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 K ' •: 
 
 
 
 % 
 
The Sexes. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/sexesherehereaft01holc 
 
The Sexes 
 
 II 
 
 HERE AND HEREAETER. 
 
 BY. 
 
 WILLIAM Hr'HOLCOMBE, M.D. 
 
 Author of “Our Childre7i m Heaven," etc. 
 
 “whom cod hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO 
 
 1870. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
 
 In the Clerk’s Office of the District Coiut of the United States, for the 
 Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Lippincott's Press, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
ns.i- 
 
 H Isis'S 
 
 TO 
 
 MY MOTHER AND MY WIFE, 
 
 WHO, 
 
 ABOVE ALL OTHERS, 
 
 f/Al^S CONTRIBUTED TO EXALT AND SPIRITUAL- 
 IZE MY CONCEPTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 WOMAN. 
 

 Ifii’ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Sex, Love, and Marriage Universal 13 
 
 CHAPTER II, 
 
 Sex, Love, AND Marriage Eternal 48 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 What our Lord Says About it 84 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 What Swedenborg Says About it 125 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Spiritual Differences between Man and Woman. 164 
 
 7 
 
8 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Spiritual Philosophy of Love and Beauty. . . 204 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Spiritual Uses of Marriage 230 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Practical Tendency of our Views. 
 
 261 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, I am 
 confident, are destined to occupy an ever-increasing 
 place in the public regard. Some who are unac- 
 quainted w'ith the teachings of this man, suppose 
 them to be near akin to, if not identical with, those 
 of modern Spiritualism. But this is a great mistake. 
 Wide and irreconcilable diffei'ences exist between 
 the two systems — if the latter, indeed, may be called 
 a system." 
 
 The belief in spirits, both good and bad — in 
 angels and devils — and in the pi'oximity of a spir- 
 itual world and the possibility of communicating 
 with it, is warranted by the plain teachings of the 
 Bible, and is the common inheritance of the uni- 
 versal Christian Church. He who denies or doubts 
 
 9 
 
lo Preyace. 
 
 these things, has already forfeited his birthright, and 
 is either a rationalist or a skeptic. 
 
 Skepticism, Rationalism, and Spiritualism, how- 
 ever, are but protests against the unreasonableness 
 and insufficiency of the old theologies. They are 
 incidental and needful to human progress ; the way- 
 stations, but not the abiding-places, of the soul. 
 The New Christian faith has little in common with 
 these phases of opinion. It rises high above them 
 all. 
 
 The three central doctidnes in Swedenborg’s theo- 
 logical system — doctrines repeatedly declared by him 
 to be essential and fundamental — are : 
 
 The supreme and absolute Divinity of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; 
 
 The Divinity, and plenary inspiration, of the 
 Sacred Scripture ; and 
 
 Regeneration through faith in Christ and a life 
 accoiding to his commandments. 
 
 These doctrines are seldom met with in the teach- 
 ings of modern Spiritualism. Nor have Spiritual- 
 ists, generally, any knowledge of the other distin- 
 guishing doctrines of the great Swede — such as 
 
Preface. 1 1 
 
 those of Influx, Order, Degrees, Correspondence, 
 Heaven and Hell, the Spiritual Sense of the writ- 
 ten Word, and the doctrine concerning Conjugial 
 Love. 
 
 And although Swedenborg professes to have en- 
 joyed open intercourse with the spiritual world for 
 a period of nearly thirty years, whereby he was 
 enabled to reveal the great facts and laws of that 
 world, yet he repeatedly warns his readers against 
 such intercourse, and shows us why it is attended 
 with danger to men’s souls. And those who accept 
 his teachings, generally regard such intercourse as 
 disorderl}', against the Divine interdict, and perilous 
 to a man’s spiritual welfare. 
 
 Upon the subject of the Sexes — here and here- 
 after — no man has ever thought so profoundly or 
 Avritten so wisely as Swedenborg. He has gone to 
 the bottom of this grand theme. He has made 
 known the spiritual causes of polygamy, concu- 
 binage, and prostitution ; has revealed the marvel- 
 ous strivings of the Divine Providence to preserve 
 in man the conjugial principle, and to lead him 
 from a greater to a lesser evil, when it cannot lead 
 
1 2 Preface. 
 
 him from evil to good ; and has unfolded the phi- 
 losophy and spiritual uses of marriage, and the true 
 relation of the sexes to each other. 
 
 And for the benefit of the New Age, whose dawn 
 we already witness — an Age in which the Lord in 
 his Divine Humanity shall reign supreme in the 
 heaids of men — he has revealed a doctrine of Con- 
 jugial Love which surpasses in beauty, purity, and 
 practical value, anything hitlierto known or im- 
 agined ' 
 
 The main purpose of the present work is to pop- 
 ularize some of his teachings on this subject, and 
 to lead thoughtful men and women to give them the 
 consideration they deserve. 
 
 “ He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” 
 
 W. H. H. 
 
 New Orleans, La. 
 
The Sexes; 
 
 HERE AND HEREAFTER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SEX, LOVE AND MARRIAGE UNIVERSAL. 
 
 ATURE,” says an eloquent prose wri- 
 ter, “ is a System of Nuptials.” 
 
 “Nature,” echoes a charming poet — 
 
 “Nature, with endless being rife, 
 
 Parts each thing into ‘ him’ and ‘ her;’ 
 And in the arithmetic of life 
 The smallest unit is a pair.” 
 
 “ Loves and marriages,” writes Dr. Mason 
 Good, “ are common to all nature. They 
 exist between atom and atom, and the philoso- 
 pher calls them attraction. They exist between 
 congeries and congeries, and the chemist calls 
 
 B 13 
 
14 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 them affinity. They exist between iron and 
 the loadstone, and every one denominates them 
 magnetism.” 
 
 Another acute thinker, Ralph Waldo Emer- 
 son, thus formulates the same beautiful truth : 
 “ An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that 
 each thing is a half, and suggests another thing 
 to make it a whole; as, spirit, matter; man, 
 woman ; odd, even ; subjective, objective ; in, 
 out; upper, under; motion, rest; )’ea, nay. 
 While the world is thus dual, so is every one 
 of its parts.” 
 
 The grandest generalization of modern sci- 
 ence, is thus expressed by Hatch in his Consti- 
 tution of Man : 
 
 “The law of conjugality is the basis of every 
 force in nature.” 
 
 Sex, love, and marriage, not used in their 
 common and restricted sense, but in their 
 widest and philosophical meanings, are the 
 keys to all the phenomena of mind and matter. 
 Every object in natui'e is male or female ; and 
 one sex is always complementary to the other. 
 Love is the elective affinity, the passional 
 attraction which exists between these comple- 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Universal. 15 
 
 mentary forms or sexes. Marriage is the union 
 of the sexes, producing the organization of all 
 things, whether it be the creation of the indi- 
 vidual or the perpetuation of the species. Sex 
 is the universal form ; love the universal power 
 or force ; and marriage the universal result. 
 
 Grindon, the most charming of English sci- 
 entific writers, to whom we are deeply indebted, 
 has thus eloquently expressed the great truth 
 of universal sex and marriage : 
 
 “ Underlying every phenomenon of the mate- 
 rial world and underlying every psychological 
 occurrence, there is found a fixed causative 
 relation of Two things or Two principles, as 
 the case may be ; different and unequal, yet of 
 such a difference and such an inequality that, 
 like man and woman — who constitute the type 
 and interpretation of the whole of nature both 
 visible and invisible — each is the complement 
 of the other ; one being gifted with energy to 
 act, and the other with equal energy and apti- 
 tude to r^act. All phenomena, alike of matter 
 and of mind, resolve into this dual virUis. 
 Whether physical or spiritual, animal or vege- 
 table, Life always presents itself as communi- 
 
1 6 The Sexes ; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 cated through one simple formula — the recif- 
 rocal action and reaction of com^lementariesi' 
 
 “ Binary causes lie at the base of all things. 
 The sun and moon cast their light upon us, the 
 rain falls and the waves roll, the spheres pre- 
 serve their rotundity and persevere in their 
 motions, all as the result of underlj’ing dual 
 forces. The fabric of nature, like its phenom- 
 ena, resolves everywhere into dualities. Land 
 and water, male and female, the straight line and 
 the curve, do but express prominently a univer- 
 sal principle. The elements, we have already 
 seen, are almost demonstrably only Two.” 
 
 “ In that admirable adaptation and aptitude 
 of things to act and react, and thus to enter 
 into a relation of which marriage is the highest 
 exponent, consists, accordingly, the whole prin- 
 ciple of living action. There is no other source 
 of phenomena either in the animated or inani- 
 mate world ; and wherever it brings things and 
 natures into contact, reciprocally adapted each 
 to the other, life immediately appears, beautiful 
 and exuberant. God made things complement- 
 ary on purpose that they should unite, and open 
 channels wherein his life should have new out- 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Universal. 17 
 
 lets. Until conjoined and until they have opened 
 such new channels, they are everywhere rest- 
 less and erratic. Everywhere, in earth and 
 heaven, equilibrium comes of well-assorted 
 marriage or union of complementaries, and 
 there is no equilibrium independent of it.” 
 
 These, advanced truths, foreseen intuitively 
 by a few poets and philosophers, which the 
 present science, psychology and theology can 
 neither appreciate nor utilize, are wrought as 
 foundation-stones into the stupendous system 
 of Emanuel Swedenborg, who has given the 
 world the elements of a new science, a new 
 psychology, a new theology, bearing the same 
 relation to the old which the butterfly, sporting 
 in the golden light of heaven, bears to its first 
 unsightly form in which it groveled in the dust. 
 
 All forms are derivations from the uncreated 
 Substance. All causes are emanations from 
 the First Great Cause. Sex, love and mar- 
 riage are universal principles, derived from the 
 Supreme Being and expressing his nature. 
 The laws of the existence of the Divine Cre- 
 ator are impressed upon and repeated in his 
 creation. Man, the central figure, was created 
 2 B * 
 
1 8 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 in His own express “image and likeness.” 
 “Man is nature concentrated,” says Grindon, 
 “ and nature is man diffused.” Man is the mi- 
 crocosm or little universe, the perfect miniature 
 of nature the macrocosm or the great universe. 
 Both reveal the character and mirror forth the 
 glory of God. Sex, love, and marriage, the 
 fundamental principles underlying both man 
 and nature, must bear upon their faces the 
 image and superscription of the Divine Love 
 and the Divine Wisdom. 
 
 “ God is both a man and an immortal maid,” 
 says an old Greek h^^mn in one of the Orphic 
 fragments. “ Male-female” was also an epi- 
 thet frequently applied to the Supreme Being 
 by the subtle intuition of Grecian genius. The 
 Divine Love is the feminine, the Divine Wis- 
 dom the masculine principle in the Divine 
 nature. They are inseparable, coexistent, co- 
 animating, co-operating. They are the positive 
 and negative poles of the infinite magnet. Thej^ 
 exist and are perpetuated by their action and 
 reaction upon each other. As the intensity of 
 each pole of the magnet is determined by the 
 intensity of the other, so the state of the Divine 
 
Sex^ Love and ALarriage Universal. 19 
 
 Love determines the state of the Divine Wis- 
 dom, and vice versd. The infinity of one pro- 
 duces and reciprocates the infinity of the other. 
 
 The activity of love is Goodness ; the form 
 of wisdom is Truth. Divine Goodness and 
 Divine Truth are the sexes of God, yearning 
 for each other with infinite attraction, united 
 together in the divinest marriage. Their recip- 
 rocal action is the cause of all life and love and 
 light. The offspring of their marriage is the 
 heavens and the earth and all that is therein. 
 
 The magnet illustrates with great beauty the 
 fundamental law of creation. Its male and 
 female elements, known as its positive and 
 negative poles, are concentrated toward its ex- 
 tremities, but cannot be separated. If you 
 break a bar of magnetic Iron in two, you will 
 not find one portion positive and the other neg- 
 ative ; but each fragment is a perfect magnet as 
 before, with its male and female elements as- 
 suming the old relations to each other. The 
 minutest atom of a magnet becomes a magnet 
 itself when separated from its parent one. So 
 is the image of God repeated and perpetuated 
 in every object he strikes off from his own sub- 
 
20 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 stance, and then reanimates with his breath. 
 Therefore it is that in every dewdrop, every 
 crystal, every organic atom, in every created 
 form, natural or spiritual, the male and female 
 elements stand opposite each other ; holding 
 each other in place, inspiring each other with 
 love, impelling each other to use ; building up 
 from invisible bases the material and spiritual 
 containants of life. 
 
 As the loadstone lying in the bosom of the 
 earth becomes a miniature magnet, receiving 
 power from the great magnet of which the 
 globe itself consists, so does man, receiving his 
 life from God, by a similar induction become a 
 finite form of his Love and Wisdom. Passing 
 into the human being, these forces become the 
 will and the understanding of man — the will 
 being an organ receptive of the Divine Love, 
 and the understanding an organ receptive of the 
 Divine Wisdom. Like the Love and Wisdom 
 of their Divine prototype, they reciprocally 
 yearn for each other in the heavenly marriage ; 
 and when the understanding knows and be- 
 lieves the Divine Truth, and tlie will obeys 
 and loves the Divine Will or Goodness, man 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Universal. 21 
 
 becomes an image of God, his son, and an 
 heir to his kingdom. 
 
 Every human being, man or woman, is, like 
 the Lord himself, in a certain sense bi-sexual, 
 having both masculine and feminine qualities, 
 which are to be beautifully blended or equili- 
 brated in a spiritual marriage, which is regen- 
 eration. This spiritual duality of each individ- 
 ual is represented in the physical duality of the 
 human body. It is composed of two similar 
 halves united at the median line, which are 
 positive and negative or male and female in 
 relation to each other. The entire brain and 
 nervous system, with their wonderful appen- 
 dages of muscles and bones, are precisely alike 
 on both sides of the body. We have two eyes, 
 two ears, two hands, two feet, two breasts ; and 
 where there is apparently only one organ, as 
 the nose or mouth, it is composed of two halves 
 precisely alike and accurately adjusted or mar- 
 ried to each other. There are other marriae^es 
 also in the body ; between organ and organ, 
 between function and function, between the 
 nervous fluid and the blood, between the heart 
 and the lungs, between the cerebrum and the 
 
22 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 cerebellum, etc., too abstruse for popular com- 
 prehension ; but confirming the exclamation of 
 the Psalmist, that we are fearfully and wonder- 
 fully made, and justifying the remark of Galen, 
 that the anatomy of the human body is a sub- 
 lime hymn in honor of the Deity. 
 
 The crowning act of the Divine mercy and 
 glory was the production of two human forms, 
 each external to the other, each the image of 
 God, each a microcosm embodying all the mys- 
 teries of nature, and yet with their relative prop- 
 erties and affinities so proportioned and adjusted 
 that each should be the complement, the ideal, 
 the life, the all of the other. Man and woman 
 are bi-sexual in themselves, but in relation to 
 each other they are complementary. In man 
 the masculine element is the positive and the 
 feminine element is the negative principle, 
 while in woman it is exactly the reverse. 
 Therefore it is, by a law common both to spirit 
 and matter, that man is attracted by the femin- 
 ine element in woman, and woman is attracted 
 by the masculine element in man. From this 
 reversal of the spiritual poles of life, come all 
 the passions and activities of the world ; the 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Universal. 23 
 
 charms of home, the dream of hope, the purple 
 light of love ; the subtlest joys of earth and the 
 eternal bliss of heaven. 
 
 Every object in the universe is masculine or 
 feminine. The attractions between these com- 
 plementary forms, under the generic title of 
 love, produce all the motions and organizations 
 of spirit and matter. The union or marriage 
 of these elements is the vital principle of crea- 
 tion, the secret cause why one thing coheres to 
 another, atom to atom, world to world, and all 
 things to God. It is well for us to contemplate 
 the universality of these truths. 
 
 Spirit and matter hold to each other the rela- 
 tion of positive and negative or masculine and 
 feminine. The Spirit of God brooded over the 
 face of the abyss. Spirit is the living, active, 
 impregnating element ; matter the passive and 
 receptive. Spiritual forces flow into matter, 
 which gives them form and subsistence. Brings 
 them into objective life, as the mother does the 
 babe, and nourishes them from an inexhaustible 
 bosom. Therefore the spiritual and natural 
 worlds are as eternal and as inseparable as the 
 love and wisdom of God. They coexist and 
 
24 The Sexes ; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 correspond, being reciprocally active and re- 
 active ; and one without the other is impossible. 
 “The Earth,” says Homer, “is the wife of 
 Heaven.” 
 
 The Sun and the Earth are positive and 
 negative to each other ; and it is to their action 
 and reaction that all mundane phenomena are 
 due. The sun impregnates the terrestrial at- 
 mospheres with his masculine qualities, and 
 the earth conceives and brings forth all the 
 wonders of the elemental sphere, and all the 
 forms of mineral, vegetable and animal life. 
 When the earth turns herself away from the 
 solar orb, which is called in Scripture the 
 bridegroom, the result is darkness and cold; 
 but when she advances to his ardent em- 
 brace, he fires her heart with the warmth 
 and glory of life, and colors her Spring 
 with silver and green and her Autumn with 
 purple and gold. 
 
 Heat and Light are the positive and negative 
 solar elements which represent and make oper- 
 ative the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom 
 in nature. Heat is the feminine principle 
 which expands and opens : Light is the mas- 
 
Sex^ Love and Ma^-riage Universal. 25 
 
 culine principle, which penetrates and illumines. 
 They co-operate in the creation and preserva- 
 tion of all earthly things. They are the love 
 and wisdom, the affection and thought, the 
 man and woman, of the elemental sphere. 
 Magnetism and Electricity are their counter- 
 parts or analogues in a different field, holding 
 to each other a similar relation, and having 
 each in itself a still further combination of 
 positive and negative or masculine and feminine 
 principles. 
 
 Land and Water under different forms are 
 repetitions of the same eternal truth. Water 
 is the male or positive element, from whose sub- 
 stance the Land, or female element, was taken 
 or deposited. The Land is wholly negative 
 and unfruitful without the impregnating and 
 fructifying power of the Sea, which draws 
 slowly back from the purple hills all he had 
 given, and rising on the wings of the invisible 
 wind, sinks softly again in innumerable showers 
 upon the bosom of his happy bride. 
 
 Instinctively recognizing this truth, man has 
 always called the earth his “mother;” and 
 
 Homer, the first of poets, expressing the most 
 c 
 
26 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 ancient philosophic opinion, styles water “ the 
 father of all things.” “ Earth,” sa3^s Lucretius, 
 “ impregnated by the liquid rains, produces the 
 luxurious crops and the jo^'ous groves ; pro- 
 duces the race of men and all the living tribes.” 
 Rivers in all languages are spoken of as males, 
 as Father Tiber, Father Thames, Mississippi — 
 the Father of Waters. The land of Egypt was 
 represented by Isis, and her great river, the 
 Nile, was represented by Osiris, the husband 
 of Isis. And the poetic myth of Venus rising 
 all-beautiful from the sea, appears to be an- 
 other version of the old stor}^ of Eve abstracted 
 from the breast of Adam, or the feminine prin- 
 ciple waking into separate consciousness and 
 assuming its objective, complementary^ and at- 
 tractive relationship to the masculine. 
 
 The masculine and feminine principles are 
 detected in minerals by their relation to the 
 electro-positive or the electro-negative pole of 
 the batteity. This binary combination, this 
 essential duality of form and function, this sex- 
 uality, so obvious in its simplest expression, 
 pervades the most complex structures, even 
 where it eludes the research of the chemist and 
 
Sex, Love and ]\Iarriage Universal. 27 
 
 is visible only to the clairvoyant eye of the poet 
 and the philosopher. 
 
 The sexuality of plants is so apparent that 
 they have been divided into phanerogamic and 
 cryptogamic, or plants with open marriages 
 and plants with concealed or not clearly dis- 
 coverable marriages. In some forms of the 
 vecfetable kingdom the sexes are as distinct to 
 view as in animals ; and their interchanges of 
 love are wafted to and fro by the feet and 
 wings of insects and the whispering currents 
 of the concerting winds. When a bee has 
 gathered honey from a male flower, he will 
 alight the next time only on the female flower 
 of the same species, where he shakes from his 
 body the golden dust which impregnates the 
 receptive plant with the aromal life of her 
 distant lover. 
 
 The higher the animal in the scale of devel- 
 opment, the more complicated is the sexual 
 apparatus, and the nearer to the human type are 
 the passions which its evolution engenders. In 
 the gentle and beautiful birds that bathe their 
 plumage in the light of heaven and fill the 
 forests with their songs, we find the nearest 
 
28 The Sexes ; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 approach to conjugal affection and fidelity. 
 The great difierence between the animals and 
 man, proving the immortality of man and the 
 pure materiality of the animal kingdom, is 
 this : that, while the actions and re-actions 
 between the human sexes are independent of 
 time and space, they seem to be governed in 
 animals by periodic and cosmic laws, such 
 as direct the mechanical movements of the 
 tides or the involuntary unfolding of the 
 flowers. 
 
 The ancients understood the sexuality of all 
 things better than we do. Keightley furnishes 
 one key to the mythological stories of the 
 Old World, when he says that the Greeks de- 
 lighted to represent the origin, union and 
 changes of the various parts of nature under 
 the guise of love, matrimony and birth. Causes 
 with them were parents, and effects children. 
 “The division of all mythological beings into 
 masculine and feminine,” says IMiiller, “can- 
 not have been in any event the result of acci- 
 dent.” It was rather an intuitive recognition 
 of the universality of a sexual principle per- 
 vading all spiritual and natural things, and 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Universal. 29 
 
 also of the great truth that the spiritual and 
 natural worlds do not differ in their forms, but 
 only in the substance of which their forms are 
 made. 
 
 This great principle of sexuality, flowing 
 from the dual nature of God himself, and re- 
 peated in his relation to his Church — for He 
 is the Bridegroom and she the Bride ; repeated 
 in the will and the understanding of man, 
 which are to be conjoined in the regenerate 
 marriage ; repeated in the forms and forces of 
 the elemental world, in the structure of the 
 vegetable and animal kingdoms, in the happy 
 conjunction of human sexes ; repeated also in 
 the relation of Religion to Science, of Church 
 to State, of the sublime to the beautiful in 
 cesthetics, and in a thousand other instances 
 which it would take volumes to elucidate ; — this 
 great principle descends from universals to par- 
 ticulars, and every word we speak and every 
 sound we make has a masculine or a feminine 
 quality. 
 
 The letters of the alphabet have their sexes. 
 
 The vowels are feminine and the consonants 
 
 are masculine elements of speech. The vowels 
 c ■» 
 
30 The Sexes j Here and Hereayter. 
 
 are soft, rounded and fluent, expressing the 
 affections; the consonants are harsh and fixed, 
 limiting the sound and organizing it into an 
 expression or sign of our ideas or thoughts. 
 It is the marriage of vowels and consonants 
 which produces words. Vowels alone produce 
 only sound. Consonants alone cannot be ut- 
 tered. The consonant and the vowel corre- 
 spond to the straight and the curved lines of 
 architecture and art, which are the elements of 
 all form and beauty. 
 
 Words again are either masculine or femi- 
 nine. The neuter gender acknowledges only 
 our inability to distinguish the sex of the word. 
 In some words, as in some plants, the sexes are 
 united in the same individual. In the com- 
 pounding of the words into sentences there are 
 two great classes of words, styled by gramma- 
 rians the noun-word and the verb-word, which 
 are male and female elements of thought, and 
 without a marriacre between which no intelli- 
 
 o 
 
 gible statement is possible. The division of 
 composition into prose and poetry still further 
 represents the tendency to assume the male and 
 female forms ; for prose, like speech, is the organ 
 
Sex, Lot)e aitd jSIarriage Universal. 31 
 
 of thought, and poetry, like music, is the organ 
 of emotion and affection. 
 
 The sound or tone of our voices represents 
 the state of our affections : the words of our 
 speech convey our thoughts or ideas. When 
 the sound and the sense do not strike upon our 
 minds in married harmony, we know intuitively 
 that the hypocrite does not feel or mean what 
 he says. Speech and music also are relatively 
 male and female. Tennyson, intuitively pene- 
 trating this mystery, declares that woman must 
 set herself to man 
 
 “Like perfect music unto noble words.” 
 
 Music is the organization of sound, as speech 
 is the organization of words ; and the same laws 
 of sexuality govern in both. Bass is the mas- 
 culine and soprano is the feminine element in 
 music, which must be married for the produc- 
 tion of the highest harmony. The great truth 
 that each human being is bi-sexual, or has both 
 male and female qualities occupying different 
 relative centres in man and woman, is beauti 
 fully illustrated in the distinctions between the 
 musical sounds. Woman’s voice divides itself 
 
32 The Sexes; Here aitd Hereafter, 
 
 into soprano and contralto, as man’s is divided 
 into tenor and bass. Soprano is the voice of 
 woman’s affection, contralto the voice of her 
 intellect. Tenor is the voice of man’s affec- 
 tion, and bass of his intellect. Contralto is the 
 male voice of woman, and tenor is the female 
 voice of man. 
 
 Music is pre-eminently the voice of the affec- 
 tions, charming like woman the most savage 
 breast. It is the subtlest spiritual agency in 
 nature, whereby the very breath of heaven can 
 penetrate into and agitate our inmost souls. 
 “Music,” says Mrs. Child, “is the feminine 
 principle, the heart of the universe. What the 
 tone is to the word, what expression is to form, 
 what affection is to thought, what the heart is 
 to the head, what intuition is to argument, what 
 religion is to philosophy, what moral influence 
 is to power, what woman is to man, music is 
 to the universe.” 
 
 In illustration of the above it may be affirmed 
 that the state of music in any age or country 
 is a fair index of the spirituality or the spiritual 
 potentiality of a people. Barbarians produce 
 nothing but discords. No genuine music is 
 
Sex, Love and Mai^riage Universal. 33 
 
 possible among a people generally addicted to 
 polygamy or concubinage. The unrivaled 
 religious music of Europe is due to the chas- 
 tening influences of Christianity, and to the 
 tender worship of female purity and beauty 
 under the form of the Holy Virgin. And the 
 present advanced and advancing state of mu- 
 sical science, is the best omen of heavenly influ- 
 ences descending upon the world, and the best 
 prediction of the coming reign of woman and 
 of love. 
 
 One proof that the creation or created Word 
 and the Bible or the written Word of God have 
 the same Divine Author, is to be found in the 
 fact that the same universal principle of organ- 
 ization runs through them both. Like every- 
 thing emanating from God and bearing his 
 image, the Bible has male and female elements 
 blended in secret and divine union. Every 
 concrete thought or idea in the Word of God, 
 has a feminine and a masculine side to it, one 
 referring to the emotional, the other to the intel- 
 lectual sphere of life, whether the subject be 
 the Lord himself, his spiritual church or the 
 individual soul. 
 
 3 
 
34 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 This is not the place to prove or even to 
 illustrate this wonderful truth, which appears 
 strange and mystical to those who deny a spir- 
 itual sense to the Bible, and who therefore 
 cannot understand the Scriptures nor the 
 power of God. The dual or male-and-female 
 structure of the spiritual sense of the Word, is 
 organic and universal. It has been clearly re- 
 vealed through Swedenborg for those who have 
 ears to hear. Every incident and verse of the 
 Bible, from the journeyings of the patriarchs 
 and the seemingly trivial ceremonies of the 
 Jewish law, to the prayer-poems of the Psalmist 
 and the dark sayings of the prophet, contain 
 the spiritual wonders of the married will and 
 understanding, and of the vital union between 
 the Divine Bridegroom and his Church. 
 
 The Old Testament also contains, relatively 
 to the New, the Wisdom-principle or the mas- 
 culine and positive element of revelation. The 
 New Testament is the revelation of the femi- 
 nine or Love-principle. Each Covenant is, 
 again, male and female in itself, — the Law rep- 
 resenting the masculine and the Prophets rep- 
 resenting the feminine element in the Jewish 
 
Sex, Love and Ma 7 ‘riage Universal. 35 
 
 dispensation ; while the Evangelists are the 
 masculine and the Apocalypse the feminine 
 element in the Christian economy. Moses and 
 Aaron were typical in the old law — one of the 
 Divine Truth and the other of the Divine 
 Goodness. Peter and John are the analogous 
 masculine and feminine types in the Church 
 established by Christ. Representing also the 
 heavenly marriage between the True and the 
 Good, our Lord sent out his disciples in cou- 
 ples, “by two and two,” to preach the new 
 gospel of peace and love. 
 
 The striving of sexual elements through af- 
 finities or passional attractions after congenial 
 marriage unions, is the cause of all the mo- 
 tions, growth and activities in the physical 
 and moral worlds. The failure to attain the 
 desired end, and the warfare between unconge- 
 nial and repulsive elements, are the causes of 
 all the broken equilibriums, discords and col- 
 lisions in both spheres. If the atomic mar- 
 riages in nature were perfect, there would be 
 no storms or droughts or poisons or monstrosi- 
 ties or disease. If the marriage between the 
 individual will and understanding, between the 
 
2,6 The Sexes; Here a?id Hereafter. 
 
 interior and exterior life, were perfect, we 
 should have regenerate men upon earth wor- 
 th}'- to be called the sons of God. If the mar- 
 riage between the sexes were perfect, we 
 should have a social paradise. If the marriage 
 between Church and State, or between our 
 moral and civil ideas, werp perfect, we should 
 have a governmental order as sublime and 
 beautiful as that of the stars. If the marriage 
 between the Church and the Lord were perfect, 
 we should have heaven open and the angels 
 of God descending to converse wdth men. 
 
 We have designated the universal power, 
 which draws and binds together the positive 
 and negative elements, by the name of Love. 
 The expression and product of this love is Life, 
 whether it be the gravitative life of atom co- 
 hering to atom ; the mineral life of ox3'gen and 
 hydrogen embracing and dissolving into water ; 
 the vegetable life of the rose-bush perfuming 
 and crimsoning the air with its presence ; ani- 
 mal life displaying itself in happy motions and 
 exquisite songs ; or human life bound to the 
 earth b}^ its sensuous affinities and penetrating 
 into heaven vith its spiritual aspirations. 
 
Love and Ala^-riage Universal. 37 
 
 Philosophers have long suspected that all 
 the manifold forms of matter are modifications 
 of some simple elemental substance. They are 
 now quite confident that all the so-called forces 
 of nature — heat, light, electricity, magnetism, 
 mechanical motion, etc. — are not distinct as they 
 seem to be, but mutually convertible modifica- 
 tions of one fundamental force. That one force 
 is the Divine Life, appearing as love or heat 
 when it passes into finite, created forms. In 
 one sphere it is the power of gravitation ; in 
 another it is chemical affinity ; in a third it is 
 electrical or magnetic attraction ; in a fourth it 
 is the universe of human feeling and thought. 
 One in principle, protean in form, it assumes a 
 different manifestation for every shape through 
 which it passes. It draws the ocean from his 
 bed ; it keeps the moon in her path ; it points 
 the needle to the pole ; it attracts the flower to 
 the sun ; it directs the beast to his prey ; it 
 binds man to his home ; it leads the Christian 
 to his God. 
 
 A brilliant French author gives charming 
 expression to the idea that love is the real 
 divinity that conceals herself, under various 
 D 
 
38 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter, 
 
 chemical and electrical disguises, from the dull 
 eyes of the poor materialist : 
 
 “Linnaeus said : ‘ Minerals grow, plants grow 
 and live, animals grow, live and feel’ — as many 
 capital errors as words. 
 
