In the Christmas story, the wise men bring gifts to the Lord: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The gold is listed first, because it is the inmost - signifying good, e.g. the good that we do when we love the Lord and the neighbor.

The frankincense is next. It signifies rational truth, which is the set of true ideas that we know, not about external things like cars or cooking, but about what is really good, and what is really true.

These rational truths are built on earlier knowledges that we learn, before we have really made them our own. Those early knowledges about spiritual things - often learned in childhood - are represented by the myrrh.

In a way, these gifts are really a reciprocation. We can't actually give them to the Lord until the Lord has given them to us. We necessarily start out by learning and doing the Lord's law (myrrh). The Lord can then call up those memories to become rational truths (frankincense). Then, over time, and with effort, those truths can be transformed into good (gold). The wise men from the East had gone through this process of learning and becoming vessels that could receive truths and goods. They were able to perceive the Lord's birth, and find him, and bring gifts to him.

40. Who can deny that the universe was created for the sake of the human race, in order that from it should be formed an angelic heaven, wherein God might dwell in the dominion of His glory? To promote and accomplish this end, what mediate cause is there but religion? and what else is religion but a walking with God? Moreover, religion is like a seed producing just and true desires, and hence judgments and acts, in spiritual things, and by means of these in moral things, and by means of the latter and the former in civil things. In order, therefore, that it may be known what is the quality of the man who has religion, and what of him who has not religion, it shall be stated. The man who has religion is, in spiritual things, like a pelican, nourishing its young with its own blood; but the man who has not religion, is in those things like a vulture, in a state of starvation devouring its own offspring. The man who has religion is, in moral things, like a turtle-dove in the nest with its mate, sitting on its eggs or young; but the man who has not religion is, in these things, like a kite or hawk in the coop of a dove-cot. The man who has religion is, in political things, like a swan flying with a bunch of grapes in its mouth; but he who has not religion, is in these matters like a basilisk with a poisonous herb in its mouth. The man who has religion is, in judiciary matters, like a tribune riding on a noble horse; but the man who has not religion, is in those things like a serpent in the desert of Arabia biting its tail in its mouth, and hurling itself, thus enfolded, upon a horse to coil itself about its rider. The man who has religion is, in other civil affairs, like a prince, the son of a king, who exhibits the marks of charity and the graces of truth; but the man who has not religion, is like the three-headed dog Cerberus at the entrance to the court of Pluto, foaming out poison from its triple mouth.