18. Anyone can come to an inner assurance about the presence of infinite things in God--anyone, that is, who believes that God is a person; because if God is a person, he has a body and everything that having a body entails. So he has a face, torso, abdomen, upper legs, and lower legs, since without these he would not be a person. Since he has these components, he also has eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and tongue. He also has what we find within a person, such as a heart and lungs and the things that depend on them, all of which, taken together, make us human. We are created with these many components, and if we consider them in their interconnections, they are beyond counting. In the Divine-Human One, though, they are infinite. Nothing is lacking, so he has an infinite completeness.

We can make this comparison of the uncreated Person, who is God, with us who are created, because that God is a person. It is because of him that we earthly beings are said to have been created in his image and in his likeness (Genesis 1:26-27).

4598. 'Israel travelled on' means the celestial-spiritual of the natural then. This is clear from the meaning of 'travelling on' as a further stage or a continuation, dealt with in 4375, 4554, in this case towards aspects more interior still, and from the representation of 'Israel' here as the celestial-spiritual of the natural, dealt with in 4286. What the celestial-spiritual of the natural is has been explained already, namely the good of truth, or the good of charity arrived at through the truth of faith. Little knowledge exists in the world of what an advance towards more interior aspects is. It is not an advance into knowledge of facts, for that kind of advance is often made without any advancement towards interior things, and more often still is accompanied by a movement away from these. Neither is it an advance in maturity of judgement, for this too is sometimes accompanied by a movement away from interior things. Nor yet is it an advance made into cognitions of interior truth, for these count for nothing if a person does not have any affection for them. An advance towards interior things is an advance nearer to heaven and the Lord made by means of the cognitions of truth which have been implanted in an affection for them, and so is an advance made by means of the affections.

[2] What an advance towards interior things is like is not apparent to anyone in the world; but in the next life it is plain to see. In that life it is an advance out of a kind of haze into light; for compared with others people who are concerned solely with more external things live in a haze, and are also seen by the angels to do so, whereas those who have a concern for more internal things dwell in light, and consequently in wisdom since the light there is wisdom. And what is amazing, those living in the haze cannot see that those in light are in light, whereas those dwelling in light can see that those in the haze are in a haze. Since the subject is the advance made by the Lord's Divine towards more interior aspects, Jacob is called Israel here; but where that advance is not the subject he is called Jacob, as in verse 20 immediately before this, and in the final verse of this chapter.