Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 3738

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3738. HOW EXTERNAL THINGS MAY HAVE REPRESENTED INTERNAL. I spoke with a spirit when writing [and saying] that the external things of the Jewish church represented internal, and that externals were to be compared to an apple that was seen, in which were stored up innumerable things; and because the interior things of the apple were exhibited by representative ideas, the comparison was continued, [showing] that the apple not only contained within itself the things of taste and of smell, but fibers similar to those of the tree, the receptacles of the seeds, the seeds, in which was the wonderful power of producing a new tree, and not only a single tree, but an innumerable succession of them, so that they could fill the whole earth, and that even to a kind of eternity. This being its inward property, the infinite and eternal is in this way represented by it, and thus the Lord: and thus also in the singulars exclusive of the potencies of the seed, for all and each of the things [of the apple] conspire to its eternity, and, as it were, to its infinity. - 1748, October 27.


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