EVERYDAY BLESSINGS

  { PT.  67 } - The ruling love of parents by means of a germ from it passes over into the offspring and is transcribed upon it and becomes its nature. If the love of the parents is a love of adultery it is also a love of evil for falsity and of falsity for evil.From this source man has all evil, and from evil he has hell. All this makes clear that it is from adulteries that man has hell, until he is reformed by the Lord by means of truths and a life according to them. And no one can be reformed unless he shuns adulteries as infernal and loves marriages as heavenly. In this and in no other way is hereditary evil broken and rendered milder in the offspring. It is to be noted, however, that while from adulterous parents man is born a hell, he is not born for hell but for heaven. For the Lord provides that no one shall be condemned to hell on account of the evils, but only on account of the evils that the man has actually made his own by his life, as can be seen from the lot of i...

  { PT.  66 } - There would be a like form on the earth if the procreations there were effected by marraiges in which a true marriage love reigned; for then, however many families might descend in succession from one head of a family, there would spring forth as many images of the societies of heaven in a like variety. Families would then be like fruit-bearing trees of various kinds, forming as many different gardens, taken together would present the form of a heavenly paradise. This is said in the way of comparison, because trees signify men of the church, gardens intelligence fruits goods of life, and paradise heaven. I have been told from heaven that with the most ancient people, from whom the first church on this globe was established, which was called by ancient writes and golden age, there was such a correspondence between families on the earth and societies in the heavens, because love of the Lord,mutual love, innocence, peace, wisdom, and chastity in marriages then pre...

( PT.  65 ) - It is true that the earth might be filled with inhabitants by fornications ans adulteries as well as by marriages, but not heaven; and for the reason that hell is from adulteries but heaven from marriages. Hell is from adulteries because adultery is from the marriage of evil and falsity, from which hell in the whole complex is called adultery; while heaven is from marriages because marriage because marriage is from the marriage of good and truth, from which heaven in its whole complex is called a marriage. That is called adultery where its love, which is called a love of adultery, reigns, whether it be within wedlock or apart from it, and that is called marriage where its love, which is called marriage love, reigns. When procreations of the human race are effected by marriages in which the holy love of good and truth from the Lord reigns, then it is on earth as it is in the heavens, and the Lord's kingdom on earth corresponds of the Lord's kingdom in the heavens. ...