215. The truths in the literal sense of the Word are in part not bare truths, but appearances of truth. They are like similes and comparative analogies taken from appearances in the natural world. Thus they are adapted and brought down to the level at which they may be understood by simple people and even children. But because they are at the same time correspondences, they serve to receive and make a home for genuine truth. They are containers in the sense that a crystal cup is a container of vintage wine, a silver salver of tempting foods; or like the clothes which we wear, whether a baby's shawls or the pretty dresses of a girl. They are also like the facts stored in the memory of the natural man, which include his perception of and affections for spiritual truth. The bare truths themselves which are wrapped, contained, clothed and grasped, exist in the spiritual sense of the Word; the bare forms of good exist in its celestial sense. But illustrations must be given from the Word.
[2] Jesus said:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, because you clean the outside of the cup and dish, but the insides are full of robbery and intemperence. You blind Pharisee, clean first the inside of the cup and dish, so that the outside too may be clean. Matt. 23:25, 26.
In saying this the Lord spoke in similes and comparisons which are at the same time correspondences. When He said 'the cup and dish', cup not only means but stands for the truth of the Word, since cup implies wine and wine stands for truth. Dish, however, implies food, and food stands for good. Therefore cleaning the inside of the cup and dish means purifying the interior parts of the mind, the seats of will and thought, by means of the Word. 'So that the outside may be clean' means that in this way the exterior things too, what we do and say, are purified, for their essence is drawn from the interior.
[3] Again Jesus said:
There was a certain rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen, and feasted magnificently every day; and there was a poor man named Lazarus, who lay in his entrance porch full of sores. Luke 16:19, 20.
Here too the Lord spoke in similes and comparisons which were correspondences and had a spiritual content. The rich man means the Jewish nation, which is called rich, because it possessed the Word containing spiritual riches. The purple and fine linen which he wore mean the good and truth of the Word, purple its good and fine linen its truth. Feasting magnificently every day means taking pleasure in having the Word, and hearing many things from it in their temples and synagogues. The poor man Lazarus means the gentiles who did not possess the Word. The contempt and rejection they suffered at the hands of the Jews are meant by Lazarus lying in the entrance porch of the rich man. Full of sores means that the gentiles were plagued by many false notions due to their ignorance of truth.
[4] The reason the gentiles were meant by Lazarus was that the gentiles were loved by the Lord, just as Lazarus, who was revived after being dead, was loved by the Lord (John 11:3, 5, 36). He is also called the Lord's friend (John 11: 11), and he reclined at table with the Lord (John 12:2). These two passages show plainly that the truths and kinds of good in the literal sense of the Word are like vessels and garments serving to clothe bare good and truth, which both lie hidden in the spiritual and celestial senses of the Word.
The Word being like this in the literal sense, it follows that those who possess Divine truths, and believe that the Word inwardly in its depths is something holy and Divine, and more so those who believe that the Word is like this because of its spiritual and celestial senses, these people, when they read the Word and receive enlightenment from the Lord, see Divine truths by natural light. For the light of heaven, which illuminates the spiritual sense of the Word, exerts an influence on the natural light which illuminates its literal sense, and enlightens man's intellectual, also called rational, faculty, enabling it to see and recognise Divine truths, whether plain to view or hidden. The light of heaven has this effect upon people, sometimes even without their knowing it.
This page is part of 
© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church