Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 2.djvu/63

 it is evident how much deceived they are who believe that heaven will be shut when full. When yet the contrary is true, that it will never be shut; and that the greater its fullness, the greater its perfection. Therefore the angels desire nothing more earnestly than the arrival of new angelic guests.

As heaven is a man in the greatest form, and a society of heaven in a less, so is an angel in the least. For in the most perfect form, which is the form of heaven, there is a likeness of the whole in every part, and of every part in the whole. The reason is, that heaven is a communion; for it communicates all its own to each one, and each one receives all that he has from that communion. An angel is a receptacle [of all heavenly things], and thence a heaven in the least form.

Man, too, so far as he receives heaven, is also a receptacle, a heaven and an angel. This is described in the Apocalypse in these words: "He measured the wall of the holy Jerusalem, a hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of a man, that is, of an angel." xxi. 17. In this passage Jerusalem is the Lord's church, and in a more eminent sense heaven; the wall is truth which protects from the assault of falsities and evils; a hundred and forty-four are all truths and goods in the complex; the measure is its quality; man is the subject in whom reside all these things in general and in particular, and therefore heaven is in him; and because an angel also is a man from these same things, therefore it is said, the measure of a man, which is that of an angel. This