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the Divine, by the chemical degradation wrought by one of the lowest parasitic forms of vegetable existence. Or, to put it otherwise, that the fruit of good works which clusters on the branches of Him who is The Vine, is less exalted in correspondence than it becomes when its juice suffers important degradation by the medium of a fungus.

But "the whole correspondence of the process of fermentation" is so "interesting" to S. T., that he concludes it "ought not only to establish the propriety of using fermented wine in the Lord's Supper, but to establish in the minds of New Churchmen the entire question of alcoholic use and abuse." The propriety which S. T. had to establish was that of using none but fermented wine in the Lord's Supper. And he now further sets about it by naming four characteristics of the process of fermentation, which he fondly and admiringly gazes on, conceiving that they effectually do the business. These

are:

(1.) "The action of the fungoid leaven." An action, however, which being fungoid, can only be regarded as a familiar sign, wherever occurring in nature, of rank degeneration and decay.

(2.) "The evolved heat." A symptom which, if necessarily ennobling, would consecrate boils and blains, and exalt to dignity the decomposition of a dunghill.

(3.) "The disengagement of the deadly carbonic acid gas." Which element (unfortunately for S. T.) is not deadly at all, as it exists in the grape before rendered gaseous by the decomposing work of the torula. Carbon, as we all know, is an essential element in the animal frame, and for purposes of indispensable nourishment is supplied abundantly by all our usual food. Not even when set free as gas is it deadly; but it refreshes, so long as we swallow without breathing it. Over the vat of wholesome and nourishing grape-juice the yeastfungus causes an easily life-endangering gas to hover, and having turned what is excellent to drink into what is deadly to breathe,. receives the admiring approval of S. T.

(4.) "The separation of the lees;" that is, the subsidence of a muddiness caused by the yeast-plant-the dropping down of its exuvia and a process of fining, such as occurs in every turbid unfermented liquid with the help of time, a little isinglass, and repose. Having spoiled the grape-juice, wasted great part of the nourishment it contained, defiled the atmosphere, and run its own ignominious life-course, the fungus dies, and its dirty relics at last leave the liquid clear. In all which S. T. sees an enhancement of the correspondential value of the noble juice of the vine! According, therefore, to S. T., "the whole correspondence of fermentation" shown by these four "interesting" characteristics, "ought not only to establish the propriety of using fermented wine in the Lord's Supper,"; -and, as he said in the outset, none but fermented wine, but also to establish in the minds of New Churchmen "the entire question of alcholic use or abuse," or rather, the entire answer to that question! —a conclusion so copiously outside his adduced premises as to compel

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the inference that the reasoning powers of S. T., whilst preparing his article for the Repository, must have been indulging in complete repose.

Of course I know what Swedenborg has written about fermentation; and I have also read, and largely with pleasure and gratitude, the Editor's own articles in the Repository, so clearly showing that we must not demand of Swedenborg, on all points of natural science, information wholly in advance of the science of his century. I cannot conceive of any competent chemist who would be able today to accept Swedenborg's explanation of the process of fermentation as in any respect adequate or satisfactory.

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Had it been true, as S. T. argues, that the corruptible unfermented juice of the grape is unworthy to be used at the Lord's Supper on account of its inferior correspondence, I should have expected to find the grape-cluster discarded for the wine-flask in Swedenborg's own spirit-world experience. In T. C. R. (461) we find him asking for figs, which, when he gets them, become grapes in his hand; that is to say, instead of becoming a "clear, bright, aromatic fluid," as they ought to have done to support S. T.'s argument, they are transmuted into a "corruptible juice" in its native vessels; and yet they have to maintain a very exalted correspondence. For Swedenborg is told on the spot by an angelic spirit, "The figs became grapes in your hand, because figs by correspondence signify the goods of charity, and thence of faith in the natural or external man, whereas grapes signify the goods of charity, and thence of faith in the spiritual or internal man ; and because you love spiritual things, therefore this change happened to you; for in our world all things come to pass and exist, and are also changed, according to correspondences." Grapes being thus correspondentially suitable for the illustrious and spiritually-minded Swedenborg, I, as one of his admirers and pupils, shall certainly not think it beneath me to rest content with the adequacy of grapes and pure grape-juice for my own case.

