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standing belong to your spirit. And the Lord's spiritual sun warms your spirit with love, and enlightens your spirit with truth, as the natural sun warms your body with heat, and illuminates it with light.

The Lord is a Divine Man. You read in the first chapter of Genesis, twenty-sixth verse, that "God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Men derive all that makes them men from the Lord, and from their being in the image and likeness of Him, who, alone, is perfect and infinite Man. You will, at some future time, learn and understand more of this, and of the appearance of the Lord in the heavens. Now, I will only say, that He is not often seen otherwise than as a sun in the heaven, which is constantly shining there, and pouring out heat and light, in which are love and truth, and from which the angels live, and love, and think, and know that they do so.

You will remember, therefore, that the sun corresponds to the Lord; that the heat of the sun corresponds to love, and that its light corresponds to truth.

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Let us now see what the moon corresponds to. I do not know what progress you have made in the study of astronomy; but I suppose you know that the moon is inhabitable, like our earth, and that it shines upon us because the light of the sun falls upon it, and comes from it to us. The moon gives no heat to us whatever. It has none but what it Neither has it any light of But the light of the sun comes from it

receives from the sun.

its own.

to us.

Now

you

will remember that heat corresponds

but

to love, and light corresponds to truth. Both heat and light come to us from the sun, the heat of the sun is the chief thing which comes from it. That is, the heat of the sun gives warmth and life to all this natural world; and this is more essential than light, though both are great and immeasurable blessings. For if all warmth were taken away from you, you would instantly die; but if light were taken away, you might continue to live, however unhappily.

From this it comes, that the principal correspondence of the sun is to love; and the corres

pondence of the moon is to truth. And when they are mentioned in the Bible, these are their respective significations.

Let us now see if we can carry this correspondence a little farther. And to do this, I must tell you what charity is and what faith is.

When you receive the divine love into your wills, and do not pervert it into self-love by your own evils, but let it flow forth in your affections ́and lives, then you lead a life of charity. Charity is the love of the neighbor, derived from a reception of divine love from the Lord.

If you permit the divine light to flow into your understandings, and do not obscure it by your own falsities, but permit it to illuminate your minds; and if you do not turn away from the truths this light reveals, but receive and believe, and love them, then you have faith. Faith consists of the understanding, reception and affectionate belief of truths.

Just now we said that the sun and the moon, when they are mentioned together in the Scriptures, signify, from their correspondence, love and truth. Now, you can see, that they also signify charity

and faith; for charity comes from love in the will, and faith comes from truth in the understanding.

Let us now see what the stars correspond to. The stars are brilliant points of light. They are suns, so far off, that no perceivable heat comes from them to us, but their light does come, and so we see them. They are not suns to and for us, because they give us no heat; neither are they as moons, because they shine with their own light. Therefore they do not correspond to and signify love, or charity; neither do they truth, or faith. But they correspond to and signify knowledges, or truths known. If you have studied, perceived, and gained possession of any truth, and know it, then that truth becomes a star in your mind; and you may gather these knowledges, one after another, until you have very many of them, and the sky of your mind is filled with stars.

and you

While your affections are very warm, love very strongly, it is as if the sun shone warm upon you, and you think only of what you are desiring, or loving, and not of your knowledges; and then they retire from sight, like the stars at

noon-day. But when your mind grows cooler, and your affections or desires fade away, and you cease thinking only of them, then it is as when the sun sets; and these knowledges may come into view, and shine forth like the stars in darkness.

We have seen now the correspondence of the sun, moon and stars. Before we endeavor to see other instances and examples of correspondence, let us apply these to the words of the Bible, and to our conduct and actions. And this we will

do in the next lessons.

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