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62 every state of purification, signified by washing the feet, we are ignorant of its uses and end, and remain so whilst the process continues; nor can we discover them until the process is ended, and we are made sensible of the heavenly good to which it has conducted us. The same is true of every trial, trouble, and cross, which we are called to endure in our Christian course, because the suffering, with which it is attended, never fails at the time to close the interiors of the mind against the light of heaven, and therefore we cannot discern the blessing to which it conducts us, until the suffering is past, and the interiors are again opened to admit heavenly light and its love.

155. In the song of Hannah, (1 Sam. ii. 6,) it is written concerning the Lord, that He lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, because by a beggar, according to the spiritual idea, is meant one who supplicates the Almighty to supply his spiritual wants; thus by a beggar, abstracted from personality, is meant supplication grounded in want; by a dunghill again, according to the same idea, is meant ejected, or separated evil; for a dunghill, spiritually considered, is nothing else but a collection of such evil. When therefore it is said, that the Lord lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, it is the same thing as if it had been said, that there is a power of elevation, from and to the Divine Being, in all supplication which is grounded in repentance of the heart and life; since by such repentance, all evils are ejected, separated, and collected into the spiritual dunghill, which is hell.

156. It is written in the 68th Psalm, verse 14, When