Divine Love and Wisdom (Harleys) n. 402

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402. (iv) Love or the will prepares a home or bed-chamber for its future wife which is wisdom or the understanding. In the created universe and every single thing thereof a marriage exists between goodness and truth; and this is so because goodness comes from love, and truth from wisdom, and these two are in the Lord, and from Him all things were created. How this marriage exists in man can be seen reflected in the union of the heart with the lungs, for the heart corresponds to love or goodness, and the lungs to wisdom or truth (see above, n. 378-384). From that conjunction it can be seen how love or the will betroths to itself wisdom or the understanding, and later weds or goes through a form of marriage with it. It betroths her to itself by preparing a home or bed-chamber for her; and it marries her by uniting her to itself through the affections, and then carries wisdom with it into that home. Why it is so cannot be fully described except in spiritual language, because love and wisdom, and will and understanding therefrom, are spiritual concepts, which can indeed be taught in natural language, but only so as to be vaguely perceived on account of the ignorance of what love, wisdom, affections of goodness, and affections of wisdom which are affections of truth, are. Yet one can see the nature of the betrothal and of the marriage of love with wisdom, or of the will with understanding through the parallelism that exists in their correspondence with the heart and lungs. For it is the same with these as with love and wisdom, so much so as to make absolutely no difference, except that one is spiritual and the other natural. Thus it is evident from the heart and lungs that the heart first forms the lungs, and later unites itself with them; it forms the lungs in the embryo, and unites itself with them after birth. This the heart does in its home, the breast, where they share their tent in common, separated from the other parts of the body by a wall, the diaphragm, and by a covering, the pleura. It is the same with love and wisdom, or with will and understanding.


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