Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/168

72

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End." This signifies that He governs all things from first [principles] by means of ultimates, and in this manner governs all things in heaven to eternity. This is evident from the signification of Alpha and Omega, which is the first and the last, or in first [principles] and in ultimates; and He who is in first [principles] and in. ultimates also governs things intermediate, and so all. These things are said of the Lord's Divine Human, for they are said of Jesus Christ, by which names His Divine Humanity is meant. By means of this the Lord is in first [principles] and in ultimates. But that He governs all things from first [principles] by ultimates is a mystery which until now has not been perceived by man. For man knows nothing of the successive degrees into which the heavens are distinguished; and into which also the interiors of man are distinguished; and but little of the fact that as to his flesh and bones man is in ultimates. Neither does he perceive how from first [principles] by ultimates intermediates are governed; and yet in order that He might thus govern all things the Lord came into the world to assume the Human and glorify it, or make it Divine, even to the ultimates, that is even to the flesh and bones. That the Lord put on such a Human, and took it with Him into heaven, is known in the church from the fact that He left nothing of His body in the sepulchre; and also from what He said to His disciples: "Behold My hands and My feet that it is I Myself; handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have" (Luke xxiv. 39). By this Human, therefore, the Lord is in ultimates; and by making even these ultimates Divine, He clothed Himself with Divine power to govern all things from first [principles] by means of ultimates. If the Lord had not done this, the human race on earth would have perished in eternal death. (A. E. n. 41.)

He who knows what in the Lord the Son of God signifies, and what in Him the Son of Man signifies, can see many secrets of the Word; for the Lord calls Himself sometimes the Son of God, and sometimes the Son of Man—always according to the subject treated of. When His Divinity is treated of. His unity with the Father, His Divine power, faith in Him, and life from Him, He calls Himself the Son, and the Son of God,—as in John v. 17-26, and elsewhere; but where His passion, the judgment. His coming,