according to order." And in a subsequent passage he says of magical miracles, or miracles wrought by evil spirits, that "they flow from order." We thus have the authority of Swedenborg, that a miracle is but the regular operation of the interwoven laws of mind and matter. It is certainly abhorrent to reason, and all just conceptions of the Creator of heaven and earth-"the same yesterday, to-day, and forever—who had all knowledge of the future at the beginning, and whose wisdom is infinite"-to suppose that He could destroy, or even suspend for a moment, the operations of His own laws. A miracle is but the manifestation of effects of matter acting upon matter, or mind upon matter, or mind upon mind, from inherent and eternal properties, acting as regularly, according to laws established from the beginning of creation, as sunrise and sunset; and a miracle may be defined as an unusual or unseen law coming into view in place of a common or known law.

A miracle in one age, or country of the earth, is not a miracle in another. Carlyle well observes, " To the king of Siam, an icicle were a miracle." And to an inhabitant of the equatorial regions who had never heard of the like, water asleep, or in a solid state, must have seemed an inversion of the laws of nature, and to have been a direct interposition of the Supreme Being. When the army of Xerxes invaded Greece, a mule gave birth to a colt. Such an event was then unheard of, and it was thought a message from the immortal gods. But now two or three instances are on record of a mule being a fertile animal, and scientific men are satisfied that Divinity had nothing in particular to do with the mule of Xerxes. To a Hottentot, or the historic Abraham, many things in nature would be miracles, that to us are easily explained. In the infancy of the world, earthquakes and eclipses were miracles. The earthquake which swallowed up Korah and his company, must have seemed to the Israelites a direct suspension of nature by Jehovah; while it was, in fact, the orderly and natural action of the gases in the earth causing a convulsion harmo

niously chiming with the time and place, and giving to the local incidents dramatic dignity and force. The woman of Samaria said: "Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did; is not this the Christ?" To her, the disclosing of her past life was a miracle. But at the present day she seems like a very simple-minded soul; for any one can have his past life revealed —and even his secret thoughts -by giving a dollar or two to a skilful clairvoyant. Unless the teachings of all experience are falsified, much that to us would seem miraculous, will be familiar to the man of the coming ages. Veneration, however, should restrain us. from speculating what agencies of mind or matter caused this or that miracle. It is none of our business how any particular miracle was wrought. It is sufficient to know the grand and universal truth, that the Creator, both on general and apparently special occasions, always works through the uniform and eternal laws of nature and the human soul.

Having seen now, by analogy and the experience of mankind, by reason and our reverential feelings for Him who is Infinite Wisdom itself, and by the teachings of Swedenborg, that a miracle is not a direct interposition of Providence, the conclusion follows that miracles cannot prove Christianity, or any religion or doctrine, or be evidence in the slightest degree. But there is another argument – perhaps of greater weight-to prove the incompetency of miracles as evidence. God is Love, and there is nothing in the universe created for the purpose of destroying or injuring man. Man himself, by the perversion of nature and his own faculties, is the author of all his own misery. If miracles destroy or injure the human mind, then, either they do not originate from the Divine Love, or they are put to a disorderly use. Now this is actually the fact. Miracles, when considered as evidence, do injure the intuitions, rationality, and freedom of that soul which was created in the image of Jehovah.

If miracles are received as evidence, they drive the receivers to believe. If the doctrines confirmed by miracles

do not accord with the intellect, either one must cease to think — in which case his rationality and freedom are destroyed or there occurs a collision between his mental powers and the world of sense. When the latter has strangled the former, it compels him to believe by suspending the exercise of his intellectual powers-and thereby injuring his mind and freedom- until a new collision takes place. Repeated collisions result in the degradation of the soul, and injuring the man's self-respect by destroying faith in the action of his mental faculties; or repeated collisions cause him to speculate and fancy, and wish and dream, until he persuades himself that the particular miracles confirming the doctrines in question were delusions, and not real miracles, and thus have no force as evidence.

