3137. 'At the spring' means the enlightenment of them from Divine truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a spring' as truth, dealt with in 2702, 3096, here Divine truth, as above in 3131. Because the Word is Divine truth it is therefore called 'a spring'. That 'standing at the spring' here embodies in the internal sense the enlightenment of things in the natural man follows from the train of thought; for where Divine truth is, enlightenment is there.

The heart means love. A good heart means love to the Lord and to the neighbor, while a hard or stony heart means the love of self or the world -- riches and things. When the psalmist asks the Lord to search his heart, he wants the Lord to see what it is that he loves. And we are what we love. What we eat may form our earthly body, but it's only temporary, what we love forms our spiritual body, beautiful or ugly as we have chosen. It's interesting to note that the first multi-cellular motion of our embryo is the pulsating that starts in a twist of blood vessel that is to become our heart, and the last motion of our natural body is our heartbeat. It is there for all of our natural life. And of course there is a beating heart in our spiritual bodies when we come to put them on.