ページの画像
PDF
ePub

we are not responsible for; and I should be very sorry if it were supposed for a moment that, in our desire to co-operate with Christians in the far East, we were neglectful of our more intimate relations with our fellow-Christians who live nearer to us."

[ocr errors]

CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS OPINION IN PROTESTANT CHRISTENDOM. In the course of an article on the Disestablishment Movement in the Fortnightly Review for March, the Rev. R. W. Dale makes the following remarks:-"During the last three hundred years a great change has passed upon Prostestant Christendom. The change amounts to revolution-not in religious faith, but in religious opinion—a revolution which in some of its aspects is quite as grave as that which divided Western Christendom in the seventeenth century. Orthodox Protestant theologians retain the substance of the creed of the Reformers, but the definitions of nearly all the principal articles of that creed have been re-cast. The method of theology has been gradually modified, and whenever there is modification of scientific method there will be modifications of scientific results. Contrast the sermons, the theological treatises, the commentaries produced by every school in the English Church during the Carolinian and Elizabethan periods, with the works written by the theologians of every school in the English Church in our own time, and it will be obvious that English theology has not escaped from the influences by which the theology of Continental Protestantism has been transformed. Evangelicals do not write about free-will, original sin, and the atonement, in the way in which the Calvinistic reformers in the reign of Elizabeth wrote about the same doctrines. The Evangelicals write in another way because they think in another way. Broad Churchmen stand on different ground altogether from that on which the Latitudinarians of the seventeenth century stood, and even if it were not so, Latitudinarianism had nothing to do with shaping the Book of Common Prayer. The High Anglicans and Ritualists approach, no doubt, very near to the position of the Laudian divines; but the divines of the sixteenth century, to whom we owe the Prayer Book, would have regarded both Laud and the Ritualists with dismay and horror."

LUTHERANISM AND FREE THOUGHT.

Rationalism has penetrated Lutheran Denmark. The ideas of certain English writers-such as Darwin, Mill, and Spencer-have obtained great acceptance among the young men at the University. The party has found a leader in a Dr. Braudes, a writer on æsthetics of great learning and reputation. The Professor of Mathematics in the Copenhagen University, Dr. A. Steen, has lately come to the front as a champion of progress. On the occasion of the anniversary of the Reformation, held last November, he gave an address before the University, in which he called in question the propriety of regarding that great movement as having anything to do with true intellectual liberty. He argued that the Reformation was simply an exchange of bondage—from the authority of the Church to the authority of the Bible. This oration, since published, has occasioned a warm controversy, in the course of which it has become clear that the party of progress, while protesting against the paralyzing influence of the Church upon University teaching, has begun to cherish the hope of destroying the no less hurtful action of the Church in the State. Professor Steen's charge against the Church is, that she has, by the teaching of a rigid and unscientific theology, placed herself in collision with the progressive scientific teaching of the University. The controversy between science and the Bible is thus being pursued, and men in their unwisdom, instead of seeking a wiser interpretation, reject the "oracles of God." This result is to some extent chargeable upon the Church. Doctrines and practices opposed to enlightened reason and sound morals lose their hold upon instructed minds, and in their exposure and rejection is danger of the loss of faith in revealed religion.

PROGRESS OF THE DOCTRINES OF THE NEW CHURCH.-The Messenger of February 9th says: "The evidence is constantly increasing that the writings of the New Church are beginning to attract the favourable attention of both ministers and people in the various denominations of the Christian Church. have heard, within a few weeks, of seven ministers, who belong to the Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian Churches respectively, who are earnestly

We

reading our writings, and with general acceptance. Some of these have reached the point where they can see that they must soon openly avow their belief in them. Within three weeks Swedenborg and his writings have been mentioned with approval in two pulpits by popular preachers in New York. There has never been a time when there was such a widespread and deep interest in the doctrines of the New Church as there is now."

ATONEMENT. A reviewer in the Nonconformist having offered a novel etymology of this word, the following letter by the Head-Master of Mill Hill School (R. F. Weymouth) appeared in a subsequent issue of the paper :

"The interest which every reader of our English Bible must feel in the question-what is the true signification of our word atonement ?-will, perhaps, suffice as my excuse for calling attention to the remark of a reviewer in your current number (p. 1208, col. 1), who speaks of the derivation of the word from at-one-ment, as an etymology abandoned by nearly all philologists now in favour of the far more probable origin of the word from at-tone, to attone, or to harmonize two instruments in discord.'

