manner acquire a melancholy life, unreceptive of heavenly joy. To
receive the life of heaven a man must by all means live in the world
and engage in its duties and affairs and by a moral and civil life
receive the spiritual life.

That it is not so difficult to live the life of heaven, as some
believe, may be seen from this: when a matter presents itself to a man
which he knows to be dishonest and unjust, but to which he inclines,
it is only necessary for him to think that it ought not to be done
because it is opposed to the Divine precepts. If a man accustoms
himself to think so, and from so doing establishes a habit of so
thinking, he is gradually conjoined to heaven. So far as he is
conjoined to heaven the higher regions of his mind are opened; and so
far as these are opened he sees whatever is dishonest and unjust; and
so far as he sees these evils they can be dispersed--for no evil can
be dispersed until it is seen.

--_Heaven and Hell, nn._ 528, 533


THE DECALOGUE

"Come, let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual
covenant that shall not be forgotten."

--_Jeremiah_, L, 5

The conjunction of God with man, and of man with God, is taught in the
two Tables which were written with the finger of God, called the
Tables of the Covenant. These Tables obtain with all nations who have