862. The symbolism of it happened at the end of forty days as the time that the previous state lasted and the point at which the next commenced is established by the symbolism of forty. In a passage that, referring to times of trial, mentions forty days and forty nights, forty is a symbol for the length that times of trial last (§730). Here, because the subject is the state that follows struggles, it says forty days but not nights. The reason the text speaks only of days is that charity now begins to appear. The Word compares charity to the day and calls it day, while the early faith that is not yet very tightly bound up with charity it compares to the night, and calls night. An example is Genesis 1:16; and there are other passages.

Another reason that the Word refers to faith as night is that it obtains its light from charity, as the moon does from the sun. So the Word compares faith to the moon and calls it a moon, and it compares love, or charity, to the sun and calls it the sun.

Forty days, and the length of time they symbolize, relate both to what comes before and to what comes after, which is why it says at the end of forty days. In this way, they symbolize the duration of the previous state and the commencement of the state presently under discussion.

Now begins a description of the second state following periods of struggle for the people in this church.

590. The fact that regret has to do with wisdom, and heartfelt grief with love, cannot be explained clearly to people's understanding. It can only be explained in terms of human experience and so in terms of appearances.

Every concept in our thinking contains something of both intellect and will; to put it another way, it contains something of thought and of love for that thought. If an idea does not draw to some extent on the will, or on love in the will, it is not an idea, because without love we cannot think. There is a kind of marriage, perpetual and inviolable, between thought and will. So the contents of the will or the objects of love in the will are present within the ideas that make up our thinking, or are at least attached to them. From this human experience it seems more or less possible to know (or rather to grasp in some measure) what lies at the heart of the Lord's mercy: wisdom and love.

As a result, the prophets (especially Isaiah) almost everywhere use two terms for every concept, one involving a spiritual quality and the other a heavenly one. ¹ The spiritual aspect of the Lord's mercy is wisdom and its heavenly aspect is love.

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