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tainly cannot be derived from the light of nature. It may be said of it, in the language of the Scriptures, "Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us?" But all these things are fully made known in the doctrines of the New Church.

But the points on which we need light in order to understand the Divine providence are so numerous, that it seems difficult to know where to begin.

The sole end of all that the Lord is doing towards us is to lead us spiritually to Him. This is the cause why the Scriptures speak so frequently of His providence. They speak of His providence always in a manner calculated to move the heart, and not so much directly to enlighten the understanding; because the Lord wishes to affect our hearts and our lives, and thereby to bring us to Him. Let us therefore go immediately to Him, and look at these things

from Him.

The Lord acts always according to His own order. He is love itself and wisdom itself; and He acts from these, and cannot act otherwise. He cannot act from hatred, anger, or wrath, because there are no such things in Him. So, too, He cannot act otherwise than from the most perfect wisdom. Every one sees that He cannot do these things, because they are contrary to His nature-contrary to His Divine order. To say, therefore, that He cannot act contrary to His nature, is no limitation of His omnipotence; it is only a declaration of His own Divine order. When we look at Him in this, His Divine order, we shall find that there are many things that He cannot do, merely because they are contrary to His nature. He cannot, for example,

love evil.

When men think of the Lord's providence they look merely at what they see taking place around them in the world. All this is indeed the work of His providence; but, in order to see it as such, we must look at it, not as it is in itself, but we must look at it from Him: we must see Him working in it. He has taught us in His Word that the most

minute of these things is the work of His providence; that "not a sparrow falleth to the ground without Him," and that "the very hairs of our heads are all numbered." We can thus see Him and His providence in all these things with the eye of faith, and with the eyes of our internal, spiritual man. He wishes us to look at Him thus; but He also wishes us to see Him in His Divine providence in our whole man: not only in our spiritual, but in our rational and natural man.

The Lord's providence is defined as being His Divine government in and over the various beings and things of His creation. But He does not govern as earthly rulers govern, or as any finite rulers govern, whether in the natural world or in the spiritual world. Finite rulers govern by issuing decrees and laws, and expecting them to be obeyed. The Lord indeed does this, He has given His Word, which contains the laws of His kingdom; and those who obey them come into His kingdom, and enjoy its blessings, in proportion to the degree of their obedience. But He does much more than this: He not only gives laws, and acts upon His subjects outwardly, as earthly rulers do; but He acts upon them inwardly, by the influence of His Spirit. This they cannot do; He not only gives laws outwardly, for men to learn, and to obey; but He gives them inwardly the ability to learn and understand those laws, and all the will and affection they ever have for obeying them. His government is, therefore, altogether different from any other government; and when we speak of His government, which is His Divine providence, it is necessary that we should keep carefully in mind whose government, and what kind of government, we are speaking of.

This peculiarity of His government arises from the nature of His work of creation. It has always been supposed that He created as man makes; that when He created man, He put a certain amount and kind of life into him, and then separated him from Himself, so that he continued to live

that life as separately from Him as any piece of work exists separately from the man that made it, after he has finished it.

Now this is impossible. If man could thus exist separately from the Lord, he would have life in himself, would be independent, would be God. This is an impossibility. This is one of the things which the Lord cannot do. He cannot create a being so that he shall be independent of or separate from Himself. The way in which He creates, and the only way in which He can create, is to form organized beings adapted to receiving life perpetually from Him. Such beings are men, spirits, and angels. He created them in His image, endowed them with His own organization, and they are thus capable of perpetually receiving spiritual life internally from Him to an indefinite degree.

Similar to this is the manner in which He created the material universe. Every object in it He created, planned, and fashioned with the express end that it should be a medium or instrument into and through which He could perpetually flow, for effecting uses to men. Nothing can exist independent of Him, or can continue to exist when separated from Him. All life, therefore, whether in the spiritual world or the natural world, whether in angels, spirits, men, or material objects, is His life flowing into them now and perpetually.

But the Lord not only created the objects of the natural world as mediums of doing good to man; this is also what He created men and spiritual beings for. His sole end in creating at all was to make human beings into angels of heaven; and He is perpetually spending His own love, and His own Divine energy, for this end, and for no other. All other ends are incidental, and for the promotion of this. He looks solely to the spiritual good, the regeneration of human beings; and He directs their natural and temporal concerns solely for the promotion of this. He created us in a natural world, only that we might thereby become more perfectly spiritual, more perfect angels. The angels of heaven, all of whom were once men upon earth, were created

to do good to others, were regenerated to their present heavenly state by doing good to others, and are perpetually employed by the Lord, in His heavenly providence, in doing good to others, both in that world and in this. His internal government and influence over men is mostly carried on through angels and spirits; and He employs them in it to promote their own happiness, as He is infinitely happy in doing good to all. The population of heaven and of the spiritual world is immense; hence we see what immense resources He has at His command, for operating upon men internally and spiritually.

But the most important feature in the Lord's economy towards man, next to creating him and giving him life, has hitherto been left unstated. This is man's freedom. Without freedom he would be nothing, he would not be man. We know that we have not life in ourselves, and that we exist only by perpetually receiving life and all its powers from the Lord. But if we saw this, if we actually saw that in every exercise of will, affection, feeling, thought, and act, we were simply acted upon, and that He was doing all these things in us, if we saw these things, and saw their actual operation in us, life itself would be irksome and a burden: it would be a thing we should wish to get away from.

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But He has not placed us in this position. He created us in His image; and though He could not make us absolutely independent, as He is, yet He created us such organs of reception, that He perpetually flows into us with all the powers of life, will, thought, and act, not only in a manner altogether unconscious to us, but in a manner wholly inscrutable by us. All that he does for us internally, either directly Himself, or through angels and spirits, is entirely hidden from us; and thus our freedom is perfectly provided for. He thus makes us, to all appearance, and to all practical experience, absolutely free; and this our freedom He guards above all things. Everything else must yield to this, because without it we should not be men. Neither Himself,

nor any angel, nor any good spirit, ever attempts to insinuate anything into us except by our free reception; for this makes us the kind of beings He wishes to have us be. This makes us in His image. Evil spirits, it is true, do not hesitate to attempt to control us; and the greatest use which the angels and good spirits do to us, is by keeping the influence of evil spirits over us perfectly balanced.

We think comparatively little, most men not at all, of our regeneration and spiritual life; but the Lord is thinking of nothing else, and looks at nothing else. We, like emmets on a molehill, are planning our little affairs, whatever they may be, while He is planning and providing nothing else but how to make us angels of heaven. We know that not a particle in the material universe would continue to exist if He did not exist in it; and that not a particle in it moves without Him acting into it. We see, therefore, that His government in it, which is His outward providence, is in the smallest particulars, and thus universal, in it. He thus orders outward things at will in regard to us, and in a manner most perfectly adapted to the internal influences, which, though altogether secret, He is perpetually bringing to bear upon us, in all possible variety, and in a manner most perfectly adapted to our changing states. He lives in the same manner in all the angels and spirits of the spiritual world, and He makes use of them to perform this, His work, as unlimitedly as He does of the natural world; and they also are altogether free in this, because they love nothing else but to do His will.

When we consider that nothing can have life in itself except the Lord, that no angel, spirit, man, or material object exists but by life now flowing in from Him, that He thus, though entirely unseen, lives and acts in all and in every thing, we can see that His providence is not only most particular, and thus universal, but that it is absolutely necessary; that it cannot but be; that there could be no life, no world, without it. But when we think of Him as operating this providence, both in the outward world, which we see,

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