Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/112

106 God descends through the heavens even to man. Thus it descends through degrees celestial, spiritual, and natural; and when it has descended it contains these degrees in itself. The literal sense of holy Scripture is natural; its interior sense is spiritual; its inmost sense is celestial; and in each sense it is divine. These three senses of Holy Scripture make one by correspondence, like end, cause, and effect; therefore in the literal sense the Word is in its fulness, its holiness and its power. Every natural expression or image involves a corresponding internal sense. Thus it is a "ladder of light" with its foot on the earth and its top in heaven, upon which the angels of God ascend and descend, holding men and angels in open communion with the revealing Word who is over all and in all.

"There is conjunction with the Lord by means of the Word, because He is the Word, that is, the veritable Divine Truth and Good therein. The conjunction is effected by the literal sense, because the Word in that sense is in its fullness, its holiness and its power. That conjunction is not apparent to man, but it exists in love of truth, and in the perception of it. There is consociation with the angels of