something. But while man is positive in an adverse direction, the Lord cannot be positive with him so successfully. Be not inactive, but passively active in the hands of the Lord. In short, realize our own feebleness, and our utter dependence on God, and look to him only for help, and our powers will be increased seven-fold. Man only fritters away his powers in any other attempt. He is never so feeble, never so inefficient, as when he says, in a spirit of self-trust and self-consciousness— "Now I will, or I am going to do this or that." To be sure, sometimes great things are accomplished by what we call the power of a resolute will; but when it is so, there is almost always a strong belief and reliance on some fate, or destiny, or providence, in man's behalf. Bonaparte was a man of indomitable will; but he believed in destiny.

He believed that God

He believed that all

had raised him up for just such a work. the powers of heaven, or of fate, were on his side, so that he could not fail. And it is wonderful how such a faith in destiny stimulates the human will, far more perhaps, than the extreme of the doctrine of absolute free-will. A man that really believes in it, does not sit down, and idly fold his hands, trusting to his faith, or to this Fate, or Predestination, to work it out for him. No, but he goes to work himself all the more vigilantly and vigorously, resolving that because it must, it shall be accomplished!

This is the true way. Combine both. This is the way in which providence is carried on. I say that a man who does not believe in this, but sets out with an air of importance, declaring what great things he will do, will only fret and fume his little self away, and in the end, chance if all he does be not to go headlong into folly's destruction. We have seen such people, and they are the most inconsequential little creatures in the world.

But the soul of great, calm, majestic resolutions, looking to the Lord, and relying on Him, quietly and noiselessly goes

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forth, accomplishing the mightiest results with the utmost facility and ease.

And so in this great work of the regenerate life. Even the sound of the wind may not be sensibly heard, it blows so gently and mildly, and through so accordant a nature; but the affections are all tranquil, and the thoughts serene; yet if the wind does rise, and sweep somewhat boisterously through the clogged and perverted channels of the soul, (and the wind always makes the most noise where there is the most obstruction,) then the man knows that he is wrought upon, but he cannot tell whence cometh the mighty spirit, nor whither it goeth. Fortunate for him, if he submit himself to this manifest effort of Providence to train him for the skies, and that he drive not off the angel guardians of his peace.

Finally, the essence of this New Birth is Love. If there was any one thing that distinguished the people of the primitive ages the infancy of the human race, it was a spirit of love grounded in innocence. This is evident from several considerations; and it is plain to be perceived, that as the essence of all evil is selfishness, so the essence of all good is unselfishness, or love for one another. The mind of man, in fact, is made up in general of two parts, the Will and the Understanding, or the affectional and the intellectual natures. Now, the fall of man, or his gradual declension, consisted in the separation of the will from the understanding, or the good affections from the mere intellect, so that, in process of time, the intellectual principle came altogether to predominate; and such is the state of the world at this day. Faith pertains to the intellect, or to the understanding, rather than to the will; and it is conspicuous, that love or charity holds but a subordinate place in the faith of the church and in the practice of mankind.

Now, the New Birth is the uniting again of what has been so grievously sundered. And as the soul of all truth is goodness, or the soul of all wisdom is love, without which it is nothing but a cold, dead body, so this new birth of the Christian is

so much like a birth as to be the creation of a new soul in a new body; viz., a new will principle in a new understanding. For the understanding itself, or man's rational powers, are as much vitiated as his love, by the Fall, and have become filled with abominable falsities. Hence it it so hard, frequently, to understand theological and spiritual truths. The popular mind has often an utter aversion to them. It is not because the truths themselves are so hard and unfitted to the mind, but because our own minds are pre-occupied with so much rubbish. Now, therefore, a new spiritual infant is born, created of God in the substances of the human soul, and as it grows, and comes to maturity, the whole "old man" is made to die the death, and human nature is permeated by a new spirit, has a new life. a new will and a new understanding. And the beauty of it all is, these two parts of our nature are thenceforth perfectly and harmoniously united. There is a restoration of lost powers to the human soul, a pure, divine marriage of Goodness and Truth, and God is glorified and man is saved.

CHAPTER V.

SPIRITUAL WARFARE.

"The more the interior man is searched and laid open by the Word of God, the clearer are the demonstrations of this divided consciousness; and it seems to the individual that two classes of powers are ranged in opposition, and seeking for the dominion of his nature. This conflict perhaps did not appear except under the light of Christian truth bursting on the soul in clearer splendor, - like the sun arising on a field where hosts are gathered and arranged for battle, but which lay in stillness on their arms until the morning light should appear."-Rev. E. H. Sears.

THE work of the regenerating life is everywhere represented as a work of strife and combat. The natural mind is full of evils, and the work of routing and removing them is sometimes very painful. In nothing, perhaps, does man feel his duality of being, that is, his natural and spiritual minds, so powerfully. For, unless he had two minds, as distinct in their desires and cravings almost as two persons, could it be that there would exist this warfare and division in him? The natural or external mind is, in all its characteristics, an image of the natural world, and finds its delight in the things of the natural world; the spiritual or interior mind is an image of the spiritual world, and loves the things of that world, or heaven. The spiritual, indeed, loves also the things of the natural world, but only as a master loves a servant, by whose means he performs uses; the natural world, by such an one, is held in subordination; it is not suffered to become uppermost, or chief. And when the natural is so regarded, then the natural mind itself becomes spiritual, or spiritual-natural; it suffers the spiritual to act through it and by it; it is thus at one and in harmony with the spiritual. But this is the effect of regeneration. Before this, it is not so.

And indeed, all through this life in the world, both with the regenerate and the unregenerate, these two minds are so distinct, that man does not know what is performing with himself in his superior mind; for with that mind he is in the spiritual world with angels, and with the other, in the natural world with men; and even when he becomes a spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not, according to Swedenborg, know what is performing in his inferior mind.

It was these two minds, so distinct and separate, that furnished the ground of the Apostle's warfare, and also the ground of every warfare experienced in the heart of the Christian. And it may be safely concluded, that until a person has begun to experience this warfare, that is, an unrest, a dissatisfaction with himself, and a conflict more or less painful with the predominant desires of the heart, he has not even begun the regenerate life.

This matter is so interesting, it covers so large a field of human life and of the Divine Providence, that we are moved to look at it still more analytically. And here may be contemplated a certain description of character which is common enough to be met with, and which frequently, perhaps, excites almost our envy, or at least our desire, that we could be of such a disposition. We refer to certain persons of a mild and even temperament, who never appear to be troubled much with any thing. Or at least, if troubles come they are soon over; they are met with a momentary shock and passed by lightly; and there is such a natural buoyancy and equanimity of spirit prevailing with them, and so much easiness, that it seems quite out of the power of this world's fortunes to produce any great or deep disturbance in them. And they frequently have, too, a certain amiability about them, a quiet, contented, goodnatured disposition, that seems to mark them out as made and fitted for enjoyment. In short, they seem to be what many truly religious people are, all but the religion. For it is not their religion which confers this enjoyment, for they have none.