alone, hold His Word sacred, love divine truths and reject faith
separated from charity. More about this sense of the Word may be seen in
_Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about Sacred Scripture_ (nn. 5-26 and
following numbers); what the spiritual sense of the Word is (nn. 5-26);
that a spiritual sense exists in all of the Word in general and in detail
(nn. 9-17); that by virtue of the spiritual sense the Word is divinely
inspired and holy in every expression (nn. 18, 19); that until now the
spiritual sense has been unknown, and why it was not revealed before (nn.
20-25); and that henceforth that sense will be open only to one who is
in genuine truths from the Lord (n. 26).

[6] It may be evident from these propositions that it is by the Lord's
divine providence that the spiritual sense has lain concealed from the
world until the present day and been kept meanwhile in heaven with the
angels, who draw their wisdom from it. This sense was known and treasured
among ancient peoples who lived before Moses, but when their descendants
converted the correspondences, of which their Word and hence their
religion solely consisted, into various idolatries, and the Egyptians
converted them into magic, by the Lord's divine providence this sense was
closed up, first with the Israelites and then with Christians for the
reasons given above, and is now opened for the first time for the Lord's
new church.

265. _Doubt may arise against divine providence in that it has been
unknown hitherto that to shun evils as sins is the Christian religion
itself._ That this is the Christian religion itself was shown in
_Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem,_ from beginning to end; and as
faith separated from charity is the one obstacle to its being received,
that also was treated of. We say that it has not been known that to shun
evils as sins is the Christian religion itself, for it is unknown to