1050. 'And with every living soul in all flesh' means the entire human race. This is clear from the meaning of 'living soul in all flesh'. Every individual is called 'a living soul' from that which is living within him. No one can possibly live, let alone as a human being, if he does not have something living within him, that is, if he does not have some measure of 'innocence, charity, and mercy, or from these something of a similar or comparable nature. This measure of innocence, charity, and mercy a person receives from the Lord when he is an infant and during childhood, as becomes clear from the state of infants and also from that of childhood. What a person receives at that time is preserved within him, and the things that are preserved are in the Word called 'remnants', which are the Lord's alone with a person. These remnants that are being preserved are what make it possible for someone when he becomes adult to be a human being. Regarding these remnants, see what appears in 468, 530, 560-563, 576.

[2] That the states of innocence, charity, and mercy that have been his in infancy and in childhood years enable a person to be human is quite clear from the fact that man is not born as animals are, ready to perform any of life's activities, but has to learn how to do every single one. The things he learns to do then become through the performance of them habitual and so to speak natural to him. Man is not even able to walk, or to talk, until he learns how to do so; and the same applies to everything else. Through usage these activities become so to speak natural to him. The situation is the same with regard to the states of innocence, charity, and mercy with which likewise he is endowed from infancy. But for these states man would be far inferior to any animal. These states however are not states that man acquires by learning but ones which he receives as a free gift from the Lord, and which the Lord preserves within him. These, together with truths of faith, are what are also called remnants and are the Lord's alone. To the extent that a person in adult life destroys these states, he becomes a dead man. When a person is being regenerated these states are the principal agents of regeneration, and he is brought into these states, for, as stated already, the Lord works by means of remnants.

[3] These remnants present with everybody are what are here called 'the living soul in all flesh'. That 'all flesh' means everybody and so the entire human race becomes clear from the meaning of 'flesh' in many places in the Word - see what has been shown in 574 - as in Matthew,

Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. Matthew 24:22; Mark 13:20.

In John,

Jesus said, Father, glorify Your Son, as You have given Him power over all flesh. John 17:1-2.

In Isaiah,

The glory of Jehovah will be revealed, and all flesh will see it. Isaiah 40:5.

In the same prophet,

All flesh will know that I am Jehovah your Saviour. Isaiah 49:26.

37. (i) GOD IS LOVE ITSELF AND WISDOM ITSELF, THESE TWO MAKING UP HIS ESSENCE.

Our earliest ancestors realised that love and wisdom are the two essentials to which are to be ascribed all the infinite qualities which are in God or emanate from Him. But succeeding ages gradually lost this vision, as they allowed their minds to sink down from heaven and plunge into worldly and bodily affairs. They began to be unaware of what love is in its essence, and so what wisdom is in its essence, for they did not know that love cannot exist in the abstract without form, but works in and through a form. Now since God is the very, sole and prime substance and form, the essence of which is love and wisdom, and since it was from Him that all things came that were made, it follows that He created the universe in all its parts out of love by means of wisdom, and thus the Divine Love together with the Divine Wisdom is present in every single created object. Love too is not only the Essence which forms everything, but it also unites and joins them, so keeping together what has been formed.

[2] Countless things in the world can serve to illustrate this. For instance, the sun's heat and light, which are the two essentials and universals which enable every single thing on earth to come into and continue in existence. They are there because they correspond to the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom; for the heat radiated by the sun of the spiritual world is in its essence love, and the light from this source is in its essence wisdom. Another illustration might be the two essentials and universals which enable human minds to come into and continue in existence, namely, will and understanding. Every mind is composed of these two faculties, and the same two are present and function in every one of its acts. The reason is that the will is a receiver and seat of love, and the understanding likewise of wisdom. Therefore these two faculties correspond to the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, from which they originally came. Yet another illustration is the two essentials and universals which enable human bodies to come into and continue in existence, namely, the heart and the lungs, or the systolic and diastolic motion of the heart and the breathing of the lungs. It is well known that these two function in every part of the body; the reason is that the heart corresponds to love and the lungs to wisdom. This correspondence was fully proved in my book ANGELIC WISDOM ABOUT THE DIVINE LOVE AND THE DIVINE WISDOM published in Amsterdam.

[3] Countless examples in both the spiritual and the natural worlds can be adduced to prove that love like a bridegroom or husband produces or begets all forms, but by means of wisdom as bride or wife. Only one can be mentioned here: the whole heaven of the angels is arranged into its form and preserved in it by the Divine Love acting by means of the Divine Wisdom. Those who infer that the world was created from any other source, and are unaware that the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom make up the Divine Essence, sink from the vision of reason to the vision of the eye. They embrace nature as the creative force of the universe, thus conceiving chimeras and giving birth to ghosts. Their thoughts are fallacies, from which they reason and draw conclusions like ¹ eggs containing night birds. Such minds do not deserve that name; they are mere eyes and ears devoid of understanding, or thoughts devoid of soul. They talk of colours as if they could come into existence without light, about trees as if they could grow without seed, about everything on earth as if it could come into existence without sunlight. What they are doing is to confuse derived things with the principles from which they are derived, and caused things with causes. This stands everything on its head, and they lull their wakeful reason to sleep, until they are dreaming.

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