Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/166

162 the universe, who come into heaven from any other earth whatsoever.

It is to be observed, that the Word on our earth, given through heaven from the Lord, is a permanent medium of conjunction between heaven and the world: for which end there is a correspondence of all things in the letter of the Word, with divine things in heaven. But on every other earth divine truth is revealed to the inhabitants in an audible way by spirits and angels, and is therefore necessarily repeated from time to time, as they stand in need of it, for the regulation of their faith and life.

The Lord accepts and receives all, from whatsoever earth they be, who acknowledge and worship God under a human form, since God under a human form is the Lord. And as the Lord appears to the inhabitants of the different earths in an angelic form, which is the same as the human form, therefore when spirits and angels from those earths hear from the spirits and angels of our earth, that God actually is a Man, they receive that Word, acknowledge it, and rejoice that it is so. To the reasons above adduced, why the Lord was pleased to be born on this earth, and not on another, may be added, that the inhabitants, spirits, and angels of our earth, in the Grand Man of Heaven Universal, have reference to the external and corporeal sense; and the external and corporeal sense is the ultimate, in which the interiors of life close, and in which they rest as in their common basis. The case is similar in regard to divine truth in the letter, which is called the Word, and which on this account also was given on this earth, and not on another. Now since the Lord is the Word, and it's first and last, that all things might exist according to order, he was willing also on this account to be born on this