5704. 'The firstborn according to his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth' means in conformity with the order truths take beneath good. This is clear from the meaning of 'taking seats according to birthright, and according to youth' as in conformity with the order truths take beneath good. The sons of Israel represent the truths known to the Church existing in their proper order, see the explanation at Chapters 29, 30 of Genesis, and therefore taking their seats according to their order of birth means in conformity with the order truths take. But the truths known to the Church, which 'the sons of Israel' represent, do not come to be arranged into any kind of proper order except through Christian good, that is, through the good of charity towards the neighbour and of love to the Lord. For good has the Lord within it, and therefore has heaven within it. Good consequently has life within it, making it a force that is active and filled with life. But truth devoid of good cannot possibly have any life within it. Good arranges truths into order in keeping with itself, as is quite evident from every kind of love, including self-love and love of the world, and so such love as gives rise to vengeance, hatred, and other evils like these. People governed by those loves call evil good because they take delight in evil. This so-called good of theirs imposes a certain kind of order on those falsities which to them are truths - a kind of order that enables these falsities to lend support to it, till at length all those falsities, which they call truths, are arranged into an order that becomes a sequence of false beliefs. But this order is the kind of order that exists in hell, whereas the order in which truths are ranged beneath the good of heavenly love is the kind that exists in heaven. This also explains why a person with whom the latter kind of order resides, that is, a person who has been regenerated, is called a miniature heaven and also is heaven in the smallest form of all that it can take; for his interiors correspond to the heavens.

[2] The fact that good is what brings order to truths is evident from order as it exists in the heavens. All the communities there are ranged in conformity with the order in which truths that are received from the Lord exist beneath good. For [in His own Being] the Lord is nothing else than Divine Good, while Divine Truth, which does not exist within Him, goes forth from Him. And it is in conformity with this Divine Truth ranged beneath Divine Good that all the communities of heaven have been arranged into order. As regards the Lord's being nothing else than Divine Love whereas Divine Truth does not exist within Him but goes forth from Him, this can be illustrated by a comparison made with the sun of this world. The sun is nothing else than fire, while its light does not exist within it but goes forth from it. What is more, objects in the world dependent on light, such as plants, are subject to the order imparted to them by the heat that goes forth from the fire of the sun and exists within the light of the sun, as is evident in springtime and summertime. For since the Whole natural order is a theatre representative of the Lord's kingdom, so is this whole situation involving the sun representative. The sun represents the Lord; its fire represents His Divine Love; the heat from it represents the good that flows from this Love, and its light the truths that constitute faith. And since they have these representations, 'the sun' is also used in the spiritual sense of the Word to mean the Lord, 1053, 1521, 1529-1531, 3636, 3643, 4321 (end), 5097, 5377, 'fire' to mean love, 934, 4906, 5071, 5215, so that the sun's fire in a representative sense is Divine Love, while the heat from that fire is good flowing from Divine love. As regards 'light' meaning truth, see 2776, 3138, 3190, 3195, 3222, 3339, 3636, 3643, 3862, 3993, 4302, 4409, 4413, 4415, 4526, 5219, 5400.

5377. CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GRAND MAN - continued. IN THIS SECTION, TOO, THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS WITH IT

The subject at the end of the previous chapter was the correspondence of certain internal organs of the body with the Grand Man, that is to say, the correspondence of the liver, pancreas, stomach, and certain other organs with it. In this present section the same subject moves on to the correspondence of the peritoneum, kidneys, ureters, bladder, and also the intestines with it. Whatever exists in the human being, both in the external man and in the internal man, has a correspondence with the Grand Man. Without that correspondence with the Grand Man - that is, with heaven, or what amounts to the same, with the spiritual world - nothing can ever come into being and remain in being. This is because it does not have a connection with anything prior to itself or consequently with Him who is the First, that is, with the Lord. Nothing that lacks such a connection, thus that is independent, can remain in being for even a single instant. For everything that remains in being does so entirely by virtue of its connection with and dependence on what brings it into being; for remaining in being consists in a constant coming into being.

[2] From this it follows that not only all the individual parts of the human being correspond to the Grand Man but also every single thing in the universe. The sun has a correspondence, and so does the moon; for in heaven the Lord is the Sun, and the Moon too. The fire and heat of the sun, as well as its light, have a correspondence, for it is the Lord's love towards the whole human race that its fire and heat correspond to, and His Divine truth that its light corresponds to. The stars too have a correspondence, the communities of heaven and their dwelling-places being what the stars correspond to. Not that the heavenly communities dwell in the stars, but that they have been set in order in the same kind of way as the stars. Everything under the sun has a correspondence - every single thing beneath it in the animal kingdom and every single thing beneath it in the vegetable kingdom. And unless the spiritual world were flowing into them all, every one, they would instantly break down and fall to pieces.

[3] Considerable experience too has made me aware of all this, for I have been shown what very many things in the animal kingdom, and still more in the vegetable kingdom, correspond to in the spiritual world, as well as the fact that without the inflow of the spiritual world into them they cannot by any means at all remain in being. For once what is prior has been taken away what is posterior of necessity perishes, and likewise once what is prior has been severed from what is posterior. Since correspondence is primarily the correspondence of the human being with heaven, and through heaven with the Lord, the specific nature of each person's correspondence therefore determines what he looks like in the next life in the light of heaven. This explains why angels have an indescribably bright and beautiful appearance, whereas those in hell have an unspeakably dark and ugly one.