by a life according to the truths of the church and of reason: hence it is, that atheists themselves, who are in the glory of reputation arising from self-love, and thence in a high conceit of their own intelligence, enjoy a more sublime rationality than many others, but only at the time when they are in the thought of the understanding, and not when they are in the affection of the will. The affection of the will possesses a man's internal principle, whereas the thought of the understanding possesses his external principle." The angel further declared the reason why a man (homo) is composed of the three loves above-mentioned; namely, of the love of use, of the love of the world, and of the love of self; which is, that he may think from God, although as from himself. He also said, that the supreme principles in man are turned upwards to God, the middle principles outwards to the world, and the lowest principles downwards to self; and since the latter principles are turned downwards, a man thinks as from himself, when yet it is from God."*

"He that is filthy, let him be filthy still; he that is unjust, let him be unjust still." This is the terrible doom hanging over the whole of the pages in these writings, descriptive of Hell: the spiritual world is wide, its regions, kingdoms, and continents are vast, and there are found all the states which answer to our states below-the Ruling passion, the

*Conjugial Love, § 269.

360 HE THAT IS FILTHY LET HIM BE FILTHY STILL.

governing affection, this determines our destiny. There is no possibility of a magic change transforming nature in the article of death. Or if the affections are thus becoming gently transformed and put forth on the tract of holy loving, and holy living, much has to be done before the fulness of celestial light breaks and dawns upon the soul. It is the tendency of the Will that makes our Hell or our Heaven; who does not see then the fearful and terrible condition of many in this world. You shall pursue that phantom to all eternity, you may say to many a seeker here: for when we die we do not as we have said enter into a strange world. How can we? That world will be to us the counterpart of this; it will grow out of this: it will be the bloom, or the fruit of this. We are all shaping out our future course, and may, if we will but think of it, notice the shaping of the roads along our eternal life as plainly as we notice those which branch from our cities here.

CHAPTER VIII.

SACRED HIEROGLYPHICS.

SWEDENBORG ON THE DOCTRINE OF CORRESPONDENCES.

"The old Asiatic style, so highly figurative, seems by what we find of its remains in the prophetic language of the Sacred Writings, to have been evidently fashioned to the mode of ancient Hieroglyphics, both curiologic and tropical: of the second kind which answers to the tropical hieroglyphic, is the calling empires, kings, and nobles by the names of the heavenly luminaries, the sun, moon and stars: their temporary disasters or entire overthrow by eclipses and extinctions; the destruction of the nobility by stars falling from the firmament; hostile invasions by thunder and tempestuous winds; the leaders of armies, conquerors, and founders of empires, by lions, bears, leopards, goats, or high trees. In a word, the prophetic style seems to be a speaking hieroglyphic."-BISHOP WARBURTON, Divine Legation of Moses.

"All which is here called the word of God is a revelation of the incarnate, and, in regard to His divine essence, the self-renouncing divine Word. Hence we see the Word of God on earth when He became man under a human form; for in the Scriptures, the Word continually becomes flesh in order to dwell among us. But when we have leaned on the bosom of the incarnate Word, and are able to follow Him as He goes up into the high mountain, then we shall say we have seen His glory. Such is the Transfiguration of Scripture for all, who from a vivid communion with Christ rise with Him and learn to understand its spirit."-Origen,

CHAPTER VIII.

CONTENTS.-The Apologue of the Mysterious Lock-an Obvious Application-Citations of Difficult Passages-The Doctrine of Correspondences—Brief Elucidation of it-Swe denborg quoted on the Three Senses of the Sacred Writings— the Universal Necessity felt for a Key to the Scriptures-a Key Uniform in its Application- the Key applied to Animal Analogies-Material Things-to Places-and to NumbersClose and Summary.

DID you ever read the history of THE MYSTERIOUS LOCK? In ages when oriental things were far more awful in their influence than now, and when the monarch minds of the earth perpetuated their deeds in the lofty columns of marble, and palaces, and obelisks of colossal grandeur, a vast building of true Eastern magnificence was reared on the plains of Arabia. In those days, as we know by many a building, the works of man were as vast as their ideas; and this building was vast as a pyramid. Its chambers were innumerable, and they extended through long galleries of brilliant mirrors, and corridors of the purest marble; the building itself seemed as if sculptured and excavated from the solid rock, so awful was its height, and depth; and breadth; it was in itself an Arabia Petræ; the sacred bull loomed haughty-gigantic from on high, and the lion seemed almost to paw the rock, to shake the