331. Useful functions for the support of our bodies have to do with its nourishment, clothing, shelter, recreation and pleasure, protection, and the preservation of its state. The useful things created for physical nourishment are all the members of the plant kingdom that we eat and drink, such as fruits, grapes, seeds, vegetables, and grains. Then there are all the members of the animal kingdom that we eat, such as steers, cows, calves, deer, sheep, kids, goats, lambs, and the milk they give, as well as many kinds of bird and fish.

The useful things created for clothing our bodies also come in abundance from these two kingdoms, as do those for our shelter and for our recreation and pleasure, for our protection, and for the preservation of our state. I will not enumerate these because they are familiar, so listing them would only take up space.

There are of course many things that we do not find useful, but these extras do not prevent usefulness. In fact, they enable useful functions to continue. Then there are abuses of functions; but again, the abuse of a function does not eliminate the useful function, just as the falsification of something true does not destroy the truth except for the people who are doing the falsifying.

1854. 'You will be buried at a good old age' means the enjoyment of all goods by those who are the Lord's. This is clear from the fact that people who die and are buried do not die but pass over from an obscure life into one that is bright. For death of the body is but a continuation and also a perfecting of life, when those who are the Lord's enter for the first time into the enjoyment of all goods. That enjoyment is meant by 'a good old age'. The expressions 'they died', 'were buried', and 'were gathered to their fathers' occur quite often, but they do not carry the same meaning in the internal sense as in the sense of the letter. In the internal sense it is the things which belong to life after death, and which are eternal, that are meant, whereas in the sense of the letter it is those which belong to life in the world and which are temporal.

[2] Consequently, when such expressions occur, those who see into the internal sense, as angels do, have no thoughts of such things as have to do with death and burial but with such as have to do with the continuation of life; for they look upon death as nothing else than a casting off of the things which belong to merely earthly matter and to time, and as the continuing of life proper. Indeed they do not know what death is, for death does not enter into any of their thinking. It is the same with people's ages. By the phrase used here, 'at a good old age', angels have no perception at all of old age; indeed they do not know what old age is, for they themselves are constantly moving towards the life of youth and early manhood. It is life such as this, consequently the celestial and spiritual things belonging to it, that are meant when the expression 'a good old age' and others like it occur in the Word.