54. Male and female He created them. What 'male and female' is used to mean in the internal sense was very well known in the Most Ancient Church, but when among later generations the interior sense of the Word was lost, so too was this particular arcanum. Marriages gave them their highest forms of happiness and delight; and they used to liken to a marriage anything that could be likened to it, in order that from it they might feel the happiness of marriage. And because they were internal men they took delight solely in internal things. As to external things, they did no more with them than take them in with their eyes, but their thoughts involved what those things represented - so much so that external things meant nothing to them except insofar as they could reflect internal things in them, and in those internal things reflect celestial things, and in so doing reflect the Lord, who was to them everything. Consequently they reflected the heavenly marriage in those things, which, they perceived, was the source of the happiness in their own marriages. For this reason they called the understanding in the spiritual man Male and the will Female, and when the two acted as one, they called it Marriage. From that Church sprang the common usage of referring to the Church itself, because of its affection for good, as 'a daughter', and also 'a virgin' - as in Virgin of Zion, Virgin of Jerusalem - and 'a wife' as well. On these matters however see verse 23 of the next chapter, and Chapter 3:15.

10200. 'Morning by morning' means whenever a state of love in clearness exists. This is clear from the meaning of 'morning' as a time when a state of love in clearness exists, dealt with in 10134, so that 'morning by morning' or every single morning means whenever that state exists. It has been shown several times before that in heaven states of love and light, that is, of goodness and truth, follow one another in sequence unceasingly, just as on earth morning, midday, evening, and twilight do, and as spring, summer, autumn, and winter do. It has also been shown that those states are the origin from which these times of day and seasons of the year arise; for things that come into being in the world are images of the realities that exist in heaven. This is so because everything natural comes into being from what is spiritual, that is, from what is Divine in the heavens. From this it is evident what the variations of the states in heaven are like, for one comes to know what they are by comparison with the states of heat and light that exist in the world, heat in the heavens being the good of love coming from the Lord and the light there being the truth of faith coming from the Lord. States there follow one another in this kind of way to the end that angels may constantly grow more perfect; for as they pass through those states they experience all varieties of goodness and truth and are endowed with them. The differences furthermore in the varieties of the good of love and truth of faith there are like the differences of heat and light in all the particular regions or climates of the planet; that is to say, those near the equator are different from those further away in either direction from it, and they are different from one day to the next, and from one year to the next. What is exactly similar or the same does not ever return; for it has been provided that nothing shall ever be exactly the same, neither in the spiritual world nor in the natural world; and this enables perfection to increase constantly.