The Parable of Creation/Chapter5
V.
THE SOUL BECOMES A LIVING THING.
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the. seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Gen. I: 20-21.
The subject of the regeneration is one of the utmost interest and importance. Our Lord said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Why should it not be so? The new-born babe is ushered on to its this-world existence a weak, unformed thing. Its body is formed, indeed, but not its mind. It has been born into the kingdom of nature; it has yet to be reborn and that into the kingdom of mind. When this takes place, and the once immature babe becomes a knowing, thinking and reasoning being, it has but partially fulfilled its destiny. It can live in this world, and use its knowledge of natural things with decision and skill; it has entered largely on to the realm of this world's thought; but it has again to be re-born. This time the birth is into the realm of spiritual thought. These things are progressive. There can be no rational, thinking being until the physical body is formed. There can be no spiritually minded being until thought and reason as natural things are developed. The one, in each case, constitutes a foundation, as it were, on which the other may rest.
Spiritual thought and natural thought, spiritual aspiration and natural aspiration, a spiritual life and a natural life, belong to distinctly different faculties of mind. After the natural mind is born and formed, the spiritual mind must be born and formed. This is the rebirth the regeneration, of which our Lord spake, when He said "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." To see the kingdom of God is to see spiritual things. It is to understand them when presented to the mind. It is to be able to revolve them rationally in the thought, to grasp them, to enjoy them, so as finally to come, in matters of every day life, into their living spirit and purpose.
But the kingdom of God extends into the hereafter as well as has its beginnings here. Our ability to enter upon its joys in the world to come depends upon the harmony of our minds with its principles, purposes and uses. It is not so much a question, when we arrive there, as to how much punishment ought to be meted out for our short-comings, or how much reward for our well-doing, as it is: Has the mind learned to see spiritual things—spiritual principles, ideas and uses, or has it not? Is the mind in harmony with the kingdom of God, or is it not? Has it entered into the spirit and purpose of that which essentially constitutes the heavenly kingdom, or has it not? You might as well ask the Hottentot, who has no musical development above his tom-tom, to enter into the refined enjoyment of the strains of Mendelsohn or Mozart, as to invite a merely natural or sensuous man, when he enters upon the other-world life to partake of the spiritual joys, associations, thoughts or uses of the heavenly kingdom. He would neither understand, appreciate or enjoy them. It is requisite that one should be born again to see the kingdom of God. Properly, this spiritual development should be made on earth. It is as much designed of God that the natural man should become a spiritual man, as it is that the physical babe should become a rational being.
If, then, it be true, that earth life is educational, looking to the preparation of the individual for the never-ending existence which awaits him in the world to come, it is the one great theme from which the mind should never be wholly averted. No one who leans in the least degree toward the doctrine of the superiority of spiritual things can doubt this.
As the regeneration of the soul is first in interest as it respects human welfare, it becomes, therefore, by right of priority, the first spiritual lesson we ought to learn. We would naturally expect to find a statement of its general phases, in the very opening chapter of the Word of God. In this, do we but view the matter aright, we will not be disappointed. The narrative of the Creation is but a parable of the regeneration. The earth is a symbol of the human mind. The statement that at the beginning all was dark and void, sets forth, in symbolic language, the mind's utter ignorance and emptiness of spiritual things before its regeneration begins. The fact that at the very outset of Creation light was flashed across the earth represents that at the very outset of regeneration, in the case of each one, light is thrown upon his mind as to the superiority of spiritual life and knowledge over that which is merely natural. The development of the firmament or natural heaven, typifies the opening of the higher or heavenly mind of spiritual observation and thought. The springing forth of grass and the growth of the fruit tree yielding fruit denote the first buddings and incipient fruitage of a good life under the more elevated principles now recognized. The setting up of the sun, moon and stars in the firmament of heaven symbolizes the elevation of love, faith and spiritual knowledge as the guiding and controlling elements of the regenerating individual's life.
The regeneration of the human mind is, therefore, progressive. It proceeds, as Creation proceeded, by distinct steps. The four days of Creation symbolize four successive stages of regenerative advance. First, some higher spiritual light was thrown upon the mind; second, the spiritual mind, or the faculty for the perception of spiritual things, was developed; third, good actions and a better life resulted; fourth, love, faith and knowledge, like great lights and stars of brilliant shining, lit up the life with their beautiful radiance. All this has been fully illustrated and explained in previous lectures. We now come to the fifth state of regeneration represented by the fifth day of Creation. In this state the man's spiritual condition begins, at last, to exhibit signs of genuine life.
