spiritually in the Apocalypse, where it speaks of those who say they are Jews, but are not, but are of the Synagogue of Satan, ii. 9, iii. 9. The like holds of other names in the Word: they are not local or national or individual in the internal sense. So Babylon, which signifies the love of dominion over the souls of men, pre-eminently denotes the Church of Rome, but also all other churches, institutions. and persons where this love is an essential quality. Thus Judaism, like Babylon, exists wherever its quality is, whether in the Jews, or in any other denomination.

XVII-HUMAN NATURE NEEDS A
REVELATION.

From the Arcana Calestia, where a divine imprint shines from every page, the following is commended to the reader as bread for the day :

"Man, without a revelation from the Divine cannot know anything about eternal life nor even anything about God, and still less about love and faith to Him. For man is born into mere ignorance; and must after birth learn everything from worldly experiences, from which he must form his understanding. He is also born by inheritance into all the evil of self-love and love of the world. The delights derived from these two loves are continually prevalent, and their suggestions are diametrically opposite to the Divine. Hence now it is that Man of himself knows nothing about eternal life. Therefore there must be a Revelation to communicate such knowledge."

"That the evils of the love of self and the world induce such ignorance concerning those things that relate to eternal life, is very manifest from those within the Church, who, although they know from revelation that there is a God, that there is a heaven and a hell, that there is an eternal life, and that that life is to be gained by the good of love

and faith, still fall into denial about these things; as well the learned as the unlearned.

what great ignorance would revelation."

Hence it is further evident

prevail if there were no

"Since then man lives after death, and in such case, to eternity, and a life awaits him according to his love and faith, it follows that the Divine, out of love towards the human race, revealed such things as may lead to that life, and conduce to man's salvation. What the Divine has revealed with us is the Word."

"The Word, as a Revelation from the Divine, is divine in all things and in everything. What is from the Divine cannot be otherwise."

"What is from the Divine descends through the heavens down to man. In the heavens therefore it is accommodated to the wisdom of the Angels who are there, and on earth to the apprehension of the men who are there. Thus in the Word there is an internal sense which is spiritual for the angels, and an external sense which is natural for men. Hence it is that conjunction of heaven with man is effected by the Word."

"The genuine sense of the Word is apprehended by none but those who are illuminated or enlightened, and they alone are enlightened who are in love and faith to the Lord, for the interiors of such are elevated by the Lord into the very light of heaven."

"The Word in the letter cannot be apprehended except by doctrine derived from the Word by one who is enlightened. The sense of the letter is accommodated to the apprehension of men, even of the simple. Therefore doctrine derived from the Word must be to them for a lamp."

"The Books of the Word are all those which have an internal sense; those which have not are not the Word. The Books of the Word in the Old Testament are the Five Books of Moses, the Book of Joshua, the Book of

Judges, the two Books of Samuel, the two Books of Kings, the Psalms of David; the Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; and in the New Testament, the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; and the Apocalypse" (n. 10318-10325).

XVIII.—THE THICK DARKNESS ABOUT GOD ON MOUNT SINAI.

The cruelties mentioned in Section XVI., though apparent commands of Jehovah, yet come by reflex action from the Jews. But they exist in the Divine Word, and infernal as they are, they have heavenly opposites and correspondences, and they show the bed or nidus in which the Jewish Dispensation was born. The very womb of it was Sinai, of which it is written, "And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace; and the whole mount quaked greatly. And after the commandments were delivered, All the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw, they removed, and stood afar off. . . And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness about God." In the spiritual sense, which we now possess more indestructibly than we possess the English Language, and from the same Lord God who spoke the Ten Commandments from Sinai, these terrible appearings were far off from Jehovah Himself, but were the project of the human nature opposed to Him, and reacting against His Divinity: they denoted the self-love of the Jews about to receive the last word and dispensation which was then possible; and about to reject

and destroy it. The thick darkness about God was the nature of that race. The obverse love and truth which alone are the Father was shown in condescension of Glory when other Jews were blessed by Christ, and it came to pass while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into Heaven. God appears to every man, and to all bodies collectively, differently according to the state of each, which we shall be pardoned for repeating.

Also compare the overshadowing of the Virgin by Jehovah the Lord, and the Heavenly Host with the Shepherds watching their flocks by night, and the darkness about God dissipated by the Incarnation,-these inaugurations of the first Christian Religion, with the awful beginning of the Jewish Religiosity.

XIX.-SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT CORRESPONDENCE.

In such difficult studies it is useful to lead the horse, or understanding of the Word, time after time, to principles in which thirst for truth may be satisfied, and the way refreshed. Let us delay here for a word about Correspondence; since this fact, doctrine and knowledge, is so often referred to in these pages. Correspondence in the Word is between. earthly and heavenly things. In the Ancient Church all the rituals were correspondences, and caused the presence of heaven to sincere worshippers. Placing things in a holy order, therefore, where the heart and mind were in the like state, had actual and active power from God to sanctify and potentize worship. There was Divine Spiritual Induction, as now by physical placements we have electrical induction : a proper plane from below to above and from above to below is the condition in both cases. This knowledge of spiritual correspondences came down from the earliest ages, when during the first celestial innocence it was in the mind

from the heart of the Family of Man, and was as instinctive as the vitals of the body are now, and as the minds of animals and birds and insects are. There was, however, what there is nowhere but in man, a heavenly will to it, which was not instinctive, but free, -a free will. Nature so far as was good and useful, was transparent to this mind, flowed from it, and obeyed it by Correspondences. For man and nature were of one affection by act of God, and loved to correspond and converse, and so the world let man into her bridal rooms where she was continually married by new ends to her Creator, and where her teeming progeny of love was born. Therefore the science of correspondences was the science of sciences. In the Ancient Church the knowledge but not the instinct of it survived; a broken knowledge suited to the service of a more external Dispensation. Egypt possessed the scientific profession of it, and cultivated the "scientifics of the Church." It taught by the lore of most ancient symbols how worship could commune with heaven, and how those in heaven could flow into worship. It was an organized body of religion; a might and a power. The arrangement of Correspondences under the guidance of a pervading Revelation was like the build of the organization in a man, which while it answers to life and corresponds with it, brings life down into the body, and begs the question of life by being alive. So this organic science of the Church brought a fulness of life to faithful religious worshippers, and made them a body under an upper body in the spiritual heavens. This power when attained was subject to the state of the worshippers, and of the Church. The conscience formed to protect its integrity was corrupted by the free will of the members; oblivion came between worship and God, and the vehicles of divine truth were alienated. This was gradual, and the power of the knowledge was slowly lost. The refuse of it was more and more man-made, not God-made. It ruled minds from priestly dominion, and attempted to control the nature of