116. I have been granted to see peoples born on islands who were rational as regards civic matters, but who knew nothing at all of God. In the spiritual world they look like apes and lead a life almost like that of apes. But because they were born human beings, and so into the ability to receive spiritual life, they are instructed by angels and given new life through concepts of God as a man.

What a person is like on his own is clearly apparent from people in hell, who have among them some clerics and learned who are unwilling even to hear of God and therefore cannot even mention God. I have seen them and spoken with them. And I have also spoken with some who responded with the fire of anger and wrath when they heard someone speaking about God.

[2] Consider, then, what a person would be like if he was told nothing of God, when some people are as described who have heard about God, written about God, and preached about God. Many of the Jesuits are of that character.

They are of such a character because they are prompted by a will that is evil, and, as we said before, this steers the intellect and expels any truth that it has in it from the Word.

If people could have known on their own of the existence of God and life after death, why have they not known that a person remains a person after death? Why have they supposed that his soul or spirit is like a puff of wind or the ether, which has no eyes with which to see, or ears with which to hear, or mouth with which to speak, until it is united to and combines with its corpse and skeleton?

Imagine then a doctrine for use in worship hatched from rational sight alone. Would it not be people themselves who were worshiped, as has been the case from days of old and is the case today by those who know from the Word that God alone is to be worshiped? No other worship can come of a person’s native self, not even worship of the sun or moon.

26. 5. 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.

[2] 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.

[3] That protections have been set was represented to me in the following way:

I was given to see large purses, looking like sacks, which had stored away in them a great deal of silver. Since they were open, it seemed as if anyone might take some of the silver deposited in them, even to make off with it. However, next to the purses two angels were sitting as guards. The place where the purses rested looked like a manger in a stable. In the next room I saw modest maidens, together with a chaste wife. Near that room were two little children, and I heard it said they were not to be played with in a childish way, but wisely. Afterward a harlot appeared, then a horse lying dead.

4] On seeing these images I was informed that they represented the literal meaning of the Word, which has a spiritual meaning within. The large purses full of silver symbolized concepts of truth there in great abundance. The purses’ being open and yet guarded by angels symbolized that anyone might draw concepts of truth there, but that people should take care not to falsify the spiritual meaning, which contains only truths. The manger in the stable where the purses were sitting symbolized spiritual instruction for the intellect. (A manger has this symbolism, because a horse, which feeds from it, symbolizes the intellect.)

5] The modest maidens I saw in the next room symbolized affections for truth, and the chaste wife the conjunction of truth and good. The little children symbolized the innocence of the wisdom in it (they were angels from the third heaven, all of whom appear like little children). The harlot together with the dead horse symbolized the falsification of the Word by many people today, by which all understanding of the truth has been extinguished. (A harlot symbolizes falsification, and a dead horse no understanding of truth.)