ASSYRIA AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE WORD OF GOD, ETC.

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303 a corrupt state of the church is evidently treated of, both as respects its faith or doctrines and its love by the sisters. By the horses mentioned must, therefore, be signified something contrary to the good and true; specifically they signify the intellectual principle in a perverted condition; the intellectuality or power of understanding used to serve a false rationality for self-exaltation. By the impure love of the sisters is represented the violation of true religious principles, through the fascinating influence of the apparent glory and self-elevation which such a perverted rationality induces. In the same chapter it is threatened that in consequence of their lewdness, the Lord will bring against them their lovers, the Assyrians, all of them captains and rulers, desirable young men, great lords and renowned, all of them riding upon horses, who should deal with them hatefully, and despatch them with the sword, and burn up their houses with fire;" representing the utter destruction of all that can constitute a church, either internally or externally, that will inevitably follow when the doctrines and life of religion have become such as to encourage false reasonings, rather than preserve the integrity of their faith and love towards the Lord; for the false reasonings which serve to draw away men's hearts and understandings from the purity of truth and righteousness will eventually lead to the destruction of every religious feeling, and the spread of a dreary infidelity, even as the kings of Assyria and Babylon ultimately destroyed the cities of Israel and Judah, and led away the people into an inglorious captivity. The same is the signification of horses in Habakkuk; speaking of the Chaldeans—“Their horses are swifter than leopards, and fiercer than the evening wolves. They shall come all for violence; they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them. They shall deride every stronghold; for they shall heap dust and take it." Shewing the intellectual power with which a perverted rationality attacks the things of the church, or the principles of religion, when the genuine truth and life of the church have been departed from, and the weakness, the utter imbecility of the doctrines most gloried in before so self-confident and unmerciful an enemy. In Ezek., chapter 26, the Lord threatens to bring against Tyrus, "the king of Babylon, with horses and horsemen, and much people, by reason of the abundance of whose horses the dust should cover them, and who, with the hoofs of his horses, should tread them down in their streets." In a good sense Tyrus represents the church's interior knowledge of truth, hence the enumeration of its many riches and resources given in the next chapter, when describing what had been its condition. In the passage noticed a perverted and corrupt state of the church is shewn, when the faculty of acquiring

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the interior riches of truth turned itself to self-glory and exultation. A laying waste of the spiritual understanding, and destruction of its intellectual riches that follows, by reason of the profane use of sacred things, and the abundant power and influence of a depraved understanding as to religious truth, is represented by "the king of Babylon with his abundance of horses and horsemen and much people covering them with dust, and treading them down in the streets." In Jeremiah, chapter 50, in a denouncement of Babylon, it says-" A sword is upon their horses and upon their chariots," foretelling the efficacy of truth, signified by a sword, in destroying the perversions of a depraved intellectuality and its false doctrines. In Nahum, chapter 3rd, prophesying woe to Nineveh, it exclaims-" The noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and the jumping chariot," by which is represented the abundance and predominancy of false doctrines and perverted understandings existing when the rational principle has become, by perversion, the conquering adversary and spoliator of the Lord's church. In Hosea, chapter 14, Israel is made to say-" Ashur or Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses, neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods," signifying that the genuine church of the Lord when raised up shall not look for salvation from evil and falsity unto the false reasonings of a fallen church, nor trust to its perverted understanding of truth, nor rely upon any notions originating in a self-derived intelligence.

The understanding of truth fighting against evil and falsity would be represented by the horse engaged in battle or in combats with wild beasts; but the horse variously engaged in the service of man, or peacefully grazing in the field, would also denote the spiritual understanding subserving the purposes of goodness, or receiving spiritual nourishment from the provisions of Divine Truth. A perverted rationality, however, making use of the intellectual power, is generally occupied in combat against truth. As the Assyrian represented this principle in its perversion at that time, when the sculptures now dug from its ruins were decorating their furnished and occupied palaces, it is quite consistent with such a representative character that these sculptures should be almost destitute of any carvings of the horse, except as engaged in the battle or the chase, or in some triumphal processions. There is, however, at least one exception to this among the sculptures in the Museum, a representation of some kitchen occupations, and a man grooming a horse, and a group of three horses loose, two of them drinking at a tank. It is a somewhat remarkable fact that the horse, so much valued and used by the Assyrians, should not have been honoured

with a place among the emblematical figures. Why are there not human-headed winged horses, or at any rate, horses with some mythical metamorphosis? It was not because their horses were not of the noblest kind, neither that they were not proud of their horses. When, for the ornamentation of their palaces, in their later times, they adopted or selected from the symbolic figures with which they had always been familiar, had the horse been as common among these as the lion or bull, it would, no doubt, have shared their mythic honours, and contributed with these to adorn their walls in similar metamorphoses and colossal dimensions; or had those strange forms been the inventions of those later times, it is not likely the horse would have been omitted. Swedenborg tells us, as we have already noticed, that in the early times of that ancient church of which Assyria was a descendant branch, men were acquainted with the science of correspondences, and by its means invented numerous symbols, consisting, among other things, of animals and combinations of animal forms, by which they represented spiritual things in an instructive manner; but that the knowledge of their meanings in process of time became lost, and the symbols afterwards were regarded as invested with mysterious sanctity, and then supplied men with objects of idolatrous adoration. Before the truths of the church had become perverted, men's rational faculty would not have to employ the power of understanding spiritual truth in combating with falsity, as would become necessary after the introduction and increase of errors, as the horse is not naturally of a combative disposition, although capable of being trained to warfare. The horse, therefore, might not have appeared among those early symbols, except in a peaceful character. It might have been endowed with wings to represent the power of the intellect to soar away into elevated degrees of truth. I have seen one pair of winged horses, there may be more, among the embroidered ornaments on the garments of the king, but they are very rare. It was, perhaps, when the Assyrian had become the representative of a combating principle, and the invention of symbols according to correspondences had ceased, that the horse was first used by him in a belligerent capacity. In that capacity, however, it would soon become a necessary and a very efficient auxiliary, and consequently a great favourite, although the power of its hoof to break open the Heliconian fountain and liberate the nine Muses, might be but very little appreciated. The horse, therefore, would not figure among the emblematical figures embellishing an Assyrian palace, but would be elaborately and carefully represented in the battle scenes that should tell so faithfully the conquests and glory of Assyria.

