90. Since angels are spiritual beings, they cannot live in any warmth or any light that is not spiritual. We, on the other hand, cannot live in any warmth or any light that is not physical. This is because what is spiritual suits what is spiritual, and what is physical suits what is physical. If angels were to depend on physical warmth and light to even the least extent, they would be destroyed. It is absolutely wrong for their life.

Each of us is a spirit, as far as the inner levels of our minds are concerned. When we die, we leave this world of nature completely behind. We give up everything it has to offer and enter a world that contains nothing proper to the world of nature. In that world we live so completely distanced from nature that there is no communication along a continuum, that is, nothing like degrees of purity or coarseness. It is a case of before and after, with no communication except by correspondences.

It stands to reason, then, that spiritual warmth is not a purer form of physical warmth, that spiritual light is not a purer form of physical light, but that they are completely different in essence. Spiritual warmth and light derive their essence from a sun that is nothing but love, a sun that is life itself, while physical warmth and light derive their essence from a sun that is nothing but fire, containing no life whatever, as I have already stated [89].

333. The premise is that for our salvation, divine providence begins at our birth and continues to the end of our life. To understand this, we need to realize that the Lord knows the kind of person we are and the kind of person we want to be and therefore the kind of person we will be. Further, he cannot deprive us of the freedom of our volition if we are to be human and therefore immortal, as amply explained above; so he foresees what our state will be after death and provides for it from our birth all the way to the end of our life. He does this for evil people by both allowing and constantly leading them away from their evils, and for good people by constantly leading them to what is good. So divine providence is constantly at work for our salvation; but it cannot save more of us than want to be saved. We want to be saved if we believe in God and are led by him, and we do not want to be saved if we do not believe in God and we lead ourselves. In the latter case, we are not thinking about eternal life or salvation, while in the former case we are. The Lord sees all this and still leads us, doing so under the laws of his divine providence, laws he cannot violate because that would be to violate his divine love and his divine wisdom, and therefore himself.

[2] Since he foresees everyone's state after death and foresees our place as well--in hell for people who do not want to be saved and in heaven for people who do--it follows that, as just stated, he provides places for the evil by permitting and leading them away and for the good by leading them to their places. It follows also that if this were not being done constantly for everyone from birth to the end of life, neither heaven nor hell would endure. Without this foresight and providence, that is, there would be neither a heaven nor a hell, only confusion. (See 202-203 above on the fact that we are all provided with places by the Lord in his foresight.)

[3] To illustrate this by a comparison, if an archer or musketeer were to aim at a target and a straight line a mile long were drawn behind the target, then if the aim were off just a hair, at the end of that mile the arrow or ball would have strayed far from the line behind the target. That is what it would be like if the Lord did not have his eye on eternity at every moment, every least moment, in his foresight and provision for everyone's place after death. The Lord does this, though, because to him the whole future is present, and to him everything present is eternal.

On the fact that divine providence focuses on what is infinite and eternal in everything it does, see above, 46-69, 214 and following.