to make the above remark.* The ideas of Socrates also, in relation to the sexes, were extremely lax and ill defined. As Plato especially devoted himself to the culture of intellectual philosophy, he laid great stress on mathematics, and he suffered no one to enter into the academy who had not previously studied geometry. He maintained that the source of our knowledge is not the evidence of the senses, or of experience collected by means of the senses in the way of experiment and observation,-but Reason, the object of which is to contemplate the Unchangeable and the Absolute (10 ovтwg ov). He considered that the soul has certain innate ideas (vonuara) which form the basis of our conceptions. To these ideas (idea) as he called them, which are the types and models of all things, or the principles of our knowledge, we refer the infinite variety of individual objects presented to us. Hence it follows as a principle in the Platonic philosophy, that all the particulars of our knowledge are not the results of experience, but only developed and expanded by those results. These ideas, he says, are awakened or called up in the mind in proportion as it becomes acquainted with their resemblances, or copies, in the external world; the process being that of recalling to mind the circumstances of a state of pre-existence. Now, since the objects thus presented to the mind correspond as opoμaтa, or copies, with its ideas, or innate conceptions, they must have some principle in common which has formed these external objects after the model of the ideas. This principle, Plato said, is the Deity. He thus drew a distinction between Empirical knowledge, or knowledge gathered from experience in the external world, and Rational, or knowledge derived from the intellectual world, making this latter the only true object of philosophy. From the philosophy developed in the writings of the New Church, the means are provided by which the defects in the system of Plato can not only be detected, but the truths of a genuine system are also clearly unfolded and established. Plato seems not to have known the true doctrine of influx; how the faculties of man are actuated from within by the constant action of life from God; and although this divine influx communicates all the power of thinking by which ideas are acquired, yet, for the formation of ideas it is necessary that objects and materials * See the learned Dr. Mohler's Symbolism, &c., article Anabaptists, in the 2nd volume, where he especially alludes, in a note, to this peculiar perversion to which the doctrine of a communion of goods has been liable, tracing the perversion up to Plato's Republic. Dr. Mohler's work was reviewed in this periodical for 1844, pages 135 and 181. from without, or from the external world, be supplied. These objects, phenomena, and events, which constitute our experience, derived through the senses from the external world, are as necessary to the formation of ideas as the raw materials of silk, flax, and cotton are indispensable to the manufacture of useful and elegant garments; or as the ingesta of food and drink are necessary to the formation of the blood and the animal spirit.* Objects in the external world are, as Plato said, copies, or images of ideas, and, in the supreme sense, they are images of divine ideas, or of the divine love and wisdom, because external nature is, as it were, a theatre on which, in a most general sense, the divine things in God are represented. But there are no ideas innate or connate in the mind; it is only the faculty which is connate, just as there are no connate images of external objects on the retina, which at birth possesses only the faculty of receiving the images of objects by the action of the sun's rays. These images are acquired by the action or influx of life from within, and by the reaction of that which corresponds to life from without, which is the sun's heat and light. This action and reaction are necessary not only to produce images of objects on the retina of the bodily eye, but also ideas which are images seen on the retina of the intellectual eye, or in the understanding. Man, in his rational capacity, stands in the middle between the living action of the divine influx from within, and the reaction from without; and according to the employment of his rational faculty in meditating, reflecting, analyzing, &c., will be the correctness, number, and extension of his ideas. These ideas are exalted and pure precisely in proportion to the nature of the end, or love which actuates the mind. "Not the least idea of thought," says Swedenborg, "can be produced. without these active and passive forces.”† Philosophy was indebted to Plato for its systematic form, which it has preserved to the present time. He divided it into Logic, Metaphysics, and Morals, comprehending under the latter head political science; he defined the distinctions between these branches of philosophy, afterwards so largely carried out by Aristotle, who was many years the disciple of Plato, but who did not adopt his doctrine of ideas. He was also the first to distinguish between the analytical and synthetical methods of reasoning. Plato considered the soul to be a self-acting energy or power (ɛavTO * See this beautifully explained by E. S., in the "Animal Kingdom,” vol. II., pages 498-522. + Diary, 2722. KIVOVV) moving itself. Here we see how indispensable the genuine doctrine of influx is, to a correct and enlightened system of philosophy. The divine Being is the only self-acting power, which by its constant action or influx into the soul, causes it to live and move as of itself. Plato, who was one of the first to point out the difference between real and apparent truths,—the ro ov and the ro pavoμevov, did not see that he uttered an apparent truth, when he alleged that the soul is a self-acting power. As united with the body, he distinguished the soul into two parts, the rational, and the irrational, or animal. The animal part, he alleged, has its origin in the imprisonment of the soul in the body; the intellectual, however, or rational, still retains a consciousness of the ideas, by the development of which it will return into the happy state of immortal spirits. Nearly all the sages of antiquity thought that the soul, so long as it is in connexion with the material body, is in a state of banishment and punishment. It does not appear that they had any idea that, according to divine order, man must first appear in the ultimates of creation, clothed with a material body, before he can exist as a spiritual being in a spiritual world. They had no knowledge that such are the conditions of man's immortality, and of the development and formation of his mind for the reception of love and wisdom from God. Plato thus endeavoured to prove the spirituality of the soul, and to demonstrate its immortality. All evil, he said, results from our connexion with matter; virtue consists in the endeavour to resemble the Deity, whom Plato considered to be infinitely good, and to become