Conjugial Love #364

By Emanuel Swedenborg

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364. In order to acquire a distinct idea of zeal with the good and with the evil, and of their dissimilarity, it is necessary to form some idea respecting internals and externals with men. That this may be formed, take the idea of the vulgar respecting them, for this is for the common people also. The matter can then be illustrated by nuts or almonds and their kernels. With the good, the internals are like inner kernels, in all their perfection and goodness, enclosed in their usual and natural shell. With the evil it is altogether different. Their internals are like kernels, either inedible because of their bitterness, or rotted or worm-eaten; but their externals are like coverings or shells, either like their natural shells, or reddish like shell-fish, or many-hued like iris stones. Such is their external appearance within which lie concealed the internals mentioned above. It is the same with their zeal.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society, for the permission to use this translation, and to Bryn Athyn College of the New Church, for the use of the scanned text.