Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/61

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ing the external man in such a manner as cannot be described; the truths of faith, and the goods of love, which derive their life from the delight of peace, are then born.

93. The state of the celestial man, thus gifted with the tranquillity of peace—refreshed by the rain—and delivered from the slavery of what is evil and false, is thus described by the Lord in Ezekiel:

I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil wild beast to cease out of the land, and they shall dwell confidently in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods; and I will make them and the places round about My hill a blessing; and I will cause the rain to come down in his season; rains of blessing shall they be. And the tree of the field shall yield its fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be upon their ground in confidence, and shall know that I am Jehovah, when I have broken the reins of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that make them to serve them; and ye My flock, the flock of My pasture, ye are a man, and I am your God (xxxiv. 25-27, 31).

And that this is effected on the "third day," which in the Word signifies the same as the "seventh," is thus declared in Hosea:

After two days will He vivify us; in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live before Him; and we shall know, and shall follow on to know Jehovah: His going forth is prepared as the dawn, and He shall come unto us as the rain, as the late rain watering the earth (vi. 2, 3).

And that this state is compared to the "growth of the field," is declared by Ezekiel, when speaking of the Ancient Church:—

I have caused thee to multiply as the growth of the field, and thou hast increased and hast grown up, and hast come to excellent ornaments (xvi. 7).

And it is also compared to

A shoot of the Lord's planting, and a work of the hands of Jehovah God (Isa. lx. 21).

94. Verse 7. And Jehovah God formed man, dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath (spiraculum) of lives, and man became a living soul. To "form man, dust from the ground," is to form his external man, which before was not man; for it is said (verse 5) that there was "no man to till the ground." To "breathe into his nostrils the breath of lives," is to give him the life of faith and love; and by "man