It was then she began to understand the great truth on which the church is built, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only God of heaven and earth. From reading and meditating upon the Holy Word and the writings of the New Church, she obtained a general knowledge of the doctrines, and hence she was led to attend the weekly reading meetings with great interest and delight. During her long and painful affliction, she was supported by the assurance that her bodily sufferings were permitted for her eternal good. She had the happy reflection of looking back upon a life of usefulness. She was well known as a good neighbour and active member of society. At social and religious meetings, she felt real pleasure in doing all she could to make others happy. She was a most zealous superintendent of the New Church Sunday school, and was punctual in her attendance. Her manner of instructing the children was pleasing, and with great effect. Whilst on her sick bed, her countenance would cheer up at the hopes of being restored to health, that she might again assemble with the teachers she so much respected, and the children so dear to her affections. Her funeral sermon was delivered on Sunday evening, October 11th, and was listened to by a numerous and attentive congregation. There is every reason to believe she is now enjoying the fruits of a useful life, in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, her heavenly Father. W. H. G. Died at Harrogate, Oct. 13th, 1846, Miss Deborah Smith, of Keighley, in the 35th year of her age. She was the daughter of the late Mr. Berry Smith, of that place, one of the earliest receivers in the neighbourhood, and, being an only child, had been carefully instructed from infancy in the heavenly doctrines of the New Jerusalem. Being of a truly meek, amiable, and affectionate disposition, she was much esteemed by all who knew her; and, from the influential sphere in which she lived, the society, in her removal, has experienced a loss which will be long and deeply felt. J. J. Died at Aylesbury, on the 26th December last, in his 70th year, Mr. Thos. Woodman. The deceased was for more than forty years an ardent receiver of the doctrines of the New Church. They were his chief consolation and support through the greater part of a life of more than ordinary vicissitudes and trials. It is hoped he is now realizing, in the world of realities, what they had taught him to look forward to, and aspire after. Died at Leigh, Lancashire, December 29th, 1846, in his 87th year, Mr. James Adkin. He had been a cordial receiver of the heavenly doctrines for the period of sixty-two years. He commenced in 1784 to read the doctrines, having met with the few first chapters of the spiritual exposition of Genesis, which Swedenborg himself had caused to be translated and published in English, in which he was delighted to find what he had elsewhere searched for in vain, and the result was a deep and settled conviction of the truth and value of these writings; for, instead of being, as formerly, distracted with the apparent contradictions in the letter of the Word, he found all harmoniously and beautifully explained in its spiritual sense. To the end of his life, the doctrines of the New Church were his great delight, and the standard by which he endeavoured to regulate his conduct. He was one of the first who met to celebrate the New Church worship of the Lord in Bolton, Lancashire, in which town the first New Church place of worship was opened in 1793. He was at the opening, both in England and America, where he had also lived some years, of no less than ten places of worship in the New Church, each of which was to him an additional source of delight, in contemplating the spread of the New Church doctrines. He enjoyed excellent health during the whole course of his long life. He attributed his comparative freedom from the infirmities of age to his being enabled, of the Divine Mercy, to take daily walks in the open air. His last walk was on the 28th of December, when he was, to all appearance, as well as usual, but in returning he slipped down, and received so great a shock, that his strength could not recover; he died the next evening. For a long period he had been accustomed to contemplate death as the continuation of life, and the entrance to a better state. He was doubtless well prepared for the change. H. A. Died suddenly, on the 11th of January last, Mr. William Kay, member of the New Church Society, Stand Lane, Pilkington. The departed had been a receiver of the New Church doctrines from early life, and continued warmly attached thereto until the time of his removal into the spiritual world. Mr. Kay was respected by all who knew him, as a man of sterling integrity and unswerving uprightness. He was, moreover, a man of liberality and warm hearted charity. Never was his ear closed against the voice of distress-never did he refuse his aid to those who solicited it, either on their own behalf or that of others. He has left a widow and two daughters to mourn his departure. The society also of which he was a member, has lost in him a warm and most liberal supporter; but we are forbidden to mourn by the assurance that his departure is his gain, that the church is the Lord's, and that in the removal of us all, He doeth all things well. B. Departed this life, on the 14th January, 1847, at her residence in Argyle-square, London, Mrs. Anna Thompson, widow of the late Mr. William Thompson, of King-street, Clerkenwell, and