an expression which signifies a path or way, and a path or way is
predicated of truth. By a ladder, therefore, one extremity of which is
set on the earth, while the other reaches to heaven, is signified the
communication of truth which is in the lowest place with truth which
is in the highest, indeed with inmost good and truth, such as are in
heaven, and from which heaven itself is an ascent as it were from what
is lowest, and afterward when the order is inverted, a descent, and is
the order of man's regeneration. The arcanum which lies concealed in
the internal sense of these words is, that all goods and truths
descend from the Lord, and ascend to Him, for man is so created that
the Divine things of the Lord may descend through him even to the
ultimates of nature, and from the ultimates of nature may ascend to
Him; so that man might be a medium uniting the Divine with the world
of nature, and uniting the world of nature with the Divine, that thus,
through man, as through the uniting medium, the very ultimate of
nature might live from the Divine, which would be the case had man
lived according to Divine order.

--_Arcana Coelestia, nn._ 3699-3702


ITS FUNCTION

Divine truth, in passing from the Lord through the three heavens to
men in the world, is written and made the Word in each heaven. The
Word, therefore, is the union of the heavens with one another, and of
the heavens with the Church in the world. Hence there flows in from
the Lord through the heavens a holy Divine with the man who
acknowledges the Divine in the Lord and the holy in the Word, while he
reads it. Such a man can be instructed and can draw wisdom from the