But was not the individual really alive before? Naturally speaking, yes; spiritually speaking, no. In all the business, work, pleasures, ambitions and aspirations of the world, yes; in the higher and more inward ends, desires and motives of life, no.
And what is it to be alive? We ask this question, of course, in a sense above that which attaches to the idea of merely physical life. There is a phrase much affected of late years which illustrates the point. We hear of live political parties—these are such as drop dead issues and deal vigorously with the living questions of the day; of live newspapers—these are such as are enterprising in gathering all the news that interests, and in a racy handling of the topics of the times; of live men these are energetic, earnest, pushing people, who rest not until they accomplish, and that successfully, whatever ends they undertake. The expression has come down, in a reflected form, from the ancient language of symbolism, in which the Scriptures are written. Only, in them the phrase is always spiritually applied.
There, living things are such as are touched by the breath of God. Natural things are held to be, in themselves, dead. A dead man, in the light of the Word of God, is one who is given over to selfishness and worldliness. A live man is one who has dropped the old, dead issues of a merely natural life, and deals vigorously with the living issues which the spiritual condition of the world and his own soul presents. He is enterprising in gathering unto himself the living truths that relate to higher life. He is energetic, earnest, pushing, in all that relates to the regeneration of his own soul and the leading of the world on to higher levels. He is alive to everything of spiritual import and eternal issue, because his faith in the Lord is established, his love to the Lord has taken some absolute form, and his knowledge of spiritual things is becoming varied and extended. The sun of love and the moon of faith are set upon the firmament of his spiritual mind, and new stars of knowledge come brightly shining forth upon his intellectual horizon with every advancing state.
These terms living and alive come forth in their symbolic significance so plainly in the Scripture that there is no mistaking them. Thus the one Lord is there recognized as life itself and consequently the only source of life. This is true naturally and spiritually. Especially is it true that He is the only source of spiritual life, because that is the more real. Therefore, in the Word, the Lord is called the living God, Him that liveth forever. He is also called the Fountain of Life, and the Fountain of Living Waters. And heaven which is heaven only by virtue of its inhabitants receiving his life, is called in many places "the land of the living." The term living waters is often used to indicate those spiritual truths which lead to everlasting life. In this view our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, "If thou knewest who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." Living bread is the Lord's spiritual life received as the nourishment of the soul. Said He, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever.' Living men are those who think and act under the influence of the genuine spirit of the Lord and his commandments. In this view the Apostle said, "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."
I have been thus particular in indicating the genuine spiritual meaning of this term as used in the Scripture, because upon it hinges the signification of the description of the fifth stage of man's regeneration as contained in the parable of creation. So you will observe that while man may be naturally alive, and perform his natural duties with energy and enterprise, without a single spark of living fire from off the altar of God, he can be spiritually alive only as he lives in the love, faith and knowledge of God, and performs all duties, natural and spiritual, in their light and under their influence.
In the early stages of regeneration, we begin to do right, because we think we ought so to do, but we do not exactly do it from the living fire of God within the heart. We recognize the Lord; we study his commands; we try to be just to the neighbor and punctual to our religious duties. But we do not see them from love, nor do we much enter into the deep spirit of their meaning and practice. While we are perfectly willing to say that all our good is from the Lord, we feel it as our own. And while we are free to admit that our regeneration is the Lord's work upon the soul, we are in a strong sense of our own efforts to that end. So much so is this the case that our consciousness is, all the time, that it is our own work. At this stage of regeneration it necessarily must be so. And we also speak the language of self-conscious effort, because in that state a higher language would almost savor of hypocrisy. We feel, therefore, our good as our own effort, and not as that of the Lord in us, we being simply co-operators; and we recognize the truths we obtain as light gained by our own studies, and not as light shed down from a Divine source through the higher firmament of the mind.
This is one of the stages of our progress which cannot possibly be avoided. We may hear the higher idea preached and fully assent to it, and yet we will fail to realize it. We will grow into that. But it is not an exceedingly vivified state. The waters of truth may flow into the mind but the they are hardly living waters. Light may shed its radiance upon the firmament of the spiritual mind, but it is scarcely living light. The soul may be touched with the higher truth, and its affections may be stirred to reach forth for the higher life, but it cannot, in a proper sense, be called, as yet, a living soul.
Now in this parable of regeneration, the lower state I have thus delineated is described by the vegetation created on the third day; but the higher state, when one is conscious of all his truth as the light of God and of all his goodness as the influence of the Lord, is described and represented by the living soul which the waters brought forth.
