The Secret of Swedenborg

The same subject continued and illustrated. — Swedenborg's vindication of nature and the part it plays in creation. — The divine love and wisdom can- not but be and exist in other beings or existences created from itself; and nature is the logical background of such existences, as giving them self- consciousness. — Remarkable definition of love. — Consists in one's wil- ling what is one's own to be another's, and feeling another's delight as one's own. — Other quotations from Swedcnborg. — If love be of this essentially unselfish quality, the creative love must be infinitely pure; binding the creator to make himself over without stint to the creature, or to allow the latter to effloresce in all his native selfishness and worldliness, to the utmost limit compatible with liis eventual spiritual reaction towards the creator. — Creation is the practical immersion consequently of crea- tive perfection in created imperfection, so that the more the creator alone is, the more the creature alone appears.. Hence the origin of nature. It expresses the obligation the creature is under to appropriate the creator, or to make him his own. It is the nuptial couch of creator and creature ; the marriage ring that consecrates the espousals of infinite and finite. Thus its virtue is purely ceremonial, shadowy, reflective, as giving the creature — not being — but self-consciousness, or such an appearance of being as may eventually induct him into the acquaintance of being itself 25-31