Verses 1-6. The Lord recruits the soul with spiritual life when there is reception; it is man himself that rejects the Divine influx.

Verses 7-14. The implantation of good and truth in the soul in infancy and youth.

Verses 15-33. The declension of the natural man from Divine truth, and consequent destruction of good and truth in the soul.

Verses 34-43. But when the soul has found by experience the futility of all else and turns to the Lord, its evils and falsities are dissipated.

Verses 44-52. The absolute necessity of carrying out the Divine will in the life again impressed upon the soul. Truth gives to the soul a perception of heaven, but cannot bring it thither till carried out in the life.

2305. There are certain people who identify innocence with early childhood, for the reason that the Lord, when speaking about young children, said that heaven consisted of such, and that those who do not become as young children cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. But those who think in this fashion do not know the internal sense of the Word, nor thus what is meant by early childhood. 'Early childhood' is used to mean the innocence that belongs to intelligence and wisdom, the nature of which is such that they acknowledge that they possess life solely from the Lord and that the Lord is their one and only Father; for a person is human because of intelligence and wisdom - essentially truth and good respectively - which people have solely from the Lord. Innocence itself, which in the Word is called early childhood, exists and resides nowhere else than within wisdom, so much so that the wiser anyone is the more innocent he is. Consequently the Lord is Innocence itself, because He is Wisdom itself.