47. A proper perception of these matters may show that the universe is a coherent whole from first to last, since it contains ends, causes and effects bound up in an indissoluble knot. Since every love has an end in view, and all wisdom is the advancement of the end through mediate causes, and through these proceeding to effects, which are the purposes it serves, it follows too that the universe contains the Divine Love, the Divine Wisdom and services, and is thus a coherent whole from first to last. Every wise man can study as in a mirror the fact that the universe is composed of a perpetual succession of services brought about by wisdom and initiated by love, if he forms for himself any general idea about the creation of the universe, and examines its details. For the details adapt themselves to the general pattern, and this arranges them into a consonant form. Many illustrations of this will be given in the following pages.

483. The names which follow - Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah - mean just so many Churches, the first and chief one of which was called Man. The chief characteristic of these Churches was perception, and therefore the differences between the Churches of that period were primarily differences in perception. On the subject of perception, let it be mentioned here that nothing else reigns in the whole of heaven but the perception of good and truth. Its nature defies description, and includes differences so countless that no one community's perception is exactly like that found in another. Perceptions there fall into genera and species. Those genera are countless, and so too are the species within every genus. These in the Lord's Divine mercy will be dealt with later on. Since there are countless genera, and countless species within every genus, and even more countless sub-species to each species, it becomes clear how very little indeed the world of today knows about celestial and spiritual matters. It does not even know what perception is, and if told, it does not believe that it even exists. The same applies to other matters too.

[2] The Most Ancient Church represented the Lord's celestial kingdom, even as to each variation of perception in its genus and species. But because nobody nowadays knows what perception is, not even the most general aspect of it, facts of a wholly strange and meaningless nature would therefore be imparted if the genera and species of the perceptions of those Churches were stated. They were divided into houses, families, and nations, and used to contract marriages within their own houses and families, in order that genera and species of perception might be established and be derived from parents altogether as reproductions of innate dispositions. This also is why members of the Most Ancient Church dwell together in heaven.