ministry"? But suppose Mr. Wilks had at first assumed the affirmative instead of the negative of the question which we propounded to him. Suppose that he, when reading Coronis 17, saw it to be true that there is and must be in both the new church and her ministry just such a trine as there is in man; so that there should be persons in the church and in her ministry as the head; and other persons in the church and ministry under those, as the body; and still other persons, under both these and those, as the feet and soles of the feet; would he not then see every where in the Word and the writings something to confirm this truth? Suppose him to go to Ap. Rev. 744-which see on p. 473 of this report-would he not find the truth that there is a trine of discrete degrees of persons in the church confirmed by that? Suppose him to go to Gen. xviii.-would he not now see in the incident of Jehovah's appearing to Abraham as three men "confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ" that there should be three orders of priests instead of one in the new-church ministry? Would he not now see that when John saw the Lord as the Son of Man in Rev. i. the trine of the priesthood was still presented to view as it is "in man" by Swedenborg in Coronis 17?" such a trine is man." would not this memorable relation which he quotes from Ap. Rev. 926 present to him now a very different aspect? All we can say is, it is passing strange that Mr. Wilks should not see the three degrees represented here, viz. :

I. The simple tent-natural degree.

II. Temple like that at Jerusalem-spiritual degree.

III. The Lord standing alone-celestial degree.

And

For which, in the complex priesthood as one man, there should be— I. The natural priest-to represent the tent.

II. The spiritual priest-to represent the temple.

III. The celestial priest-to represent the Lord alone.

The tent, the temple, and the Lord alone, represent worship in its three discrete degrees, just as Elias, Moses and the Lord, or Peter, James and John, and the three tabernacles to be made for them, did on the mount of transfiguration.

Now, reader! if you will do the same; that is, assume it to be true, that there is and must be such a trine in every church and every priesthood; then, wherever you look, with this affirmation in your mind, you will every where see confirmations of it in both the Word of God and the writings of Swedenborg. Be assured that your experience in this respect will be like ours. But, if you assume the negative of this principle, as Mr. Wilks has done, then you cannot find confirmations of it any where. Be assured that your experience in this respect will be like his. Sir Isaac Newton, observing an apple fall from its parent tree to the ground, reasoned that it so fell because the earth attracted it. From this postulate, as golden or silver stuff, he spun and wove the theory that has fully explained all the phenomena of planetary movements in the whole starry heavens, as well as in our particular mundane and solar spheres. It is concluded that these motions are all produced by mutual attraction, because Newton's theory of gravitation fully explains them. If, then, we assume it to

be true, from Coronis 17, that there is such a trine of discrete degrees persons in both the church and its priesthood as corresponds to head, body and feet in man, and the whole Word and all of Swedenborg's writings do not contain a single passage contradicting this in words, but, on the contrary, may be made to confirm it as Rev. 744 and Gen. xviii. do, then, reader! we ask you to conclude with us that this is a truth, taught both by the Word and Swedenborg under the Lord's special illumination: so that "the Central Convention, agreeably to its constitution, has power to establish no other than SUCH an order of priesthood; and therefore should not presume to do so"!

We now dismiss the Rev. Thomas Wilks's report with this most general and concluding remark-in our estimation, it is the most plausible and subtle, yet fallacious and unsound, argument upon the subject of which it treats that our new-church literature has ever produced. THE REV. WILLIAM MASON'S LETTER.

We purpose to say a very few words on this topic. We have animadverted pretty much upon all of the contents of Mr. Mason's letter in the body of our report. We should not have noticed it at all, if it had not been sent to us by Mr. Mason in his official capacity of president of the General Conference. This fact gave to his assertions the weight of that most respectable body's authority. To say that his official censure wounded us to the heart, is true, but not strong enough to express the anguish which it gave us. We had respected Mr. Mason highly, and loved him greatly. We were looking up to him as a spiritual Mentor, whose words of monition and of counsel were to distil that "wisdom which is from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy." And when this letter came, full of objurgation, with its petulant, irascible and jarring tone of rebuke, and with the startling enunciation of the most questionable propositions of new-church theology, it was far from the least source of our pain, that a man who had stood so high, should now sink so low, in our estimation! Can it be possible, we said to ourselves, as we read his letter over and over, that this is the same Mr. Mason who wrote the former letter to our convention, whose works we have read with so much admiration, and whose instructions we have received with so much profit! Can it be possible that these are his viewsespecially in regard to marriage! Surely these are not the views which generally prevail in England on this most peculiar and most prominent new-church sanctity! If so, how greatly have we been mistaken in our profound reverence for the high intelligence of our church in England!

