Personal Experience of a Physician by Ellis, John, 1815-1896

The "Fruit of the Vine," or pure unfermented or unleavened wine, has been organized by the Lord in the vegetable kingdom; it therefore not only contains water, but also organized nourishment for the structures of the body, which supply in a most remarkable degree the wants of the body, like a mother's milk to her infant child; it therefore most beautifully symbolizes blood, and corresponds to spiritual truth, united with good from the Lord, which nourishes and builds up the spirit of man, when he drinks or appropriates it, or when he lives as divine truth teaches, shunning evils as sins against God. It is consequently used appropriately in the Most Holy Supper.

It has been my aim above to simply give the reader a glimpse of this most wonderful and beautiful of all sciences, and really the foundation of all sciences-the science of correspondence between natural and spiritual things. He who reads carefully and without prejudice the "Apocalypse Revealed" and the "Arcana Celestia," with a desire to know and live according to the truth, cannot fail to see that the Sacred Scriptures are plenarily inspired, and are a special revelation from God to man; and that, different from all merely human writings, they contain within the letter a connected spiritual sense. That the science of correspondences was once understood by the inhabitants of our earth, is to be seen in the relics which remain in a more or less perverted form in the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the idolatry among many nations, and sun-worship, where the spiritual signification has often been lost and men have come to worship the natural objects instead of the spiritual, which they represent. The mythological writings of many nations, and even Masonry, contain remains of this once well known science. The first chapters of Genesis and the entire Word are written in strict accordance with this science. The first chapters of Genesis, like the Parables of our Lord, were not intended to be understood literally; the very names therein show this clearly. A tree of life, a tree of knowledge of good and evil, a talking serpent, how can any man for a moment suppose these to be natural trees and a natural snake? Do serpents ever talk? the garden eastward in Eden, and an Ark which would not hold the hides and teeth of all the animals on earth--were these to be understood literally?

CHAPTER VI.

A NEW DAY TO OUR EARTH.

"'Behold He cometh with clouds,' signifies that the Lord will reveal Himself in the literal sense of the Word, and will open its spiritual sense at the end of the church."--_A. R. 23._