Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/106

10 love. Even what is called friendship among men of the world puts on the semblance of that love; for every one when he invites a friend to his table gives him the best that his house affords, receives him with kindness, takes him by the hand, and makes him offers of service. This love is also the cause and only origin of all the sympathies and tendencies of congenial and similar minds towards union with each other. Nay, the same Divine sphere operates even upon the inanimate parts of the creation, as trees and plants. But then it acts through the instrumentality of the natural sun, and its heat and light; for the heat entering into them from without conjoins itself with them, and causes them to bud, and blossom, and bear fruit—which operations may be called their state of bliss. And this is effected by the sun's heat, because it corresponds with spiritual heat, which is love. Representations of the operation of this love are manifested also in various subjects of the mineral kingdom, and their types may be seen in the uses and consequent value to which each is exalted. (T. C. R. n. 43, 44.)

The immensity of God has relation to spaces, and His eternity to times. His infinity comprehends both immensity and eternity. But as infinity transcends what is finite, and the cognition of it, the finite mind, in order to attain some degree of perception of the subject, it must be treated of in this order:—1. God is infinite because He is and exists in Himself, and all things in the universe are and exist from Him. 2. God is infinite because He was before the world, consequently before spaces and times had birth. 3. God, since the world was made, is in space without space, and in time without time. 4. Infinity in relation to spaces is called immensity, and in relation to times eternity; and yet, notwithstanding these relations, there is nothing of space in God's immensity, and nothing of time in His eternity. 5. From very many objects in the world enlightened reason may discover the infinity of God the Creator. 6. Every created thing is finite; and the infinite is in finite things as in its receptacles, and in man as in its images. (T. C. R. n. 27.)

Men cannot but confound the Divine Infinity with infinity of space; and as they cannot conceive of the infinity of space as other than a mere nothing, as it really is, they disbelieve the Divine Infinity. The case is similar in respect to eternity, which men can only conceive of as eternity of time, it being presented to the mind under the idea of time with those who are in time. The true idea of the Divine Infinity is insinuated into the angels