Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/191

 said that there is any life in it; for whence is its life unless from those things which are of life? that is, unless from this, that all and each of the things in it have reference to the Lord, who is the very Life itself? Wherefore whatsoever does not interiorly regard Him, does not live; nay, whatever expression in the Word does not involve Him, or in its own manner relate to Him, is not Divine.

"III. Without such life the Word as to the letter is dead; for it is with the Word as with man, who, as is known in the Christian world, is external and internal; the external man separate from the internal is the body, and thus dead; but the internal is what lives and gives to the external to live. The internal man is the soul. Thus the Word as to the letter alone is as the body without the soul.

"IV. From the sense of the letter alone, when the mind is fixed in it, can in no wise be seen that it contains such things; as in this first part of Genesis, from the sense of the letter nothing else is known than that it treats of the creation of the world and of the Garden of Eden, which is called Paradise; also of Adam as the first