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of adult baptisms took place at the evening service, and at Hammersmith the sacrament of the Holy Supper was administered by the Rev. E. Madeley. All the services of which we have received notice were impressive and interesting. At most of the places the attendance was over their average num ber, and the proceedings were through out such as to encourage the hope of usefulness to the Church in this large metropolis.

CONFERENCE TEA PARTY. This annual party of the Conference was held in the Church recently purchased at Kensington. Upwards of 400 persons assembled to tea, and over 600 were present after tea. The body of the Church was comfortably filled, and a sprinkling of friends occupied the spacious gallery. Hymns suited to the occasion were printed and circulated in the assembly. The interest of the meeting was heightened by the presence of strangers from distant parts, as well as friends from all parts of the country. The inscription upon the building, "JESUS THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH, AND the King of ISRAEL," was selected as the general subject for discussion, and branches of the subject, together with the names of the speakers, were printed and circulated on a small handbill. The meeting was such as to attract attention in the neighbourhood and respectful notice by the public press. We are happy in being able to give a condensed report of the proceedings.

The Rev. Dr. BAYLEY, on taking the chair, remarked that the etiquette of Conference at this Thursday evening's meeting was, that the President should take the chair, but on this occasion the President felt himself too pressed with important business to do so without serious inconvenience, and he had requested the present Chairman to preside and relieve him in this respect. He welcomed the meeting in the new place of worship so commodious, and so noble in all respects. He congratulated the meeting on its numerous and enthusiastic character, and he felt confident that the evening would be one which all would remember with delight. There were several circumstances which were known to those who had been more intimately acquainted with the particulars connected with this new

acquisition, which were striking indications of the working of Divine Providence in relation to it. Twelve months ago, said Dr. Bayley, I was hunting up and down in Kensington for a place in which to deliver some lectures, but none could be had. One chapel was quite unused, but was refused. Little did I imagine this noble building would so soon be at our disposal. It is a case similar to the one when the two disciples went at the divine command to seek the ass, and the colt, the foal of the ass. The Lord said, if any man ask you what you do, say "The Lord hath need of him." The Lord had need of this place, and here it is. Then look at the inscription on the front, Christ the head of the Church, and the King of Israel. We shall now without doubt put the crown of undivided royalty on the Saviour's glorious head, and hail Him in this place as King and Lord of all. The speakers to-night will in several ways illustrate the various branches of this great truth, and to them I will now entrust it to unfold the divine character of our blessed Saviour, who is God over all, blessed for ever.

Rev. E. D. RENDELL said that the first principle of religion is the knowledge and acknowledgment of God. For this knowledge we must go to the Word of God, and seek also an extensive acquaintance with its teaching. It is not in any one passage or in any one set of passages that we can find this knowledge. That Christian faith may be come an intelligent faith, it must be enlightened by an extended knowledge of the truths of the Word. God has from the earliest ages manifested him. self to man. His first appearance was to Adam. Subsequently He appeared to the patriarchs. Whenever seen He appeared in a humanity. If we think of the infinite apart from the human, we shall find that we are thinking of nothing. In the many manifestations made to his people under the older dispensations, He appeared as an angel, whence He is called "the angel of His presence. Angels are men in a glori fied form; and these manifestations of the Lord were the appearances of the Divine Human before the incarnation. But as society sunk into wickedness and error, they separated themselves from the Lord, and in the fulness of time

that men might not perish, Jehovah appeared as Jesus, the Divine descended into the human, God appeared as man. Appearances were against this Divine Human, but as these appearances were removed, all the angelic hosts acknowledged Him. The preaching in this

Church will be to maintain this truth of a Divine Human Saviour, and to proclaim Him to the world.

