body; parts animated, nevertheless, by one and the same life, as in the case of the bodily organs; for the essential life of all in heaven, is the life of love to the Lord and the neighbor.
It cannot be denied that the human form is the most perfect of all forms. And if the Lord's disciples (and surely those composing the heavenly societies are to be reckoned as such) are "made perfect in one," then must the whole heaven of angels be in the human form; and the doctrine of the Grand Man as revealed through Swedenborg, must be true. For under any other form than the human, or arranged in any other order than that of the different parts of the human body, the heavenly societies could not be said to be "perfected into one;" since their arrangement would be less beautiful and orderly and their union less perfect than it might be.
Then the testimony of the great Apostle to the Gentiles might be cited in corroboration of the truth of this doctrine. Writing to the Church at Rome, he says: "For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ." (Rom. xii. 4, 5.) Again to the Corinthian Church: "For the body is not one member, but many; and ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." He further says there is no schism among the bodily members, and there ought not, therefore, to be any in the body of Christ; that the various parts or members of this body (the church), "should have the same care one for another."
Now the church on earth ought to be, and so far as
