Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/135

material to make it visible, useful and fixed in the natural world. Beginning thus, in the mineral kingdom, and in the simplest forms, and proceeding by successive modifications of forms and their vivification from the spiritual world, existences came forth successively through the three kingdoms of nature, each in effort to prepare for, and to supply forms to receive and bring forth the higher. But the only part that nature can play in the production of these ascending existences is to supply matter, and thus receptive forms, for the active spiritual seed and soul that flows in from the spiritual world. In the whole chain of existence not a mineral crystalizes, or a seed forms, or a plant grows or an animal is born, or a man lives and becomes regenerate, except by spiritual influx from the spiritual world adapted to produce that result; and such influx proceeds each and every moment, in every case, whether to produce or to sustain, by continual mediations from the love and wisdom of God. And when thus the kingdoms of nature were developed, and the corresponding kingdoms of the spiritual world, the Lord operating through both worlds produced man as the end involved, and the crown and consummation in the