10178. 'With pieces of shittim wood you shall make it' means from love that is Divine. This is clear from the meaning of 'shittim wood' as the good of merit and of righteousness, which is the Lord's alone, dealt with in 9472, 9486, 9715. The reason why love as well is meant is that when the Lord was in the world He was motivated by Divine Love to fight against all the hells and overcome them, and in so doing to save the human race, as a result of which He alone has earned merit, and has become righteousness, see 9486, 9715, 9809, 10019, 10152; and the good of merit which is the Lord's is therefore His Divine Love. The reason why 'shittim wood' has so profound a meaning is that all things which exist in earth's three kingdoms - the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms - serve to mean spiritual and celestial realities, or else their opposites. (For the whole natural order is a theatre representative of the Lord's kingdom, see the places referred to in 9280.) And 'wood' means in general the good of love, and in particular the good of merit, 2784, 2812, 3720, 4943, 8354, 8740. So it is that in the highest sense 'wood' means Divine Good; for all things serving in the internal sense to mean aspects of the Church and of heaven serve in the highest sense to mean Divine realities.

87. There Is a Correspondence of Everything in Heaven with Everything in the Human Being

People today do not know what "correspondence" is. There are many reasons for this ignorance, the primary one being that we have moved away from heaven because of our love for ourselves and for the world. You see, people who love themselves and the world above all focus on nothing but earthly matters because these provide gratification to their more outward senses and pleasure to their moods. They do not attend to spiritual matters because these offer gratification to their deeper senses and pleasure to their minds. So they set such matters aside, saying that they are too lofty to think about.

The early people behaved differently. For them, knowledge about correspondences was the pearl of all knowledge. By means of it, they gained intelligence and wisdom, and by means of it those who were of the church had a communication with heaven. Knowledge about correspondences is in fact angelic knowledge.

The earliest ones, who were heavenly people, did their thinking from correspondence like angels, so they could even talk with angels. Further, the Lord was quite often visible to them, and taught them. Nowadays, though, this knowledge has been so completely lost that people do not know what correspondence is. ¹

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