904. That 'God spoke to Noah' means the Lord's presence with the member of the Church becomes clear from the internal sense of the Word. The Lord speaks to everybody, for whatever good and truth a person wills and thinks comes from the Lord. With everyone there are at least two evil spirits and two angels. The former activate his evils whereas the latter instill goods and truths. Every good or truth that angels instill is the Lord's; in this way the Lord is constantly speaking to man, though quite differently from one person to the next. To people who allow themselves to be carried away by evil spirits the Lord speaks as though He were not present, or so far away that He can hardly be said to be speaking. But to those who are being led by the Lord, the Lord speaks as one who is quite present. This becomes clear enough from the fact that nobody can possibly think of anything good and true except from the Lord.

[2] The Lord's presence is relative to the state of love towards the neighbour and of faith present in a person. It is in love towards the neighbour that the Lord is present, for He is present in all good, and not so much in so-called faith that is devoid of love. Faith devoid of love and charity is something severed or disjoined. Wherever conjunction exists there has to be a conjoining agency, which is exclusively love and charity. This may become clear to anyone from the fact that the Lord has compassion on everybody, loves everyone, and wishes to make everyone eternally happy. A person therefore who is devoid of the kind of love that leads him to have compassion on others, to love them, and to wish to make them happy, cannot be joined to the Lord because he is not at all like Him, and is in no sense the image of Him. Looking to the Lord by means of that which goes by the name of faith while hating the neighbour amounts not only to standing a long way off, but also to having between himself and the Lord a hell-like chasm into which the person would fall if he wished to go any nearer. For it is hatred towards the neighbour that constitutes that intervening hell-like chasm.

[3] The Lord is present with a person the moment he starts to love the neighbour. It is in love that the Lord is present, and to the extent that a person has love the Lord is present. And to the extent that the Lord is present He speaks to man. No one knows anything other than that he thinks from himself. Yet he possesses not one single idea of thought, not even the shred of an idea, from himself. Rather that which is evil and false he possesses through evil spirits from hell, and that which is good and true through angels from the Lord. Such is influx, the channel by which a person's life comes and by which consequently his soul interacts with the body. All these considerations make clear what 'God spoke to Noah' means. 'Saying to someone' means one thing, as in Genesis 1:29; 3:13-14, 17; 4:6, 9, 15; 6:13; 7:1, while 'speaking to someone' means another. Here speaking to Noah' means His being present, for the subject now is the regenerate person, who has had charity conferred on him.

5695. 'And he washed his face' means that it took steps to ensure this. This is clear from the meaning of 'washing his face' here as taking steps to ensure that it remained unseen; for Joseph's face was washed, and so steps were taken by him to ensure that his tears remained unseen. The full implications of this will in the Lord's Divine mercy be stated further on; but let something be said at this point about the correspondence of a person's face with his interiors. His face is what is external serving to represent his interiors. For the face has been designed in such a way that a person's interiors may be seen there as if in a mirror that reflects things in a representative fashion; it has been so designed that another may know its owner's attitude of mind towards himself, so that the owner reveals his sentiments when he speaks not only through his speech but also through his face. This was the kind of face possessed by the most ancient people who belonged to the celestial Church, and it is the kind that all angels have. Angels have no wish to conceal from others anything they think, for they think solely of their neighbour's well-being. Nor do they have any thought hidden away which desires their neighbour's well-being for some selfish reason of their own.

[2] But those in hell, as long as they are not seen in the light of heaven, have a face other than the one that corresponds to their interiors. The reason for this is that during their lifetime they bore witness by means of their face to charity towards the neighbour solely for the sake of their own position and gain; they did not desire their neighbour's well being except insofar as it was identical with their own. Consequently the expression on their face is at variance with their interiors. Sometimes that variance is so great that feelings of enmity, hatred, and revenge, and the desire to murder are inwardly present, yet their face is set in such a way that love towards their neighbour is beaming from it. From this one may see how far people's interiors disagree at the present day with their exteriors, and why they resort to those kinds of practices to serve their own interests.