other names. He is acknowledged and adored as the Lord through out all heaven, because he has all power in heaven and earth. He also commanded his disciples so to call him, when he said, "Ye call me Lord, and ye say well, for so I am," (John xiii. 13.) And after his resurrection his disciples called him Lord.

15. Throughout all heaven they know no other Father than the Lord, because he and the Father are one, as he himself said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life.-Philip saith, Lord, show us the Father.-Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father: and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?-Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me." (John xiv. 6, 8-11.)

16. Verse 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The most ancient time is called the beginning; by the prophets it is usually called the ancient days, and also the days of eternity. The beginning also implies the first time when man is regenerating, for then he is born anew and receives life: it is from this ground that regeneration is called a new creation of man. To create, to form, to make, in almost all parts of the prophetic writings, signify to regenerate, yet with a difference of signification; as in Isaiah; "Every one that is called by my name, I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him." (xliii. 7.) Wherefore the Lord is called the Redeemer, the Former from the womb, the Maker, and also the Creator; as in the same prophet: "I am Jehovah, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your king," (xliii. 15.) And in David: "The people which shall be created shall praise the Lord," (Psalm cii. 18.) And in the same: "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the earth," (civ. 30.) That heaven signifies the internal man, and earth, before regeneration, the external, may be seen from what follows.

17. Verse 2. And the earth was vacuity and emptiness, and darkness was upon the faces of the abyss. And the spirit of God moved upon the faces of the waters. Man before regeneration is called earth, void, and empty, and also ground, wherein nothing that is good or true is sown; it is said to be void where there is nothing of good, and empty where there is nothing of the true. Hence comes darkness, or a dulness and ignorance as to all things which belong to faith in the Lord, consequently, respecting spiritual and celestial life. Man in this state is thus described by the Lord in Jeremiah: "My people is foolish, they have not known me: they are sottish children, and they have no understanding; they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. I beheld the earth, and lo, it was vacuity and emptiness: and the heavens, and they had no light,” (iv. 22, 23.)

18. The faces of the abyss are the lusts of the unregenerate man, and the falsities thence originating, of which he consists, and in which he is totally immersed. In this state, having no light, he is like a deep abyss, or something obscure and confused. Such persons are also called abysses, and depths of the sea, in many parts of the Word, which are dried up, or wasted, before man is regenerated; as in Isaiah: "Awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art not thou he who hath dried the sea, the waters of the great abyss; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over? Therefore the redeemed of Jehovah shall return," (li. 9-11.) Such a man also, when he is seen from heaven, appears like a black mass, destitute of vitality. The same expressions likewise in general imply the vastation* of man, frequently spoken of by the prophets, which precedes regeneration; for, before man can know what is true, and be affected with what is good, there must be a removal of such things as hinder and resist their admission: thus the old man must needs die, before the new man can be conceived.

19. By the Spirit of God is meant the mercy of the Lord, which is said to move, or brood, as a hen broods over her eggs. The things over which it moves, are such as the Lord has hidden and treasured up in man, which in the Word throughout are called remains or a remnant, consisting of the knowledges of the true and of the good, which never come to light, or day, until external things are vastated. These knowledges are here called the faces of the waters.

20. Verse 3. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. The first [state], is when man begins to know that the good and the true are of a superior nature. Men who are altogether external do not even know what good and truth are; for they fancy all things to be good which relate to self-love and the love of the world, and all things to be true which favor those loves; not being aware that such goods are evils, and such truths falses. But when man is conceived anew, he then begins first to know that his goods are not goods, particularly when he is enlightened to see that the Lord is, and that He is the good and the true itself. That men ought to know that the Lord is, he himself teaches in John: "Except ye believe that I AM, ye shall die in your sins," (viii. 24.) Also, that the Lord is good itself, or life, and the true itself, or light, and consequently, that there is neither goodness nor truth except from the Lord, is thus declared: "In the beginning was the Word. and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.-All

The term vastation, when applied to the regenerate man, signifies the removal of such things as hinder the operation of the divine grace in the soul; but when applied to the unregenerate, it signifies his deprivation of all goodness and truth, hereby he is left a prey to the evils and errors which he has embraced.

things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness. He was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," (John i. 1, 3, 4, 9.)

21. Verses 4, 5. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided between the light and the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. Light is called good, because it is from the Lord, who is good itself. Darkness means all those things, which, before man is conceived and born anew, appeared like light, evil in that state seeming like good, and the false like the true; nevertheless all is darkness, consisting merely of the things proper to man himself, which still remain. Whatsoever is of the Lord is compared to day, because it is of the light; and whatsoever is man's own is compared to night, because it is of darkness. These comparisons frequently occur in the Word.

