mense advantage is thus presented to mankind in the writings of the New Church, which will serve to elevate and to associate men with heavenly influences, and with higher sentiments and perceptions than has been the case for many ages past; and, especially, when we consider that the spiritual sense of the Word is now opened, in which all its types, emblems, parables, and "dark sayings," are clearly exhibited to view, the heavenly science of correspondences becomes great indeed!

The

Of all inanimate objects the sun is the most important, useful, and glorious, and, as such, corresponds to the "Sun of Righteousness" in heaven. This sun is not the Lord, but the proximate effulgence from his glorious body, or his Divine Humanity, of his divine love and wisdom-his divine nature. He himself is in the midst of this sun, as the infinite source and centre of all life, love, wisdom, and power. Apostle alludes to this sun when he says, that "the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and who only hath immortality, dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto. (1 Tim. vi. 15, 16.) And what residence can we conceive more exalted and glorious, as the immediate personal abode of the Lord, than the centre of the Sun of Righteousness?

The essential elements of the sun of nature are heat and light; but the essential elements of the Sun of Righteousness are infinite love and wisdom. These elements mutually correspond to each other,―the heat corresponds to the divine love, and the light to the divine wisdom. The operation of love and wisdom from the Lord, as the Sun of Righteousness, produces in the spiritual universe effects to which those produced by the sun of nature correspond. This latter, however, is only a passive instrument in the hand of the former, and is, in every respect, subservient to its life-giving influx and power.

All the laws of motion, of force, and attraction, predicated of the sun of nature, also correspond to the living motions, powers, and attractions of the Sun of Righteousness. The natural sun has an axilary or circular motion, that is, around its own axis; this is the aggregate motion of all its parts, for "the sun consists of created substances, the activity of which produces fire." (T. C. R. 472.) This is the primary motion in inanimate nature, which causes every planet to move around its own axis, and likewise around the sun as the centre of its motion. By the former, the vicissitudes of day and night are effected, and by the latter, the changes of the seasons. We know that the Lord, as the sun of heaven, is the infinite centre of all activity and motion, since he is Life itself, and activity and motion are among the primary predicates of life. The form of this motion, says Swedenborg, is the perpetual circular,

or the spiral, which is the most perfect motion, according to which all influx from God in the creation and preservation of the universe, and in the salvation of mankind, proceeds and operates. (See A. E., vol. vi. 435.) Hence it is, that every created object assumes more or less of the circular form, and the more perfect it is, the more completely it assumes this form. The sun, which, of inanimate objects, is the most perfect, is the most completely circular. The planets are also circular or globular, because they are moulded not only into an image, as to forin, of their parent, the sun, but, by the sun's operation and influx, they are fashioned into the form which corresponds to his own motion. Every thing in the mineral kingdom, which is the basis of all, is more or less rounded off, and emulates the circular form. The mountain and the hill are round and circular in their outlines, emulating, as it were, the rotundity of the earth itself. The lofty rocks present the same general contour, and every pebble, not broken by the hand of man, is more or less globular: but in the vegetable kingdom this becomes more apparent. Here fruits and seeds are the ends, or uses, of vegetable existence; and all fruits and seeds are, more or less, globular, and the more perfect, the more completely do they assume that form. Hence, it is customary to compare the earth to an orange; and this, it may be said, is not only a just comparison, but is also an additional proof that the earth is round; for fruits and seeds are the offsprings of the earth as a mother, and it is a law of order, that the offspring, as to form, shall resemble its parent. Thus, an orange, an apple, a pine, or a grape, are not only resemblances of the earth, as to form, but they may also, we think, be reckoned amongst the proofs of its rotundity. In the animal kingdom, every thing assumes, more or less, a circular and cylindrical form, and the more perfect the object is in the scale of creation, the more completely does it assume that form. Thus, in man, the head is more globular, and all parts of his body are more beautifully rounded off than in any animal. The cortical substances of the brain are globular, and are hence called globules, and the form of the head is the aggregate of the globular forms of the brain. These forms we know exist in infinite variety; hence, no head is formed precisely like another; and as influx is according to forms, hence arise the neverending varieties of mental talent and phenomena. And all the viscera, both of the thorax and the abdomen, approach according to the dignity and perfection of their uses, the circular form. It appears that nature, when exhibiting the forms and uses of heavenly order, shuns, as much as possible, what is acute, sharp, and pointed; but when exhibiting contrary forms and consequent evil uses, which have had their proxi

mate origin in hell, and from which, by influx, they receive their animating principle, nature presents the acute and the pointed. Compare the vulture, or the hawk, with the dove or the hen, and we at once perceive how acute and pointed all the features of the former are, when compared with the latter. Compare the sharp-pointed face and nose of the fox or the wolf with the sheep, and we become sensible of the same phenomena. It would appear from E. S., (Diary 208,) that in proportion as we ascend in the heavenly world, all angularity and pointedness, as well as all hardness of form, disappear. Every thing is beautifully rounded, and all forms are soft, pliant, and yielding to the Lord's influent powers and graces of the Good and the True. The angels dread the idea of what is sharp or pointed, since thereby either truth separated from goodness, or the false opposed to truth and goodness, is presented to view. The doctrine or philosophy of forms is very important, because it is intimately connected with a proper knowledge of uses. These remarks may appear digressive from our subject; but they are not, since, in considering the sun, it is necessary to take into consideration his form, his motion, and the mode of his operation. The sun mirrors himself in the planets, especially as to their form and motion, and the manner in which they reflect his rays; and the planets mirror themselves in their fruits and productions, and all are mirrors of the Creator, especially man, who is created to be his image and likeness.