Still, therefore, I conceive that New Churchmen, although forbidden by S. T., "with correspondence before them," to do anything of the kind, may fearlessly maintain their right to prefer pure unfermented natural wine to any wine which is fermented, and to be entitled to use it, both at the Lord's Supper and elsewhere; and not by any means to be bound, as S. T. would bind them, "thankfully to regard and accept fermented wine" "as a gift of God to man," except only as they accept laudanum, arsenic, deadly nightshade, and all other toxicant and lethal products of nature controlled or uncontrolled by human art; nor to consider what S. T. calls "temperance and selfcommand" in the "use" of alcohol, opium, hashish, henbane, hemlock, nux vomica, or any other drug, as a "higher plane" than total abstinence from the dietary use of all such perilous medicaments; nor need they cease to claim the right to hold and to express their own opinion as to the good judgment and wise discrimination of those who see only "happy usefulness" in addition to the common consumption of such articles.

H.

TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

(To the Editor of the "Intellectual Repository.")

SIR,-In the article by R. R. R. in the Intellectual for September last there is a reference to "teetotallers' as a class of people not "truly wise." I desire, not so much on account of "teetotallers" as on behalf of their ism, to protest against the appearance of such a statement in the magazine of the New Church Conference. If "teetotalism" is to be discussed, let it be discussed as a separate question. The best test of the wisdom of a system is that given by the Lord Himself: 66 By their fruits ye shall know them." The fruits of teetotalism abound throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, and so do the fruits of drinking. Teetotalism has rescued many a family from the curses inherent in a drunkard's home-has restored thousands to family, friends, and society-has brought back many deserters from our churches. What are the fruits of drinking? I know, we all know the "fruits" of drunkenness! What other "fruits " are there? "Truly wise," indeed! It is very unwise to walk in slippery places. Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall. We of the New Church have known many who thought themselves "truly wise" prove the victims of their folly, bringing death to themselves, misery to their families, disgrace to the Church. Is it "truly wise" to sneer at a cause that has done so much for the social welfare of the country, a cause that numbers amongst its advocates most of the philanthropic workers of the day, a cause that every other religious body is taking up, a cause that has secured the practical adhesion of one-third of the ministers recognised by the New Church Conference? R. R. R. would do well to refrain from such sneering allusions in respect to those who, from principle, are making a practical effort to promote sobriety. The drunkards of England are being constantly recruited from the ranks of moderate (?) drinkers, and surely if we teetotallers try to reclaim such characters, for whom teetotalism is admittedly the only remedy, our efforts should not be met with such cold sympathy. R. R. R.'s subject was the Wisdom of the Serpent. I beg to draw his attention to Proverbs xxiii. 31, 32.

In the last number of the Intellectual Repository your correspondent S. T. refers to this question of total abstinence, and seems to imagine that he settles the question so far as New Churchmen are concerned. The question is not to be settled on such theoretical ground. The Temperance question is a practical one, and is not touched by the position taken up by S. T. The Sacramental Wine question is a very difficult one, from the standpoint taken by a great number of earnest and intelligent New Churchmen. For my own part, I should be exceedingly sorry to see the question brought prominently to the front at present, but the time will come when it will have to be dealt with. In my experience as a minister, I have known several cases where men with the appetite strong for drink within them, and who were trying to live it down by the practice of teetotalism, dure not

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partake of the Sacrament lest the old appetite should be revived. Many cases are on record where men have lapsed into drunkenness from taking part in this holiest act of religious worship. There are many men that I would not invite to the Sacrament on this account. To these people there is danger, and I contend that the service may be at least as devout and as efficacious with unfermented as with fermented wine. And the time will come, I hope soon, when nonabstainers will feel it their duty to face this practical aspect of the question, even if they regard it as a yielding to the feelings of their weaker brethren. The weaker brethren are the people to be mainly considered by the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that prays, "Lead us not into temptation.' Not that I believe abstainers are (as a rule) weaker on this point than drinkers; they are on stronger, because on safer, ground. The man who abstains for his own sake is strong enough to say "No;" the man who abstains for his neighbour's sake is strong enough to bear a hand to aid in the rescue of perishing thousands, strong enough to deny himself for his Father and his brethren's sake. The weak people are those that feel they ought to abstain and don't. The question is a very serious one in the estimation of all those who have tried to save a drunkard; the moderation remedy does not touch the disease, and therefore cannot effectually cure it. S. T. says, "Pure fermented natural wine ought alone to be used." Is this wine used? Is it obtainable? The wine of commerce is notoriously impure, and a very large portion of it is entirely destitute of the vine element.