daughter of the late Rev. Isaac Hawkins, who, at the time of her birth, was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher. When she was sixteen years of age, the "Treatise on Heaven and Hell" was put into her father's hands, by his valued friend, the late Rev. James Hindmarsh, which work she read with great delight whenever she could spare time from her domestic duties. She had been remarkable for some previous years, at the Methodist class-meetings, for her expression of pious feelings, and she ardently received the doctrines of the New Church, which peculiarly suited her habit of intelligent investigation. After reading the "Heaven and Hell," and the "Universal Theology," at the age of seventeen, she commenced the "Arcana Cœlestia," and, in conjunction with her younger brother, began to form a Dictionary of Correspondences, in order that they night have the means of refreshing their memories in the course of reading. This they diligently pursued, and collected a multitude of correspondences, which coming to the knowledge of the Rev. James Hindmarsh, he begged and obtained a copy of the manuscript in the year 1787; this formed the nucleus of his Dictionary published in 1794. On her father's expulsion from the Methodist connexion in the year 1786, for propagating the new views, he opened his house for the first Sunday meetings of the New Church friends which were held in London, where his daughter was noticed with great approbation for her zealous attention to the accommodation of the visitors; and, on the opening of the church in Great East Cheap, January, 1788, for the first public worship under the New Dispensa. tion, she became the active mistress of the arrangements in every department in which she could be useful. At the age of twenty-one Miss Hawkins was married to Mr. William Thompson, brother of Mr. Richard Thompson, who, in conjunction with Mr. Ralph Hall, built the church in Cross-street, Hatton-garden. Mrs. Thompson's exertions in the church were necessarily suspended many years by the cares of a numerous family, who were baptized in the New Church, her name standing as a member of the Friars-street Society next to that of the Rev. M. Sibly. The last few years, she was frequently prevented by the delicate state of her health from attendance on public worship; this induced her to hold a meeting at home for reading and conversation with her particular friends, twice a month, which was continued, with occasional intermission, until within a month of her death; her observations on those occasions proved that she was deeply imbued with the interior views of the doctrines of the New Jerusalem, and there is reason to believe that those meetings have been instrumental in confirming some of her friends, who have since become members of the church. During the latter period of her illness she had much bodily suffering, and occasionally passed through severe temptations, with frequent deep self-examination; but she was at length enabled to rejoice in the conclusion that the Lord Jesus Christ was all in all, and she herself nothing. The evening before her departure, she partook, with her family and some friends, of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and when the benediction was pronounced, she with a firm voice responded "Amen and Amen." She then took an affectionate farewell of her family and friends, exhorting them to keep the commandments; adding, that she hoped to be placed in a sphere of usefulness, whatever that sphere may be. The next day (Thursday the 14th) she breathed her last. Of her it may truly be said, "She was a mother in Israel." J. I. H. Cave and Sever, Printers, 18, St. Ann's-street, Manchester. The vengeance, it with the curse of A FAST has lately been proclaimed throughout the land. The terms in which it has been proclaimed are truly astonishing. is said, of Almighty God has smitten the nation famine, and to appease that vengeance, to remove the curse, and to obviate the famine, the people are called upon to humble themselves by fasting and prayer. There is truly cause for the deepest humiliation,there is, indeed, cause for the sincerest prayer; but the cause is not the vengeance or the displeasure of Almighty God; it is our own wicked selfishness, our own unjust laws, which, instead of establishing, as to civil life, (the peculiar province of human governments as coöperating with the divine government,) the proper relations between man and man, between landlord and tenant, between master and servant, between the rich and the poor, between the employer and the employed,-have destroyed those sacred relations, and trampled the rights of industry and the claims of humanity in the dust, and reduced the millions to the dreadful alternative of feeding on the roots which the swine do eat; or, if the miserable root should fail, to perish by famine and pestilence. All these destructive evils of selfishness are to be traced to the fact, that the church has come to its end. The love of the neighbour, which is the essential life of Christianity, is extinguished; faith has expired, and when love and faith are extinct, Christianity is dead. Selfishness in every form spreads itself like famine and pestilence over the land; and worldliness buries every thing holy, just, and good, in the grave of spiritual death. In some countries, the end, or consummation of the church, is more visible than in others. In Ireland, the "lamentation, mourning, and woe," are written in letters of