194. (i) WHAT THE SPIRITUAL SENSE IS.
The spiritual sense is not the one which transparently underlies the literal sense of the Word, when it is scrutinised and expounded to support some dogma of the church; such a sense can be called the literal sense of the Word as understood by the church. But the spiritual sense is not to be seen in the literal sense; it lies within it, like the soul in the body, or as what is thought by the understanding shows in the eyes, or as the affection of love shows in the face. This sense is the principal reason why the Word is spiritual, not only for human beings, but also for the angels. This is why this sense enables the Word to act as a channel of communication with the heavens. Since the Word is inwardly spiritual, it was composed simply by the use of correspondences; anything written by using correspondences emerges in its outermost sense as resembling the style used by the Prophets, the Gospels and Revelation. For all that it seems ordinary, it still has stored within it Divine wisdom and all the wisdom of the angels. The nature of correspondence may be seen from My HEAVEN AND HELL (published in London in 1758), where there is a section (87-102) on the correspondence of everything in heaven with everything in man, and another on the correspondence of everything in heaven with everything on earth (103-115); and it will be further demonstrated by the examples from the Word, which I shall quote below.