Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/493

Rh goods nor in truths of wisdom no trees appear unless denuded of their leaves, as in winter-time in the world. The man who is not rational is nothing else than such a tree. Rational truths are those which immediately receive spiritual truths. For the rational [faculty] of man is the first receptacle of spiritual truths; since in the rational of man there is, in some form, a perception of truth which the man himself does not see in thought, as he does the things which are under the rational, in the inferior thought that connects itself with external sight. Rational truths are likewise signified by leaves in Gen. iii. 7; viii. 11; Isa. xxxiv. 4; Jer. viii. 13; xvii. 8; Ezek. xlvii. 12; Dan. iv. 11, 12; Psa. i. 3; Lev. xxvi. 36; Matt. xxi. 19, 20; xxiv. 32; Mark xiii. 28. But the signification varies according to the kinds of trees; the leaves of the olive and the vine signify rational truths from celestial and spiritual light; the leaves of the fig tree, rational truths from natural light; and the leaves of the fir, the poplar, the oak, and the pine, rational truths from sensual light. The leaves of these last kinds excite terror in the spiritual world when they are shaken by a strong wind. These are what are meant in Levit. xxvi. 36; Job xiii. 25. But with the leaves of the former it is not so. (A. R. n. 936.)

"And they shall see His face; and His name shall he in their foreheads" (ver. 4). This signifies that they will turn themselves to the Lord, and that the Lord will turn Himself to them, because they will be conjoined by love. To see the face of God and of the Lamb, or of the Lord, does not mean to see His face, because no one can see His face, as He is in His Divine love and in His Divine wisdom, and live; for He is the sun of heaven and of the whole spiritual world. For, to see His face as He is in Himself would be as if one should enter into the sun; by the fire of which he would be consumed in a moment. Yet the Lord sometimes presents Himself to the sight out of His sun; but He then veils Himself, and thus presents Himself to their sight,—which is done by means of an angel. As He also did in the world, to Abraham, Hagar, Lot, Gideon, Joshua, and others; and therefore those angels were called both angels and Jehovah, for the presence of Jehovah was in them from afar. But here "they shall see His face," does not mean thus to see His face; but to see the truths which are from Him in the Word, and through them to have cognition of and acknowledge Him. For the Divine truths of the Word form the light in which the angels are, which proceeds from the Lord as a sun; and as they