two young children, and bathed at a part of the beach of whose dangerous character he was ignorant. In a few minutes he was seized by a powerful current, and though a boat hasted to his rescue, it was just too late. He was washed out to sea, and his body found six days after, about five miles away from the spot where he lost his life. Mr. Sones had been connected with the Argyle-square society for about ten years. He was scholar, teacher, librarian in succession, junior member, and then senior member, and beloved and esteemed in every capacity. He was gentle, orderly, and good. For several years he had been connected with the letter-carrying department of the Postoffice, and in this, as well as in all the relations of life, he was most exemplary. To his young widow, his parents, and his numerous friends, it must be the greatest possible source of consolation to know that his sweet spirit, and earnest, thoughtful life gave evidence of that heaven within which prepares the soul for heaven above.

J. B. On September 1st, at Exeter, Miss Georgina Beedle departed to her final home. Her end was truly peaceful, her resignation to the will of her Heavenly Father perfect, her joy unspeakable at

the prospect of so blessed a change as
she confidentially anticipated. Her cha-
racter was peculiarly innocent, and love
ruled her thoughts, words, and actions.
Pure-minded and guileless, she readily
accepted and conformed to the exalted
truths of the New Jerusalem, and humbly
trusted in her Divine Saviour for that
salvation He alone can bestow, and
which He had prepared her to receive.
"Blessed are the dead who die in the
Lord."
G. C. R. B.

She

On the 28th September, at Swinton, near Manchester, Mrs. Hannah Jepson, widow of the late Mr. Samuel Jepson, was removed to the spiritual world, in her 80th year. She had previously suffered much from the dropsy. was a cordial receiver of our heavenly doctrines, having joined her husband in his reception of them more than twenty years ago. These doctrines afforded her much consolation in her last illness, enabling her to meet death with fortitude, and look forward to a happy release from suffering. She was very grateful for the long life which had been granted to her, and the ample opportunity thus afforded her to make preparation for that better world where suffering is no more and "the weary are at rest."

Missionary and Tract Society, Swedenborg House, Bloomsbury-street.-
First Friday

College, Devonshire-street, Islington.-Second Thursday
National Missionary Institution, and Students and Ministers' Aid Fund,
Swedenborg House, Bloomsbury-street.-Fourth Monday

MANCHESTER.

ditto

Tract Society, Schoolroom, Peter-street.-Third Friday..

ditto

H.

p.m.

6-30

8-0

6-30

6-30

7-0

Missionary Society Members of Conference are invited, when in London, to attend the National Missionary, and when in Manchester, to attend the Missionary and the Tract Societies.

TO READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

Communications to be sent for the Essay department, to the Editor, the Rev. W. BRUCE, 43, Kensington Gardens Square, London, W.; for the Miscellaneous department, to the Rev. R. STORRY, Heywood Hall, Heywood. Those intended for insertion in the forthcoming number must be received not later than the 15th.; except brief notices of recent meetings, &c., which may appear if not later than the 18th.

A Letter from Dr. Bayley, containing some particulars of a Ladies' School for German, &c., at Constance, on the lake of Constance, in Switzerland, was received too late for publication.

Several Reviews in type have been unavoidably postponed for want of space.

Change of Residence.-Dr. Bayley desires his friends to notice that his address is now slightly altered, being-19, Richmond-crescent, Barnsbury.

CAVE AND SEVER, Printers by Steam Power, Hunt's Bank, Manchester.

THE combined efforts of contributors and readers have considerably increased the circulation, and thus enlarged the usefulness, of the Repository during the last year. Considering the necessarily limited extent of our impression, five hundred numbers for the year, or forty for the month, is an encouraging addition to the sales. Believing that this success is in a great measure due to the fulfilment of the promise we were able to make in December last of contributions from eminent writers in the church, we beg to tender them our best thanks, which, we are sorry to add, is almost the only acknowledgment it is yet in our power to offer them. The result shows, however, that the pure and simple prospect of doing good is held by many as quite a sufficient reward for that which, however largely paid in money, is nothing unless it be a labour of love.

We have much pleasure in being able to announce that the promises of support for the coming volume are such as give us new encouragement to hope that it will be not less attractive and useful than the one which is now completed. Among those who have kindly consented to be contributors are the Revs. A. Clissold, Dr. Bayley, J. Hyde, W. Woodman, O. P. Hiller, and Mr. Leo H. Grindon.

Arrangements have been made for securing greater variety, and for having, as recommended by the Conference Committee, fewer articles in series. The variety intended is not so much in the nature of the subjects, as in the length of the papers. Two or three short articles will appear in each 1 umber; a fair specimen of which, both as to matter and extent, may be judged of by the two shortest which appear in the

I

present number. The unusual length of one in this month's impression is not to be taken as an example of what is to come, but is printed as the last of a series, which it has been thought desirable to conclude with the present volume. To compensate for this, and prevent arrears, the present number contains an extra half sheet.

Having indicated what we have endeavoured to do for our readers, and what, by the good providence of the Lord, we hope to accomplish, we now earnestly invite them to do what they can to help forward the work in which we are unitedly engaged, by endeavouring to increase the number of readers.

TRANSITION.

IV. THE INDEFECTIBILITY OF THE CHURCH.

Being an Illustration of the Doctrine of Development, and an Address to the Swedenborg Society on the occasion of the last Anniversary, June, 1868. (Concluded from November No.)