Something of this is seen in the experience of those who have consulted clairvoyants. He who has no knowledge at all of the laws-still imperfectly understood -- which govern these wonderful persons, is filled with unbounded amazement at the complete information possessed respecting his past life, his secret intentions, and his physical complaints and sensations. He is impressed with great respect for the power of the clairvoyant, and jumps at the conclusion that the latter can tell the future as well as the past and present. Either he becomes a fatalist, trusting in the predictions of his clairvoyant, and making little or no effort of his own, or, as time moves on, and the events foretold do not come to pass, and even the very contrary happen, attrition takes place between his understanding and his faith in the seer; and he at last convinces himself that clairvoyance is not a miracle after all, and is not cognizant of the future. Miraculous evidence, like the improper use of intoxicating liquors, may give temporary strength and a warm glow of satisfaction; but eventually it either brutalizes the man, or causes mental disquietude until its force is finally dissipated and reaction follows,- perhaps leaving him in a worse state than at first.

The views of Swedenborg upon the efficacy of miracles as evidence, are expressed in the following language:

"That miracles do not contribute anything to faith, may be sufficiently manifest from the miracles wrought amongst the people of Israel in Egypt, and in the wilderness, in that they had no effect at all upon them; for that people, although they so lately saw so many miracles in Egypt, afterwards the Red Sea divided, and the Egyp tians overwhelmed therein, the pillar of the cloud going before them by day, and the pillar of fire by night, the manna daily showering down from heaven, and, although they saw Mount Sinai in smoke, and heard Jehovah thence speaking, with other miracles of a like kind, nevertheless, in the midst of such things, they declined from all faith, and from the worship of Jehovah to the worship of a calf; hence it is evident what is the effect of miracles."

If I have dwelt long upon miracles, it is because I have felt the importance of the subject. In all ages miracles have been considered unanswerable arguments, as Mahomet and the Mormon prophet well knew. Swedenborg has told us that heresies are to arise to harass the New Church. Being falsities, they will not come attended with right reason, but they may come with miracles. Perhaps we are seeing the dawn of some of them in our time. The New Church doctrine of the utter worthlessness of miraculous evidence may be, at no distant day, the only defence. for Christianity against the assaults of Spiritualism. We should firmly fix this doctrine in our minds as the cornerstone of all evidence and logic. If we should see all the holy men of old, and all the angels of the heavens, working all the miracles recorded in profane and sacred history, and they should assure us that there are three persons in the Trinity, it would be our duty to tell them that they are a pack of liars. Equally great liars would they be, should they tell us that the earth is an animated being, and has a soul as seems to be taught by Thomas L. Harris-or if they should tell us as true anything that the intellect knows to be false. Man needs not miracles, for he has a rational soul, a soul that is developing as the

ages roll on. Bacon did much to give freedom to the human soul by delivering it from the tyranny of the schoolmen; but he did not finish the work. It remains for Swedenborg to complete the task, and hurl miracles from their throne in the human mind. Then will the mind of man work with perfect freedom-work with infinitely increased energy without thought or dream of rest.

"And it never will rest nor from travail be free,
Like a sea that is laboring the birth of a sea."

THREE IN ONE.

THERE are those who seem to think that New Church doctrines may be held and believed as those of the Old Church could be, and that is with sharp-cut, exact, and defined precision. But this is utterly impossible. The very peculiarity of our doctrines is, that now infinite truths are given in the form of doctrines. There will be no further and additional Church, because there needs to be none, inasmuch as all possible growth and advancement in religious truth will be made by gradual, but eternal, development from the truths now given. And this could not be, if these truths were not infinite. Thus to apply this to the doctrine of our Lord. The Christian Church knew from the beginning that God was three in one. But they wanted to define this infinite truth, so they said he was three substances, or three hypostases, or three persons, and one God. But now reflecting minds see that this is impossible. Hence many, discarding the doctrine of three persons, discard with it all. thought of threefoldness in God, because it did not occur to them that this could be without three persons. Does Swedenborg say three persons? No, he utterly denies it; and yet his whole system is founded upon this threefoldness. What then does he say, or what do we say instead of persons? Nothing; nothing whatever; because we have no idea about it which could be adequately expressed in one concrete word. I think there will never be such a word.