Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/125

Rh creeping thing, the living soul, and let the fowl fly above the earth upon the faces of the expanse of the heavens." I use here again the more literal rendering from the Hebrew which Swedenborg gives. The authorized version reads as though the waters brought forth the fowl; but in the Hebrew of the original it is not so.

Birds in the symbolism of Scripture signify our thought. They do so because the thought, can soar up and away from its surroundings, even piercing the realms of spirit, of heaven, and of God, as birds fly above the earth and waters into the firmament above. "Let fowl fly above the earth" means, Let the thoughts of the regenerating man now rise above earthly things, above those that occupy the lower mind. "Upon the faces of the expanse of the heavens," or "in the open firmament of heaven" means, Let them rise to heavenly and eternal themes, and soar amid the regions of the spiritual mind with broad and far-reaching views of the higher truth of God, as the bird in its upward flight broadens its scope of vision the higher it goes.

And then it is said, "God created great whales (properly leviathans) and every living soul that creepeth which the waters brought forth abundantly after its kind, and every winged fowl after its kind." The Leviathan, as the largest inhabitant of the deep, symbolizes knowledge in its general or