22. Verse 5. And the evening and the morning were the first day. What is meant by evening, and what by morning, is hence now discoverable. Evening means every preceding state, or that of shade, or of falsity and of no faith; morning is every subsequent state, being one of light, or of truth and of the knowledges of faith. Evening, in a general sense, signifies all things which are of man's own; but morning whatever is of the Lord; according as it is said by David: "The spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and his word was in my tongue; the God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me; he is as the light of the morning, when the sun ariseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springeth out of the earth, by clear shining after rain," (2 Sam. xxiii. 2-4.) As it is evening when there is no faith, and morning when there is faith, therefore the coming of the Lord into the world is called morning; and the time when he comes, because then there is no faith, is called evening, as in Daniel: "And he said unto me, unto two thousand and three hundred days.-The vision of the evening and the morning," (viii. 14, 26.) In like manner, the morning is used in the Word, to denote every particular coming of the Lord; consequently, it is an expression which has respect to new creation.

23. That day is used to denote time itself, appears from many passages in the Word; as in Isaiah: "The day of Je hovah is at hand. Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh. I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. Her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged," (xiii. 6, 9, 13, 22.) And in the same prophet: Her antiquity is of ancient days. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king," (xxiii. 7, 15.) Forasmuch as day is

used to denote time, it is also used to denote the state of that time; as in Jeremiah: "Woe unto us, for the day goeth away, for the shadows of the evening are stretched out," (vi. 4.) And again: "If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season," &c., (xxxiii. 20, also v. 25.) And again: "Renew our days as of old," (Lament. v. 21.)

24. Verse 6. And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it divide between the waters in the waters. After the spirit of God, or the mercy of the Lord, has brought forth into day the knowledges of the true and of the good, and has communicated a perception that the Lord is, that he is the good itself, and the true itself, and that there is no goodness and truth but from Him, he then distinguishes the internal man from the external, consequently the knowledges which are in the internal man, from the scientifics which appertain to the external. The internal man is called an expanse; the knowledges which are in the internal man are called the waters above the expanse; and the scientifics appertaining to the external man are called the waters beneath the expanse. Man, before he is regenerated, does not even know that any internal man exists, much less is he acquainted with its nature and quality. Being occupied with corporeal and worldly things in which also the faculties of his internal man are immersed, he cannot conceive of any difference between this and his external, and thus he forms a confused and obscure something, from two perfectly distinct existences. It is on this account that it is first said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters," and further, "Let it divide between the waters in the waters," but not "Let it divide between the waters which are under the expanse and the waters which are above the expanse," as it is afterwards said in the next verses: 66 And God made the expanse, and divided between the waters which were under the expanse, and the waters which were above the expanse, and it was 80. And God called the expanse heaven," (verses 7, 8.) The next thing therefore which man observes in the course of regeneration, is, that he begins to know that there is an internal man, or that the things which are in the internal man are goods and truths, which are of the Lord alone. Now as the external man, when he is being regenerated, is of such a nature that he still supposes the goods which he does to be done of himself, and the truths which he speaks to be spoken of himself, and whereas, being such, he is led by them of the Lord, as by things of his own, to do good and to speak truth, therefore mention is first made of a division of the waters under the expanse, and afterwards of those above the expanse. It is also an arcanum of heaven, that man, by things of his own, as well the fallacies of the senses as the natural appetites, is led and inclined of the

Lord to what is good and true; and thus that each and every moment of regeneration proceeds from evening to morning, thus from the external man to the internal, or from earth to heaven; wherefore now the expanse, or internal man, is called heaven.

25. To spread out the earth and stretch out the heavens, is a common form of speaking with the prophets, when they are treating of the regeneration of man; as in Isaiah: "Thus saith Jehovah thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb; I am Jehovah that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself," (xliv. 24.) And again, where he plainly speaks of the coming of the Lord: "A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment unto truth;" that is, he does not break the fallacies, nor quench the desires of the senses, but inclines them to what is true and good; therefore it follows, "He that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein," (xlii. 3, 5.) Not to mention many other passages to the same purport.

26. Verse 8. And the evening and the morning were the second day. The meaning of evening, morning and day, was shown above, verse 5.

27. Verse 9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry [land] appear. When it is known that there is both an internal and external man, and that truths and goods descend by influx from, or through, the internal man to the external, from the Lord, although this is contrary to appearance, then those things, or the knowledges of the true and the good in the regenerate man, are stored up in his memory, and become scientifics: for whatsoever is insinuated into the memory of the external man, whether it be natural, or spiritual, or celestial, abides there as a scientific, and is called forth thence by the Lord. These knowledges are the waters gathered together into one place, and are called seas; but the external man himself is called dry [land], and presently earth, according to what follows.

28. Verse 10. And God called the dry [land] earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he seas; and God saw that it was good. That waters signify knowledges and scientifics, is plain from the sense in which they are most generally used in the Word, and hence it is that seas signify their being gathered together; as in Isaiah: "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea," (xi. 9.) And in the same prophet, where he speaks of a want or failure of knowledges and scientifics: "The waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up, and they shall