3164. 'And the servant brought out vessels of silver and vessels of gold, and garments' means truth and good, and the adornment of these. This is clear from the meaning in the internal sense of 'vessels of silver, vessels of gold, and garments' - 'silver' meaning truth, see 1551, 2048, and 'gold' good, 113, 1551, 1552. The words 'vessels of silver and vessels of gold' are used because they have reference to the affection for truth, meant here by 'Rebekah'. Indeed regarded in itself truth is nothing else than a vessel or recipient of good, 1496, 1832, 1900, 2063, 2261, 2269, 3068. Specifically, by 'vessels of silver' facts are meant since facts are the recipients of truth, and by 'vessels of gold' truths are meant because truths are the recipients of good. But as for 'garments' meaning adornment, this may be seen without explanation.

[2] In ancient times such things used to be given to a virgin at her betrothal. They were given to her because of the representation and the meaningful sign which denoted that 'a betrothed virgin' corresponded to the truth of the Church that was to be joined to good. This also is how the Ancient Church in its earliest days is described in Ezekiel,

When it was the time for falling in love, I clothed you with embroidered cloth, swathed you in fine linen, and covered you with silk, and I adorned you with ornaments, and put bracelets on your hands and a chain on your neck, and I put a jewel on your nose, and earrings on your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus were you adorned with gold and silver, and your garments were fine linen, and silk, and embroidered cloth. Ezekiel 16:8-13.

And when the same Church had departed from truth and good it is described in that chapter as follows,

You took some of your garments and made for yourself gaily-decked high places. And for your adornment you took vessels made of My gold and of My silver, which I had given you, and you made for yourselves figures of the male. And you took your embroidered garments and covered them. Ezekiel 16:16-18.

From these places it is quite evident that 'silver, gold, and garments' means nothing else than things that are the Church's, that is to say, truth and good, and things that belong to truth and good.

1900. 'Go in now to my servant-girl' means a joining to the more exterior man. This too is clear from what has been stated already - that the rational part of man's mind is conceived and begotten from the internal man as its father and from the exterior as its mother. Man's very life springs from the internal man, which cannot have any communication with the external, other than a very obscure communication, until the formation of recipient vessels belonging to the memory has been effected by means of cognitions and knowledge.

[2] The influx of the internal man occurs as an influx into the cognitions and factual knowledge that are present in the exterior man - affection being the means. Meanwhile, before they are present, a communication does indeed exist, but solely through those affections that control the external man; so that not more than very general stirrings and certain appetites occur there, and also certain blind inclinations such as reveal themselves in small children. But this life grows by degrees more definite as vessels are formed in the memory by means of cognitions and in the inner memory by rational concepts. As these vessels are formed and arranged into a sequence - into such a sequence in fact that they stand mutually related to one another like blood relatives and relatives by marriage, or like communities and families - so the correspondence is perfected of the external man with the internal man, and even better so through rational concepts, which are intermediate.

[3] But if the cognitions by means of which those vessels are formed are not truths, a lack of congruity still exists, for the celestial and spiritual things belonging to the internal man do not discover any correspondence for themselves except within truths. Such truths constituting the organic forms of the two memories ¹ are the genuine vessels into which the celestial things of love and the spiritual things of faith may be introduced fittingly; for when they are so introduced they are arranged by the Lord according to the pattern and image of the communities of heaven, that is, of the Lord's kingdom - insomuch that the person becomes, in miniature, heaven or the Lord's kingdom, as also in the Word the minds of those people are called in whom the celestial things of love and the spiritual things of faith are present. But these matters have been stated for the benefit of those minds that like to go more deeply.

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