remarkable example on record of a truly rational man. The end for which he was prepared, in a manner almost miraculous, to understand the laws of the spiritual world, was that he might reveal them to others; and the great purpose for which we are permitted to live in this world, and to which the natural sciences may eminently contribute, is, that we may be prepared to live in the spiritual world, and to understand and love its laws. The philosophy proper to the New Church rises above the outer into the inner world; it embraces not only all the sciences hitherto known, but it ascends to their common fountain, the science of sciences,—the correspondence of external things with internal, of the natural with the spiritual. We learn from Swedenborg, that the spiritual world is, to appearance, similar to the natural. There are mountains, hills, and valleys; trees, and grasses, and flowers, as well as animals, in that world, as there are in this. But they are there from an origin purely spiritual; and here they exist from a spiritual and a natural origin combined. And the laws of the two worlds are entirely distinct, like the ends for which they were created. The great use and purpose of the natural world is, that it may be the seminary and the basis of heaven. There are no angels who originally were born or created such. It is according to the order of creation, and essential to that which is truly human, that it should begin to exist in the natural world. There could not be otherwise the full measure of a man; for the ultimate or external of true humanity would be wanting; and without this there could be no reaction, no freedom, no rationality. Without the externals of the mind, there would be nothing into which that which is spiritual could close, and on which it could rest. In the spiritual world animals are not continued by generations, nor vegetables by seeds, as with us; but the things without angels and spirits are created instantly in correspondence with their affections and thoughts. The objects in that world are often spoken of as mere correspondences, and as appearances; and I have been sometimes apprehensive that this language would leave the impression of a want of reality in regard to them. The word "mere is often applied to things of which we make little account. But by mere correspondences are meant, simply pure correspondences. So, in common language, a thing is said to be an appearance, which is not real. But when Swedenborg speaks of appear ances in the spiritual world, he means simply those objects which appear before the eyes of angels and spirits; and these are more real than material things. And the fact that external things there depend on internal, may at first leave the impression that they are fleeting and transient, and constantly passing away to have their places supplied by new objects. But if we look into the causes of these appearances, this impression will be corrected. Let us consider a society of angels. This society corresponds to some organ in the Grand Man. It has its peculiar love and its peculiar use, which will be for ever perfected and become more and more distinctly its own, but can never be changed for others. The case may be compared to the countenance of a person in successive periods of his life, or as it is lighted up by new feelings or emotions. There are changes, |