AC 3690 - The Histories of the Word; AC3691 - The Core of True Charity

AC 3690 [2]

All the histories of the Word
are truths more remote
from essential Divine doctrinal things,
but still are of service
to little children and older children,
in order that thereby they may be
by degrees
introduced into the interior doctrinal matters
of truth and good;
and at last to Divine things themselves;
for within them, in their inmost, is the Divine.
While children are reading them
and are affected by them from innocence,
the angels who are with them
are in a happy celestial state,
being affected from the Lord with the internal sense,
consequently with those things
which the historical facts represent and mean;
and it is the celestial happiness of the angels
that flows in and causes the delight with the children.
In order that this first state may exist,
that is, the first state of infancy and childhood
of those to be regenerated,
the histories of the Word were given,
and were so written
that all things therein
both in general and in particular
contain within them things Divine.

AC 3691 [5]

. . . in true charity the Lord is present . . .