Page:Arcana Coelestia - Volume I.djvu/22

8 things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness.—He was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," (John i. 1, 3, 4, 9.)

21. Verses 4, 5. ''And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided between the light and the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. Light'' is called good, because it is from the Lord, who is good itself. Darkness means all those things, which, before man is conceived and born anew, appeared like light, evil in that state seeming like good, and the false like the true; nevertheless all is darkness, consisting merely of the things proper to man himself, which still remain. Whatsoever is of the Lord is compared to day, because it is of the light; and whatsoever is man's own is compared to night, because it is of darkness. These comparisons frequently occur in the Word.

22. Verse 5. And the evening and the morning were the first day. What is meant by evening, and what by morning, is hence now discoverable. Evening means every preceding state, or that of shade, or of falsity and of no faith; morning is every subsequent state, being one of light, or of truth and of the knowledges of faith. Evening, in a general sense, signifies all things which are of man's own; but morning whatever is of the Lord; according as it is said by David: "The spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and his word was in my tongue; the God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me; he is as the light of the morning, when the sun ariseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springeth out of the earth, by clear shining after rain," (2 Sam. xxiii. 2—4.) As it is evening when there is no faith, and morning when there is faith, therefore the coming of the Lord into the world is called morning; and the time when he comes, because then there is no faith, is called evening, as in Daniel: "And he said unto me, unto two thousand and three hundred days.—The vision of the evening and the morning," (viii. 14, 26.) In like manner, the morning is used in the Word, to denote every particular coming of the Lord; consequently, it is an expression which has respect to new creation.

23. That day is used to denote time itself, appears from many passages in the Word; as in Isaiah: "The day of Jehovah is at hand. Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh. I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. Her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged," (xiii. 6, 9, 13, 22.) And in the same prophet: "Her antiquity is of ancient days. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king," (xxiii. 7, 15.) Forasmuch as day is