ment of the creative Wisdom. Obviously then it admits only of a symbolic anticipation, or a revelation by means of natural types and shadows such as we have in the OLD and NEW Testament Scriptures.

But here you may ask, "What is the necessity of any revelation at all? Why should mankind have needed a revelation either direct or indirect, either open or symbolic ?" I have answered this question by implication in a dozen places, but I am glad of the opportunity to give it a full and explicit solution. I shall proceed to do so in my next Letter.

Yours truly,

LETTER XVIII.

MY DEAR W.

Paris, Jan. 12th, 1857.

YOUR present intellectual demand may be interrogatively expressed thus: Why does the Divine creation involve the necessity of a revelation? This is only asking in other words, what is the scientific force of the logos, or creative WORD: or still again, why has the Church hitherto been the leading feature of human history. I do not profess myself to be an adept, but only a learner, in these sublime fields of inquiry, and I am besides subject to a painful suspicion that I do not concisely report what I clearly enough apprehend: yet as the faintest exhibition of truth is powerful to dislodge error, I have no doubt that I shall be able to satisfy your reasonable demands in some sort, if I am only sustained by your cheerful attention and goodwill.

The entire philosophy of the creative Word or logos, is to be found in the fact that the creative nisus is not physical but purely spiritual: in other

words, that creation is never an absolute but strictly a rational-never a wilful but strictly an orderly procedure on the part of God, involving a due adjustment of ends to means and of both to effects. But all this is too succinct for use without elucidation. Let me rather say then that the reason why creation seems to involve a previous literal revelation of the Divine name, or implies both a letter and a spirit, is that God creates only forms or subjects of life, never life itself. Properly speaking, creation is always a redemptive process, consisting in the bringing life out of death, good out of evil. The Divine creation, in other words, always pre-supposes a field of existence, or consists in God's giving real being to what in itself possesses only a seeming being. It is a logical contradiction to suppose God giving being to what does not even exist, to what does not even appear to be, or to what is destitute of self-consciousness: because this would be tantamount to supposing that He gives being to nothing, which is denying creation. Nothing does not exist. To suppose God giving being to nothing therefore, to what does not exist, to what does not possess even an apparent being, is precisely the same as affirming a realm of non-existence within the universe of being, that is, within the scope of the creative operation. It is to make nothing convertible with something, non-existence equivalent to existence : which is the mere wantonness of absurdity. Only

things exist, and nothing has no existence. In denying then that God gives being only to what exists, only to conscious or visible existence, we virtually affirm that He gives being to nothing, and so deny creation altogether. The old orthodox theological formula does indeed say, that God creates all things out of nothing but this only means that no mere thing is the creative source of any other thing, much less of all other things: or that all sensible existence claims a strictly spiritual and supersensuous being. It by no means professes to be a scientific appreciation and statement of the facts in the case.

No, as Swedenborg shews in his pregnant little treatise on the Divine Love and Wisdom, God creates ex vi termini only forms or subjects of life in which He may dwell as in Himself. He cannot, as we have seen, create being of course; because "creating" means giving being, just as making" means giving form, and what arrant nonsense it would be to say that God gives being to being! From the very necessity of the case He creates or gives being only to subjective forms, that is, to organized or conscious existence.* Thus all true creation implies a subsidiary process of formation or making. And God blessed the seventh

* "Absolute being" as it is called, is unconscious or inorganic being, is being without form; and unformed being is non-existent being, for existence means the going forth of substance into form, means, that is to say, a process of formation.

day and hallowed it, because in it He rested from all the work which He CREATED TO MAKE. That is to say, when the creature is properly made or formed, and not before, the true divinity of his source unequivocally avouches itself: then, and not till then, God's rest or sabbath in him is accomplished, for then first He is able to fill him with the fulness of His immortal innocence, and with the exhaustless power and peace which that innocence conveys.

Now we have already seen that the human form or selfhood alone is equal to this great destiny, because it is the only one in which the universal element serves the individual one. In the human form alone the feminine element (meaning by that term whatsoever is internal, spiritual, and private) transcends the masculine (meaning by that term whatsoever is external, natural, and communistic). Thus the human form is essentially spontaneous or free.* Man alone possesses spiritual indivi

* I use these words synonymously, because we know no positive freedom which is not convertible with spontaneity. Our spontaneous force argues a complete accord between life and existence, between what is real or essential in us and what is merely phenomenal or constitutional, that is to say, between the private individual self hood and the common universal nature. It springs indeed from the perfect marriage-fusion, or unity, of our spiritual with our natural parts, and is aptly typified by all the wealth of that angelic bond. Thus in spontaneous action the outward or natural individuality freely obeys the inward or spiritual one, finds life and delight in doing so : just as in the angelic marriage the husband is secondary or passive, and the wife pri