life, in its whole visible extent from the lowest region of the vegetable kingdom, to the highest of the animal, is a dualty. The distinction between male and female is as universal as vitality, and all visible evidence goes to prove that it is the indispensable condition of reproduction, i. e. of vital creation. If we find two elements in all the streams of life, why should we not infer that the same two elements are in the Fountain ?

Swedenborg, in all his writings, labors assiduously to make known that the human form is the archetype of all existences. He insists that every specific society in heaven is in the human form-that the universal heaven is in the human form-and finally that God himself is in the human form. On this foundation, certainly, the only consistent doctrine of the Godhead that can be raised is that of its dualty. For what is the human form? Is it the form of man? or of woman? Nay; it is certainly the form of all that enters into the constitution of human beings, i. e. it is the form of both man and woman. To call a male form alone, the human form, is as absurd as it would be to call the right half of the human body the human form, or to call the odd half of a pair of shears' the shear-form. In our reading of Swedenborg's long discourses on the universality of the human form in heaven, we have a continual desire to ask him which of the two human forms, or rather which half of the human form he refers to? He says nothing, so far as we know, directly on this point; but he leaves us to conclude from the fact that he evidently refers to but one of the two parts of the dual human form, and from the constant use of the word man in designating that part, that he refers to the male half. This being true, it follows that the female half of human nature is not, in his view, of any account, and has no place in the higher regions of heavenly and divine existence. The heaven and the God of his theory, instead of being in the human form, is, if we may use the expression, in the bachelor form-a somi-human anomaly.

For our part, instead of having any repugnance against the idea that God is a bi-personal being, we find all our natural prepossessions in favor of it.We are quite willing that the indications of the created universe should be true that woman as well as man should have her archetype in the primary sphere of existence-that the receptive as well as the active principle, subordination as well as power, should have its representative in the Godhead. And we believe that an unsophisticated child would much prefer the familyidea of a dual head over all'-a Father and Mother of the universe,-to the conception of a solitary God.

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If now we interrogate scripture, we find the testimony of nature exactly and fully confirmed. God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. * So God created man in his own image.' Gen. 1: 26, 27. This is a favorite text with Swedenborg, and he builds large theories on a part of the idea which it presents. But let us have the whole idea. If this passage proves any thing, it proves, even in express terms as well as by implication, the dualty of the Godhead. If man is the image of God, it is fairly to be inferred that God has both parts of human nature, i. e., is bipersonal; and this inference is strengthened by the use of the plural pronoun in the clause-Let us make man,' &c. But we are not left to inference.

The sequel of the passage quoted is this: In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.' Here is an actual specification of the first great feature in the human constitution which makes it an image of God; and that feature is its bi-personality.

In the New Testament we have an account of the manifestation of God. A person appeared in human form, professing to be, not the entire Godhead, but the Son or Word of God, co-eternal with the Father, but subordinate to him. In our controversy with Swedenborg we have no occasion to prove that this person was divine. On that point he accepts the testimony of the Bible as unreservedly as can be desired by orthodoxy itself. Nay, he goes far beyond all orthodoxy, and insists that Christ is not only a divine person, but the only divine person-the Father himself incarnate. He constantly and vehemently maintains that the Lord (by which term he always means Jesus Christ) is Jehovah, the only God of heaven and earth. He is a Unitarian; but he reaches Unitarianism by a road exactly opposite to that which is usually pursued. Like ordinary Unitarians, he first plants himself on that part of the testimony of scripture which asserts the unity of God. But when he comes to dispose of the problem of Christ's nature, he turns his back on While they assume the separate personality of Christ and save the doctrine of the unity by denying his divinity, Swedenborg assumes the divinity of Christ, and saves the doctrine of the unity by denying his separate personality. We think Swedenborg has the more formidable task of the two. It seems easier to get rid of the divinity of Christ than of his distinct personality. But in our view the true theory saves both.

