jects for the present session are "The Neighbour," read the first night by Mr. Appelbee; "Shakespeare and Swedenborg on the Supernatural," "The Law of Retaliation,' 66 Correspondences," "Pathology and Swedenborg," etc. The Society meets the third Thursday in each month, from October to May inclusive, at 36 Bloomsbury Street, at 7 o'clock p.m. Intending members should apply to the Secretary, Mr. Keene, 38 Hartham Road, London, N. Each member's ticket admits also a friend to each meeting. Refreshments are provided at 9.30, and the session concludes with a conversazione in June. It is intended, when the funds will allow, to publish an annual volume of proceedings. on LONDON (Argyle Square).—A short course of lectures has been given in this church during the past month, which was commenced by Rev. W. B. Hayden, of Portland, Maine, U.S., who lectured “The Judgment: Where and How effected?" This was followed on succeeding Sabbath evenings by lectures on "Heaven" and "Hell" by the minister. The attention of the Society is also being strongly directed to the subject of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. It is much to be desired that a greater attention to this subject were given by Occupied and interested as we are with the many discoveries of spiritual truth, and with the internal things of the Word and of worship, we are too apt to overlook the importance and value of the external means of promoting the soul's spiritual nourishment and growth. The following notice, given in the Manual of the Society, may possibly suggest increased attention to this important service in other Societies all the Societies in the New Church. "The Society, at its last quarterly meeting, having expressed a strong desire that arrangements should be made to increase the convenience of attendance at the Sacrament of the Holy Supper, the Committee have since given their attention to this important subject. It is felt that all the attendants at our ordinary service should be encouraged to stay to the Communion, not necessarily in order to partake,although it is hoped most will ultimately feel this to be a privilege and duty, but devoutly to hear the valu able doctrinal expositions of the service, and to join in the sacrifice of prayer and praise. Arrangements are accordingly proposed, which, it is hoped, will compress the entire proceedings on a Sacrament Sunday-including the sermon and the Order of Communion-as nearly as possible within the limits of an ordinary morning service, enabling all to leave the church well before a quarter to one o'clock. Moreover, it is intended that under the new system but one offertory shall be taken during a Communion service, the proceeds of which shall be divided, as may be deemed most equitable, between the Church and the Benevolent Fund, to which the present sacramental alms are appropriated." The offertory, which was introduced into this church two years ago, seems to have been very successful. Its amount the first year was £161, 18s. 3 d., the second year it amounted to £196, 14s. 9d. LONDON (Buttesland Street).—With a view of helping the Building Fund of this Society, a course of entertainments have been arranged by our indefatigable friend, Jocelyn Fisher, Esq.; which, through the kindness of the Argyle Square friends, are held in their school room. been of a very excellent character, and The entertainments already given have have given great pleasure to the crowded audiences attracted to them. As an evidence of the practical sympathy manifested, it may be mentioned that all the best vocal, musical, and elocutionary talent in the London Societies of the New Church have been placed unreservedly at Mr. Fisher's service. The result will be, we are assured, solid and cheering. A reference to the advertisement in another part of the Magazine, respecting a proposed Easter Tree, for the sale of fancy and useful articles, will, we hope, elicit a hearty response from our more wealthy New Church brethren: the proceeds will be devoted to the Building Fund. A course of lectures is now being delivered by Mr. Dicks on the " Flood, and other kindred subjects, which have attracted several strangers, who will we trust be induced to remain amongst us. LONDON (Camden Road).-Four lectures have been given by Rev. Dr Tafel at this church during the months 66 of November and December last. The commenced missionary work in earnest. subjects discussed were- "The Soul and They have resolved that if the people the Nature of Spirit, "The Resurrec- will not come to them, they will go to tion and the Conditions of Immortality," the people. They have, therefore, as Heaven, the Abode of the Blessed," an experiment, engaged for their minand "The Reality, Nature, and Locality ister's use a well known public hall for of Hell." Brief notices of these lectures alternate Mondays, until Christmas. are given in the St. Pancras Guardian. Two lectures have already been delivered From these we give the following :with marked success. Both have been re"The Rev. Prof. Tafel began a short ported in the Nottingham Journal. The series of discourses on the Future following account of the second lecture is Life,' last Sunday evening, at the New taken from the columns of that paper:Jerusalem Church, Camden Road, by a "A lecture on the 