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is charity. United to love it grows in ever-increasing luxuriance and beauty, separated from love it perishes. Now this is indicated in the next portion of this address-"Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love."

The first love of the Ephesian Church has generally been interpreted of her zeal. The zeal of the primitive church was wonderful. Men under its influence were led to relinquish their worldly possessions and prospects, and in dependence on their Divine Head and trust in His providence, to devote their lives to extend the knowledge of the truth. But zeal is the expression and manifestation of love, and may arise from Christian or unchristian motives. There is a zeal which is "not according to knowledge," and there is also a zeal which is not according to charity; but which, springing from self-love, is united with uncharitableness of feeling, and bitter enmity against those who do not favour the party to which it is allied. Genuine zeal is kindled from the fire of divine love. It has its origin in the love of the Lord, and the desire to build up His kingdom of truth and righteousness in the earth. It is the manifestation of our love of the neighbour, whom it seeks to benefit and to bless. The "first love," therefore, is this deeper element of the Christian life, the love of the neighbour, springing from the still deeper and holier love of the Lord. The word "first" refers not to the order of time, but to dignity of subject. In the order of time faith is the first. The mind is first attracted to the truth. Interest in its instructions is excited. Inquiries are made, truth is embraced, and obedience becomes the order of life. But underlying all these mental movements and spiritual progressions is the desire which has given them birth, and the affection by which they are sustained. Faith has thus its unseen and incipient beginning in love. And the end to which it aspires and in which it finds its perfection, its saving efficacy and its accomplished purpose, is charity, or the love of the neighbour. Without charity it is as the light of winter-displaying, it may be, the crystallized forms of many intellectual beanties, but leaving the heart cold and fruitless. But faith united with love,

is as the same light in the season of spring and summer, when, united with the vernal heat, it calls forth the blossoms of plants, ripens their fruits, and clothes the earth with beauty. To leave the first love, therefore, is to depart from charity, which is the true life of religion, and to occupy the mind with the barren speculations of a merely intellectual faith.

In this departure from charity is the ground of all decline in religion.

It is departure from love which renders faith cold and profitless. Separated from charity, which is its true life, faith becomes allied with self-love, generates the pride and dogmatism of self-intelligence, becomes impatient of contradiction and intolerant of departure from authorized opinion, and ends in persecution and cruelty-thus in the utter extinction of the first principles of true religion. Christianity in modern times affords sad evidence of this departure from the first love both in doctrine and practice. Doctrine has represented faith alone as sufficient for salvation; and the life has been too often in harmony with the faith. Selfish and worldly passions have nestled securely under the teachings of the church, the teachers themselves being not unfrequently as worldly-minded as their hearers. Towards the middle. and close of the last century error and evil, like a cloud of night, had spread a mantle of darkness over the church, obscuring her faith and life, and rendering new agencies necessary for her restoration to the state from which she had fallen.

One of the first means of restoring the church is the restored remembrance of the truth from which she had fallen. It is by calling to mind the relation of this truth to love and obedience of life that the church is led to repentance, which involves departure from the evils. and errors, which have sprung up under the influence of faith when separated from charity. And this departure from evil and error opens the way to new affections of Christian meekness and love, and to the cultivation of a life of genuine good works. These are "the first works," the works of charity and brotherly affection, from which the Church had departed. And the danger of neglecting these duties is included in the exhortation to their observance-" Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent." The Church is not light but a recipient of light. The true light is the Lord, the Church is the candlestick whereby this light is to be held aloft, and its rays diffused upon the nations. The light is truth which in its union with love enlightens and guides the mind to newness of life, and reveals the beauty of a new creation. Separated from love the light sets in darkness, and the candlestick of the Church is removed out of its place. The only means, therefore, of preserving the knowledge of the truth, is by uniting it with the love of goodness, and embodying both these sublime affections in the cultivated treasures of wisdom and holiness.

