e divine providence on the back and not in the face;
also in a spiritual state but not in a natural._ To see divine providence
on the back but not in the face means after it acts and not before. To
see it in a spiritual state and not in a natural is to see it from heaven
and not from the world. All who receive influx from heaven and
acknowledge divine providence, especially those who have become spiritual
through reformation, on beholding events taking a wonderful course see
providence as it were from an interior acknowledgment and confess it.
These do not wish to see it in the face, that is, before it eventuates,
fearing that their volition may intrude on something of its order and
tenor.

[2] It is otherwise with those who do not admit any influx from heaven
but only from the world, especially with those who have become natural by
confirming appearances in themselves. They do not see anything of divine
providence on the back, that is, after it eventuates, but wish to behold
it in the face or before it eventuates; and as divine providence works by
means, and these are provided through man or the world, they attribute
providence, whether they look it in the face or on the back, to man or to
nature, and so confirm themselves in the denial of it. They make this
ascription of it because their understanding is closed above, that is, to
heaven, and open only below, that is, to the world; one cannot see divine
providence in a worldly outlook, only in a heavenly. I have wondered
sometimes whether they would acknowledge divine providence if their
understanding was opened above and they were to see as in the light of
day that nature in itself is dead, and human intelligence in itself
nothing, and that it is by influx that either appears to have being. I
perceived that those who have confirmed themselves in favor of nature and
of human prudence would not make the acknowledgment because the natural
light flowing in from below would immediately extinguish the spiritual
light flowing in from above.

189.* The man who has become spiritual by acknowledgment of God, and wise
by rejection of the proprium, sees divine providence in the world as a
whole and in each and all things in it. Looking at natural things, he
sees it; at civil things, he sees it; at spiritual things, he sees it;
and in things simultaneous as well as successive. He sees it in ends,
causes, effects, uses, forms, things great and small. Above all he sees
it in the sa