Doctrine of Holy Scripture - Swedenborg Foundation

DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 236Heaven and Hell (n. 59–86). In this man, the church where theWord is read and the Lord thereby known, is as the heart andlungs; the celestial kingdom as the heart, and the spiritual kingdomas the lungs.[2] As all the other members and viscera subsist and live fromthese two fountains of life of the human body, so also do all thosein the whole earth who have some sort of religion, worship oneGod, and live aright, and who are thereby in that man andcorrespond to its members and viscera outside the chest whichcontains the heart and lungs—subsist and live from theconjunction of the Lord and heaven with the church by means ofthe Word. For the Word in the church, although existing withcomparatively few, is life to all the rest, from the Lord throughheaven, just as there is life for the members and viscera of the wholebody from the heart and lungs, and there is a similarcommunication.[3] This is why those Christians among whom the Word is readconstitute the breast of that man. They are the midmost of all;round about them are the papists; around these again are thoseMohammedans who acknowledge the Lord as the greatest prophetand as the son of God; beyond these are the Africans; while thenations and people of Asia and the Indies constitute the furthestcompass. Concerning this ranking of them something may be seenin Last Judgment (n. 48). Moreover all who are in that man looktoward the middle region where the Christians are.106. The greatest light is in this middle region where are theChristians who possess the Word; for light in the heavens is Divinetruth that proceeds from the Lord as the sun there; and as theWord is this Divine truth, the light is greatest where dwell thosewho possess the Word. From this region as from its proper center,the light propagates itself from one compass to another even to theuttermost of them; and in this way comes the enlightening, bymeans of the Word, of all the nations and peoples that are outsidethe church. That the light in the heavens is Divine truth whichproceeds from the Lord, and that this light confers intelligence not