Page:Arcana Coelestia - Volume I.djvu/29

33-34 33. It is in every one's power to see most clearly, that life never exists without love, and that there is no kind of joy but what flows from love. Such, however, as the love is, such is the life, and such the joy; if you remove loves, or what is the same thing, desires, which have relation to love, thought would instantly cease, and you would become like a dead person, of which I have often been convinced by personal experience. Self love and the love of the world have in them some resemblance to life and to joy; but as they are altogether contrary to true love, which consists in a man's loving the Lord above all things, and his neighbor as himself, it must be evident that they are not loves, but hatreds; for in proportion as any one loves himself and the world, in the same proportion he hates his neighbor, and thereby the Lord. Wherefore true love is love towards the Lord; and true life is the life of love from him; and true joy is the joy of that life. There cannot possibly exist more than one single true love, nor more than one single true life, whence flow true joys and true felicities, such as are tasted by the angels in the heavens.

34. Love and faith admit of no separation, because they constitute, one and the same thing; wherefore, when mention is first made of luminaries, they are regarded as one, and it is said, let there be luminaries in the expanse of heaven (sit). Concerning this circumstance it is permitted me to relate the following extraordinary particulars. The celestial angels, by virtue of the heavenly love with which they are influenced from the Lord, are in all the knowledges of faith, and enjoy such a life and light of intelligence as can scarcely be described; but, on the other hand, spirits, who are only skilled in the doctrinals of faith without love, are in such a coldness of life, and obscurity of light, that they cannot even approach to the first limit of the entrance into the heavens, but fly back with all speed. Some of them profess to have believed in the Lord, but they have not lived according to his precepts; and it was of such that the Lord said in Matthew: "Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?" &c, (vii. 21, 22, to the end.) Hence it is evident that such as are in love are also in faith, and thereby in the possession of celestial life; but it is otherwise with those who say they are in faith, and are not in the life of love. The life of faith without love is like the light of the sun without heat, as in the time of winter, when nothing grows, but all things are torpid and dead; whereas faith proceeding from love is like the light of the sun in the time of spring, when all things grow and flourish in