Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/275

Rh life of charity, and its secondary is praying. From which it is clear that they who place all Divine worship in oral piety and not in actual piety err exceedingly. Actual piety is to act in every work and in every function from sincerity and rectitude, and according to what is just and equitable, and this because it is commanded by the Lord in the Word; for thus in every work man looks to heaven and to the Lord with whom he is thus conjoined. . . . It is written in David:—"I cried unto God with my mouth. . . . If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear. Verily God hath heard; He hath attended to the voice of my prayer" (Psa. lxvi. 17-19). It is said, "If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear," because the quality of prayer is according to that of the man's heart, and therefore they are not prayers of any worship if the heart is evil. The heart of man is his love, and the love of man is his very life; consequently his prayers have the quality of his love or the quality of his life. It follows therefore that the prayers signify the life of his love and charity, or that his life is meant by prayers in the spiritual sense. . . . Moreover, when a man is in the life of charity he continually prays, though not with the mouth yet with the heart; for that which is of the love is continually in the thought, even when he is unconscious of it. (ib. n. 325.)

But a man ought not while he lives in the world to omit the practice of external worship also, for by external worship internal things are awakened; and external things are kept by external worship in a state of sanctity, so that the internal can flow in. Besides which a man is thus caused to imbibe knowledge, and prepared to receive celestial things, that he may be endued also with states of sanctity of which he is unconscious; which states of sanctity are preserved to him by the Lord, for the use of eternal life. For in the other life all man's states of life return. (A. C. n. 1618.)

In all worship there must be humiliation. If there is no humiliation there is nothing of adoration, and therefore nothing of worship. That a state of humiliation is essential to worship is for this reason, that in the degree that the heart is humbled in the same degree self-love and every evil therefrom ceases, and so far as this ceases good and truth, that is charity and faith, flow in from the Lord. For self-love is what chiefly opposes the reception of these, because in this there is contempt of others in comparison of one's self, together with hatred and revenge if he is not worshipped. (ib. n. 2327.)

By worship according to the order of heaven is meant all practice of good according to the Lord's precepts. The worship of God at this day means principally the worship of the lips in a temple morning and evening. But the worship of God does not