Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/138

42 which fills the universal heaven, and effects that those should be saved who before could not be saved. This now is the Lord, who, as to the Divine Human, alone is Man, and from whom man derives that he is man. (A. C. n. 3061.)

Let it be well understood that all the correspondence there is with heaven is with the Divine Human of the Lord; since heaven is from Him and He is heaven. For unless the Divine Human flowed into all things of heaven, and according to correspondences into all things of the world, neither angel nor man would exist. From this again it is manifest why the Lord became Man, and clothed His Divine with the Human from first to last; that it was because the Divine Human from which heaven existed before the coming of the Lord, was no longer sufficient to sustain all things; because man, who is the basis of the heavens, subverted and destroyed order. (H. H. n. 101.)

It has been told me from heaven, that in the Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, before the assumption of the Human in the world, there were the two prior degrees actually, and the third degree in potency, as they are also with the angels; but that after His assumption of the Human in the world He put on also the third or natural degree, and thereby became Man, similar to a man in the world,—save that in Him this degree, like the two prior, is infinite and uncreate, while in angels and men these degrees are finite and created. For the Divine, which filled all space without space, penetrated also to the ultimates of nature. But before the assumption of the Human, the Divine influx into the natural degree was mediate through the angelic heavens; but after the assumption it was immediate from Himself. This is the reason why all the churches in the world before His advent were representative of spiritual and celestial things, but after His coming became spiritual and celestial-natural, and representative worship was abolished; also why the sun of the angelic heaven—which is the proximate proceeding of His Divine love and Divine wisdom—after His assumption of the Human shone with more eminent effulgence and splendour than before the assumption. This is meant by the words of Isaiah: "In that day, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall he sevenfold, as the light of seven days" (xxx. 26); which is spoken of the state of heaven and the church, after the Lord's coming into the world. And in the Apocalypse: "The countenance of the Son of Man was as the sun shineth in his strength" (i. 16) ; and elsewhere, as in Isaiah lx. 20; 2 Sam. xxiii. 3, 4 ; Matt. xvii. 1, 2. The mediate enlightenment of men through, the angelic heaven, which there was before the Lord's coming, may be compared to the light of the moon, which is the mediate light of the sun; and because