 “ Neither minerals nor flowers are devoid 
 of sensibility ; only the sensibility of those in- 
 ferior beings is not manifested through the 
 same organs as that of man, for the very 
 simple reason that plants and minerals are 
 less richly organized for thinking and speak- 
 ing than man. But the brain and the larynx 
 are not indispensable in order to feel and to 
 love. Every substance penetrable by elec- 
 tricity, is susceptible of feeling and loving ; and 
 all bodies are penetrable by electricity, which 
 plays in nature the part of a universal agent 
 of attraction, of life and of fertility. Electricity 
 operates on all bodies by giving them a sex ; 
 that is to say, by doubling them, so as to give 
 to each of their separate parts a strong desire 
 to be rejoined. To love is, properly speaking, 
 to be electrified. It is to feel that one is double, 
 and to feel the necessity of joining the other 
 half of one’s being. Man and woman, who 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Universal. 39 
 
 are two upon earth, are but one in the other 
 life ; wherefore the number of women is equal 
 to that of men in all globes. Electricity 
 preaches by example ; and the untiring mutual 
 pursuit of the two sexes is the cause of all the 
 great phenomena of nature.” 
 
 That love is the secret element or power in 
 universal life, was wonderfully allegorized in 
 the Grecian mythology — that rich treasury of 
 spiritual wisdom. There were two gods known 
 as Love, and still mysteriously regarded as 
 one and the same. These gods were the old- 
 est and youngest of the divine race, stand- 
 ing at the two extremes, — for love is the alpha 
 and the omega, the beginning and the end of 
 all things. The ancient or primeval Love was 
 without parents, or self-existing, and contem- 
 porary with Chaos. He was the uniting or 
 blending power of the universe, the cause of 
 attraction, affinity and combination. “ On 
 him,” as Lord Bacon expresses it, “ every 
 exquisite sympathy doth depend.” At the 
 other end of the series stands the beautiful and 
 youthful Cupid, the cheruhic child of Venus, 
 because beauty gives birth to love, whose special 
 
40 
 
 The Sexes J Here and Hereafter. 
 
 delight it is to enkindle the tender passion. Thus 
 Love stands upon the first and last round of the 
 ladder of development, drawing atom to atom 
 in one place, and heart to heart in another. 
 
 Both these gods, so far separated in appear- 
 ance but identical in reality, were represented 
 as winged infants, blind and naked, and armed 
 with the bow and arrow. These symbols are 
 charmingly significative. Love is represented 
 as a naked infant on account of his tender, 
 simple, beautiful and innocent nature, being 
 the first emanation from the Divine life. He is 
 blind, because it is not his specialty to see, but 
 to feel — for sight belongs to the rational powers 
 or the understanding. He shoots with the 
 arrow, because he radiates his subtle power to 
 a distance like the sun ; and he has wings, 
 because it is the aspirations of love only which 
 enable us to soar from earthly to heavenly 
 things. 
 
 We have difficulty in recognizing the fact 
 that sex, love and marriage are fundamental 
 and universal, only because we compare the 
 phenomena at the two extremes where the 
 analogies are least apparent ; and we see no 
 
Sex^ Love and Ma 7 -riage Universal. 41 
 
 resemblance whatever between the union of 
 oxygen and hydrogen under the electric spark, 
 and a marriage ceremony before some gorgeous 
 altar, where the loving pair exchange vows and 
 kisses amidst the perfume of orange-blossoms, 
 and the good priest blesses them, as Spenser 
 sweetly describes it, “ with his two happy 
 hands.” And yet these remote facts are anal- 
 ogous links in the same great chain which 
 binds the least things to the greatest, the cii- 
 cumference to the centre and all to God ! 
 
 The starting-point is always the same. The 
 first steps are always similar. The embryos 
 of all forms are alike. Yet the universal laws 
 which govern all organization are as active in 
 these simple things as in the most complex. 
 By successive diflbrentiations and evolutions 
 the sexes become varied in structure and func- 
 tion. The simplest unions produce only third 
 substances, differing from both of the constitu- 
 ents. Higher forms of marriage reproduce 
 the species. A still loftier type transmits the 
 spiritual qualities of father to son, so that man 
 becomes “ the heir of all the ages.” At each 
 ascending series we are delighted with new 
 
43 
 
 'The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 forms, new faculties, new phenomena ; until 
 only scientific analysis can bring us back to 
 the few simple truths — the alphabet of nature — 
 which underlie, pervade, and sustain the splen- 
 did universe which has been reared upon 
 them. 
 
 Man is organically but one grade above the 
 brute. A single faculty, a single phrenological 
 organ at the summit of the brain, separates him 
 from the animal kingdom. That is the organ 
 of veneration ; the idea of God ; the capacity 
 to know, to love and to obey a Supreme Being. 
 That spiritualizes his whole nature, moral, in- 
 tellectual and physical. Veneration makes him 
 negative or submissive to the Divine above him, 
 and sublimely positive to all below him. It 
 makes him immortal. 
 
 Everything about the man who reveres and 
 obeys God, becomes spiritualized. His com- 
 monest words and deeds are spiritual and are 
 I'ecorded above. His daily life is seen and 
 known and loved by sympathizing angels in 
 heaven, as the islands and ships of the sea are 
 sometimes reflected in the sky. His love is 
 sanctified ; his marriage is spiritual. Some 
 
Sex, Love and Mari'iage Universal. 43 
 
 sweetly coherent and congenial woman is grad- 
 ually welded into his very being ; and smiling 
 at death, he awakes into life to find his bliss 
 another and yet the same, and all his love that 
 was genuine upon earth eternally renewed in 
 heaven. 
 
 We have thus traced the sexual elements, 
 yearning for maiTiage, from their Divine Source 
 through spirit and matter into elemental and 
 mineral forms, and then upward through all 
 the kingdoms of nature to men and spirits, 
 
 “Until we find, as darkness rolls 
 
 Far off, and fleshly mists dissolve, 
 
 That nuptial contrasts are the poles 
 
 On which the heavenly spheres revolve.” 
 
 Man sees himself repeated in nature as in a 
 vast and beautiful mirror. Nature indeed is an 
 infinitesimally dissected map of man, reveal- 
 ing his secret structures, both spiritual and nat- 
 ural. This is the Eesthetic key to the passion 
 which man displays for investing inanimate 
 things with human feelings and faculties. It 
 is seen best in the innocent sports of young 
 children, and in the works of those wise chil- 
 dren who never grow old — the poets. The 
 
44 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 poets, who, as a quaint writer observes, “ half 
 understand God,” indulge frequently in the 
 humanization of nature, and secretly charm us 
 by presenting spiritual truths in poetic form, 
 which our feeble and torpid understandings 
 would reject if they were offered as matters of 
 science. 
 
 The Latin poet, Claudian, has some lines 
 which Darwin might have chosen as a motto 
 for his poem, “ The Loves of the Plants 
 
 “The gentle boughs together live in love, 
 
 The happ3’ trees enamored intertwine; 
 
 Palm nods to palm ; the poplars softly sigh 
 To poplars; alders, poplars, pines and all 
 Whisper their tender passions to each other.” 
 
 How sweetly our great Milton presents us 
 with the same idea, when describing the happy 
 employments of Adam and Eve in Paradise : 
 
 “ On to their morning rural work the^' haste. 
 
 Among sweet dews and flowers ; where anj^ row 
 Of fruit trees, over-woodj', reached too far 
 Their pampered boughs, and needed hands to check 
 Fruitless embraces; or they led the vine 
 To wed her elm. She spoused about him bvines 
 Her marriageable arms, and with her brings 
 Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn 
 His barren leaves.” 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Utiiversal. 45 
 
 The philosopher slowly arrives at his grand 
 induction, that man is nature condensed, and 
 nature is man diffused. The poet sees by a 
 spiritual light that the life of man and nature is 
 one. He detects in all the features of natural 
 scenery the spiritual elements which connect 
 them with the heart of man. He perceives 
 love and gladness and fear and terror in inani- 
 mate objects ; wisdom in animals ; passion in 
 flowers; hymns in the cataract; “sermons in 
 stones ;” “ books in the running brooks ;” epics 
 in the stars ; and prophecies in the sunset. 
 
 Wordsworth of all the poets has penetrated 
 most deeply into the heart of nature, and evoked 
 her latent sympathies or analogies with man. It 
 was he who turned from the “statelier passions” 
 of his race, to draw from the “ humbler urn” of 
 the flowers their “lowlier pleasures;” who for- 
 got his sorrows in “ the jocund company” of the 
 daffodils, and his solitude in the presence of the 
 violet; who read his own “unutterable love” in 
 the faces of the clouds, and felt the pulse of his 
 own gladness in the throb of the sunlit ocean ; 
 to whom the cuckoo was not a bird, but “ an 
 invisible thing,” — “ a voice, a mystery, a hope, 
 
46 The Sexes', Het'e a 7 id Hereafter. 
 
 a love and who had so thoroughly read the 
 symbolism of nature and found the secrets of 
 his own heart under it all, that he could exclaim 
 to the little daisy : 
 
 “ Sweet, silent creature, 
 
 That breath’st with me in sun and air, 
 
 Do thou, as thou art wont, repair 
 My heart with gladness and a share 
 Of thy meek nature 1” 
 
 Swedenborg says that the men of the first or 
 antediluvian church beheld nature as an open 
 book or infinite mirror, in which the good and 
 true things of the Lord’s kingdom, descending 
 through their own minds, were outwardly re- 
 peated and revealed. In the spiritual world 
 also the surrounding scenery of the angel or 
 spirit is not fixed or accidental, but is a shifting 
 panorama, purely symbolical of his own mental 
 and moral states. The poets only discern, from 
 their high mount of vision,' the coming truths 
 which seem mystical to their prosaic fellow- 
 men, but which are really universal and eternal, 
 and the subject of common and daily experience 
 to those happy beings who have escaped our 
 painful limitations of time and space, and have 
 risen into the Land of Light. 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Universal, 47 
 
 Whatever exists in man is repeated in nature ; 
 whatever exists in nature may be discovered 
 under some correspondential form in man. 
 Sex, love, and marriage pervade both. The 
 principle of binary combination, caused by the 
 attraction of two complementary forms or forces, 
 underlies every object, every fact, every move- 
 ment in the world. Sex is the universal form ; 
 love the universal force ; marriage the universal 
 result. If man be immortal, why are not his 
 sex, his love, his marriage eternal? 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 SEX, LOVE AND A/A EE/ACE ETEENAE 
 
 O him who has discovered the organic 
 bond of connection between the visible 
 and invisible worlds ; who can real- 
 ize the divine solidarity or mutual coherence 
 of all things ; who knows that the future life, 
 springing from the same causes and assuming 
 similar forms, is a beautiful, ethereal, and per- 
 fected continuation of this ; to him theology, 
 retaining its sublimity, has lost its gloom, and 
 death, without ceasing to be solemn, is divested 
 of its terror. To him our last great change, 
 by which we simply disappear from our earthly 
 friends, is not 
 
 “ So much as even the lifting of a latch; 
 
 Only a step into the open air 
 
 Out of a tent already luminous 
 
 With light that shines through its transparent walls.” 
 
 48 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage EterJial. 49 
 
 When we die, or rather when we seem to die, 
 we sleep ; and our sleep is of little longer dura- 
 tion than that which we here experience be- 
 tween one day and another. “ This day shalt 
 thou be with me in paradise,” said the Saviour 
 to the penitent thief; and there is little doubt 
 that the conversation which was interrupted by 
 the sufferings and death of the cross, was soon 
 resumed between Christ and the new Chris- 
 tian in their spiritual bodies in the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 For we awake from the quiet little sleep of 
 death, and find ourselves in a spiritual body. 
 
 “ There is a natural body and there is a spir- 
 itual body,” says Paul : which are conjoined 
 during life and separated at death, adds Swe- 
 denborg. The soul outside of a spiritual body 
 has no existence ; for spirit which has no form 
 has not yet come into being. Man knows him- 
 self as “ a natural body” whilst in this world, 
 and as “a spiritual body” in the next. The 
 word “sown,” used by Paul, refers not, as some 
 readers suppose, to the interment of one’s corpse 
 in the grave, but to the birth of our living nat- 
 ural body into the world. “The time,” says 
 4 E 
 
50 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 John Locke, “that man is in this world, affixed 
 to this earth, is his being ‘ sown,’ and not when 
 being dead, he is put into the grave, as is evi- 
 dent from Paul’s own words ; for dead things 
 are not sown. Seeds are sown, being alive, 
 and die not until after they are sown.” 
 
 “ The grave has nothing it can render back : 
 
 We do not pass from nature to the grave ; ’ 
 
 But Nature is our grave, from which we rise, 
 
 At seeming death, our real resurrection. 
 
 Into the Land of Beauty.” 
 
 The natural body is subject to disorder, acci- 
 dent, dishonor, and corruption, as Paul affirms. 
 The spiritual body is ethereal, beautiful, incor- 
 ruptible, immortal. But it is not the less a 
 body, compounded of organs and tissues, and 
 possessed of sensibilities and functions corre- 
 sponding to those of the natural body. It is 
 also male or female. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive of the soul in any 
 other shape than that of the body ; and equally 
 impossible to conceive of any other shape which 
 can give expression to the thoughts, feelings, 
 and capacities of the soul. The common percep- 
 tion of mankind, undarkened by metaph3^sical 
 
Sex, Love arid Marriage Eternal. 51 
 
 speculations, teaches that our departed friends 
 are not resolved into spiritual ethers or gases 
 or vapors, but that they exist in veritable 
 human form. Spirits and angels always ap- 
 peared to the ancient worthies in bodies undis- 
 tinguishable from those of men. Virgil calls 
 the souls of the dead whom Charon was ferry- 
 ing over the river Styx, “ corpora,” or bodies. 
 It is only the transcendental theologian who, 
 by his subtle abstractions, would lead us to the 
 absurd conclusion of Anaximenes, that the soul 
 is a disembodied essence. 
 
 The fathers of the Christian Church, very 
 near to the teachings and the traditions of 
 the apostles and of Paul, very generally re- 
 garded the human soul as identical with the 
 “spiritual body.” Cudworth says: “ Tertul- 
 lian makes the soul itself to be corporeal, fig- 
 urate and colorate, and after death to have the 
 very same shape which its respective body had 
 before in this life.” 
 
 Lord Bacon, the founder of the inductive 
 philosophy, echoes this early and rational opin- 
 ion of the Church. “ This spirit whereof wc 
 speak,” says he, “is not from virtue or energy 
 
52 
 
 The Sexes; Here a7id Hereafter. 
 
 or act or a trifle, but plainly a body, rare and 
 invisible, notwithstanding circumscribed by 
 space, quantitative, real.” 
 
 How exquisitely the poet confirms in song 
 the graver teachings of the sage ! — 
 
 “ Sudden arose 
 lanthe’s soul. It stood 
 All beautiful in naked purity, 
 
 The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. 
 
 Each stain of earthliness 
 Had passed away; it reassumed 
 Its native dignity and stood 
 Immortal amid ruin !” 
 
 Such is the resurrection which awaits us all, 
 even before the hair has ceased to grow upon 
 the dead body our friends have buried. The 
 soul rises in a spiritual body, and that bod}" is 
 male or female. Augustine gravely discusses 
 the question whether women are admitted into 
 heaven in their own bodies, or in the bodies of 
 men, or under some other form ; and he comes 
 to the rational conclusion that the female soul 
 must inhabit a female body. 
 
 A woman who closes her eyes in this world 
 and opens them in another, has lost nothing of 
 
Sex, Love atid ]\Iai'i'iage Eternal. 53 
 
 her feminine form and character. She is not a 
 man, nor an hermaphrodite, nor a nondescript, 
 nor a spiritual vapor floating in the mystic ether 
 of universal thought. She is a living, breath- 
 ing, sensitive woman ; and if regenerate, she 
 has every womanly feature beautified and ever}'’ 
 womanly quality intensified for a higher and 
 better life. The “ sex of the soul,” as Cole- 
 ridge calls it, impresses itself inefiaceably both 
 here and hereafter upon the bodily structure. 
 Woman is woman still. Every muscle there as 
 here is a female muscle ; every bone is a female 
 bone. From her delicate and sfirituelle fea- 
 tures beam forth the softness and beauty of the 
 feminine soul, and on the elliptic curves of her 
 graceful form accumulates, as in this world, the 
 charming magnetism of life. A man also finds 
 himself organically a man. 
 
 The spiritual body is far purer in substance 
 than the natural body ; it is like diamond to 
 stone-coal. It has none of those excretory 
 functions which are here necessary to rid us 
 of the poisons we daily absorb. Plastic to the 
 influent forces of the spiritual life, it is a perfect 
 picture and revelation of the soul. It changes 
 
54 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 with our states of love and wisdom. The good 
 alone are beautiful. The false and evil have 
 their interior ugliness transcribed in baleful 
 characters on their outward forms, while the 
 pure and the loving become more and more 
 perfect and beautiful for ever. In heaven 
 beauty is really what the ancients called it — 
 the outflowering of virtue. 
 
 When men and women, newly ascended into 
 the spiritual w'orld, begin to move about and to 
 realize the change which has taken place — 
 to think, examine and be instructed — they dis- 
 cover not only that they have similar 3'et incor- 
 I'uptible bodies, but also that they have the 
 same mental and moral peculiarities which they 
 exhibited in this life. They have the same 
 sympathies and antipathies, the same faith and 
 opinions, the same appetites and passions, which 
 the}" had here. They have left nothing behind 
 them but the material bod}" and the natural 
 limitations of time and space. No miraculous 
 transformation has occurred by the act of death. 
 They find that the spiritual life is simply a 
 continuation of this life on higher ground, the 
 evil being totally and for ever separated from 
 
Sex, Love and JMarriage Eternal. 55 
 
 the good, and with more potent and heavenly 
 influences and more beautiful and plastic forms, 
 because nearer to the vital source of all being. 
 
 Spiritual objects make impressions upon 
 their spiritual bodies precisely similar to those 
 which natural objects luake upon our natural 
 bodies. Consequently the life there, although 
 intensely spiritual and intellectual, is very simi- 
 lar to ours. They have an earth as solid to 
 them as ours is to us. They have a sun and a 
 sky and gorgeous clouds that, like ours, are 
 “ shepherded by the gentle wind.” They 
 have towns and cities and temples and palaces. 
 They walk in gardens and meadows and 
 groves. They have the voices of morning 
 and evening, the glory but not the gloom of 
 mountains, and the green pastures and still 
 waters of enchanted vales. 
 
 In that world, as real and substantial as this, 
 love, by whatever name we call it, whatever 
 form it assumes — afBnity, attraction, sympathy, 
 passion, aspiration, or adoration — love is the 
 supreme power, and determines the life of the 
 heavenly society and the form of its govern- 
 ment. It draws kindred spirits together in the 
 
56 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 bonds of a thousand shining uses. The over- 
 ruling love of the Lord and the neighbor blends 
 the affections and thoughts of all souls into 
 eternal harmony, and builds up a heaven within 
 and without. The centre and throne of love’s 
 sweetest, highest power in that life, as in this, 
 is the Home. Husband-and-wife, the double- 
 star of the spiritual skies, is the unitary form 
 of heaven. Eden was a type of the celestial 
 country. Every home there is a little paradise 
 in which some happy Adam and Eve, partaking 
 of the tree of life and communing sweetly with 
 God, enjoy each other’s love for ever. 
 
 Verily, sex, love and marriage are eternal. 
 
 This is the necessary and legitimate conclu- 
 sion to be drawn from the following great and 
 eternal truths : the unity and omnipresence of 
 God ; the connection and concordance of the 
 natural and spiritual words ; and the immortal- 
 ity of the human soul. 
 
 If there be one Creator, indivisible and om- 
 nipresent, who operates everywhere and eter- 
 nall}^ by the same immutable laws, He must 
 have created the spiritual and the natural worlds 
 by the same forces and on the same plan, so 
 
Sex^ Love and Marriage Eternal. 57 
 
 that in some manner they may correspond to 
 each other, and be held together by his ani- 
 mating and cementing breath. If sex, love 
 and marriage express forms forces and princi- 
 ples not originating or inherent in dead matter, 
 but imparted to it by spiritual influences flowing 
 from God through the spiritual world, and con- 
 necting both spirit and matter with himself, and 
 if man is immortal and retains his identity in a 
 higher world through which the spiritual forces 
 that organized and animated him while here 
 had already passed — the conclusion is irre- 
 sistible that he will be there just what he was 
 here, minus the material body ; that he will be 
 male or female ; that he will love and be loved ; 
 and that he will be or may be eternally con- 
 joined to the object of his love. 
 
 Man and woman are so thoroughly and or- 
 ganically male and female, that they cannot be 
 unsexed in the other life without such a radical 
 change in their nature and qualities that they 
 would lose their spiritual identity, and could not, 
 therefore, be said to be immortal. And if not 
 unsexed, then must attraction, afflnity, sympa- 
 thy, passion, and all the forms of love, unless 
 
58 The Sexes ; Here mid Hereafter. 
 
 so changed or reconstructed as to be no longer 
 love, manifest the same properties and produce 
 the same effects that they do in this world. 
 
 The sexuality of man and woman consists 
 really in the sexual differences between their 
 souls, which are thence anatomically repre- 
 sented in their bodies. It is said in the Scrip- 
 ture that God created man male and female, in 
 his own image and likeness. Surely the image 
 and likeness of God is not in the physical bodies 
 of men and women ! That image and likeness 
 must be found, if anywhere, in some male and 
 female principles of the soul itself. Sex there- 
 fore is spiritual. If- spiritual, it is eternal. 
 Love is the attraction, the very life of the 
 sexes ; marriage is their union, their eternal 
 life, their heaven. 
 
 This spiritual philosophy of sex, so clear, 
 so beautiful, so consonant with intuition and 
 reason, and having such a sound scientific 
 basis, is quite a new thing to the psychologies 
 and theologies of the present day. The posi- 
 tion of the two great ecclesiastical powers on 
 the subject, has been eloquently defined by a 
 writer of great experience in spiritual matters. 
 
Sex, Love a 7 td Mai'riage Eteivtal. 59 
 
 “ It is obvious that neither Rome nor Protest- 
 antism inculcate this faith [marriage in the spir- 
 itual world] ; nor do they leave it as an august 
 problem to be solved within the portals of a 
 better life. Rome is essentially monastic in its 
 theory. Marriage is a permitted impurity, or 
 at least in holiness far below celibacy. Rome 
 never twined a wreath of celestial flowers for 
 Hymen’s brow ; never chanted a heavenly epi- 
 thalamium ; never overshadowed the nuptial 
 couch with reverent wings ; never diflused a 
 sanctifying power to exorcise the genii who 
 invade and desecrate its mysteries. It leaves 
 the sweetest of all human affections in the 
 grave where the body perishes, and inscribes 
 the sentence of everlasting oblivion upon the 
 mute remains.” 
 
 “But if Rome is monastic, Protestantism is 
 corporeal. From a celestial point of view its 
 ideas resemble, not winged cherubs, not hymn- 
 ing seraphs, but beasts and creeping things. 
 It mai'ries for time ; it divorces for eternity. 
 As a worldly convenience, a temporal moral- 
 ity, a present divine ordinance, it recognizes a 
 mere form of union, and does well when it 
 
6o The Sexes', Here and Hereafter. 
 
 insists upon its maintenance, denouncing the 
 violations of its ordinances with extreme spir- 
 itual penalties. But while it consecrates and 
 ratifies the external bond, it betrays too often 
 the impurity of its internal thought by denoun- 
 cing as carnal the doctrine that finds in heaven 
 a union of two kindred chastities into one beati- 
 tude. The rejection of this faith from its pul- 
 pits, the denial of it there, fatally disproves its 
 claim to be considered as the Church of God in 
 any absolute or final sense.” 
 
 It is necessary to consider the causes of the 
 exclusion of the ideas of sex and marriage from 
 the conception which the Apostolic Church en- 
 tertains of the life after death. If it can be 
 shown to candid minds that the reasons adduced 
 for such an exclusion are wholly inconclusive, 
 it will go far toward uprooting prejudices and 
 misconceptions which keep out the light of 
 spiritual truth. The doctrines of Swedenborg 
 on this subject, when rightly understood, are 
 found to be rich in heavenly truth and beauty. 
 
 The first reason, and a most powerful one, 
 against sex and marriage in heaven, is, that 
 our Lord appears to have settled the question 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Eternal. 6i 
 
 by explicitly declaring that in heaven they 
 neither marry nor are given in marriage. This 
 has precluded all investigation, all discussion 
 of the subject. It has been taken for granted 
 that sexual distinctions are dropped at death, 
 and that we are something entirely different in 
 the other world from what we are here. A 
 separate chapter will be devoted to this import- 
 ant question, and it will be clearly shown that 
 a misinterpretation of our Lord’s meaning, 
 necessary and inevitable at that age, has fixed 
 a doctrinal error upon the Church, from which 
 it is about to be delivered by a further unfolding 
 of the Divine Word, and by the progressive 
 development and receptivity of the human 
 mind. 
 
 The second reason why the idea of sex and 
 marriage in heaven is repulsive to the orthodox 
 mind, is that the Church has never understood 
 the full significance of marriage as a divine 
 institution and means of regeneration ; and that 
 the perversions of the sexual relation have been 
 so terrible, that the common conception of mar- 
 riage is altogether external, sensuous, and 
 unspiritual. 
 
 p 
 
62 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 The world is full of evil, the powers of hell 
 are near to us, and our general range of thought 
 is low and sensual, on account of our corrupt 
 affections and our darkened understandings. 
 It is almost impossible for us to approach 
 the pure and holy subjects of sex and marriage 
 in the proper spirit. Heaven is so closed to 
 us, we live so thoroughly in and for the senses, 
 and our civilization is so cankered with natural- 
 ism, that it is difficult for us to see anything 
 in the union of the sexes but a temporary 
 alliance for the reproduction of the species. 
 Its whole world of spiritual uses is closed to 
 us or concealed from us. We suspect there is 
 something unchaste about marriage itself ; and 
 our ideal of personal holiness and angelic 
 purity supposes something which is developed 
 apart from and superior to the sexual relation. 
 This idea of impurity connected with marriage, 
 is simply an index of our own impurity. 
 
 These false views of the subject have given 
 rise to many absurd and fanatical asceticisms, 
 including the enforced celibacy of the clergy 
 in one Church, and in all of them erroneous 
 conceptions of chastity and of the uses of mar- 
 
Sex^ Love and Alarriage Eterttal. 63 
 riacre. To such an insane decree has this 
 
 o o 
 
 phantasy been carried, that at one time the 
 Church regarded woman herself as essentially 
 impure, and she was forbidden to come to the 
 hol}^ communion. Theological delirium could 
 not have engendered a more direful falsity. 
 Akin to it is the delusive idea, that those who 
 separate themselves from the world and devote 
 their lives to holy contemplation and prayer, 
 are especially chaste, especially spiritual, espe- 
 cially accepted of heaven. 
 
 Monks and nuns are thought to be married 
 to Christ in a peculiar manner. What a 
 mockery ! What a terrible misconception of 
 the heavenly marriage ! Every Christian must 
 be manned to Christ, or he will never be 
 admitted to the supper of the Great King. 
 Men and women are best married to Christ 
 by being thoroughly, devotedly, spiritually 
 married to each other. They are married to 
 Christ by the faithful performance of house- 
 hold duties, by the care of children, by the 
 love of friends and neighbors and ’country, by 
 religion in little and familiar things, by sub- 
 ordinating the appetites to the moral send- 
 
64 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 ments, by honest and useful labors, by mutual 
 trials and temptations and sufferings, by fight- 
 ing in the world and with the world until they 
 have subdued themselves and the world. 
 
 As men can quote the literal sense of Scrip- 
 ture to confirm any absurd or monstrous doc- 
 trine whatsoever, they have not failed to de- 
 nounce the intercourse of the sexes even in 
 wedlock as debasing and unchristian on the 
 strength of the remarkable passage in Revela- 
 tion xiv. 4: “These are they which were not 
 defiled with women ; for they are virgins. 
 These are they which follow the Lamb whith- 
 ersoever he goeth.” 
 
 To sustain a preconceived opinion, they have 
 enforced a literal interpretation of this passage, 
 occurring in a book whose every sentence 
 is plainly allegorical and sj-mbolical. Their 
 exposition requires that the mj-stical number 
 of saints, “ a hundred and forty and four 
 thousand,” — representing the whole multitude 
 of the redeemed from the earth, who were 
 not “ defiled with women,” — should have been 
 of the male sex. No women at all in heaven ! 
 An obvious absurdity ! “ Women” in the con- 
 
Sex^ Love and Marj'iage Eternal. 65 
 
 text evidently means the natural affections and 
 passions of the soul; and to be “not defiled 
 with women,” is to have kept the heart pure 
 from earthly passions and uncontaminated by 
 evil loves, and therefore “virgin” for the 
 Lamb, who is the Bridegroom of the Church. 
 The passage describes the regenerate soul, and 
 is just as applicable in its spiritual sense to the 
 female as to the male member of Christ’s 
 church. 
 
 To deliver us from the bondage of material- 
 ism and sensualism, a special and extraordi- 
 nary illumination of the human mind has been 
 granted by the Lord. When we understand 
 the spiritual sense of the Scriptures, which 
 shines through or dissipates the obscurities or 
 “clouds” of the letter; when we see the true 
 relations between spirit and matter, now for the 
 first time clearly revealed ; when we are made 
 acquainted with the laws and phenomena of 
 the other life, we shall discover that marriage 
 is the central and pivotal fact of the universe ; 
 that the reproduction of the species in this 
 world is the lowest and humblest of its many 
 
 uses ; that the union of the sexes appointed by 
 5 r * 
 
66 
 
 The Sexes ; Here and Hereayter. 
 
 God in the first paradise, is the t3"pe and image 
 of their eternal union in the last; that wedlock 
 under the divine law, is chastity itself ; and that 
 the happy marriage of two loving souls, is so 
 pure, so holy, so immutable, that it is the 
 chosen type in the Divine Word of regen- 
 eration and of heaven. 
 
 A third potent reason why the world and the 
 Church are not prepared for the grand idea of 
 eternal sex and marriage is, that they know 
 absolutety nothing about the spiritual life, 
 and see no philosophical bond of connection 
 between the visible and the invisible worlds. 
 Religion and science are so thoroughly di- 
 vorced in the common mind, that men see no 
 special reason for any influx from heaven into 
 earth. They think matter has certain proper- 
 ties inherent in itself, and that material forces 
 and forms have built up this physical world 
 around us, which can run its own course like a 
 machine, separate from and unconnected with 
 any spiritual universe. This latter may be, 
 for aught they know, a veiy different crea- 
 tion, lying afar off from this, with totally dif- 
 ferent forms, laws and phenomena, having no 
 
Sex, Love mid Alarriage Eternal. 67 
 
 necessary and organic connection with this 
 world. 
 
 These are monstrous fallacies blinding the 
 mind to any conception of spiritual truth. The 
 first melancholy result is a vicious method of 
 reasoning about spiritual things. Spirit is sup- 
 posed to be so different from matter, so far 
 from it, so unconnected with it, that they can- 
 not possibly have anything in common. Mat- 
 ter has extension, weight, form, color, odor, 
 organization, etc. Therefore no such proper- 
 ties can be ascribed to spirit. Spirit thus be- 
 comes, not something real and substantial, but 
 a mere negation of matter ; and as all our 
 thoughts in time and space are based upon our 
 sensuous conceptions, the spiritual world be- 
 comes, to the popular mind, simply vacated of 
 everything except certain incomprehensible 
 abstract essences. 
 