'Nature of Man'lecture on the spiritual part of man the second of a series of fortnightly and on spirit generally. The text he lectures on the Revelations of Swedenselected was, And God breathed into borg-was delivered by the Rev. Charles man the breath of life, and man became H. Wilkins, on Monday evening, in the a living soul.' He said the men of the lecture hall of the Mechanics' Institute. present day were apt to judge everything by their understanding, which was regarded as the special object of culture; but God had placed two centres of life in man, which in the body were the heart and the lungs in the soul the will and understanding. And as man physically could not live unless his heart and lungs worked healthily, neither could he live spiritually in the manner God intended unless his will and understanding, his affections and thoughts, were properly and harmoniously developed. The eye cannot discriminate the heart-stirring tones of music, and the mental eye of philosophers and scientists fail to tell us anything of a man's love, the higher because the more interior faculty of man, which transcends their investigations. He combated the notion which is known as evolution, showing that as all life is God's, the difference is due to the vessels for its reception; that a human soul received human life because it only had the vessels capable of receiving that life; that the body was in the human form, because the soul from which it receives its form is so first. Everything created has its spiritual essence, to which its existence in the natural world is due, and which, like the soul to the body, stands in the relation of a cause to its effect. Spirit is not refined matter, and cannot be arrived at by continuity. Contiguity not continuity is the relation it bears; and though like soul and body most intimately connected, they are like these on entirely different planes. "The lecturer said-The popular idea of man is that his material body is a piece of complicated machinery, of which the soul is the all-impelling stream. According to this conception man ceases to be man when the body is separated from the soul, the former rusting away in inactivity, the latter vanishing as vapour. Swedenborg utterly repudiates this idea. With him man is not a material being, not even a being that is partly spiritual and partly material, but a being essentially and exclusively spiritual. The real body is spiritual, aud is not less perfectly organized, but is unspeakably more perfectly organized than the material body. The material body is but the means by which man is enabled, for eternal purposes to retain a temporary connection and communication with the material world. When the time comes for man's departure into his spiritual and eternal home he casts away the material body never to resume it, and appears in his spiritual and immortal or real body in the spiritual world. This is in harmony with Scripture. Verily, verily, I say unto you,' said Jesus, 'If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.' True Christians keep the sayings of Jesus and yet they see the death of the material body. It follows, therefore, that the death of the material body is the death not of the real man himself, but only of his temporary material covering. Again Jesus said, in speaking with the Sadducees, 'Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and NOTTINGHAM.-The friends here have the God of Jacob? God is not the God The of the dead, but of thel iving.' OXFORD.-We gave in a former nummaterial bodies of these three Jewish ber an account of proceedings in this patriarchs had long been only dust, and city in connection with the New Church. yet Jesus declares that they were then The lecture by Mr. Holland has been living men. Then when Peter, James, followed by a newspaper report and corand John looked upon their transfigured respondence. A writer, under the title Lord upon the mountain, they saw that of "Civis Oxoniensis," has given so He was talking with two men, and that grossly inaccurate a report of Mr. Holthese two men were Moses and Elias. land's lecture that the lecturer has These men were not in their material thought it necessary to correct his misbodies, and yet they were perfectly or- statements. This he does very effectuganized men, men possessed of all human ally in a letter which appeared in the faculties, and at that moment exercising Oxford Times of November 18th. The the faculty of speech. These are but a few misrepresentations are of the usual kind, of the innumerable proofs of this doctrine and manifest either an incapacity or an to be found in the Holy Scriptures. unwillingness to understand what the The Scriptures are in very deed the teaching of the New Church really is. Word of God. But just as surely the It is scarcely credible that intelligent human intellect is God's work. The men should persist in asserting that same Divinely-cunning fingers wrote the Swedenborg, and public lecturers on his one and formed the other. And when writings, teach immorality of life. With the first is truly read, it must inevit- the appalling facts before their eyes, ably harmonize with the last when truly which have grown up under orthodox exercised. So this doctrine that Sweden- teaching, they ought certainly to be borg teaches, that