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Let us then begin that new portion of Time upon which we are now entering, with a full persuasion of these great and blessed truths. Let us look not so much at the things of Time, but at the things of Eternity, as united and connected with them. Let us believe that the riches of the eternal wisdom are nearer to us, and infinitely more real, than all the gilded wealth of this world. Let us believe the favour of the eternal God, and the peace of a pure conscience, and the glories of Heaven, to be greater blessings, and to belong to us more properly, than all the transitory joys of mere time and sense. Let us look at the present world, and at our present life in it, not as things fixed, which are to remain, but only as things to be passed through, and designed as our preparation for, and introduction to, the eternal world, and to that eternal life in God's kingdom for which we were created and redeemed.

I do not say, nor does the Word of God say, that we should never look at all at the things of Time; for whilst we continue in our present bodies, we cannot avoid looking at them, and being affected by them, yea, and it is our duty to look at them, inasmuch as in them and through them, if we use them aright, we may not only behold, but also be led to the possession of their eternal essence. But, though it be our duty, and we cannot avoid looking at the things of Time, yet we can avoid, and it is our duty to avoid, looking at them more than, or as unconnected with, the things of Eternity. Here, therefore, rests the great point which concerns us. If we look at the things of Time principally, and separate from things eternal, we shall then lose both them and the things of Eternity; but if we look principally at the things of Eternity, and at the things of Time in connection with them; if we cultivate and cherish in ourselves the holy love and wisdom of God, above all things, accounting those invisible things to be the great realities which properly belong to us, and suffering them to guide and govern our hearts and bodies in the things of Time, we may then rest happy in the comfortable assurance, that we shall secure to ourselves all the real good both of the things of Time and of the things of Eternity, inasmuch as Jesus Christ himself hath said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (that is, the things of Eternity), then adds, and all these things (that is, the things of Time) shall be added unto you."

May we be wise to begin and end the present and all succeeding years of our lives, under the full influence and guidance of these great and eternally blessed truths!

PROFESSOR BUSH AND SWEDENBORG.

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THE name of Mr. Bush, as the eminent Professor of Hebrew at the New York City University, has, during the past year, appeared several times in our periodical. It will be remembered that two notices of a work on the Resurrection of the Body, entitled "Anastasis," &c.,* by Professor Bush, were inserted in our pages. The doctrine maintained in that work is substantially the same as that advocated by the New Church,―that man rises in a Spiritual body," and that his natural body, as suited only to this natural world, will never be resumed. The Professor, when engaged in writing that work, was not acquainted with the system of Scripture Interpretation, or of the Science of Correspondences, by which the letter of the Divine Word is unfolded, and its genuine sense opened to the mind. He had at least not yet · sufficiently examined the nature of the system, so as to see its inestimable worth, as a key to unlock the treasures of divine truth in the Holy Word, or he would have seen his way more clearly and directly to the proper explanation of those passages, both in the Old and in the New Testaments, which relate to the resurrection. We are, however, happy to state, as will be seen from the following extracts, that Professor Bush now says "that he is satisfied, upon the most rigid inquiry, that Swedenborg's system is true;" and that having arrived at this conviction, "he deems it a dictate of duty to do all in his power to disabuse his fellow Christians of impressions which may be injurious to a great and good man, and adverse to their own highest interests," &c. The Professor comes, therefore, boldly forward in order to proclaim and to propagate, as much as possible, the wonderful treasures of truth and of spiritual knowledge he has discovered in the writings of Swedenborg.

To this end Professor Bush has determined to issue a periodical, called the "Swedenborg Library," in which portions of the writings of E. S. will be published, accompanied by notes from the Editor. He commences with the "memorabilia," or with the "memorable relations" concerning the soul, and the nature of the life after death, extracted from the "Arcana Coelestia." We have seen three numbers of this periodical, each containing 16 pages, and we have much pleasure in presenting our readers with the

"INTRODUCTION.

"The alleged Revelations of Emanuel Swedenborg (says the Professor) "have been about a century before the world. In that time they have * See Intellectual Repository for January and March, 1845.

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won a slow and difficult triumph, and to a very limited extent, over the "incredulity which such extraordinary claims might be expected to en"counter. The very assumption on which the whole system is foundedthat of a supernatural illumination by the opening of an internal sense, making its subject cognizant of the realities of a Spiritual World-has “been, for the most part, rejected with disdain, although the psychological condition of the ancient prophets was substantially the same; and the idea that such disclosures should be made at this day has been set down as a virtual disparagement of the Scriptures of Truth, as containing God's final and only revelation to men. While no attempt has been "made to show that such a discovery, through such a medium, is intrin"sically impossible, or that the Most High has precluded himself, by express declaration, from granting additional light to his creatures on the world unseen, yet the deep-seated and inveterate belief-the ‘fore"gone conclusion'-to the contrary, has wrought with so much power on the general mind of Christendom, that no favor has been shown to a “system which is built upon the asserted fact of a new and divine deve"lopment of the hitherto hidden arcana of another life. The claims of "Swedenborg, therefore, have been widely regarded as the fruit of a dis"tempered brain-as the out-birth of a philosophico-religious mania-and his wonderful relations of Heaven and Hell classed in the same category "with the dreaming delusions of Jacob Behmen, Joanna Southcote, and "Joe Smith.

