Page:Evolution and Natural Selection in the Light of the New Church.djvu/15

Rh of pure love to desire that what is its own may become another's, therefore God creates man, and endows him with rationality, freedom, and immortality to the end that He may forever have beings to love, who can freely and intelligently reciprocate His love. Man is endowed by God with two faculties—the Will and the Understanding; these, though distinct from each other, are so created as to form a one, called the. Into his Will the Love of God so ﬂows that it becomes human love—the source of the affections. Into his Understanding the Wisdom of God so ﬂows that it becomes human wisdom—the source of the thoughts and intelligence; and thereby man is enabled intelligently to love and serve God, and to love, think, live, and perform uses as a human being. Freedom and love are inseparable, that is, freedom is inherent in love; and man being created to ﬁnd his supreme happiness in the Voluntary exercise of his love or affections, he is, of necessity, endowed by his Creator with freedom of Will, or freedom of choice between good and evil; in other words, between the love of serving God and his neighbor, and the inordinate love of himself. Hence it is that man, through the abuse of that freedom with which he is endowed by God, to the end that he may be truly happy, has the power so to pervert his nature that, if he choose, it may become the very opposite of God's nature; that is, instead of being loving, wise, and useful he may become entirely evil. And it is solely from man's wilful perversion and abuse of his freedom that "sin," with all its attendant miseries, originated and still exists.

Man is so created, that, during his life in the world of nature, he is in reality an inhabitant of both the material and spiritual worlds—consciously of the former,