Page:Evolution and Natural Selection in the Light of the New Church.djvu/13

Rh sustained by Him, they exist objectively out of Him. In God all things are uncreate and inﬁnite; by creation they become limited and ﬁnite. Divine Life and Substance, in their ﬁrst descent from God, become life and substance such as exist in the spiritual world; and in their further descent become life and substance such as exist in the natural or material world. Thus there is the Divine, the spiritual, and the natural or material,—God, spirit, and matter,—which are to each other as end, cause, and effect. The end or purpose of Creation exists in the mind of God; the spiritual world is the mediate creative cause through which God operates; and the effect is the created material universe. All things exist after this order of Degrees. The material world exists from the spiritual world, as an effect from its cause, and both the spiritual and material worlds, with all their varied forms of life, exist from God their Creator.

The spiritual world—the world in which all spiritual substances and vital forces exist, and in which a man's soul or spirit lives forever after its separation from the dead material body—is a real, substantial, habitable world; in it there are atmospheres, waters, earths, and all things needful for the sustenance and happiness of its inhabitants. These things are not natural or material, as is the world of nature, but they are spiritually-substantial. All things derive their existence from the united operation of heat and light; and the spiritual world has its sun, the heat and light of which are media whereby life and substance from God are conveyed to all things in that world, and thence, through the medium of the natural sun, to all things in the natural world. The sun of the spiritual world is not God, but is the Divine Sphere which emanates immediately from God;