If you divide pleasure and love and thought, The wilderness of this Elysian earth.” These lines express our meaning fully; and they also give, it seems to us, a better lesson on the value and necessity of unselfishness than many sermons could give. Division of love, pleasure, or thought is certainly one of the highest forms of unselfishness; and Shelley's words bring forward plainly what we have before alluded to, namely, that goodness or truth if divided, that is to say, if understood, constantly increases; and that in the same way dross, or sin, separated and analyzed, can be diminished till it is expelled from the life. 66 The truth of this is evident, and particularly is it true when connected with any form of sin. For if evil is allowed to reign unknown and undisturbed in your soul, it is like an internal wound which is not seen, but is ever gnawing and tearing at your strength and life. Sin," says Swedenborg, "must become apparent before it can be removed." And this does not mean that you must commit sins to make them apparent; but that you must divide sins, see them in their nakedness, and know which are your peculiar weaknesses and failings. If you are envious, for example, you must know that envy is a sin, and endeavour to drive it from you, or your sin has not appeared to you. And so long as you continue to envy, without pausing to consider that you are sinning, it is useless to attempt to remove the sin. Sin cannot be removed till it is seen and known. It must be broken and bruised! Take the commandments, for instance, and the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," in particular. "Thou shalt not steal" must not be considered simply as being a general command that cannot be applied to ourselves, but we must narrow the words to suit our own failings. We may certainly not be thieves in the common broad sense of the word, but yet we may still steal constantly and almost unconsciously. We steal ideas and palm them off as our own; we steal good opinions by giving wrong impressions of ourselves; and above all, we steal when we slander and talk scandal. To take away characters is one of the most common, and yet most grievous examples of breaking the command, "Thou shalt not steal.” And this spiritual thieving is often far worse than the actual dishonesty we should blush at. As Shakespeare says "Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; But he who filches from me my good name, Robs me of that which not enriches him, Examples could be given indefinitely, but enough has been said, we think, to make our meaning plain. Goodness and truth must be divided if we wish them to give us strength and life; and sin must be dissected, and seen in all its details, if we wish to destroy it. A general confession of sin is not sufficient, and the necessity of constant and vigorous self-examination must be recognised. And it can even be understood why the Roman sacrament of penance has held its place so long. For nothing can be so bad, so destructive, as for people to live without knowing their sins; and the confessional at least forced men to make a certain, if an imperfect, account of their sins; and their sinfulness was forced, as it were, upon their knowledge. And so far it had a use. But this usefulness was of the lowest and least spiritual order, and has become, or rather ought to have become, a thing of the past. Men surely should be able to examine their consciences, and discover their own infirmities, unaided; and if they are not tender-souled enough to do this, fallible fellow-creatures must certainly be but poor assistance to them in their search. However, we have said enough on this subject; we have endeavoured to show how the words to break or divide could be made as applicable to evil as to good-that sin and sorrow must be seen in detail before they can be banished; and that love and truth must be shared with others, understood, and made practical, to really increase. To quote again from "Epipsychidion :" "True love in this differs from gold and clay, The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, One object and one form, and builds thereby The spirit of these lines is the inculcation of broad and catholic views of life; and we have given them in full, because they uphold in part the necessity of division, of which we have been speaking. The whole truth, the truth that love and thought not only must be divided and shared, but must also be understood and made our own, is a grand one. And we must constantly keep it before our eyes, and practically use it, if we wish the miracle of the breaking, and wonderful increase, of the loaves and fishes, to become a living reality to us. And now we will turn to the last and greatest illustration of practical religion that may be drawn from the miracle. We refer to the manifestation of God on the earth in the person of Christ. Christ came into the world to make Goodness and Truth apparent to all men, and capable of being understood by the simplest mind. Before His time men saw the light but dimly and vaguely. The voice of God had spoken but feebly in their darkened souls-conscience was unheeded. But Christ came-" A Second Conscience, an external Conscience "1-and men were taught in grand simple lessons to crucify their desires, and passions, and lusts; and to raise up and glorify the very humanity that might otherwise be their destruction. The bread of the miracle was broken, goodness was made visible and possible to all men, and the veil of eternal mystery was lifted. Men had but to follow in the footsteps of Christ and obey His teachings, and the bread of Divine goodness would become theirs, and they would be fed abundantly. In the words of Christ, "He that eateth of this bread, shall live for ever." This, as we said