"Seek ye first the kingdom of the heavens and its righteousness, and all these things (which are recounted), shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33)

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Comparison of the kingdom of God:

1. With the human body from inmosts to outmosts; and therefore concerning that society wherein the Messiah is the Soul, and which shall form one body as one man.

2. With the kindred in the house of Abraham and Nahor.

3. With the land of Canaan and its bordering countries.

4. With the Paradise of Eden.

5. With a marriage and a feast.

[For the above comparisons, see:

(1) n. The Word Explained 596 seq.

(2) n. 567-568.

(3) n. 477 seq.

(4) n. 498 seq.,

(5) n. 586.]

Men are men only so far as they walk in the way of truth. But so far as they turn aside therefrom, they approach to the nature of a beast.

498. In the Divine Word the kingdom of God is compared to a paradise in whose midst or center was the tree of life. What the seed of Abraham and Isaac is, and now the seed of Jacob; and also how in their seed all nations shall be blessed; shines out more clearly from this comparison than from others. The tree of life in the midst of paradise is the one only tree from which all the trees in the whole paradise derive their origin, being all sprung from its seed. Therefore each one of them can represent the central tree in a kind of image as their parent. But this is according to the distance to which the seeds have fallen; thus the nearest trees derive their origin immediately from the central tree, while the others derive theirs from the seeds of trees which in their turn have grown up from the sowing of the first seeds; and so, from these again, that is to say, from this paradise, all the other groves and woods which spread out to the west, east, north, and south according to the words of the text: And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and it shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south (vs. 14).