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NEW CHURCH, THE. 



NEW CHURCH, THE. The sixty-first Gen- 

 eral Convention of the New (Swedenborgian) 

 Church met at Washington, D. C., May 20th. 

 The Rev. Chauncey Giles presided. Delegates 

 wore present from the States of Massachusetts, 

 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Dela- 

 ware, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illi- 

 nois, Georgia, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Cali- 

 fornia, and from Canada, Statistical reports 

 \\crc presented from the associations as fol- 

 lows: Canada Association, 5 societies ; Illinois 

 Association, 450 members; Maine Association, 

 5 societies, 3 ministers, 830 members; Mary- 

 land Association ; Massachusetts Association ; 

 Michigan Association; Minnesota Association ; 

 Mi>M>uri Association ; New York Association, 

 8 ministers, 11 societies, 538 members; Ohio 

 Association, 8 ministers, 3 licentiates, 11 soci- 

 eties, 557 members ; Pennsylvania Association, 

 5 ministers, 7 societies, 357 members ; societies 

 at Denver, Col., New Orleans, La., Edenfield, 

 Milwaukee, Wis., and San Francisco, Cal. A 

 society in Savannah, Ga., applied for admis- 

 sion. The trustees of the Jungerich fund for 

 promoting the distribution of the works of 

 Swedenborg reported that after nine years of 

 work in the distribution of the " True Chris- 

 tian Religion," and the "Apocalypse Re- 

 vealed," in the course of which 20,500 copies 

 of the former and 14,000 of the latter work 

 had been sent out, the demand for the books 

 continued steady. In all, 51,500 copies of 

 Swedenborg's works had been distributed 

 through this agency. The Board of Missions 

 had received $2,248, and had paid out $1,882. 

 The German Missionary Union, the object of 

 which is to furnish German members of the 

 New Church in the United States with books 

 and tracts, had on hand the sum of $749. 

 It had provided a German liturgy and a sing- 

 ing-book for Sunday-schools, and had pub- 

 lished a German edition of Tafel's " Authority 

 in the New Church." The Theological School 

 at Boston, Massachusetts, had been attended by 

 six students. Instruction was given in the doc- 

 trines of the Church, " The Greek of the Word," 

 the Latin of Swedenborg, and in elocution. 

 Nearly half of the proposed endowment of 

 $50,000 had been secured. An address from 

 the British Conference made especial mention 

 of the spiritual good that had resulted from 

 the interchange of New Church books between 

 England and America. The work of greatest 

 interest now was the projected publication by 

 Professor Tafel of Swedenborg's treatise on 

 "The Brain," which contemplates natural 

 things from within. The revised version of the 

 New Testament was also likely to be of inter- 

 est to the New Church, and must be examined 

 " with respect to its being a proper basis for 

 the spiritual sense." An address was presented 

 from the Australasian Conference of the New 

 Church, announcing its organization. The 

 Committee on Foreign Correspondence pre- 

 sented communications from Professor Loreto 

 Scocia, in Italy ; F. Goerintz, in Germany ; A. 



Byesen, in Sweden; William Winslow, in Den- 

 mark ; S. Baumann, in Switzerland ; and Mr. 

 Schinek, in East Prussia. The letters men- 

 tioned the progress of the religious movement 

 in Italy and Sicily, accompanied by larger sales 

 of Swedenborg's works than had ever before 

 been made, and the translation of many new 

 works of the Church into the German language. 

 An address was received from the Swiss soci- 

 ety of the New Church in reply to the address 

 of the Convention of 1879. 



The American Swedenborg Printing and 

 Publishing Society supplied more than sixty 

 libraries with full or partial sets of Sweden- 

 borg's works during 1880. It also made a be- 

 ginning of publishing the writings of the Church 

 in a cheap form, and had published two edi- 

 tions of the " Four Doctrines," at the price of 

 ten cents a copy, wholesale. It was engaged 

 in publishing the works of Swedenborg in Latin, 

 and had ready the "Apocalypsis Revelata," 

 with the " Coronis," "De Divino Amore," 

 and " DeDivinaSapientia," soon to follow, and 

 the " Apocalypsis Explicate," to be begun. The 

 American New Church Tract and Publication 

 Society had distributed to 1880 in all 22,500 

 volumes and 90,000 copies of tracts. It had 

 also begun the publication of tracts in the Ger- 

 man language. 



The seventy-fourth General Conference of 

 the New Church in Great Britain met in Man- 

 chester, August 8th. The Committee on Sta- 

 tistics returned the number of church-members 

 as 5,192, against 5,199 as returned in the pre- 

 ceding year. Reports of correspondence were 

 made from Sweden, Denmark, Buda-Pesth 

 (Hungary), and Prussian Poland, and concern- 

 ing the Italian missions. A Swedish transla- 

 tion of the " True Christian Religion " was in 

 progress, of which a copy was to be presented 

 to every Lutheran clergyman in Sweden, and 

 a monthly paper was published in that country. 

 Some books and a collection of hymns had been 

 published, and a monthly paper was printed in 

 Denmark. An agent in Prussian Poland had 

 sold several copies of " Heaven and Hell " and 

 the "Divine Providence " in the Polish lan- 

 guage. A committee which had been appointed 

 at the previous conference to revise the creed 

 of the Church, presented a report which was 

 not accepted, and another committee was ap- 

 pointed. A resolution was passed expressing 

 appreciation of the value of the revised version 

 of the New Testament, but declining to advise 

 members of the Church to use it either in pub- 

 lic or family worship. The Building Fund 

 Committee reported a balance on hand of 700, 

 but that no applications for grants were before 

 it. 



The seventy -first anniversary of the Swe- 

 denborgian Society, British and Foreign, was 

 held May 21st. The translation of the Sweden- 

 borgian books into the Hindoo tongues had 

 been begun, and a specimen of the first work 

 in Marathi was shown to the numbers present 

 at the anniversary meetings. 