before, is one of the most glorious lessons to be learned from the miracle of the loaves and fishes; and although we have not thrown any new light on the spiritual interpretation, perhaps we may still have drawn attention to the value of the practical religion it so plainly teaches. Goodness and truth must be understood and made our daily food. We must see ourselves as we really are, and take what is good in our souls to Christ, that we may be under His Divine guidance. These things are the framework of religion, and it is impossible not to recognise their truth. The doctrine of Faith alone is a doctrine that blinds and kills, "for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." Religion must be practical, must be made the measure 1 Dean Stanley. of all our daily actions; of our thoughts, affections, and ambitions. And constant self-examination must be observed. For if this is not done, the loaves and fishes of the miracle remain eternally unbroken, our hunger is unsatisfied, and we starve in the very midst of abund ance. To end with the words of old Menenius: "Oh that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! Oh that you could!" H. THE REV. W. C. JAMIESON, B.A. WHILE most readers of the Intellectual Repository believe and give consistent practical effect to their belief that they can find no congenial rest, no sufficient field for free religious life and effort in the communions of the Orthodox Church, it is nevertheless true that in these communions there are many who in the main agree with us, and yet find that they can live and work freely among their old associates. There is no New Churchman but has heard with respect, and thinks with gratitude to the Divine Providence, of the life and wide ceaseless activity of John Clowes, once Rector of St. John's, Manchester. There are also living men in the Church of England, and among the various sections of Protestant dissent in this country, who have been able so to read the documents by which their several Churches are constituted as to understand them, with all honesty, in such senses as do not to them seem inconsistent with the most plain-spoken advocacy of the doctrinals and claims of the New Jerusalem. Nor is it possible to doubt that much of the liberality of thought as well as of the activity of true philanthropy by which this day is characterized may be, must be ascribed to the instrumentality of such men. Whenever and wherever a true word is kindly spoken by a man who embodies that Word in the affectionate earnestness of a holy life, there seed is being sown which will in some cases, at least, produce abundant fruit. To such men and their labours we may even look confidently for the carrying on of that preparatory work by which the Church will be enabled, hereafter, to make conquest of the sects. In such men we may perhaps even see an illustration of that Divine parable in which we learn that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which, hidden for a while, leavens that which at first conceals it. There are, however, differences in the manner in which this leaven ing work is done. These diverse modes shall not here be discussed, as our object is to make our readers acquainted with a most remarkable phenomenon of which during recent years the Church of Scotland has been the scene. W. C. E. Jamieson, born forty years ago, was son of a law-clerk in Edinburgh. Early left fatherless, he had much to do to win an education. This had been more difficult anywhere than in Edinburgh. The work of education which was begun by James I.'s goldsmith was helpful to Jamieson, both as inmate of Heriot's Hospital, and then as Heriot Bursar in the Edinburgh University. Here he pushed his own way through the Arts and Divinity curriculum. For readers south of the Tweed it may be well to explain that this curriculum affords the student a wide, deep, and varied culture. Its duration, seven years, gives opportunity for classical, literary, scientific, and philosophical study of considerable extent, and after this for three years equal care is given to those studies which are regarded as likely to qualify a man for rightly dividing the Word of Truth. He entered the ministry of the Church of Scotland as assistant to Dr. Robertson, of the New Greyfriars, Edinburgh. Subsequently he was minister at Invertiel, in Fifeshire, and then at St. Matthew's, Glasgow. While in this city he became acquainted with David Gilmour, of the Paisley New Church Society. This gentleman, first an acquaintance, then a fast friend of Mr. Jamieson, had a large and most helpful influence on the minister of the "Auld Kirk," who, I believe, through him became aware of the existence, and then of the reality of the New Church. With Mr. Jamieson the hearing led to examination, this resulted in reception, gradual, hearty reception of the doctrines of the New Church. Nor did he receive in silence, but declared freely the truth as he knew it, and as freely referred to the documents and the teacher that had led him to his new beliefs. is said that in the Glasgow Presbytery, or Church Court, he was familiarly spoken of as "our Swedenborgian brother." His preaching, always characterized by a manly eloquence, became more attractive and powerful as its subject-matter grew more worthy of acceptance, and the communion-roll of St. Matthew's, which had been short, soon comprised 1200 names. It In 1876 he was translated to the Tron parish in Edinburgh, in which charge he laboured with much acceptance. It was in the autumn of this year that I first met Mr. Jamieson, who, because I was minister of the New Church, welcomed me most cordially, and only parted from me with the assurance, "At any time if there be anything that I can do, either personally or through such influence as |