[Enl. Series.-No. 67, vol. vi.]

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It appears likely that the lion was bred and reared at Nineveh, as we observed in noticing the passage in Nahum, where, anticipating its desstruction, it is asked-"Where is the dwelling place of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions, where the old lion walked and the lion's whelp, and none made them afraid. The lion did tear in pieces for his whelps and for his lionesses." We consider the lion to signify in a good sense Truth as to its all-conquering power, but it is Truth as deriving its power from Goodness. In the opposite sense, therefore, it is the destructive power of falsity, as implied by the love of evil. In this passage, therefore, the lions signify the destructive power of falsity used by the love of evil, and yielded to a false rationality. The prolific nature of this evil principle in such a state of things is represented by the dif ferent generations of "old lion, lion, young lion, and lion's whelp." The shelter and encouragement afforded it by the perverted rationality is signified by their "dwelling and feeding place, and place for walking." The destructive energy of this evil and false principle is denoted by the lion "tearing in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangling for his lionesses." By the threatening of the Lord against them which follows, “to burn her chariot in the smoke, and let the sword devour her young ones," is represented the superior efficacy of divine truth in removing such an evil state of things. As we gave the interpretation of some other passages, in which the lion corresponds to the falsity exercising its power from evil love, we will pass on to the representative meaning of the bull. In 50th chapter of Jeremiah, the Chaldeans are said to have " grown fat as the heifer at grass, and to bellow as bulls;" signifying that the prevailing false principle in the church has grown according to the increase of the evils of the natural man, and has formed its doctrines to suit the disorderly ravings of the unregulated natural affections. In the 27th verse, "Slay all her bullocks, let them go down to the slaughter," which signifies that these disorderly lusts or affections of unregenerated nature are to be overcome, and consigned to destruction. In the Levitical law it is enacted that "if an ox gore a man that he die, he shall be put to death," denoting that if a natural affection become so wild and lawless in its energy as to destroy some good and true principle, it must be itself subdued and destroyed, that the spiritual may not suffer from its indulgence. In the 49th chapter of Jeremiah, camels are named among the spoil that Nebuchadnezzar would take away from Kedar. Kedar appears to be the same as Arabia, over the deserts of which, to the present day, the camel bears the merchandise of nations, and carries the wandering Arab. Kedar was one of the twelve sons of Ishmael, whom Hagar, the Egyptian, bare unto Abraham. Kedar therefore represents some external principle

of the church belonging to the natural degree. The camel being a beast of burden, has reference in its signification to the understanding part of the human mind, along with the horse and the ass. We have shown that the horse corresponds to an intellectual power in reference to spiritual things, and also, in a former lecture, that the ass has a similar signification, but of a lower degree, or such an understanding of truth as the natural mind is capable of. What the camel represents is not any power of intellectually comprehending Truth either in a spiritual or natural manner, but rather the faculty of accumulating in the memory mere facts, and the forms of expression that contain truths, what in New Church phraseology are called scientifics. Among the peculiarities in the nature of the camel which render it such a representative, may be noticed its well-known capability, by means of the provision in its internal structure, of taking in a large quantity of water, to serve it for many days, out of which natural reservoir its proper stomach is supplied with its required drink while pursuing its journeys over the thirsty desert. The prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar should take away the camels of Kedar foretels, therefore, that when, in the low and debased condition of the church, the profane principle signified by Babylon and its king should prevail, then the domination of this profane principle would deprive the church even of the outward forms of true doctrine, and not only of these, but also of such knowledges of natural science as serve to furnish the memory with materials for building up the intellect,state of things that could give birth to this monstrous maxim, "Ignorance is the mother of devotion," and in which the discoveries of science could be anathematized as contradictory of religious truth.

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The Assyrian merchants must have been familiar with the usefulness of the camel. To its services their cities must have been greatly indebted for many articles and materials requisite for the wants, comforts, and embellishments of a civilized state of society such as theirs; but, any more than the ass, it is seldom to be found delineated on their sculptures; when it does occur, it is in a procession of captives and tributaries bringing objects of tribute to the king, or fleeing with its rider before the pursuit of the all-conquering Assyrian. The dominant love in the Assyrian character being representative of the chief delight of the rational principle, its display of self-ornament and conquest, corresponding to the pride of a perverted rationality, excludes the inelegantlooking though useful camel, except among the spoils of a captured people, or as aiding the flight of a discomfited adversary. Upon the obelisk in the Museum may be seen two camels being led in, representing one of these processions of tribute, and upon one of the slabs