 What follows? Incapacity to conceive of 
 any real life after death. Practical infidelity 
 as to the existence of a spiritual world. Total 
 indifference, and even intolerance, about spirit- 
 ual things. It is a melancholy fact that intelli- 
 gent curiosity in respect to the life after death, 
 
68 The Sexes; Het’e and Hereof ier. 
 
 is almost dead in orthodox circles. Christians 
 think and know nothing about it outside of the 
 mere question of personal salvation. They are 
 not ashamed to acknowledge their inability and 
 indisposition to form any definite idea of the 
 world they are to live in forever. Their eyes 
 are shut against rational light, or further revela- 
 tion. They will assent to infinitudes of love, 
 peace, praise, glory, blessedness, etc., in the 
 heavenly kingdom ; but they turn a deaf ear 
 when you speak of societies and governments 
 and aids and sciences and churches and homes 
 and husbands and wives in the world to come. 
 
 What has reduced the Christian mind to such 
 a vacant and apathetic state? “ Do you think 
 we will know our friends in the other life.''” is 
 generally the first question to a New Church- 
 man. The apostles, who knew Moses and Elias 
 when talking with the transfigured Jesus, had 
 • no doubt about knowing their fidends in the 
 other life. The early Christians, who saw 
 devils cast out of the bodies of men, and who 
 met angels at the tomb of the Lord, had no 
 doubt about the reality and proximity of the 
 spiritual world. Has it changed its nature or 
 
Sex, Love and ]\Iarriage Etei'nal. 69 
 
 its relation to this world since that time? John, 
 who received the Apocalypse through one of his 
 brethren, the prophets, had no doubt about the 
 immediate resurrection of the dead, or the open- 
 ing of the spiritual eyes of a man still living in 
 the world. How the good men from Abraham 
 to Paul, who saw into heaven before death, and 
 recognized there mountains and rivers and ani- 
 mals and trees and tabernacles and temples 
 and sounds and colors and crowds of spiritual 
 beings in human form, would be filled w4th 
 astonishment at the transcendental theology of 
 the present day, which practically makes the 
 soul an ether, heaven a vacuum, and God, as 
 one great commentator actually defines him, 
 “ a luminous abyss !” 
 
 Here it is that Swedenborg’s rational and 
 philosophical doctrines, illustrating his spiritual 
 theology, render such transcendent service. 
 The spiritual and natural worlds are co-exist- 
 ent, correspondent, and mutually dependent. 
 The forces employed in their creation and 
 maintenance are identical — namely, the Divine 
 Love and the Divine Wisdom operating by the 
 same universal and immutable laws. There- 
 
70 
 
 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 fore the spiritual and natural worlds are not 
 only connected but inseparable ; and they are 
 counterparts of each other, each having ii^s 
 sun, its earths, its innumerable forms, — animal, 
 vegetable, and mineral, — and its human beings 
 — for angels are only men transfigured. 
 
 All genuine life, force, power, quality, sen- 
 sation, etc., reside in the spiritual and not in 
 the natural sphere, although the contrary ap- 
 pears to us to be true. What is the conse- 
 quence? The qualities or properties of matter 
 are not inherent but infiiient. Never was a 
 grander truth than this, differentiating the Swe- 
 denborgian philosophy from all the feebler 
 systems which have preceded it and pre- 
 pared the wa}^ for it. The ideas of extension, 
 weight, color, form, odor, etc., made on us here, 
 are states of our spiritual organization which 
 exist and are infinitely varied in the spiritual 
 world without the intervention of natural ob- 
 jects. Therefore that world is as real and 
 solid as this — the reality, indeed, of which ours 
 is the shadow. 
 
 This is the basis of Swedenborg's doctrine 
 of correspondences, which explains the spirit- 
 
Sex, Love and ALarriage Eternal. 
 
 ual sense of the Bible and the spiritual signifi- 
 cance of nature. Every natural form is pro- 
 duced by and represents some spiritual form. 
 A pleasant emotion is awakened in the soul ; a 
 smile follows in the body, as its representative, 
 or material correspondent. The smile has a 
 spiritual cause and meaning. So has a stone, 
 a flower, a bird, a cloud, the sun — yea, every 
 visible object in nature — its spiritual meaning. 
 Were our understandings sufiiciently enlight- 
 ened and our spiritual perceptions sufficiently 
 quickened, we would catch the spiritual mean- 
 ing of all things, and the natural world would 
 be to us an open book or mirror repeating and 
 revealing the wonders of the spiritual. Under 
 the old philosophies nature will be alwa3''s 
 “the open secret” of Goethe; exposed every- 
 where, explained nowhere; seen of all men, 
 understood by none. 
 
 To those who grasp this necessary connec- 
 tion between the spiritual and the natural 
 worlds, together with the priority, superiority, 
 and causativeness of the spiritual, the distinc- 
 tions of sex after death, the activity of all 
 human passions, and the perpetuity of mar- 
 
^3 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 riage, are not only rational and proper, but 
 absolutely inevitable. To deny them is to deny 
 the unity and omnipresence of a God working 
 by immutable and universal laws, the relation 
 of cause and effect, the mutual coherence of 
 all things spiritual and natural with one great 
 Centre, and the immortality of the human soul. 
 
 The gi*eat Puritan poet expresses, in a cau- 
 tious question, what is the intuitive perception 
 of every mind unbenighted b}’' the ratiocina- 
 tions of some so-called philosophy : 
 
 “ What if earth 
 
 Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
 
 Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought?” 
 
 Mrs. Browning, the queen of modern song, 
 recognizes the vital relations between the spir- 
 itual and the natural worlds in a more vivid 
 and beautiful manner : 
 
 “Not a natural flower can grow on earth 
 Without a flower upon the spiritual side. 
 Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
 With blossoming causes.” 
 
 And as if the veil which conceals the spirit- 
 ual secrets of nature from obtuser mortals had 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Eternal. 73 
 
 fallen from her eyes, she exclaims in sublime 
 rhapsody, 
 
 “ Earth’s crammed with heaven, 
 
 And every common bush afire with God !” 
 
 “The characters of nature,” says an emi- 
 nent English divine, “ are the hieroglyphics 
 of God.” To these hieroglyphics, Sweden- 
 borg, illumined from on high, has given us the 
 key ; and it will be our own fault if the created 
 and written Words do not enlighten our minds 
 and gladden our hearts with stores of heavenly 
 wisdom hitherto concealed from the world. 
 The richest among these treasures is the spirit- 
 ual philosophy of marriage on earth and in 
 heaven. 
 
 Archbishop Trench, in his work on the 
 Parables, discussing the grounds of analogy 
 between the spiritual and natural worlds, gives 
 unconscious utterance to the Swedenborgian 
 doctrine with great force and beauty : 
 
 “It is not merely that these analogies [equiv- 
 alent to Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspond- 
 ences] assist to make the truth intelligible, or, 
 if intelligible before, present it more vividly to 
 
 the mind, which is all that some will allow 
 G 
 
74 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 them. Their -power lies deeper than this, in 
 the harmony, tcnconsciously felt by all meii, 
 and by deeper minds continually recognized 
 and perceived, between the naticral and spirit- 
 ual worlds ; so that analogies from the first are 
 felt to be something more than illustrations 
 happily but arbitrarily chosen. They are ar- 
 guments, and may be alleged as witnesses : 
 the world of nature being throughout a wit- 
 ness for the world of spirit, proceeding from 
 the same hand, growing out of the same root, 
 and being constituted for that very end. All 
 lovers of truth readily acknowledge these mys- 
 terious harmonies and the force of arguments 
 derived from them. To them the things on 
 earth are copies of the things in heaven. 
 They know that the earthly tabernacle is made 
 after the pattern of things seen in the mount. 
 
 “It is a great misunderstanding of the 
 matter to think of these as happily, but yet 
 arbitrarily, chosen illustrations. Rather they 
 belong to' one another , the type and the thing 
 typified, by an inward necessity ; they were 
 linked together long before by the law of a 
 secret afiinity. It is not a happ}'- accident that 
 
Sex, Love mid Marriage Eternal. 75 
 
 has yielded so wondrous an analogy as that of 
 husband and wife, to set forth the mystery of 
 Christ’s relation to his Church. There is far 
 more in it than this : the earthly relation is 
 indeed hut a lower form of the heavenly, on 
 which it rests and of which it is the utter- 
 ancel’’ Such is precisely Swedenborg’s basis 
 for his doctrine of conjugial love. 
 
 Archbishop Trench is a distinguished author- 
 ity on the etymology and significance of words, 
 and he goes on to say : 
 
 “Out of a true sense of this secret affinity, 
 has grown our use of the word likely. There 
 is a confident expectation in the minds of men 
 of the reappearance in higher spheres of the 
 same laws and revelations which they have 
 recognized in the lower ; and thus that which 
 is like is also likely or probable.” 
 
 What is more likely or probable than the re- 
 appearance in higher spheres of the laws and 
 relations of sex, love, and marriage, seeing they 
 constitute so largely the basis of the physical, 
 social, and historical development of human 
 life? 
 
 Thus the analogy or concordance between 
 
76 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 spirit and matter, the unity and omnipresence 
 of God, the universality of his laws, their con- 
 tinuous operation in both worlds, the percep- 
 tion that similar causes produce similar effects, 
 the immortality and identity of human spirits, 
 all combine with the inexplicable intuitions of 
 our own hearts to assure us that the life to 
 come is essentially a continuation of this on a 
 subtler and grander field, having similar forms, 
 affections, and relations both personal and 
 social. 
 
 Let no one suppose, however, that there will 
 be no difference between heaven and earth. 
 Earth at its best is but the shadow of heaven, 
 which immeasurably exceeds it in the perfec- 
 tion and glory of its forms and the rapidity and 
 beauty of their changes. Freed for ever from 
 the disorganizing influences of evil, lifted into 
 purer and sweeter atmospheres of life, the 
 affections and thoughts of the soul will expand 
 indefinitely. The peace and joy of personal 
 relations in the Hereafter, the harmony and 
 strength of social institutions, transcend our 
 present greatest conceptions. Our love and 
 knowledge of God will be perpetually increas- 
 
Sex, Love a7id Marriage Eternal. 
 
 77 
 
 ing, and He will be thereby enabled to give us 
 ever new and more glorious revelations of his 
 goodness and power. Eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, more than a poor fraction of the 
 heavenly life as it is, and no heart hath imag- 
 ined its possibilities in the future. 
 
 Oh the hopes, the fears, the longings, the 
 imperishable activities of conjugial love ! Its 
 intensity reminds us of what Paul said about 
 the love of Christ. Indeed, the marriage of 
 Christ with the Christian heart is typified in the 
 inseparable union of two congenial souls ; and 
 the fervid words of the apostle are as applicable 
 to the true husband and wife as to the Bride- 
 groom and his Church : 
 
 “Who shall separate us from the love of 
 Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or perse- 
 cution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the 
 sword ? 
 
 “Nay, in all these things we are more than 
 conquerors, through Him that loved us. 
 
 “ For I am persuaded that neither death, nor 
 life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
 nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
 height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
 
78 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 be able to separate us from the love of God 
 which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.” 
 
 Like Solomon’s song, this is the language of 
 conjugial love as well as of religious fervor. 
 
 How sweetly does that pure-hearted and 
 saintly woman, Mrs. John Fletcher, plead for 
 a perfect reunion with her great and good hus- 
 band, who preceded her thirty years into the 
 kingdom of light and love ! — 
 
 “As spiritual union arises from a communi- 
 cation of the love which flows from the heart 
 of Christ, I cannot but believe that a nearer 
 approach to its centre, and a fuller measure of 
 that divine principle, must increase and not 
 diminish the union between kindred souls. 
 Will not, it is asked, all particular unions 
 cease? and is it not the design of God that 
 death should divide husband and wife? To 
 answer this objection I must premise that, what 
 is of God shall stand. I plead only for that 
 union which has God as its source ; and I think 
 it will not be hard to prove that, what God hath 
 joined together, death cannot -put asunder. 
 Division comes not from God, but the devil.” 
 
 Far away — the moral antipode to this pure 
 
Sex, Love and Alarriage Eternal. 79 
 
 and saintly soul — we find the gross and reck- 
 less Byron, in some happy moment of spirit- 
 ual insight, felicitously expressing the same 
 truth : 
 
 “ There are two souls of equal flow, 
 
 Whose gentle streams so calmly run, 
 
 That when they part — they part? Oh no! 
 
 They cannot part ! those souls are one !” 
 
 indeed, the poets are all with Swedenborg 
 on this question. For the perception of spiritual 
 truth, they are more trustworthy than theologians 
 or philosophers. They stoutly ignore the fact 
 of death, and color time and eternity with the 
 purple splendors of love. The expounders, 
 the custodians, the very aiTists of love, they 
 trample boldly on theological and popular fal- 
 lacies, and speak of the reunion of husbands 
 and wives in heaven, as if it was a matter of 
 course and to be expected by every rational 
 man. 
 
 One of the grandest passages in Tennyson or 
 any other poet, is where King Arthur takes 
 his farewell leave of the guilty Guinever, who 
 had wrought the ruin of his kingdom and his 
 home, and who lay groveling at his feet upon 
 
8o The Sexes ; Here aitd Hereafter. 
 
 the floor. The stern reproaches of blighted 
 glory and honor softly subside into expressions 
 of forgiveness and pity, and the peerless hus- 
 band, heartbroken and marching to his doom, 
 begs of the penitent wife, from whom he felt 
 nimself inseparable, the hope at least of her 
 purified love in heaven : 
 
 “ My love through flesh hath wrought into my life 
 So far, my doom is that I love thee still. 
 
 Let no man dream but that I love thee still. 
 
 Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul. 
 
 And so thou lean on our fair Father, Christ, 
 
 Hereafter, in that world where all are pure. 
 
 We two ma}' meet before high God, and thou 
 Wilt spring to me and claim me thine, and know 
 I am thy husband — not a smaller soul. 
 
 Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that, 
 
 I charge thee, my last hope.” 
 
 And the remorseful queen, who dedicated 
 herself to humility, chastity, and devotion, until 
 she passed purified 
 
 “ To where, beyond these voices, there is peace,” 
 
 treasured this little hope bequeathed her by the 
 king, as the sacred germ of the new life spring- 
 ing up in her soul. 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Eternal. Si 
 
 “What hope? ' I think there was a hope, 
 
 Except he mocked me when he spake of hope ; 
 
 His hope he called it; but he never mocks, 
 
 For mockerj is the fume of little hearts; 
 
 And blessed be the king who hath forgiven 
 My wickedness to him, and left me hope 
 That in mine own heart I can live down sin. 
 
 And be his mate hereafter in the heavens 
 Before high God.” 
 
 There is a beautiful Grecian myth versified 
 by Bulwer in his “ Lost Tales of Miletus,” 
 which not only teaches marriage in heaven, but 
 the still more advanced truth that those mar- 
 riages are determined by the inmost, ineradi- 
 cable, indestructible spiritual affinity of the two 
 souls, independently of anything which occur- 
 red during their earthly lives. 
 
 The argument is this : Leonymus of Croton, 
 invading Locria, was wounded by a phantom 
 figure of Ajax, “guarding still his native soil.” 
 This ghostly wound could not be healed by any 
 physical means ; and the sufferer was sent by 
 the oracle to the Isle of Happy Souls, where 
 he was told he could be cured by the touch of 
 the spirit-hand which had inflicted the injury. 
 The poet does not tell us how Leonymus got 
 
82 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 into the spiritual regions in search of his ho- 
 mcEopathic cure ; but, when he did get there, 
 he found a beautiful external nature remark- 
 ably like ours, and Achilles, the greatest war- 
 rior of Greece, and Helen, its most beautiful 
 woman, enemies in the earth-life, enjoying an 
 eternity of wedded bliss. 
 
 The visions of the prophet and the intuitions 
 of the poet have been verified by the observa- 
 tions of Swedenborg, who teaches, not from 
 theory or fancy, but “ from things heard and 
 seen,” as he himself expresses it, that men and 
 women are still male- and female in the other 
 life ; that they are drawn together there by 
 the same spiritual affinity which attracted them 
 here ; and that in heaven the relation of hus- 
 band and wife is established on a sure, beau- 
 tiful, holy, and immutable basis. 
 
 How beautiful, how real, how near the other 
 life becomes, when we view it from this stand- 
 point ! All that has been said or sung of the 
 charms and pleasures of home, and of the un- 
 speakable delights of newly-wedded love, is 
 “ imaged there in happier beauty.” The per- 
 fected married pair is the type of the Lord’s 
 
Sex, Love and Marriage Eternal. 83 
 
 Church, the miniature form of Heaven, the 
 centre of divine influx, the repository of divine 
 life, the' crowning work of the divine wis- 
 dom, the consummated flower of the divine 
 love. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHAT OUR LORD SAYS ABOUT IT. 
 
 the resurrection they neither marry 
 )r are giv^en in marriage ; but are as 
 e angels of God in heaven.” 
 
 So spake Jesus to the Sadducees, who told 
 him of the woman who had seven successive 
 husbands, and who asked him, After death, 
 whose wife shall she be? 
 
 Marriage was established by the Lord him- 
 self in the warden of Eden. It was the first 
 
 o 
 
 and holiest institutional work of his hands ; 
 preceding his Church, preceding his Word, 
 preceding his Heaven, — for all angels have 
 been men, and are the offspring of marriage. 
 Before the fall, man and woman were husband 
 and wife in the purest innocence and love ; and 
 they were then, what they have never been 
 since, the perfect image and likeness of God, 
 precisely as the angels are now. 
 
 8i 
 
\\'hat our Lord Says About it. 85 
 
 The Lord has perpetuated and blessed this 
 heavenly institution which He then ordained. 
 “ Houses and riches,” says Solomon, “ are the 
 inheritance of fathers ; but a prudent wife is 
 from the Lord.” “ Marriage is honorable in 
 all, and the bed undefiled,” says the apostle. 
 
 Marriage is used as the type of the union of 
 the Lord with his Church ; and the wanderings 
 of the heart from God, and the consequent 
 falsifications of his holy Word, are described 
 as conjugal infidelities which leave their dark- 
 ening and deadening ■ effects upon the soul. 
 Marriage is also the type of regeneration and 
 of the kingdom of God in the individual spirit, — 
 of the union of God’s goodness and truth in the 
 individual life. How holy must be the essence 
 of marriage when such is its signification ! 
 
 Our Lord’s first miracle was performed at a 
 marriage-feast, which represented that union 
 of goodness and truth, of charity and faith, in 
 which alone the divine power and presence be- 
 come manifest. The water was turned into 
 wine, to represent how the natural truths of the 
 Word are made spiritual to our perceptions by 
 a life according to the commandments. By the 
 
 H 
 
88 The Sexes; Here a7td Hereafter. 
 
 We must not be so hasty and self-confident 
 as to suppose that we see the Lord’s meaning 
 at a glance ; that the truth shines on the sur- 
 face ; that the sense most obvious to every 
 reader is the genuine sense. Natural things 
 may sometimes be seen at a glance, because 
 they are discovered by the natural senses ; they 
 shine on the surface because they are super- 
 ficial. Spiritual truths are all interior and 
 coherent, woven together by spiritual laws, 
 unseen by the carnal eye, and symbolized in 
 Scripture by forms and modes of speech which 
 need interpretation. 
 
 “ Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my 
 blood hath eternal life,” said Jesus in the lan- 
 guage of spiritual symbolism. The Jews “strove 
 among themselves, saying. How can this man 
 give us his flesh to eat ?” His bewildered dis- 
 ciples also said, “This is a hard saying; who 
 can hear it?” And the Saviour left the Jews in 
 their mental darkness ; but he declared to his 
 disciples that his intention was to convey spir- 
 itual truth under natural or literal forms of ex- 
 pression. “Doth this offend jmu?” he inquired. 
 “It is the Spirit that quickeneth : the flesh prof- 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 89 
 
 iteth nothing : the words that I speak unto you, 
 they are spirit and they are life.” The expla- 
 nation was insufficient. Many of his disciples 
 went back and walked no more with him ; and 
 he said sorrowfully to the twelve: “Will ye 
 also go away?” So hard is it for the unregen- 
 erate mind to recognize spiritual truth under its 
 corresponding literal forms, to which it insists 
 upon giving nothing but the most obvious, 
 literal interpretation. 
 
 “The letter killeth,” says Paul, “but the 
 spirit giveth life.” 
 
 The spirit is needed to give life to many 
 parts of the Scripture which the letter has 
 killed. The first eleven chapters of Genesis, 
 evidently so different from all the rest, the sin- 
 gular incidents of Jewish history, the appar- 
 ently trifling details of the Jewish law, the 
 dark sayings and unintelligible symbols of the . 
 prophets, and the mystical visions of the Apoc- 
 alypse, are all instinct with spiritual life and 
 beauty, needing the voice of the interpreter to 
 decypher their hieroglyphics and to utilize their 
 transcendent truths. Happy will it be for the 
 Chirrch and the world when they recognize the 
 
 H « 
 
90 The Sexes j IIe 7 'e and Hereafter. 
 
 great fact that the Second Coming of the Lord 
 is not a personal appearance in the clouds of 
 heaven, but a new revelation of the Divine 
 Wisdom through the clouds — or literal sense — of 
 the Sacred Scripture. 
 
 There is, then, a spiritual sense to the Bible. 
 The true meaning of any passage of Scripture 
 is always found in the spiritual sense. Why 
 should the literal and spiritual senses ever seem 
 to differ? Because when the natural mind is 
 incapable of receiving spiritual truth in its 
 purity, it alwa3^s gives it a natural or literal 
 interpretation. This is not the place to discuss 
 thoroughly the coexistence of two senses in the 
 Bible. We affirm the fact, and say that in the 
 most obscure and difficultpassages we find bril- 
 liant and glorious truths in the spiritual sense, 
 which do not in the least appear in the letter. 
 
 . “All these things spake Jesus unto the multi- 
 tude in parables, and without a parable spake 
 he not unto them. 
 
 “And when they were alone, he expounded 
 all things unto his disciples. 
 
 “And the disciples came and said unto him. 
 Why speakest thou unto them in parables? 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 91 
 
 “ He answered and said unto them : Because 
 it is given unto you to know the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not 
 given.” 
 
 It is plain, therefore, that the words of Christ 
 contain a double meaning, an internal and an 
 external. The external sense fell upon the ear 
 of the multitude in the shape of parables or 
 mystical sayings, to which each man gave a 
 literal interpretation according to his degree of 
 natural light, or his own analytic and imagina- 
 tive powers. The other sense, explaining the 
 parables and unfolding the “mysteries of 
 heaven,” was reserved for those who could 
 retire from the world “alone” with Jesus, and 
 become receptive of truth in a higher or spir- 
 itual degree. The same distinction exists to- 
 day. The literalists stand outside with the 
 multitude, and are not permitted to know “ the 
 mysteries of heaven” which lie concealed in the 
 internal sense of the Word. 
 
 Thus also one dispensation of truth is interior 
 to and higher than another, not to be understood 
 by those who occupy the lower and more ex- 
 ternal standpoint. Paul told the Jews that the 
 
90 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 great fact that the Second Coming of the Lord 
 is not a personal appearance in the clouds of 
 heaven, but a new revelation of the Divine 
 Wisdom through the clouds — or literal sense — of 
 the Sacred Scripture. 
 
 There is, then, a spiritual sense to the Bible. 
 The true meaning of any passage of Scripture 
 is always found in the spiritual sense. Why 
 should the literal and spiritual senses ever seem 
 to differ? Because when the natural mind is 
 incapable of receiving spiritual truth in its 
 purity, it always gives it a natural or literal 
 interpretation. This is not the place to discuss 
 thoroughly the coexistence of two senses in the 
 Bible. We affirm the fact, and say that in the 
 most obscure and difficultpassages we find bril- 
 liant and glorious truths in the spiritual sense, 
 which do not in the least appear in the letter. 
 
 . “All these things spake Jesus unto the multi- 
 tude in parables, and without a parable spake 
 he not unto them. 
 
 “And when they were alone, he expounded 
 all things unto his disciples. 
 
 “And the disciples came and said unto him. 
 Why speakest thou unto them in parables? 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 91 
 
 “ He answered and said unto them : Because 
 it is given unto you to know the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not 
 given.” 
 
 It is plain, therefore, that the words of Christ 
 contain a double meaning, an internal and an 
 external. The external sense fell upon the ear 
 of the multitude in the shape of parables or 
 mystical sayings, to which each man gave a 
 literal interpretation according to his degree of 
 natural light, or his own analytic and imagina- 
 tive powers. The other sense, explaining the 
 parables and unfolding the “ luysteries of 
 heaven,” was reserved for those who could 
 retire from the world “ alone” with Jesus, and 
 become receptive of truth in a higher or spir- 
 itual degree. The same distinction exists to- 
 day. The literalists stand outside with the 
 multitude, and are not permitted to know “ the 
 mysteries of heaven” which lie concealed in the 
 internal sense of the Word. 
 
 Thus also one dispensation of truth is interior 
 to and higher than another, not to be understood 
 by those who occupy the lower and more ex- 
 ternal standpoint. Paul told the Jews that the 
 
92 The Sexes; Here a7td Hereafter, 
 
 story of Hagar and Ishmael was an allegory 
 involving spiritual truths which they had never 
 suspected to exist in it ; and that the veil which 
 Moses had put over his face, concealing the 
 divine light, was still upon their own hearts 
 when Moses was read in the temple. Swe- 
 denborg has been empowered to reveal the still 
 deeper meaning hidden in the Scriptures, and 
 to lift the veil of both Moses and Paul from the 
 mind of the Apostolic Church. 
 
 We are not wandering at all from the subject 
 of marriage in heaven, as the reader will soon 
 discover. 
 
 As the soul or living spirit requires a natural 
 body for its outward manifestation, so the living 
 spirit of God’s Word required a literal form or 
 body for its outward expression. As our nat- 
 ural body is feeble and imperfect from its neces- 
 sary limitations in time and space, and is thus 
 a poor and inadequate manifestation of the im- 
 mortal soul within, so the letter of the Word, 
 being expressed through the finite minds of a 
 feeble and sensuous race, takes on their imper- 
 fections, and reveals in its external forms very 
 little indeed of the divine glory which illumin- 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 93 
 
 ates its interior. To insist that the divine reve- 
 lation lies in the letter of the Word alone, is 
 like attributing all life and power to the material 
 body, denying the spiritual element within it. 
 
 Without the body, no soul could be mani- 
 fested. Therefore the letter of the Word 
 should be the object of scinipulous care. On 
 its preservation, its accuracy, its purity, depend 
 our hopes of getting at the genuine truth within. 
 But to limit the revelation of divine truth to the 
 letter alone, is to circumscribe, depreciate, and 
 really dishonor the gospel. It is the demand 
 of the sensuous skeptic that a revelation from 
 God shall be perfectly simple and intelligible to 
 all, bearing its meaning on the surface, and as 
 plain and clear as the edicts of an earthly king. 
 And this were a reasonable demand if the 
 real spirit and meaning of the Word is to be 
 drawn from the letter. But the skeptic finds 
 the Bible full of strange and miraculous histo- 
 ries, mysterious prophecies, and inexplicable 
 visions, about the true meaning of which the 
 whole Christian world is sadly divided in opin- 
 ion ; and he rejects it all as the work of impos- 
 ture or fanaticism. 
 
94 The Sexes J Here and HereaJ'ler. 
 
 The Christian who is capable of spiritual 
 thought above the senses, who believes the 
 Bible to be inspired, and to contain the wisdom 
 of Him who created the universe both of mind 
 and matter, — he ought to be the fii'st to ac- 
 knowledge that the Scriptures may, and indeed 
 must, have meaning within meaning for angels 
 as well as men ; that, being constructed by the 
 Author of the visible and invisible creation, and 
 according to the same immutable laws, the Bible 
 must be as vast, as deep, as complex, as myriad- 
 sided as creation itself. Its essential divinity 
 cannot, therefore, reside in the mere letter. 
 
 It is a great error to suppose that spiritual 
 interpretation would give a loose rein to the 
 imagination, and flood the Church with wild 
 theories and fantastic speculations. Nothing 
 could be more remote from the truth than this. 
 It is the bare letter which has done all this 
 harm. It is the letter which has torn the 
 Church with schism and filled it with false 
 doctrines. It is the letter to which every sect 
 appeals in support of its peculiar tenets. It is 
 the letter which has created the carping spirit 
 of rationalism, and winged the shafts of infidel- 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 95 
 
 ity. How strange that the Christian Church 
 should not yet have generally discovered that 
 “the letter killeth that “the flesh profiteth 
 nothing that the Lord’s words are spirit and 
 life ; that the Holy Book is written within as 
 well as without; that the rock conceals water 
 in its bosom ; that the water contains wine inte- 
 riorly ; and that the inmost of the wine is the 
 blood — the living spirit — of the Lord ! 
 
 The spiritual sense revealed by Swedenborg 
 bears no resemblance to the fanciful traditions 
 of the Hebrew Cabalists, and scarcely any to 
 the ingenious speculations of Origen and other 
 Christian writers. It was not imagined, con- 
 ceived, discovered, or invented by Swedenborg 
 at all. It was revealed to him from heaven by 
 a special illumination of his mind. It has 
 always existed in heaven ; it is the food of 
 angelic minds ; and its revelation to men will 
 reconnect heaven and earth. This spiritual 
 sense is indivisible like the inner garment of 
 the Lord. It is a fixed, organic, coherent, unit- 
 izing system of Divine Truth, which cannot, 
 like the letter, be interpreted in different ways. 
 
 Convinced, now, that there is an interior, 
 
96 The Sexes; IIei-e and Hereayter. 
 
 higher, and spiritual meaning to what our 
 Lord says, which may or may not shine 
 through the outer and literal statement, let us 
 consider his remark about marriage in heaven. 
 Remember that he always means spiritual 
 things, when the literal expression appears to 
 relate only to natural things. The water of 
 which he spake to the woman at the well, was 
 spiritual water ; the meat which his disciples 
 knew nothing of, was spiritual meat ; the wine 
 and bread of the holy supper were spiritual 
 elements — his own goodness and truth. When 
 he spake of death, he meant spiritual death ; 
 of the resurrection, he meant a spiritual resur- 
 rection ; for he says “I am the resurrection.” 
 When he alluded to father, mother, and breth- 
 ren, he meant spiritual relationships, disclaim- 
 ing all others. When he spoke of marriage, 
 however gross and carnal our idea of it may 
 be, he meant spiritual marriage, and that only. 
 
 Spiritual marriage? What is that? There 
 is a common opinion that although there is no 
 marriage in heaven in the least resembling 
 ours, still there is a mystical union of kindred 
 souls — a blending together in eternal harmony 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 97 
 
 of tender thoughts and gentle sympathies, so 
 that two lives may become spiritually one. 
 Swedenborg has dissipated the obscuring mists 
 which have hitherto surrounded this subject, 
 and by actual observation and experience has 
 revealed the constitution of the spiritual world, 
 as the scientific men of our earth have discov- 
 ered the constitution of the natural world. 
 
 He finds that the spiritual and the natural 
 worlds correspond to each other. He finds 
 that everything which exists in the natural 
 world is repeated in the spiritual world in spir- 
 itual forms. We have shown in our first chapter 
 that everything in nature is bi-sexual ; that elec- 
 tric and magnetic polarities divide every object 
 and every atom in every object into positive 
 and negative or male and female forms, which 
 have for each other special affinities, and are 
 forever striving for equilibrium, union, or, as 
 we prefer to say, marriage. 
 
 This great natural law is an image or corre- 
 spondence of the spiritual law, that every spir- 
 itual force or form is positive or negative, male 
 or female. Every idea of the mind is com- 
 pounded of the affections and thoughts which 
 7 I 
 
98 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 give it outward expression. When the affec- 
 tion (female) is married to the thought (male) 
 we have the outward manifestations of life, 
 sensation, perception, action. Forms or ob- 
 lects are bound together in the spiritual world 
 by affinities similar to those which exist in the 
 natural world. The female forms have relation 
 to love or goodness ; the male forms have rela- 
 tion to truth or wisdom. Their marriage pro- 
 duces the outer world, whether spiritual or 
 natural. Goodness alone, or truth alone, is 
 nothing ; combined, they are all things. They 
 only become objective when subjectively united. 
 
