man
science is but the utterance; he derives that knowledge from the Logos,
and learns the law of _correspondences_ by which the world is placed
in unison with heaven. The _word of God_ was wholly written by pure
Correspondences, and covers an esoteric or spiritual meaning, which
according to the science of Correspondences, cannot be understood.
'There exist,' says Swedenborg ('Celestial Doctrine' 26), 'innumerable
Arcana within the hidden meaning of the Correspondences. Thus the men
who scoff at the books of the Prophets where the Word is enshrined are
as densely ignorant as those other men who know nothing of a science and
yet ridicule its truths. To know the Correspondences which exist between
the things visible and ponderable in the terrestrial world and the
things invisible and imponderable in the spiritual world, is to hold
heaven within our comprehension. All the objects of the manifold
creations having emanated from God necessarily enfold a hidden meaning;
according, indeed, to the grand thought of Isaiah, 'The earth is a
garment.'

"This mysterious link between Heaven and the smallest atoms of created
matter constitutes what Swedenborg calls a Celestial Arcanum, and
his treatise on the 'Celestial Arcana' in which he explains the
correspondences or significances of the Natural with, and to, the
Spiritual, giving, to use the words of Jacob Boehm, the sign and seal
of all things, occupies not less than sixteen volumes containing thirty
thousand propositions. 'This marvellous knowledge of Correspondences
which the goodness of God granted to Swedenborg,' says one of his
disciples, 'is the secret of the interest which draws men to his works.
According to him, all things are derived from heaven, all things lead
back to heaven. His writings are sublime and clear; he speaks in heaven,
and earth hears him. Take one of his sentences by itself and a volume
could be made of it'; and the disciple quotes the following passages
taken from a thousand others that would answer the same purpose.

"'The kingdom of heaven,' says Swedenborg ('Celestial Arcana'), 'is the
kingdom of motives. _Action_ is born in heaven, thence into the world,
and, by degrees, to the infinitely remote parts of earth. Terrestrial
effects being thus linked to celestial causes, all things are
_correspondent_ and _significant_. Man is the means of union between the
Natural and the Spiritual.'

"The Angelic Spirits therefore know the very nature of the
Co