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.

379. The fact that such things are meant by these statements is clear from what has gone before, and from the fact that 'one who is cursed' means one who became alienated, as also shown already in 245. For it is forms of iniquity and abomination, which are forms of hatred, that alienate a person and cause him to look downwards only, that is, towards bodily and earthly interests, and so to things that belong to hell. This takes place when charity is banished and annihilated. Indeed the bond that exists between the Lord and man is in that case put asunder. Charity alone, or love and compassion, is what joins the two together. Faith without charity never does so, for that is not faith, but mere knowledge such as even the devil's crew is able to possess and by which they are able to deceive and mislead the upright and pretend to be angels of light. Very wicked preachers are sometimes accustomed to act in a similar way; they preach with a zeal that seems to be an expression of inner godliness but is in fact nothing more with them than that which they bear on the lips. Can anyone be so lacking in judgement as to believe that faith alone residing in the memory has the power to achieve anything, or that mere thought from the same source has? Everyone from personal experience knows that nobody places any value on another person's words and assentings if these are not an expression of his will and intention. It is will and intention that make them acceptable and join one person to another. The activity of the will is the real person, not thought and utterance of that which he does not will. From the activity of his will he acquires a particular nature and disposition, for his will is what moves him. If his thoughts are of good, the essential element of faith, which is charity, is contained in his thinking, because it contains the will for good. But if he asserts that his thoughts are of good and yet lives wickedly, the activity of his will cannot possibly be anything else than the will of evil, and as a consequence faith does not exist.