 This great truth, lying at the basis of all cre- 
 tions, is thus beautifull}^ expressed by a heaven- 
 inspired poet : 
 
 “ Such perfect friends are Truth and Love, 
 
 That neither lives where both are not.” 
 
 The first or primaiy form of marriage is the 
 perfect union of the will and understanding, 
 of the affections and thoughts, of the emotions 
 and the intellect, of charity and faith, in the 
 individual soul. The regenerate man is the 
 man in whom pure and holy affections are so 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 99 
 
 wedded to true and wise thoughts, that his 
 entire life is divinely moved to good actions. 
 
 A more complex form of the same marriage 
 exists between the sexes, both here and here- 
 after. Man and woman alike have in them- 
 selves individually the elements of goodness 
 and truth, and must each attain that marriage 
 of pure affection and wise thought, which is 
 regeneration. But sexually the}' are different. 
 Woman is the form of goodness, man the form 
 of truth. These exercise the same love or at- 
 traction for each other as the affections and 
 thoughts do in the individual mind. Men and 
 women love each other just as each individual 
 loves what he believes and believes what he 
 loves. 
 
 A still more complex form of marriage is 
 between the Lord and his Church. Here the 
 married couple, regenerate in themselves, re- 
 generate in their union with each other, make 
 the unit or least form of the Church, which is 
 female or negative in relation to the male or 
 positive Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ, which 
 animates and impregnates the two-souls-in-one 
 with all the glories, beauties, harmonies, peace. 
 
:oo The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 order, love, of the spiritual and eternal life. To 
 one of these three marriages, — the marriage of 
 the will and the understanding in the regene- 
 rate life of each individual ; the marriage of the 
 Divine Goodness and the Divine Truth repre- 
 sented in objective male and female forms, hus- 
 band and wife ; or the mandage of a spiritual 
 being compounded of two congenial beings to 
 the great Bridegroom of the Church, — to one 
 of these three marriages, and indeed to all of 
 them in turn, every scriptural sentence alluding 
 to marriage, when rightly understood, will be 
 found to refer. 
 
 The reader ma}' hastily conclude from this 
 explanation, that our Lord, in sa3’ing that " in 
 the resurrection they neither marry nor are 
 given in marriage,” has affirmed that in the 
 spiritual life there is no union of the good 
 and true, no marriage of charity and faith, 
 none of the very things which we have de- 
 scribed as the essential and organic elements 
 of the spiritual world. A closer inspection, 
 however, will convince him of his error. 
 
 The interpretation of the passage evidendy 
 turns upon the meaning of “ marrying and giv- 
 
What oiir Lord Says About it. loi 
 
 ing in marriage.” About the natural significa- 
 tion of the words there can be no doubt. But 
 most readers have never yet learned the fact, 
 that the spiritual signification of words and 
 things is twofold. The same words in the 
 Bible have two different and opposite senses, 
 according as they refer to good or evil, to the 
 true or the false, or according as they relate to 
 heaven or hell. 
 
 The fundamental cause of this is, that the 
 evil and false have no absolute and independent 
 existence, but are simply perversions of the 
 good and true ; as disease is not a real object or 
 power, but only a perversion or disturbance of 
 the natural healthy functions. The good and 
 the evil spiritual powers are often symbolized 
 in nature under the same forms. Thus there is 
 a marriage which is not only possible in heaven, 
 but which is heaven itself; and there is also a 
 marriage not only impossible but incomprehen- 
 sible to angelic beings. And both of these spir- 
 itual marriages are represented by the natural 
 symbol — marriage — as it comes to our natural 
 perception. 
 
 This is a point of so much importance to an 
 
 r«- 
 
102 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 intelligent comprehension of Scripture myste- 
 ries, and of this one in particular, that we must 
 press its careful consideration on the reader. 
 
 Let us take the word -water., and we shall see 
 that it has two opposite significations according 
 to the context. 
 
 The waters which gushed from the rock in 
 Horeb, to save the dying multitudes ; the “ still 
 waters” associated with the “ green pastures” 
 in the land of the Good Shepherd : the water 
 of life, “clear as crystal;” and the consecrated 
 water of baptism, are all evidently significative 
 of divine truth in its regenerating influence on 
 the soul. But when the Psalmist exclaims, 
 “ Save me, O God ! for the waters are come in 
 unto my soul,” he evidently means some kind 
 of waters very different from the preceding. 
 He evidently means no natural waters what- 
 ever. He means those false and deadly per- 
 suasions which would assault and destroy his 
 faith in God. He means falsities opposite to 
 the truths of heaven ; for water in its good 
 sense refers to truth, and in its opposite sense 
 to falsity. 
 
 Take the symbolic meaning of the word 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 103 
 
 sword. “They that take the sword shall 
 perish by the sword” is the solemn warning of 
 the gospel. “They shall beat their swords 
 into ploughshares,” is a prediction of a state of 
 heavenly peace. But the same gospel, in ap- 
 parent though not real contradiction to itself, 
 says, “Prepare war: beat your ploughshares 
 into swords;” and again: “He that hath no 
 sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” 
 These are respectively the swords of truth and of 
 its opposite falsity — the one used in the defence 
 of the good, the other in the aggressions of the 
 evil ; and the meaning demanded in each place 
 is determined, not by the word, which is two- 
 fold in its signification, but always by the 
 context. 
 
 The Bible recognizes two meanings to the 
 word -peace. How tenderly does the great 
 Prince of Peace touch the hearts of his disci- 
 ples by those sweet words: “Peace I leave 
 with you; my peace I give unto you!” Yet 
 the same Prince of Peace also declares : 
 “Think not that I am come to send peace 
 on earth : I am not come to send peace, but a 
 sword.” The heavenly peace which the Lord 
 
104 The Sexes ; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 sends the good, is the unition of the soul with 
 himself. The world’s peace, the infernal peace 
 of the evil, is the obdurate heart, the seared 
 conscience, the quiet mind of the reprobate, 
 against whose repose the Lord sends forth the 
 sword of Divine Truth. 
 
 “ Honor thy father and thy mother” is a holy 
 precept of the decalogue. What does the Lord 
 mean, then, by that strange declaration, “Who- 
 so hateth not his father and mother cannot be 
 my disciple?” It is not a sufficient explanation 
 to say that this passage onl}^ means that we 
 must love father and mother less than we love 
 God. Father and mother, like ever^’thing else, 
 may be used in a bad as well as a good sense. 
 The false and evil things in our nature, are de- 
 scended from or born of the old hereditary mas- 
 culine and feminine evil principles, which are 
 here denominated father and mother. That 
 evil spiritual father and mother we are to hate. 
 
 The Lord always ignores natural things and 
 appearances when they do not represent spirit- 
 ual verities. He never recognized Joseph as 
 his father or Mary as his mother, because they 
 had no such spiritual relationship to his own 
 
What our Lord Says About it. loi^ 
 
 spirit. He never called Mary mother but 
 “ woman.” The Jews were lineally descended 
 from Abraham ; but Jesus sternly denies that 
 they are the children of Abraham, and assigns 
 them to their spiritual father: “Ye do the 
 works of your father, the devil.” 
 
 Blood in one sense is the symbol of wicked- 
 ness, violence, and death. In the other sense it 
 is the symbol of self-sacrifice, infinite love, and 
 the eternal life of divine truth. Mountains in 
 one sense mean the supreme or loftiest good 
 affections of the soul, which are said to break 
 forth into singing and gladness at the presence 
 of the Lord. In the opposite sense they are the 
 opposite evil affections, which are to be removed 
 and cast into the sea, or the depths of hell, by 
 means of a living faith. 
 
 Wine is the precious emblem of divine truth ; 
 and the feast which the Divine Wisdom provides 
 for the soul, is described as “a feast of old 
 wines.” Yet the awful heresies with which 
 Babylon intoxicated the world, are symbolized 
 also by wine : and the priests of a perishing 
 church are described as erring in vision and 
 
 stumbling in judgment “through wine and 
 H 
 
1 
 
 io6 The Sexes; Uei'e and Hereafter. 
 
 strong drink,” which are false doctrines or 
 falsifications of truth. 
 
 “ Eating and drinking, marr^fing and giving 
 in marriage,” are the terms applied to the 
 wicked and sensual antediluvians, who mocked 
 at Noah’s earnest preparations to escape the 
 impending flood. There are two kinds of 
 “ eating and drinking.” Here it is evidently 
 used in the bad sense. But the solemn declara- 
 tion, “ He that eateth my flesh and drinketh 
 my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him,” ex- 
 presses the most vital truth of religion. One 
 kind of eating and drinking is the appropria- 
 tion of the evil and false, and their assimila- 
 tion into the organic life of the soul. In the 
 opposite and good sense, it is the appropriation 
 and assimilation of the good and true. 
 
 There is a heavenly marriage and there is an 
 infernal marriage. When a man knows the 
 truth and loves to obey it, he is in the heaven- 
 1}^ marriage and wears the wedding-garment. 
 When he believes the false and loves to live in 
 it, he is in the opposite or infernal marriage, 
 and will assuredly be cast “ into outer dark- 
 
 ness. 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 107 
 
 When goodness or charity animates the will 
 of man and truth illumines his understanding, 
 and when the}^ act together like man and wife, 
 and good works are their offspring, we have 
 that marriage between the complementary parts 
 of the individual soul which we call regenera- 
 tion. When there is a similar union of two 
 souls, male and female, — the female element 
 representing the purified affections of the will 
 and the male element representing the truthful 
 thoughts of the understanding, — we have the 
 heavenly marriage between the sexes, which 
 was instituted by the Lord in Eden, which he 
 has dowered with his perpetual blessing upon 
 earth, and which is the central and funda- 
 mental form of social life in heaven. 
 
 The infernal marriage is the exact opposite 
 of the heavenly. As every good affection has 
 a sympathetic affinity for that thought, or form 
 of wisdom, which gives it the best and happiest 
 expression, so every evil affection has a pas- 
 sional attraction for the specific falsity or error 
 which excuses it, approves of it, loves it, and 
 gives it shape and power. This gradual con- 
 junction or marriage of the evil and the false. 
 
io8 
 
 The Sexes; Ilere and Hereafter. 
 
 I 
 
 mutually attracting and espousing each other, 
 and then prolific of a wicked life, is meant by 
 the “ eating and drinking, marrying and giving 
 in marriage” of the antediluvians. 
 
 How are we to determine which kind of 
 marriage the Lord meant in the passage before 
 us? Simply as in all other cases — by the con- 
 text. The character and motives of the per- 
 sons who put the question, and the principles 
 involved in the case propounded, must deter- 
 mine the true meaning of the response. 
 
 Man}'- inquiries were made of Jesus during 
 his earth-life, and his answers were always 
 adapted to the mental and moral states nf the 
 questioners. Sometimes, to the natural man’s 
 apprehension, he appears to conceal : sometimes, 
 to evade. Sometimes his reply seems to evince 
 only the lower grades of worldly prudence ; 
 then gems of spiritual wisdom fall from his lips ; 
 and under the hig-hest conditions his answer is 
 a sun-burst of celestial glory. To the greatest of 
 all questions — Whence comest thou? and what 
 is truth? he was profoundly silent : for Pilate, 
 the type of the old, perishing pagan civiliza- 
 tions, could not have received the glorious 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 109 
 
 responses. At the other extreme stands the 
 young man who had kept all the command- 
 ments from his youth, and whom Jesus loved; 
 and to him he bequeaths that sentence of tran- 
 scendent beauty, incomprehensible to the sen- 
 sual mind : 
 
 “ One thing thou lackest. Go thy way, sell 
 whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and 
 thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, 
 take up the cross and follow me.” 
 
 The question. Whose wife shall she be? was 
 put by the Sadducees, a party or sect in the 
 Jewish Church which stickled vehementl}^ for 
 a purely literal interpretation of the Scriptures. 
 They denied the resurrection and a future 
 life. It was to throw ridicule on the life after 
 death, that they proposed what they considered 
 an insurmountable difficulty in the event of a 
 woman meeting her seven husbands in another 
 world. They put the question in a hypocritical 
 and mocking spirit. As Dr. Adam Clarke ob- 
 serves, “ It was the question of libertines.” 
 
 Our Lord rebuked their literalism by telling 
 them that they erred greatly, “ not knowing the 
 Scriptures, nor the power of God.” How could 
 
 K 
 
no The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 it be otherwise? The power of God is con- 
 cealed in the spiritual sense of the Scriptures ; 
 and it is the naturalism in men, leading them to 
 interpret the Lord’s words literally, which has 
 always caused the church to err. 
 
 He rebuked their denial of the resurrection 
 by reminding them that Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob had already risen from the dead, and 
 were living in heaven, — a fact of which a great 
 many literalists need to be reminded at the 
 present day. 
 
 He rebuked their sensuality by concealing 
 from their gross understandings the most beau- 
 tiful truths of the heavenly life. There was no 
 ground in such minds ready for their reception. 
 The divine truth is always •pressing from 
 heaven to come to us and bless us ; but it can 
 come only through human mediums. No me- 
 dium, no truth ; false mediums, false doctrines. 
 To these men nothing could be given but the 
 vague, incomprehensible phrase, “ They are as 
 the angels of God.” 
 
 Examine the case propounded by the Saddu- 
 cees, and you will discover that the principles 
 involved in its structure stamp it as a picture 
 
What oiir Lord Says About it. 1 1 1 
 
 of the evil or infernal marriage, which cannot 
 exist in heaven, and which indeed effectually 
 and forever excludes from the heavenly life. 
 
 It was a marriage in which the prime motive 
 was the propagation of the species ; that he 
 might “ raise up seed unto his brother.” Such 
 things are impossible in the spiritual world. 
 
 It was a forced, unnatural union, commanded 
 by law. The parties might have no spiritual 
 affinity or attraction, indeed might hate and 
 loathe each other ; and still they were obliged 
 to submit to the usages of the nation. It was 
 purely external. 
 
 It was a marriage involving polygamy ; for 
 although a man might have a congenial wife 
 of his own, he was compelled to take his de- 
 ceased brother’s wife also to his arms. 
 
 It was a marriage so often repeated as to 
 destroy every vestige of true conjugial love in 
 the womanl}^ part of our nature, and to bestial- 
 ize the affections to the lowest degree. 
 
 This marriage, propounded by persons who 
 denied the life after death and the spiritual 
 sense of the Scriptures, was plainly destitute 
 of every element of spirituality. 
 
1 12 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 This marriage, wholly sensual and external, 
 a mere civil or legal alliance with no interior 
 vitality, a marriage which might be indefinitely 
 repeated, which might be coincident with an- 
 other already existing ; this marriage, the 
 proper external type of the union of the evil 
 and the false, and therefore childless and fruit- 
 less ; this revolting marriage was presented to 
 our Lord by the Sadducees, who did not revolt 
 at it, but regarded it complacently from their 
 sensual stand-point as a fair type of the union 
 of the sexes ; and the question was propounded : 
 “In the resurrection whose wife shall she be?” 
 
 If the tribute-money which Jesus declared 
 should be rendered unto Csesar, bore “the 
 image and superscription” of Ccesar, whose 
 “ image and superscription” is stamped upon 
 the face of this Sadducean marriage ? To 
 whom shall it be assigned ? Is the seal of 
 heaven upon it ? Is its existence possible 
 among angels? 
 
 Our Lord replies : 
 
 “The children of this world marry and are 
 given in marriage ; 
 
 “ But they who shall be accounted worthy to 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 113 
 
 attain that world and the resurrection from the 
 dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage.” 
 
 And his meaning clearly is this : 
 
 Carnal and sensual men, “ children of this 
 world,” have marriage unions upon a merely 
 external or legal basis, destitute of spiritual 
 life ; a kind of union which does not and can- 
 not exist in the spiritual world, where angels 
 who have been raised from spiritual death or 
 have attained unto the resurrection, are united 
 in a different manner, incomprehensible to the 
 present generation of men. 
 
 “ They are as the angels of God in heaven.” 
 He does not tell them who the angels are. He 
 does not unfold the laws of their being or the 
 state of their life, the relation which they hold 
 to each other, nor the outward social and insti- 
 tutional forms which their spiritual affections 
 necessitate. These things were carefully with- 
 held from that sensuous and incapable age. 
 When we understand how it is with the “ aneels 
 of God,” we shall undei'stand the mystery of 
 marriage. 
 
 The concealments of Divine Providence are 
 as wonderful and as merciful as its revelations. 
 
r 14 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 The Sadducees represented the whole world at 
 that time on the question of marriage. If the 
 Lord had attempted to explain to them the dif- 
 ference between the marriage of angels and the 
 marriage of the “children of this world;” if 
 He had given them the idea that there was 
 any marriage at all in heaven ; they would not 
 have grasped his idea, but would have cor- 
 rupted and falsified it with their own. They 
 would have imagined that angels have sexual 
 passions like ourselves, are attracted and ex- 
 cited by physical grace and beauty, and con- 
 tract alliances very much as we do on earth ; all 
 of which would have been totally false. Such 
 misconceptions might have been of incalculable 
 injury to the infant Church. It was far better 
 to leave them in darkness and error,- than to 
 give them a spiritual truth which they could 
 not understand, and which the}- would have 
 falsified and defiled by sensuous interpretations. 
 
 Let us notice how subtly and beautifully the 
 resurrection from the dead is connected with 
 our spiritual idea of marriage. Our Lord 
 always means spiritual things when he seems 
 to speak only of natural things. He means 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 115 
 
 spiritual resurrection. All men undergo the 
 resurrection from the dead — but “ the resurrec- 
 tion of life” and “ the resurrection of damna- 
 tion” are opposites. The resurrection of life is 
 the putting away of all earthly and sensual 
 modes of thought and feeling, and the recep- 
 tion of spiritual and heavenly life instead. The 
 poet understood it when he wrote : 
 
 “That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things.” 
 
 It is this resurrection by which we cease to 
 be “ the children of this world,” and become 
 “ equal to the angels.” It is this resurrection 
 which delivers us from the bondage of the evil 
 or infernal marriage, the union of wicked lusts 
 and false persuasions, so that we rise above it 
 and leave it beneath us for ever, and become 
 capable of the heavenly or angelic marriage. 
 
 Observe also that as this spiritual resurrection 
 is quietly going on all the while we are dying 
 to our earthly selves, even during our life in 
 this world, so in the same degree is the heavenly 
 marriage being consummated in the interiors of 
 our spirits. It is thus that resurrection, mar- 
 
ii6 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter, 
 
 riage, regeneration and heaven are spiritually 
 identical. In one sense, therefore, the bare letter 
 is true, that there are no marryings in heaven : 
 for the essentials of marriage, the union of the 
 good and the true in the soul, the germs of 
 regeneration, must be acquired upon earth to 
 be unfolded into beautiful and eternal outward 
 form in the heavens. 
 
 Heaven is spiritual marriage, and no one can 
 be. admitted into heaven until interiorly pre- 
 pared for that marriage. The outward nuptials 
 in heaven, transcendently beautiful as they are, 
 are only the sign and seal, the ratification, the 
 ceremonial outbirth, of what has already taken 
 place, unconsciously perhaps, in the depths of 
 two blessed and immortal spirits. On earth 
 very frequently the bodies only are married, or 
 the bodies first and the souls afterward. In 
 heaven the souls are manned first, on an eternal 
 basis, and the bodies afterward ; so that hea- 
 venly purity, order, and beauty may descend 
 from the interior life into the outer or bodily 
 life, as the sunlight enters a cloud and colors 
 every atom of its form with its own ethereal and 
 resplendent glory ! 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 1 1 7 
 
 The reader may now see that the true mean- 
 ing of this often-quoted text does not lie upon 
 the surface ; that a great deal more is meant 
 than the sensuous understanding apprehends ; 
 and that, rationally interpreted, our Lord’s 
 words do not teach that there are no mar- 
 riages in heaven. They really teach this : that 
 men who have attained the angelic state by 
 dying to themselves and the world through 
 obedience to God, have put off or renounced 
 those evil passions and false principles whose 
 union is the infernal or the merely sensual mar- 
 riage ; and have thereby become so different 
 from “ the children of this world,” so elevated 
 above them, that the same life, fortune, fate, 
 and social forms can no longer be predicated of 
 both parties. The word “ marriage,” as appli- 
 cable to one, becomes wholly inapplicable to 
 the other. The angels from their spiritual 
 stand-point, can say with equal truth of “the 
 children of this world,” they neither marry nor 
 are given in marriage. 
 
 The Lord’s words also leave the entire ques- 
 tion of angelic forms, affections, and unions un- 
 touched and their phenomena unrevealed. If it 
 
ii8 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 be his will to unfold the mysteries of angelic 
 life, including those of marriage, to a more 
 receptive age, that revelation must be judged 
 of by its own intrinsic character ; and the 
 merely literal sense of this passage, which has 
 truly killed its spirit or real meaning, cannot 
 be brought against it as a legitimate objection. 
 
 Why, then, says the reader, have so many 
 wise and good men and women been permitted 
 for so many centuries to entertain such erro- 
 neous ideas about heaven and angels, and 
 about the true nature and final social destiny 
 of their own souls? Because truth cannot be 
 clearly revealed to imperfect men and to an in- 
 fant Church. There is indeed a grand, orderly, 
 progressive evolution and revelation of divine 
 truth. The Church like the race and the indi- 
 vidual has its infancy and its childhood ; when 
 it is fed upon the milk and not the meat of the 
 Word ; when it apprehends all things sensuously 
 and not intelligent!}^ ; when it is taught by dic- 
 tations and not by such philosophical explana- 
 tions as are afterward required. The Divine 
 Word also, like the created and unw’ritten word 
 of nature, is a vast system of symbols or hiero- 
 
What our Lord Says About it. • 119 
 
 glyphics ; some of which are perfectly plain or 
 easily deciphered, especially those essential to 
 moral and spiritual life ; while others are very 
 obscure and difficult, demanding for their solu- 
 tion a. high degree of scientific and rational 
 culture. 
 
 Man at first believes what his senses teach 
 him ; anjd he learns very slowly to distrust the 
 evidence of those most fallacious guides. For 
 how many ages did men believe that the sun 
 moved round the earth, rising and setting as it 
 seems to do ! And blinded by theological preju- 
 dice, how absurdly did they resist the scientific 
 correction of the false report of their senses ! 
 Nature has already revealed to our modern 
 analysis, things which would have been more 
 wonderful to our ancestors than all their fables 
 and myths and fairy-tales seem to us. The 
 sensuous interpretation of nature ceases with 
 the advent of true science and philosophy. 
 And since the Word of God and his creation 
 are analogous, producing similar effects upon 
 the human mind, we see that the Church has 
 had its period of literal or sensuous interpreta- 
 tion, to which it still clings with a childish 
 
120 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 tenacity, ignoring the happy dawn of a truly 
 rational spirit, which will compel it to put away 
 childish things. 
 
 Marriage in heaven is denied solely in the 
 spirit and on the strength of the letter. An- 
 other and instructive example of false doctrine 
 arising from sensuous or literal interpretation, is 
 the confident belief of the apostles and early 
 Christians that the second advent of the Lord 
 was close at hand. Jesus had declared that 
 that generation should not pass awa}^ before 
 his description of the last judgment would be 
 fulfilled. He had also permitted them to infer 
 that the Apostle John should tarry until his 
 second coming. And the angel commands the 
 Seer of Patmos not to seal up the pi'ophecy of 
 the book, with the ominous declaration, “ for 
 the time is at hand.” The spiritual and real 
 signification of all these things was not under- 
 stood. False doctrines based on the apparent 
 truth of the letter spread through all the 
 churches ; and every century since the time of 
 Christ, has had its grand agitation on the Sec- 
 ond Advent, and the same cruel disappointment, 
 to the delight of scoffing infidels. 
 
 O O 
 
What our Lord Says About it. I3i 
 
 If the articles of the present Christian faith 
 are critically examined, it will be seen that this 
 principle of sensuous or literal interpretation 
 has tainted the whole body of religious doctrine, 
 so that not one stone of the temple of truth is 
 left upon another in the relations of spiritual 
 order and beauty they were designed by the 
 great Architect to occupy. The history of the 
 Church is a history of the struggles between 
 the unyielding spirit of Literalism and the 
 growing and expanding spirit of Rationalism, 
 discovering the untenableness of the letter, and 
 attempting to spiritualize it by its own unaided 
 imagination. It is evident to thinking men that 
 the Church must outgrow the limitations of the 
 letter, or the human mind will outgrow the 
 Church. It must spiritualize with Swedenborg, 
 or it will inevitably rationalize with Strauss and 
 Renan. 
 
 The first stage of the life of the Church is 
 like that of the child ; and the first duty, to 
 learn the Father’s will and do it without ques- 
 tioning his authority or prying into the uses and 
 philosophy of his system of government. He 
 
 is taught by dictation on the plane of the intel- 
 L 
 
122 
 
 The Sexes ^ lle^'e and Ilereayter. 
 
 lect, and led by love on the higher plane of the 
 affections. It he attempts to reason, his powers 
 are inadequate, his data insufficient, and his 
 conclusions necessaril}" fallacious. In the after- 
 stages of his development, he is not only per- 
 mitted but invited to cultivate and use his own 
 powers of observation and analysis. With ex- 
 panded faculties, new data, new liberty of 
 thought and action, he penetrates mj-steries 
 before inscrutable. He then corrects, in the- 
 ology as well as in science, the erroneous im- 
 pressions of his senses, and by the opening of 
 his spiritual perceptions he participates with the 
 angels in the knowledge of genuine Truth. 
 
 “ I have many things to say unto you, but ye 
 cannot bear them now,” said Jesus to his disci- 
 ples ; and although he has made gloidous addi- 
 tions to the store of truths then given, the words 
 are still true and will forever remain so. The 
 truths revealed by each New Dispensation, 
 however great, are few and small in compari- 
 son with those which must forever remain con- 
 cealed in the bosom of God. One age or 
 Church is ready to hear what a preceding one 
 could not receive. Spiritually speaking, Swe- 
 
What our Lord Says About it. 12^ 
 
 denborg’s doctrines are nothing new, but only 
 the genuine growth and outflowering of the old, 
 eternal truths of the spiritual universe. Through 
 him the Lord has given us many, many things 
 which the Apostolic Church could not bear. 
 One of the most beautiful and wonderful of 
 these divine gifts, is a true doctrine of sex, 
 love, and marriage, the great keystone of the 
 spiritual arch. Under the narrowing influence 
 of literalism, the Christian world may for a while 
 regard it with incredulity or aversion, as it did 
 the astronomy of Galileo and the discoveries of 
 geology ; but the spirit of truth, which conquers 
 and reconciles and unites all things, will finally 
 overcome the prejudices and dissipate the dark- 
 ness of the human mind. 
 
 All things, then, are bi-sexual ; God ; Man ; 
 Nature ; the Word ; the Church. Nothing ex- 
 ists but by the reciprocal attraction and inspi- 
 ration of two coequal forces or powers. Male 
 and female or sex, attraction or love, equi- 
 librium or marriage, is the key to all science, 
 spiritual and natural. Our forms, our loves, our 
 unions, are imperishable. Nature affirms it ; 
 the spirit reveals it ; our Lord does not deny it. 
 
134 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 That tender, holy, heavenly conjunction of two 
 hearts into one, which is effigied in the mar- 
 liage of the will and understanding of the re- 
 generate soul, and which is itself a miniature 
 of that infinite marriage between the Lord and 
 his Church, is the eternal source of our life and 
 joy. For death is a shadow ; we never cease 
 to live or cease to love. 
 
 “ Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
 
 And grow forever and forever.” 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WHA T SWEDENBORG SA ABOUT IT. 
 
 HEY are as the angels of God in 
 heaven.” 
 
 Sublime, mysterious words ! — the em- 
 bodiment of all we can imagine of innocence, 
 beauty, peace and love ; suggesting a realm of 
 unimaginable glory and wonder ; farther off, it 
 seems to us, than Orion or the Pleiades ; more 
 inaccessible than the golden islands and seas 
 of a summer sunset ! 
 
 And yet — 
 
 x\re we never to know how it is with the 
 angels? Does the impassable gulf which sepa- 
 rates heaven from hell, stretch its awful abysses 
 also between heaven and earth? Then how did 
 Moses and Ezekiel and John and Paul see into 
 heaven? And what does our Lord mean by 
 those strange and hope-inspiring words? — 
 
 “ Hereafter ye shall see heaven open.” 
 
 L » 
 
 125 
 
126 The Sexes', Here and Hereafter. 
 
 More than a century ago a Swedish philoso- 
 pher of great learning, genius and virtue, pro- 
 fessed to have the sight of his spirit opened, 
 whereby he was intromitted into the spiritual 
 world. He remained in this state for more than 
 a quarter of a century, during which he studied 
 the laws and phenomena of that world, and 
 unfolded a complete system of psychology and 
 theology, which he declared to be revelations 
 from heaven for the use of a New Church signi- 
 fied by the New Jerusalem in the Apocal3^pse. 
 A strange man he was, and the author of 
 strange books ; a psychological problem as yet 
 unsolved. He made no proselj^tes, founded no 
 Church, sought no distinction ; but dropped his 
 seed into the field of theological literature, as 
 quietly and patientl}'^ and with a faith as un- 
 wavering as a man who plants an acorn and 
 sees with the mind’s e^m his grandchildren 
 playing in the shadow of the mighty oak. 
 
 “A revelation from heaven!” exclaims the 
 incredulous child of modern philosophy — as if 
 all things were not revelations from heaven ! 
 
 Heaven? The flowers reflect it; the birds 
 sing of it ; the ocean voices it ; the stars point 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 127 
 
 to it ; the winds breathe it ; the sun blazons it , 
 all nature mirrors it ! Our human souls are 
 full of it ; our thoughts flow from it ; our loves 
 are born of it ; our music, architecture, poetry, 
 art, science and all, are the falling shadows of 
 its transcendent glory ! 
 
 Revelations or communications from the spir- 
 itual to the natural sphere, have been given in 
 all ages and to all peoples and tongues, vary- 
 ing in their form, extent, and character accord- 
 ing to the nature, circumstances, and receptivity 
 of those to whom they were sent. 
 
 The highest revelation was “the voice of the 
 Lord God walking in the garden.” Then came 
 special visitations and oral instruction by angels. 
 Then the inspiration of a written Word contain- 
 ing Divine Wisdom in its unseen but infinite 
 depths. Sometimes revelations have been made 
 by miracles, sometimes by dreams, and some- 
 times by open vision into heaven or the world 
 of spirits. 
 
 A new Church and a new revelation come, 
 not because the preceding were false or had 
 failed of their mission, but because new, higher, 
 larger, better conceptions of truth have become 
 
128 7 he Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 possible and necessary by the gradual and 
 orderly unfolding of the human mind. Our 
 spiritual life always depends upon our com- 
 munication with heaven ; and the form of the 
 revelation depends upon and varies with our 
 mental states. And all revelations, however 
 diversified in external form, have the same in- 
 terior source and life. There is no antagonism 
 between what Jehovah taught in the garden 
 and what Moses received on the mount. The 
 ray of divine light is continuous through Psalm- 
 ist and Evangelist, through Prophet and Apos- 
 tle. And Swedenborg in his highest flight, 
 only interprets the old song which Moses and 
 John, “like poets hidden in the light of thought,” 
 have always been singing, unheard by the 
 world. 
 