We first plant ourselves on that part of scripture which testifies that God made man in his own image male and female, (from which we infer his bipersonality,) and on the abounding evidence of the divinity and distinct personality of Christ; and then we interpret the assertions of scripture concerning the unity of God by the rule which Christ himself has supplied.The text which Swedenborg most frequently quotes in proof of the absolute identity of Christ with the Father, is John 10: 30-I and my Father are one.' And it may fairly be assumed that this text involves all that is meant by the unity of God as it is elsewhere asserted in the Bible. Now if it can be shown that the unity here intended is consistent with a plurality of persons in the Godhead, the seeming inconsistency between the unity, and the dualty which we maintain, will be removed, and the labors of the common Unitarians to disprove the divinity of Christ, and of Swedenborg to disprove his personality, will be superseded. We conceive that the following sayings of Christ entirely define the sense in which he asserted the unity of himself with the Father:-Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. ** Neither I pray for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.' John 17: 11, 21. The unity here prayed for is expressly declared to be the same as that existing between the Father and the Son; and it is a unity of many persons, and is certainly consistent with their distinct personality. It follows therefore that the unity of God,

in the sense in which Christ and the Bible assert it, is consistent with his bi-personality.

We know no reason why absolute unity of life or spirit is not as consistent with dualty of persons as it is with dualty of powers (love and wisdom, for instance) in one person. Universal common sense recognizes the substantial unity of two persons standing in the relation of husband and wife. As 'God created man male and female, and called their name Adam,' (see Gen. 5: 1, 2,) making of twain one flesh,' (see Gen. 2: 24 and Mark 10: 8,) so the common law of most countries treats man and wife as one being, and in common speech they are called the united head of the family.' On a similar principle we believe that the Bible asserts the unity of God in perfect consistency with the divinity and distinct personality of Christ.

As to its results, Swedenborg's doctrine is much the same as ordinary Unitarianism. In effect, it denies not only the divinity but the existence of the Christ described in the evangelists; for that Christ constantly and in various ways represented himself as a person distinct from the Father. The very names Father and Son necessarily designate two persons; and to say that the two things meant by those names constitute but one individual, i. e. that the Father is the only actual person, is to annihilate the Son. Christ said that he was sent by the Father, that the Father was greater than he, that the Father knew some things which were not known to the Son, &c. In all this, according to Swedenborg, there was but one person concerned; which is as much as to say that the apparent person who said these things was a mere phantom or nonentity. Christ constantly prayed to the Father just as though there was a distinction of personality between them; but Swedenborg's theory turns this into a downright farce, such as it would be for a man to present a formal petition to himself, or for a man's body to pray to his soul. But these incongruities are easily smoothed over by resolving as much of the evangelists' account of Christ as is necessary into apparent truth, and falling back upon the 'internal sense.' In this respect Swedenborg has an advantage over common Unitarians.

The doctrine which only denies the divinity of Christ is certainly less irrational than that which denies his existence. Both equally deprive the Christian scheme of its divine Mediator, and both, in our view, come within the range of the apostle's test- Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God.'

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§ 13. CREATION.

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Ir is commonly believed that God created the universe 'out of nothing! Many, we doubt not, seriously imagine that this is explicitly affirmed in the Bible. Yet it certainly is not: neither is there any thing in the Bible, so far as we know, that suggests or favors such an idea. In Hebrews 11: 3, we are told that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.' But this is not an assertion that things which are seen' were made out of nothing. They were not made of things that do appear,' but they may have been made of things that do not appear; and this is even intimated by the form of the expression. Knapp says that the negative in this sentence is placed by some after the preposition of instead of before it, so that the reading would be things that are seen were made of things that do not appear;' i. e., in fewer words, visible things were made of things invisible. This is a more natural reading than the other; and corresponds better to the definition of faith in the 1st verse, which the apostle obviously had in mind. Faith,' he there says, is the evidence of things not seen.' Here he illustrates that definition, by the fact that God made the visible universe out of things that were not seen. He does not say in the one case that faith is the evidence of things that do not exist; nor does he mean in the other that God made the worlds out of things that did not exist, but simply that he made them of things that were invisible. In this view of the apostle's language, it is obvious that, instead of favoring the dogma that God made the universe out of nothing, it expressly affirms the contrary.And whether we take this view or the other, no assertion or implication of that dogma can be fairly found in the passage.

