Many persons imagine that infants are forever infants in heaven, and that there is indeed something infantile about all angels. This idea probably arises from the pictures which are frequently seen, in which angels are drawn as infants. But this is a great mistake. Children in heaven grow up into young men and women, and the aged return to the freshness of early manhood. They who are in heaven are continually advancing to the spring-time of life, and the more thousands of years they live, the more delightful and happy is the spring to which they attain; and this progression goes on to eternity. Good women who have died old and worn out with age, after a succession of years come more and more into the flower of youth, and into a beauty which exceeds all the conceptions of beauty which can be formed from what the eye has seen. In a word, _to grow old in heaven is to grow young_. It is worthy of note, that the human form of every man after death, is beautiful in proportion as his love and practice of divine truths is interior. The angels of the inmost heaven are consequently the most beautiful, because their love of truth is the deepest, and their lives are the most perfect. “I have seen,” says Swedenborg, “the faces of angels of the third heaven, which were so beautiful, that no painter, with the utmost power of art, could depict even a thousandth part of their light and life; but the faces of the angels of the lowest heaven may, in some measure, be adequately depicted.” It is believed by many in the world that heaven is a place of idleness, full of refined sensual delights, of pleasant sights and harmonious sounds; in short, some such place as a laborious tradesman, struggling for a fortune, fancies he shall enjoy when his gains shall have enabled him to “_retire_.” But this is a great mistake. Man’s nature remains the same in heaven as on earth; and who has not felt that his happiest moments are not those of mere pleasure and idleness, but those in which he was rendering himself most eminently useful? Happiness is as little consonant with idleness in heaven as on earth. Jesus himself said: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” John v. 17. The angels are employed. All the delights of heaven are conjoined with uses, and are inherent in them. In proportion to an angel’s usefulness, is his bliss. Some spirits, we read, conceived the opinion that heavenly happiness consisted in a life of ease, and in being served by others; but they were told that happiness by no means consists in mere rest from employment, because every one would then desire to take away the happiness of others to promote his own; and since all would have the same desire, none would be happy; that such a life would not be active but indolent, and that indolence makes life torpid; and that without activity there can be no happiness, and that _cessation from employment is only for the sake of recreation_, that a man _may return_, with new vigor, to the _activity_ of his life.