of the instrument employed by the Spirit, but only the falsehood or rather the mystification of the Spirit, who is not a critic of history or science, but just takes them both as he finds them in the mind of his agent; for prological or visionary Revelations are not final teaching or positive knowledge, but merely moral and religious atmospheres to give a tone and a character to the parties who receive them, and thus enable them to do a special preliminary work, on which a logical and a better is afterwards superinduced. We have thus a scale of five modern Churches, founded on modern spiritual revelations Quakers, Swedenborgians, Southcottians (represented by Israelites, as the only large organised party with a living prophet), the Catholic and Apostolic Church, and the Mormonites. The spirit, however, is dead in the two former; that is, they have no longer those spiritual manifestations in which they originated. They have cooled, and become hardened and inaccessible to new inspirations. We must, therefore, cut them off the list of the five, to which they will not object, for they do not wish to be associated with them; but in cutting off the dead Swedenborgian visitation, we must introduce as its multiplied counterpart and substitute the modern American spirit manifestations, which, in perfect conformity with the American democratical and numerical principle, have taken the polytheistic form -the star system, numerical authority-and sud denly issued forth to the astonished world innumerable Sybilline leaves of inspiration from the uncanonised and departed spirits of men and women lately deceased-a movement so clearly akin to that of Swedenborg, being its multifold self, that all the mediatorial spirits appear to regard him as one of the wisest of men. These four are all the spirit movements in England, and two of them have originated in America ; and regarding them as signs of the times, we perceive a scale that precisely corresponds in miniature to that of the Great Drama: first, an absolute Jewish Law, with little liberty and no learning; second, a divided Gentile authority, with logical development, great learning, taste and refinement; third, a physical and spiritual power, using the sword and falling by it, taking possession of a territorial inheritance, and aiming at the conquest of the world; fourth, a great numerical polyglott, and not yet accordant, spiritualism, mixing up the liberty of private judgment and the liberal philosophy and poetry of the times with the faith of a new and necromantic Revelation. But none of these four parties agree; they all despise each other's authority; yet they are so far superior to the rest of the world in charity, that they all allow the reality of each other's manifestations, but ascribe them to evil or inferior influence. The scale, however, increases gradually in magnitude and popularity; but loses in moral stringency, unity, and absolute power as it ad : vances from the first to the fourth stage. If the next step preserves this ratio of increase, it will be something very remarkable. But we do not pretend nor mean to prophesy; we merely analyse; and these parties being all collective bodies which profess to have that same power in which all Revealed Religion arose, are thus entitled to be regarded as the great signs of the times in the theological sphere. But merely signs ultimate or constructive missions they cannot have, merely because they have no understanding of each other's work, and think themselves all-sufficient, though only forming part, and not the whole, of a scale. Quakerism is the type of the law to come; for it is the Herald of Peacethe Moral Law-the Moral Government. The Friends typify a better system of moral order, but cannot realise it for want of artistic and doctrinal development, though in charity and good works they exemplify it better than any other party in Christendom. And the New Church teaches more definitely than any other party the doctrine of charity, but it wants the doctrinal apprehension and acceptation of other missions, and merely sweeps them away like cobwebs, without understanding or investigating them. These two parties are beautiful types of a Law of Morals and a Gospel of Charity. Types precede their antitypes. The Four Great Missions yet developed still remain represented amongst us-the Jews as distinct as ever; the Greeks or literary men, philoso phers, freethinkers and poets; the Roman Catholics, and the Protestants. They cannot be amalgamated, nor can one destroy the other. They exist by Divine ordination, like so many species of animals or different races of men. The first is unitary, the second is divisional, the third is unitary, the fourth is divisional, just as at first. The fifth is to come. It is unitary. SCENE FOURTH. THE MEN OF THE LAW. There are numerous illustrations of the idea we have suggested, that Britain is an ultimate in the movement of Western Civilisation, and the initiative of a universal system. But one is especially deserving of attention. It is the absolutism of her law; not the absolutism of a man or a band of men, but the absolutism of a principle-the independence of Law. The absolutism of Law, if a just Law, is Liberty. When Law is overruled by an individual tyrant, it is no longer Law as a principle, but Law as a capricious dictator. The final object of legislation is really to establish this absolutism of Law, and put an end to the reign of individual will and fallible power. But it must be the logical form of absolutism, not the prological, with which the career of civilisa tion began; for that was only the root; this is the efflorescence. We have seen the Law arise in the desert in a positively absolute and reverend form, forbidding the exercise of human judgment in its formation or amendment. We see it again at the end of the line, in a logically absolute, but irreverend and political form, elaborated solely by the exercise of human judgment on the Divine Revelation of Nature. This is an approximation to the ultimate of mundane government; the principle of which is, that when the children come to maturity, they judge for themselves. But Law cannot afford to lose either its sanctity or its reverence. Agreeable as liberty may be to the feelings, we lose more than we gain by its looseness and licentiousness-its venality or its want of dignity. Law, therefore, naturally grows in liberty to correct this evil. But it is Law as an absolute principle, not as an individual governor; and it is in the sphere of perfect liberty that the perfect absolutism of Law will be realised. For that only is perfect Law which is consistent with pure liberty; whilst that alone is perfect liberty which is compatible with pure and just and absolute Law. The absolutism of Law and the freedom of Liberty are bisexual and marriageable principles, whose natural opposites combine and form a union, in which the unpractical or vicious character of each, in isolation or preponderance, |