154. In like manner the ancients represented God as Man in their pictures; and the same is done at the present day, as may be seen by consulting paintings; and this, too, from the common idea concerning God that comes from heaven. But still, the idea of the Divine as in the Human form has at this day been destroyed; and the reason is that they draw conclusions from space, since there is an extension of the sphere from the Divine into the universe, like that of the sun; and indeed the sphere proceeding from angels extends itself into much of heaven. The cause of such a conception is that men are too external, and hence are limited like the sensual. The inhabitants of all the earths perceive God to be in the Human form. The wise men of old, as Abraham, had such perception; men of interior wisdom of the present day, as the Africans, have the same; not so our wise men; but the simple-minded only, with whom the common idea of God that comes from heaven has not been extinguished by perverted reasonings.