of the book produced a very different effect upon his mind. He was too little informed on such subjects to be able to detect all its fallacies, and too young to be able entirely to resist its influence; yet his religious feelings were sufficiently strong to cause him to be affected with the utmost horror at the contemplation of its dreadful principles and their direful consequences. He was particularly shocked by the denial of the very existence of the Lord Jesus Christ, which seemed to him like blotting the sun out of the firmament. For three weeks, day and night, he suffered the greatest agony of spirit; until, by the almost instantaneous breaking in of light upon his mind, he obtained peace, by a view of the origin of such opinions, as satisfactory as he ever afterwards enjoyed! a view which may be expressed in the words of the Lord himself, that "men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

This trial seems to have been but the prelude to, and means of preparing him for, undergoing one still greater. A belief in the truth of the Scriptures being now established in his mind on a more solid foundation than that on which it had previously rested, he began to feel a strong desire to possess some more certain knowledge of the truths which the Scriptures contain, attended with, and no doubt originating in, great concern about his own salvation. He eagerly sought information in church and in chapel, but in both without success. Unable to obtain relief from men, he betook himself more devotedly to the Word of God. For about two years he carried a small Bible constantly in his pocket, which he employed every leisure moment in reading, even while he walked the streets. Still he was unable to obtain what he so earnestly sought after. His unsatisfied desire for light filled him with constant anxiety; and his very prayers for relief became to him a source of alarm, from the distraction which the different objects of worship, in the Persons of the Trinity, introduced into his mind. In this state, when every door of hope seemed shut against him, Divine Providence opened to him a way of escape.

By one of those circumstances which are commonly regarded as purely accidental, a lady became an inmate of the house in which he lived, who, it was soon discovered, entertained peculiar views on the subject of religion. Some of her religious books came into the hands of the young artist. They treated of the most momentous subjects, many or all of which had for years occupied and distressed his mind. They directed him to one object of worship in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ,-the one God, in whom is the Divine Trinity, who came into the world to redeem mankind from the power of hell, and who pro

vided for the salvation of all who believe in him and keep his commandments. They were the writings of Swedenborg. While he read these works, he saw that the doctrines were true, yet he dared not believe them. Though unsatisfied with the common faith, he was yet so much under its influence as to dread the thought of embracing new views, lest the consequences might be fatal. He had heard where those new views were preached. In his state of mental doubt and distress he one Sabbath morning entered the place of worship in which we are now assembled, where the doctrines of the New Church were preached by perhaps the greatest master of pulpit eloquence then in the metropolis, the Rev. Joseph Proud, whose orations drew together, every Sabbath, such multitudes of charmed hearers as filled the church to overflowing. In that crowded assembly, in which, as the event proved, so many who admired the preacher were little impressed with his solemn message, there was observed one Sabbath morning to stand near the entrance a young man who, it was evident, not only admired, but felt the sentiments that were uttered-who seemed to be drinking, like a thirsty man, the truths that flowed from the preacher's lips in such impressive language. He had read in the books the same truths which he now heard uttered by the living voice, but they had never so affected him before. The truths he had read seem as if they yet lay in his mind like the dry bones, or the yet inanimate bodies of the slain in the valley of vision; while the eloquent preacher seems to have been like the inspired prophet, prophesying to the four winds to breathe upon the slain, that they might live; and the spirit of life entered into them, and they stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Or, he himself had been like the disciples in the ship on the sea of Galilee, tossed and terrified by the storm; while the truths uttered by the preacher had an effect upon him like that produced by the voice of Him who is the truth itself, when he rebuked the wind and the waves, saying 'Peace, be still ;" and there was a great calm. He had entered the church with a mind torn with intellectual conflict and worn with intense anxiety; he left it with settled convictions and with his mind restored to perfect tranquillity: and he solemnly resolved to venture his salvation on the truth of the doctrines of the New Jerusalem. No delight on earth, he has declared, can be compared with what he felt on his first reception of these doctrines, coming, as they did, with the charms of truth and novelty in union, upon the freshness and ardour of youth Thus, on the third of June, fifty-three years ago, was ushered into the New Church of the Lord, one who was to occupy so distinguished a place in her early history.

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Those trials, which had so happy a termination, were, as is evident

from his own description of them, real spiritual temptations, and not the results of morbid feeling or spurious conscience. And when we reflect on the circumstance that one so young should have passed through two such severe ordeals, we cannot fail to be impressed with the conviction that Divine Providence was leading him to the light of the New Jerusalem, and preparing him to become an instrument in His hand of imparting it to others. In his first trial, the dread of losing the Bible originated in the still greater dread of losing Jesus, without whom the Bible, he felt, would be a firmament without a sun. The second trial had relation to the whole system of Christian doctrine; and arose out of a state of painful solicitude on the question,— "What shall I do to be saved?" Such early experience bespeaks one more than ordinarily advanced in spiritual life, and a mind in which the principles of religion could be laid on a deep and broad foundation.

From the time that Mr. Noble received the doctrines of the New Jerusalem, he became a regular and delighted attendant on the services of the church; and in the month of March following set his seal to his new faith by receiving the ordinance of baptism.