The decline of the Church is relieved, however, by one testimony to the truth. "But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." Great obscurity attaches to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. The opinions of the ancient expositors are conjectural and not reliable. The supposition that they were a sect of Gnostics descended from Nicolas, one of the first deacons (Acts vi. 5), rests upon no sufficient authority, and the few other conjectures which have come down to us are equally uncertain. Swedenborg says, "that the works of the Nicolaitans are meritorious works, has been made known by revelation." This connects the doctrine of the Nicolaitans with the doctrine of merit. Now amid much false doctrine and many mistaken practices, the Reformers, and after them the Puritans, were swift witnesses against the doctrine of the merit of our own works. Unable, however, from their doctrinal standpoint to look upon works otherwise than as meritorious, they became jealous of their practice, and hence sunk into an exclusive devotion to faith and doctrine, and into bitter controversy and uncharitable contention.

The promise made to this Church is in harmony with its representative character. "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God." The paradise of God is a garden eastward in Eden. Eastward is, spiritually, in the region of love. The garden is a symbol of intelligence and wisdom. The trees of the garden are the perceptions of the varied truths which constitute this wisdom. The tree of life is our perception of the Lord as the true life and the source of all felicity and good. The tree of knowledge, the self-intelligence which leads the mind away from God, and fills it with the vain imagination of its own fancied superiority and glory. The tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God, therefore, is wisdom rooted and grounded in love-intelligence aglow with the fervour of charity. The promised blessing, therefore, is the restoration of the Church which has declined from truth, and wandered from goodness and from God; and, with her restoration, the opening to her delighted vision of a new paradise of spiritual wisdom and glory, in the midst of which will be the tree of life, the Lord in His wisdom and love as the central object of her faith and love; and by her conjunction with Him as her Divine Head and true life, and the appropriation of His love and wisdom in her affections and thoughts, she will eat of this tree of life and live for ever.

R. S. H.

145

THE ETERNITY OF THE HELLS.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY."

DEAR SIR,-Will you permit me to direct attention to the following interesting extracts from Swedenborg's Spiritual Diary:—

In paragraphs 384-6, "On Hell and the Infernal Crew," -our author in speaking of the lowest hell says, "It is more grievous than that it can ever be described, nor was it in mercy permitted by God Messiah that I should be let down thither. I was afterwards told from heaven that such are there as have so very little of the human principle left, that they remain there for centuries some having been there already twenty centuries. There are, however, none of those there who perished in the time of the flood, but they have been brought out of that direfully infernal tun; and there are those who have been created anew (et qui e novo creati sint). These things were seen by me in full wakefulness, and at the same time in vivid thought, together with speech, so that it is a pure truth. Dec. 1, 1747."

In paragraph 228,-"On the State of the Damned in Hell," we read : "I was let down to the unhappy in hell that I might perceive their state, and hence announce to the world that there is a hell, especially to the unbelievers-not only that there is a hell, but also what the state of those is who are there; this state indeed I cannot sufficiently describe. I heard lamentations of this kind :-O God! O God! Jesus Christ, have mercy! Jesus Christ, have mercy! and this for some time, to which I at first directed my attention; . . . they suffer ineffable torments; but it was permitted to relieve or console them with a certain degree of hope, so that they should not entirely despair. For they said they believed the torment would be eternal. They were relieved or consoled by saying that God Messiah is merciful, and that in His Word we read that the prisoners will be sent forth from the pit' (Zech. ix. 11); it was told them that the pit signifies hell, which I heard confirmed from above. These things were stated to them that they might receive some consolation, which they said they did then feel. But what is still more wonderful, and what I can attest as worthy of belief, because it is true, is, that God Messiah, being moved with inmost mercy, appeared out of heaven to these spirits, and indeed, as was told me, in glory; I could also discern it, but not so manifestly as those unhappy spirits; from which appearance they confessed that they received great consolation. I am now informed that the angels also consoled them, and that they would continue to console them. Moreover, I desire to state this fact, for I know it to be true, because I have perceived it, that many of them have been raised from hell and torments into heaven, where they now live, and that it appeared to a certain one who had been in the greatest torment as though God Messiah embraced and kissed him (See Luke xv. 20). Afterwards several were delivered from hell and raised up into heaven.”

