the Word was written the Lord speaks with men by means of it (n. 10290).  The church, where the Word is and the Lord is known by means of it, in relation to those who are out of the church where there is no Word and the Lord is unknown is like the heart and lungs in man in comparison with the other parts of the body, which live from them as from the fountains of their life (n. 637, 931, 2054, 2853).  Before the Lord the universal church on the earth is as a single man (n. 7396, 9276).  Consequently unless there were on this earth a church where the Word is, and where the Lord is known by means of it, the human race here would perish (n. 468, 637, 931, 4545, 10452).

306.  I have been told from heaven that the most ancient people, because their interiors were turned heavenwards, had direct revelation, and by this means there was at that time a conjunction of the Lord with the human race.  After their times, however, there was no such direct revelation, but there was a mediate revelation by means of correspondences, inasmuch as all their Divine worship then consisted of correspondences, and for this reason the churches of that time were called representative churches.  For it was then known what correspondence is and what representation is, and that all things on the earth correspond to spiritual things in heaven and in the church, or what is the same, represent them; and therefore the natural things that constituted the externals of their worship served them as mediums for thinking spiritually, that is, thinking with the angels.  When the knowledge of correspondences and representations had been blotted out of remembrance a Word was written, in which all the words and their meanings are correspondences, and thus contain a spiritual or internal sense, in which are the angels; and in consequence, when a man reads the Word and perceives it according to the sense of the letter or the outer sense the angels perceive it according to the internal or spiritual sense; for all the thought of angels is spiritual while the thought of man is natural.  These two kinds of thought appear diverse; nevertheless they are one because they correspond.  Thus it was that when man had separated himself from heaven and had severed the bond the Lord provided a medium of conjunction of heaven with man by means of the Word.

307.  How heaven is conjoined with man by means of the Word I will illustrate by some passages from it.  “The New Jerusalem” is described in the Apocalypse in these words: 

I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.  And I saw the holy city New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven.  The city was foursquare, its length as great as its breadth; and an angel measured the city with a reed, twelve thousand furlongs; the length, the breadth, and the height of it are equal.  And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of a man, that