DLW 1
Love is a person's life.
People know that love exists,
but they do
not know what love is.
. . . This
the wise person may perceive
from considering the following
proposition:
If you take away any impulse having to do with love,
can
you form any thought?
Or can you perform any action?
Is it not the case
that as the affection belonging to love cools,
in the same measure
thought, speech and action cool?
And the warmer the affection grows,
the
warmer they grow?
Still, the wise person perceives this
not from
any concept that love is a person's life,
but from his empirical
observation that it is so.
DLW 4
God alone, thus the Lord,
is love itself, because He is life itself;
and angels and people are recipients of life.
. . . the Lord, who is God of the universe,
is
uncreated and infinite,
while people and angels are created and finite;
and because the Lord is uncreated and infinite,
He is the underlying
that-which-is or being itself
which is called Jehovah,
and is life itself or life in itself.
From Him who is
uncreated,
infinite, being itself and life itself,
no one can be created directly,
because the Divine is one and indivisible.
Rather he must be created
out
of elements already created and finite,
so formed that the Divine can
be present in them.
Because people and angels are such creations,
they are recipients of
life.
Consequently, if anyone allows himself
to be so led astray in his
thinking
as to suppose he is not a recipient of life,
but is life,
he
cannot be averted from the thought that he is God.
DLW 5
. . . because the Lord is love in its very essence,
or Divine love,
He appears
to angels in heaven as the sun,
and that from that sun emanate warmth
and light,
the warmth emanating from it being,
in its essence, love,
and
the light emanating from it being,
in its essence, wisdom.
Moreover, to
the degree
that angels are receptive of that spiritual warmth
and that
spiritual light,
to the same degree
they are embodiments of love and
wisdom -
not embodiments of love and wisdom of themselves,
but from the
Lord.
__________
DLW - Divine Love and Wisdom
** If you are reading Divine Love and Wisdom,
I have found it very helpful to also be reading
the book by Rev. Prescott A. Rogers called,
A Companion to Divine Love and Wisdom,
Thoughts on the book written by Emanuel Swedenborg.
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