Heaven and Hell (Harley) n. 85

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85. But, that God is Man can scarcely be comprehended by those who judge all things from the sense-experiences of the external man. For the sensual man can think of the Divine only from the world and the things that are therein, thus of a Divine and Spiritual Man in the same way as of a corporeal and natural man. From this he concludes that, if God were a man He would be as large as the universe, and if He ruled heaven and earth it would be done through many, after the manner of kings in the world. If told that in heaven there is no extension of space as in the world, he would not in the least comprehend. For he who thinks from nature and its light only, never thinks otherwise than from an extension such as there is before his eyes. But they are completely deceived when they think in this way about heaven. The extension there is not like extension in the world. In the world, extension is determinate and thus measurable, but in heaven it is not determinate and therefore not measurable. What, however, extension in heaven is, will be seen in the pages to follow in connection with space and time in the spiritual world. Besides, everyone knows how far the sight of the eye extends, namely, to the sun and stars which are so remote. Whoever thinks more deeply knows that the internal sight, which is that of thought, has a still wider extension and therefore that a still more interior sight must extend even more widely. What, then, must not the Divine sight be which is the inmost and highest of all? Because thoughts are capable of such extension, all things of heaven are communicated with everyone there, so too are all things of the Divine which makes heaven and fills it-as has been shown in the preceding sections.


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