blood. They cannot be mistaken. Every one can read them. То say that Christianity, there, exists as a system-as a spiritual power, as a channel of good from the only Source of Good, is to belie one's interior convictions, and to hold, knowingly, a "falsehood in the right hand." Its embers may still feebly glow in the bosom of many, who may sigh for the abominations of the church; but as a system, in its aggregate form, Christianity in Ireland is dead. Protestantism is the funeral pall spread over its coffin, and Romanism is the shroud in which it is buried. The Church of England, although in its external form upheld for centuries by the vast wealth it has unrighteously usurped, and by the statedignity in which, as in purple and fine linen, it has been clothed, has proved itself utterly powerless as a system of good, as a channel of blessing to the nation. Its internal, like "the inside of the cup and the platter, is full of extortion, rapine, and excess," and the woE is consequently written upon its gilded shrine, and "Ichabod,"—the glory has departed,-is engraved upon the horns of its altar. The food to which the millions of Ireland have been reduced, as the stay, the only stay of subsistence, is powerfully emblematic of the spiritual food which Romanism and Protestantism have supplied to their respective adherents. This food has not been the bread of life,— not the feast of fat things,—but the husks and roots which the swine do feed upon. Only think of millions being reduced to the necessity of subsisting on potatoes! Only think of the swine in one corner of a wretched hut, feeding on potatoes, and human beings in another, subsisting on the same root! Why, Lazarus, eating the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table, is an enviable condition compared with this. And yet this state of things has come to pass in the Christian church, and under the sceptre of the most enlightened government upon earth. Enlightened, indeed, as to the selfish concerns of the few, but dark and blind as to the interests of the millions. But this state of things cannot continue; it has come to its crisis and its doom. Selfishness in church and state can go no further, it carries with it its own destruction; its harvest of famine, pestilence, and death, is now fully ripe. The day of vengeance is assuredly come, but it cometh not from the Almighty; it cometh, like the destroyer Apollyon, from the bottomless pit, and its victims are the train of Magog,-the merely external selfish members of the church, who may have a name to live, but are spiritually dead; -its victims are the worshipers of Mammon, in whom the love of the world is uppermost, and whose commanding objects in life are wealth, power, pleasure, and fame;its victims are the followers of Baal, immersed in every species of selfishness, "who grind the faces of the poor, who reap where they have never sowed, and who gather where they have never strown, who, instead of bread give a stone, instead of a fish give a serpent, instead of an egg give a scorpion." Truly there is cause for fasting, humiliation, and prayer! Our life is influenced by our ideas. According as we habitually think, our life assumes its quality. If our ideas are erroneous, our life will be influenced by the error; its quality will become spurious and corrupt. How immensely important, therefore, it is to have correct ideas of God, of his providence, and of our relations to Him. He is infinite love, wisdom, and mercy. "If ye," says the Lord, "being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him?" Here is an expression of infinite love, drawn from a comparison with the most disinterested love upon earth,-that of a parent to his child. But can infinite love be the cause of famine? Can vengeance and wrath abide in the bosom of infinite love? Can He who commands us to love our enemies, ever inflict calamities upon the children of men? Our ideas of God and of spiritual things become correct, when we separate apparent from genuine truths-"the wheat from the chaff"-when we "judge not according to the appearance, but judge a righteous judgment." We shall then see that all calamities and afflictive judgments are caused by the selfishness and wickedness of man; not by the vengeance of God. In our infatuation, shutting our eyes to our own evil states, we ascribe the miserable effects of our wickedness to the vengeance of Almighty God, and not to its proper cause. But so long as our ideas are thus infatuated,-led out of ourselves away from our own evils to seek the causes of our miseries, we cannot be led to right views of fasting, repentance, humiliation, and prayer. What, then, is the proper idea of fasting? Fasting, or abstinence from food, was observed in the ancient churches and religions among nearly all nations. It was always an attendant of mourning, sorrow, and affliction, and was frequently practised by the Jews when in those states. "To fast, (says Swedenborg,) signifies to mourn on account of the defect of goodness and truth in the church."-(A.E. 375, 1189.) Fasting is, in some degree, enjoined by nature, for when the soul is in great trouble and affliction, the appetite for food ceases, and the body spontaneously fasts. Fasting is not enjoined in the Levitical law; Moses, however, fasted forty days and forty nights on Mount Horeb, after the idolatry of the people in worshiping the golden calf; Elijah fasted forty days and forty nights when the prophets under Ahab and Jezebel were persecuted and |