Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/65

Rh as their feasts,—such as the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of tabernacles, the feast of first-fruits;—and the priesthood of Aaron and the Levites, and their garments of holiness; and besides these, all their statutes and judgments, which related to their worship and life, were correspondences. Now, since Divine things present themselves in the world by correspondences, therefore the Word was written by pure correspondences. For the same reason the Lord, as He spake from the Divine spake by correspondences; for whatever is from the Divine descends into such things in nature as correspond to the Divine, and which then conceal things Divine, which are called celestial and spiritual, in their bosom." "Without the spiritual sense," says he in another place, "no one could know why the Prophet Jeremiah was commanded to buy himself a girdle and put it on his loins, and not to draw it through the waters, but to hide it in the hole of a rock by the Euphrates (Jer. xiii. I-7) or why the Prophet Isaiah was commanded to loose the sackcloth from off his loins, and put off the shoe from off his foot, and to go naked and barefoot three years (Isaiah xx. 2, 3); or why the Prophet Ezekiel was commanded to pass a razor upon his head and upon his beard, and afterwards to divide [the hairs of] them and burn a third part in the midst of the city, smite a third part with the sword, scatter a third part in the wind, and bind a little of them in his skirts, and at last to cast them into the midst of the fire (Ezek. vi. 4); or why the same prophet was commanded to lie upon his left side three hundred and ninety days, and upon his right side forty days; and to make him a cake of wheat and barley and millet and fitches, with cow's dung, and eat it, and in the mean time to raise a rampart and a mound against Jerusalem and besiege it (Ezek. iv. 1-5); or why the Prophet Hosea was twice commanded to take to himself a harlot to wife (Hosea i. 2-9, iii. 2, 3); and many such things. Moreover, who, without the spiritual sense, would know what is signified by all things belonging to the tabernacle,—by the ark, the mercy-seat, the cherubim, the candle-stick, the altar of incense, the bread of faces on the table, and its veils and curtains? Or who,