Part 4 (2/2)

--_Heaven and h.e.l.l, n._ 89

What is Divine presents itself in the world in what corresponds. The Word is therefore written wholly in correspondence. Therefore the Lord, too, speaking as He did from the Divine, spoke in correspondence.

--_True Christian Religion, n._ 201

”And behold a ladder set on the earth, and its head reaching to heaven: and behold the angels of G.o.d ascending and descending on it.

And behold Jehovah standing above it.” The ladder set between earth and heaven, or between the lowest and the highest, signifies communication. In the original tongue the term ladder is derived from an expression which signifies a path or way, and a path or way is predicated of truth. By a ladder, therefore, one extremity of which is set on the earth, while the other reaches to heaven, is signified the communication of truth which is in the lowest place with truth which is in the highest, indeed with inmost good and truth, such as are in heaven, and from which heaven itself is an ascent as it were from what is lowest, and afterward when the order is inverted, a descent, and is the order of man's regeneration. The arcanum which lies concealed in the internal sense of these words is, that all goods and truths descend from the Lord, and ascend to Him, for man is so created that the Divine things of the Lord may descend through him even to the ultimates of nature, and from the ultimates of nature may ascend to Him; so that man might be a medium uniting the Divine with the world of nature, and uniting the world of nature with the Divine, that thus, through man, as through the uniting medium, the very ultimate of nature might live from the Divine, which would be the case had man lived according to Divine order.

--_Arcana Coelestia, nn._ 3699-3702

ITS FUNCTION

Divine truth, in pa.s.sing from the Lord through the three heavens to men in the world, is written and made the Word in each heaven. The Word, therefore, is the union of the heavens with one another, and of the heavens with the Church in the world. Hence there flows in from the Lord through the heavens a holy Divine with the man who acknowledges the Divine in the Lord and the holy in the Word, while he reads it. Such a man can be instructed and can draw wisdom from the Word as from the Lord Himself or from heaven itself, in the measure that he loves it, and thus can be nourished with the same food with which the angels themselves are fed, and in which there is life, according to these words of the Lord:

”The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

”The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

”Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of G.o.d.”

--_Apocalypse Explained, n._ 1074

HOW TO USE IT

They who, in reading the Word, look to the Lord, by acknowledging that all truth and all good are from Him, and nothing from themselves,--they are enlightened, and see truth and perceive what is good from the Word.

That enlightenment is from the light of heaven.

--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 9405

ITS DISSEMINATION OF LIGHT

There cannot be any conjunction with heaven unless somewhere upon the earth there is a Church where the Word is and by it the Lord is known.

It is sufficient that there be a Church where the Word is, even though it should consist of few relatively. The Lord is present by it, nevertheless, in the whole world. The light is greatest where those are who have the Word. Thence it extends itself as from a centre out to the last periphery. Thence comes the enlightenment of nations and peoples outside the Church, too, by the Word.

--_Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture, nn._ 104, 106

A CANON ON A NEW PRINCIPLE

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