"No doubt your reviewer has some grounds for his assertion, but the only modern authorities whose opinion I can find distinctly stated (Halliwell, Latham, Wedgwood) maintain the old derivation; and indeed I am at a loss to know how any scholar who is at all familiar with our early literature can have any doubt on the subject.

[ocr errors]

"The fact is, at one is an adverbial phrase which has been recognised in our language for many centuries in the sense of agreed or reconciled. (See Stratmann, Hearne's Robert of Gloucester,' p. 620, and my edition of Bishop Grosseteste's 'Castle of Love,' Glossary, s. v., where the origin of the phrase is explained.) From this the verb to at-one was very naturally formed, apparently in the Elizabethan period; for is seems to occur first in Shakespeare.

"The occasional late misspelling with tt, which we find both in the verb and in the adverbial phrase, is an argument of no weight whatever; and as to pronunciation, the rhymes of Chaucer and all our early poets show the numeral one (notwithstanding our now calling it

wun) to have been pronounced like the same letters in bone, stone, &c., and as we still sound it in al-one, on-ly, and, I venture still to think, in at-one.

"As to the verb attune, I can find no evidence of its having existed in our language till Milton introduced it, many years after King James's Version was made; nor have I met with any passage where attone contains even apparently a musical allusion."

DEATH AND BURIAL.-Under this title the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies has an article in the March number of Good Words, in which are many sentiments closely akin to the teaching of the New Church respecting the resurrection. Whilst we are living our bodies are not durable. Every day we are parting with something from our tissues, and adding something to them. The resemblance of death to sleep is only an appearance. The body does not wake, but passes to decay. "The body," says Mr. Davies, "is evidently mortal, in the fullest sense of mortality; but we believe man to be immortal. We are thus constrained to distinguish between a man and his decaying body. There are powerful instincts in human nature which refuse to admit that a man is nothing more than his body of flesh and blood. The human race in general has believed in immortality; and as this faith has been prompted by the more spiritual affections, we do not wonder to observe that the belief in immortality, whilst it has been refined, has been also deepened and strengthened by the moral growth of humanity." Christianity gives us a firm assurance of an existence over which death has no power. "But our faith in immortality being thus spiritual, we ought not to pledge it to physical ideas which are proved to be untenable. When we have learned that our bodies of flesh and blood are not stable, even whilst we live, for an hour, and that what happens to be the body at the moment of death quickly passes into other forms, in which it mingles with the soil and the air, and enters into vegetation, and through the air and vegetation into other animal bodies, our conclusion ought to be that we must not lodge our hopes of immortality in the body of corruption. clear to us by these observations that the immortal man does not reside in

It is made

these mortal remains.

appears to be, that the living person seds off the body in which he goes through the change called death as completely and finally as he has shed off parts and particles of his body through out his life.'

66

The truth and unmistakable distinctions between
the New Church and modern Spiritual-
ism were clearly pointed out, and the
impossibility of the union of the two
systems made clearly manifest. To this
letter a reply is published on the side of
Spiritualism. In the course of this
reply is the following admission:-
"Spiritualists are of all shades of reli-
gious opinion,-from the most orthodox
type of Evangelicalism to the most wild
and fanatical shapes of fantastic Nation-
alism which home-made creed construc-
tion can produce. But in all cases the
religious or irreligious creed depends
upon the man himself, his life, his
character, his training, associations,
traditions, tendencies, and all other in-
fluences which belong to the recognized
psychology of religion, and not upon
Spiritualism." What then is the value
of a system which exercises no influence
in the formation of consistent Christian
character? Is it desirable that mem-
bers of the New Church should relin-
quish the clear light of sound doctrine
for the uncertain glimmer of an ignis
fatuus which shines only to deceive?

