When someone known to me in life was speaking with me, it appeared as if he were moving his lips and thus speaking with the lips. When I told him this, he said that he had spoken with me using the lips, but I replied to him that a spirit does not have lips, and so cannot speak with the lips. Yet he kept on insisting, until he was informed by an actual demonstration that it was not so, but that it is a depiction of lips, and it so appears by way of symbolic portrayal proper to spirits. 1748, 14 March. Consequently, the term "lips" in the Word of the Lord symbolizes mental imagery and thus thoughts.