teach they hang these packs in front of their faces like some ruminatory
stomach, squeezing and regurgitating out of them things they know will
feed their listeners.
Passion in preaching is just an intensity in the earthly self. If passion
has a love for truth inside it, then it is like the sacred fire that flowed into
the apostles, about which it says in Acts:
There appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one rested on
each one of them. As a result they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
(Acts 2 : 3 , 4 )
If, on the other hand, there is a love for falsity inside that passion or
intensity, then it is like fire smoldering inside a piece of wood that bursts
into flame and burns the house down.
You who deny that the Word is holy and the Lord divine, please take
your pack off your back and open it (as you freely do when you are at
home). You will see.
When they enter the church, and even more when they climb the
stairs into the pulpit, I know that the people meant by Lucifer in Isaiah—
the people of Babylon, especially those who named themselves the Soci-
ety of Jesus—are overcome with passion. For many of them that passion
comes from a hellish love. They raise their voices more vehemently and
draw sighs from their chests more deeply than those whose passion comes
from a heavenly love.
There are also two other spiritual actions of the Lord in members of
the clergy; see § 155 below.
The church is still hardly aware that in all our desire, thought, action, 147
and speech, there is an inside and an outside. From early childhood we
are taught to speak from the outside, no matter how the inside disagrees,
which leads to pretense, flattery, and hypocrisy. People are double. The
only simple people are those whose outer selves think and speak, and
desire and act, from their inner selves. These people are in fact referred to
as “simple” in the Word; for example, Luke 8 : 15 , 11 : 34 , and elsewhere,
even though they are wiser than double people.
Every created thing has two-fold and three-fold design, as the human
body shows. Every nerve in the body is made of fibers, and every fiber is
made of fibrils. Every muscle consists of bundles of fibers, and each bun-
dle consists of individual motor fibers. Every artery consists of three lay-
ers of sheaths. It is the same in the human mind—its spiritual organic
structure is the same. As I said before [§§ 34 , 42 , 69 ], the structure of the
human mind is divided into three different levels. The highest or inmost
§147 the holy spirit & divine action 209