For our present purpose, I prefer the exactly literal translation of the original Hebrew given by Swedenborg to that of the authorized version. In the latter it reads, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life." But the accurate rendering is, to give in English the precise force of the Hebrew words, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the creeping thing, the living soul." It is this term, "living soul," which gives force and point to the idea. The regenerating individual becomes now, in this stage of progress, a truly living soul. In a certain sense, vegetation, indeed, has life, but it is an utterly unconscious life. It represents, in a happy manner, one's first efforts at good action, because he is unconscious of the Lord's presence in those first efforts. They are not truly and spiritually alive, because the conscious feeling is that their motive springs originate in himself. The Lord's higher influence is not at all perceptible in them.
But when the man essays to speak and think from a genuine faith, and to will and act from real love, he then begins to be, in an elevated spiritual sense, a living soul. His first beginnings of religous life were mere spiritual vegetation, a state in which he possesses no consciousness of the Lord as the life of all that is true and good within him, just as natural vegetation has no consciousness whatever of the life that makes it lovely. But in the advanced stage to which I now refer all this is changed. He feels a consciousness that all his life—that all his truth and goodness, is but the Lord's influence within him, just as the things of animate creation—the beasts and birds—move on in the conscious enjoyment of the physical life they possess.
This is not a difficult thought to grasp even though one may not have arrived at so high a state. We well know how common it is to move along through life just as though there were no living soul of God within it. We buy, we sell, we sing, we dance, we hold social converse, we perform religious acts, just as though we did it all. Yet the very blood is coursing through our veins, the heart is beating in rythmic cadence, breath comes and goes with each expansion and contraction of the lungs, without a conscious effort of our own; for there is a life within and behind it all which works away, with no consultation on the subject with our thought and will. In mental life it is the same. The mind works on and man has not the power to stop it. He may lead it, guide it, but even a self-inflicted bullet through the brain will not cause the throbbings of a once created mind to cease. It still works on and it works forever. It is the energy of God within and behind this individuality of ours. Yet who thinks of it? Who takes conscious cognizance of its presence? Who does otherwise than live and work, as though this life was all his own? True we have individuality, and we influence the course, each one of his own life, but who looks behind, in common thought, at the concealed springs of existence which lie within that individuality?
So we look forth upon the beauties of the floral world, or upward at the sunlit sky. The grass is growing beneath our feet, the brilliant flowers of a thousand hues adorn our garden beds, the luscious fruit is hanging from the bended boughs, the sky is filled with light for our coming and going steps, and displays all forms of beauty to our eyes. But is there any conscious thought as we see, and walk, and work amid them all, that the Lord's never ceasing inflow of Divine life is pushing up the grass on which we tread, is painting the blossoms with the pure white or flaming red, with gold or azure blue, is pouring the juicy current into the hanging fruit, or is making the world radiant with the light which illumines our daily walk?
Do we walk forth with the consciousness that it is God who by his ceaseless influence lights up the sun, and warms the soil, and forms the rain, and as the great supernal Law lives in all law, and universally throbs through all the laws which make and keep this universe, from its greatest to its least things, so wonderfully grand and so transcendently beautiful?
Nay, we scarcely ever think of it. Yet if any wise mentor calls our attention to the fact, if we read in some reverent book or in the Word of God that we are indebted to the Lord of the universe for all that glory of natural creation which every where surrounds us, for our knowledge, our understanding, our love, for the truth we gain and the good we get, then, perhaps, we will acknowledge that it is so. But the idea is not an ever present, conscious, living idea, which lifts us in our daily life above ourselves, and which feels the breath of the Lord's mercy and love in every act of a busy life, and along every path of a righteous walk.
But when you have arrived at that stage of spiritual life which is represented in the parable by the creation of the living soul, then the situation changes. Then you begin to bear about with you the consciousness of the Divine origin of all you have and enjoy, and of the Divine presence in all you are. I do not mean that your active thoughts will at all times be actively centered on God, or that in all your discourse you will be ever repeating your belief in his agency, operation or influence. Spiritual life is an eminently practical thing. It does not ask you to be ever dreaming to the neglect of your work, or ever ecstatic to the point of forgetting that you live in the world for the world. But I do mean that you will feel the Lord as you linger amid his blessings just as you know the presence of the sunlight as you walk the ways of earth, just as you realize the moon and stars as above you when by their radiance you travel the paths of night, just as you revel in the perfume of the flowers or the new mown hay, when you pass through gardens or meadows. You may be conversing on utterly incongruous themes; your thoughts may run deeply on the cares and questions your worldly duties lay before you; you may be at play or at work; yet they are an ever present, ever conscious influence, which is as realistic as the sunshine which surrounds you and as certain as that you live.