liberated from the influence of matter. That virtue may exist, it is necessary that there be a unison and harmony of all our principles and actions according to reason, whence results the highest degree of happiness. Virtue is compounded of four elements-Wisdom, Fortitude or Manliness, Temperance, and Justice, the four cardinal virtues; which were explained, as understood by the ancient philosophers, in the former paper on the philosophy of Socrates. FIDELIS. DR. ADAM CLARKE'S TESTIMONY TO THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER TO JESUS CHRIST, &c. THE extract (in page 16) from the late Dr. Arnold's Letter to the late estimable William Smith, Esq., in 1833,* suggests the probability that * Seven years previous to this date, I had some hours' conversation with Mr. the testimony of the late Dr. Adam Clarke to the efficacy of prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ, may not be unacceptable. It is contained in a very interesting life of that upright and learned individual, “By a Wesleyan Preacher," dated 1841, and the passage in which it occurs refers to the manner of his obtaining a sense of the pardon of his sins, when he was a very young man : "Less than a pardon felt in his heart, and witnessed in his conscience by the Holy Ghost, would not satisfy him. The day at length dawned on which he was to obtain that blessing which his soul so ardently desired. One morning while labouring in the field, his anguish of soul was so great, as to oblige him to desist through the failure of his physical strength. The heavens seemed as brass to his supplications, and he was tempted to believe that God would not have mercy on him, and that he who died for a world, had not died for him. Thick darkness enveloped his soul. His agony was indescribable, and he fell prostrate to the earth! He could have chosen strangling rather than life, if death could have ended his sufferings. Nor were these feelings excited by the dread of hell. They arose from his deep consciousness of his destitution of the favour and image of God. While in this state, it was strongly impressed upon his soul that he should PRAY TO CHRIST. He obeyed the inward suggestion, and the change was instantaneous. According to his own words, a glow of happiness seemed to thrill through his whole frame: all guilt and condemnation were gone. He examined his conscience, he found it no longer a register of sins against God. He looked up to heaven, and all was sunshine; he searched for his distress, but could not find it. He felt indescribably happy, but could not tell the cause :-a change had taken place within him of a nature wholly unknown before, and for which he had no name. He sat down upon the ridge where he had been working, full of ineffable delight. He praised God, and he could not describe for what; for he could give no name to his work. His heart was light, his physical strength returned, and he could bound like a roe. He felt a sudden transition from darkness to light, from guilt and oppressive fear, to confidence and peace. He could now draw nigh to God with more confidence than he ever could to his earthly father." It appears that in 1777, Mr. Barber, a Methodist preacher, in pursuing his vocation in Ireland, had urged upon young Adam Clarke "earnestly to aspire after that sense of pardoning love which the Methodists teach as the common privilege of every man." But Adam could not get it by praying to the Father for the sake of the Son, as Mr. Barber had instructed him to do, and was consequently reduced to that agonizing state of despair described in the beginning of the foregoing extract. He got it, however, by deviating from the Methodist practice,-and yet he became a Methodist, nevertheless! It appears that about seven Smith in a Norwich stage-coach, concerning the doctrine of Universal Restitution, the true definition of Charity, and other points in theology, with which he was sufficiently interested to promise to obtain and read Swedenborg's True Christian Religion. years after he had received this experimental proof of the efficacy of prayer to Jesus Christ, he was providentially favoured with the means of knowing the reason of this efficacy. Instruction was offered to him by means of the writings of Swedenborg, in proof that Jesus Christ is the only proper Object of a Christian's worship. Any one might naturally have supposed that, Mr. Clarke having found by experience the superior efficacy of direct prayer to Jesus Christ, as compared with prayer to the Invisible God for the sake of the manifested God, he would have persevered in the practice of it. But no: custom was stronger than experience. Had it been otherwise, he would have been better prepared to have taken advantage of the providential circumstance mentioned in the following extract : "It appears from an entry made in Mr. Clarke's journal, dated January 4th, 1784, that he had been much perplexed by a conversation with Mr. J. H., [James Hindmarsh] who had been master of Kingswood school, and several years a preacher, but had retired to Norwich in 1782, having imbibed the doctrines of Baron Swedenborg. In accordance with his new creed, Mr. H. endeavoured to shew that there is no such thing as three Persons in the Godhead; but that what is called God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, is only the Great God acting under three different characters. Mr. Clarke, however, satisfied himself, that Matt. iii. 16, 17, contained an unanswerable argument for the [Tripersonal] doctrine of the Trinity." It seems to be a necessary result of the abuse of advantages, or the rejection of means of improvement, that parties become less wise than they would otherwise have been; or than they were before such an ungrateful return was made for divine mercies. Mr. Clarke had been favoured with experimental proof, that Jesus Christ could grant his petitions, but he nevertheless discontinued to pray to Him, preferring to be led by the Methodists in their mode of worshipping the Invisible Father only! He was next favoured with the offer of being instructed in the true doctrine of the Trinity, but he rejected this also; and afterwards we find, as the probable sad consequence of an abuse of such gracious opportunities, that Dr. Clarke fell into the absurdity of openly advocating not merely Tripersonalism, but, according to the testimony of his fellow Methodists, absolute Tritheism; for which no doubt he would have been expelled the Methodist society, had he not been so very learned and influential a person. As it was, he roused in his fellow-leaders the greatest state of alarm, and excited them to the most earnest opposition to his dogmas. No doubt there was no essential difference in his ideas of thought upon the subject, and theirs; but the good doctor was too honest a man to comply with the sinister clause in the Athanasian Creed, so universally acted upon by Tripersonalists, which says, in effect, that while we believe that there are three Gods and three Lords, we must not |