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"The complacency, however, with which this estimate has been enter'tained, has of late been somewhat rudely invaded and disturbed by the discovery, that in the person of the demented Swedish seer stands revealed, not only one of the purest and holiest men that ever graced "the Christian name, but one of the sublimest geniuses that ever adorned “the annals of science-a worthy compeer of Newton, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Laplace, of Cuvier-a man of the most stupendous "attainments in every sphere of knowledge—of analytic perspicacity never surpassed-of a power of generalization to which the world has "not seen a superior-whose writings have created a new era in physiological research—who is par eminence the philosopher of ends and causes—who solved with equal ease the problems of Fluxions, of Phy"siology, of Anatomy, of Chemistry, of Metallurgy, of Mechanics, and "of Finance—whose intellectual sports were the Differential Calculus, the Ascertainment of the Longitude, the Motion and Position of the Planets, the Application of Geometry to Chemistry and Physics, the "Construction of Ships, Docks, and Dykes, the Invention of Stoves, " and the Depreciation and Rise of the Swedish Currency—and finally,

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"who is beginning to receive the honors of the true paternity of the "Kantian Philosophy, of the Atomic Theory of Boscovich and Dalton, of the Nebular Hypothesis in Astronomy, and of many of the grandest "discoveries of Anatomical Science of more modern times.* All this "the world was little prepared to find in the self-proclaimed herald of the New Jerusalem, and yet all this is now beginning to be ackowledged as a due concession to the transcendent mind of Swedenborg. The time,' says an undiscipled eulogist of his 'Animal Kingdom,'' is not "far distant when he must and will be considered as the Zoroaster of Europe, and the Prometheus of a new era of reason.'

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"Yet to this day the reputed reveries of the theologian and Heresiarch “have obscured the fair fame of the Philosopher, although it cannot be doubted that the vindication of his character in the one 'department will eventually lead to a juster judgment of it in the other. It cannot "always remain an unsolved problem how the greatest philosopher of "the last century should have lapsed into a mere retailer of idle visions, "when at the same time these visions are built upon the profoundest philosophy of the moral and intellectual nature of man-when not the slightest indication of mania apart from these alleged disclosures ever "betrayed itself to his contemporaries—when, during the whole time, " he was courted, honored, and esteemed by kings, nobles, and savans, as the pride of his country—and when, for the same revelations, he boldly challenges the test of the strictest scrutiny, on the ground of “internal evidence, making his appeal to consciousness and not to

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miracle, though the testimony of miracles can be unequivocally esta"blished in support of his claims. I say we have in this whole matter a problem which will not-which cannot-remain always unsolved. “The time must surely come when the contemptuous rejection of Swedenborg's dreams will be called to justify itself by an argumentative display of the false philosophy on which they rest. This philosophy "has approved itself as sound and irrefutable to men whose minds would honor any school, and whose lives would be an ornament to any Church 66 -men who do not believe without evidence, nor reason without force"who have come to their present convictions, and entered into their present associations, in despite of the strongest previous prejudices, * "In this reference to the Philosophy of Kant, we have in view especially his theory of Time and Space as the forms of our ideas, and the predominance of the Subjective over the Objective, in both which he was preceded by Swedenborg. As to the Nebular Hypothesis, we assign it to Swedenborg so far only as the origination of the planets from the sun is concerned. This theory does not involve the necessity of considering the fields of nebulous matter visible to the telescope, the material from which the planets were formed."

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"and in the face of obloquy and sacrifice. Granting that Swedenborg "himself was deluded, how is it that he has been enabled to inoculate "with his delusion, if so grossly palpable as many affirm, intellects as keenly perceptive of logical sophistries, and as vigilantly on their guard "against the magic of enthusiasm, as those of the men who sit in judg 66 ment upon them? Without at present affirming whether the system is 'true or false, I say that here is a problem to be solved, and that it is due "to the interests of Truth that it should be solved.

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It is beyond doubt that a most intense ignorance prevails as to the "true character of the revelations in question. Out of the body of Christians who receive them as authentic and true, they are little read "-little cared for-little asked for. Minds pre-occupied with prejudice, "and resting in the belief that every such claim as Swedenborg's, by whatever testimony urged upon attention, must be false and pre'posterous, of course are heedless of becoming acquainted with the marvellous record, and consequently content themselves with vague rumours " and indistinct impressions. The great desideratum is knowledge of the subject. Upon no other basis can a correct judgment of the system be "formed. To supply, in a measure, this desideratum, is the object of "the present series of publications. Having labored myself, previous to "perusal, under a total mis-conception of Swedenborg's writings, and supposing others to be in the same predicament, I have deemed it a dictate of duty to do all in my power to disabuse my fellow "Christians of impressions which may be injurious to a great and good 'man, and adverse to their own highest interests. I enter advisedly upon the task. My eyes are fully open to the consequences. I am perfectly aware of the light in which Swedenborg and his doctrines are generally viewed. I have but too clear a foresight of the odium which "must necessarily attach to any name that ventures to connect itself with the so-called mystic visionings and vagaries of the Prophet of the New Church, the expounder of Arcana which never existed but in his own fancy, the mouth-piece of angels and the dragoman of demons. But all this is the mere breath of the lips. It is one thing to indulge ridicule-another to confute arguments. Having usually but one question to ask in the formation of my religous opinions-whether a doctrine is true-I feel not at liberty to concern myself with consequences. Upon the most rigid inquiry I am satisfied that Swedenborg's system is true. When candidly surveyed, it answers all the "demands of my intellect and my heart. It commends itself to my best "reason as given of God, and worthy of all acceptation; and so believing, I dare not confer with flesh and blood. If Swedenborg has uttered

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