Twenty-two years elapsed before he entered into the ministry. But this long interval was not lost to the church. As a member of her communion he felt a deep interest in her welfare, and took an active share in the plans and labours which were undertaken to promote it. He was one of the few who, in 1810, instituted the society for printing and publishing the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. For several years his name appears in the list of the committee along with that of Flaxman, who has so exquisitely expressed in marble what the other has so well expressed in the forms of written language-fine conceptions of the pure and the beautiful-the good and the true. But the records of that Institution give no adequate idea of the benefits it derived from his labours. Besides acting, till his entrance into the ministry, as its secretary, he for many years superintended through the press every work which it published; and effected several translations and numerous revisions. Two years after this he assisted in commencing the Intellectual Repository-the present poriodical of the Church. After the first number, he became its principal editor; the duties of which he discharged with great ability for twenty-eight years. Besides the service which he rendered as editor, he was also a very large contributor to the pages of the Repository.*

The Repository commenced in 1812, from which period to 1830 it was a Quarterly; from 1830 to 1840 it was a Bimonthly; and from 1840 it has been a Monthly Periodical.

But the most important, and ultimately the most beneficial to the church, of all the labours in which Mr. Noble was engaged during this period, was that which so eminently qualified him for the work of the ministry, when he came to enter upon it, and for the composition of those works which the church no doubt owes to his having assumed the ministerial office. It was during this period that he increased his stock of classical learning, that he studied the languages in which the Scriptures were originally written, that he stored his mind with Biblical literature; but above all, that he studied with profound attention the theological writings of Swedenborg, in which the genuine doctrines of the Christian religion and the spiritual sense of the Holy Word are explained; so that when, therefore, he entered on the duties of his office, he came to his delightful labour with a mind richly stored with varied learning and knowledge, ancient and modern, natural and spiritual, which made him truly a scribe instructed unto the kingdom, bringing forth from his treasures things new and old, employing his old knowledge to illustrate and confirm his new truths, and shedding the light of his new truths on his old knowledge, as in one of his works he has so successfully done with the fables of antiquity.

Soon after Mr. Noble's entrance into the church, a desire had been awakened in his breast that he might one day be an instrument in the Lord's hand for conveying to the minds of others those truths which had brought light and consolation to his own. An appreciation of his worth and talents soon led to his being pressed to render occasional service in the pulpit; and on the death of Dr. Hodson, minister of Dudley-street Chapel, which occurred in 1812, Mr. Noble preached a sermon on the occasion, which was printed, and which was the first of his published discourses. So early as the year 1801, three years after his reception of the doctrines, Mr. Proud warmly encouraged him to come forward as a preacher, with the view of devoting himself to the service of the church, expressing his conviction that Providence intended him for the ministry, and declaring his belief, almost in the language of prediction, that his "dear young friend" would yet become eminent in the church. Four years after this he was pressingly invited to become the stated minister of this church, the pulpit of which was then vacant, but he declined it on the ground of his being too young; a determination which his maturer judgment entirely approved.

At length, in 1819, when the Society then meeting in Lisle-street was deprived of the services of Dr. Churchill, whose delicate health had compelled him to retire from the active duties of the ministry, all eyes were turned to Mr. Noble as his successor, and he was unanimously N. S. No. 166.-VOL. XIV.

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invited to fill the vacant office. Mr. Noble was at this time successfully engaged in his profession, in which he was one of the first class, though not of the first rank, and which yielded him a much larger income than he had any expectation of ever deriving from the work in which he was invited to engage. He, however, after mature deliberation, consented to leave all, and obediently follow where the Lord appeared so evidently to lead. On Whit-Sunday of the following year he was ordained a minister of the New Church; and then commenced that career of usefulness which he so long and successfully pursued.

The beneficial effects of his labours were soon felt in the prosperity of his Society; from his admirable discourses, from the order which he introduced into its affairs, and the energy which he infused into its operations, these effects soon became apparent in the prosperous state of the Society-a prosperity which increased so much that the Society was enabled, seven years afterwards, to purchase their present place of worship. It was chiefly through the exertions of the minister that this church, which had passed out of the hands of its original possessors, was restored to the purpose for which it was erected, and to which it had been dedicated the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ as the only God.

By his connection with the General Conference, Mr. Noble came to exercise an influence on the general church as great, and, we believe, as beneficial, as that which he had exerted in his own Society. He actively promoted the various measures adopted by that body for the purpose of introducing a more perfect organization into the church, by uniting the societies of which it consists more fully in the bond of external order, as conducive to the proper development of the internal principles of the church, and thereby to her strength and unity. Amongst the means adopted for this purpose were the formation of a Hymn Book and Liturgy which might be acceptable to the whole church; and those which are at present used amongst us were then produced. Mr. Noble's labours contributed much to the attainment of this object. One only of the hymns, a paraphrase of the sublime production of the prophet Isaiah, "Unto us a child is born," is from his pen; but the Morning Service, and other considerable portions of the Liturgy, are of his composition.

Mr. Noble's talents as a preacher soon became known to the church by means of a lecture which he delivered at Dover in the year after his ordination. That lecture was soon afterwards published, and was deservedly regarded as the production of a man to whose usefulness the church had reason to look forward with hope. The first part of that