1874. In conversation with good spirits, I said that in the Word many things, even more than one can believe, are said according to appearances and according to the fallacies of the senses, as that Jehovah is in anger, wrath, and fury against the wicked; that He takes pleasure in bringing them to ruin and destruction, and even that He kills them. But these things have been said in order that persuasions and cupidities might not be broken, but that they might be bent; for to speak otherwise than as man apprehends (that is, from appearances, fallacies, and persuasions) would have been to sow seed in the waters, and to say that which would be at once rejected. Nevertheless such forms of speech are able to serve as general vessels in which spiritual and celestial things may be contained, for into them it may be insinuated that all things are from the Lord; then that the Lord permits, but that evil is wholly from diabolical spirits; afterwards that the Lord provides and disposes that evils should be turned into goods; and at last that nothing but good is from the Lord. Thus the sense of the letter perishes as it ascends and becomes spiritual, then celestial, and at last Divine.