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 in three heavens and three hells; they have a similar idea, and fancy that common place sinners, who think one heaven will meet all their requirements, and that one hell will be too much for their nerves, are wrong.

New Jerusalem Church, in Preston, has a Sunday school beneath it—­a place obtained partly on the celestial and partly on the Irish principle—­by heightening the roof and lowering the foundations.  The school is pretty well managed; but its scholars are not numerous; they number between 60 and 70, and there is no immediate prospect of an increase.  The endowment of the late Mr. Hugh Becconsall realises 100 pounds a-year for the minister—­the Rev. E. D. Rendell, who has been at the church ever since its opening; and the investment of a sum of money by the late Mr. John Becconsall, of Ashton, who was a great believer in Swedenborgianism, brings in on his behalf 50 pounds more.  The minister once had a “call” to Accrington, where the doctrines of the New Church obtain a very large number of admirers, and in consequence of that call, which necessarily implied a better salary, as well as a wider sphere of action, five 10 pounds notes were added to his stipend here.  He was appeased by those said notes.  Mr. Rendell also lives rent free in a house adjoining and belonging to the church.  Its situation renders the house very convenient; but a position more distant would not have been very harrowing if freedom from rent had accompanied its tenancy.