Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/343

Rh from the Divine love, and exist from the Divine love by the Divine wisdom. Wherefore as was said before the one is of the other." There was a novitiate spirit with me, who hearing this asked whether it is the same with charity and faith, because charity is of affection, and faith is of thought. And the angel replied, "It is quite the same. Faith is nothing but the form of charity, just as speech is the form of sound; faith also is formed by charity, as speech is formed by sound. We in heaven know also the manner of formation, but there is not time to explain it here." He added, "By faith I mean spiritual faith, in which alone there is spirit and life from the Lord through charity; for this is spiritual, and by it faith becomes so. Faith therefore without charity is merely natural faith, and this faith is dead; it also conjoins itself with merely natural affection, which is no other than concupiscence." The angels spoke of these things spiritually; and spiritual language embraces thousands of things which natural language cannot express; and, what is wonderful, which cannot even fall into the ideas of natural thought. After the angels had conversed on these subjects they departed; and as they returned each to his own heaven there appeared stars about their heads; and as the distance from me increased they appeared again in chariots as before.

After these two angels were out of my sight I saw on the right a garden, in which were olives, fig trees, laurels, and palms, arranged in order according to correspondences. I looked thitherward and saw angels and spirits walking and talking together among the trees. And then one of the angelic spirits looked at me (they are called angelic spirits who are in the world of spirits preparing for heaven). He came to me from the garden and said, "If you will come with me into our paradise you will hear and see wonderful things?" And I went with him. And he then said to me, "These whom you see (for there were many) are all in the love of truth, and thence in the light of wisdom. There is also a palace here which we call the . But no one can see it who believes himself to be very wise; still less one who believes himself to be wise enough; and least of all one who believes that he is wise from himself. The reason is that they are not in the reception of the light of heaven, from the love of genuine wisdom. It is genuine wisdom for a man to see from the light of heaven that what he knows, understands, and appropriates (sapit), is as little compared with what he does not know, understand, and appropriate, as a drop of water to the ocean; or scarcely anything. Every one who is in this paradisiacal garden, and from perception and sight within himself acknowledges that he has comparatively so little wisdom, sees that ; for the interior light in the mind