What, then, is the spiritual body in which we survive death and appear in the world beyond? The author's answer to this question is very indefinite, and can scarcely, we think, satisfy a thoughtful inquirer. "How the living person is to be conceived of," he says, apart from the form of flesh and blood through which his fellow-mortals have known him, is one of those questions on which a spiritual faith ought not to be too eager to pronounce with confidence. Let us always remember how little we can know of a world and state of existence different from those by which all our conceptions have been moulded. The idea which seems to me to have most to commend it is, that the living being who deserts the tenement of clay is not strictly incorporeal. Invisible he is, certainly, and not subject to the cognizance of any of our senses. But he may still be clothed with some unknown kind of form in which living powers are held together. And the word soul may be so understood as not to exclude from its meaning such an invisible imperceptible body. But how is either our imagination or our language to put into intelligible shape the inhabitant of another world? No wonder if we fail in the attempt. The being whom it is important to us to know as surviving death is not he who occupies space, or puts forth modifying energy upon the elements surrounding him, but he who loves and fears, and hopes and knows, who enjoys and suffers." Surely the Bible opens to us a better assurance in its revelation of the "spiritual body," and the appearance, in all the perfection of the human form, of those who had departed from earth.

"THE TWO DESTINIES."-The eminent novelist Mr. Wilkie Collins, in his newest work of fiction, "The Two Destinies," the publication of which commenced in Temple Bar magazine for January 1876, introduces his readers, in his second chapter, to a lady whose "nobler superstition formed an integral part of her religious convictions-convictions which had long since found their chosen resting-place in the mystic doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg. The only books which she read were the works of the Swedish Seer. She mixed up Swedenborg's teachings on angels and departed spirits, on love to one's neighbour and purity of life, with wild fancies and kindred beliefs of her own, and preached the visionary religious doctrines thus derived." Will members of the New Church recognise themselves or their New Church acquaintances in the above description? Where do the New Church people reside of whom it can be truthfully said, the only books they read are those of the Swedish Seer? We have never met with them.

SPIRITUALISM.-The Nonconformist newspaper closed an article a short time since on the "Phenomena of Spiritualism" with the inquiry, "Why do not Spiritualists become Swedenborgians?" To this a New Church writer replied, in an able letter which occupied a column growth of high ecclesiastical pretensions and a half of the paper. The prominent in the Church of England has of late

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE.

The

years led to extreme oppression, and often open persecution, of the members of dissenting churches. In many of the villages the squire and the parson are paramount, and they exercise their authority in a high-handed manner. In a recent address, the Rev. Gervase Smith, President of the Conference, after dwelling on the progress of the truth at home and abroad, and referring to the kindness of the Duke of Bedford and others in aiding Methodist objects, stated that there were 2000 villages in England in which perfect religious freedom did not exist, and where Methodists, as such, could not exercise their religious privileges. In many cases Methodists had had their names placed on the lists of nomination for high civic offices, and their names had been struck out of those lists simply because they were Methodists. On the same ground, Methodist farmers had been driven away from their farms, and Methodist shopkeepers had been compelled to close their shops, orders having gone forth that nobody was to trade there. He could fill pages of the Times newspaper with accounts of cruelty and oppression of the like kind. The time had come, he said, when they ought to speak out. plainly on this subject.

TESTIMONIAL TO REV. E. D. RENDELL.-The sub-committee appointed by the Sunday School Union to solicit subscriptions for a testimonial to the Rev. E. D. Rendell, has great pleasure in stating that the handsome sum of over £270 has been realized—greatly exceeding their most sanguine expectations. A detailed list of contributions will be found in this month's issue of the Juvenile Magazine.

BRISBANE.-The Brisbane Courier of Wednesday, October 27, 1875, contains the following:- "Dr. Brereton, the leading member of the New Church Society of Sydney, who is now in Brisbane on his return from a trip to the North, was last night entertained by the members of that Church in this city, at a tea meeting held at M'Leod's diningrooms, Edward Street. Over forty persons sat down to tea. After tea Mr. Garsden, the leader of the Society in Brisbane, took the chair. After a few general remarks, he introduced the guest, who, in addressing those present,

dwelt at some length on the religious belief of New Churchmen, and the principles upon which their doctrines were founded. At the conclusion of the address, several texts of Scripture, sometimes raised in opposition to these doctrines, were referred to by some of those present, and explained by Dr. Brereton. The meeting, which was of a pleasant and sociable character, was brought to a close shortly after 10 o'clock. We understand that it is the intention of the New Church Society of Sydney, by means of a legacy of a sum of money left them, and, with the assistance of the Brisbane Society, to send home for a missionary, whose services will be divided between the two colonies."