Rev. Mr. WALTERS-The motions and thoughts in my mind are conflicting. If I could express my deepest feelings they would be burning hot in love to Christ. My position at this meeting is strange and mysterious. This Church was erected for a Baptist congregation, and I, a Baptist minister, am addressing you on the highest subject of New Church theology. In the

natural order of things I should have been addressing a Baptist congregation on baptism; but, in the divine order of things, I am led to address you on the grandest object of spiritual Christianity. If asked by my own dear people, how it is that I am thus employed, I should say that I am telling you what I have told them, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one only Jehovah. The New Church teaches, and is the only body that does teach, the true Godhead of Jesus. This it is which unites me to you. We are united to the same Lord. We recognise together the divinity of the humanity of Christ. The New

Church again is the only Christian organization that has formed definite ideas of the prophecies of the Apocalypse. What you call the Old Church makes the same mistake in relation to these prophecies that the Jews did in relation to those of a former time. The Lord descended and fulfilled former prophecies without their knowledge; and again He is fulfilling prophecy and men know it not. The New Jerusalem, however, can only descend upon the earth as it descends into regenerate souls. The regenerate soul has realized the Lord's Second Coming, and as all men recognise this they will be brought into the grand organization of the true Church the living body of Christ. What use, it is said, is there in the doctrine of the Trinity and in preaching abstract truth? I believe the most practical doctrine of spiritual Christianity is the doctrine of the Trinity as revealed in the Godhead of Jesus Christ.

The problem of salvation is not how to escape hell, or to creep through some pigeon hole into heaven as an outward paradise, but how the soul is to be brought again into a living relationship with the Being from whom it has been separated, and this can only be done in Christ.

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The Rev. R. STORRY said the Chairman has introduced to us the subject of the sovereignty of the Saviour. This is matter of distinct scriptural announcement. It is predicted in the prophets, and repeated in the Gospels and the Apocalypse. But in view of this great fact, the objection with which the Saviour was reviled not unnaturally rises to the mind-" If He be the King of Israel, let Him descend from the cross. If the entire creation is dependent upon His influent Spirit, and in His extremity He could command twelve legions of angels, why should He submit to sufferings? The sufferings of Christ were matter of revelation and historic fact. To understand the cause and trace the consequences of these sufferings was of the highest importance in the formation of an enlightened faith. The sufferings of Christ attained their climax in Gethsemane and on the Cross, and a thoughtful examination of these fearful scenes of sorrow would show that they were of the nature of conflict and temptation. In Gethsemane the sufferings are described as an agony, in which He sweat as it were large drops of blood. The word agony was an untranslated word. It denoted the contortions and writhings of a wrestler engaged in a conflict, in which was victory or death.. And the narrative disclosed this enemy as the power of darkness-"This is your hour and the power of darkness." It was the concentrated effort of hell to defeat the great purpose of the Lord's descent into the world. The same lesson is taught by Calvary, on which was heard the despairing cry of the human to the divine-"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me." These were the commencing words of the 22d Psalm-a Psalm which described the Lord's conflicts in language which clearly indicated the enemies with whom He had to contend. The

bulls of Bashan, which gaped upon Him with their mouth as a ravening and a roaring lion, the dogs that com

passed Him, and the assembly of the wicked that inclosed Him, could only represent the spirits of darkness whom He overcame, and from whom He delivered His people.

The Rev. Mr. REED, of Boston, U.S., was next introduced to the meeting, and in the course of a pleasing and impressive address, said -The object before us is to lift up our souls to Him to whom we desire to dedicate this house in which we are assembled. We would have our souls lifted to Him and would join in the song of the angels and say, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches and wisdom, and strength and honour, and glory and blessing."

It is

a remarkable circumstance that the minds of men are turned everywhere as never before to this great subject. Books, such as "Ecce Homo," behold the Man, "Ecce Deus," behold God, letters from every quarter, earnest men, like Robertson of Brighton, seeming to wear themselves out in trying to solve this strange personage. Is it not strange that after eighteen centuries men are again asking with renewed intensity of interest, What think ye of Christ? The question comes when the answer is ready, "Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?" What He said to Philip He says to me, He says to all, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." There is the answer required. "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me." The Father was in Him reconciling the world to Himself. Those who desire a nearer approach to God will only be satisfied with these words, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. But these words have a

double meaning. The disciples saw Him with their bodily eyes, we see Him with the understanding-we see Him more truly. When we see Him, when we look to Him and pray to Him, we are looking to the Father in the Humanity, and there is no other way of going to the Father. There are many aspects in which to look to Him. Swedenborg has said that God became Man and Man-God in one person. the doctrines of the New Church we are able to understand both these sides of the person of the Lord. When we are thinking of the divinity of His humanity we may lose some lessons

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He has taught us. How near He appears to us when we think that He has passed through all we pass through. Little children in their little trialsgreat to them though small to ushave a very real idea of Christ. He is no abstraction to them. They think of Him and they love Him. And we also

as we pass through our trials are to be drawn closely to Him as our present Saviour and loving Father.

