56. One may believe that a doctrine of genuine truth can be acquired by means of the Word’s spiritual sense, which is obtained through a knowledge of correspondences. But doctrine is not acquired by means of that sense, but is only illustrated and corroborated by it. For as we said in no. 26 above, no one arrives at the spiritual sense through correspondences unless he first possesses genuine truths from doctrine. If he does not possess genuine truths first, a person may falsify the Word by applying some correspondences that he knows and connecting them and interpreting them to support something lodged in his mind from a preconceived premise.

In addition, the spiritual sense is granted to a person only by the Lord, and He protects it, as He protects heaven, inasmuch as heaven is present in it.

It is better, therefore, for a person to study the Word in its literal sense. That alone is the source of doctrine.

19. The Word contains a still more interior sense, called celestial, which we said something about in no. 6 above. But this sense is almost impossible to explicate, as it does not fall so much within the scope of the thought of the intellect as into the affection of the will.

The Word contains this still more interior sense, called celestial, because there emanates from the Lord Divine goodness and Divine truth — Divine goodness from His Divine love, and Divine truth from His Divine wisdom. Both are present in the Word, for the Word is a Divine emanation. And because both are present, therefore the Word gives life to people who read it reverently. However, we will say more on this subject in the section where we show that the constituents of the Word all contain a marriage of the Lord and the church, and so a marriage of goodness and truth.