In the Christmas story, the wise men bring gifts to the Lord: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The gold is listed first, because it is the inmost - signifying good, e.g. the good that we do when we love the Lord and the neighbor.

The frankincense is next. It signifies rational truth, which is the set of true ideas that we know, not about external things like cars or cooking, but about what is really good, and what is really true.

These rational truths are built on earlier knowledges that we learn, before we have really made them our own. Those early knowledges about spiritual things - often learned in childhood - are represented by the myrrh.

In a way, these gifts are really a reciprocation. We can't actually give them to the Lord until the Lord has given them to us. We necessarily start out by learning and doing the Lord's law (myrrh). The Lord can then call up those memories to become rational truths (frankincense). Then, over time, and with effort, those truths can be transformed into good (gold). The wise men from the East had gone through this process of learning and becoming vessels that could receive truths and goods. They were able to perceive the Lord's birth, and find him, and bring gifts to him.

7236. 'According to their armies' means in accordance with the genera and species of good within truths. This is clear from the meaning of 'an army' as the truths that constitute faith, dealt with in 3448. But forms of good in the spiritual Church are essentially nothing other than truths, since truths are called forms of good when people lead their lives in accordance with those truths. When therefore the word 'army' is used to refer to those within the spiritual Church who have been regenerated, forms of the good of truth or forms of good within truths are meant. The reason why it says that the children of Israel were to be led out 'according to their armies' is that it is speaking about the time when they will come out of Egypt - in the internal sense when they will come out of conflicts with falsities, thus after they have performed spiritual military service. The proper way to understand the command that they were to be led out 'according to their armies' is that they were to be distinguished in keeping with forms of good within truths, thus were to be divided into groups according to different kinds of good. And this was done in order that they might represent the Lord's kingdom in the heavens. There all have been divided up and allotted a place in the Grand Man in accordance with both the genus and the species of each one's good.

[2] The fact that all in heaven are divided up in accordance with their different kinds of good shows how manifold and how varied good is; it is so varied that good is never the same with one person as it is with another. Indeed if millions of people went on being multiplied forever, one person's good would still not be like another's, just as one person's face is not like another's; and in heaven furthermore good is what shapes angels' faces. The reason for the unending variety is that every form has distinct and varied constituent parts; for if two were exactly alike they could not be two but a single unit. This also explains why in the natural order no one thing ever exists which is like another in every respect.

[3] What makes good so varied is truth; when this is joined to good it gives the good specific character. One reason why truth is so manifold and varied that it can make good so greatly varied is that truths are countless, and interior truths take on a different form from exterior ones. Another reason is that false impressions gained by the outward senses attach themselves, and also false ideas that are products of evil desires. Since therefore truths are so countless one can see that when they are joined to good just as many variations are produced, so many that one form of good can never be the same as another. This is plain to anyone who knows that from merely twenty-three letters joined together in different combinations the words contained in all languages can be produced; indeed even if there were thousands of languages, an unending variety of combinations could be produced. So what will be the product of varieties numbering thousands and millions, as truths do? Confirmation of the existence of those varieties is also contained in the proverb in general use in the world that there are as many opinions as there are heads, that is, ideas are as varied as the number of people there are.