The truths of the sense of the letter of the Word are in part
appearances of truth, and are taken from things in nature, and thus
accommodated and adapted to the grasp of the simple and also of little
children. But being correspondences, they are receptacles and abodes
of genuine truth; and are like enclosing and containing vessels. The
naked truths themselves, which are enclosed and contained, are in the
Word's spiritual sense; and the naked goods in its celestial sense.
The doctrine of genuine truth can also be drawn in full from the
literal sense of the Word; for the Word in this sense is like a man
clothed, whose face and hands are bare. All that concerns man's life,
and so his salvation, is bare; the rest is clothed.
--_Doctrine Concerning the Sacred Scripture, nn._ 40, 55