Page:Swedenborgs Maximus Homo.pdf/14

 chosen seers as "the angel of Jehovah," his form was always the human.

And it is a Divinely-revealed truth that man was created in the image and likeness of God. His form, therefore, is one capable of receiving and expressing in a finite degree something of that truly human life which flows from the Divine Human. This life when received, becomes in man the life of love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbor. And this is the essential life of heaven. Other creatures below man receive and enjoy lower degrees of life; but he alone can receive and enjoy this higher or heavenly life, because he alone is in the human form. And the more we receive of this life, the more truly human do we become in our thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and purposes; and the more faithfully do we express through our human form—by our looks, words, and actions—the love and wisdom which are the essential constituents of true humanity. For the most beautiful and perfect form is that which best expresses the purest and most exalted human love.

And as it is with a single individual, so with a society or community—with men in the aggregate. The more of true human life each member of a community receives, or the more each one suffers himself to be governed by the highest good and truth, the more orderly, industrious, united,