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220 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
borg, in some passages, has taught that the literal sense
perishes as a shell, without use, and that thereby the
author contradicts himself; the manner in which we are
to understand this, will be made clear to our satisfaction
by a diligent consideration of 1871 , in the Arcana Cœ
lestia, taken in their connexion with what I have said
above, and what I have further to remark. In the other
life, where man is a spirit, the natural and material ideas,
which derived their origin from the literal sense, which
sounds terrestrial and worldly, perish, and do not appear
again, forasmuch as the internal, spiritual, and celestial,
meaning succeeds them, which is accommodated to the
nature of spirits ; and even in this life, while man fixes
his attention upon the light of heaven, he does not so
much observe the literal words and forms of expression
of the Scriptures. This circumstance also takes place in
private and general conversation, when ignorant and
simple people count words, but the wise insist chiefly
upon the purport and meaning of the speaker : some will
recount verbatim the fine and ornamented expressions,
while others despise, and even forget, the phraseology, but
retain and weigh the importance of the subject. The
wiser a man is, the less solicitous he is about words ; it
becomes a prudent man, carefully to weigh the things
themselves, and not to adhere solely to the external, that
is, the literal form of the discourse ;-how much more,
then, does it behove that man so to do who looks above
nature. Hence it is evident, that the literal sense of the
Word stands in analogy to the state of the inhabitants of
the respective worlds. On this occasion, it may not be
useless to consider and weigh with proper attention, the
Doctrine ofthe New Jerusalem concerning the Sacred
Scriptures, 65, 66 ; also Arcana Calestia, 2395, and
Concerning the Intercourse between the Soul and the
Body, 12. The chief obstacle which prevents most of
the learned from thinking and speaking with proper accu
racy of the letter of the Scripture, is undoubtedly this,
that they dispute with too much insipidity, and disparage
the divine Word and truth, which chiefly originates in
their ignorance of the spiritual nature of things, because
they are misled through the materiality of their ideas ;
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