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marvellous hand, touching the laws, but not violating them, which yield to his miraculous agency; and often is the course of our life interrupted, or its current changed, by the unseen beings who hover over us with their benignant power. Oh, this dead faith in the mechanics of the universe- this mathematical, sensual reasoning about nature's laws and forces! What a world this would be, says some one significantly, if two and two always made four !—if it didn't sometimes make five! What a world it would be, if every thing was governed by dead weight, and algebraic equations, and fixed, mechanical principles; if there did not occasionally break out influences. from above the region of mere law, and force upon us the observation of the unaccountable, the impossible!

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But all this, in our theology, is made rational and consistent. Two and two always make four, but the spiritual arithmetic is larger than the natural — takes in more things - has wider connections. Oh! there is nothing too wonderful, or too minute, or too vast, for the computation of the Infinite One, or to order in eternity, and effect in time. And He who inhabiteth all the convolutions of all the spheres, and toucheth the secret springs of the will of every angel, and every man, and comprehendeth every least state of every creature throughout eternity, will yet continue the doings of that Wisdom which is "wonderful in counsel and excellent in working." shall the few fleeting years of our mortal life be over, and then, seeing the great end of a heavenly blessing above all the conflict and all the darkness, we shall have a more abundant reason to thank the Almighty "for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men."

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CHAPTER II.

THE ETERNAL MEMORY OF THE SOUL.

"Hail, Memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine,
From age to age unnumbered treasures shine;
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And place and time are subject to thy sway.

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But is her magic only felt below?

Say, through what brighter realms she bids it flow;
To what pure beings, in a nobler sphere,

She yields delight but faintly imaged here;
All that till now their apt researches knew,
Not called in slow succession to review,

But, as a landscape meets the eye of day,

At once presented to their glad survey!"—Samuel Rogers.

WE should fail to receive an adequate idea of the truth of this subject, or how the Divine Providence is secured and accomplished in every one's life, without an understanding of the wonderful faculty of Memory. Many scriptures assure us of an opening—a revealing to be made after we have entered upon the eternal world; that the "books are to be opened," and the judgment proceed according to them; and that there is "nothing covered that shall not be revealed; nor hid, that shall not be known." We can never know the spiritual import of such language without an understanding of the true psychology. The words of Scripture are the words of the Divine Creator, most particularly given through chosen mediums, and systematically expressed and arranged according to the constitution of the human soul, and its experience in all worlds. The true spiritual sense of them is, therefore, primarily in the soul; or more truly, the Word of the Lord is Himself, or his own Truth,

as it stands connected with the human soul in all worlds. In our world it is embodied in writing. It is, therefore, nothing arbitrary, but a simple transcript of the Divine Mind concerning human experience and regeneration, as it is seen to exist in visible form in the soul, in the spiritual world, and in all that pertains to it. So that, with a true enlightenment, such as may be obtained from the Word itself, from the study of Swedenborg, and from all other sources of illustration and wisdom, we may find the written Word, and human nature, and all true philosophies, to exist in harmony.

But let us refer to one great truth, upon which so many passages of the Word are undoubtedly built. We mean this vital truth of the soul's eternal Memory. It is plain to be perceived that there is some faculty or capability in the soul, by which the hidden things of the spirit are treasured up and made possible to be revealed. There is some subtle and mysterious connection between all the motions and doings of the mind, which makes it possible for the whole experience of an individual to be recognized and identified in the spirit, after the body has been surrendered to death. This is evident from the words of the Lord, not only in the language quoted, but in many other passages of the Scriptures. Our question is - What is that connection, that power, or capability?

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Some philosophers have supposed that there is a special faculty of Memory. But it rather appears that every faculty is a faculty of memory ;- that while one remembers words, another remembers ideas, another places, another times, deeds, persons, etc. One remembers forms, and another colors; one the quality of a thing, another its more external connections. Even Phrenology would teach thus much. Every faculty is impressed with its own appropriate objects, and retains and dwells upon the ideas which those objects excite. We speak sometimes of a good memory when reference is had chiefly to what we read or hear; but it is well known that while one remembers the words of a discourse, and can repeat it almost ver

batim, and perhaps without understanding it, another will remember its ideas, and be able to tell us all about it, but have no memory of the words. While one will remember the faces of persons, and forget the names, another will remember the names, and have no distinct recollection of the persons. How evident it is that every faculty is a faculty of memory; — that whatever we see, hear, read, or experience, whether it pertains to intellectual, moral, or religious matters; whether it be of business, pleasure, sorrow, scenes of virtue or scenes of vice; whether it be what we do to ourselves, or what we suffer others to do upon us; in fact, our whole experience makes its impression upon some one or more of the various departments of the soul, and there leaves its impress; so that, by being placed again in certain circumstances, or affected with a similar experience, it can be recalled and vivified before us as a present reality.

But now, how are these things impressed? or, what do we mean by an impression? Do we talk of a mere nothing-of a mere abstraction, without substance or form? How useless are these abstract terms without a substantial groundwork for the understanding! What is an idea? a thought? a feeling? We need not plunge into any abstruse metaphysics, for these things are clear to us in their first principles, so that even a child may understand them. Is not the soui a substance, and an organism? If it is not, is it not a nothing? How much have the metaphysicians done, and theologians, too, in an affected spirituality, to reduce all spiritual nature to nothing! How vainly have they talked of a human spirit! Spirit, we are told, is an essence or substance, without form, parts, color, extension, or any of the properties of material nature. But in our anxiety to escape entirely from the material, is there any necessity for going into nothing? If the human soul is any thing, if it is a substance, it must have form; and both reason and revelation concur in pronouncing the human spirit to be in a human form.

Now, then, what is a mental impression, an idea, or feeling? Is it not real and substantial in the soul? Without entering into any useless or minute considerations which are not appreciable, can we not say that all the operations of the mind are attended with absolute motions of its substance? Substance and motion — the whole universe is made up of this - God, angels, and men. And never a man thinks or feels without the movement of some of that fine and susceptible substance of the soul, which truly and literally receives impressions—as truly as the wax takes an impression from the seal. There is some stir of the constituents of a man's spiritual being-some trembling, vibrating, absolute motion of the interior organism, just as there is of the nerves, and sinews, and more manifest flesh. In fact, it is the motion of the spirit which is all that makes the body move; for the body without its spirit is unanimated and dead.

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We begin now to perceive how a man's experience in this life can be treasured up in the memory, or in other words, what the memory is. What can it be, but the capacity of the whole soul to receive the impressions made upon it by all the experience which it undergoes?- a sort of daguerreotype susceptibility, by which the substance of the human spirit is wrought upon, and, with an exceedingly fine touch, receives the impress of every thought and feeling which may be made, like rays of light, to pass over it or into it? This may be confirmed by the process of recollection. Memory and recollection differ. A thing may be in the memory, that is, impressed upon, or formed in the soul, but forgotten-not able, for the time, to be re-ccllected, or called out into consciousness. But after some effort, or by some circumstance which throws us again into a similar state, we all at once re-collect it, or call it out from the chambers of the soul where it slumbered, to manifest life, presence, and reality again. Now, what is this getting into similar states? What can it be but fixing again upon those very impressions, traces, or lines in the soul, which are as real there as though

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