S. T. goes on to say that the "correspondence" of the process of fermentation, etc., "ought not only to establish the propriety of using fermented wine in the Lord's Supper, but to establish in the minds of New Churchmen the entire question of alcoholic use and abuse." This latter question, I repeat, has to be settled on practical grounds, in view of the mischief wrought by what S. T. is pleased to call the "abuse." What the "use" is I don't know.

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Again, S. T. speaks of fermented wine as "a gift of God to man." Many of us, judging by what we see of its "fruits," doubt this. well might we term Guiness's stout, and Bass's beer, and Allsopp's pale ale, and the various brands of gin, and rum, and brandy, and whisky, together with breechloaders and Woolwich infants, and the cat-o'-nine-tails and the hangman's rope, and poisonous plants and reptiles, the good gifts of God to men. I could as soon believe the doctrines of Election and Substitution as such a doctrine as that put forth by S. T.

Far be it from me to "judge" those who do not come up to the standard of total abstinence, but as a thoroughly impartial student of this question (ie. with my conscience, judgment, and reason unbiassed by taste), I fail to see how it is possible that indulgence in alcoholic drinks can be calculated to promote "happy usefulness."

JOSEPH DEANS.

66

Miscellaneous.

ATHEISM AND THE CHURCH.-The demption had come; it only needed to progress of atheistic sentiment is a just be unfolded to its utmost capabilities. cause of alarm to the Church. It is The culminating point was atnot to be prevented by denunciation, tained. The human-divine of Asiatic and the clergy are not always able to speculation, and the divinely-human of expose the sophistry of its reasoning, European philosophy, met and coalesced; or to offer a satisfactory solution of the and from that wedlock emerged Christiacknowledged contradictions between anity." The effort thus made is a bold science and the teaching of the Church. attempt to bridge over the difficulty The Rev. Canon Curteis has attempted between Atheism and Christianity by this reconciliation in the January num- incorporating the theories of atheistic ber of the Contemporary Review. This philosophers in the Christian religion. attempted reconciliation, however, ac- Thus the writer continues: "Of this cepts too fully the leading thoughts of language in St. John's Gospel (‘No man the writers whose works avowedly or hath seen God at any time, the onlyundesignedly tend to atheistic opinion begotten Son, who is in the bosom of to be of practical value for the guidance the Father, He hath declared Him') it of the Church. Doctrine respecting is obvious that Hegel's doctrine-echoed God is regarded as a natural evolution afterwards by Comte and the Posiat which we have arrived by a necessary tivists-is a sort of variation set in a law of our nature. "No doubt," he lower key. In humanity, said he, the says, "religion was cradled amid gross Divine idea merges from the material superstitions; and only by great and and the bestial into the self-conscious." perilous transitions has it advanced This idea of humanity as the visible from the lower to the higher. It was a presentment of "the Divinity, the great great step from the fetish and the tera- Cosmic Unknown," which Hegel found phim to the animal and plant symbols in himself and his compeers, Canon of Egypt and Assyria. Ît was another Curteis finds in the Son of Man, but in great step to Baal, the blazing sun, and both cases the human element is all Moloch, wielder of drought and sun- that is seen and known. The WORD is stroke, and Agni, friendly comrade of ignored except as the production of the the hearth." This process of evolution finite writers of the several books, and prepares the way for "a transition from the Church is looked to to reconcile the physical and the brutal and the these diversities of thought, and to astral to the human and the moral in adapt her teachings to these requireman's search after a true (or the to him ments of modern philosophy. truest possible) representation of the Church must not part company with the infinite forces at play around him." world she is commissioned to evanThis process of evolution opens the way gelize." (The italics are the writer's.) The "for Moses to elaborate with a Divine Church of Rome cannot accomplish this sagacity a completely organized society, work. "A Catholic who should adhere saturated through every fibre with this to the testimony of history when it apone idea the unity of all the nature pears to contradict the Church would forces great and small, and their govern- be guilty not merely of treason and ment, not by haphazard, or malignity, heresy, but of apostasy." The Church or fate, but by what men call LAW. of England, whose doctrinal canons 'Thou hast given them a law which assert that even "General Councils may shall not be broken.' For this word err and have erred," is accessible to new 'law' distinctly connotes rationality... light. She may adapt her teachings to This grand transition, then, once made, the requirements of the times. And all else became easy. The human these requirements are urgent. "Never,' imagination, the poetic or plastic power says a writer cited by Canon Curteis, lodged in our brain after many failures, "in the history of man has so terrible had now at last got on the highroad a calamity befallen the race as that which led straight to the goal. Re- which all who look may now behold

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