and limitary fact about Him, or rather by seeing in these facts only their universal spiritual meaning, the meaning they reflect upon universal man in relation to God. All the literal facts-Christ's life, death, and resurrection,—are unspeakably precious-why? Because they contain some magical virtue? Assuredly not, but only because they reveal a truth which they do not constitute, a truth which relates universal man to God. Spiritual Christianity drops out the carnal Jesus, or no longer sees Christ after the flesh. It drops the man born of the virgin Mary, six feet high more or less, of an uncomely aspect, bent and seamed with sorrow, to see henceforth the glorified or Divine Man who is the intimate and omnipresent secret of creation. Spiritually viewed, Christ is the inmost and vital selfhood of every individual bosom, bond or free, rich or poor, good or evil, whether such bosom be reflectively conscious of the truth or not. But in saying this I should be very sorry to be understood as saying, that the literal Man Jesus of Nazareth becomes lifted out of His native environment, and personally inserted in every individual bosom. This would be too absurd. What then do I mean? I mean simply to indicate the spiritual significance of the Christ. I mean to say that the birth, life, death and glorification of Christ spiritually imply, that infinite love and wisdom constitute the inmost and inseparable life of man, and will ultimately vindicate

their creative presence and power by bringing the most degraded and contemned forms of humanity into rapturous conscious conjunction with them. When I think spiritually of the Christian truth, I do not think of Jesus personally, except as it were to anchor or define my thought. I think quite away from Him personally indeed, and fix my attention upon what is universal to man, or upon the life of universal human fellowship which the Divine love is now engendering in your bosom and mine, and that of all other men, by the stupendous ministry of science. The Christian facts attest, reveal, predict this universal spiritual life of man, this redemption of the natural mind, because they are a real ultimation of it. Every incident of Christ's personal history grew out of this unseen and unknown Divine operation in humanity, and were thus a mystical and endless revelation of it, such a revelation as human intelligence permitted. There could have been no scientific information upon the subject of course, because no angel even knew the wonders of the Divine love implied in the intimacy of His conjunction with human nature. By the very necessity of the case, therefore, the great and inscrutable truth could only look forth under a veil, and wait for the gradual unfolding of human reason to be discerned in its just spiritual proportions. That just discernment is now taking place. Men are everywhere now beginning to drop the tedious cant of mere per

sonal homage to Christ, and insist upon finding a universal humanitary meaning in His truth, a meaning which shall vitally associate with God every man of woman born, whatever be his natural limitations and infirmities.

Thus the Divine Incarnation is with me a spiritual truth before-or, in order to its-becoming a natural one. I value the natural facts only because they contain something higher and better than themselves, something which relates you and me and all mankind to the inmost and exhaustless heart of God. The entire history of the church from Adam to Christ inclusive, is only a series of effects from a real Divine operation in the spiritual world, which is the universal mind of man; and your and my spiritual experience with that of our remotest natural descendants, constitute the substance of that world, quite as much as does that of Moses or David. The spiritual world, or the mind of man, is out of space and time; and all God's alleged spiritual judgments which were expressed or ultimated in the life of Christ, claim your and my bosom for their veritable ground or arena, quite as much as they do that of any one who died before Christ. Thus we can spiritually understand Christianity only in so far as we rightly apprehend the life which is taking place in our own bosoms and that of our contemporaries. All the Swedenborgs who ever lived will not avail us here, but only the clear and

reverential insight into what God is now effecting in the universal mind of man. I for my part see, very clearly, that God is begetting by the ministry of science such a recognition of human society, fellowship, or equality in the bosom of man, as that bosom has never conceived, much less known, and can never again lose sight of: such a recognition, indeed, as must ere long prostrate every throne and altar now erected upon the twin dogmas of human inequality and depravity, and by means of such prostration bring the whole disunited family of man into conditions of mutual knowledge, love and reverence. And seeing this,

I see that such and no less is the spritual force of Christianity: that this boundless blessing of God upon man's natural life, and by means of that upon his spiritual life, is the great and universal burden of the Christian letter, and I consequently value that letter not with any servile estimation, but with the hearty relish of one who has tasted its endless and ineffable spiritual

contents.

Yours truly,

LETTER III.

MY DEAR W.

Paris, Oct. 1.

THE great disease of the religious mind at present is, that it obstinately persists in looking upon religion as a private question instead of a public one, as an affair of the individual conscience instead of the associated one. One is not surprised at the old sects continuing in this traditional way, but I am surprised that you, who read Swedenborg, should not have begun to get out of it, for Swedenborg shews us in every page of his books, that revelation proceeds upon strictly universal principles, and that not one single word of it is to be spiritually interpreted in a private or personal sense.

The old theory of religion is that God is a respecter of persons, that He approves one sort, the morally good, and saves them; and disapproves another sort, the morally evil, and damns them. Viewed spiritually, of course this is arrant superstition, because all men are alike worthless in the Divine sight, the morally good and the