Arcana Caelestia

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1882. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... an ark on this account, because in it the Testimony or Law was stored up. 6597. We have now concluded the subject concerning the internal sense of the contents of the Book of Genesis; but as all the things in this book are historical, except in chap, xlviii. and xlix., which are also prophetical, therefore it can scarcely appear, that what has been expounded is the internal sense; for historical things hold the mind down in the literal sense, and thus remove it from the internal sense; and the more so, because the internal sense differs altogether from the literal, inasmuch as the former treats of spiritual and celestial things, but the latter of worldly and terrestrial. But that the internal sense is such as has been expounded, is evident from every thing which has been explained; and especially from this consideration, that it has been dictated to me from heaven. CONTINUATION OF THE SUBJECT CONCERNING INFLUX, AND CONCERNING THE COMMERCE OF THE SOUL AND BODY. 6598. IT is well known, thai one man excels another in the faculty' of understanding and perceiving that which is honest in.moral life, jusl in civil life, and good in spiritual life; the cause consists in the elevation of the thought to the things of heaven, whereby it is withdrawn from the external things of sense. For they who think only from the things of sense, cannot at all see what is -honest, just, and good; wherefore they trust to others, and speak much from the memory, and hereby appear to themselves wiser than others. But they who are able to think above the things of sense, (if the things in their memory be in orderly arrangement^) are in a superior faculty of understanding and perceiving / and this according to the degree in which tthey view things from an interior principle. 6599. II...