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 world, I would by no means overlook that great fundamental tenet which regards the Divine Being Himself, the proper and only object of worship to the universe of intelligent creatures. In presenting this point, I shall vary a little from the direct argumentative treatment of the subject, and suppose myself to be interrogated by a candid inquirer somewhat as follows:

“You are assuming to proclaim to your fellow-men what you term a New Dispensation—the Dispensation of the New Jerusalem—and I would fain learn what it is precisely that we are to understand by this Dispensation.”

Our answer is, that we mean by it a purer and more perfect order of life, doctrine, and worship established among men on the earth, in accordance with the express predictions of holy writ to that effect.

“But in what respect does this hold good? How will this order of things differ specifically from that which has hitherto prevailed in the Christian world?”

In greater purity of doctrine and superior sanctity of life.

“Your reply is still vague. Please be more explicit.”

The doctrine taught in the New Church makes known to us that one God is to be believed in and worshiped, in whom is a Divine Trinity, and that Jesus Christ in his glorified or Divine Humanity is that God. According to this doctrine the Creator and the Redeemer of the world, are not two persons, but one, and consequently, that the Tripersonality of the Godhead is nothing but a fiction, and a phantasy, while yet the doctrine of a Trinity, true and Scriptural, is most emphatically maintained.

“But how does this differ from the commonly received tenet? Does not that also affirm that there is but one only God, while in the Godhead we are to recognize the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?”

Still there is a radical difference between the old and the new doctrine. This difference will be more palpable if we contrast the two systems in respect to a single point. The so-called orthodox theology teaches that Christ possessed a true human soul, as well as a true human body. But this the New Church denies from the fact that our Lord had no human father, while he had a human mother, and it is one of the authoritative teachings of the church that the soul is, in all cases, derived from the father, while the body in which it is clothed is from the mother. As then our Lord had no human father, that inmost essence which, in all other men, is from a paternal origin, was derived from Jehovah himself, and as the divine nature is incapable of division, this is but saying that his soul or the inmost element of his being was Jehovah. This of course lays a foundation for the claim of absolute and essential divinity in the nature of Christ, which, in every other system, is virtually withheld from him, though nominally conceded, as the ascription to him of a human soul necessitates the inference that the Divine element was merely adjoined to the human, instead of constituting the central and paramount principle of his being. His soul was in fact the essential Divinity itself, and this is but another name for the Father, or, which is equivalent, the Divine Love. This is the first essential in the Divine nature, often erroneously termed the first person. The second is the intellectual, or Wisdom, or Truth principle, as contradistinguished from the affectional. In the incarnation it was this principle which was more especially manifested, and termed the Son, though the Divine Love was not separated. The third is the Divine operative energy proceeding from the