Heaven and its Wonders and HellSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Future life -- Christianity -- Early work to 1800; Heaven -- Christianity; Hell -- Christianity
Have ye not read that He who made them from the beginning
made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall
a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his
wife, and they twain shall become one flesh? Therefore,
they are no more twain, but one flesh. What, therefore,
God hath joined together let not man put asunder. Not all
can receive this word but they to whom it is given (Matt.
19:4-6, 11; Mark 10:6-9; Gen. 2:24).
This is a description both of the heavenly marriage in which the
angels are and of the marriage of good and truth, "man's not putting
asunder what God has joined together" meaning that good is not to be
separated from truth.
373. From all this the origin of true marriage love is made clear,
namely, that it is formed first in the minds of those who are in
marriage, and descends therefrom and is derived into the body, where
it is perceived and felt as love; for whatever is felt and perceived
in the body has its origin in the spiritual, because it is from the
understanding and the will. The understanding and the will constitute
the spiritual man. Whatever descends from the spiritual man into the
body presents itself there under another aspect, although it is
similar and accordant, like soul and body, and like cause and effect;
as can be seen from what has been said and shown in the two chapters
on Correspondences.
374. I heard an angel describing true marriage love and its heavenly
delights in this manner: That it is the Lord's Divine in the heavens,
which is Divine good and Divine truth so united in two persons, that
they are not as two but as one. He said that in heaven the two
consorts are marriage love, since everyone is his own good and his
own truth in respect both to mind and to body, the body being an
image of the mind because it is formed after its likeness. From this
he drew the conclusion that the Divine is imaged in the two that are
in true marriage love; and as the Divine is so imaged so is heaven,
because the entire heaven is Divine good and Divine truth going forth
from the Lord; and this is why all things of heaven are inscribed on
marriage love with more blessings and delights than it is possible to
number. He expressed the number by a term that involved myriads of
myriads. He wondered that the man of the church should know nothing
about this, seeing that the church is the Lord's heaven on the earth,
and heaven is a marriage of good and truth. He said he was astounded
to think that within the church, even more than outside of it,
adulteries are committed and even justified; the delight of which in
itself is nothing else in a spiritual sense, and consequently in the
spiritual world, than the delight of the love of falsity conjoined to
evil, which delight is infernal delight, because it is the direct
opposite of the delight of heaven, which is the delight of the love
of truth conjoined with good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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