3016. 'Abraham, being old, was advanced in years' means when the state was reached in which the Lord's Human could become Divine. This is clear from the representation of 'Abraham' as the Lord, dealt with in 1893, 1965, 1989, 2011, 2172, 2198, 2501, 2833, 2836, and many times elsewhere; from the meaning of 'old' or old age as casting off what is human and putting on what is heavenly, dealt with in 1854, 2198, and when it has reference to the Lord, putting on what is Divine; and from the meaning of 'day' as state, dealt with in 23, 487, 488, 493, 893, 2788, and therefore from the meaning of 'advanced in years' as the point when a state has been reached. The reason why 'old' and 'advanced in years' mean these things is that with angels the notion of old age does not exist, nor that of getting older, meant by 'advanced in years', only the notion of state as regards the life that is theirs. Consequently when getting older or old age is mentioned in the Word the angels present with man can have no other idea than that of the state of life that is theirs or that is men's as they pass through the different stages of life until they reach the last, that is to say, as they accordingly cast off what is human and put on what is heavenly. For man's life from infancy to old age is nothing else than an advance from the world towards heaven, the last stage of which is death and the actual transition from one life to the next. Burial therefore is also resurrection since the casting-off process is completed then, 2916, 2917. Such being the idea that angels have, nothing else can be meant by 'advanced in years' and by 'old age' in the internal sense - the sense which exists primarily for angels and for men who have minds like those of angels.

24. Even without being aware of it, everyone thinks of an association of people as being like a single individual. Consequently everyone also immediately perceives the meaning when he hears it said that the king of a nation is its head, and his subjects the body, or that this or that person serves this or that function in the general body, meaning, in the kingdom.

The same is the case with a spiritual body of people as with a civil one. The church is a spiritual body. Its head is the human God. It is apparent therefore how the church would appear in this perception of it as a single individual if one were to think not of one God as the creator and sustainer of the universe, but of more than one instead. It would appear, in this perception of it, as a single body having upon it several heads, thus not as a human entity, but as a monster.

If someone were to say that the several heads possessed one essence, and that by virtue of that they together formed one head, no other idea could result from it but that either the one head had several faces, or that the several heads had one face. Thus the church would be presented to the perception as grotesque. Yet in fact one God is the head, and the body is the church, which does what it does at the bidding of the head and not on its own, as is also the case in the human individual.

So it is, too, that in any one kingdom there is only one king. For more than one king would divide it, whereas one is able to hold it together.