THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
meet every year with few omissions until the present time. The Journal of the 89th session of the general convention of the New Jerusalem in the United States of America, held in 1909, has a list of 14 associations and 6 isolated societies with a total membership of 6,425, and a Sunday-school membership of 3,281. Its roll of ministers embraces : general pastors, who have ordaining powers and preside over associations, 8; pastors and ministers, 95; authorized candidates and preachers, 6. The English conference maintains a theological school for training men for the ministry in the New Church College in Islington, London, with its local branches. The American convention has its theological school at Cambridge, Mass., with commodious grounds and buildings immediately adjoining Harvard University. It maintains an able faculty and in 1909 graduated a class of two and in 1910 a class of one. The church also maintains a preparatory school at Waltham, Mass., and schools for collegiate and advanced studies in Urbana, Ohio, the latter institution having received a university charter from the State of Ohio in 1850. Societies of the New Church exist, outside of the United States and Canada and Great Britain, in Brazil, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, Natal, Mauritius, and Mexico.
The publishing activity of the New Church has been quite phenomenal. Book and Tract Societies were shortly after the death of Swedenborg established in London, Manchester, and Birmingham in
England, and in Boston, New York,
4. Pub- and Philadelphia in America. The
lishing Swedenborg Society established in
Agencies. London in 1810 has published editions
of Swedenborg's writings in whole or in part in Latin, English, Welsh, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, Italian, French, German, Russian, Polish, Magyar, Arabic, and Hindi. The works in Italian are deposited in the free libraries throughout Italy and Sicily. Between one and two hundred thousand volumes have been distributed to the Protestant ministers applying for them in England and America, and the American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society furnishes all free libraries applying with full sets of the works. Swedenborg's Latin editions have been carefully and elegantly republished, and the original manuscripts preserved in the Royal Academy's library at Stockholm have been reproduced in photolithographed volumes at great expense. The number of titles of Swedenborg's works and of works relating to him and the New Church contained in the British Museum Catalogue is over five hundred, and the Bibliography of Swedenborg published by the Swedenborg Society (London, 1907) containing titles alone is a volume of 760 pages. The periodical press of the New Church embraces one Quarterly Review, two monthly magazines, and a considerable number of monthly and weekly papers published in English, German, Danish, and Swedish. The publishing center in London is at 1 Bloomsbury Street, W. ; and in New York at 3 West Twenty-ninth Street. A publishing house also exists in Stuttgart, Germany. The dissemination of the doctrines of the New Church through the press and by means of books on phi-
losophy and literature by those not identified with the religious body itself is so extensive as to indicate an influence of the New Church on modern thought and belief much wider than the limits of its enrolled membership.
The ritual of the New Church follows in general the lines of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, although the doxologies and prayers are all addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ as God instead of through him to another divine person. The following creed or " faith " is found in the Book of Worship of the American Convention:
The Creed.
We worship the One God, the Lord the Savior, Jesus Christ; in whom is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; whose Humanity is Divine; who for our salvation did come into the world and take our nature upon Him. He endured temptation even to the passion of the cross. He overcame the hells and so delivered man. He glorified His Humanity by uniting it with the Divinity of which it was begotten; so He became the Redeemer of the world, without whom no mortal can be saved. And they are saved who believe in Him and keep the Commandments of His Word. This is His Commandment: That we love one another as He has loved us. Amen.
In accordance with the high degree of sanctity attached to the Word by virtue of the indwelling divine and spiritual meaning beneath its letter, the sacraments are held in the highest veneration: the Lord being " really " although not materially present in the Lord's Supper in the divine good and truth which are his body and blood; and in baptism, there being an actual angelic association formed and an enrolment in heaven effected. New Churchmen do not call themselves " Swedenborgians," believing that this name implies a sect originating in a man's opinions and leadership, whereas the New Church is a divine dispensation of truth of which the man Swedenborg was only the transmitting instrumentality, as the evangelists were the human transmitters of a divine revelation, and not founders of sects to be named after them. Frank Sbwall.
The Academy of the New Church is the result of
a reformatory movement based upon the labors of
Rev. Richard DeCharms (d. 1863),.
5. The and of Rev. William Henry Benade Academy of (d. 1905), for a stricter adherence to
the New the revelation given through Emanuel
Church. Swedenborg, and for a greater distinctiveness of the religious and social life in the New Church. After many years of preparatory work the Academy was organized in Philadelphia June 19, 1876, by W- H. Benade, John Pitcairn, and ten others, eminent ministers and laymen of the New Church, on the basis of the following distinctive principles: (1) The acknowledgment of the divine authority of Swedenborg's theological writings as the Word of God in his second coming; (2) the recognition of the spiritually consummated state of the Christian world, and the consequent necessity of the distinctive establishment of the New Church in worship, organization, and life; (3) the government of the church to reside in its priesthood in its three degrees; (4) New Church baptism as the necessary means of entrance into the outward Church; (5) the wine of the holy supper to be administered only in the