On page xxvii of our Appendix, the reader will find the letter of Mr. Mason, on which we now proceed to make one or two brief remarks. In regard to Mr. Mason's construction of Coronis 17, we imagine it will now be seen that we do not differ very widely from him. Nor do we dissent from his position that uses are prior to the mediums of use, and that priestly uses must determine the external order of the priesthood. But we differ from him as to the time and

way of instituting external representative order in the new church. We also differ from him in respect to what the three uses which are implied by the three offices of the priesthood are; and therefore differ in respect to the three officers which those uses, when foreseen and provided for by the church, will bring into determinate existence. And we think we can now pretty confidently say, there is nothing in this difference of opinion which justifies Mr. Mason's severe charge against us, of having indicated "a somewhat superstitious state of mind," "which appears to have led to a forced construction and misapplication of passages in the writings of Swedenborg, cited in the Journal in support of the superstitious conclusions sought to be established thereby, and which have grown out of the unwarranted construction of Coronis 17, in attempting to carry that construction into practice." We could say a good deal about the first paragraph, or that marked "I.", of the letter,-especially about the Lord's actual presence in the good and the truth of the laity instead of his representative presence in the offices of the priesthood which are still holy representatives, and also about the "unquestionably unauthorized and practically injurious (!) sundering of the two sacraments, in violation of the professedly adopted pattern of the three degrees in the Coronis," &c. &c.,-but our space is so completely exhausted that we are utterly prevented.

There are but two things upon which we wish to remark in the letter now before us. First, Mr. Mason's petulant defence of his hymn book from the rather sweeping "condemnatory judgment" of it by the report of our acting committee. It is proper for us to say here, that we had no hand in writing that report, and did not like what was said in it respecting the Conference Hymn Book. The condemnation of that book is far too sweeping, and savors too much of the prejudice against it which has been engendered in another general body of our church in this country. We have ever thought it, in general, an excellent hymn book-as good a one as we ought to have expected in the incipiency of our external church. We have always used it ourselves; and tried to introduce it wherever we have officiated. But we cannot disguise the fact, that there is a prejudice in this country against it-that there is, in fact, a difficulty in using it on account of the metrical composition of very many of the hymns not allowing them to be easily sung in public worship. This is in fact the complaint made by those who lead our singing here in Baltimore. We believe that this arises out of fastidious and unreasonable prejudice. But it is a fact-so stubborn that it cannot be helped, nor forced out of the way. We want in this country that for our church which we want in our nation-spiritual songs which shall so embody the affections of the doctrinal truths of our church as to excite those affections in our public worshipers, just as appropriate national songs excite the affections of patriotism in our citizens. We want truly poetic illustrations of the Universal Theology of the New Heaven and the New Church. Cannot these be produced-will they not be produced? Not, we admit, till the heavenly and pure affections of the divine truths revealed by the Lord in that work are