Rev. W. WOODMAN said-Christ is revealed as the head of the Church. Christians have not sufficiently considered the teaching of Paul that He is the head of the body, so that the Church receives from her Divine Head vital influences corresponding to those which the body receives from the brain. The Church without Christ is a headless body; and what is a headless body but a corpse? Christ is the Resurrection. The idea of the resurrection is commonly confined to the idea of the resurrection of the body. Scripture speaks only of the resurrection of the soul.

The body never lives, it is the soul that lives in the body and animates it with its presence. When the soul is withdrawn from the body we are said to die, but man never dies; the soul rises immediately after the death of the body into a world for which it is fitted and prepared. The Resurrection, however, is a character ascribed to the Lord. There is but one life and that is in the Lord. The soul is not life, but an organized vessel receiving life from its one fountain. It is the Divine life which animates the soul and gives us the power of affection and thought. God is the very life itself. "In Him we live and move and have our being." The Lord Jesus Christ is this life. He says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life;" and as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself." As there is only one life, and that life is God, these words clearly prove that Christ is God. There are two aspects in Christ-the Divine and the Human. If we pursue the Divine we are lost in infinity. It is only in the human we can think of God-not, indeed, in a finite but an infinite human. We read of Christ as love. God is love, and life is the activity of love. It is as love that He is the Resurrection. There is no power so

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attractive, so irresistible as love. "I, if I be lifted up," said the Lord, “will draw all men unto Me."

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Rev. Dr. HIBBARD, of Chicago, next addressed the meeting, selecting as his subject the Lord Jesus Christ as the universal King of the universal Church. The prophecy and the promise concerning the New Church is, that "In that day the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day there shall be one Lord and His name one. This prophecy of Zechariah has begun to be fulfilled. That day points to this day. Assembled from the four quarters of the earth in this metropolis of the world, we meet together on this basis -That the Lord Jesus Christ is the only God of heaven and earth. The declaration of the inscription placed over the head of the Saviour on the cross is what has brought us here. This title, written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin-the three crystallised languages in which the revelations of divine truth have been made to the Church-is claiming fulfilment in this day, when the Lord has again come and again been crucified in that great city which is Sodom and Egypt. When the Lord came and was rejected, then was set up the inscription, "Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews." It is the accusation of His death. Death means resurrection, and these words signify to all hereafter ages that He is the everlasting and risen King of the Church. The Old Testament in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, and their unfolding in Latin, all testify that He is King of the Jews.

All are

not Jews, however, who are called Jews, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly in the spirit. The inscription has in it therefore, more than we suppose. It has in it a prophecy of the Church of all the future ages-a New Jerusalem which is coming down from God out of heaven, of which we all here are witnesses. This is to bind men in one universal Church of which the acknowledgment of the Lord, the holiness of the Word, and the life of charity, are the distinguishing features. To cheer each other onward in the dissemination and the life of these three great central doctrines are we assembled. Our work is one, as the Church for which we labour, and the Lord in whosel vineyard we are employed are one. Why are we all here so much at

home? Why do I a stranger, one thousand miles away from the eastern coast of my own country, feel so completely at home? It is because the doctrines of the New Church, have come down from God out of heaven to me, and they have also come down from God out of heaven to you. Whether I preach on the prairies of America, or our brother in Scandinavia, or Senor Scocia in the sunny plains of Italy, or you in England, we are engaged in one work, and are the servants of one Master, who is God over all. The Lord Jesus is our King, His country is our country, His subjects are our fellow-citizens, brethren of the same family and heirs of the same inheritance:

Mr. GUNTON was next introduced to the meeting, and in a short address described the circumstances under which the Church had been presented to the Conference, and dwelt upon the importance and value of external things to promote the growth of things internal. Difficulties were foreseen and anticipated, but did not produce discouragement. The hope of those who had taken part in the purchase was to make it a centre of usefulness and blessing.

At a few minutes after nine the meeting was closed by the Chairman with the usual benediction.