man is essentially an able to discriminate between the permisexclusively spiritual being, is taught by sion and the approval of evil. Yet this the intellect which God made, as plainly charge is gravely brought against Mr. as it is taught by the Scriptures which Holland's lecture, and thus replied to God wrote. Reason declares that God in his letter:- 66 I said he permitted is the infinitely perfect Being. Reason lesser evils to avoid greater evils, and declares as plainly that if we are His the Bible said the same thing, quoting offspring we must be in His image-that many passages of Scripture in support if He is the infinite Spiritual Man, we of the assertion. There is a great differare finite spiritual men. But if man is ence between the advocacy of an evil, a spiritual being destined to live in an and the permission of an evil. I pointed eternal spiritual home, why is he cum- out conditions which, though evil in bered even for a day with a material themselves, were permitted by God, body? Why has he to linger even for though they were not His will, but an hour in a material world? Ask, were contrary to it. Yet the natures of rather, why need the precious seed of a the people were such that this was the glorious plant be cumbered with a highest approach to good they were harsh dry husk which must be event- capable of. And so Swedenborg declares ually relinquished never to be resumed? they are evils in themselves, and that Ask, rather, why need the offspring of the directions he lays down are not for the skylark or the eagle he cumbered those to shelter themselves under who with an imprisoning shell, which must can live above them, his subject being break and perish before the bird can to limit a great and common evil to the rise into its native element? Nature narrowest possible compass, if it cannot and man are both works of the same be brought to an end, and not to 'advoMaster Workman. His indelible sig- cate' it in the slightest possible degree. nature is upon both. And all the greatest I did not say anything, or hint at any facts of nature are parables of the greater thing, likely to lead any one to infer facts of humanity. The lecturer con- that I believed, or even thought, cluded by inviting all who were present 'Swedenborg was as much a prophet to favour him with their company a as any of the prophets of old, if not fortnight hence, when he would continue the subject by speaking of death and resurrection. The audience, which was a large one, gave the lecturer a remarkably attentive hearing." more. All these expressions, and others I have not here noticed, instead of being in my lecture, are altogether of 'Civis Oxoniensis's own introduction. Not one of them ever escaped my lips." 66 was Mr. Holland's letter is followed by been kindly placed at the disposal of another from a writer who is 'No the writer of this notice :-"I Swedenborgian," but who censures the advice given by Mr. Walsh to young men not to read Swedenborg. "If we want,' says this writer, "honest, healthy, vigorous minds, free reading and free thought should by all means be encouraged. It is this one-sided education of young men that forms in religious matters that namby-pamby class that have no real freedom; and one kept perhaps all their life in leading strings by nice men of small tea-par ties. Birth. December 2nd, at 8 Lady Margaret Road, Kentish Town, N. W., the wife of Mr John F. Howe of a daughter (Ethel Mary). Obituary. On Wednesday, 25th October 1876, at Criccieth, Caernarvonshire, Mr. Hugh Evans, aged twenty-four years, was removed to his eternal home. Born in the heart of the Metropolis, at Basinghall Street, Hugh Evans early manifested the mental acuteness which familiarity with the sights and sounds of the great city excite in a child of inquiring disposition. Thus, at the age of eight years, finding an old treatise on shorthand, he at once set to work to master its difficulties, and ultimately became a proficient in Pitman's phonography, his practice of which was much facilitated by the singular neatness and beauty of his ordinary writing. His leisure was habitually employed in mental improvement, his custom being to rise at five for the prosecution of study. Consequently, without interfering with his regular duties as shorthand clerk in a merchant's office, where he always enjoyed in an eminent degree the respect and confidence of his employer, he attained considerable skill in various acquirements, especially in his favourite pursuit of music, in connection with which he wrote a little work, which was purchased and published by a London bookseller. In fact his boyhood and youth consistently prepared him for the great change in his religious convictions which, in the Lord's good providence, at length occurred. The manner of this change is described in the following extract from a long letter written by him on the 7th December 1874 to a friend, by whom it has deeply interested in the study of phrenology, and being desirious of subscribing to the American Phrenological Journal, I applied at the office of Dr. N. L. Fowler, and inquired the name of the London agent of this paper, which he informed me was Mr. J. Burns, of Southampton Row. I accordingly wrote to this gentleman asking what the subscription would be, to which he