 Revelations are authenticated, not by mira- 
 cles, nor by the authority of great names, nor 
 by external evidence of any kind, but solely 
 by the luminous and beneficent truths the}' con- 
 vey to man. Revelation reaches the first or 
 lowest stage of human thought and life by 
 miraculous impression upon the senses : it 
 reaches a higher and nobler stage by rational 
 
What Swedenborg Says Abotd it. 129 
 
 illumination of the understanding. Yet no rev- 
 elation is ever recognized as such by those 
 who look from the old standpoints, and who 
 have not interiorly outlived and outgrown the 
 peculiar spirit and forms of the preceding dis- 
 pensation. 
 
 A rational age does not ask for miracles, but 
 for light. Swedenborg’s system must stand, 
 not upon his mere dicta, but on its own intrinsic 
 merits. Is it rational, satisfjdng the under- 
 standing? Is it beautiful, satisfying the aesthetic 
 longings of the soul? Is it consistent with the 
 Sacred Scriptures, satisfying our ineradicable 
 loyalty to Revealed Truth? It is only by this 
 method that we can assure ourselves whether 
 this new doctrine is the genuine light of heaven, 
 or some mysterious flash of magnetic fire from 
 the northern skies. 
 
 Whatever may be the verdict of posterity, 
 there is unquestionably an increasing and legit- 
 imate curiosity among intelligent people to 
 know what Swedenborg said about the spiritual 
 world. We will gratify our readers and il- 
 lustrate our subject by some quotations from 
 
 this wniter, who, entirely aside from his theo- 
 9 
 
130 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 logical pretensions, has made some of the 
 profoundest observations on the nature of the 
 human soul, the origin of love and the philoso- 
 phy of marriage. If he did not get his singu- 
 larly beautiful doctrines from a spiritual source, 
 he is at least the founder of a system of psy- 
 chology which is more in harmony with the 
 rich discoveries of modern times in all depart- 
 ments of science, than any of the systems which 
 have engaged the attention or secured the faith 
 of men. 
 
 Communication with the spiritual world is 
 commonly regarded as impossible or improb- 
 able, because men are in the densest ignorance 
 of the true nature of spirit, and of the connec- 
 tion between heaven and earth. They cannot 
 imagine how a man living on earth can see into 
 heaven ; and yet if that be impossible, the 
 Bible is false and revelation a dream. Swe- 
 denborg explains how this seemingly miracu- 
 lous insight into the spiritual world is effected. 
 He says : 
 
 “Angels cannot be seen by man with the 
 eyes of his body, but only with the ej’es of his 
 spirit (or spiritual body) which is within him. 
 
What Swedenborg' Says About it. 131 
 
 This spiritual body communicates with the spir- 
 itual world, while all parts of the natural body 
 are in the natural world. Like sees like, be- 
 cause from a like ground. Objects which are 
 above the sphere of nature, as all those of the 
 spiritual world are, may hbw'ever be seen by 
 man when he is withdrawn from the sight of his 
 body, and that of his spirit is opened. This is 
 done in an instant when it is the pleasure of the 
 Lord that the things of the spiritual world shall 
 be seen by man : nor is he at all aware at the 
 time that he does not behold them with his 
 bodily eyes.” 
 
 “ It was in this way that angels were seen 
 by Abraham, Lot, Manoah and the prophets. 
 It was in this way that the Lord was seen by 
 the disciples after his resurrection ; and it was 
 in the same way also that angels have been 
 seen by me. 
 
 “As the prophets enjoyed this mode of 
 vision, they were called Seers, or the 7nen 
 whose eyes were oj^en; and to cause them to 
 see in this way was called opening their eyes. 
 This was done to Elisha’s servant, of whom we 
 read : 
 
132 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 “ ‘And Elisha prayed and said : Jehovah ! I 
 pray thee, open his eyes that he may see. 
 
 “ ‘And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young 
 man, and he saw ; and behold ! the mountain 
 was full of horses and chariots of fire round 
 about Elisha.’ ” 
 
 The process by which Swedenborg saw 
 spirits and angels being thus rationally ex- 
 plained, we may credit his assurance that all 
 spirits are in the perfect human form. He says, 
 moreover, that they are male and female ; that 
 they ai‘e animated by loves, feelings, and senti- 
 ments similar to those which people on earth 
 experience. Societies are arranged in that 
 world, not geographically, nor b}' any external 
 law, but by the great internal law of spiritual 
 affinity. Similar or sympathetic men and wo- 
 men are drawn together. The male and female 
 souls most congenial, most sympathetic, are 
 united in an eternal union, which is the mar- 
 riage of heaven. 
 
 His picture of the heavenly societies is sur- 
 passingly beautiful. The perfect order, peace, 
 beauty, love, which there reign supreme, would 
 realize our grandest and holiest ideal of the 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 133 
 
 final home and rest of the saints. We are at 
 first surprised and bewildered, but finally con- 
 vinced and delighted, as he unfolds to us the 
 wonderful fact, that the secret principle and 
 key to all this heavenly organization is the 
 conjugial love. Sex belongs to the soul as 
 well as to the body : and, as our souls are im- 
 mortal, sex, with all its aspirations, is eternal. 
 Regenerate souls united forever in conjugial 
 love, constitute the Lord’s church or kingdom 
 in heaven. 
 
 Of this conjugial love, the connecting bond 
 of angelic hearts and the life of the heavenly 
 home, Swedenborg makes the following gen- 
 eral statements, which may serve to show how 
 important a place it occupies in the psychology 
 and theology of the New Church : 
 
 “ There is a love truly conjugial, which at 
 this day is so rare that its quality and almost 
 its existence are unknown. 
 
 “ It originates in the marriage of goodness 
 and truth from the Lord in the regenerate souls 
 of man and woman, and corresponds to the 
 spiritual marriage of the Lord with his church. 
 
 “ From its origin and coiTespondence, this 
 M 
 
134 The Sexes; Here and Hereayter. 
 
 conjugial love is celestial, spiritual, holy, pure, 
 and clean above every other love imparted by 
 the Lord to the angels in heaven and to the 
 men of the church. 
 
 “ It is the fundamental love of all celestial and 
 spiritual loves, and thence of all natural loves ; 
 and into it are gathered all the delights and joys 
 of the human soul. 
 
 “ It belongs to the internal or spiritual man ; 
 and none come into this love, or can remain in 
 it, but those who love the Lord and obey his 
 commandments.” 
 
 How the natural love of the sex, common to 
 man and animals, is changed into this pure, 
 holy, and perfect love, is also explained in his 
 writings ; from which we may learn that regen- 
 eration, resurrection, marriage, and heaven, are 
 in their spiritual sense S3'non3^mous terms. We 
 are thus led into an entireL new sphere of ps3'- 
 chological and theological truth. 
 
 We are aware with what incredulitv' and dis- 
 trust these revelations will be received. Man 
 is slow to discover the truth, and even slower 
 to recognize it after it has been discovered. 
 We plead for free thought, charit3s and liberal 
 
What Swedenborg Says Aboitt it. 135 
 
 construction. Aside from its psychological and 
 theological issues, this doctrine of love and 
 marriage in heaven has an msthetic value, sure 
 at last to command the admiration of men. We 
 will show the practical tendency of these novel 
 teachings, and satisfy a legitimate curiosity, by 
 drawing from Swedenborg some descriptive 
 illustrations of the highest state of marriage 
 and conjugial love in heaven ; for he has a 
 charming method of making his philosophical 
 principles objective and intelligible by narrating 
 scenes and conversations with spirits and an- 
 gels, which impress them on the imagination 
 and memory. The scene of the following 
 narration is in the world of spirits, a realm 
 between heaven and earth, or the region or 
 state which every one enters immediately after 
 death : 
 
 “On a time when I was meditating on con- 
 jugial love, lo ! there appeared at a distance 
 two naked infants with baskets in their hands 
 and turtle-doves flying around them. On a 
 nearer view, they seemed as if they were 
 naked, but beautifully ornamented with gar- 
 lands. Chaplets of flowers decorated their 
 
136 The Sexes; Mere and Hereafter 
 
 heads, and wreaths of lilies and roses, hang- 
 ing obliquely from the shoulders to the loins, 
 adorned their bosoms. Round about both of 
 them there was, as it were, a common band 
 woven of small leaves interspersed with olives. 
 But when they came nearer they did not appear 
 as infants or naked, but as two persons in the 
 prime of life, wearing cloaks and tunics of 
 shining silk embroidered with the most beauti- 
 ful flowers. When they came near me, there 
 breathed forth from heaven through them a 
 vernal warrnth attended with an odoriferous 
 fragrance, such as arises from gardens and 
 fields in the time of spring. 
 
 “They were two married partners from 
 heaven, and they saluted me ; and because I 
 was musing upon what I had seen, they, in- 
 quired, ‘What did you see?’ When I told 
 them that at first they appeared to me as naked 
 infants, afterward as infants adorned with grar- 
 lands, and lastly as grown-up persons in em- 
 broidered garments, they smiled pleasantly and 
 said : 
 
 “ In the way we did not seem to ourselves as 
 infants, or naked, or adorned with garlands, but 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 137 
 
 constantly in the same appearance which we 
 now have.” 
 
 They then explain to Swedenborg how the 
 beautiful picture first presented, made up of 
 naked infants and doves and uniting wreaths 
 of flowers, was emblematical of the innocence, 
 sweetness, peace, purity, and exquisite delights 
 of their conjugial love. In the spiritual world 
 every one’s sphere precedes him, and tells in 
 charming symbolic statuary or painting the 
 character and peculiarities of the one who ap- 
 proaches him. There as here, “distance lends 
 enchantment to the view.” In the same manner 
 also every beautiful and useful object upon 
 earth, however ignorant we may be of it, repre- 
 sents the sphei'e or outflowing of some spiritual 
 truth or some heavenly affection. 
 
 They also explain to him the cause of the 
 vernal glow and the exquisite fragrance of fields 
 and gardens which surround them. They tell 
 him it comes from the constant spiritual spring 
 in which they live ; for love and wisdom, which 
 are spiritual heat and light, are united in their 
 minds in equal proportions. They assure him 
 also that it is the same conjugial sphere de- 
 
 M * 
 
138 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 scending from heaven to earth, which causes 
 the germination of leaf and blossom and the 
 connubial associations of birds and animals, as 
 well as the tender gushes of sentimental pas- 
 sion in the hearts of human beings. 
 
 *‘In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s 
 breast; 
 
 In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another 
 crest ; 
 
 In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished 
 dove ; 
 
 In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to 
 thoughts of love.” 
 
 “.He gave me his right hand,” continues 
 Swedenborg, “ and conducted me to houses 
 inhabited by married partners in a like prime 
 of life with himself and his partner ; and he 
 said : 
 
 “ These wives who now seem like 3'oung 
 virgins, were in your world infirm old women ; 
 and their husbands who now seem in the spring 
 of youth, were in the world decrepid old men. 
 They have all been restored b}’ the Lord to the 
 prime of life, because they mutually loved each 
 other, and from religious principles shunned 
 adulteries as enormous sins.” 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 139 
 
 He gives the following beautiful description 
 of an angelic pair from the third or celestial 
 heaven, — that heaven which Paul visited, but 
 whose wonders he was not permitted to reveal : 
 
 “ One morning I was looking upward into 
 heaven (from the world of spirits) and saw 
 over me three expanses one above another. I 
 saw that the first expanse which was nearest, 
 opened ; and presently the second which was 
 above it ; and lastly the third which was highest. 
 I then perceived that above the first expanse 
 were the angels of the first heaven ; above the 
 second expanse were the angels who compose 
 the second heaven ; and above the third ex- 
 panse were the angels who compose the third 
 or highest heaven. 
 
 “I wondered at first what all this meant; 
 and presently I heard from heaven a voice as 
 of a trumpet, saying, 
 
 - “ ‘We perceive that you have been meditat- 
 ing on Conjugial Love : and we are aware that 
 no one on earth knows what conjugial love in 
 its origin and essence is. Yet it is of import- 
 ance that it should be known. It has therefore 
 pleased the Lord to open the heavens to you, 
 
140 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 in order that illustrating light may flow into the 
 interiors of your mind. Our delights in the 
 third heaven are principally derived from con- 
 jugial love. In consequence, therefore, of leave 
 granted us, we will send down to you a conju- 
 gial pair for your inspection and observation.’ 
 
 “There instantly appeared a chariot descend- 
 ing from the highest or third heaven, in which 
 I saw at first one angel ; but as it came nearer 
 I perceived that it contained two. (Angelic 
 married pairs always appear at a distance as 
 one pei'son or angel.) The chariot afar off 
 glittered before my eyes like a diamond, and 
 to it were harnessed two young horses as white 
 as snow. Those who sat in the chariot held in 
 their hands two turtle-doves, and they called 
 out to me, saying : 
 
 “ ‘Do you wish us to come nearer to 3'ou ? 
 If so, take heed lest the flaming radiance of 
 the heaven from which we have descended 
 penetrate too interiorly. It would illuminate, 
 indeed, the ideas of your superior or interior 
 mind ; but those ideas are ineffable and incom- 
 municable in the world in which you dwell. 
 Therefore let what you are about to receive 
 
What Sxvedenborg Says About it. 141 
 
 enter only your rational or lower mind, so that 
 you can make your fellow-men understand it.” 
 
 “ I replied, I will observe your caution : come 
 nearer.” 
 
 There is a great psychological truth hidden 
 in the above paragraph. The human mind 
 itself has three degrees, expanses, or heavens, 
 one above another, the opening of any one of 
 which intromits us into the heaven of that de- 
 gree. Swedenborg’s own mind was opened to 
 the celestial degree on this occasion, and the an- 
 gels appeared to him to descend only because 
 he ascended. The things in these degrees are 
 so discrete that what is seen or heard in one 
 may not be understood or remembered when 
 the perceptions of the soul ascend or descend 
 into another degree. Paul could not remember 
 or explain what he heard when in the celestial 
 degree, because his natural degree was closed 
 at the time. When he returned consciously 
 into that degree, the celestial was closed and 
 all its glories had vanished. Swedenborg is 
 warned to receive and retain in his lower mind 
 the angelic truths, so that he could cominuni- 
 cate them to us who live on that plane. He 
 
142 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 concentrates his intellect upon the rational 
 meaning of what he is about to hear ; and 
 continues his story : 
 
 “So they came nearer; and lo ! it was a 
 husband and wife. They said : ‘We are a 
 conjugial pair ; we have lived happy in heaven 
 from the earliest period, which ^'ou call the 
 golden age ; and have continued all that time 
 in the same bloom of youth in which you see 
 us now.’ 
 
 “ I viewed each of them attentively, because 
 I perceived that they represented conjugial 
 love in its life and in its decorations ; in its life 
 by their faces, and in its decorations by their 
 raiment. All angels are affections of love in 
 the human form. The ruling affection itself 
 shines forth from their faces ; and from the 
 affection the kind and quality of their raiment 
 is determined. Therefore it is said in heaven 
 that every one is clothed by his own affection.” 
 
 Swedenborg then minutely describes their 
 appearance and dress, every point in which 
 was, according to the creative laws of the 
 spiritual world, symbolical of their own spirit- 
 ual qualities. He labors in vain to do justice 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 143 
 
 to beings so transcendently beautiful. We 
 gather, however, from his description, that the 
 face of the husband was “ one resplendent 
 comeliness,” and that the beauty of the wife 
 was immeasurably beyond the reach of pen or 
 pencil. He gives us a touch or two worthy of 
 Dante for poetic charm and grandeur. 
 
 “I saw her face, and I did not see it. I saw 
 it as essential beauty ; and I did not see it, be- 
 cause this beauty was indescribable. In her 
 face was a splendor of flaming light, such as 
 the angels in the third heaven enjoy ; and this 
 light made my sight dim, so that I was lost in 
 astonishment. Observing this, she addressed 
 me, saying, ‘ What do you see?’ 
 
 “ I replied : ‘ I see. nothing but conjugial 
 love and the form thereof : but I see and I do 
 not see.’ 
 
 “ Hereupon she turned herself sideways 
 from her husband, and then I was enabled to 
 view her more attentively 
 
 Dante acquired strength to look at the sun 
 by gazing on the heavenly face of Beatrice. 
 The Dantes and Beatrices of the angelic spheres, 
 acquire strength to look upon the Lord by gaz- 
 
144 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 ing into each other’s faces : but then their glory 
 becomes blinding to earthly visitants. They 
 can diminish the flood of celestial light which 
 surrounds them by turning away from each 
 other, and thus unveil their beauty to mortal 
 eyes. 
 
 Swedenborg continues in a strain almost as 
 beautiful : 
 
 “ Her hair was arrancred with a taste corre- 
 spending to her beauty, and in it was inserted 
 a diadem of flowers. She had a necklace of 
 carbuncles from which hung a rosary of chrj’s- 
 olites, and she wore pearl bracelets. Her robe 
 was scarlet, and fastened in front with a clasp 
 of rubies. What surprised me in all this was, 
 tliat the colors varied according to her aspect 
 in regard to her husband, being sometimes 
 more glittering, sometimes less. ' If she looked 
 toward him, they shone more brilliantl}^ : if she 
 turned sideways, they shone less.” 
 
 A similar illumination of precious stones b}'’ 
 influx of light or truth from the Lord, was the 
 secret of the Urim and Thummim, or twelve 
 precious stones worn on the breastplate of the 
 Jewish high-priest. They gave responses by 
 
4 . 
 
 What Swedeitborg Says About it. 145 
 
 brilliant variegations of color, a veritable lan- 
 guage of light, as intelligible as the language 
 of flowers. Josephus affirms that their light 
 was perfectly dazzling when Jehovah promised 
 victory to the Jewish armies. This wonderful 
 property of the breastplate has always been a 
 great puzzle to the commentators. Infidels and 
 naturalists deny the facts : Swedenborg alone 
 explains them. The miracles of the Bible are 
 illustrated and confirmed by the simplest laws 
 and phenomena of the spiritual life. 
 
 While these heavenly beings are conversing 
 with Swedenborg on the mysteries of conjugial 
 love, he makes a curious observation about 
 their unity or simultaneousness of thought and 
 speech, — a phenomenon impossible in our na- 
 tural state of life, and one of the results of the 
 perfect marriage union of souls. 
 
 “When the husband was speaking, he spoke 
 at the same time as if from his wife ; and when 
 the wife was speaking, she spoke at the same 
 time as if from her husband. This union of 
 expression came from their perfect mental har- 
 mony. On this occasion, also, I detected the 
 
 tone of voice which indicated conjugial love. 
 
 10 N 
 
146 The Sexes ; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 It was interiorly simultaneous, and it proceeded 
 from the delight of an interior state of inno- 
 cence and peace.” 
 
 Of this wonderful and perfect union of two 
 hearts and minds, which is the key to heavenly 
 felicity and all its most beautiful outward accom- 
 plishments, our author thus speaks : 
 
 “In heavenly marriage there is no domina- 
 tion exercised by one party over the other ; for 
 the will of the wife is also that of the husband, 
 and the understanding of the husband is also 
 that of the wife. One loves to think and to 
 will as the other does ; and they do so mutually 
 and reciprocally. The result is their final con- 
 junction into one spiritual life. This conjunc- 
 tion is actual ; for the will of the wife enters 
 into the understanding of the husband, and the 
 understanding of the husband into the will of 
 the wife, more especially when they look each 
 other in the face ; for as has been often before 
 stated, there is an actual transference of thoughts 
 and affections in heaven.” 
 
 How have these glorious angels, once men 
 and women like ourselves, attained to this ex- 
 alted state, so that they think, feel, and act sim 
 
What Swedenborg Says Abozit it. 147 
 
 ultaneously? that they appear to others at a 
 distance as one person? that when one speaks, 
 it is seen and felt that both speak? that they 
 have forms of such transcendent grace and 
 beauty, radiant with celestial love and wisdom ? 
 and that all objects around them are warmed 
 and colored with the sweet spiritual life that 
 wells up from their own happy bosoms? 
 
 This is the answer : 
 
 They are “ the children of God, being the 
 children of the resurrection.” They are dead 
 to every selfish feeling and thought ; dead to 
 every carnal desire and motive ; dead, utterly 
 dead to everything false and evil. They have 
 risen to spiritual life in God ; to eternal holiness 
 and purity ; to the spiritual marriage, incom- 
 prehensible to the carnal man, and for ever 
 concealed from his eyes ; and in the seraphic 
 calm of mutual love and wedded bliss, they are 
 images and likenesses of the Heavenly Father. 
 
 Would not these “ children of the resurrec- 
 tion,” with their super-sensual and holy ideas 
 of marriage, forgetting all the evil and pain of 
 their earth-life, looking by chance downward 
 and backward into our dark and unholy and 
 
148 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 selfish souls, poor “ children of the world” as 
 we are — would they not say pitifully of us, as 
 we say blindly of them : — 
 
 “ The}^ neither marry nor are given in mar- 
 riage ?” 
 
 Trusting that the reader will see in these 
 descriptions, and in the principles involved, 
 something more than the play of fancy or im- 
 agination ; — will see, indeed, that with supreme 
 art the great philosophic artist is simpl}' cloth- 
 ing the True in the garment of the Beautiful; 
 we will add for his instruction the following 
 
 O 
 
 account of a marriage-ceremony in heaven 
 given by this illustrious seer. 
 
 A marriage-ceremony in heaven ! 
 
 Yes : — and is it not as rational and probable 
 as the tabernacle seen in heaven by Moses, or 
 as the still more remarkable objects and events 
 there seen and described by the prophets? If 
 angels are male and female ; if all the sweet and 
 gentle and heroic sentiments and passions sur- 
 vive death and exist forever ; if they live in 
 houses and homes, and under perfect civil and 
 social institutions ; if marriage is perpetuated in 
 the holiest form as the eternal type of the Lord’s 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 149 
 
 mystical union with his Church ; is it not most 
 probable and proper that, when two conjugial 
 partners, having passed through all the explora- 
 tory processes of the judgment, are brought 
 face to face, each being perfectly revealed as 
 the other’s ideal and counterpart, there should 
 be some public and official recognition of the 
 great fact, some high and holy and final seal 
 set to a union provided and blest of God, and 
 which is to be thenceforth eternal? 
 
 Surely no event or usage in either world can 
 have a grander significance than this — the cul- 
 mination of spiritual affinities, the crowning 
 work of love, in which the Heavenly Father 
 confirms and blesses the perfect and eternal 
 union of two of his redeemed and happy chil- 
 dren ! Indeed, the subject is so transcendent 
 and holy, that Swedenborg eschews the futile 
 graces of poetry and rhetoric, and treats it with 
 the austere simplicity of antique art. 
 
 “Toward evening there came a messenger 
 clothed in linen to the ten strangers who at- 
 tended the angel [newly-arrived spirits from 
 the earth], and invited them to a wedding which 
 was to be celebrated the next day ; and the 
 
150 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 strangers were much pleased to think that 
 they were to witness a marriage ceremony in 
 heaven. 
 
 “When they awoke in the morning, they 
 heard the singing of the virgins and young 
 girls from the houses around the public places 
 of resort mentioned above. They sang that 
 morning the affection of conjugial love, the 
 sweetness of which so affected and moved the 
 hearers, that they perceived a blessed serenity 
 instilled into their bosoms. 
 
 “At the hour appointed the angel said: 
 ‘ Make yourselves ready, and put on the heav- 
 enly garments which our prince has sent 3'ou.’ 
 They did so ; and lo ! the garments immediately 
 became resplendent as with a flaming light. 
 They asked the angel, ‘ What is the reason of 
 this?’ He replied, ‘ Because 3'Ou are going to 
 a wedding ; and when that is the case, our gar- 
 ments always assume a shining appearance, and 
 become wedding-garments.’ 
 
 “After this, the angel conducted them to the 
 house where the nuptials were to be celebrated, 
 and the porter opened the door. They were 
 received and welcomed by an angel sent from 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 151 
 
 the bridegroom, and were introduced into an 
 antechamber and shown to the seats intended 
 for them. There was a table in the middle of 
 the room, and on it a magnificent candlestick 
 with seven branches and sconces of gold. 
 Against the walls were hung silver lamps, 
 which being lighted made the atmosphere of 
 the room of a golden hue. There were two 
 other tables on which loaves of bread were 
 placed in three rows ; and each corner had 
 a little table with crystal cups upon it for 
 wine. 
 
 “ While they were looking at these things, a 
 door opened near the marriage-chamber, and 
 six virgins came forth ; and then the bridegroom 
 and the bride, holding each other by the hand. 
 The angelic pair advanced and took seats op- 
 posite the candlestick, the bride on the right 
 and the virgins standing along at her side. 
 The bridegroom wore a mitre on his head, and 
 was dressed in a bright purple robe and a tunic 
 of shining linen, with an ephod on which was 
 a golden plate set round with diamonds. On 
 the plate was engraved a young eagle, the 
 marriage ensign of that heavenly society. The 
 
152 The Sexes', Here and Hereafter. 
 
 bride was dressed in a scarlet robe, underneath 
 which was a garment ornamented with fine 
 needlework. Beneath her bosom was a golden 
 girdle, and on her head she wore a golden 
 crown set with rubies. 
 
 “When they were seated, the bridegroom, 
 turning himself to the bride, put a golden ring 
 on her finger. He then took bracelets and a 
 pearl necklace, and clasped the bracelets about 
 her wrists and put the necklace around her 
 neck, and said : '■Accent these fledges.'' When 
 she had accepted them, he kissed her and said : 
 ^ Now thou art mine;’' and he called her his 
 wife. Then the company exclaimed : ‘ May 
 the divine blessing be upon you.’ These words 
 were first pronounced by each one separately, 
 and then by all together. The}'- were pro- 
 nounced also in his turn by a certain person 
 sent from the Prince to be his representative. 
 At that instant also the antechamber was filled 
 with an aromatic smoke, which was a token of 
 blessing- from heaven. 
 
 “Then the servants in waiting took loaves 
 from the table near the candlestick, and cups 
 now filled with wine from the tables in the 
 
What Swede 7 iborg Says About it. 153 
 
 corners of the room, and gave to each of the 
 guests bread and wine ; and they ate and drank. 
 After this the husband and wife arose, and the 
 six virgins, holding silver lamps in their hands, 
 attended them to the threshold, and the married 
 pair entered their chamber.” 
 
 Every object and circumstance of this sim- 
 ple ceremony, was emblematic of something 
 spiritual. The golden candlestick, the silver 
 lamps, the shining garments, the auroral atmo- 
 sphere, the six virgins, the dress of the bride 
 and bridegroom, the pledges given and ac- 
 cepted, the blessings bestowed, — the whole 
 scene in its greatest and least parts, had sa- 
 cred meanings to the illumined assembly, 
 which in our highest states we can but par- 
 tially understand. 
 
 The grandest and most solemn feature in this 
 ceremony was the partaking of bread and wine 
 as in the Holy Supper. Marriage, which typifies 
 regeneration, and the Lord's church or heaven 
 in the soul, is also typified by the Holy Supper. 
 The final marriage of two regenerate souls in 
 heaven, is the highest and holiest act of union 
 with the Lord, the genuine spiritual supper. 
 
154 I'he Sexes ; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 whereby He enters into and sups with them 
 and they with Him. 
 
 “Then a certain wise personage, one of the 
 marriage-guests, said to the strangers : ‘ Do 
 you understand the meaning of what you have 
 seen?’ They replied : ‘ Only a little of it.’ And 
 then they asked him why the bridegroom was 
 dressed in that singular manner. He answered : 
 ‘ Because the bridegroom represented the Lord 
 (who is our great High Priest) , and the bride 
 represented the Church ; for marriages in 
 heaven represent the marriage of the Lord 
 with the Chur eh. This is the reason why he 
 wore a mitre on his brow, and was dressed in 
 a robe, tunic, and ephod like Aaron ; and why 
 the bride had a crown on her head and wore a 
 scarlet mantle like a queen. To-morrow, how- 
 ever, they will both be dressed differently, for 
 this representation lasts only a day. 
 
 “The strangers asked: ‘Why were there 
 not bridesmen with the bridegroom to corre- 
 spond with the virgins who attended the bride ?’ 
 
 “ The wise one answered: ‘ Because to-day 
 we males are numbered among the virgins.’ 
 
 “ They said : ‘ Explain your meaning.’ 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 155 
 
 “ He replied : ‘A virgin signifies the Church, 
 and the Church consists of both sexes. There- 
 fore also we men, with respect to the Church, 
 are virgins. This is evident from these words 
 in Revelation : 
 
 “ ‘ These are they who were not defiled with 
 women : for they are virgins ; and they follow 
 the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.’” 
 
 The poets, those child-like interpreters of 
 spiritual truth, understand perfectly that per- 
 sonal purity and chastity are not lessened, but 
 immeasurably augmented, by mandage. Cov- 
 entry Patmore, the poet of conjugial love, inter- 
 prets the Revelation better than all the profes- 
 sional commentators : 
 
 “Virgins are they before the Lord, 
 
 Whose souls are pure. The vestal fire 
 Is not, as some mis-read the Word, 
 
 By marriage quenched, but burns the higher.” 
 
 “ Lastly, they asked : ‘ Is it not expedient 
 that a priest should be present and minister at 
 your marriage-ceremonies ?’ The marriage- 
 guest answered : ‘ This is expedient and proper 
 on earth, but not in heaven, on account of 
 the representation of the Lord himself and 
 
156 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 the Church. On earth they know nothing of 
 these things. Yet even with us a priest min- 
 isters in whatever relates to betrothings, and 
 hears, receives, confirms, and consecrates the 
 consent of the parties.’ ” 
 
 What a vast change it would make in the 
 social condition of our world, if this custom of 
 the spiritual life existed here also ; if marriage 
 was regarded as such a holy and divine institu- 
 tion, that none would enter it until they had 
 confided their loves, their hopes, their motives, 
 their aspirations, to a pastor’s spiritual and 
 loving inspection ; and until every unworthy 
 thought and feeling had, through his assist- 
 ance, been scourged from their souls ! 
 
 It is necessary to impress it upon our natural 
 minds, steeped in sensualism as they are, that 
 these heavenly marriages are so chaste, that the 
 life of such marriages is chastity itself. The 
 faintest breath of earthly passion would stain 
 forever the angelic mirror of conjugial purity. 
 By the great law, that similar natures attract, 
 while dissimilar ones repel, a separation is 
 effected between souls after death. The evil 
 pass into evil societies ; the good ascend into 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 157 
 
 heaven. The good become continually bettef 
 and purer and holier. The marriage sphere of 
 heaven is so chaste and powerful, that evil 
 and licentious spirits are blinded and suffocated 
 when they approach the Happy World. Fe- 
 male angels are intensely sensitive thermome- 
 ters to the heat which arises from the activity 
 of sensual passion. The most hypocritical 
 spirits cannot long conceal their interior licen- 
 tiousness from such amazingly acute perceptions. 
 
 Robertson, a charming English divine, thus 
 illustrates this remarkable detective power 
 which innocence and purity display in the 
 presence of their moral opposites : 
 
 “Purity can detect the presence of the evil 
 it does not understand. As the dove which 
 has never seen a hawk trembles at its presence ; 
 as the horse rears uneasily when a wild beast 
 unknown and new to it, is near ; so innocence 
 understands, and yet understands not, the mean- 
 ing of the unholy look, the guilty tone, the sin- 
 ful manner. It shudders and shrinks from it 
 by a power given to it, like that which God has 
 conferred on the unreasoning mimosa.” 
 
 Most persons to whom the idea of sex and 
 0 
 
158 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 marriage after death is new and strange, imme- 
 diately ask the same question as did the Saddu- 
 cees, What will they do who have been mar- 
 ried several times? There is no difficulty on 
 this point, when we reflect that the unions 
 formed in this world from various external and 
 selfish motives, are not marriages at all in the 
 spiritual sense of the word. Most marriages 
 here are alliances or contracts for this world 
 only. They are, however, schools and means 
 of discipline for the spiritual life, making a 
 spiritual marriage possible. God’s marriages 
 are spiritual, and therefore indissoluble. Those 
 whom He hath joined together in eternal union 
 by an organic and mutual affinity, can never be 
 sundered — no, not even by death. 
 
