23. Nothing is more common in the Word than for the word 'day' to be used to mean the particular time at which events take place, as in Isaiah,

The day of Jehovah is near. Behold, the day of Jehovah comes. I will make heaven tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, on the day of My fierce anger. Its time is close at hand, and its days will not be prolonged. Isaiah 13:6, 9, 13, 22.

And in the same prophet,

Her antiquity is in the days of antiquity. On that day Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, like the days of one king. Isaiah 23:7, 15.

Since 'day' stands for the particular time it also stands for the state associated with that particular time, as in Jeremiah, Woe to us, for the day has declined, for the shadows of evening have lengthened! Jeremiah 6:4

And in the same prophet,

If you break My covenant that is for the day and My covenant that is for the night, so that there is neither daytime nor night at their appointed time. Jeremiah 33:20, 25.

Also,

Renew our days as of old. Lamentations 5:21.

38. Such is the state of the church to-day; it has no faith because it has no charity. Where there is no charity, neither is there any spiritual good, for charity is the sole source of that good. I have been told from heaven that some people still have good, but it cannot be called spiritual good, only natural good. This is because real Divine truths are obscured, and it is these which lead to charity, teaching it and looking to it as the end in view. There is no other way charity can come into existence than by truths being present as its source. The Divine truths on which the church's teachings are based are concerned with faith alone; so they are called the teachings of faith, and they are not concerned with life. Truths which are concerned only with faith and not with life cannot make a person spiritual; and so long as they are not part of his life, they are merely natural truths, merely known and thought about like other matters. That is why spiritual good does not exist to-day, but only in certain people natural good.

[2] Moreover, every church is spiritual to begin with, since it starts from charity. But in course of time it turns aside from charity to faith, and then becomes an external instead of an internal church. When it becomes external, it reaches its end since then all importance is attached to knowledge and little if any to life. As a person becomes external instead of internal, so proportionately is spiritual light darkened for him, until he is unable to see Divine truth from truth itself, that is, in the light of heaven, the light of heaven being Divine truth, but only in natural light. This is such that, when it is alone and not accompanied with spiritual light, he sees Divine truth as it were at night-time, and he has no other way of recognising whether it is truth than from its being preached by a prelate and generally received by its hearers. That is why their intellectual faculty could not be enlightened by the Lord; for the brighter natural light shines in the intellect, the more spiritual light is dimmed. Natural light shines brightly in the intellect, when worldly, bodily and earthly concerns are loved more than spiritual, heavenly and Divine ones; and to that extent a person is external.

9075. 'And also its owner shall die' means damnation of the internal man. This is clear from the meaning of 'the owner of the ox' as the internal man, dealt with above in 9069; and from the meaning of 'dying' as damnation, also dealt with above, in 9008. The reason why an ox was to be stoned and its owner to die if he knew that the ox was accustomed to gore, yet did not keep it in, lies with the spiritual meaning of this judgement or law, which is this: A person who is aware of an evil in himself and does not restrain it is guilty; for he approves it and in so doing snuffs out the light of truth, and along with it he crushes the seed of a belief in the truth the moment it is implanted. And when this has been snuffed out good from the Lord is not received. As a result the internal man cannot be opened and consequently endowed with spiritual life, which is the life of the truth and good of faith. When this is a person's state he leads a natural life, which is that of the external man. But this life without spiritual life is dead, the result of which is damnation, 7494.