Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/106

100 the knowledge of Correspondences, he would understand the Word as to its spiritual sense and it would be given him to know arcana, concerning which he sees nothing in the sense of the letter. For in the Word there is a literal sense, and there is a spiritual sense: the literal sense consists of such things as are in the world, but the spiritual sense of such things as are in heaven; and because the conjunction of heaven with the world is by Correspondences, therefore such a Word was given, that every single thing in it, even to an iota, corresponds.

"I have been instructed from heaven that the most ancient men on our earth, who were celestial men, thought from Correspondences themselves, and that the natural things of the world which were before their eyes, served them as means of so thinking; and because they were such, that they were consociated with angels and spoke with them; and that thus by them heaven was conjoined to the world. From this, that time was called the golden age; of which it is also said by ancient writers, that the inhabitants of heaven dwelt with men, and had intercourse with them as friends with friends. But after their times those succeeded who thought not