the ministers of the New Church party and
all who listened to them, with the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram, and uttered language implying a wish that the earth would
open its mouth and swallow them up. The Rev. Augustus Clissold,
M.A., formerly collegian at Oxford, who is the only profound scholar
in England belonging to the New Church sect, ably answered him.
There are many smart polemics but very few great scholars in the
sect referred to. Twenty-five years ago New Jerusalem Church, in
Avenham-road, was opened, and the believers in it increased for some
time afterwards. Anything new is fashionable, and a new church
always gives an impetus to the number of its worshipers. Those
assembling at the church created much curiosity, and not a little
cynical criticism, at first. They even do so now. Ordinarily
orthodox people look down censoriously upon believers in "the New
Jerusalem," and class them as a mysterious, visionary sect of
religionists, given up to dreams, pious eccentricity, and self-
righteousness. But they have, like other individuals, a reason for
their belief; if it is madness there is method in it; and they are
prepared to "argue the point," and make a respectable disturbance if
their creed is assailed.

We shall not criticise their belief--neither praise nor condemn it--
but just give its chief points for the benefit of unknowing ones.
Here they are: they believe in a trinity, not of persons but
essentials--love, wisdom, and power; they do not believe in the
doctrine of faith alone, but of faith conjoined with good works;
they do not believe in a vicarious atonement, but in a
reconciliation of man to God; they don't believe in a resurrection
of the material body, but a resuscitation of the spirit immediately
after physical death; they don't believe in a physical destruction
of the world by fire, but think that the world as it is now created
will continue to exist--for ever; they have no faith in the Noachian
deluge, and say that the sacred record of it refers to an inundation
of evil and not of water; finally they believe that there will be
marriages in heaven,--not wedding ring unions, not kissing,
courting, and quarrelling amalgamations, but conjunctions of
goodness with truth; and they have further an idea that there will
be "prolifications" in heaven, not of crying children with passions
for sucking bottles and sugar teats, but of truth and goodness.
Swedenborg, by whom they swear, believed