wisdom and divine life. Our earthly self evaluates the Word on the basis
of style and does not see those qualities in its style. Nevertheless, the style
of the Word is the divine style itself. There is no comparison between it
and all other styles, no matter how sublime and excellent they may seem.
The nature of the Word’s style is that it has holiness in every meaning
and every word; in fact, in some passages there is holiness in the very let-
ters. As a result, the Word connects us to the Lord and opens heaven.
There are two things that emanate from the Lord: divine love and
divine wisdom (or what amounts to the same thing, divine goodness
and divine truth). In its essence the Word is each of these. Because the
Word connects us to the Lord and opens heaven, as I just said, therefore
the Word fills us with love for what is good and wisdom about what is
true. It fills our will with love for what is good and our intellect with wis-
dom about what is true. This is how we receive life through the Word.
It is very important to realize, however, that the only people who
receive life from the Word are those who read it for two purposes: to draw
divine truths from it because it is the fountain of truth; and to apply to
their life the divine truths they have drawn. The opposite happens to peo-
ple who read the Word only with the purpose of increasing their status
and gaining the world [see Matthew 16 : 26 ; Mark 8 : 36 ; Luke 9 : 25 ].192 Any of us who are unaware that the Word has a spiritual meaning,
like a soul within its body, have nothing else to judge the Word by except
its literal meaning. Yet the literal meaning is like a case that contains the
precious objects of the spiritual meaning. When we are unaware of the
spiritual meaning, we cannot judge the divine holiness of the Word any
more than we could judge a precious stone on the basis of the ore that
envelops it, which sometimes looks very ordinary. Or imagine a case
made out of jasper, lapis lazuli, amianthus (also called mica), or agate
that contains rows of diamonds, rubies, sardonyxes, oriental topazes, and
so on. If we do not realize it contains gems, it is no wonder we do not
value the case any more than the worth of the material it is visibly made
of. It is the same with the Word’s literal meaning.
Therefore to prevent people from doubting that the Word is divine
and most holy, the Lord has revealed to me its inner meaning, a meaning
that is essentially spiritual and exists within its outer, earthly meaning like
a soul in a body. The inner meaning is the spirit that brings the letter to
life. The inner meaning has the power to prove even to our earthly self that
the Word is divine and holy—provided we are willing to be convinced.