2706. God was with the child. That this signifies the Lord’s presence with the spiritual, is evident from the signification of “God being with” anyone, and from the signification of the “child.” That “God being with” anyone signifies the Lord’s presence, is evident without explication. The Lord is indeed present with everyone; for life is from no other source, and He governs the most minute things of it, even with the worst of men, and in hell itself; but in various ways according to the reception of life. With those who receive the life of the love of His good and truth in a wrong manner, and pervert it into loves of evil and falsity, the Lord is present, and overrules their ends as far as possible for good; but His presence with them is called absence, and indeed in the same degree in which evil is distant from good, and falsity from truth. But with those who receive the life of the love of the Lord’s good and truth, He is said to be present, and indeed according to the degree of reception. It is with the Lord’s presence as with that of the sun, which is present with its heat and light in the vegetation of the world also according to the reception.

That the “child” signifies the spiritual as to truth, has been said above; but here he signifies those who are spiritual because he represents the man of the spiritual church, and also the spiritual church itself, and in the universal sense the Lord’s spiritual kingdom; for when it is said that anyone signifies what is spiritual, as here that “the child” signifies the spiritual as to truth, it involves that those are signified who are spiritual; for there is no spiritual without a subject. It is the same with all other things said in an abstract sense.