Heaven and Hell (Harley) n. 239

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239. The speech of angels is likewise full of wisdom because it proceeds from their interior thought, and their interior thought in wisdom, as their interior affection is love. In speech their love and wisdom unite. Consequently, their speech is so full of wisdom that they can express in a single word what man cannot express in a thousand words. Also the ideas of their thought include such things as man cannot grasp, still less express. This is why the things that have been heard and seen in heaven are said to be ineffable, and such as ear hath never heard nor eye seen. [2] That this is true I have also been permitted to learn by experience. At times I have entered into the state in which angels are, and in that state have talked with them, and I then understood everything. But when I was brought back into my former state, and thus into the natural thought proper to man, and wished to recall what I had heard, I could not. For there were thousands of things not on a level with the ideas of natural thought, and therefore only to be expressed by variegations of heavenly light, and thus not at all by human words. [3] The ideas of thought of the angels, from which their words are derived, are also modifications of the light of heaven, and the affections from which the tones of the words are derived are variations of the heat of heaven. This is because the light of heaven is Divine Truth or Wisdom, and the heat of heaven is Divine Good or Love (see above, n. 126-140), and the angels have their affection from the Divine Love, and their thought from the Divine Wisdom.# # The ideas of angels, from which they speak, are expressed by wonderful variegations of the light of heaven (n. 1646, 3343, 3993).


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