Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/135

Rh them but love, and when there was no love disjunction took place, the consequence of which is destruction and extirpation. A promise, therefore, was then made concerning the coming of the Lord into the world, who should unite the Human to the Divine, and through this union should effect conjunction of the human race in Himself, by a faith grounded in love and charity. From the time of the first promise (concerning which see Gen. iii. 25), faith grounded in love to the Lord who was to come was effective of conjunction; but when there was no longer any such faith remaining throughout the earth, then the Lord came, and united the Human Essence to the Divine, so that they became entirely one, as He Himself expressly declares. He at the same time taught the way of truth, showing that every one who should believe on Him—that is, should love Him and the things appertaining to Him, and who should be in His love, which is extended towards the whole human race—should be conjoined with Him, and be saved. When the Human was made Divine, and the Divine Human, in the Lord, then the influx of the Infinite or Supreme Divine took place with man, which could never otherwise have come to pass. Hence, also, there was a dispersion of the direful persuasions of falsity, and of the direful lusts of evil, with which the world of spirits was filled and was continually being filled, by souls continually flowing in from the world; and they who were in those evils and falsities were cast into the hells, and thus were separated. Unless such a dispersion had been effected, mankind must have totally perished, for they are governed of the Lord by means of spirits. Nor was there any other method of effecting such dispersion; since there could be no operation of the Divine upon man's internal sensual [principles] through the rational, this being far beneath the Supreme Divine not thus united with the Human. (A. C. n. 2034.)

The reason why it pleased the Lord to be born a man was, that He might actually put on the Human, and might make this Divine, to save the human race. Know, therefore, that the Lord is Jehovah Himself or the Father in a human form. This also the Lord Himself teaches in John, "I and the Father are one" (x. 30); again, "Jesus said, Henceforth ye have known and seen the Father. . . . He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. . . . Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me" (xiv. 7, 9, 11); and again, "All Mine are thine, and all thine are Mine" (xvii. 10). This great mystery is described in John in these words: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word; the same was in the beginning with God; all things were made hy Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the