the previous chapter. From a long line of foregone ancestry he inherits tendencies to all kinds of evil. His hereditary life is supremely selfish. The properly human life is the life of unselfish love—the Lord's own life in the human soul. This is the higher or heavenly life which every man is made capable of receiving, and which we must receive before we can enter the kingdom of heaven, or before we can know from personal experience what heaven really is. It is in its essential nature the very opposite of that life into which we are born naturally, which is a purely selfish life. Therefore we must be "born again"—"born from Above"—"born of God"— before we can become truly the children of God, or have the heavenly Father's name "in our foreheads." Agreeable to the Divine declaration, "Except a man be born again [or born from Above], he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John iii. 3.) And to be born again, or born from Above, is to be born into a new and higher degree[1] or life than
- ↑ According to Swedenborg there are three degrees of life belonging to the soul, corresponding to the three angelic heavens, the natural, spiritual and celestial. These degrees are opened successively in all who become regenerate: and with the opening of each degree, the individual is introduced or born into a new and higher degree of life. The lowest or natural degree is opened by simple obedience to a low or natural form of truth—the literal sense of the Word. The spiritual degree is opened by a rational understanding of the truth, or a perception of the spiritual sense of the Word, and obedience thereto. And the celestial or highest degree is opened when the individual comes to act from a higher principle than mere obedience to any form of truth—from love to the Lord and