 All external bonds are broken by death ; all 
 human institutions, civil and social, vanish 
 away. In the spiritual world our associations 
 will be determined, not by outward things as 
 on earth, but by our interior spiritual affinities. 
 Those who are similar to us will undergo ex- 
 periences similar to our own. It is by this 
 great law of passional attraction that societies 
 in heaven and hell are formed, consisting of 
 
What Swedenborg Says About it. 159 
 
 spirits, male and female, who harmonize so 
 thoroughly in affection and thought, that they 
 must needs live together and have the same 
 objective scenery around them. To every male 
 spirit in heaven, there will be some female 
 spirit more interiorly drawn than any other 
 spirit in the universe, his exact counterpart, his 
 spiritual complement. They will live in the 
 same society and in the same house ; have the 
 same loves and the same life ; and their union 
 will be necessarily eternal. 
 
 No one can know while on earth, whether 
 an existing legal marriage is a true spiritual 
 marriage or not. To judge by appearances is 
 not righteous judgment. Our interior character 
 is sometimes vastly different from our exterior. 
 We cannot truly know ourselves or each other 
 until we are stript of our earthly wrappages, 
 and stand forth in our spiritual character ; until 
 what has been spoken in the closet shall be 
 proclaimed on the house-tops. Swedenborg 
 says that partners who seem exteriorly to be 
 the closest friends, are sometimes interiorly the 
 most inveterate enemies. On the other hand, 
 couples who seem to be very dissimilar and un- 
 
i6o The Sexes J Here and Hereafter. 
 
 happy here, may find, after death and the judg- 
 ment, that interior and hidden sympathies stream 
 forth and melt them into blissful and eternal 
 reconciliations. So marriage on earth is not a 
 finality. It was meant to be a grand discipline 
 of life, a stepping-stone, a preparation for true 
 marriage hereafter. 
 
 It is clear from this, that marriages in this 
 world interpose no difficulties in the wa}’ of 
 spiritual marriage in the next. It is asked also. 
 What will the unmarried do? They are drawn 
 to their spiritual affinities, as all are ; and some- 
 times, perhaps, more easily than those who 
 have been externally married and are compelled 
 to divest themselves of earthly affections and 
 memories. Swedenborg says that the Lord in 
 his mercy alwaj's provides “ similitudes,” or 
 conjugial partners, for those who desire love 
 truly conjugial : if not on earth, owing to num- 
 berless hindering contingencies, yet He surely 
 provides them in heaven. 
 
 Those who have renounced the world and 
 its temptations, and vowed perpetual virginity ; 
 neglectinor natural duties, and devoted whollv to 
 spiritual things ; expecting, from their superior 
 
What Swedenborg Says About h. i6l 
 
 purity and sanctity, a special reward hereafter ; 
 are most to be pitied of all the spirits who come 
 into the heavenly kingdom. They are kindly 
 received by all the heavenly societies ; but 
 when they feel the sphere of conjugial love, 
 which is one of intense activity, buoyancy, and 
 joy, they secretly revolt at it on account of 
 their false ideas of chastity and holiness, and 
 become sad and fretful. They then go from 
 one society to another, disappointed and doubt- 
 ing, and are only satisfied when they collect 
 together with their like, and enjoy a communion 
 of thought which is repulsive to all truly re- 
 generate spirits. The good among them are 
 finally delivered from their delusions, and find 
 their conjugial mates. 
 
 Having convinced ourselves by a rational 
 process that the sexual relation is nniversal and 
 eternal ; that love in this world and the next is 
 the central, unitizing, organizing element in 
 social life ; that marriage is the highest, holiest, 
 and perpetual type of those divine forces which 
 create and bind all things together ; we are 
 prepared to make a practical application of the 
 
 great doctrines of Swedenborg on these subjects. 
 
 11 0 * 
 
162 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 The most momentous questions before the 
 world, are not those of government, or finance, 
 or constitutions, or law, or science, or art, or 
 physics, or metaphysics ; but these : 
 
 What are the spiritual differences between 
 man and woman? — or the Philosophy of Sex. 
 
 What are the laws of the action and re-action 
 of the sexes on each other? — or the Philosophy 
 of Love. 
 
 What is the divine order or plan of union 
 between the sexes, whereby two conjugial part- 
 ners are made one, creation perpetuated, regen- 
 eration effected, and heaven filled with angels, 
 once men? — or the Philosophy of INIarriage. 
 
 What are the distinctive spheres of life, 
 function, duty, and use for the masculine and 
 feminine faculties? — or the elements of anew, 
 perfect, and final Sociology for man. 
 
 We appeal in vain, for answers, to the sci- 
 ences which are based on the experience of our 
 fallible senses ; which practically divorce God 
 from nature, and spirit from matter ; and which 
 offer no philosophical bond of connection be- 
 tween the visible and the invisible worlds. 
 
 We appeal in vain to a merely literal and 
 
What Swedenborg . Says About it. 163 
 
 sensuous interpretation of the Word of God, 
 separate from its living spirit ; — a system of in- 
 terpretation which falsifies the Scripture, dark- 
 ens the understanding, and has been the prolific 
 source of error and mysticism. 
 
 We appeal in vain to our short and imperfect 
 human experience, and to the chaos we call 
 history, for any genuine truth about problems 
 which demand for their satisfactory solution the 
 revealing light of heaven. 
 
 Swedenborg alone of all men claims to have 
 lived for nearly thirty years in sensible contact 
 with both worlds, analyzing both and discover- 
 ing the relations they hold to each other. Let 
 us see what he says about the spiritual differ- 
 ences between man and woman, the philosophy 
 of beauty and love, and the spiritual and eternal 
 uses of marriage. He may give us such ra- 
 tional insight into the organization of the human 
 mind, that we may consider possible, or even 
 probable, his exquisite ideal of conjugial love 
 in heaven, which is so transcendently pure and 
 beautiful, that with our present light we are 
 tempted to regard it rather as the dream of a 
 Poet than the vision of a Seer. 
 
/ 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SPIRITUAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MAN AND 
 WOMAN. 
 
 HE difference between the spiritual con- 
 stitutions of man and woman, is funda- 
 mental and organic. It is the key to 
 the forms, functions, powers, duties, and pecu- 
 liarities of each sex ; the key to the influence 
 they exert on each other ; the key to the spiritual 
 philosophy of marriage, and to many of the 
 most wonderful secrets of nature and man. 
 
 Swedenborg has given us this key. 
 
 This discovery was not made by scientific 
 induction, nor was it merel}^ the result of rare 
 philosophic insight. It was revealed as one of 
 the countless treasures which lie concealed be- 
 neath the letter of the Word of God. 
 
 Every doctrine taught by Swedenborg is 
 based upon, drawn from, and confirmed and 
 illustrated by the Divine Word. Those who 
 i6r 
 
spiritual Differences Detween the Sexes. 165 
 
 reject the Holy Scriptures, and those who can- 
 not be brought to see their interior glory by 
 means of a better and higher interpretation, 
 will probably not understand all we have to say, 
 and must be left to feed upon the husks of na- 
 turalism, while in their Father’s house there is 
 bread enough and to spare. 
 
 The first chapter of Genesis, — rejected by 
 science, doubted by reason, the jest of the infi- 
 del, the stumbling-block of the Christian, — con- 
 tains psychological truths of the highest order ; 
 truths so transcendent and universal, that vol- 
 umes might be written in elucidation of each 
 verse as a text. From this source we have 
 drawn the principles which underlie our theory 
 of love, sex and marriage. Swedenborg’s ex- 
 position in his Arcana Coelestia, refers spe- 
 cially to the changed relation between the will 
 and understanding occasioned by the fall ; but 
 the same principles are applicable to the rela- 
 tion of husband and wife, or of the Lord and 
 his Church. Many of the most beautiful truths 
 are even apparent in the letter of the Word. 
 
 Man, the image of God, contained the female 
 element within himself when first created. 
 
i66 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 “ Let us make man in our image and after 
 our likeness.” 
 
 The plural number is here used, because the 
 Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, or the 
 bi-sexual elements in the Divine nature, are 
 the creative power which gives to man the 
 bi-sexual character of his own organization. 
 
 “ So God created man in his own image ; in 
 the image of God created he him ; male and 
 female created he them.” 
 
 Again says the Divine Word : 
 
 “In the day that God created man, in the 
 image of God made He him : 
 
 “Male and female created He them; and 
 blessed them, and called their name Adam in 
 the day when they were created.” 
 
 Adam, therefore, containing within himself 
 both the male and female elements, was the 
 image and likeness of God. 
 
 Why was the female element taken out of 
 the man, so that the sexes became distinct and 
 objective to each other? 
 
 If the love or female principle had remained 
 within the man, exciting, attracting, and vivif}^- 
 ing his wisdom-principle, man would have 
 
spiritual Differences Between the Sexes. 
 
 become a form of self-love, and would have 
 been withheld from any external love, use or 
 activity. But it was taken out of the man, and 
 presented to him in a beautiful external form, 
 an image or counterpart or complement of him- 
 self, so that he might love himself in another. 
 This mutual love of one’s self in another, or 
 of another as one’s self, is the conjugial love — 
 the fountain and mother of all loves. 
 
 The ancients represented, by the graceful 
 myth of Narcissus, what man would have been if 
 the female element had not been taken out of him, 
 and presented to him in a beautiful external form. 
 Narcissus was a beautiful young man who died 
 for love of his own face in the water. He had 
 no attendant but Echo — the shadow of himself; 
 and he consumed away because he failed to 
 realize his ideal. If his Echo had been turned 
 into an Eve, he would have discovered a para- 
 dise of uses, beauties, and glories all around 
 him. After death, according to the story, he 
 was changed into a flower, which was made 
 sacred to the infernal powers ; in regard to 
 which Lord Bacon says : “Whatever produced 
 no fruit in itself, but passeth and vanisheth as 
 
1 68 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter . 
 
 if it had never been, like the way of a ship in 
 the sea, the ancients were wont to dedicate to 
 the ghosts and the powers below.” 
 
 This creation of Eve out of Adam, is also the 
 symbol of the larger creation of the whole uni- 
 verse of souls out of the bosom of God — the 
 All-Father. The Love of God, yearning for 
 something to love outside of his own perfec- 
 tions, takes an objective form in the created 
 universe, drawn from his own substance and 
 vivified by his own life ; and this form is a 
 female form, and known in its largest and 
 grandest signification as the Church of God, 
 embracing all who are capable of receiving, in 
 the greatest or least degree, the descending 
 influx of the Divine Love and Wisdom. 
 
 Thus Christ, or the Divine Wisdom, the Di- 
 vine Truth, “ the Light of the World,” becomes 
 the Bridegroom, the Husband of the Church. 
 Their love is conjugial, reciprocal, eternal. 
 
 Wisdom is only satisfied with love ; love is 
 only satisfied with wisdom. Each without the 
 other is nothing ; united they are all things. 
 Each sees in the other itself beautified and glo- 
 rified, its hope, its dream, its heaven, its all. 
 
spiritual Differe 7 ices Betweeji the Sexes. 169 
 
 Their attractive or passional affinity for each 
 other, yearning to become one In form, soul, 
 function, use, and life, is love. This concep- 
 tion of love includes all loves, as the sea in- 
 cludes its waves. 
 
 Neither God, nor Adam his Image, could be 
 satisfied with the self-analysis and contempla- 
 tive powers of the introverted understanding 
 alone. The living soul, inspired with wisdom 
 by love, yearns for something outside of itself 
 to reciprocate its affection ; something which it 
 can call its own, and on which it can lavish all 
 the activities of its being. Without such an 
 external object, man is said to be “ alone,” and 
 the proper reciprocating object is called a “ help 
 meet for him.” That he might not be “alone,” 
 God created a universe of souls, a vast spiritual 
 Church or Bride for himself; and repeating the 
 same work in Adam, He blessed him with Eve. 
 There is another higher and to us more ob- 
 scure meaning of the word “alone.” It implies 
 a celestial state of life and marriage in which 
 the soul is one with the Lord, and sees only 
 Him in all things of the created universe. The 
 descent from that highest state into a lower but 
 
 p 
 
170 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 still holy and beautiful spiritual state, is meant 
 by the deep sleep falling upon Adam, and the 
 creation of an external feminine counterpart to 
 his interior life. The expulsion from the Garden 
 of Eden is the descent, through disobedience, 
 from the spiritual into the natural degree of life 
 in which we still live. 
 
 The understanding, or properly male ele- 
 ment, which penetrates and analyzes all things, 
 is not satisfied with the infinite displays of God’s 
 wisdom and power and glory in the universe 
 around us. Great and dazzling as they are, 
 they are as cold and distant and lifeless to our 
 hearts, as the stars of a summer night. We 
 may know all things and all creatures, divine 
 their properties and call them by their names, 
 as Adam did ; but the “ help meet” is not found 
 there. We can find it onl}^ in something taken 
 out of ourselves and thei'efore our own ; bone 
 of our bone and flesh of our flesh ; something 
 in whose radiant beauty and life and love we 
 can realize the unspeakable dreams and intui- 
 tions of our inmost souls. 
 
 The utter loneliness of the man whose better 
 half of life has not yet been made objective to 
 
spiritual Differences Betwee 7 i the Sexes. 171 
 
 his senses, is thus described by the poet of 
 Hope, with a sweetness which ever bears repe- 
 tition : 
 
 “Till Hymen brought his love-delighted hour, 
 
 There dwelt no joy in Eden’s rosy bower; 
 
 In vain the viewless seraph, lingering there 
 At starry midnight, charmed the silent air; 
 
 In vain the wild-bird caroled on the steep, 
 
 To hail the sun, slow wheeling from the deep ; 
 
 In vain, to soothe the solitary shade, 
 
 Aerial notes in mingling measure played; 
 
 The summer wind that shook the spangled tree. 
 
 The whispering wind, the murmur of the bee : — 
 
 Still slowly passed the melancholy day. 
 
 And still the stranger wist not where to stray. 
 
 The world was sad ! the garden was a wild ! 
 
 And man, the hermit, sighed — til) Woman smiled.” 
 
 Woman thus created was not another man ; 
 nor was she a creature of a higher order ; for 
 she was created out of Adam and for him. 
 She is a part of him ; bone of his bone, flesh 
 of his flesh ; as he recognized her to be, when 
 he called her his wife and spake those remark- 
 able words : 
 
 “ Therefore shall a man leave his father and 
 his mother and shall cleave unto his wife : and 
 they shall be one ffesh." 
 
172 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 A charming writer, full of deep and spiritual 
 thought, maintains that woman is a distinct or 
 discrete creation, coming after man and supe- 
 rior to him ; having more organs, functions, 
 uses, and powers, and therefore destined to 
 rule the world.* Love or woman will cer- 
 tainl}^ rule and save the world ; but it will be 
 done by working in married harmony with 
 wisdom or man, its conjugial partner. 
 
 Anatomically speaking, man and woman 
 have the same organs ; but they have different 
 degrees of development according to the func- 
 tions of paternity or maternity to be exercised. 
 What is fully developed in one sex, is rudiment- 
 ary or scarcely visible in the other. And all 
 of woman’s highest functions, like herself, are 
 still only a part of man ; for it is her greatest 
 office to ultimate on the material plane of being 
 the forces with which she has been impregnated 
 by the masculine element from the spiritual side. 
 And there lies a grand m3'stery. 
 
 Paternity and not maternit}’ is the crowning 
 phenomenon and wonder of nature. We can 
 partially understand the maternal aspect of 
 
 * Mrs. Farnham’s “Woman anu her Era.'’ 
 
spiritual Differences Between the Sexes. 173 
 
 vegetation ; the bosom of mother earth ; the 
 nutritive elements provided by air and water ; 
 the chemical combinations which build up the 
 new and beautiful structures before us ; but the 
 impregnating power of the solar ray, the pa- 
 ternal aspect of it all, remains an inscrutable 
 mystery. 
 
 Swedenborg tells us that the soul of the child 
 comes from the father. The body, with its 
 animal spirits derived from the mother, would 
 be a mere human animal, irrational and mortal 
 as the Undine of fiction, if it were not spirit- 
 ualized by the paternal forces. This is not the 
 place to discuss the physiological or theological 
 bearings of this great truth. We only wish to 
 affirm that woman with her maternal functions 
 and forces is an appendage to man, a com- 
 plementary and supplementary form, through 
 which his spiritual forces are given a physical 
 Qutbirth and embodiment. 
 
 In one sense woman is superior to man. She 
 is the central, highest figure in the creation. 
 The last created, receiving first the Divine life, 
 she intervenes, as it were, between man and 
 heaven. The vegetable kingdom is formed out 
 
 P 
 
174 The Sexes; Here aiid Hereafter. 
 
 of the mineral, and lifts it higher toward the 
 vital world. The animal kingdom is formed 
 
 O 
 
 from both, and comes still nearer to the spirit- 
 ual. Man is builded upon all the kingdoms 
 below him, and connects with heaven. Woman 
 is not another kingdom separated from him, 
 but a part of himself, reaching higher into the 
 celestial atmosphere ; and, like the lofty places 
 of our earth, she is first illumined by the ethe- 
 real touches of the coming Day. 
 
 It is generally supposed that with the same 
 education, the same opportunities and pursuits, 
 the same surroundings, etc., man and woman 
 would be very much alike, and indeed almost 
 undistinguishable. It is not so, however. 
 Woman’s organic instincts would finally assert 
 themselves under any conceivable pressure of 
 external training. She would surely revolt 
 against any life which did not involve and 
 effect her thorough and spiritual union with 
 man, such a total immersion of self in the con- 
 jugial partner as to produce reall}* one fesh. 
 
 She is not the equal of man ; she is not his 
 superior. She was taken out of him ; she be- 
 longs to him ; she is his interior self in external 
 
spiritual Differences Betzveen the Sexes. 175 
 
 form. She is nothing but a shadow, or image 
 in a mirror, without him. She yearns for 
 union with him, as he does for union with her, 
 more than for all things else. Neither man 
 nor woman would have a destiny or even a 
 life without the other. It is their union which 
 makes the perfect Man, the image and likeness 
 of God, just as the union of the Lord with his 
 Church will make the perfect world and the 
 pei'fect universe. 
 
 The bi-sexual nature of the Supreme Being 
 is decomposed in the sexes as light is decom- 
 posed in the prism. Break a magnet into two 
 pieces, and each part is still a magnet with its 
 positive and negative or male and female poles. 
 Man and woman stricken off, to speak analogi- 
 cally, from the Divine substance and life, remain 
 both masculine and feminine in themselves, 
 although objectively masculine and feminine 
 to each other. Eveiy man has a feminine, 
 every woman a masculine, element more or less 
 developed. The key to the differences hetzveen 
 the sexes is this: the poles are reversed. 
 
 Wisdom, as revealed through the operations 
 of the understanding, is the positive or ruling 
 
176 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 element in man, and dominates or determines 
 the character of his love. 
 
 Love, as revealed through the activity of the 
 affections, is the positive or ruling element in 
 woman, and dominates or determines the cha- 
 racter of her wisdom. 
 
 The interior life and vital principle in man 
 lies in this, that he is inspired with the love of 
 the divine wisdom, that is, of every external 
 manifestation of the divine glory, constituting 
 the whole of knowledge, science, art, philoso- 
 phy, and all things upon wdiich the understand- 
 ing is exercised. The interior and vital soul 
 of w'oman is not the same. It is the love 
 of all these things, not for themselves but as 
 they have been acquired by and exist in man. 
 She loves man for all those things for which 
 he wmuld naturally love himself, and that is 
 the reason why he is so w^armly attracted to 
 her. 
 
 Othello’s wooing of Desdemona by the story 
 of his wmnderful “battles, sieges, fortunes,” 
 hairbreadth escapes and “moving accidents by 
 flood and field,” very beautifully illustrates this 
 truth : 
 
spiritual Differences BeHvcen the Sexes. 177 
 
 “My storj’ being done, 
 
 She gav'e me for m3' pains a world of sighs : 
 
 She swore — in faith ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange, 
 ’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful! 
 
 She wished she had not heard it : 3’et she wished 
 That heaven had 7nade her such a man. 
 
 ******** 
 
 She loved me for the dangers I had passed, 
 
 And I loved her that she did pity them.” 
 
 Milton also caught a glimpse of the spiritual 
 relation of the sexes when he said of Adam 
 and Eve : 
 
 “ In their face 
 
 The image of their glorious Maker shone. 
 
 For contemplation he, and valor formed, 
 
 For softness she, and sweet attractive grace; 
 
 He for God onlj', she for God in him.” 
 
 Let the reader ever bear in mind that in the 
 following statements of the influence of the 
 sexes on each other, we have presumed both 
 parties to be living in true Christian order, in 
 obedience to the commandments of God. It 
 would be a great mistake to suppose that all 
 these beautiful things are asserted of men and 
 women in the present corrupt and disorderly 
 conditions of society. They are the possibili- 
 ties of the race. 
 
 12 
 
17S TJie Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 Man’s love is abstract; woman’s concrete. 
 His love is for principles ; hers is for persons. 
 Man loves himself in w'oman, but woman loves 
 man unselfishly. Hence the intensit}’’, the in- 
 dividuality, the singleness, the spirituality or 
 super-sensuousness of her love. Every woman 
 is the organic form or realization of some man’s 
 intellect, loyal only to him and his, and yearn- 
 ing and groping through the great dark of our 
 natural life for a perfect and eternal union with 
 her conjugial partner. 
 
 Eve’s intuitive perception that man’s life was 
 his love of wisdom, and that her own wisdom 
 was due to her love of man’s wisdom, led her 
 to give a willing ear to the temptation of the 
 serpent, or sensual principle, which said : 
 
 “ In the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes 
 shall be opened ; and ye shall be as gods, 
 li7iowing good and evil. 
 
 “And when the woman saw that the tree was 
 good for food, and that it was pleasant to the 
 eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one -wise., 
 she took of the fruit thereof and did eat ; and 
 gave also unto her husband with her, and he 
 did eat. 
 
spiritual Differences Between the Sexes. 179 
 
 “And the e3^es of them both were opened.” 
 
 Woman thus sensualized both herself and 
 man to gratify him, as she is doing at the 
 present day. When man acquires interior and 
 heavenly wisdom, woman will inspire him with 
 a love entirely super-sensuous and celestial. 
 
 The zealous devotion of woman to church and 
 state, and to all the institutions established by 
 man, is simply the expression of her love of the 
 masculine wisdom by which all these things 
 have been achieved or constructed. She is 
 conservative and aristocratic where he is ; re- 
 publican and radical where he is. She attaches 
 herself to him and his, and identifies herself 
 with them. The women of the Southern States 
 cared little or nothing for the principles which 
 animated the Southern soldier ; nothing for 
 slavery or separate nationalit}'. Their self- 
 sacrifice, which has never been exceeded in 
 the history of the world, was made for persons ; 
 for husbands and sons, for lovers and brothers. 
 Thus was it always ; thus will it always be. 
 
 There is no height to which woman cannot 
 rise, no depth to which she will not fall, in obe- 
 dience to the great law of her being, that she 
 
iSo The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 must ultimate in external forms of beaut}", love, 
 and use, the secret life with which she is im- 
 pregnated by the masculine sphere of thought. 
 The holy women who accompanied Jesus, intu- 
 itively divining the spiritual truths of his king- 
 dom, outstripped in faith and devotion the 
 tardier understanding of the apostles. Vivified 
 by the same truth, it was a woman who taught 
 with practical sublimity the doctrine of the uni- 
 versal brotherhood of man, long before men 
 had more than dreamed of giving it political 
 and social expression. The story is this : 
 
 “ St. Catherine of Siena on one occasion ac- 
 companied a notorious malefactor to the scaf- 
 fold, and administered to him the consolations 
 of religion. When the axe had done its duty, 
 she lifted up the bleeding head, and addressing 
 the assembled crowd by whom she was re- 
 garded as a direct messenger of God, she said : 
 ‘ Fear not to raise your prayers for this man’s 
 soul. I accept him as my brother and she 
 kissed the dead lips.” 
 
 Swedenborg says that with man love is inte- 
 rior and wisdom exterior, while with woman 
 wisdom is interior and love is exterior. Hence 
 
Spirihial Diff^erences Between the Sexei. i8i 
 
 the strength and power of man’s external form 
 and the grace and beauty of woman’s. Hence 
 also man is the creator, the father, the builder, 
 the organizer ; for the divine energies work 
 through his interior life and manifest them- 
 selves by means of his understanding. Wo- 
 man receives not the divine wisdom, but the 
 male wisdom or understanding, into her interior 
 life, and there it becomes intuition, a spiritual 
 instinct ; and she brings it all down into nature 
 again, and gives him back the True clothed in 
 the garment of the Beautiful. Unconsciously 
 to herself and to him, she transfigures the crude 
 shapes of his earthly thought into apparitions 
 of spiritual loveliness, which excite and purify 
 his affections for the reception of still higher 
 degrees and forms of wisdom. 
 
 Of the grandest phenomena in nature our 
 poor spirits are wholly unconscious. We feel 
 nothing of the transcendent miracles which are 
 being wrought every moment in our own bodies. 
 The weight of the atmosphere, the whirling 
 motion of the earth on its axis, the magnetic 
 currents encircling the globe, and a thousand 
 other wonders, are all imperceptible to us. We 
 Q 
 
iSz The Sexes; TTere and Hereafter. 
 
 know nothing, also, of the spiritual currents 
 which proceed to and fro between the sexes, 
 binding them together for the uses of life, as 
 the heart and lungs are bound together in the 
 bosom of the living man. 
 
 Love and Wisdom are the opposite poles of 
 the magnet, which always attract, sustain, ex- 
 cite and intensify each other. Man’s interior- 
 life being the love of divine wisdom, is impreg- 
 nated by the Divine Wisdom, and the result is’ 
 the masculine form and understanding. Wo- 
 man s interior life being the wisdom or under- 
 standing of the man, is impregnated by the 
 Divine Love, and the result is the ineffable 
 charm and beauty of the female form. Such 
 is the influx of the Divine life into both sexes. 
 Thence follows the operation, by spiritual in- 
 flux, of the sexes on each other. 
 
 One current starts from the Divine Love as a 
 centre, and flows through woman ; for woman 
 is receptive of the divine feminine, and ulti- 
 mates the love she receives in beautiful forms 
 and uses. The other current starts from the 
 Divine Wisdom as a centre, and flows through 
 man who is receptive of the divine masculine. 
 
spiritual Differences Detweejt the Sexes. 1S3 
 
 and ultimates the wisdom he receives in the 
 manifold organizations or institutions which are 
 the product of thought. The love manifested 
 in the beauty and goodness of woman, is the 
 attractive centre to the wisdom which is the life 
 of the masculine understanding ; and vice versd. 
 This is the spiritual origin of sex, love and mar- 
 riage, which, in their largest sense, are of ne- 
 cessity universal and eternal. 
 
 Woman inspires man with love, because she 
 is the very form of his self-love or the love of 
 his own wisdom. Man inspires woman with 
 wisdom, because his wisdom is the magnet 
 which excites the activity of her love. 
 
 She impregnates him with love which quick- 
 ens his rationality, and ultimates itself through 
 the intellectual faculties. 
 
 He impregnates her with wisdom which 
 quickens her emotional intuitions and percep- 
 tions, and ultimates itself through the affections. 
 
 “ Her rapid mind decides while his debates; 
 
 She feels a truth which he but calculates.” 
 
 Woman absorbs the masculine forces and 
 brings them out into the material plane of life. 
 Man responds to the excitation of the feminine 
 
184 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 principle by ultimating its forces on the spirit- 
 ual or mental plane of life. Thus is the great 
 spiritual current from heaven to earth and back 
 again to heaven, established by means of the 
 co-operating influence of the sexes. Either 
 sex without the other, would be as useless and 
 lifeless as one half of the human body sepa- 
 rated from the other. Conjoined in heavenly 
 marriage, they constitute the man or the angel. 
 
 Patmore alludes to this mystical and recipro- 
 cal mental action of the sexes on each other : 
 
 “Love kissed by wisdom wakes twice love, 
 
 And wisdom is through loving wise.” 
 
 That woman stimulates the intellectual activ- 
 ity of man by the love with which she inspires 
 him, is written on every page of the public and 
 private history of mankind. Plan’s wisdom 
 comes immediately from God ; woman’s wis- 
 dom comes mediately through man. Woman’s 
 love comes immediately from God ; man’s love 
 comes mediately through woman. As love is 
 the centre and life of all things, and as wis- 
 dom or truth is determined by the love from 
 which it springs, woman is the motor ;pozvcr. 
 
spiritual Differences Between the Sexes. 185 
 
 j? 
 
 while man is the organizing power, of human 
 life. Woman is the heart, man the head, of the 
 social body : woman is the priest of the world, 
 if man is its king. 
 
 The grand psychological truth involved in 
 the above paragraph, is sweetly recognized by 
 a charming English poet : 
 
 “ For Love is substance, Truth the form ; 
 
 Truth without Love were less than naught; 
 
 But blindest Love is sweet and warm, 
 
 And full of Truth not shaped bj thought.” 
 
 All love, therefore, comes from woman : all 
 thoup-ht comes from man. Thought flowing 
 
 o O O 
 
 from the man into the woman, becomes feeling. 
 Feeling flowing from the woman into the man, 
 becomes thought. This idea is well illustrated 
 by Dryden in his poem of Cymon and Jphi- 
 genia. Cymon was a poor stupid creature 
 whom no pains or labor could instruct or im- 
 prove. He one day found the beautiful Iphi- 
 genia sleeping in the woods, and a ray of love’s 
 divine ligfht illumined his soul, causing his 
 torpid understanding to spring into sudden ac- 
 tivity. The story is a true symbol of a universal 
 law. 
 
i86 The Sexes ; Here mid Hereafter. 
 
 “Through the rude chaos thus the running light 
 Shot the first ray that pierced the native night: 
 
 So reason in his brutal soul began ; 
 
 Love made him first suspect he was a Man ; 
 
 Love made him doubt his broad barbarian sound; 
 
 By Love his want of words and wit he found : 
 
 That sense of want prepared the future way 
 To knowledge, and disclosed the promise of a day. 
 What not his father’s care nor tutor’s art 
 Could plant with pains in his untutored heart, 
 
 That best instructor. Love, at once inspired. 
 
 As barren grounds to fruitfulness are fired : 
 
 Love taught him shame, and shame with Love at strife, 
 Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.” 
 
 Yes ; man has no love, no passion, no senti- 
 ment which does not primarily come to him 
 from woman. Woman alone has the power 
 of drawing the divine fire down from heaven. 
 The mother, the first love, the wife, are the 
 sources of our purest and best inspirations and 
 wisest thoughts. And from the w'hole female 
 sex a vast current of affection pours toward the 
 whole male sex, inspiring it to intellectual ac- 
 tivity, like the mighty ocean stream which bears 
 the tropical heats in its bosom, and causes the 
 bleakest shores of the North to brighten and 
 blossom with a life not their own. 
 
spiritual Differences BeHveen the Sexes. 187 
 
 In the wildest mining districts of California, 
 and in communities of men utterly lawless and 
 desperate, the advent of a single American 
 woman, unknown to nearly all of them, was 
 a signal for the decrease of violence and the 
 dawn of peace and order and law ; while 
 visions of home and happiness and flower- 
 gardens and children, of books and music and 
 love, of schools and churches and heaven, 
 arose in every mind. 
 
 “I believe if I had something from the hands 
 of a woman, I would get well,” said a dying 
 English soldier in a hospital of the Crimea ; 
 and another brave fellow, who got hold of the 
 hand of one of Florence Nightingale’s nurses, 
 grasped it tightly in silence till he died ! 
 
 The unhappy and licentious Byron, yearning 
 on his deathbed for all that remained to him of 
 the pure and the good in woman, exclaimed 
 with his last breath : 
 
 “Augusta ! Ada ! — my sister ! my child !” 
 
 As woman alone draws love down from 
 heaven to warm the world, so man alone 
 draws down wisdom for its light and guidance. 
 What then is the understanding of woman? 
 
1 88 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 A reflection of the masculine mind, just as the 
 light of the moon is the reflected light of the 
 sun. Milton speaks wisely of the sun and 
 moon as 
 
 “ Communicating male and female light.” 
 
 The intellect of woman is soft and tender, 
 diflfeiing from that of man as the sweet face of 
 woman does from the sterner features of the 
 male sex. Woman, by the intensity and purity 
 of her love for man, is capable of absorbing the 
 whol® of his wisdom, so that she shall appear 
 fully equal to him in all the labors of the un- 
 derstanding. She may reach the higher mas- 
 culine standard in astronomy, mathematics, 
 science, or literature. Still, her intellectual 
 light is borrowed. She originates nothing, not 
 even in the composition of music, in which her 
 organization would lead us to think she would 
 excel. The office of her intellect, indeed, is 
 not to originate or organize, but to utilize or 
 make fruitful in her own field the stores of wis- 
 dom which man has acquired in his. And 
 here we detect how the intellect of woman is 
 the greatest and best “ help meet for him” that 
 
Splrihial Differences Detween the Sexes. 1S9 
 
 he can possibly find. Educate woman up to 
 the masculine standard of thought, and fire her 
 soul with the love of God and the neighbor, of 
 husband and children, of home and country, 
 and the world will find in the expression of 
 woman’s opinion on every subject a new foun- 
 tain and oracle of true wisdom hitherto un- 
 known. 
 
 When man and woman love purely and are 
 truly conjoined, the subtlest combinations of the 
 male intellect are sometimes futile and weak 
 in comparison with the lightning^ike wisdom 
 which emanates from the feminine brain, — a 
 fact, which may be of immense importance 
 to the future of human society. This psy- 
 chological truth is beautifully illustrated by 
 Schiller in the character of Thekla in his 
 Wallenstein. 
 
 When Wallenstein and his sister are weaving 
 the subtle web of treason about the young Pic- 
 colomini, whose frank and brave nature is as 
 incapable of suspicion as of fear, Thekla, his 
 betrothed, visits the camp. Her intuitions, 
 quickened by love, immediately perceive the 
 danger his intellect has not detected ; and the 
 
190 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 moment they are alone she rushes to him, ex- 
 claiming, 
 
 “ Do not trust them ! They are false !” 
 
 When the fatal step is taken, the exposure 
 made, and Wallenstein is an open traitor to his 
 emperor, Piccolomini still lingers in the camp, 
 magnetically attracted by his love for Wallen- 
 stein’s beautiful daughter. All but Thekla en- 
 deavor to draw him over to the revolt. They 
 ply him with persuasions and powerful argu- 
 ments. His reason staggers, blinded by love. 
 Suddenly he appeals to Thekla to think for 
 him, to decide for him. He leaves the whole 
 matter “to the unerring good within her heart.” 
 To the rage of her friends and the despair of 
 her lover, she sublimely sacrifices their hopes 
 and interests, and counsels him to the path of 
 duty and honor : 
 
 “ Being faithful 
 
 To thine own self, thou art faithful, too, to me. 
 
 If our fates part, our souls remain united. 
 
 A bloody hatred may divide forever 
 Our houses, Piccolomini and Friedland, 
 
 But we belong not to our houses. Go!” 
 
 It may be asked. How is man the organ or 
 
spiritual Differences Between the Setces. 19 1 
 
 medium of the divine wisdom, if his own wis- 
 dom is determined by the inspiring love of 
 woman? In spiritual and natural things alike, 
 conditions determine development. Sunlight 
 cannot create flowers or fruit until seeds are 
 properly planted. Thought is impossible until 
 the aflections are awakened. The distinctive 
 peculiarity of the male mind is, that man’s 
 affection, awakened by woman’s influence, is 
 impregnated by the inflowing divine wisdom, 
 producing all the resplendent phenomena of the 
 intellectual or rational sphere. The love of 
 man’s achievements is the heart-life of woman ; 
 and that, impregnated by the Divine Love, is 
 the source of her intuitive wisdom, her beauty, 
 and her grand capacity for offices of self-sacri- 
 flce, love, and use. 
 
 In the presence of these fundamental laws of 
 our spiritual being revealed by Swedenborg, it 
 is entirely useless to discuss the common ques- 
 tion of the equality or inequality of the mental 
 and moral powers of the sexes. Man is at 
 present inferior to woman on the moral and 
 woman is inferior to man on the intellectual 
 plane, simply because the sexes, as the two 
 
1^2 The Sexes; Here and Hereayter. 
 
 great halves of our spiritual life, are not con- 
 joined in the heavenly marriage. Woman is 
 capable of absorbing and reflecting the entire 
 understanding of man, so that her intellectual 
 faculties shall be identical with his. Man is 
 capable of rising to the loftiest height of wo- 
 man’s love. Nothing, however, but the uni- 
 versality of marriage can accomplish such a 
 glorious equalit}'-, and that kind of marriage 
 in which each sex receives in perfect measure 
 all the other has to give, so that they become, 
 in the no longer m^^stical words of the Bible, 
 one jlesh. 
 
 This mutual, organic, inevitable, beautiful 
 dependence of the sexes on each other for the 
 manifestation of their peculiar properties, mak- 
 ing co-operation and marriage necessar}^ here 
 and hereafter, overturns the prevalent theories 
 of sex and marriage, and leads to a higher 
 philosophy which will solve the mysteries of 
 beauty and love and define the sphere and duty 
 of both man and woman. 
 
 From the universality of sex, or the bi-sexual 
 character of all the forms in nature, and from 
 the fact that spiritual truths are always pic- 
 
spiritual Differences BetweeJi the Sexes. 193 
 
 tured in natural laws, we may arrive at the fol- 
 lowing important conclusions in our pursuit of 
 truth : 
 
 The excitation of one species of electricity is 
 always accompanied by the excitation of the 
 other, both being produced in equal degrees. 
 This is true also of love and wisdom, or affection 
 and thought, the spiritual electricities of our life. 
 Given the state of wisdom in man, and you 
 have the exact measure of the state of love in 
 woman ; and vice versd. Every augmentation 
 of woman’s love increases the wisdom of man ; 
 which suggests the true sphere of woman, and 
 the true method of moving, reforming, and 
 spiritualizing the world. 
 
 As the strength of the magnet depends upon 
 the intensity of the two opposite poles, so the 
 perfection of human character d-epends upon 
 the distinct rationality or masculinity of man, 
 and the distinct emotional activity or femininity 
 of woman. 
 
 Like the two poles of a magnetic bar, man 
 and woman are the mutual sustainers of each 
 other’s condition ; he of her love, she of his 
 wisdom. Man grows more truly rational and 
 
 13 R 
 
194 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 masculine, as woman grows more truly fem- 
 inine. 
 
 If man grows more effeminate and woman 
 more masculine, they both lose the proper in- 
 fluence they should exert on each other, because 
 each sexual pole of life is weakenedby the other. 
 
 The nearer they approach each other in 
 quality and pursuit, not by reflecting but by 
 rivaling each other, the less will be the recip- 
 rocal attraction betw'een them. 
 
 If the distinctive spiritual characteristics of 
 the sexes could be destroyed, they would cease 
 to respect the chastity or honor of each other ; 
 spirituality of thought and motive would be- 
 come impossible, and man w'ould sink to the 
 level of the brute. 
 
 These are great and eternal truths, which 
 might be scientifically demonstrated and con- 
 firmed by countless illustrations from human 
 experience and history. Let them serve as 
 beacon-liffhts to those earnest and darincr souls 
 
 O O 
 
 who are striving to reconstruct the soqial fabric 
 upon principles derived from the supposed light 
 of nature, and not always illumined by the 
 superior light of spiritual truth. 
 
spiritual Differences Detween the Sexes. 195 
 
 The inspiration of the poet is ever in har- 
 mony with the wisdom of the Seer : 
 
 “For woman is not undeveloped man, 
 
 But diverse : could we make her as the man, 
 
 Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this. 
 
 Not like to like, but like in difference : 
 
 Yet in the long 3'ears liker must they grow.” 
 
 If man and woman were equal and alike ; 
 if their wills and understandings had no dif- 
 ferences but such as exist between parties of 
 the same sex ; then the spiritual marriage or 
 absolute union of two souls would be impossi- 
 ble. No such union can exist between two 
 men, or between two women. It is only possi- 
 ble between the sexes, because they are unequal 
 and unlike ; because man derives his wisdom 
 from God and his love mediately from woman, 
 while woman derives her love from God and 
 her wisdom mediately from man. This is the 
 grandest psychological truth ever revealed to 
 the world. 
 
 All life flows from the spiritual world into the 
 natural. All love, all wisdom, all our affections 
 and thoughts, come down from the interior. 
 Wiman is the organ or medium for the descent 
 
196 The Sexes ^ Here and Hereafter. 
 
 of the divine love. Man is the organ or 
 medium for the descent of the divine wisdom. 
 The love which woman acquires from above, is 
 reflected over to man. The wisdom which man 
 by means of that love acquires from above, is re- 
 flected over to woman. The correspondence and 
 attraction between the love and wisdom thus ac- 
 quired by the co-operation of the two sexes, is 
 the basis of the spiritual or heavenly marriage. 
 
 Now how is the actual amount of love in the 
 world increased? or what is the special office 
 of woman? And how is the actual amount of 
 wisdom in the world increased? or what is the 
 special office of man? 
 
 As there is no wisdom without love, so there 
 is no love without obedience. Obedience, or 
 living according to the divine law, is the means 
 whereby love and wisdom are brought down to 
 us. We become truly wise only by keeping 
 the commandments. The mind cannot be per- 
 manently illumined until the heart is purified. 
 Obedience was properly made the test of the 
 possibility of such a spiritual life as that signi- 
 fied by the Garden of Eden. Disobedience 
 brought sensuality, blindness, spiritual death. 
 
Sph'itual Differences Between the Sexes. 197 
 
 It is the obedience of woman to the divine law, 
 which brings down the heaven of love to the 
 world. It is the obedience of man to the divine 
 law, which brings down the heaven of wisdom 
 to the world. Thus the work of each sex is 
 complementary to that of the other. It is only 
 when they co-operate or act in harmony, that 
 true love and true wisdom can be obtained. 
 
 The sphere of man’s labor is evidently the 
 sphere of the understanding, beginning from 
 without and working upward and inwai'd. The 
 sphere of woman’s labor is the sphere of the 
 affections, beginning within and working down- 
 ward and outward. Woman’s love is super- 
 sensuous ; man’s love is sensuous until spirit- 
 ualized by woman. Man’s understanding is 
 rational and inductive ; woman’s understanding 
 is intuitive and deductive, because it is only 
 man’s understanding raised to a higher or spir- 
 itual power. Man’s forces are centripetal, wo- 
 man’s are centrifucral. The masculine ascends 
 
 o 
 
 '.he ladder of Jacob to heaven, but the feminine 
 descends it with blessings for mankind. 
 
 Man’s labor is in the field of the senses. He 
 examines, compares, discovers, invents. He 
 
£98 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 conquers nature, and the material is to him the 
 real. He tills, plants, reaps, builds, travels, 
 creates. Science, literature, art, philosophy, 
 manufactures, governments, churches, institu- 
 tions, are the products of his strength and wis- 
 dom, the fruits of his organizing mind ; and 
 all these he lays at the feet of woman — the 
 silent, secret, unseen motor power of all his 
 goodness and wisdom and courage and labor. 
 
 Woman works in a far more interior sphere. 
 To her sweet intuitions the spiritual is real and 
 supereminent. She alone saw the angels at 
 the sepulchre of the Lord. She repa3 s man 
 for his benefits by bringing down into nature 
 the ideal light and beauty of an inner world. 
 She conquers man, not nature ; and her weapon 
 is not the strength of reason, but the inspiration 
 of love. She inspires him with that tender 
 sentiment which stimulates him to new thought, 
 new wisdom, new power. She etherealizes and 
 spiritualizes all about him. She blesses him, 
 elevates him, purifies him. She gives him love 
 which is her dower from God, and home which 
 IS the image of heaven. 
 
 The words wife and mother express the 
 
spiritual Differences Between the Sexes. 199 
 
 whole nature, functions, uses, and life of wo- 
 man. No education, training, business, or in- 
 fluences, which do not help to qualify woman 
 for these sublime offices, are of any permanent 
 value. These words, wife and mother, so full 
 of tenderness and beauty, have a spiritual as 
 well as a natural meaning. Nature designed 
 that every woman should be a wife and mother 
 in both senses ; but the evils of our imperfect 
 civilization leave many a virgin rose to wither 
 on the thorn. Those women are spiritually 
 wives and mothers, whether externally and 
 legally married or not, who absorb from the 
 masculine element of thought in books, in 
 conversation, in society, in practical life, in 
 religion, the subtile forces of wisdom which 
 enrich their own souls with grand intuitions, 
 beautify their characters and faces with wifely 
 and maternal purity, modesty, and humility, 
 and produce around them a crowd of radiant 
 influences, sympathies, divinations of love, and 
 unconscious charities, which are the children 
 of the spiritual marriage. 
 
 Woman's work is within. What is external 
 in man is internal in woman. Organically, 
 
200 The Sexes', Here and Hereafter. 
 
 mentally, socially, spiritually, she is more in- 
 terior than man. She herself is an interior 
 part of man, and her love and life are always 
 something interior and almost incomprehensi- 
 ble to him. He never understands woman as 
 woman understands him. The man’s thoucrht 
 
 o 
 
 reverts occasionally, or it may be frequently, 
 to wife and child. The woman’s thought 
 stands always like an invisible angel by the 
 side of husband and child wherever they may 
 be. She is the unseen Ariel who creates all 
 the sweet and mysterious music which leads us 
 out of the dark and thorny places of life. “O 
 woman !” exclaims Michelet, “ fragile globe 
 of incomparable alabaster, wherein burns the 
 lamp of God.” 
 
 In the old world and the old times, w'hen 
 everything was symbolic, this interiority of 
 wmman was represented by the large mantle in 
 wdiich the bride was concealed when presented 
 to the husband. It w^as by this means that 
 Jacob was deceived, and Leah substituted for 
 Rebecca. The modern veil is the last vestige 
 of this concealment. The strict seclusion of 
 the Oriental woman, the flowing, concealing 
 
Spirittial Differences Between the Sexes. 201 
 
 dress of the sex, the scriptural command that 
 woman should not go with the head uncovered, 
 nor speak in public assemblies, have their 
 origin in a spiritual recognition of the essential 
 interiority of woman. 
 
 For the same reason the sphere of woman’s 
 power is the house, the chamber, the closet, 
 and not the street, the field, the forum, the mar- 
 ket-place, — the common theatres of masculine 
 activity. Woman is to deal with domestic af- 
 fections and uses, not with philosophies and 
 sciences. She is the form of charity, not of 
 faith. She is priest, not king. The house, 
 the chamber, the closet, are the centres of all 
 social life and power, as surely as the sun is 
 the centre of the solar system. Woman occu- 
 pies already the precise point from which she 
 can move the world. She needs only the lever, 
 which is the knowledge of the right method of 
 doing it. 
 
 Another proof of the interiority of woman, is 
 the wonderful secretiveness and power of dis- 
 simulation which she possesses. These words 
 applied to woman’s character, have a good 
 meaning very different from the usual meaning 
 
202 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 attached to them. Woman’s secresy is not 
 cunning ; her dissimulation is not fraud. They 
 are intuitions or spiritual perceptions, full of 
 tact and wisdom, leading her to conceal or 
 reveal, to speak or be silent, to do or not to do, 
 exactly at the right time and in the right place. 
 A type of woman’s beautiful dissimulation is 
 seen in the mother of Moses, who carried her 
 point with great ingenuity, concealing her child 
 from his cruel enemies ; and, what was still 
 more difficult, concealing her own gushing joy- 
 ous maternity from the Egyptian princess. 
 
 A charming English poet, describing the 
 secret and wonderful power of a true woman 
 to elevate and purify the man she loves, thus 
 sings : 
 
 “ Without his knowledge he was won. 
 
 Against his nature kept devout; 
 
 She’ll never tell him how ’twas done, 
 
 And he will never find it out. 
 
 If, sudden, he suspects her wiles. 
 
 And hears her forging chain and trap. 
 
 And looks; she sits in simple smiles, 
 
 Her^'o hands lying in her lap!” 
 
 Such are the spiritual differences between 
 man and woman, on wffiich must be based a true 
 
spiritual Differences Betweeti the Sexes. 303 
 
 philosophy of sex. Eminent service will these 
 doctrines render to those who study the spiritual 
 uses of marriage, the causes and effects of the 
 perversion of the love-principle or of false mar- 
 riages, and the means whereby may be inau- 
 gurated a new and better civilization, in which 
 woman, as love married to wisdom, or charity 
 conjoined with faith, shall share with man the 
 government, the glory, and the happiness of “a 
 new earth,” fitted by their united efforts for 
 communication with the “ new heaven.” 
 
 In all we have said thus far, we have had 
 onl}^ good men and women in our mind’s eye. 
 There is a dark reverse to our bright picture ; 
 opposite forms, but governed by the same laws. 
 Instead of good, there is evil ; instead of the 
 true, there is the untrue ; instead of heat, cold ; 
 instead of light, darkness. There are men 
 who bi'eathe upon women only the sensual and 
 the false. There are women “ whose cham- 
 bers are the gates of death, and whose steps 
 lead down to hell.” 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE AND 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 YOUTH 1 beautiful, tender, enchant- 
 ing aurora of life ! happy transition 
 period between the child and the man ! 
 What soul from whose hearing 
 
 “ The horns of Elfland, faintly blowing,” 
 
 have not died away for ever, can forget its 
 sweet illusions, its wild ambitions, its incom- 
 municable longings, its transport and its tears? 
 
 “Tears from the depths of some divine despair!” 
 
 The wonderful secret of all this, is love. 
 God created woman to be a form of love. 
 At the age of puberty the magnetic forces of 
 the sexes begin reciprocally to excite and at- 
 tract each other. Up to that period, the boy 
 and girl are almost undistinguishable in form 
 and feature ; then they separate, — separate, 
 
 204 
 
spiritual Philosophy of Love a 7 id Beaicty. 205 
 
 however, only to be drawn together again by 
 irresistible powers, and reunited for ever. 
 
 The astonishing changes which take place 
 in the physical and moral systems of both 
 sexes at this period, are explained by the doc- 
 trines advanced in the preceding chapter. Like 
 flowers which have different affinities for the 
 heat and light of the sun, the feminine life 
 awakens into activity at the touch of the Divine 
 Love, and the masculine life at the touch of 
 the Divine Wisdom. The feminine principle, 
 secretly inspired by the tenderest love, clothes 
 itself with beauty in which the corresponding 
 masculine intellect can see its own interior wds- 
 dom portrayed and reflected as in a magical 
 mirror. 
 
 Therefore the phenomena of woman’s devel- 
 opment which differentiate her from man, lie in 
 the plane of love or the emotional sphere ; and 
 the phenomena of man’s development which dif- 
 ferentiate him from woman, lie in the plane of 
 the understanding or the intellectual sphere. 
 
 This law is represented in the body of each 
 sex by specific changes. The changes in 
 
 woman belong to the interior, those in man, to 
 s 
 
2o6 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 the exterior, organic forms. In woman they 
 attach to the blood-system, of which the heart, 
 the great representative of the emotional life, 
 is the centre. In man they attach to the res- 
 piratory S3'stem, for the lungs reflect and ulti- 
 mate by speech the intellectual life of the brain. 
 The interior periodic changes in woman, an- 
 nounce her preparation for a love more spiritual 
 and super-sensuous than that of man, and for 
 the holy offices of wifehood and maternity. 
 The change of voice in man and the growth of 
 muscle and beard, proclaim the development of 
 wisdom, courage, power, and “ the wrestling 
 thews that throw the world.” 
 
 Inspired by the love of wisdom or know- 
 ledge, the masculine understanding early as- 
 serts itself and betra3's its spiritual affinities. 
 What earnest pursuit, what abstraction, what 
 passionate study, what lofty ambition, what 
 hope, what audacity ! Imagination lends wings 
 to desire, and the dreams of the 3'outh are pro- 
 phecies of the man. The 3’oung statesman 
 declaims to applauding senates which hj^'e 
 never assembled, and the poet who has not 3'et 
 sung, listens to his songs as the3’^ echo round 
 
spiritual Philosophy of Love and Beauty. 207 
 
 the world. The coming soldier steps to in- 
 audible drums, and the born sailor hears in his 
 inland solitude the music of the sea. 
 
 How different the evolution of woman’s na- 
 ture ! The bloom of a new loveliness comes over 
 her face. The charm of a new elegance like a 
 spiritual drapery envelops her form. Startled at 
 her own dawning beauties which make her the 
 centre of attraction, she retires, self-conscious, 
 into herself with bashful timidity. She trem- 
 bles, “like a guilty thing surprised,” at the 
 unfoldings of nature in herself and others. 
 What charming apprehensions, what grace, 
 what sweet dependence, what affection, what 
 passion, what caprices, what tender inquietudes, 
 what brooding fancies ! 
 
 — “And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, 
 
 An undistinguishable throng!” 
 
 — all foreshadowing the development of a 
 moral and emotional medium or organ of the 
 Divine Love; the bride of wisdom, the rose of 
 joy, the pearl of innocence, the light, the life, 
 the wonder of the world. 
 
 Then it is that the two angels of youth. 
 
2 o 8 The Sexes', Here aiid Hereafter. 
 
 Honor and Chastity, male and female, appear 
 with their flaming swords to guard the sacred 
 gates which enclose the tree of life. Chastity 
 is the purity and innocence of love, and mod- 
 esty is her inevitable handmaid. Honor is 
 loyalty to truth and principle, and courage is 
 his noble shield-bearer. Chastity belongs to 
 the heart and the will ; Honor to the under- 
 standing and the thought.- The gender of 
 these virtues is the reason why we speak of 
 the honor of man and the chastity of woman 
 as the priceless pearls of a high civilization. 
 
 Love radiating from its divine source, 
 changes its manifestation according to the forms 
 into which it flows. In the highest or celestial 
 sphere, nearest to the Lord, it is the celestial 
 love of the angels. In the next inferior sphere, 
 it is spiritual love. Lower still, it is the natural 
 love of the sex with man. Below the rational 
 sphere, it is simply animal or corporeal. Di- 
 vested of sentiment, it becomes a mere passion. 
 Farther down the ladder of nature, it is the 
 sympathy of plants, the attraction of metals, the 
 gravitation of atoms, — love being the life and 
 soul of all things from the greatest to the least. 
 
spiritual Philosophy of Love and Beauty. 209 
 
 Woman is a bundle of loves which determine 
 her thought. Man is a bundle of thoughts 
 which determine his love. As every chemical 
 element in nature has specific affinities for cer- 
 tain other elements, so every constituent of the 
 masculine soul has its fixed affinity for some cor- 
 responding constituent in the feminine soul. 
 The elemental forms of our interior minds are 
 forever striving after union with their sexual 
 counterparts. This is the origin of the love of 
 the sex, or the mutual and reciprocal passional 
 attraction between man and woman. Thence 
 come all the activities of life. 
 
 Woman is attracted to man by the manifesta- 
 tion of those forms and qualities which flow 
 from the operation of wisdom or truth in the 
 masculine soul. A woman may marry from 
 any motive, — external, inadequate, and even 
 base ; but she never loves a man unless he is 
 wise, brave, strong, just, or capable, in her eyes. 
 She does not care for beauty in him ; because 
 she wishes that for herself, so that she can be- 
 stow it upon him in exchange for the protection, 
 the power, the dignity, the organizing and ex- 
 ecutive genius of the masculine life. 
 
 14 S » 
 
210 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 Man is attracted to woman by that beauty 
 which is the symbol or hierogl3'ph of his own 
 most secret thought. Her grace of movement, 
 symmetry, softness and elegance of form, her 
 sweetness of manner, vivacity of intellect, or 
 tenderness of sentiment, strike the hidden and 
 sympathetic cords in some masculine soul, 
 which thus sees its counterpart or other self 
 revealed to it in a manner incomprehensible to 
 all other souls. 
 
 “ He meets, bj' heavenly chance express, 
 
 His destined wife: some hidden hand 
 Unveils to him that loveliness 
 
 Which others cannot understand.” 
 
 Each masculine or feminine soul has its or- 
 ganic peculiarities which differentiate it from all 
 others, as each face differs from all other faces. 
 Add to this, that each soul finds its correspond- 
 ing complement in the other sex, and we see 
 how the love of the sex has a constant tendency 
 to terminate and resolve itself into a love of but 
 one of the sex. This is the natural cause of 
 marriage as an institution, which, by civil and 
 religious sanction, enables us to secure and 
 retain sole possession of the object of our love. 
 
spiritual Philosophy oj' Love and Beauty. 211 
 
 “ Marriage,” says Jeremy Taylor, “ is the 
 mother of the world ; and preserves kingdoms 
 and fills cities and churches, and even heaven 
 itself.” 
 
 Of this reciprocal influence of the sexes, this 
 tender passion, the sweetest bond of social life 
 and the inspiration of poetry and art, Emerson 
 beautifully observes : 
 
 “A private and tender relation of one to one 
 is the enchantment of human life, which, like 
 a certain divine rage or enthusiasm, seizes on 
 man at one period, and works a revolution in 
 mind and body ; unites him to his race ; pledges 
 him to the domestic and civic relations ; carries 
 him with new sympathy into nature ; enhances 
 the power of the senses ; opens the imaginar- 
 tion ; adds to his character heroic and sacred 
 attributes ; establishes marriage, and gives per- 
 manence to human society.” 
 
 It is needless to repeat what has been said by 
 brilliant writers on the nature of love. Every- 
 thing hitherto advanced on the subject, relates 
 only to the passional attraction between man 
 and woman in the natural life. Neither poets nor 
 divines have obtained more than a glimpse of 
 
212 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter, 
 
 that spiritual love between the sexes, which is 
 the theme and life of Swedenborg’s philosophy. 
 Its quality, even its existence, is unknown. It is 
 claimed for it that it was revealed from heaven ; 
 and certainly it has no counterpart in the spec- 
 ulations of any mundane philosopher. It is the 
 key to the doctrine of marriage in heaven. It 
 is so novel, transcending so far the usual level 
 of human study and thought, that it has been 
 superficially examined, and greatly misrepre- 
 sented. It deserves a thorough consideration. 
 
 Swedenborg, raising love to a higher power 
 or spiritual degree, discards the word conjugal, 
 which implies being yoked together, and sub- 
 stitutes conjugial, which means united. The 
 conjugial love of Swedenborg is something 
 more than the natural love between husband 
 and wife. No purit}^, fidelity, or intensity of 
 affection, can of itself elevate the natural love 
 of the sex to the spiritual or conjugial love 
 which is the bond of wedded souls in heaven. 
 The most wicked men and women are some- 
 times capable of the most romantic passion, the 
 most extreme devotion to the object of their 
 love. And Swedenborg declares that the dead- 
 
spiritual Philosophy oj" Love and Beauty. 213 
 
 liest hatred may lie concealed underneath such 
 affectionate exteriors, beyond the consciousness 
 of both parties, only to be revealed by death 
 and the judgment. 
 
 Conjugial love does not grow out of the nat- 
 ural love of the sexes for each other, but may 
 be inserted into it like a gem in its matrix, or 
 the soul in its body. Man is created an image 
 of God, a finite form of heaven, and contains 
 all the degrees of life in his own organization. 
 He is born, however, only into the lowest or 
 sensuous and corporeal degree. The higher 
 degrees, — the rational, spiritual, and celestial, 
 — may be successively opened in him by a life 
 according to the commandments, which makes 
 him receptive of the life of heaven. So long 
 as he lives in the sensuous degree, he is only 
 capable of sensual love. When he becomes 
 rational, his love is imbued with rational life. 
 Only as he has the spiritual or celestial degrees 
 opened within him, can he be animated by 
 spiritual or celestial love. 
 
 The love of the sex belongs to the external 
 or natural man. Conjugial love belongs to the 
 internal or spiritual man. Only the regenerate, 
 
214 The Sexes,' He7'e and Hereayter. 
 
 — only the angels understand or fully enjoy the 
 conjugial love ; and man enters into a percep- 
 tion of its delights, only as he advances in 
 regeneration and becomes more and more like 
 the angels. The spiritual degree is opened by 
 a life of good works in obedience to the Divine 
 Word. Just as that degree is opened, is the 
 conjugial principle developed in the heart, 
 whether the person be externally married or 
 not ; and the soul is becoming fitted for its eter- 
 nal marriage with its mate in some angelic 
 society. 
 
 A regenerate soul is one who has experienced 
 the heavenly marriage between his own puri- 
 fied will and enlightened understanding, so 
 that faith ajid charity are perfectly wedded in 
 his nature for the production of good works. 
 Such a regenerate soul, when masculine, is a 
 certain finite image of the Divine Wisdom. 
 Such a regenerate soul, if feminine, is a cer- 
 tain image of the Divine Love. The union 
 between the Divine Love and the Divine Wis- 
 dom, which makes the Father and Son one 
 Divine Being, flowing into these regenerate 
 souls, draws them into a spiritual union, — the 
 
Sph'itual Philosophy of Love and Beauty. 215 
 
 two together making one holy angel, or image 
 and likeness of God. 
 
 Such is the conjugial love which makes not 
 only possible, but probable and rational, the 
 wonderful descriptions of married pairs whom 
 Swedenborg asserts that he saw in heaven. 
 
 In our feeble and imperfect state, so remote 
 from the realization of such glorious ideals, we 
 can scarcely form an adequate conception of 
 the conjugial love. Swedenborg declares it to 
 be the parent and fountain of all other loves 
 both spiritual and natural. It is full of inno- 
 cence, wisdom, peace, and blessedness ; and 
 its exquisite delights are so superior to any- 
 thing that springs from a merely natural rela- 
 tion, that they are inconceivable to the sensual 
 man. 
 
 It is taught by Swedenborg that woman alone 
 derives the conjugial love and the love of the 
 sex from the Lord, and imparts them to man. 
 It seems to man that his affections arise spon- 
 taneously in himself, and to woman that her 
 thoughts or ideas are unquestionably her own. 
 But it is not so. If the whole masculine sphere 
 were withdrawn from woman, she would be in- 
 
2i6 The Sexes; Here a7id Hereafter. 
 
 capable of thinking at all. If the whole fem- 
 inine sphere were withdrawn from man, he 
 would have no emotional life whatever. Swe- 
 denborg says the latter experiment was tried 
 with some spirits in the spiritual world, and the 
 result convinced them that woman is the organ 
 or medium through whom the Divine Love is 
 brought down to the various degrees of life. 
 
 The love with which man is first inspired by 
 woman, has something in it especially tender 
 and charming. We attribute the romantic sen- 
 timent of early love to the ardent imagination 
 of youth, unchastened as yet by the severe dis- 
 cipline of life. It comes rather from the influx 
 of angelic spheres redolent with the conjugial 
 life of heaven. Celestial angels are very near 
 us in infancy, and spiritual angels in youth ; 
 and when woman inspires us with our first love, 
 our guardian friends endeavor to implant the 
 conjugial principle in the embryonic forms of 
 sexual attachment. Hence the ineffable charm 
 and freshness and beauty and glory of “ love’s 
 young dream !” 
 
