Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
How the truth of the literal sense of the Word serves spiritual truth, shall be briefly told.The man of the church first learns truth from the literal sense of the Word, which is general truth accommodated to the apprehension of the external man, who is in natural light. This truth is received by an external way, that is, by hearing, and is stored up in the memory of the external man, where are also various memory-knowledges derived from the world.
Afterward, the things stored up in this memory are subjected to the sight or view of the internal man, who sees from the light of heaven. The internal man calls forth therefrom by selection the truths which agree with the good which flows in from the Lord by the way of the soul, and which the man had received. There the Lord conjoins these truths with good. The truths which are thus conjoined in the internal man are called "spiritual truths," and the good with which the truths are conjoined is called "spiritual good." This good, formed by means of truths, is what makes the spiritual life of man. The truths themselves there are called "the truths of faith," and the good is called "the good of charity." The good in which truths have thus been implanted is the church with man.
From this it is plain in what manner the truths of the literal sense of the Word serve for the formation of spiritual truths, in general for the formation of faith and of charity, which make the spiritual life, which life consists in being affected with truths for the sake of good, and in being affected with good from truths, and finally in being affected with truths from good.
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For the truths of the literal sense of the Word, stored up in the natural memory of man, form there as it were a field for the view of the internal man, into which light from heaven flows. From this field, as before said, the internal man selects such things as agree with the good in him, comparatively as the eye selects from the field of a garden such things as conduce to the uses of its life.
(from Arcana Coelestia 9034:2; 9035)