MISSIONARY OPERATIONS IN YORKSHIRE.-We have been favoured by Rev. W. O'Mant with the following report of Mission work at Harrogate and Middlesboro', which we have much pleasure in laying before our readers :—

"Since my first visit to Harrogate, already reported in the Intellectual, Mr. Rendell and I have projected and carried out a course of eight lectures on the leading doctrines of the New Church. We had considerable disadvantages at the commencement, on account of having no one on the spot that was acquainted with our doctrines and that could render help. But we overcame these trifling inconveniences, and went on our way. At the close of each lecture questions were invited, according to announcement on the hand-bills, and on every occasion the privilege was appreciated; thus giving us an opportunity of entering more fully into some of the difficult points which needed further explanation. It was pleasing to discover that some of the leading secularists of the town were very much interested in what was advanced. One of them invited Mr. Rendell and me to his house for long conversations on the new doctrines, and he said to me more than once, 'I never heard religious doctrines put in so rational a light before.' The same gentleman proposed that in the summer we should visit Harrogate and address the people in the open air. He said that a large and orderly congregation might be secured any evening when the weather is fine. I hope to carry out that suggestion. We found also that the Spiritualists were deeply interested

in the truths set forth. Many questions were asked by them, and they discovered that the philosophy of Swedenborg was sufficiently large to include within its range the strange phenomena with which they were already familiar. This, with out preaching up the practice of Spiritism; on the contrary, showing that vast stores of new truth, such as the most earnest and devout among them were in search of, are at hand and formulated in a standard literature. This led to the sale of books, generously supplied by the promoter of these lectures, viz., Mr. Joseph Allison of Middlesboro', who also bore the local expenses of the lectures. We sold about two or three dozen of the Silent Missionaries, including Dr. Bayley's Brighton Lectures, Mr. Giles' Spiritual World, and Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (small ed.). We also sold one T. C. R., one E. Ú., and one Connexion between the Soul and the Body.' I also visited Middlesboro' on the 16th and 17th of February, at the request of our New Church friends resident there. The religious public had been stirred up by some lectures given by the Secularists—Mr. Watts among them,—and, on the opposite side, by a Dr. Harrison from Manchester. It was thought a good opening for the presentation of the light of the New Church, that it might be thrown upon the darkness that prevails even on both sides as thus represented. We must feel that much of the boasted triumph of the Secularists over Christians is owing to the irrational positions which are often taken by such advocates of revelation. Acting on this conviction, our New Church friends invited me to go and give two lectures, in which Atheism and Secularism should be exposed by the stronger light that has been given to us through Swedenborg. We believe the effort was not in vain. We had about 100 on the occasion; and, although Secularists were present and questions were invited, no one came forward. But the next evening the audience seemed more courageous, for they kept on with their questions for two hours after the lecture. All this was gratifying to us, as it showed that great interest was felt, even if much was said in opposition.

"Our friends at Middlesboro' expressed a wish that I should pay them another visit shortly. I have promised to do

So.

"It would take up too much of your space to relate some of the encounters with men of devout and earnest mind that I met with at railway stations, who ascertained that I was an advocate of the doctrines of Swedenborg. I wish here to acknowledge my obligations to the Manchester Tract Society for a supply of suitable tracts for distribution on these occasions. I found them very useful."

SWEDENBORG SOCIETY-Apocalypse Revealed. This work is now complete in one handsome volume, and ready for presentation and sale. The circulars offering it to the clergy of the United Kingdom are being issued. A number of applications have already been made, and copies supplied. The Rev. A. Clissold's concise outline of the subjectmatter of the work, which forms part of the circular, is well adapted to call the attention of its readers to the basis upon which a true understanding of the wondrous symbolism employed by the sacred writer rests, and to show the relationship existing between it and the present state of the religious world as regards many of its fundamental doctrines. That a new spiritual day is dawning upon the world is perhaps at the present moment felt rather than seen, and it is a knowledge of the spiritual sense alone which can give eyes to the blind who truly desire to receive their sight. To help the accomplishment of so great a blessing is the aim of the Committee in giving the "Apocalypse Revealed" the widest possible circulation. The Committee has fixed the price of the work at 2s. 6d., at least for the present a price which does not repay its cost, but the Committee is determined to utilize what remains of Mr. Attwood's noble gift, and the generous additions since made to it by the Rev. A. Clissold and Miss Clissold, by placing this important work in the hands not only of the clergy, but of all other religious readers, at a price which should as far as possible be within the means of all.

BATH.-The New Church Society in this city is gradually recovering from the shock which it experienced in the unexpected departure of its minister, the Rev. James Keene, to the spiritual world on last Christmas Day. During

« 前へ次へ »