Heaven and its Wonders and Hell. Emanuel Swedenborg

and some say that they are in His body, meaning that they are in the good of His love. And this the Lord Himself teaches, saying,

      Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me. For apart from Me ye can do nothing. Abide in My love. If ye keep My commandments ye shall abide in My love (John 15:4–10).

      82. Because such a perception of the Divine exists in the heavens, to think of God as in a human form is implanted in every man who receives any influx from heaven. Thus did the ancients think of Him; and thus do the moderns think of Him both outside of the church and within it. The simple see Him in thought as the Ancient One in shining light. But this insight has been extinguished in all those that by self-intelligence and by a life of evil have rejected influx from heaven. Those that have extinguished it by self-intelligence prefer an invisible God; while those that have extinguished it by a life of evil prefer no God. Neither of these are aware that such an insight exists, because they do not have it; and yet it is the Divine heavenly itself that primarily flows into man out of heaven, because man is born for heaven, and no one without a conception of a Divine can enter heaven.

      83. For this reason he that has no conception of heaven, that is, no conception of the Divine from which heaven is, cannot be raised up to the first threshold of heaven. As soon as such a one draws near to heaven a resistance and a strong repulsion are perceived; and for the reason that his interiors, which should be receptive of heaven, are closed up from their not being in the form of heaven, and the nearer he comes to heaven the more tightly are they closed up. Such is the lot of those within the church who deny the Lord, and of those who, like the Socinians, deny His Divinity. But the lot of those who are born out of the church, and who are ignorant of the Lord because they do not have the Word, will be described hereafter.

      84. That the men of old time had an idea of the Divine as human is evident from the manifestation of the Divine to Abraham, Lot, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, and others. These saw God as a man, but nevertheless adored Him as the God of the universe, calling Him the God of heaven and earth, and Jehovah. That it was the Lord who was seen by Abraham He Himself teaches in John (8:56); and that it was He who was seen by the rest is evident from His words:

      No one hath seen the Father, nor heard His voice, nor seen

       His form (John 1:18; 5:37).

      85. But that God is man can scarcely be comprehended by those who judge all things from the sense-conceptions of the external man, for the sensual man must needs think of the Divine from the world and what is therein, and thus of a Divine and spiritual man in the same way as of a corporeal and natural man. From this he concludes that if God were a man He would be as large as the universe; and if He ruled heaven and earth it would be done through many others, after the manner of kings in the world. If told that in heaven there is no extension of space as in the world, he would not in the least comprehend it. For he that thinks only from nature and its light must needs think in accord with such extension as appears before his eyes. But it is the greatest mistake to think in this way about heaven. Extension there is not like extension in the world. In the world extension is determinate, and thus measurable; but in heaven it is not determinate, and thus not measurable. But extension in heaven will be further treated of hereafter in connection with space and time in the spiritual world. Furthermore, everyone knows how far the sight of the eye extends, namely, to the sun and to the stars, which are so remote; and whoever thinks deeply knows that the internal sight, which is of thought, has a still wider extension, and that a yet more interior sight must extend more widely still. What then must be said of Divine sight, which is the inmost and highest of all? Because thoughts have such extension, all things of heaven are shared with everyone there, so, too, are all things of the Divine which makes heaven and fills it, as has been shown in the preceding chapters.

      86. Those in heaven wonder that men can believe themselves to be intelligent who, in thinking of God, think about something invisible, that is, inconceivable under any form; and that they can call those who think differently unintelligent and simple, when the reverse is the truth. They add, "Let those who thus believe themselves to be intelligent examine themselves, whether they do not look upon nature as God, some the nature that is before their eyes, others the invisible side of nature; and whether they are not so blind as not to know what God is, what an angel is, what a spirit is, what their soul is which is to live after death, what the life of heaven in man is, and many other things that constitute intelligence; when yet those whom they call simple know all these things in their way, having an idea of their God that He is the Divine in a human form, of an angel that he is a heavenly man, of their soul that is to live after death that it is like an angel, and of the life of heaven in man that it is living in accord with the Divine commandments." Such the angels call intelligent and fitted for heaven; but the others, on the other hand, they call not intelligent.

      EXTRACTS FROM THE ARCANA COELESTIA RELATING TO THE LORD AND HIS DIVINE HUMAN.

      [2] The Divine was in the Lord from very conception (n.

       4641, 4963, 5041, 5157, 6716, 10125).

      The Lord alone had a Divine seed (n. 1438).

      His soul was Jehovah (n. 1999, 2004, 2005, 2018, 2025).

      Thus the Lord's inmost was the Divine Itself, while the clothing was from the mother (n. 5041).

      The Divine Itself was the Being [Esse] of the Lord's life, and from this the Human afterwards went forth and became the outgo [existere] from that Being [Esse] (n. 3194, 3210, 10269, 10738).

      [3] Within the church where the Word is and by it the Lord is known, the Lord's Divine ought not to be denied, nor the Holy that goes forth from Him (n. 2359).

      Those within the church who do not acknowledge the Lord

       have no conjunction with the Divine; but it is otherwise

       with those outside of the church (n. 10205).

      The essential of the church is to acknowledge the Lord's

       Divine and His union with the Father (n. 10083, 10112,

       10370, 10730, 10738, 10816–10820).

      [4] The glorification of the Lord is treated of in the

       Word in many passages (n. 10828).

      And in the internal sense of the Word everywhere (n. 2249,

       2523, 3245).

      The Lord glorified His Human, but not the Divine, since

       this was glorified in itself (n. 10057).

      The Lord came into the world to glorify His Human (n.

       3637, 4287, 9315).

      The Lord glorified His Human by means of the Divine love

       that was in Him from conception (n. 4727).

      The Lord's life in the world was His love towards the

       whole human race (n. 2253).

      The Lord's love transcends all human understanding (n.

       2077).

      The Lord saved the human race by glorifying His Human (n.

       4180, 10019; 10152, 10655, 10659 10828).

      Otherwise the whole human race would have perished in

       eternal death (n. 1676).

      The state of the Lord's glorification and humiliation (n.

       1785, 1999, 2159, 6866).

      Glorification in respect to the Lord is the uniting of His

       Human with the Divine; and to glorify is to make Divine

       (n. 1603, 10053, 10828).

      When the Lord glorified His Human He put off everything

       human that was from the mother, until at last He was not

       her son (n. 2159, 2574, 2649, 3036, 10830).

      [5] The Son of God from eternity was the Divine truth in