13. (vi) IF THERE HAD NOT BEEN ONE GOD, THE UNIVERSE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN CREATED AND KEPT IN EXISTENCE.

The reason the oneness of God can be deduced from the creation of the universe is that the universe is a single system coherently organised from beginning to end, and dependent upon God as the body is on the soul. The universe was so created that God could be omnipresent, and keep all its particulars under His guidance, and keep it perpetually together as a unit, and so preserve it. This too is why Jehovah God says that He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, Alpha and Omega (Isaiah 44:6; Revelation 1:8, 17) and elsewhere that He does everything, spreads out the heavens, and stretches out the earth, of Himself (Isaiah 44:24). This mighty system which is called the universe is a single unit coherently organised from beginning to end, because God had one end in view in creating it, to create from the human race a heaven of angels. The means to this end are all the things of which the world is composed; for he who wills the end, wills also the means.

[2] The man therefore who contemplates the world as a piece of work containing the means to that end can contemplate the created universe as a single coherent unit, and he can see that the world is an assemblage of services structured for the benefit of the human race, to form a heaven of angels. The Divine Love cannot have any other end in view than from His Divine to make human beings eternally blessed; and His Divine Wisdom cannot produce anything but services designed to fulfil that end. By considering the world from this universal point of view every wise man can grasp that the Creator of the universe is one, and that His essence is Love and Wisdom. Consequently there is no detail in it which does not conceal services either nearly or distantly designed to benefit human beings. Their food is provided by the fruits of the earth and also by animals, their clothing from the same sources.

[3] One of the astonishing things is that those insignificant insects called silk-worms dress both women and men in silk and adorn them magnificently, from queens and kings down to maids and servants; and those insignificant insects, the bees, supply wax to illuminate splendidly churches and halls. Those who consider one by one facts about the world instead of the whole assemblage of ends, causal means and effects, and those who do not attribute creation to Divine Love acting by means of Divine Wisdom, cannot see that the universe is the handiwork of one God, and that He dwells in each service because He is in the end. For everyone who is involved in an end is also involved in the means, for the end which activates and controls the means is buried deep within all the means.

[4] Those who regard the universe not as the handiwork of God, nor as the dwelling-place of His Love and Wisdom, but as the handiwork of nature and the dwelling-place of the sun's heat and light, shut off the higher regions of their mind from God, and expose the lower regions to the devil. As a result they exchange their human nature for that of a wild beast, indeed they not only think themselves to be no better than animals, but actually become animals. They become foxes in cunning, wolves in ferocity, leopards in guile, tigers in savagery, crocodiles, snakes, screech owls and other night-birds, each with its own nature. People like this in the spiritual world actually look from a distance like those wild beasts, for this is how their love of evil shows itself.

355. Anyone can decide for Divinity on the basis of observations of nature by looking at what we know about bees. Bees know how to collect wax from plants and flowers and how to extract honey, how to build cells like little homes and arrange them in a form like a city, with open spaces for entrance and exit. They scent at a distance the flowers and plants from which they collect wax for their dwellings and honey for their food. Laden with them they fly back to their own territory, to their own hive. In this way, they provide themselves with food and shelter for the coming winter just as though they saw it coming. They appoint a female leader as queen to be the source of their progeny and they build a kind of hall above her, surrounding her with servants; and when the time of birth has arrived, she goes from cell to cell with her retinue of servants and lays her eggs, with the attendant crew sealing the cells to protect them from the air. This provides them with a new generation.

Later, when this generation has reached the age when it can do the same, it is driven out of its home, and once it has been driven out it first gathers itself and then forms a swarm so that its company will not be dispersed, and flies off in search of a home. About autumn, too, the useless drones are taken out and shorn of their wings so that they cannot return and use up food to which they contribute nothing. There is much more, which enables us to conclude that it is for the useful function they perform for the human race and from an inflow from the spiritual world that they have a form of government like ours on earth and even like angels' in heaven. Can anyone furnished with rationality fail to see that things like this do not come from the physical world? What does the sun, the source of nature, have in common with a government that rivals and reflects heavenly government?

On the basis of all this and of other miracles among simple animals, people who acknowledge and worship nature decide for nature, while people who acknowledge and worship God decide for Divinity on the very same basis. That is, a spiritually-minded person sees spiritual forces in these events, and an earthly-minded person sees physical forces in these events. We see [reflections of] our own nature.

As for me, things like this have been testimonies to a spiritual inflow into nature, of the spiritual world into the physical world, an inflow, therefore, from the Lord's divine wisdom. Ask yourself seriously whether you could even think analytically about any form of government, any civil law, any moral virtue, or any spiritual truth unless Divinity were flowing in with its wisdom through the spiritual world. In my own case, I never could and I still cannot. I have actually been constantly watching this inflow perceptibly, tangibly, for nineteen years, so I am saying this on the basis of evidence.