241. Inner Meaning
THE earliest people, who were heavenly, did actually see everything they looked at on earth and in the world around them, but their thoughts were devoted to the heavenly or divine attribute it symbolized or represented. 1
Vision was just a means. So their manner of speaking reflected the same trait.
We can all see what that trait was like from our own experience. When we pay close attention to the meaning of a speaker's words, we hear the words, but it is as if we do not. We seem to catch only the meaning. One who thinks more profoundly does not even notice the meaning of the words but something more universal within.
Ensuing generations of the earliest church, however — the ones discussed in the present verses — were not like their forebears. They loved the worldly and earthly realm, so when they looked at it, their minds clung to it. Their thoughts about this realm were the starting point for their thoughts about the things of heaven and of God. In this way the sensory experience came to be the primary force, not the mere tool it was for their predecessors. And when the worldly and earthly realm becomes the primary force, people base their reasoning about heavenly matters on it and blind themselves.
Our own experience can again show us what this method was like. When we fail to pay attention to the meaning of a speaker's words but concentrate on the words themselves, we gather little of the meaning and still less of any universal significance within the meaning. Sometimes from a single word, or even from a single point of grammar, we leap to judgment about the whole of a speaker's message.
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