So may your spiritual life be saturated with the consciousness of the Lord's presence and ownership and influence in all the good you will or do, in all the truth you think or say, in all your faithfulness in work, steadfastness in duty, sincerity in office, purity in principle, glowing love of use; yea in every ripple of laughter, in every enjoyment or pleasure, in every innocent pastime. And though thought does not outwardly nor actively think it, nor speech actually frame it into words, the heart is full of it, and thought and speech will glow with it at the instant some little circumstance seems to call them forth. You live amid the sphere of its radiance and you bask in the sunlight of its everlasting presence.
This state, however, is one of great spiritual elevation. The fifth stage of regeneration, the fifth day of the new creation of the soul, only marks its beginnings. The state is one which only the highest angels of heaven enjoy in its full perfection. Happy we, if we can gain such brightening glimpses of its truth, such occasional broad experiences of its reality, as will lead us to yearn for its presence more and more. To love a thing is to get it in the end. For love will compass all things; it will tear down impediments; it will break through barriers; it will restlessly work until it gains the object loved. Love for mental states once experienced, for heart-conditions which meet the Lord's approval, will gain, in the end, their permanent possession.
So in this fifth stage of progress toward a perfect life, we gain our conscious beginnings of the happiness which the soul may possess in obtaining a genuine faith in the Lord, and in realizing a love for Him and his words of life. In the fourth stage, the sun, moon and stars—love, faith and knowledge, first lit our shining way. In the fifth stage, the soul begins, for the first time, in a really spiritual sense, to live. Our love, faith and knowledge now begin to become really living energies. They give spiritual vitality to all we desire, think and do. True, they will not prove to be of the most intensely vital kind even yet. Still there will be stumbling and falling. Old states which are of earth, earthy, will, at times, cloud, for a brief while, the life. Thoughts of the flesh pots of Egypt will, occasionally, lure us back to our worldly ways. But, not-withstanding this, we will have here experienced a consciousness of the Lord's presence and life in all things about us, in all we have and are, in our faculties and powers, in our knowledges and affections, in our aspirations and desires, which will create a longing for the time when we can rest forever in Him. To rest in Him is to rest in this consciousness of his perpetual influence and presence.
To be alive then, spiritually, is to feel the Lord's presence and influence as energizing our onward way. To vegetate, spiritually, is to acknowledge the fact after an intelligent manner, but to lack the conscious feeling of that presence—the realized sphere of that influence. In this we now see more clearly by comparison the two symbolisms the springing forth of vegetation on the third day and the bringing forth of living creatures on the fifth day. The one is the correspondence under which the earthly phases of regenerative life are described, the other, the spiritual figure under which this later and higher phase of progress is set forth. The one typifies that which in its degree and order is beautiful but inanimate, the other that which is on an altogether higher plane, and animate or truly living.
It is said in the parable, "Let the waters bring forth the creeping thing, the living soul." We have had occasion to note in previous lectures, that waters, throughout the Scriptures, are symbols of truths. In repeating this it must, of course, be remembered that the truths so symbolized are of a spiritual character only. Those which the Lord gives, those which teach of Himself and his ways, those which tell of the immortality of the soul and the nature of the future life, those which teach us of regeneration and the true path of Christian progress—those only constitute the water of life described in the Revelation as proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb—those only are the waters which can come in unto the soul.
It is truth—the truth Divine, which brings forth every good for man. Looking at the matter from a natural point of view merely, we can do no work, we can be useful in no employment, we can minister to our fellows in no profession, until we learn the natural truths which cover that profession or work. Much more is this spiritually so. Our minds are elevated to the Lord by every truth we gain with regard to Him. Our characters grow stronger in the study of his nature and character. We become regenerate, and thus fulfil the destiny for which we were born, by learning the truths He gives us in his Word and by living in their light. We become spiritual minded by coming into their spirit. "Let the waters bring forth" means, therefore, in the language of spiritual symbolism, "Let the truths you have gained bring forth their appropriate results." You have learned much, it is now time you live much. You have arrived at a stage of regeneration where the truths you have acquired must become living truths.
This shows the importance of penetrating to their utmost depths, so far as in us lies, the Divine truths we gain. While it is a fact that truth, without a correlative leading on to life, is worthless and dead, it is also a fact that the more truths with regard to the Lord and eternal life we can acquire, the more we will be enabled to live spiritually, regeneratively, usefully.
So it is said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly." The broader the waters the greater the abundance of life they can bring forth and support. The broader our field of spiritual truth, the broader the field of useful, and therefore spiritual, works we will find spreading forth to view. Indeed, the very attempt to live what we know, makes the life more abounding in results of good, and this without limit and without stint.