replied, sending me at the same time a work on Spiritualism. I read this book very attentively, although I felt convinced that spiritualism was nothing more than legerdemain, but the facts it contained were so striking that it led me to believe that there must be something in it. This excited my curiosity so much that I could not rest until I had found out for myself whether spiritualism was true or false. With this view I purchased a number of other books on the subject, which I carefully read. I tried to investigate it as a science, but finding that science was insufficient to explain its mystery, I looked upon it in a religious light, in order to ascertain whether it was from Heaven or from Hell. During the whole of my research I prayed earnestly to my Heavenly Father for Divine guidance in the way of truth, and a deliverance from evil. Still I went on, day after day, week after week, until at last spiritualism had got the upper hand. It was in fact making me one of its converts, preparing me to submit everything to its sway, and to persuade others to embrace it. While I was in this state a dear friend of mine called upon me, trying his utmost to alter my impressions, but to no avail. I was ready and willing to throw everything aside likely to impede my progress, even the Bible itself. I feared nothing. My conscience was perfectly easy, and I felt very happy. Thus far had I fallen when the good and loving Lord, who is ever willing to hear and answer prayer, interceded, and appointed my deliverer. It happened at that time that my attention was called to an advertisement in the Standard stating that the Swedenborg Society were willing to grant gratuitously to clergymen and ministers a copy of the True Christian Religion, and business taking me in that direction, I called and purchased a copy of that work. While there I caught sight of a little work entitled Modern Spiritism in the Light of the New Church (by the Rev. Dr. Tafel). I at once inquired its nature. Being informed that its object was to show that spiritualism was improper, I at once purchased a copy, feeling sure that nothing could alter my conviction. I commenced reading the little book sceptically, but before I had gone half-way through it the Lord opened my eyes to see the truth, and I was then and there convinced of the fallacy of spiritualism, seeing it not only to be improper, but dangerous. Thus the Lord Jesus has snatched His servant from the very jaws of death, setting his feet upon a rock (the Divine truth), and established his goings. Since then it has been my delight to study the New Church truths. They are very sweet to me, because I feel that it is the will of my Heavenly Father that I should be brought to a knowledge of the truth." recovered the fatigue of the long jour- "On the 12th of November, 1876 at Grapton Road, Holloway, London, of bronchitis, Mr. Robert Colling, formerly of Vine Place, Brighton, in his 67th year." This brief notice of this estimable member of the New Church appeared in the Brighton Examiner of November 21st. Mr. Colling held the office of leader of the Society at Brighton from its formation in 1859 till about two years ago, when he removed his residence to London. He was a man of exemplary character, had a clear perception of the truths he taught, and carefully composed the sermons he preached to his people. The paper which gives the brief notice we have cited in its obituary notices has the following in one of its leading columns: -"Many of our readers will see with He immediately sought all possible regret the death of Mr. Robert Colling opportunities for frequenting New recorded among our obituary notices. Church lectures, etc., and established among his phonographic acquaintances a circulating shorthand magazine in manuscript, for the purpose of discuss ing the doctrines. Although resident ten miles from London, at Barnet, he became a regular attendant at Argyle Square Church, where his practice of reporting the sermons soon attracted notice. An acquaintance was consequently formed with the minister, which soon ripened on both sides into a warm friendship, and ultimately Mr. Evans was connected with the first co-operajoined the Argyle Square Society, and by his own earnest desire was baptized into the New Church on the 27th of February in the past year. At the Manchester Conference of 1875 he applied for adoption as a student, and was accordingly admitted to the New Church College, his connection with which was regarded as auguring a career of great usefulness in the ministry. Almost from the beginning of the year, however, his studies were interrupted by ill-health. Advised in the summer to Criccieth, for many generations the ancestral home of his family, he procured a temporary relief; but his fatal constitutional malady, consumption, had taken too firm a grip. Soon after his return to London he suffered a relapse, with aggravated symptoms, and although he was again taken to the air from which he had previously benefited, he never The deceased was for nearly a quarter of tive movement in Brighton, in which Departed this life, November 20th, 1876, at his residence, Benfield Street, Heywood, Mr. William Bentley, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. During the last few years the deceased resided |