Now, the sun exerts a most powerful attraction, by which the planets are kept in their proper position to himself and to each other. Swedenborg, in his Principia, has endeavoured to shew the nature of this attraction. It is stated to be the magnetic sphere which is represented to us, in miniature, by the attraction of the common magnet, and if we can discover the causes of this latter, we may see the causes of the former. Nature is the same in the least as she is in the greatest,—in minimis as in maximis. A drop of water, taken from the briny deep, is an image, both as to form and predicates, of the entire ocean; a single beam from the sun, is an image of his body; a single globule of the brain is representative of the entire cerebral mass; a single vesicle of the lungs is a lung in its least form. These leasts Swedenborg calls unities; and, in a genuine system of philosophy, the doctrine of unities will supersede the doctrine of atoms and monads. Because, in the former, there is a rationale demonstrated by experience, whereas, in the latter, the rationale is wanting; and a philosophy without a rational discernment of things is blind indeed. This doctrine of unities is applicable to spiritual things as well as to natural. Thus every angel is a unity of the society of which he is a member, and as such he is an image

thereof. In like manner, every society is a unity, on a larger scale, of the entire heaven to which it belongs. And every idea containing the affection and thought of an angel is a unity, in its least form, which is a mirror, not only of the angel himself, but of the society, yea, of the entire heaven, to which he belongs. This arises from the fact, that the divine principle from the Lord is the same in the least as in the greatest. The same may be said of the opposite; every infernal spirit is a unity of the society to which he belongs, and is consequently an image thereof. The doctrine of unities, therefore, in E. Swedenborg's natural philosophy, upon which so much depends in the investigation of nature, is strictly in agreement with his theology. As to the causes of magnetic attraction, Swedenborg has most profoundly investigated the subject in his Principia, &c., a work which will shortly appear in an English translation.

Now, this attraction of the sun of nature evidently corresponds to the attraction of the sun of heaven, which is one of the effects of the infinite activities of the Lord's divine love for the preservation of the created universe, and especially for the salvation of the human race. The Lord alludes to this when he says, I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me," (John xii. 32,) divinely teaching us that, in his Glorified Humanity, he is the great centre of attraction, and the source of all preservation and salvation. How powerfully does

this

66

passage shew that the Lord is the one only God! What being less than infinite dare presume to utter such words!

By virtue of the sun's attraction, the earth has a centripetal, or centreseeking force; but by virtue of its own inertness and gravity, it has a centrifugal, or a centre-fleeing force. By the wise adjustment and counteraction of these forces, the earth is kept in its proper position to

the sun, and in perfect equilibrium, in which it can freely move in its orbit, and on its own axis. These things again illustrate man's position to the Lord, as the Sun of Righteousness, and, in a wider sense, the relation that the church, which is a man in a larger form, sustains to the Lord. By virtue of the attraction of the Lord's divine love and mercy, man has a centripetal power, by which he can, in his life's love, constantly seek the centre, and have the degrees and faculties of his spiritual and rational nature opened to a reception, in a continually increasing measure, of the life-giving beams of love and wisdom. But on account of man's proprium, or on account of his hereditary and actual evils, he has a centrifugal force, or a strong inherent tendency to flee from the centre. These forces also counteract each other, and the result is a perfect equilibrium, and a state of perfect spiritual

freedom. These forces, with the sun and the earth, are merely mechanical, and can, consequently, never be abused, nor can the equilibrium between them ever be violated. But with man these forces are spiritual and rational, and may, as the power of determination is in the rational nature of man, be abused and the equilibrium disturbed. This evil occurs when man makes himself the centre, and thus perverts and inverts the powers with which he is gifted. In this case the love of self becomes the ruling principle, and the love of the Lord the merely formal profession. The mind is consequently buried, as to every thing spiritual and heavenly, in a dreadful dreary winter, in respect to which the Lord says, "Pray that your flight be not in the winter," that is, we must pray and labour that our departure from this world be not in that unregenerate and sinful state which is represented by winter. To carry out these correspondences between things spiritual and natural, would be instructive and profitable, but we have only space to advert to the fact, that the earth turns on its own axis, from west to east, and is thus constantly endeavouring to present the whole of its surface to the sun. This fact reads us another important lesson, when viewed from its correspondence to things spiritual. The sun is stationary, or has no local motion, and moves only round his own axis, by which we have seen, as he is the parent of the planets, so he is the parent of their motions, both orbicular and axilary. He is stationary in the east, and the earth is constantly turning itself in that direction to receive, as much as it possibly can, the sun's heat and light. Now, man should constantly turn himself to the Lord, as the "Sun of Righteousness," in the East. This he can do by having the Lord constantly before him, by living according to his divine precepts, and by the humble acknowledgment" that without him we can do nothing."

MATERIALS FOR MORAL CULTURE.

(Continued from page 413, former Vol.)

CXXXI.

MINUS.

They who desire to judge their brethren from good by truth, and not from truth alone, will remember, that man, while in this world, can only act from mixed motives, because the fountains of good and evil in the soul are both open at the same time, furnishing, in the mixed streams of every one's life, varying proportions of each. Those individuals are the best, in whom there is the most of internal good, mixed with the least of the evil of the external,- the evil of self; but all those number with the good, in whom good, in any degree, predominates. The good, however,