But it is said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the creeping thing, the living soul." Yes; it is to the intent that we may become living souls that all this work goes on. Of what avail our knowledge, our activity, our energy, our enthusiasm, unless it goes forth at last into genuine spiritual life? Of what avail the possession of a soul unless that soul is made alive in the light of God? It is something to be born; but it is something more to be born again. It is something to have this body live, but it is infinitely more to have the soul alive. Life is God; and God is life. That life may be filtered through all the lower strata of thought and purpose, so that it partake of all the filthiness which inheres in stagnant things; or it may be obtained at the fountain head, pure as the spring from whence it flows, sparkling as the light that flashes from its spray. The nearer we get to the source, the purer the life. The purer the life we draw, the more eternally living the soul. When the waters of God within the man bring forth the living soul—the soul as a thing to all intents, in its Divine purity, alive—man then begins to be a man.
The living soul, however, is here called a creeping thing, because the man at this stage of regeneration, can scarcely be said to walk erect, but only to creep. "You must learn to creep before you can walk" is an old adage. It is as true of regeneration as of physical life. Though we have learned now, in a higher sense, to live, though we have gained a consciousness of the Lord's life, though we begin to realize our goodness and truth not as our own but as the Lord's in us, this life, this consciousness, this realization, in comparison with what they will be, are still feeble. Before, we were not even living souls. Though now endued with life, we are yet mere babes in Christ. We can creep, not walk. This is at first; afterward we will do better.
It is worthy of notice how gradually this parable of regeneration leads us on. It recognizes no sudden changes in our gathering strength. Like the growth of a tree, however certain it may be, it is imperceptible. We cannot look into ourselves and say , "So we were yesterday and so much further we are to-day." Much less can we say, "We were a child of the devil a moment ago, but at this minute we are a child of God." But it is development, unfolding imperceptibly, but not ceasing. It is creeping before walking, learning before living, the one merging by invisible openings into the other, and that all the way through.
And now it follows on in our text concerning the birds. "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the creeping thing, the living soul, and let the fowl fly above the earth upon the faces of the expanse of the heavens." I use here again the more literal rendering from the Hebrew which Swedenborg gives. The authorized version reads as though the waters brought forth the fowl; but in the Hebrew of the original it is not so.
Birds in the symbolism of Scripture signify our thought. They do so because the thought, can soar up and away from its surroundings, even piercing the realms of spirit, of heaven, and of God, as birds fly above the earth and waters into the firmament above. "Let fowl fly above the earth" means, Let the thoughts of the regenerating man now rise above earthly things, above those that occupy the lower mind. "Upon the faces of the expanse of the heavens," or "in the open firmament of heaven" means, Let them rise to heavenly and eternal themes, and soar amid the regions of the spiritual mind with broad and far-reaching views of the higher truth of God, as the bird in its upward flight broadens its scope of vision the higher it goes.
And then it is said, "God created great whales (properly leviathans) and every living soul that creepeth which the waters brought forth abundantly after its kind, and every winged fowl after its kind." The Leviathan, as the largest inhabitant of the deep, symbolizes knowledge in its general or largest principles. The more alive we become to the spiritual side of things, the more we gather what we know into general principles, and get the particulars into order and arrangement in the thought. Spiritual knowledge becomes thus no irrational faith, no unformed scheme, no vapid array of meaningless phrases, but a grand scheme of spiritual philosophy, complete in all its parts, beautiful in its symmetry, spiritually approved by the reason of man, and worthy of God. The leviathans of the mind, its grand conclusions, its large and fully rounded philosophy, always come last. The more alive our truths are the grander they become in character and scope. Not until we enter into living relations with God, do the truth-waters of the soul bring forth their leviathans of thought.
Such is the New-Church interpretation of what is related in the parable concerning the fifth day of Creation. As we ascend the mountains of regeneration the view becomes more broad and beautiful. If life is so good on the merely natural plane, on the spiritual how infinitely more lovely! To come into states of elevation where all we know becomes instinct with the life of God, and every truth, with gentle light, points out some duty to our fellow man; where the whole realm of mind is alive with spiritual affections, resolves and principles; where the soul is innately conscious of the Lord and his influences as urging them into every form of loving energy of good; where the thoughts soar upward into realms and spheres unknown to man the animal, and gain broad vistas of diviner view, of which mere life for the world and self cannot in the most remote degree conceive—to come into such states of elevation throws, indeed, a new light upon the problem of life and man. Then we know what life is worth. Then, truly, life is worth the living!
