Established Church, afterwards he became a member of the Rev. W. Cowherd's Society, Salford, and in 1811 he joined the Society in Peter-street. At this period, and for many years afterwards, the New Church doctrines were scouted as visionary; the receivers of them were regarded as enthusiasts, and not unfrequently as insane. Ministers of various denominations deemed it to be their duty to warn their congregations against the dangerous tendency of these new doctrines; amongst others, we may mention, the Rev. W. Gadsby, Baptist; the Rev. W. Roby, Independent; the Rev. J. Grundy, Unitarian; all of Manchester. In other places, also, opponents were not wanting, as the writings of Dr. Priestly and the Rev. W. Pike sufficiently testify. Yet all this opposition only served to awaken his reflecting faculties, enabling him to obtain clearer perceptions of the superior truths of the New Dispensation, and to confirm him in a more ardent attachment to them. On all occasions he was delighted to give his services to the Church, and besides many instances of quiet and unobtrusive usefulness which were known only to a few, he hesitated not to fulfil more important and public duties. During the ministry of the Rev. R. Jones, he was treasurer to the Society for many years. He assisted also in the management of the Sunday-school, and took an active part in the preparation of the annual recitals which at one period were so much in repute. He was one of the most zealous supporters of the Manchester and Salford Theological Society, which was established in the early days of the Missionary Institution. The meetings were held weekly, and were attended principally by the missionaries for the discussion of abstruse subjects, or particular passages of Scripture. For some years past, owing to increasing years and bodily indisposition, our departed friend had ceased to take any prominent part in the affairs of the church, yet his heart was interested in its success and welfare, and he failed not to attend divine worship with a punctuality and regularity worthy of imitation; equally so was his attendance at the Sacramental table. The last time he partook of the Holy Supper,— which was a few weeks only prior to his decease, he was so feeble that it was with difficulty he could walk; and on many occasions he has been present when illness wonld have justified his absence. When at last the infirmities of age prevented him leaving his room, and it was apparent that he would soon be called away, he felt the coming change, declared he was ready to leave this world when it should please his Heavenly Father to take him, and earnestly prayed that he might be spared a long and painful illness. His prayer was answered; after a few days' sickness he breathed his last without a struggle or a sigh. Whatever may be the circumstances or the periods of life when death occurs, it excites our feelings as well as our most serious reflections, varied, however, according to the age of the individual. Our sorrow for the loss of a child in its innocence and simplicity is altogether distinctive, and to some extent dissimilar, to our regret for the adult stricken in his strength, or the man of four-score, whose hour has been daily expected. In the latter case, while we mourn for the bereavement, we can dwell with pleasure and instruction on the reminiscences associated with them, and thus learn to estimate the difference between the past and the present. Often would our deceased friend express his delight at witnessing the increase of the church, the extended operations of the Missionary Society, the energetic circulation of the tracts, their powerful advocacy of the New Church doctrines, and the cordial acceptance of them by the public, the increasing interest and useful tendency of the quarterly tea meetings, and every other branch of the church. But this connecting link between the former and latter states of the church is at last broken, and he has gone to realise the blessings of that state which he so often contemplated. In his case we may truly exclaim, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." (Numb. xxiii. 10.) Cave and Sever, Printers, Palatine Buildings, Hunt's Bank, Manchester. TESTIMONIES FROM ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS TO THE FROM the poets we turn to the philosophers who have subjected these traditional testimonies to the tribunal of reason. The first country in Europe which gave birth to philosophy, is that Greece whose genius enlightened our ancestors, and shed over Europe the rays of that light of which it had become the only depository. The most favourite hypothesis, says M. Deguando, is that which ascribes the ancient Grecian philosophy to Asiatic traditions; so that we shall here meet with the same truths as in the former article,* changed only in their form. Cicero and St. Augustin honour Pherecides, one of the seven sages of Greece, and the instructor of Pythagoras, as being the first to teach the immortality of the soul. Another dogma attributed to Pherecides, agrees also with those received in the New Church :- The ever-just gods," says he, " regard men without respect of persons; they ask neither offerings nor sacrifices; they do not favour some in preference to others; in short, they will judge us, not by the incense which we shall have burned upon their altars, but by the virtues we shall have practised." This system destroyed the influence of the priesthood * See this Periodical for November last, p. 481. [Enl. Series.-No. 17, vol. ii.] 2 B among the Greeks, as amongst us it renders superfluous all interference of a third party between man and God. Thales, chief of the Ionian school, traced the origin of all things to water, which belongs, in some respects, to the system of emanations, since water has itself proceeded from the condensation of these latter. Bruker discovers points of agreement between this hypothesis and the traditions of the Indians and Egyptians. Freret says, that the Chinese regard water as the first principle of being. It is possible that this assertion contains a true cosmogony, of which the signification was unknown to the philosophers who transmitted it. In the language of correspondence, apparently known to the Orientals, water represents Truth, Divine Wisdom, the Word of which St. John speaks; and it is this Word, according to the Evangelists as well as the Greek philosophers, which created the universe. This truth is imaged in the church by the water poured upon the head of him who receives the new birth. Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, is the author of that fertile principle that nothing proceeds from nothing." "The Infinite," adds he, "is the beginning of all things," and this Infinite, according to him, was not an abstraction, but a substance. Anaximenes, admitting as a first cause the infinite substance of Anaximander, wished to define it. The air appeared to him to be this principle. The soul, according to him, was an aërial substance. Anaxagoras soon freed the divine substance from all admixture,—the universe, with him, was an effect of which God was the cause. The God of his predecessors was only a Power, he represented him as Intelligence. 66 With the Italian School appeared a philosophy less dogmatic, and more tinged with that mysticism which is the food of ardent minds. Pythagoras founded a doctrine of which the principle is, that God is not out of the world, but in the world, and throughout the whole universe. In the eyes of the Pythagoreans the universe was a living, animated Being. They believed in genii, and attached great importance to dreams. These genii or demons were, in their opinion, an intermediate species between God and man, and communicated with men by means of dreams and divinations. This is a near approach to true spiritual interDacier, in his discourse on the doctrine of Plato, says that that philosopher had followed Pythagoras in intellectual truths, and thus describes the doctrine of the latter:-" He taught that there is only One God, the Creator of all things; that the soul is immortal; that men ought to labour to be freed from their passions and vices, in order to be united to God; that after this life there is a reward for the good and a punishment for the wicked; that between God and men there course. are ministering spirits who fulfil the will of the former." Truth and Goodness, say the disciples of Pythagoras, are the two principal attributes of the Divinity. They also divided the soul of man into two parts, one, the seat of the affections and passions; the other, of the operations of the understanding. They placed reason and intelligence in the brain, will and the appetites, in the heart. Porphyrus, in his life of Pythagoras, ascribes to that great man this definition :-In His Body, God resembles Light, and in His Soul, Truth; which signifies, according to the New Church, that He appears as a Spiritual Sun to the eyes of the Spirit, and is perceived as Truth by the understanding. As nothing remains to us of the writings of the founder of the Italian School, we come now to two philosophers whose works contain all that was known to the ancients upon the subject of metaphysics, physics, and morality. According to Ocellus the universe was eternal, and there were no marks which disclosed its origin or foretold its destruction. He admitted two principles in nature, the active and the passive. The two worlds of Swedenborg appear in the division which Ocellus makes into two causes. "The moon," says he, separates uncreated from created things." The Swede is more correct in placing the active cause beyond the limits of matter. Ocellus places the gods in heaven, demons in the middle region, and men upon the earth. Here are very visibly disclosed the foundations on which the spiritual world in the New Church is established. 66 66 "All that exists," says the Timous of Locres, owes its origin to idea or form, to matter and sensation. Idea or form is self-generated, unalterable, of a fixed and homogeneous nature, intelligible, and the model of created beings, who are subject to change." Those forms which have appeared so wonderful in the revelations of Swedenborg, are thus reduced to a principle. The theory of degrees is not less clearly expressed. God," says Timous, "formed this world of all material substances, and rendered it the ultimate of nature, and of all that exists, because it contains within it all other things." The eternity of the world is maintained here, equally as in Ocellus :-" It is not according to the nature of a Good Being, to incline to the destruction of a good work, therefore the world will remain imperishable and incorruptible." Spiritual vision is in like manner attested by him :- "The spirit alone," says he, sees the eternal God, who is the Cause and Former of all things; but we see, with our bodily eyes, the God manifested, that is to say, in the world." The brain, which is the seat of 66 the soul in the writings of Swedenborg, fills the same office in those of Timous. In casting a glance upon the other celebrated philosophers whom Greece produced, before Socrates, we find the obscure Heraclitus, who regards fire as the origin of all things, and the universal agent. There is, in this opinion, which Zeno afterwards revived, some trace of the oriental belief in a Spiritual Sun. Empedocles, who was endowed with enthusiastic reason, and practical science, recognized the same principle; he divided the material from the spiritual world. In the doctrine of the New Church, fire corresponds to Love, which, as Heraclitus says, is the origin of all things. At length we come to Plato, through whom Greece acquired so many truths, and who combined all the different sects within his own; this Plato of whom it has been said, that he seemed to have examined and contemplated closely that eternal beauty of which he unceasingly speaks. Barthelemy thus epitomizes the whole philosophy of Plato :"There exist two worlds, one visible, the other ideal; the former, formed upon the model of the latter, is that which we inhabit. It is here that every thing being subject to birth and to decay, unceasingly changes; it is here that we see only images and fragmentary portions of the Esse. The other, or intellectual world, contains the essences and patterns of all visible objects, and these essences are real existences, since they are unchangeable. Two kings, of whom one is the servant and minister of the other, shed their lustre on these two worlds. From the lofty sky, the sun illumines and perpetuates those objects which he renders visible to our eyes; from the most elevated region of the intellectual world, the Supreme Good produces and preserves the essences which He renders perceptible to our souls. The sun enlightens us by his light, the Supreme Good by His Truth; and as our eyes have distinct perceptions when they rest upon any object upon which the light of day falls, so our soul acquires true knowledge when it meditates upon the beings from which Truth is reflected." If we wished to present, in a picture, the doctrines of Swedenborg, could we make use of images more correct, and at the same time more poetical? Are not these, in short, the two worlds, the spiritual and the natural, of which he speaks to us? The one, from which all comes into being, to inhabit the other; the former, which contains the essences of things, of which the latter offers us the correspondences; in short, the one subsisting through the material, the other through the Spiritual It is this same Spiritual Sun that the philosopher regards as the creative principle. According to St. Justin, Plato represents God as |