It may be thought by some that the word create in the 1st verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis, of itself implies creation out of nothing. But this can easily be shown to be a false impression. The primary meaning of the Hebrew word translated create, is to carve; thence it came to mean to form, and finally to make or create. The first two of these meanings certainly imply pre-existing material-something to be carved or formed; and the presumption is that the last meaning is in this respect like the others from which it is directly derived, unless there is decisive evidence to the contrary. We speak of men's making or creating things, not meaning that they had no material with which to work, but that they produced things which in their distinctive form, had no previous existence. Now there is no evidence in Gen. 1: 1 that this is not the meaning, when it is said that God created the heavens and the earth.' Neither the word itself translated create, nor any thing else in the verse, determines the question whether God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, or out of pre-existing material. But in several subsequent verses of the chapter, the same word is used in a way which shows decisively that its proper meaning is to make something new of pre-existing material. In the 21st verse it is said that God 'created great whales.' How did he create them? By speaking them out of nothing?

No. He caused the waters to bring them forth, as appears by what goes both before and after the clause in question. Again in the 27th verse it is said that God 'created man in his own image.' How did he create man? In the 7th verse of the next chapter we are told that he formed man of_the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Here we find the material out of which God created man-dust and spirit;-both pre-existing substances. This demonstrates that the word created in the first chapter is simply equivalent to made in the usual sense; and does not exclude, but actually implies the idea of pre-existing material. The reader will find further evidence that create and make are equivalent words, by comparing the 21st verse with the 25th, and the 26th with the 27th, either in the English or in the Hebrew.

This

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' How did he create them? The writer immediately proceeds to inform us. In the second verse we have an account of the pre-existing material in its chaotic state, without form, and void'-covered with darkness. The first act of creation was the production of light, recorded in the 3d, 4th and 5th verses. was the work of the first day. The second act was the separation of the waters beneath from those above, by a firmament, which firmament God called heaven. See verses 6, 7, 8. The third act was the gathering of the waters beneath into one place, and the bringing forth of the dry land, which dry land God called earth. Ver. 9, 10. It appears plainly by this account that the heaven and the earth were not made in the order indicated by the first verse as commonly understood, i. e. before every thing else, and even before the first day. Heaven was made on the second day, after the production of light; and earth was made on the third day, after the creation of heaven. The first verse then is simply a general statement of the whole transaction, the details of which are given in the discourse that follows. It may properly be regarded as an index or epitome of the whole chapter at the head of which it stands. We are first informed in general terms that God created the heavens and the earth; then follows a detail of the process by which he crea ted them. After this detail, the first general statement is substantially repeated and applied as we have suggested. The second chapter begins as follows-THUS the heaven and the earth were finished.' The obvious import of this is: We said at the outset, that God created the heaven and the earth; we have now related how he did it, recording separately the events of each day.'

The common idea of Gen. 1: 1, represents God as making the heaven and the earth twice over; first at the beginning before the first day, and then again on the second and third days, as recorded in the subsequent verses. The most plausible form of it involves the idea that God made the heavens and the earth by a twofold process, i. e., by first creating the raw material, and afterward manufacturing it,-which is well nigh an absurdity; for if God could create the chaotic material of heaven and earth out of nothing, we may fairly ask why he could not and did not create the finished fabric of heaven and earth directly out of nothing, without going through a double process? Is it not unworthy of the omnipotence commonly ascribed to God,