by regeneration formed and made to glow with the melting heat of the Sun of Righteousness, so as to flow forth in true poetic liquidity! Perhaps the truths of the New Jerusalem are now only stored in the scientific mind of the visible church on earth, as lumps of precious ore in crucibles or furnaces, and cannot flow as liquid fire into moulding forms of true poetic thought, until the coals from off the altar are fanned by the breath of heaven into sufficiently fervent heat. We do expect that the time will come, when poetry, as well as music, painting and sculpture, will lay her master-work as an offering on the altar of the Living God! The first fruits and the ingathering of the year of all true science and of all good art must, sooner or later, be consecrate to the holy divine worship of the Lord! And we only know that our hearts now yearn with insatiable longing for such songs of Zion, sung by sweet choral voices, as will excite in our worshiping assemblies the pure affections of our heavenly truths, comparatively as the songs of virgins and young girls from the houses of heavenly societies "so affect and move the hearts of the hearers by their sweetness, that they perceive sensibly a blessed serenity instilled into their joys, which at the same time exalts and renews them." (C. L. 19.) Can not our brethren in England help us to such songs? May we not stretch out our hands to them in supplication for the performance of this sweet, good use? We were, in fact, just about to write to Mr. Mason, and others of our english brethren, for their aid in this, when his letter came as an extinguisher upon our lamp. We want a hymn book with hymns con posed so as to express, in smooth and simple versification, the appropriate affections of the truths taught in the Universal Theology; arranged, therefore, under heads similar to those of the chapters of that work; and poetically illustrative of the truths taught in those chapters and their subdivisions. We also want each hymn set to appropriate music; so that the same hymn shall always be sung to the same tune, which, if sweetly harmonious and properly expressive of the sentiment of the hymn, will, by the ever continuous association of holy thoughts and affections, be more and more infilled with a sphere of holy divine worship the longer it is sung by ourselves, and our children, and our children's children, to the remotest generation. What Englishman ever tires of hearing or singing his most sublime national anthemGod save the king? What American ever tires of hearing or singing his almost equally sublime national air? Old Hundred has never become too old-never grown superannuated-in the old christian church. And may we not look for a few new-church hymns which will bear to be embalmed in the best religious affections of our souls, and be as perpetually and tirelessly sung in our public worship? Our plan may be chimerical, our aspirations vain; but this is what the writer of the report of our acting committee had in view when he asked for hymns which would "give the spiritual affections for the heavenly truths of the New Jerusalem in pure poetic garb and expression"; or for "such hymns, for our use in worship, as shall truly and beautifully express deep spiritual affection for the holy verities of our church." We are sorry that he mentioned the

"English Conference Hymn Book." He need not have done so. The mention of that book was not wholly pertinent. And we acknowledge that what he said was justly obnoxious to the displeasure of our english brethren, and especially of Mr. Mason, who was a sort of father to that compilation. His notice of it was certainly not courteous. And our whole convention is bound to make the amende honorable. But we know that the offence thus given was most unintentional on the part of the writer of that report. We can assure Mr. Mason that he is the last man in our country who would give intentional offence to our brethren in England-whom no one respects more highly than he does-or to any body else. And we are satisfied that he meant to say no more in condemnation of the book of which he spoke, than we have since found that Mr. Mason himself has said of it. If the reader will turn to our Appendix, page lxxix, he will find, as Document No. LXII., a "Report of English Hymn Book Committee," made to the Seventeenth General Conference, in 1824, by Mr. Mason, as secretary of that committee. This committee had been appointed by a former conference to get out a hymn book for the use of the new church, and, having completed their task, they report the "Preface" of the original edition in explanation of the plan of the work. In the course of the preface so reported, we find this sentence "Those [hymns] which have been introduced from other sources [than new-church writers,] will all be found to breathe, in beautiful and energetic language, the spirit of the New Jerusalem."" Now why should this be stated, if it were not desirable in England, as well as in this country, that hymns for new-church worship should "give the spiritual affections for the heavenly truths of the New Jerusalem in pure poetic garb and expression"? Hence, although "the uses of piety" are certainly to take precedence of "the powers of poetry," yet "it must needs be that the uses of piety and the language of the hymns" ought "always to be made to exist together in equal perfection"; and if this is not done, the hymns are in so far defective. Now, as the English Conference Hymn Book proves, in our attempts to use it in this country, to be in fact thus defective in literary adaptation to the uses of piety, there is certainly good reason why we should wish, and seek for, greater literary and poetic excellence than that book affords us. And that this was still confessedly a desideratum with even some of our english brethren at the time when their Conference Hymn Book was first published, will appear in the following quotation from its preface :-"The committee are aware that some individuals will necessarily find compositions inserted which they will think might as well have been omitted, while the same compositions will, to persons of a different taste, appear quite indispensable. This variety of taste and judgment the committee have, as far as their abilities go, endeavored to suit; but so far are they from conceiving that their best endeavors have been completely successful, that they would rejoice to see the church grow in interior qualities and LITERARY ACQUIREMENTS, so as to render a new and improved hymn-book necessary to the improved condition of the church. An event so DESIRABLE cannot happen TOO SOON, for any