Page:Arcana Coelestia - Volume I.djvu/34

20 of the general principles of truth. So in Jeremiah: "Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up like a whale, he hath filled his belly with my delicacies, he hath cast me out," (li. 34:) whereby is meant that he had swallowed up the knowledges of faith, here called delicacies, as the whale did Jonah; a whale denoting those who possess the general principles of the knowledges of faith, as scientifics, and act in this manner. 43. Verse 22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and the fowl shall be multiplied in the earth. Every thing which has in itself life from the Lord, fructifies and multiplies itself immensely; not indeed so long as man lives in the body, but to an amazing degree in another life. Fructification in the Word, is predicated of the things which are of love, and multiplication of the things which are of faith; fruit which is of love contains seed, by which it so greatly multiplies itself. The Lord's blessing also in the Word signifies fructification and multiplication, because they proceed from it. Verse 23. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 44. Verse 24, 25. ''And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living soul after its kind, the beast, and the moving thing, and the wild beast of the earth after its kind: and it was so. And God made the wild beast of the earth after its kind, and the beast after its kind, and every thing that crecpeih on the ground after its kind: And God saw that it was good''. Man, like the earth, can produce nothing good, unless the knowledges of faith are first sown in him, whereby he may know what is to be believed and done. It is the office of the understanding to hear the Word, and of the will to do it. To hear the Word and not to do it, is like saying that we believe, when we do not live according to our belief; in which case we separate hearing and doing, and thus have a divided mind, and fall under the description of those whom the Lord calls foolish in the following passage: "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock: and every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand," (Matt. vii. 24, 26.) The things which belong to the understanding are signified, as was shown above, by creeping things which the waters bring forth, and also by fowl upon the earth, and upon the faces of the expanse; but those which are of the will are signified here by the living soul which the earth produces, and by the beast and creeping thing, and also by the wild beast of that earth. 45. Those who lived in the most ancient times, thus represented the things relating to the understanding and to the will: