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?”

105. We need to explain, however, how the presence of the Lord and heaven and conjunction with them is possible in all lands by means of the Word.

The whole of heaven is, in the Lord’s sight, like a single person. So, too, the church. To be shown that it also actually appears as a person, see the book Heaven and Hell 59-86.

In that person, the church where the Word is read, and where the Lord is consequently known, is like the heart and lungs — the celestial kingdom being as though the heart, and the spiritual kingdom the lungs.

[2] As the heart and lungs are the two founts of life in the human body, and all the rest of the organs and viscera subsist and have life from them, so also do all people in the world subsist and have life from the conjunction of the Lord and heaven with the church through the Word — all those who have any religion, who worship one God and live rightly, who are therefore included in that grand humanity, and who relate to its organs and viscera surrounding the thoracic cavity which contains the heart and lungs. For the Word in the church, even if possessed by relatively few, is life to all the rest from the Lord through heaven, as the organs and viscera of the entire body have life from the heart and lungs. They also have a similar communication.

[3] This, too, is the reason that Christians among whom the Word is read constitute the breast of that grand humanity. They are also at the center of all, with Roman Catholics round about them. Around them are Muslims who acknowledge the Lord as a very great prophet and as the Son of God. After them come Africans. And the outmost periphery is composed of nations and peoples from Asia and the Indies. Regarding the arrangement of these peoples, something more may be seen in the short work The Last Judgment 48.

All those who are in that grand humanity also face toward the middle where the Christians are.

48. The arrangement in the spiritual world of all the nations and peoples who were judged was seen to be as follows. In the centre were gathered those who are called the Reformed, and they were divided into groups according to their native countries: the Germans were towards the north, the Swedes towards the west, the Danes in the west, the Dutch towards the east and south, the British in the middle. Surrounding this centre, where all the Reformed were, the Roman Catholics were to be seen gathered, most of them in the western quarter, but some in the southern. Beyond them were the Mohammedans, also grouped according to their native countries; they were all to be seen in the west bordering on the south. Beyond them were gathered immense numbers of the heathen, who thus made up the outermost ring. Outside them appeared what looked like the sea forming a boundary.

The reason the nations were thus arranged by districts was that their position depended upon the shared ability of each group to receive Divine truths. As a result, everyone in the spiritual world can be recognised by the quarter and place where he lives, and also within a large community by the location of his residence, on this see HEAVEN AND HELL 148-149. Much the same happens when they travel from one place to another; then they always move in directions answering to the successive states of their thoughts arising from the affections for the particular way they live. These determine their proper places, to which they are taken, as will be described. In short, the roads along which one walks in the spiritual world are realisations of thoughts in the mind. That is why roads, walking and the like in the Word mean in the spiritual sense realisations and advances in spiritual life.