Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/128

 and without thought concerning them, he does not will them; for a man cannot think of the things about which he knows nothing; and the things which he does not think of, he cannot will. When therefore a man wills these truths, then heaven, that is, the Lord through heaven, flows into his life; for He flows into the will, and through the will into the thought, and through both into the life; for all the life of man is from his will and thought.

From these considerations it is evident, that spiritual good and truth are not learned from the world but from heaven; and that no one can be prepared for heaven but by means of instruction. In proportion also as the Lord flows into any one's life, He instructs him; for in that proportion He enkindles in his will the love of knowing truths, and enlightens, his thought to discern them. And so far as these effects take place, the man's interiors are opened, and heaven is implanted in them. And still further,—what is divine and heavenly flows into the sincere acts of his moral life, and into the just acts of his civil life, and makes them spiritual; since the man then does them from the Divine, because for the sake of the Divine. For the sincere, and just actions belonging to his moral and civil life, which the man performs from the above origin, are the very effects of spiritual life; and the effect derives all that belongs to it from its efficient cause; for such as the cause is, such is the effect.