Spiritual Life and the Word of God eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 166 pages of information about Spiritual Life and the Word of God.

Spiritual Life and the Word of God eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 166 pages of information about Spiritual Life and the Word of God.

That the holy things of the Word, of the church, and of worship, have been so changed is of the Lord’s Divine providence; not of His providence that this should be done, but of His providence that when men wish to rule and do rule by means of the holy Divine things, they should choose falsity in place of truth and evil in place of good, for otherwise they would defile holy things, and render them abominable before angels; but when holy things no longer exist this cannot be done.  Take as an example what has been done with the Holy Supper instituted by the Lord:  they have separated the bread and the wine, giving the bread to the people and drinking the wine themselves.  For “bread” signifies good of love to the Lord, and “wine” the truth of faith in Him; and good separated from truth is not good, nor is truth separated from good truth, for truth is truth from good, and good is good in truth.  And so in other things. (A.E., n. 1054.)

Those who are in the love of self, and from that in the love of ruling, and who covet, acquire, and afterward exercise supremacy by means of the holy things of the Word, of the church, and of worship, are those who profane.  For the delight of the love of ruling for self’s sake, that is, for the sake of eminence, and consequent homage and a kind of worship of self, is an infernal delight.  Moreover, this prevails in hell, for in hell everyone wills to be the greatest, while in heaven everyone wills to be the least; and to rule over holy things from an infernal delight is to profane them.

But this second kind of profanation of the holy things of the church is not like the former kind of the profanation of them.  Those fall into the former kind in whom a communication with heaven has been effected by the opening of their spiritual mind; while this second kind of profanation those fall into in whom the spiritual mind has not been opened, or communication with heaven effected through it.  For so long as the delight of the love of ruling resides in man, that mind cannot be opened, and communication with heaven is not possible to him.

Moreover, the lot of these profaners after death differs from the lot of the former.  The former, as has been said, are in an unceasing delirium of fantasy; but these hate the Lord, hate heaven, hate the Word, hate the church, and hate all its holy things; and they come into such hatred because their dominion is taken away from them, and thus their state is changed into its opposite.  They appear like something fiery, and their hell appears like a conflagration; for infernal fire is nothing else than a lust for ruling from love of self.  These are among the worst, and are called devils, while the others are called satans. (A.E., n. 1055.)

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Spiritual Life and the Word of God from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.