True Christian Religion # 364
364. (i) The Lord flows into every human being with all His Divine love, all His Divine wisdom, and so with all His Divine life.
We read in the Book of Creation that man was created an image of God, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 1:27; 2:7). This description means that he is an organ of life, not life itself. For God could not have created another like Himself; if He could have done so, there would be as many gods as there are people. Nor could He create life, just as neither can light be created. But He could create man to be a form for life to act on, just as He created the eye to be a form for light to act on. Nor could God, nor can He, divide His essence, since it is one and indivisible. So since God alone is life, it follows indubitably that God uses His own life to give life to every human being. Without that quickening man would be as regards flesh nothing but a sponge, and as regards bones nothing but a skeleton, no more alive than a clock, which is kept running by a pendulum together with a weight or a spring. Since this is so, it also follows that God flows in with every person with all His Divine life, that is, with all His Divine love and Divine wisdom. These two make up His Divine life (39-40 above); for the Divine cannot be divided.
[2] However, the manner in which God flows in with all His Divine life can be grasped as somewhat resembling the way the sun of the world flows in with all its essence, which is heat and light, into every tree, into every shrub and flower, into every stone, ordinary as well as precious, so that each single object draws its ration from this common inflow; but the sun does not split up its light and heat, giving part to this object and part to that. It is much the same with the sun of heaven, which radiates Divine love as heat and Divine wisdom as light. These two flow into human minds, just as the heat and light of the sun of the world flow into human bodies, giving them life depending on the nature of their form; the form of each takes from the common inflow what it needs. The following saying of the Lord can be applied to this:
Your Father makes His sun rise upon the wicked and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous, Matthew 5:45.
[3] Also, the Lord is omnipresent, and where He is present, there He is with His whole essence. It is impossible for Him to take anything away from that essence, so as to give a part to one and another part to another, but He gives it in its entirety, enabling a person to take a little or much. He says too that He has His dwelling with those who keep His commandments, and that the faithful are in Him and He is in them. In short, everything is full of God, and from that fulness each takes his own share. Everything held in common is like this, for instance, the atmospheres or the oceans. The atmosphere is the same on the smallest as it is on the largest scale. It does not assign a part of itself to a person's breathing, to a bird's flying, or to the sails of a ship, or the sails of a wind-mill; but each takes from it its own portion and uses for itself as much as is enough. It is also similar with a granary full of wheat; the owner each day takes from it his own rations, and it is not the granary that distributes them.
Genesis 11
1
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3
And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5
And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6
And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8
So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
10
These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:
11
And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
12
And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah:
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And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
14
And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:
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And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
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And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:
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And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
18
And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:
19
And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.
20
And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug:
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And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters.
22
And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor:
23
And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
24
And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah:
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And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters.
26
And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
27
Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
28
And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
29
And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
30
But Sarai was barren; she had no child.
31
And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.
32
And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
