DLW 426 - Who loves useful service?

DLW 426

Spiritual and celestial love

is love for the neighbor and love toward the Lord,

while natural and sensual love

is love of the world and love of self.

By love for the neighbor

we mean a love of useful services,

and by love toward the Lord

we mean a love of performing useful services . . ..

These loves are spiritual and celestial for the reason

that to love useful services

and to perform them from a love of them

is divorced from a person's love of his own self-interest.

For one who loves useful services spiritually

regards not himself

but others apart from himself,

being affected by a concern for their welfare.

. . . even though a person does not sensibly perceive

whether the useful services he performs

are for the sake of the useful services

or whether they are for the sake of himself,

or in other words,

whether the useful services are spiritual

or whether they are merely natural,

still he can know it

from considering whether he thinks evils are sins or not.

If he thinks they are sins,

and on that account does not do them,

then the useful services he performs are spiritual.

And when the same person

refrains from sins from an aversion to them,

he also begins to perceive sensibly in himself then

a love of useful services for the sake of the useful services,

and this because of the spiritual delight he finds in them.