Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There eBook

7.  With regard, in general, to the Divine worship of the inhabitants of other earths:  all there, who are not idolaters, acknowledge the Lord to be the One only God; for they adore the Divine, not as an invisible Divine, but as visible, for this reason, besides others, that when the Divine appears to them it is in the Human Form, as He formerly did to Abraham and others on this Earth [g]; and all who adore the Divine under the Human Form are accepted by the Lord [h].  They also say that no one can worship God rightly, and still less be conjoined with Him, unless he comprehends Him by some idea, and that God cannot be comprehended except in the Human Form; and that if He be not thus comprehended, the interior sight, which is that of the thought, concerning God, is dissipated, as is the sight of the eye, when looking into the universe with nothing to limit the view; and that then the thought cannot but fall into nature, and worship it instead of God.

[Footnote g:  The inhabitants of all the earths adore the Divine Being under the Human Form, consequently the Lord, nos. 8541-8547, 10159, 10736, 10737, 10738.  And they rejoice when they hear that God actually became Man, no. 9361.  It is impossible to think of God except in the Human Form, nos. 8705, 9359, 9972.  Man is able to worship and love that of which he has some idea, but not that of which he has no idea, nos. 4733, 5110, 5663, 7211, 9167, 10067.]

[Footnote h:  The Lord receives all who are in good, and who adore the Divine under the Human Form, nos. 9359, 7178.]

8.  When they were told that the Lord assumed the Human on our Earth, they pondered for awhile, and then said that it was done for the salvation of the human race.

THE EARTH OR PLANET MERCURY, AND ITS SPIRIT AND INHABITANTS

9.  That the entire heaven resembles one man, who is therefore called the Grand or Greatest Man (Maximus Homo), and that all things in general and particular in man, both his exteriors and interiors, correspond to that man or to heaven, is an arcanum as yet unknown in the world; but that it is so has been shown in many passages[i].  But to constitute that Grand Man, those who come from our Earth into heaven are insufficient, being comparatively few; they must come from many other earths:  and it is provided by the Lord that as soon as there is in any part a deficiency in the quality or quantity of the correspondence, those who may supply it shall be immediately summoned from another earth, in order that the proportion may be preserved, and heaven by this means maintain its consistence.

[Footnote i:  See note f.]

10.  It has also been disclosed to me from heaven, what the spirits from the planet Mercury have relation to in the Grand Man, namely, that they have relation to the memory, but to the memory of things abstracted from earthly and merely material things.  As, however, it has been given me to speak with them, and this for many weeks, and to learn of what character they are, and to examine how the inhabitants of that earth are circumstanced, I wish to adduce the experiences themselves.