From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #52

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52. Everything in the universe was created by the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. The universe, from beginning to end and from first to last, is so full of divine love and wisdom that you could call it divine love and wisdom in an image. This is clearly evidenced by the way everything in the universe answers to something in us. Every single thing that comes to light in the created universe has such an equivalence with every single thing in us that you could call us a kind of universe as well. There is a correspondence of our affective side and its consequent thought with everything in the animal kingdom, a correspondence of our volitional side and its consequent discernment with everything in the plant kingdom, and a correspondence of our outermost life with everything in the mineral kingdom.

This kind of correspondence is not apparent to anyone in our physical world, but it is apparent to observant people in the spiritual world. We find in this latter world all the things that occur in the three kingdoms of our physical world, and they reflect the feelings and thoughts of the people who are there--the feelings that come from their volition and the thoughts that come from their discernment--as well as the outermost aspects of their life. Both their feelings and their thoughts are visible around them looking much like the things we see in the created universe, though we see them in less perfect representations.

From this it is obvious to angels that the created universe is an image depicting the Divine-Human One and that it is his love and wisdom that are presented, in image, in the universe. It is not that the created universe is the Divine-Human One: rather, it comes from him; for nothing whatever in the universe is intrinsic substance and form or intrinsic life or intrinsic love and wisdom. We are not "intrinsic persons." It all comes from God, who is the intrinsic person, the intrinsic wisdom and love, and the intrinsic form and substance. Whatever has intrinsic existence is uncreated and infinite; while what comes from it, possessing nothing within itself that has intrinsic existence, is created and finite. This latter presents an image of the One from whom it derives its existence and manifestation.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #89

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89. From the sun arising from Divine love and wisdom emanate heat and light. The spiritual world where angels and spirits dwell has in it heat and light just like the natural world where people dwell. Moreover the heat is also felt as heat and the light seen as light in a similar way. But still heat and light in the spiritual world and heat and light in the natural world differ so much that, as said above, they have nothing in common. They differ from each other as something animate and something inanimate. Heat in the spiritual world is, in itself, animate, and so, too, light, whereas heat in the natural world is, in itself, inanimate, and so, too, light. For heat and light in the spiritual world emanate from a sun which is pure love, while heat and light in the natural world emanate from a sun which is nothing but fire; and love is animate, and Divine love is life itself, while fire is inanimate, and solar fire is lifelessness itself. We can call it that because it has not the least speck of life in it.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.