Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/101

Rh and are therefore not willing to elevate the thoughts of their understanding above it into spiritual light; and they who will not cannot think even of God except from space, and to think of God from space is to think of the expanse of nature. (D. L. W. n. 7-9.) An angel of heaven can by no means think otherwise, when he thinks of the divine omnipresence, than that the Divine fills all things without space. What an angel thinks is truth, because the light which enlightens his understanding is divine wisdom. This thought concerning God is fundamental; for without it what is to be said of the creation of the universe from God Man, and of His providence, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, though it should be understood cannot be retained. Because the merely natural man, when he understands them, relapses yet into his life's love, which is of his will; and this love dissipates, and immerses them in space, in which what he calls his rational light is,—not knowing that in proportion as he denies those things he is irrational. (D. L. W. n. 71, 72.)

No one can deny that in God love, and at the same time wisdom, is in its very essence; for He loves all from love in Himself, and leads all from wisdom in Himself. The created universe too, viewed in relation to its order, is so full of wisdom from love, that it may be said all things in the complex are wisdom itself; for things innumerable are in such order, successive and simultaneous, that together they constitute one. It is from this, and no otherwise, that they can be held together and perpetually preserved.

It is because the very Divine essence is love and wisdom that man has two faculties of life, from one of which he has his understanding, and from the other his will. The faculty from which he has his understanding derives all that it has from the influx of wisdom from God; and the faculty from which he has his will derives all that it has from the influx of love from God. That man is not justly wise, and does not exercise his love justly, does not take away the faculties, but inwardly closes them. (D. L. W. n. 29, 30.)

The common idea of men, concerning love and wisdom, is that of a something volatile, and floating in subtile air or ether; or of an