289. 'Wife' is used to mean the Church, in the universal sense the Lord's kingdom in heaven and on earth. This too has been shown already, while the fact that 'mother' as well has the same meaning follows from this. In the Word the Church is commonly called 'mother', as in Isaiah,

Where is your mother's bill of divorce? Isaiah 50:1.

In Jeremiah,

Your, mother has been utterly shamed, she who bore you is covered with shame. Jeremiah 50:12.

In Ezekiel,

[You are] your mother's daughter who loathes her husband and her sons. Your mother is a Hittite and your father an Amorite. Ezekiel 16:45.

Here 'husband' (vir) stands for the Lord and everything celestial, 'sons for truths of faith, 'Hittite' for falsity, and 'Amorite' for evil. In the same prophet,

Your mother was like a vine in your likeness, planted beside the waters, fruitful, full of branches by reason of many waters. Ezekiel 19:10.

Here 'mother' stands for the Ancient Church. The Most Ancient Church is pre-eminently called a 'mother' because it was the first Church, and the only one to be celestial. For that reason it was the Lord's beloved more than any other.

3080. 'And the girl was very good looking' means the beauty of the affection for truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a girl' as affection that has innocence within it, dealt with in 3067. The reason 'very good looking' means beauty, in this case the beauty of the affection for truth since it is called 'a girl', is that all beauty comes from good in which innocence is present. When flowing in from the internal man into the external man good itself constitutes that which is beautiful. This is the source of all human beauty. This may be recognized also from the fact that it is not a person's face but the affection shining out of it that stirs the feelings in another; and in the case of those who love what is good it is the affection for good seen in a person's face that stirs them, which it does in the measure that innocence is present in the good which they love. Thus it is the spiritual within the natural that stirs their affections, not the natural devoid of the spiritual. In a similar way the feelings of those who love what is good are stirred by young children whom they see as beautiful in the measure that the innocence which goes with charity is present in the children's faces, actions, and speech. It is goodness and charity that give form to and constitute beauty, see 553; and that is why 'the girl was very good looking' means the beauty of the affection for truth that has good within it.