SS 18, 20 , 26 - The Spiritual Meaning of the Word

SS 18

The spiritual meaning is what causes the Word
to be Divinely inspired and holy in every word.
People in the church say that the Word is holy,
and this because Jehovah God spoke it.
But because its holiness is not apparent
from the letter alone,
therefore someone who once doubts
its holiness on that account,
later finds, when he reads the Word,
many things in it to confirm himself in that doubt.
For he asks himself then, “Is this holy? Is this Divine?”

Therefore, to keep this kind of thinking
from flowing in and prevailing among many people,
and so causing the conjunction of the Lord
with the church where the Word is to perish,
it has pleased the Lord now to reveal the spiritual sense,
in order to make known in what
the holiness in the Word lies.

SS 20

Every single thing found in nature
corresponds to something spiritual.
. . . For people who lived [in very ancient times],
the study of correspondences was the supreme study,
and so universal
that all their manuscripts and books
were written in terms of correspondences.

SS 26 [1-2]

The Word’s spiritual meaning is granted after this
only to someone who possesses
genuine truths from the Lord.
The reason is this:
because no one can see the spiritual meaning
unless he is enabled to do so by the Lord alone,
and unless he possesses genuine truths from Him.
For the Word’s spiritual meaning
deals with the Lord alone and His kingdom,
and that sense is the one possessed
by His angels in heaven.
It is, indeed, His Divine truth there.
It is possible for a person to violate that truth
if he has a knowledge of correspondences
and tries to use it
to explore the Word’s spiritual meaning
in accord with his own intelligence.
Applying some of the correspondences he knows,
he may twist its meaning
and use it to confirm even falsity,
which would be to do injury to Divine truth,
and to heaven as well.
If someone tries to lay open that sense on his own,
therefore, and not from the Lord,
heaven is closed,
and when heaven is closed,
a person either sees nothing,
or he becomes spiritually irrational.

There is also another reason.
Because the Lord teaches everyone by means of the Word,
and teaches him in accordance with the truths
the person already possesses
and does not infuse new truths directly,
therefore if the person is without any Divine truths,
or if he possesses only a few truths
and is caught up at the same time in falsities,
it would be possible for him to use those falsities
to falsify the truths —
as is also commonly known to be the case
with every heretic as regards just the Word’s literal sense.

Consequently, to keep people
from entering into the Word’s spiritual meaning,
or from twisting
the genuine truth found in that sense,
the Lord has set protections,
meant in the Word by cherubim.