1. The Sacred Scripture, or Word, Is Divine Truth Itself

Everyone says that the Word comes from God, is Divinely inspired, and so is holy. But even so, no one has known before this wherein the Divinity in it lies. For in its letter the Word appears as though written in the ordinary way, in a foreign style, neither as sublime or nor as lucid as writings of the present age seem to be.

As a result, a person who worships nature as God, or in preference to God, and so thinks prompted by self and his own self-interest, and not prompted by heaven in response to the Lord, may easily fall into error regarding the Word, and into scorning it, and when reading it, saying to himself, “What is this? What is that? Is this Divine? Can God, whose wisdom is infinite, speak so? Where is the holiness in it, and what makes it holy, other than some teaching of religion and so conviction?”

7. Nor can the difference between these levels be known unless one is acquainted with correspondence, for these three levels are each completely distinct from the others, like end, cause and effect, or like something prior, something subsequent, and something terminal. And yet they operate as a unit through correspondences. For something natural corresponds to something spiritual, and also to something celestial.

But what correspondence is may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, where it is discussed in The Correspondence of Everything in Heaven with Everything in the Human Being, nos. Heaven and Hell, nos. 87-102, and in The Correspondence of Heaven with Everything on Earth, nos. 103-115. It will also be further seen below from illustrations presented from the Word.