SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 66 }

 { 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 prevailed; and it was also told me from heaven that they were then inwardly horrified at adulteries, as at the abominable things in hell. ( A.E.; n. 987 ). That heaven is from marriages and hell from adulteries has been shown above. What this means shall now be told. The hereditary evils into which man is born are not from Abram's having eaten of the tree of knowledge, but from the adulteration of good and the falsification of truth by parents, thus from the marriage of evil and falsity, from which a love of adultery springs.