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24 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES.

might, if sufficiently zealous and industrious, have accomplished, but by a talent for bringing down the interior truths which they contain to the comprehension of the most simple and common understanding, and presenting them in the most engaging form, even to the adapting of them for the instruction of children. It is owing, I verily believe, as its immediate cause, to our having had a Clowes, that the doctrines' of the New Church have made greater progress in England, and in the United States of America (the people of which are still Englishmen as to language), than in any other country upon earth. No wonder, then, if one who was to be the instrument of such extensive usefulness, was called to the work by as special a divine interposition as was vouchsafed to Swedenborg himself."

And for more than fifty years this gifted and most estimable man read and circulated the writings of Swedenborg, and openly taught the doctrines they contained as " the genuine doctrines of Christianity." But he did not do it without opposition, nor without some harsh treatment and bitter persecution by ministers of his own denomination. At one time there were three clergymen in his neighborhood, who held regular weekly meetings for the purpose of crushing " the growing heresy." The most un-