ns of correspondences, and so by
means of appearances according as man confirms these.
4. This conjunction of temporal and eternal is divine providence.

All this will be placed in clearer light by explanation.

[2] First: _It is of divine providence that man puts off the natural and
temporal through death and puts on the spiritual and eternal._ Natural
and temporal things are the outermost and lowest things which man first
enters, as he does on being born, to the end that he may be introduced
then into interior and higher things; for the outmost and lowest things
are containants, and these are in the natural world. For this reason no
angel or spirit was created such at once, but all were born as men first
and then were introduced into interior and higher things. Thus they have
an outmost and lowest which in itself is fixed and stable, within and by
which the interiors can be held in connection.

[3] Man first puts on the grosser substances of nature; his body consists
of them; but he puts these off by death, retaining the purer substances
of nature nearest to the spiritual, which then are his containants.
Moreover, all interior or higher things are together in the outmost and
lowermost, as was shown earlier in passages on the subject. Every
activity of the Lord is therefore from topmost and outmost simultaneously
and so is in fullness. But as the farthest and outmost things of nature as
they are in themselves cannot receive the spiritual and eternal things
for which the human mind was formed, and yet man was born to become
spiritual and live forever, man puts them off and retains only those
interior natural things which suit and harmonize with the spiritual and
celestial and serve to contain them. This is effected by the rejection of
the temporal and natural outmosts, which is the death of the body.

[4] Second: _Through His divine providence the Lord joins Himself with
natural things by means of spiritual things and to temporal by means of
eternal in accordance with uses._ Natural and temporal things are not
only those proper to nature, but also those proper to men in the natural
world. At death man puts off both of these and puts on the spiritual and
eternal things corresponding to them. That he puts these on according to
uses has been shown in much that precedes. The natural things proper to
nature relate in general to time and space and in particular to things
visible on earth. These man leaves behind at death an