In what sense are we to understand the above passages? Yours, &c., INQUIRER.

We understand Inquirer's object in writing to be to ask whether these passages do not teach the non-eternity of the hells. As nothing can be more clear and positive than the teaching of the Writings on this subject, we have only to inquire how these passages are to be understood. As they are quoted from Mr. Smithson's translation, our correspondent has, of course, read the notes to No. 228 by the Latin editor and the English translator. Dr. Tafel merely refers to statements in the Writings which show that both before and after the date of this entry the author taught the eternity of the hells. Mr. Smithson traces the passage itself in the Diary to the Arcana, where it

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appears in a somewhat different form, but more full and explicit on the point in question. No. 228 of the Diary reappears in 699 of the Arcana, where it commences thus: "That I might be a witness of the torment of those who are in hell, and also of the vastation of those who are in the inferior earth, I was sometimes let down thither." In the Diary nothing is said about those who are being vastated in the inferior earth, but this addition in the Arcana shows that they must be included in the description. It appears, therefore, that those who implored mercy, and received consolation, and finally obtained deliverance, are the prisoners of hope (Zech. ix. 11) in the lower earth of the world of spirits, which is indeed a temporary hell, where terrible sufferings are endured by those who have much to put off, but have a remnant that can be saved, and which is the means of saving them. There is another passage in the Arcana, which Mr. Smithson has not referred to, that explains another part of the passage in the Diary, and which also shows that it relates to those who are undergoing vastation in the middle state. After describing several classes of those who undergo vastation, the author says, "Those who have fully confirmed themselves in false principles are reduced to a state of absolute ignorance, when such is their obscurity and confusion, that if they only think of the notion in which they have fortified themselves they are seized with inward pain. After a stated time, however, they are as it were created anew, and become principled in the truths of faith" (A. C. 1109). Thus the new creation which those suffering souls experience is not restoration from a state of confirmed evil, but from a state of confirmed error; and those who have been reduced to a state of absolute ignorance, and brought into new truth and a new faith, must indeed have a sense of a quasi new birth, for this is all that the author here asserts of them.

The lower earth, and the state of those who remained sometimes for ages there, are frequently treated of in the Writings. "The lower earth is proximately beneath the feet, and the region round about to a small distance. In that earth are many after death before they are elevated into heaven; mention is also made of this earth in the Word throughout; beneath it are the places of vastation which are called pits; below these places, and round about to a great extent, are hells. Hence it is in some measure evident what is meant by hell, what by the lower earth, and what by the pit, when they are mentioned in the Word" (A. C. 4728). "The lower earth," we are further informed, "is where those are kept who have been in principles of the false, and in a life grounded in the false, and yet in good as to intentions. Such persons cannot be received into heaven until they have put off the principles of the false and the delights thence derived. Those who are there are let into temptations, for principles of the false and the delights of life thence derived, can only be cast out by temptations" (A. C. 5037). Another passage may be quoted which not only explains what is meant by the pit, which in this part of the Diary is called, or is comprehended under the general term, hell, but which also gives a reason for the long detention of some in these places of vastation. "There is a great mystery, which has never as yet been known in the Church, wherefore it is expedient it should be made known. Those are called spiritual, who are such as can be regenerated only as to the intellectual-part, but not as to the will-part, in whose intellectual-part therefore a new will is implanted by the Lord, which will is according to the doctrinals of faith peculiar to their Church. Such persons were only saved by the Lord's coming into the world; the reason of which is, that the Divine principle passing through the heavens, which was the Divine Humanity before the Lord's coming, could not reach to them, inasmuch as the doctrines of their Church were for the most part not true, and hence the good, which is of the will, was not good. Because

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