"It is trifling to receive all but something which is as integral as any other portion; and, on the other hand, it is a solemn thing to receive any part, as before you know where you are, you may be carried on by a stern logical necessity to accept the whole." J. H. Newman's Essay.

WE very much doubt whether literary history for several centuries has exhibited a parallel to the discussion now going on in this country, between the assailants and the advocates of the system of Swedenborg. It is indeed, no very uncommon circumstance for controversialsts to misrepresent, in some degree, the opinions or doctrines of opponents, or to ascribe to them logical results, which the holders do not admit to be legitimately deducible from them. Neither is it uncommon for individual reviewers to misunderstand the language of an author, and thus attribute to him doctrines which he does not hold. But we believe the cases of very rare occurrence, in which not merely some unimportant details, but the entire scope of a vast system, has not only been misunderstood, but totally uncomprehended, by not one reviewer alone, but by all its reviewers, great and small; from the learned professors who have opposed it in volumes, to the sophomores who have attacked it in theses, and from the clerical critics who have denounced it in pulpits to the minor sapiences that have berated it in newspapers. Such, however, we are compelled to say is the state of the case in relation to the system in question, and those who have attempted to refute it. The German metaphysicians who have flourished since the days of Kant, have indeed labored under the great impediment of not being always understood. But their reviewers have usually confessed their inability to comprehend them, and have therefore wisely refrained from claiming to have refuted them. Had the reviewers of Swedenborg, in this country, pursued a similar course, we should have entertained more respect for the tactics they have displayed in their warfare.

"Swedenborgianism Reviewed. By Enoch Pond, D. D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Bangor, Me." Portland, 1846. 12mo. pp. 296.

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Among the many circumstances which at this day her Divine Master is overruling for the advancement of the New Church, we count the publication of the work whose title we have placed at the head of this article. It contains, in a condensed form, all the objections we remember ever to have seen urged against the claims of Swedenborg to Divine illumination; with many others never before presented; and we may add that many of them are such as very few literary men would care to stake their reputation upon. At first view this book appears to have been written throughout under the influence of an assumed hypothesis; and we are sorry to say that a reperusal serves only to strengthen the impression. Dr. Pond has conceived the idea that Swedenborg was insane; and on this assumed basis he proceeds to account for and to explain the various phenomena connected with his case. This assumptiom has received many and patient replies. But for ourselves, we have not, in conversation or otherwise, when it has been urged, taken that pains to refute it, which those who make the charge seem to think it requires. The time was, no doubt, in the earlier discussions, when it was worth while to remove this stumbling block from the path of inquirers, that the system might be fairly presented to the world. But that stage of the controversy we conceive to be well nigh passed. These writings have now been before the world nearly one hundred years, and the circle of their receivers has been gradually expanding with the increase of knowledge: a process directly the reverse of that which it must be supposed would have taken place had they been nothing more than the ravings of a maniac: Those who regard Swedenborg's system from this "insane" point of view, in our opinion, greatly overrate the advantage they fancy they will have gained when they shall have proven the charge they prefer. For, granting him insane, they are as far as ever from refuting his philosophy, or invalidating the claims his doctrines have to our reception. The shutting up of Swedenborg in a mad house would no more impede the march of the New Dispensation, than did the beheading of John the Baptist in prison retard the development of the Apos tolic.

Dr. Liebig of Germany observed in certain cases that a substance which would not of itself yield to a particular chemical attraction, will nevertheless do so if placed in contact with some other body which is in the act of yielding to the same force. "Nitric acid, for example, does not dissolve pure platinum, but the same acid easily dissolves silver. Now if an alloy of silver and platinum be treated with nitric acid, the acid does not, as might naturally be expected, separate the two metals: it dissolves both the platinum as well as the silver which becomes oxidized, and in that state combines with the undecomposed portion of the acid." From this, and a few similar cases, Dr. Liebig rose to a comprehensive generalization, and has recently propounded a theory, which may be called the theory of the contagious influence of chemical action. He supposes a law to hold throughout nature, which he expresses in the following words: "A body in the act of combination or decomposition enables another body, with which it may be in contact, to enter into the same state." This theory, however simple a concise statement of it may appear, becomes of immense importance in its application. It may be considered extremely visionary by many that anything so much resembling sympathy should pervade inanimate nature: some matter-of-fact persons may go so far as to declare the Doctor" insane on