55.  All things in the created universe are recipients of the Divine love and the Divine wisdom of god-man.

It is well known that each and all things of the universe were created by God; hence the universe, with each and every thing pertaining to it, is called in the Word the work of the hands of Jehovah.  There are those who maintain that the world, with everything it includes, was created out of nothing, and of that nothing an idea of absolute nothingness is entertained.  From absolute nothingness, however, nothing is or can be made.  This is an established truth.  The universe, therefore, which is God’s image, and consequently full of God, could be created only in God from God; for God is Esse itself, and from Esse must be whatever is.  To create what is, from nothing which is not, is an utter contradiction.  But still, that which is created in God from God is not continuous from Him; for God is Esse in itself, and in created things there is not any Esse in itself.  If there were in created things any Esse in itself, this would be continuous from God, and that which is continuous from God is God.  The angelic idea of this is, that what is created in God from God, is like that in man which has been derived from his life, but from which the life has been withdrawn, which is of such a nature as to be in accord with his life, and yet it is not his life.  The angels confirm this by many things which have existence in their heaven, where they say they are in God, and God is in them, and still that they have, in their esse, nothing of God which is God.  Many things whereby they prove this will be presented hereafter; let this serve for present information.

56.  Every created thing, by virtue of this origin, is such in its nature as to be a recipient of God, not by continuity, but by contiguity.  By the latter and not the former comes its capacity for conjunction.  For having been created in God from God, it is adapted to conjunction; and because it has been so created, it is an analogue, and through such conjunction it is like an image of God in a mirror.

57.  From this it is that angels are angels, not from themselves, but by virtue of this conjunction with God-Man; and this conjunction is according to the reception of Divine Good and Divine Truth, which are God, and which seem to proceed from Him, though really they are in Him.  This reception is according to their application to themselves of the laws of order, which are Divine truths, in the exercise of that freedom of thinking and willing according to reason, which they possess from the Lord as if it were their own.  By this they have a reception, as if from themselves, of Divine Good and of Divine Truth, and by this there is a reciprocation of love; for, as was said above, love is impossible unless it is reciprocal.  The same is true of men on the earth.  From what has been said it can now first be seen that all things of the created universe are recipients of the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom of God-Man.