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Ten

  

In most places in the Word, "ten" represents "all," or in some cases "many" or "much." The Ten Commandments represent all the guidance we get from the Lord in life; the ten horns on the beast of Revelation represent all power of falsity; the ten virgins with lamps in Matthew 25 represent all people of the church.

Yet in other places, ten, or especially a "tenth," signifies representing remnants, or tiny scraps of goodness preserved for the future. These can be the remnants of a church -- a few good people that can be built up into a new church. Or they can be tiny subconscious memories of love and joy which the Lord stores in each of us in early childhood, feelings He can use later to draw us toward a life of goodness and affection.

These two meanings seem nearly opposite, but they're actually not. Love is whole and indivisible, so that the tiniest feeling buried inside someone contains all the elements of the love it can become. In a similar way, a remnant of a church that has preserved that church's knowledge has everything it needs to grow into a new church. In a sense, then, those remnants are indeed "all," they're just a version of "all" that is still in a state of potential.

Из Сведенборгових дела

 

Arcana Coelestia # 5928

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5928. 'And Benjamin wept on his neck' means an acceptance and reciprocal response. This is clear from the fact that it is an action repeated in return, and is therefore an acceptance and reciprocal response. As regards the joining of good to truths, and the responsive joining of truths to good, it should be recognized that when good flows into truths and joins them to itself it does so by pouring good into them from itself and thereby attaching them to itself, and then the two are joined together. Now because when this happens the truths receive life they appear after that to act independently when they act in response, or react to the good. Nevertheless the truths do not act independently but are moved by the good flowing into the good which was added from itself to the truths. It is like the blood vessels in a living body. The truths are like those vessels without blood in, them, whereas the good is like the blood itself. When the blood pours itself into the vessels which previously were empty it activates them. The vessels respond, because from the blood they receive motion and so to speak life. From all this one may see what is implied by the joining of good to truths, and the responsive joining of truths to good.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.