154. Just as the ancients used to depict God in pictures as a Man, the same is done today. Look at the mural paintings. This, too, comes from the general idea of God from heaven. But still today, there has been lost the idea of the Divine in human form. The reason is that they draw conclusions from ideas of space, since there is an extension of the sphere from the Divine into the universe, like that of the sun. Indeed, the sphere proceeding from the angels extends itself into much of heaven. The cause of such an idea is that men are too external and thence are limited to the extent that they are sensual. The inhabitants of all earths have a perception of God in human form, so also had the wise men of old, such as Abraham, and at the present day those of interior wisdom such as the Africans. It is not so with our wise ones, but only with the simple, with whom the general idea about God that comes from heaven has not been extinguished by perverted reasonings.