8. Divine providence regards what is infinite and eternal from itself
especially in saving mankind because its object is a heaven from mankind
(as was shown, nn. 27-45), and therefore it is man's reformation and
regeneration or salvation to which it especially looks, since heaven
consists of the saved or regenerate. To regenerate man, moreover, is to
unite good and truth or love and wisdom in him, as they are united in the
Lord's proceeding Divine; to this especially, therefore, providence looks
in saving the race. The image of the infinite and eternal is not to be
found elsewhere in man than in the marriage of good and truth. This
marriage the proceeding Divine effects. Men filled by the proceeding
Divine, which is called the Holy Spirit, have prophesied, as we know from
the Word; men enlightened by it see divine truths in heaven's light;
above all, angels sensibly perceive the presence, influx and conjunction,
though they are aware that the conjunction is no more than can be termed
adjunction.

59. It has not been known that divine providence in all its procedure
with man looks to his eternal state. It can look to nothing else because
the Divine is infinite and eternal, and the infinite and eternal or the
Divine is not in time; therefore all future things are present to it. It
follows that there is eternity in all that the Divine does. But those who
think from time and space perceive this with difficulty, not only because
they love temporal things, but also because they think from what is on
hand in the world and not from what is at hand in heaven; this is as
remote to them as the ends of the earth. Those, however, who are in the
Divine, inasmuch as they think from the Lord, think from what is eternal
as well as from what is at present, asking themselves, "What is that
which is not eternal? Is not the temporal relatively nothing and does it
not become nothing when it is past?" The eternal is not so; it alone
_is;_ its _esse_ has no end. To think thus is to think both from the
present and the eternal, and when a man not only thinks so but lives so,
the proceeding Divine with him or divine providence looks in all its
procedure to the state of his eternal life in heaven and guides to it. In
what follows it will be seen that the Divine looks to the eternal in
everybody, in an evil as well as in a good person.

60. (iv) _An image of the infinite and eternal offers in an angelic
heaven._ Among things we need to know about i