MISSIONARY AND TRACT SOCIETY.The following interesting items of intelligence were communicated to the Committee at their last meeting. A correspondent from Wilton writes, "The Rev. Mr. H. took the precaution a few Sundays since to warn his hearers with tears against the New Church as being a set of heretics denying a Trinity, Atonement, Resurrection, &c. One of

his parishioners wrote him a letter showing how he had misrepresented our views, and desiring him to correct his statements. Mr. H. had the manly courage to do so, and announced in his Church that he had spoken without knowing what our doctrines were, a notice which will do us no harm. It is also intended to discuss the claims of Swedenborg as a religious teacher at the Baptist Church, and one of their leading members is to introduce the subject.

Another correspondent writing from Shields says, "I have found the

doctrines of the New Church to be much more widely diffused than I at first supposed. For instance, a reformed French priest writing in the True Catholic, a Low Church periodical, states that a great many Romish priests in France secretly hold and teach the doctrines of Swedenborg. Again, in a small volume of poems lately issued by a well known publishing firm, and edited and written by an eminent Low Churchman, I met with several papers touching on the nature of Christ, the doctrines of the Trinity, and future rewards and punishments, which agree entirely with the doctrines of the New Church."

It is now under the consideration of the Committee to have a course of lectures delivered by Dr. Bayley at the Church at the Mall, Kensington, in reply to those delivered by Mr. Voysey at St. George's Hall, on the character of our Lord, and the inspiration of the Bible.

DEPTFORD-Opening and Consecration of the New Church.-After a severe and protracted struggle, the Deptford Society has at length realised the object of its wishes, in having obtained its much needed new place of worship, a short_description of which appeared in our June number; to which we will only add that now, the church is finished it has elicited the admiration of all who have seen it, and is declared to be an ornament to the neighbourhood and a credit to Mr. Gosling the architect. The consecration and opening took place on Sunday, Aug. 13, when Dr. Bayley read the dedication service and the Rev. John Hyde preached in the morning from the significative words in John xvi. 12 and 25. In the evening the Rev. R. Storry preached from Rev. xxi. 9 to 11. Both discourses were well suited to the occasion, were ably delivered, gave great satisfaction to the members and friends of the Church, and made a very favourable impression upon the strangers present. The congregations were very good, especially in the morning, when many of the London friends, together with some visitors to Conference staying in London, were present. The collections amounted to £13, 4s. 4d. Mr. Gunton also received during Conference from several friends £13, 11s., making a total of £26 15s. 4d. There still remains a large amount to be made up;

and unless an additional £100 can be realised by subscription the Society will be compelled to borrow a larger sum than is thought advisable if it can be avoided. Subscriptions, therefore, however small, are earnestly solicited to be forwarded either to Mr. Rhodes, leader of the Deptford Society, or to Mr. Gunton, Treasurer of Conference.

Births.

On the 23d July, at the residence of her mother, 35 Penton Place, Mrs. Milton Smith of a female child stillborn.

On the 5th of August, at 98 Offord Road, Barnsbury, London, the wife of Mr. W. Spear of a son.

Marriages.

On June 29th, at the New Jerusalem Church, Accrington, by Mr. E. J. Broadfield, B. A., Henry Gibson, second son of Mr. Henry Cunliffe, to Alice Ann, elder daughter of Mr. Nicholas Waddington.

At Embsay, on Monday, Aug. 14th, by Mr. R. B. Swinburne, Mr. John Davy to Miss Sarah Ann Mason.

At the New Jerusalem Church, Old Lane, Worsley, by Mr. T. Mackereth, Mr. J. Newton to Miss Ann Hall, both of Worsley. This being the first marriage at the Church, and both being members of the Society, the bride and bridegroom were presented with a handsome family Bible and New Church Services.

Obituary.

Mrs. Pilkington, on the 5th of May, at the residence of her daughter Mrs. Sowey, of Brooke's Bar, near Manchester, in the 78th year of her age, Mary Pilkington, widow of the late Rev. Thomas Pilkington, of Hasling. den, passed peacefully into the eternal world. Her remains were interred at Haslingden. For many years, in the early existence of the Haslingden Society, Mrs. Pilkington received and entertained nearly all the preachers who came, and her wise interest in all that was good and true, and cheerful encouragement to every effort for the advance of the Lord's Church, impressed those who had the advantage of her acquaintance that she was a true mother in Israel. Her children revered and loved her, and her memory to them will be for ever surrounded with a halo of all the virtues which constitute the character of a true Christian mother.

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