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 Annual Addrees) read before the last Convention and published in the same number of the Messenger as the Report, seems to see that "the principles of the New Church" are rapidly flowing into, and changing the character of, the old organizations, notwithstanding their creeds remain unchanged. For he says:―

"We have abundant evidence that the principles of the New Church are rapidly extending. They are penetrating every religious body, and every human society. They are gaining a larger and more earnest hearing; they are modifying and rectifying religious beliefs, and enlightening the minds of the people more widely than ever before. They are a spiritual light, and they are shining more clearly in the understandings of men. We see evidences of the extension of this spiritual light . . . in the daily and weekly press; and teaching in sermons, and in all the external activities of the time. It is so strikingly evident, that the most unobservant notice the changed and changing condition of religious beliefs."

True—obviously true; and the very thing which a few (an exceeding few, however) of the careful students of the Heavenly Doctrines have been proclaiming to somewhat reluctant ears for the last quarter of a century; the very thing, too, which Swedenborg foresaw and foretold immediately after the Last Judgment. For he foresaw that the churches in Christendom would all