5. From this point on, the spiritual meaning will be given only to peo-
ple who have genuine truths from the Lord.
6. The Word has amazing qualities because of its spiritual meaning.These points will now be unfolded one by one.194 1. What the spiritual meaning is.The spiritual meaning is not the
meaning that comes to light from the Word’s literal meaning when some-
one examines and explains the Word in order to support some dogma of
the church. That meaning could be called “the literal and ecclesiastical”
meaning of the Word. The spiritual meaning is not apparent in the lit-
eral meaning. It lies inside it the way our soul is in our body, or our intel-
lect’s thoughts are in our eyes, or our feelings of love are in our face.
The spiritual meaning is the primary thing that makes the Word spir-
itual, not only for people but also for angels. The Word communicates
with the heavens through that meaning. Because the Word is inwardly
spiritual, it was written entirely in correspondences. Anything that is
written in correspondences has an outermost meaning that is written in a
style like the one used by the prophets, by the Gospel writers, and in the
Book of Revelation. Although that style appears poor, nevertheless it
conceals within itself divine wisdom and all angelic wisdom.
For an explanation of correspondence, go to the work Heaven and
Hell,published in London in 1758 , and look at the treatment of the cor-
respondence of everything in heaven with everything in the human being
(§§ 87 – 102 ) and the correspondence of heaven with everything earthly
(§§ 103 – 115 ). You will also be able to look more extensively at correspon-
dences in the examples from the Word I am going to present below
[§§ 196 – 199 ].
195 There is a heavenly divine influence, a spiritual divine influence, and
an earthly divine influence that emanate from the Lord, one after the
other. Whatever emanates from the Lord’s divine love is called heavenly
divine influence; all of it is good. Whatever emanates from his divine
wisdom is called spiritual divine influence; all of it is true. His earthly
divine influence comes from the other two influences; it is a combination
of them on the lowest level.
The angels of the [Lord’s] heavenly kingdom, who constitute the
third or highest heaven, are bathed in the divine influence emanating
from the Lord that is called heavenly, for they have a love for what is
good from the Lord. The angels of the Lord’s spiritual kingdom, who
constitute the second or middle heaven, are in the divine influence