Page:Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.djvu/59

 mentioned signify spiritual treasures, which are the knowledges of truth. To "lay them up on earth," is to hear spiritual truths, and receive them merely into the natural mind, or the memory, whence, if they rise no higher, they will be soon dissipated and cast out by the evils of the heart, bursting forth from within—which evils are signified by the "moth and rust that corrupt" and the "thieves that break through and steal." But to "lay up treasures in heaven," signifies to receive those truths into the internal or spiritual mind, which is effected by practicing and living according to them; and when thus elevated, they cannot be cast out or destroyed, but remain for ever, and establish heaven in the soul.

The reason why by "heaven" is signified the internal or spiritual mind, is, because that mind or that part of the mind is formed after the image of heaven, and constitutes heaven with man. There reside all heavenly thoughts and affections; there dwell the angels, who, as the Psalmist says, "encamp round about those that fear the Lord, and deliver them." This region of the mind, indeed, may be said to belong to heaven and not to the world; it is wholly spiritual, and consequently cannot be opened or fully enjoyed whilst man remains in the natural world; but, after death, when he throws off the body and enters into the spiritual world, then he comes into the full perception and sense of the heavenly thoughts and affections that fill that mind, and they constitute his heaven within.

The reason that "earth" sisfnifies the external or