Such was the collision of the old with the new state of things, in the minds of those who adhered to the old; but the transition from the old to the new occasioned serious embarrassments even among those who adhered to the new; for, long before the destruction of the Temple, it was a question how far the old had ceased and the new was to be adopted; where and when the old had terminated; where and when the new began. If converts adhered to the old state of things, they were reproached as Judaizers; if they adhered to the new, they were reproached as separatists and sectarians.

66

con

Although the Hebrew Christians," says a modern writer, tinued to observe the Law, their adoption of Christianity must powerfully have affected the strength of their allegiance to it. The displacement of the Temple sacrifice from its preeminence as the highest act of worship; the misgiving which this must have implied as to its further efficacy or meaning, and the haze of difficulty and confusion which must have been thrown upon many of the Jewish ordinances,―must needs have paralysed all missionary effort in which those questions were involved. A perplexed man may hold fast his own belief: he will never impart it to another."

Take the case of the perplexity of the very Apostles Peter and Paul, upon this subject :

*

Bishop Shirley's Account of the Church in the Apostolic Age, p. 35.

*Peter, though more particularly the Apostle of the Jews, was clearly convinced that the ceremonies of the Law were superseded and abolished by the Dispensation of the Gospel. For on all occasions we find him strongly asserting this doctrine, and declaring that the yoke of Moses ought not to be imposed on the necks of Christians; yet with all this conviction, it is equally manifest that through fear of the Jews he was induced to change his conduct, dissemble his opinion, and join himself to those zealots of the Law who required the observance of its rites as necessary to all.

Paul, on the other hand, the Apostle of the Gentiles, and by that character the more engaged to vindicate their liberty, knowing Peter's sentiments on this question to be the same with his own, was so scandalised at his dissimulation, that he could not abstain from reproaching him severely for it in public; yet when it came afterwards to his own turn to be alarmed with an apprehension of danger from the same quarter, he was content to comply and dissemble too, and in order to pacify the Jews, affected a zeal for their legal rites and observances, by the advice of James, who then presided in the Church of Jerusalem. Paul, says Chrysostom, was various both in his words and actions; at one time he complied with the ceremonies of the law, at another he contemned them; at one time he sacrificed and shaved his head, at another he denounced anathemas against all who did so; at one time he circumcised, at another rejected all circumcision."

The collision between the old and the new state of things, or the question how far it was expedient that the old should be superseded by the new, was referred to a general council, which, according to a modern writer, †"shared to the full the heat and vehemence of debate, and whose final decree bears visible marks of the conflict of individual opinions, and of that spirit of compromise which we are wont to regard as one of the surest marks of the infirmity of human nature."

"Porphyry took occasion to charge both the Apostles, in their dispute upon this subject, with levity, inconstancy, and weakness of mind. Jerome affirms that the whole quarrel was an act of dissimulation on both sides; for otherwise, how could Paul condemn in Peter that of which he himself was guilty? St. Augustine replies, that this is defending the Apostle on the ground of excusing his insincerity, and in reality practising a lie. He allows Peter to have been blameable, * Works of Dr. Conyers Middleton, Vol. II., p. 284; See the whole article. + Bishop Shirley's Account of the Church in the Apostolic Age, p. 56. See the articles in Dr. Middleton's Works, above mentioned.

not for continuing with his countrymen to observe the traditions of their ancestors, which he might have done both innocently and consistenly, but for obliging the Gentiles also to observe them in the same manner. To this view of the subject Jerome replies by treating it as a mere heresy, the same for which Cerinthus and Ebion had been condemned by the Church."

Even to this day it is said-* Nearly all theologians have laboured in vain in their attempt to explain the decree of the council, and seem not so much to have solved the difficulties contained in it, as rather to have evaded them."

We thus see the difficulty and confusion which arose from the transition, in individual minds, from the old dispensation to the new; how this transition gave rise to questions of expediency; and expediency to alleged compromise and dissimulation. The cause of these embarassments was the opposition between the old and the new; and yet that opposition was not between the new and the old as taught in the Word of God, but as interpreted by the minds of men. What in the course of Divine Providence was only a process of development, was to the old Jewish mind a process of antagonism. Certainly, new wine cannot be put into old bottles; but the old bottles were not the statutes and judgments of the Jewish law as interpreted by the new Christian Church, but as interpreted by the old Jewish Church. The old bottles of that day contained the mind of the Church, not the mind of Christ; they were simply externals alienated from things internal. And it is upon the same principles in the present day that the Scripture is interpreted; the consequence is that the old bottles burst, being incapable of containing either the truths which relate to natural science, or those which relate to spiritual life. History, prophecy, statutes, judgments, ordinances, miracles, visions, revelations, are by the critic regarded as all so many old bottles bursting one after another, almost at the first glance of inspection.

But, as in the time of the Jews, so it is now,-the old bottles are not the Old Testament, but the old forms of thought or of interpretation constituting the Church: these in many instances cannot be reconciled with the new, any more than the Jewish mind could be reconciled with the Christian; and yet the Old Testament survived the old Jewish interpretation, and remains as sacred to the Christian now as it was then to the Jew; while nevertheless the old Scriptures cannot, for the most part, in the merely literal sense, be reconciled with genuine * See Bishop Barrington's Works, Vol. II., P 268.