595. Every created thing in the world, whether alive or dead, has an internal and an external. One cannot exist where the other does not, just as an effect cannot without a cause. Every created thing is prized for its inward goodness and disdained for its inward badness; and the same is true of outward goodness containing inward badness. Every wise man in the world, and every angel in heaven, judges like this. But comparisons will illustrate what the unregenerate and the regenerate person are like. An unregenerate person who pretends to be a respectable citizen and a Christian can be compared to a corpse wrapped in aromatic substances, but which still gives off a stench that spoils the aroma and penetrating the nose offends the brain. He can also be compared with a gilded mummy, or one laid in a silver coffin; but if one looks inside, the ugly black body comes into view.
[2] He can be compared with the bones or skeleton in a tomb decorated with lapis lazuli and other precious stones. He can also be compared to the rich man who wore purple and fine linen, yet inwardly was hellish (Luke 16:19). Further comparisons may be made with sugary poison, with flowering hemlock, with fruits in gleaming shells whose kernels have been eaten up by maggots; and with a sore covered by a plaster and later by smooth skin, but full of nothing but pus. In the world the internal may be judged by the external, but only by those whose internal is not good and who therefore judge by appearances. But the situation in heaven is different; for when death separates the body, which can be twisted round the spirit and bent from evil to good, then the internal is left; for this is what makes up the spirit. Seen at a distance it looks like a snake which has sloughed its skin, or like rotten wood stripped of the bark or surface which made it look bright.
[3] It is different with the regenerated person. His internal is good, while his external resembles the other's. But his external is as different from the other's as heaven is from hell, for he has the soul of good in it. And it makes no difference whether he is a nobleman and lives in a palace, attended by hangers-on when he walks abroad, or whether he lives in a hut with only a lad to wait upon him; or in fact whether he is an archbishop with a purple pallium and a two-fold mitre, or whether he is the shepherd who lives in the woods with a few sheep, wears a loose country cloak and covers his head with a hood.
[4] Gold is still gold, whether it gleams in the firelight or is blackened with smoke on the surface; or whether it is cast into a lovely shape, a child's for instance, or an ugly shape such as a rat's. Rats made of gold and placed next to the Ark were acceptable and served as expiatory offerings (1 Sam. 6:3-5ff). For gold means internal good. A diamond or a ruby extracted from a matrix of chalk or clay are judged just as valuable for their inward goodness as they are if they are set in a queen's necklace; and so on. These examples show clearly that the external is judged by the internal, and not the other way round.
This page is part of 
© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church