 By a selfish, worldly, and ambitious life, un- 
 blessed by noble resolves or spiritual aspira- 
 
spiritual Philosophy of Love and Beauty. 217 
 
 tions, we close the interior of our minds to 
 heavenly influences, and our subsequent love 
 of woman becomes more and more external 
 and sensual. At last the cold and selfish natu- 
 ralist scoffs at the idea of a purely spiritual love 
 of woman, as a theological fiction or a poet’s 
 dream. In proportion, however, as our love 
 for woman retains a chaste, tender and rever- 
 ential spirit, do we preserve the conjugial 
 principle in our hearts — that shekinah reveal- 
 ing the Divine presence, — and retain the possi- 
 bility of becoming like the angels of God, who 
 have achieved the spiidtual resurrection and 
 attained to the heavenly marriage. 
 
 This tender, unselfish, super-sensuous attrac- 
 tion between two souls, enriching life and defy- 
 ing death, is the true natural form, matrix, or 
 cradle in which the conjugial love is best devel- 
 oped. It is the thorough sympathy with one, 
 which makes us bountiful to all. “ The one 
 beautiful soul,” says Emerson, “ is the only 
 door through which we enter into the society 
 of all true and pure souls.” Unions based on 
 sensual, social, or civil grounds, may dissolve 
 or perish. But those natural loves which emu- 
 
2i8 The Sexes; Ha-e and Hereafter. 
 
 late by their purity and beauty the conjugial or 
 heavenly type, we instinctively pronounce im- 
 mortal. Who can doubt that Abelard and 
 Eloise found no isolating cloister in heaven? 
 That Petrarch and Laura are no longer sepa- 
 rated by the absurdities of rank or fortune? 
 That Dante is at last united with Beatrice in a 
 life more beautiful than his Poem? And that in 
 every heavenly choir there is a loving Margaret 
 praying for some earthly Faust? 
 
 The young heart which has been baptized 
 with the dew of a chaste and sweet love, and 
 which keeps itself afterward unspotted from the 
 selfishness and sensuality of the world, can 
 never grow old. It is not time but sin which 
 shuts the gate of heaven. It is a beautiful 
 thing, and truly prophetic of our immortal 
 bloom, that man may return in his old age into 
 the most tender and charming sentiments of his 
 innocent youth. With what sweet simplicit}'' 
 and candor does the pious and learned Perthes 
 describe the effect of a second marriage upon 
 him in his old ao-e ! 
 
 o 
 
 “ My own experiences amaze me. The 
 varying moods familiar to the innocent heart 
 
spiritual Philosophy of Love and Beauty. 219 
 
 of the boy in his first love ; the enthusiastic 
 tenderness which found vent in happy melan- 
 choly and universal good-will to all creation ; 
 these lay far, far behind me like a lovely dream, 
 and no wishing had power to call them back. 
 But now I feel again as I did then. How is 
 this possible in a man of my age? How can I, 
 whose heart has been so tempest-tossed by time 
 and the world; — how can I, who have known 
 so much and sinned so much, return thus to the 
 innocent fondness which nestles in the newly- 
 awakened heart of a boy?” 
 
 Poor, old, pure-hearted man ! He did not 
 know that nothing but the thin veil of death 
 concealed from him a land of eternal youth and 
 eternal love ! 
 
 The spiritual philosophy of sex reveals also 
 the origin and signification of Beauty, — that 
 mysterious and ethereal power which wakens 
 the love of man for woman into activity. 
 
 Beauty is an assemblage of properties in the 
 form of a person or object, the contemplation 
 of which inspires the soul with delight. Those 
 properties depend upon symmetry, grace, color, 
 expression, harmony, etc. Beauty is the result 
 
220 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 of the marriage union between the Divine 
 Goodness and the Divine Truth, as manifested 
 in human forms or natural objects. The Di- 
 vine Love created the world by means of the 
 Divine Wisdom, and the universe was therefore 
 called by the ancients the Cosmos, or essential 
 beauty. 
 
 Heat and light are the ultimate or last forms 
 of the divine love and wisdom flowing into 
 nature. The beauty of every substance is 
 determined by the heat and light which give it 
 organization. Its form is determined by the 
 relation of its atoms to heat, and it is revealed 
 to our perceptions by means of light. It ab- 
 sorbs, reflects, or transmits the rays of light 
 according to its atomic structure, determined 
 by its relation to heat. The beauty of the 
 whole external world depends upon form and 
 color ; and form and color depend upon the 
 relation which the atoms of all objects bear to 
 heat and light. 
 
 This natural truth is the exact outward ex- 
 pression of a similar spiritual truth. What we 
 may call the atomic form or wall-principle of 
 the soul, is determined by its relation to tire Di- 
 
spiritual Philosophy oy Love and Beauty. 221 
 
 vine Love, or spiritual heat; while its intellec- 
 tual manifestation or understanding, is deter- 
 mined by its relation to the Divine Wisdom, or 
 spiritual light. When the two influent divine 
 forces are perfectly married or united in the 
 spiritual form, we have perfect symmetry, 
 grace, order, and beauty, in proportion to the 
 use of the form. 
 
 The life of the Divine Love manifesting 
 itself through the Divine Wisdom, is the cause 
 of Beauty. Therefore the Beautiful is a reve- 
 lation of the True containing the Good. 
 
 Professor Oersted of Copenhagen, has given 
 these ideas scientific expression in several ses- 
 thetic papers. He maintains that the beauty 
 of a thing depends upon the number, character, 
 or influence of the ideas or truths involved 
 in it. Why do we feel that a curved line is 
 more beautiful than a straight one? Why is a 
 circle more beautiful than a square, or a spiral 
 than a circle? Because the higher and more 
 complicated form involves more great mathe- 
 matical and fundamental truths than the lower, 
 and conveys a correspondingly greater sense 
 of pleasure to our perceptive faculties. Why 
 
 T iS 
 
222 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter, 
 
 is a crystal more beautiful than a common 
 stone? Because it expresses and symbolizes 
 more ideas and treasures of spiritual truth. 
 Could we grasp the ideas represented by differ- 
 ent objects, we should have the key to all of na- 
 ture’s symbolisms, and might immediately dis- 
 cover why a flower is more beautiful than a peb- 
 ble, why spring is more charming than winter, 
 why the ocean touches us with such sublime 
 sentiments, and why we look away through and 
 beyond the golden peace of an evening sky, 
 into the purity, love, and infinitude of heaven ! 
 
 It is not at all necessary to the sensation of 
 the beautiful, that the understanding should 
 have a conscious perception of the ideas or 
 truths involved in the beautiful object. The 
 influence of beauty is like that of music, pro- 
 ducing a state of the soul which cannot be de- 
 scribed in words. For the perception of the 
 beautiful, a certain open state of the heart is 
 required rather than an exalted activity of the 
 head ; for the beautiful awakens first the affec- 
 tions and then the thoughts. The poet sees 
 more with his heart in the flowers, the ri^’ulets, 
 the clouds, the sunset, than the philosopher with 
 
spiritual Philosophy of Love and Beauty. 223 
 
 all his erudition. And it is only the pure in 
 heart who see God. 
 
 Reverting, now, to the spiritual differences 
 between the sexes, we discover the wonderful 
 office of woman in revealing the beautiful to 
 man, and thereby uniting him with herself. 
 The Divine Love comes to man not directly 
 from the Lord, but mediatel}" thi'ough woman. 
 The Divine Wisdom comes to woman not di- 
 rectly from the Lord, but mediately through 
 man. It is therefore the man’s wisdom, or in- 
 tellectual sphere, which the woman appropriates 
 and marries to her own love derived from the 
 Lord. The beauty of woman is the result of 
 this union. Man is therefore attracted by wo- 
 man’s beauty, because, although he is intellect- 
 ually unconscious of it, that beauty is the out- 
 ward figure, symbol, and revelation of some- 
 thing inherent in his own intellectual organizla- 
 tion. It is himself in another form. It is bone 
 of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Woman is 
 attracted to man, because he realizes for her, in 
 his deeds of strength and wisdom, the ideals of 
 her love ; but man sees himself reflected in 
 
224 2"he Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 woman, and his wisdom mirrored back to him 
 in the engaging forms of beauty. 
 
 The logical issue of these psychological laws 
 is, that the beauty of woman will always and 
 everywhere depend upon the impression made 
 upon her by the intellectual sphere of man. 
 All women cannot be beautiful, until all men 
 are wise and manifest their wisdom by a good 
 life. The treasures of the masculine under- 
 standing and their utilization in obedience to 
 the divine commandments, determine the state 
 of feminine beauty in the world. Barbarians 
 are invariably homely and repulsive, because 
 the women have nothing to reflect in the shape 
 of beauty, except a low, selfish, stupid and sen- 
 sual type of masculine life. The higher and 
 nobler the achievements of man over nature 
 and himself, the more fully and radiantly does 
 woman shine forth as the beautiful realization 
 of his dreams. The existence of such men as 
 Homer and HUschylus and Plato and Socrates, 
 was the cause of the beauty of Grecian women, 
 and of the passion of Grecian genius for a 
 beneficent and lovely nature. 
 
 The love of the beautiful in nature is, indeed, 
 
spiritual Philosophy of Love a?td Beauty. 225 
 
 near akin to the chaste and spiritual love of 
 woman ; for nature reflects the wisdom of God 
 just as woman reflects the wisdom of man. 
 And poets and artists who project the interior 
 wisdom of their souls into the beautiful forms 
 of painting and statuary, music and song, exer- 
 cise a kind of womanly office for the rest of 
 men, stimulating their affections, expanding 
 their thoughts, and developing within them the 
 higher and nobler manhood. 
 
 This is also the secret of the fact, that the 
 dullest imagination is kindled into some tempo- 
 rary appreciation of the beauties of nature by 
 the inspiring influence of woman’s love. The 
 most stupid lovers are poets ; but it is only the 
 true poets, — born, not made, — who can detect 
 the identity of the beautiful in the spiritual and 
 the natural spheres. 
 
 “ She seems the life of nature’s powers ; 
 
 Her beauty is the genial thought 
 Which makes the sunshine bright. The flowers, 
 
 But for their hint of her, were naught.” 
 
 Woman’s passion for dress is duly accounted 
 for by her intuitive perception of the fact, that 
 it is her special mission to secure the love of 
 
 15 
 
236 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 man by revealing to him the beautiful, although 
 she is ignorant of the intimate relation existing 
 between female beaut}^ and masculine wisdom. 
 Dress, including all that relates to the preser- 
 vation and ornamentation of the person, is and 
 ought to be a fine art with woman. There is a 
 clothes-philosophy pregnant with more spiritual 
 truth than Carlyle and his school ever imag- 
 ined. She who does not seek to beautify her- 
 self, especially after marriage, and for the 
 influence of beauty in the home-circle, has not 
 fully comprehended the nature of love or the 
 duties of life. A woman without that assist- 
 ance which a refined and delicate taste can 
 give her, is like a spring without flowers, a 
 feast without music, a night without stars. 
 
 In an unbelieving and sensual age, woman 
 is in danger of forgetting that physical beauty 
 is only the lowest form of the development of 
 the beautiful. If she loses sight of moral and 
 intellectual beaut}^, and thinks that man cares 
 only for physical charms, and dresses accord- 
 ingly, she may become a vast power for evil 
 and demoralization in the social sphere. The 
 true wisdom of man is measured by his appre- 
 
spiritual Philosophy oj" Love and Beauty. 237 
 
 ciation of spiritual more than of sensuous beauty, 
 — or of sensuous beauty only as fitly embodying 
 the spiritual. 
 
 The beautiful garments, the splendid jewels 
 and precious stones, and all the graceful and 
 charming decorations of woman in the state of 
 highest civilization, are simply the exterior rep- 
 resentative symbols of the spiritual treasures 
 which exist in the heart and soul of the true 
 wife. These treasures are chastity, meekness, 
 modesty, fidelity, — the luminaries of the little 
 heaven of home ; the face unruffled by passion ; 
 the eye beaming with tenderness ; the voice 
 modulated by gentle and kindly emotions ; the 
 mind full of radiant and happy thoughts ; the 
 heart throbbing with self-sacrificing love of 
 husband and children ; and a soul sweet and 
 pure, reflecting to earth the light and peace of 
 heaven. 
 
 Alas ! why is it that the proud, the sensual 
 and the vicious can array themselves in the 
 fine linen and purple of the angels, while the 
 good and the pure are frequently condemned 
 like culprits to the humblest and coarsest garb 
 of poverty? Why is it that beautiful faces con 
 
22S The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 ceal cruel and selfish hearts, while homely fea- 
 tures fail to express the secret spiritual beaut}'' 
 of their possessors? The answer to these ques- 
 tions involves the spiritual philosophy of evil, 
 and its effects upon the human soul and its en- 
 vironments, — subjects foreign to the scope of 
 this little volume. Suffice it here to say, that 
 by sin the correspondence between the internal 
 and external spheres has been lost, the exterior 
 no longer perfectly representing the interior ; 
 while the efforts of the Divine Providence are 
 still directed to preserve an orderly and beau- 
 tiful exterior, to serve as the basis of a new and 
 higher interior life. 
 
 In heaven, however, all are young and beau- 
 tiful, and clad in shining garments. This is 
 because they are all perfect and exquisite forms 
 of married love and wisdom. Their moral and 
 spiritual beauty resides in a splendid external 
 » form, like a gem in its casket, like fragrance in 
 a flower. The heavenly symmetry of their 
 minds, the complete union of goodness and truth 
 or of charity and faith in their affections and 
 thouo'hts, ofives their exterior embodiment a 
 most resplendent comeliness corresponding to 
 
spiritual Philosophy of Love atid Beauty. 229 
 
 their spiritual natures. The secret of all this 
 is the conjugial love — the vital and organizing 
 principle of heaven, the primal source of all 
 beauty, and the image of God in the heart. 
 
 u 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL USES OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 E approach now the most difficult yet 
 the most pleasing part of our task, — the 
 spiritual uses of marriage. The sub- 
 ject is solemn, sublime, and inexhaustible. He 
 who would popularize the subtile and profound 
 teachings of Swedenborg on conjugial love, 
 and show how marriages on earth may be made 
 to resemble marriages in heaven, would render 
 a greater service to the human race than the in- 
 ventors of oil and wine. Many candid thinkers 
 have recognized the immense additions which 
 this writer has made to a rational psychology ; 
 but only his earnest students see the important 
 bearing of his doctrines upon the conduct and 
 duties of every-day life. 
 
 hlarriage exists as a -principle and as an 
 institution. 
 
 We have shown that marriage as a principle 
 
 230 
 
The Sptrihial Uses of Marriage. 231 
 
 is universal. A principle is a general truth ; a 
 law comprehending many subordinate truths ; 
 a settled law or rule of action ; a primordial 
 element or operative cause. Nothing exists in 
 the universe but from the union or marriage of 
 two other things. Every form is dual. Every 
 form is governed by laws of affinity and attrac- 
 tion. Sex, love, and marriage are universal 
 and eternal. • 
 
 An institution is that which is appointed, 
 prescribed, established by authority, and in- 
 tended to be permanent. The institution of 
 marriage is a form of divine order, by means 
 of which marriage as a principle, an eternal 
 law or operative cause, can govern in human 
 and angelic societies according to the divine 
 commandments. 
 
 The institutions established by God, are de- 
 signed to bring the spiritual and natural worlds 
 into harmonious relation with Himself, so that 
 one God, one law, one life, may govern in both, 
 man become the image of God, and earth the 
 image of heaven. 
 
 The written Word of God is an institution, 
 appointed, prescribed, and established by divine 
 
232 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 authority, connecting heaven and earth. An- 
 gels live in the sphere of its spiritual life, and 
 men in its literal sphere. Obedience to the 
 Word in the letter elevates man from the sen- 
 sual to the rational degree, and prepares him 
 for the reception of the spiritual or angelic life. 
 
 The Church of God, with its ordinances, bap- 
 tism and the holy supper, is an external institu- 
 tional form by which our lives, spiritual and 
 natural, may be brought into harmony with the 
 Divine Will. 
 
 The marriane of one man with one woman 
 
 O 
 
 in the external world is an institutional form, 
 rep'ulatinor the mutual influences of the sexes 
 
 O O 
 
 on each other, and turning them into specific 
 channels ; and it is an important means of attain- 
 ing to the higher or spiritual marriage. 
 
 The Word of God exists in heaven, based 
 upon its literal or institutional form on earth. 
 The Church of God exists triumphant in hea- 
 ven, based on its militant or external form on 
 earth. Marriage exists in heaven and pours 
 down its harmonic spiritual life into marriages 
 on earth, just in proportion as the married part- 
 ners here love the Word and the Church of 
 
The Spiritital Uses of Marriage. 233 
 
 God, and lead a life of idghteous endeavor and 
 heavenly use. 
 
 Marriage was established by God ; for Jesus 
 said : 
 
 “ Have ye not read, that He which made 
 them at 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 be one flesh. 
 
 “Wherefore they are no more twain, but 
 one flesh. What therefore God hath joined to- 
 gether, let not man put asunder.” 
 
 The institution of marriage has two great 
 spheres of use, one within or above the other. 
 In this twofold operation, first upon the exter- 
 nal man and next upon the internal, it also re- 
 sembles the two great institutions with which 
 we have compared it, viz. : the Word and the 
 Church. 
 
 The first great use of the institution, is to 
 elevate man from the sensual into the rational 
 degree of life, preparatory to the opening of 
 the spiritual degree in him. 
 
 Its second use is to implant the conjugial 
 
234 The Sexes; Here a7id Hereafter. 
 
 principle in him as a means of regeneration, 
 and so to spiritualize and fit him for eternal 
 marriage in heaven. 
 
 Marriage is a means designed for the spiritual 
 creation and up-building of man out of chaotic 
 materials into the order and beauty of rational 
 existence, and finally into the glory and felicity 
 of angelic life. 
 
 The necessity of marriage as a civil or re- 
 ligious institution, which limits the intercourse 
 of the sexes to one husband and one wife, can 
 only be seen in the light of the spiritual truths 
 enunciated in the preceding chapters. There 
 are currents of spiritual life which flow from 
 each sex to the other, and back again ; currents 
 as real and as potent as the red tide of blood 
 which passes from the heart to the lungs, and 
 back again, enriched with aerial treasure, to the 
 heart. 
 
 When man and woman live together in mar- 
 riage, the woman becomes so powerfully and 
 organically impressed wdth the spiritual image 
 of the man, that it sometimes happens that the 
 children by a second husband resemble a first 
 husband long dead, but whose spiritual image 
 
The Spiritual Uses of Marriage. 235 
 
 had been ineffaceably stamped on the interior 
 forms of the woman’s life. The man receives 
 similar spiritual influx from the partner of his 
 bosom ; and his after-life is not the life of his 
 own intellect, but the life of his intellect modi- 
 fied by the inflowing and inspiring emotional 
 life of the woman. 
 
 The state of man and woman living together 
 in the bonds of wedlock, is vastly different from 
 the state of man and woman unmarried. The 
 tendency of their reciprocal reactions resem- 
 bling the magnetic induction, is to engraft the 
 nature of each upon the other, and gradually 
 to bring thought, feeling, and life into spiritual 
 harmony. 
 
 Thus a husband or wife is a direct, powerful, 
 concentrating focus through which the other 
 party may receive special influx from heavenly 
 sources. 
 
 The effect of marriage, therefore, upon the 
 masculine soul, is to sharpen and brighten its 
 faculties, to enlarge and humanize its powers, 
 and to qualify it in an eminent degree for the 
 uses and labors of life. How sweetly does 
 the poet Schiller state this psychological fact 
 
236 The Sexes; Het'e ajid Hereafter. 
 
 in a letter to a friend several months after his 
 marriage ! — 
 
 “It is altogether a different existence by the 
 side of a dear wife, from such a desolate and 
 lonely one as mine was even in summer. Now 
 for the first time I wholly enjoy fair nature, and 
 live in it. Things about me again array them- 
 selves in poetic forms. What a beautiful life I 
 lead now ! My existence has gained a harmo- 
 nious continuity ; not passionately excited, but 
 clearly and calmly my days flow on. A few 
 years more, and I shall live in the full enjoyment 
 of my mind — nay, I hope to return to my youth ; 
 an inward spring of poetic life will restore it to 
 me.” 
 
 Poetry and romance have hitherto been 
 busied with the passionate strivings of conge- 
 nial spirits after their destined union. Wedded 
 love is 3mt unsung, unwritten. The poet of 
 marriage, who shall divine the celestial secrets 
 of womanhood, and, I'everencing all while he 
 loves only one, shall ravish mankind with his 
 chaste melodies, has yet to appear. Not Cupid 
 but Hymen is the true joy-bringer, miracle- 
 worker, and heaven-revealer. Fi'om the wed- 
 
The Spirittcal Uses of Marriage. 237 
 
 ding-day the heart begins a new life, the undei'- 
 standing creates a new history. Heaven upon 
 earth is to young lovers a dream, but to the 
 truly married it becomes a possibility. 
 
 Woman, being the complement of man, taken 
 out of him and yearning to be reunited with his 
 bosom-life, is gifted by Providence with powers 
 of perception, attraction, submission, conceal- 
 ment, and endurance, and with wifely mysteries 
 and faculties, unknown to man, whereof she is 
 often herself unconscious, but which enable her 
 to draw, to bend, to soften, to inspire and 
 modify the masculine soul, so that she becomes 
 indispensable to it, inseparable from it, and an 
 integral and eternal part of it. 
 
 This wonderful spiritual interchange between 
 the sexes, tending to develop a pure and true 
 humanity, is only possible between one man 
 and one woman in the bonds of matrimony. 
 The wife is the true source of spiritual heat, 
 and the husband of spiritual light, to the world. 
 A society in which the sexes live promiscuously, 
 has no spiritual heat or light, but only natu- 
 ral. They cannot rise above the barbaric 
 standard. If it were possible to keep any free- 
 
238 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 love association together, separate from the rest 
 of their own race, they would become in a few 
 generations savage or imbecile. 
 
 The first or natural use of marriao-e, after 
 the procreation of the species, is to elevate man 
 above that sensual life which he shares with 
 the brutes, into a capability of scientific and 
 rational thought. This is below the spiritual 
 degree of life, but is preparatory to it. The 
 state of marriage is the key to the civil, social, 
 and institutional life of a people. Monogamy 
 means civilization ; polj^gamy means barbarism. 
 No science, no literature, no liberty, no high 
 and progressive development, no truly rational 
 life, is possible where woman is degraded and 
 marriage unregulated by the laws of divine 
 order. 
 
 The first or Asiatic civilizations drew their 
 vitality from the golden age of the world, be- 
 fore the relations between the sexes became 
 corrupted and sensualized by poh'gamy and 
 concubinage. The stagnation or decline of a 
 people dates fi'om the desecration of marriage 
 as an institution. The Orient has been crys- 
 tallized or petrified for ages ; so to remain, until 
 
The Spiritual Uses of Alarriage. 239 
 
 some touch of divine power shall free woman 
 from her sensual bondage, and imbue her with 
 that spiritual love which alone can stimulate 
 into glad activity the entire intellectual life of 
 man. 
 
 As far back as historical records extend, 
 polygamy and concubinage have existed in 
 Asia ; but that mankind began its career with 
 a purer system, we have the words of the Lord 
 Himself to prove; for Jesus said: 
 
 “ Moses, because of the hardness of your 
 hearts, suffered you to put away your wives ; 
 but from the beginning it was 7iot so.” 
 
 “And I say unto you [restoring the primal, 
 divine law] , Whosoever shall put away his wife, 
 except it be for fornication, and shall marry an- 
 other, committeth adultery.” 
 
 The following beautiful extract from a Hin- 
 doo epic composed two thousand years before 
 Christ, and therefore one of the most ancient 
 writings in the world, shows a wonderful con- 
 ception of the strength and purity of a wifely 
 love, such as existed in that “beginning” to 
 which the Word refers. Sita, the heroine, 
 insists upon accompanying her husband into a 
 
240 The Sexes; Here a 7 td Hereafter. 
 
 fearful and interminable forest into which his 
 enemies have driven him : 
 
 “ Son of the venerable parent! hear! 
 
 ’Tis Sita speaks. Oh, art thou not assured 
 That to each being his allotted time 
 And portion, as his merit, are assigned ! 
 
 And that the wife her husband’s portion shares ? 
 Therefore with thee this forest doom I claim. 
 
 A woman’s bliss is found, not in the smile 
 Of father, mother, friend, or in herself. 
 
 Her husband is her only portion here, 
 
 Her heaven hereafter. If thou must indeed 
 Depart this day into those dreadful shades, 
 
 I will precede and smooth the thorny way. 
 
 Chide not the wife; for where the husband is. 
 
 Within the palace, on the stately car. 
 
 Or wandering in the air, in every state. 
 
 The shadow of his feet is her abode.” 
 
 While the Persians, Assyrians, and Egyp- 
 tians, having closed the avenues of spiritual 
 life, through the perversions and desecrations 
 of marriage, were consuming awa}" in the bale- 
 ful fires of their own sensuality, two sturdy 
 races were preparing to assume in turn the 
 empire of the world. The Greeks and Ro- 
 mans were the first nations of antiquity who 
 restored by legal enactment the lost institution 
 
The Spiritual Uses oj^ Marriage. 241 
 
 of monogamjr, and threw the shields of law 
 and public opinion around the sacred rights of 
 husband and wife. From the influx of the di- 
 vine love and wisdom through the appropriate 
 forms of the monogamic marriage, came a 
 new institutional life — a new civilization with 
 its monuments of wisdom and beauty, the very 
 ashes of which still excite the admiration of 
 mankind. 
 
 When they, too, became wholly corrupt and 
 sensual ; when religion was silent and virtue 
 extinct ; when the poet, the philosopher, and 
 the artist disappeared, and the shadows of a 
 long and fearful night gathered about their de- 
 parted glories ; any one acquainted with our 
 key to the spiritual philosophy of history, might 
 have foretold where the sun of a better and 
 nobler civilization would arise, on reading a 
 single passage in Tacitus descriptive of the 
 German branch of the great people of Northern 
 Europe : 
 
 “ They take only one wife; and become as 
 it were one body and one soul, having no 
 thought or desire beyond ; and loving, not only 
 
 their partners, but matrimony itself.” 
 le V 
 
242 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 Yes — the marriage of one husband with one 
 wife is the keystone of the social arch. A state 
 rises to power, glory, art, genius, with virtuous 
 marriage. It trembles on the verge of destruc- 
 tion when the reciprocations between the sexes 
 are more sensuous than spiritual. 
 
 Hence the importance of preserving the ex- 
 ternal form of the institution, as a basis upon 
 which its spiritualizing power is to rest. De- 
 velopment depends upon conditions. Spiritual 
 forces can only operate through organic forms. 
 The institution of monogamic marriage, pro- 
 tected by law, cherished by public opinion, and 
 hallowed by the religious sentiment of a people, 
 is an organic social form into which spiritual 
 forces can descend, and enrich our human life 
 with numberless individual and public blessings. 
 
 It is necessary for the peace, dignity, and 
 spirituality of the institution, that the external 
 bond should continue in force during the period 
 of natural life. To disturb the fixity of mar- 
 riage, is to unsettle the foundations of human 
 society, and pervert or prevent the influx of 
 heavenl}^ powers into the human race. It is 
 the road back to barbarism. 
 
The Spij-ihial Uses of Marriage. 243 
 
 The divine law that nothing but adultery 
 shall justify divorce, is founded on the spiritual 
 nature and uses of marriage. So long as the 
 parties remain faithful to each other, no matter 
 what their incompatibility of temper and cha- 
 racter, so long does the spiritual interchange 
 between the sexes continue, striving for equi- 
 librium and unity ; and so long is there a hope 
 that marriage as a discipline, even through its 
 trials, sorrows, and contentions, may promote 
 the spiritual welfare of the parties. But when 
 the woman absorbs the intellectual sphere of 
 another man, or the husband becomes inspired 
 by the love-principle emanating from another 
 woman, the laws of our spiritual life are vio- 
 lated ; the order of heaven is broken ; the 
 unitizing end of marriage is lost ; the marriage 
 itself is annulled ; the heart is hardened ; the 
 understanding is darkened ; and heaven is 
 closed to the offending party, only to be opened 
 again by many tears and deep repentance. 
 
 Most men are ready to admit that the institu- 
 tion of marriage, with all its cares, affections, 
 and responsibilities, its love of children and 
 home, its affinity for law and order, its kinship 
 
244 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 to religion and true liberty, has been the grand 
 stimulus and agent of development in elevating 
 man from a selfish and sensuous state of life to 
 a higher and purer condition, full of thought, 
 sentiment and rational power. And yet this 
 high state of civilized, scientific and rational 
 life, is not spiritual life; nor is the purest and 
 sweetest married love ever developed under its 
 influences, the conjugial love of Swedenborg, 
 or the bond which unites the angels of heaven 
 in marriage. 
 
 Spiritual life is not attainable by arts or sci- 
 ences or philosophies. INIen may become Ba- 
 cons, Franklins, Comtes, Faradays, without 
 having as much spiritual life awakened in 
 their souls as may exist in some little Sunday- 
 school scholar, or in the heart of the humblest 
 slave. Spiritual life is only obtained by obey- 
 ing the commandments of God from religious 
 ;princfle. The conjugial love is a part — and 
 the richest, heavenliest part — of the spiritual 
 life. 
 
 Man from sensual becomes, first rational, and 
 then spiritual. The rational is the connecting 
 bond by which the spiritual is enabled to de- 
 
"The Spiritual Uses oj' Marriage. 245 
 
 scend and govern and regenerate the sensual 
 man. The Word of God in its literal sense, 
 and the Church of God as an external insti- 
 tution, have performed a mighty use in the 
 elevation of man from his sensual state into 
 rational light. The institution of monogamic 
 marriage, based on the same divine principles, 
 has exercised a similar function. 
 
 The Church, having prepared the human 
 mind by its ceremonial laws and ordinances 
 and literal instructions for a higher and more 
 interior life, comes to us glorified in a more 
 spiritual form, not yet recognized by men. 
 The Word of God, having brought the sensual 
 mind by its heavenly influences into rational 
 life and order, is now opened in its spiritual 
 degree, and all are invited to partake freely of 
 the water of life in a higher sense than ever 
 before. The institution of marriage, having 
 contributed its share in the elevation of the 
 race, is now revealed to us in new power and 
 glory, as the great means of individual regen- 
 eration and of a perfect social organization. 
 
 Spiritual marriage is such a conjunction of 
 minds and hearts, that the will of one party is 
 
 V » 
 
246 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 perfectly and reciprocally united to the under- 
 standing of the othei' — so that the husband and 
 wife find their whole life distinctly imaged or 
 repeated, each in the other; constituting the 
 “ one flesh” in the symbolic language of Scrip- 
 ture. 
 
 Such marriages exist among angels and are 
 possible among men, because the sexes are 
 unequal and imperfect when apart ; but, being 
 complements of each other, they constitute, 
 when spiritually united, one man, one angel, 
 the image of God, and the unit in the Lord’s 
 Church. 
 
 The passional attraction, the connecting bond 
 in the spiritual marriage, is the conjugial love, 
 transcending all our earthly conceptions of love, 
 as much as its delights transcend all the pleas- 
 ures of the senses and all the delights of our 
 natural life. 
 
 This conjugial love and this heavenly mar- 
 riage are only possible between two regenerate 
 souls. This at once lifts the conjugial love of 
 Swedenborg into a sphere of thought never 
 before traversed by poet or philosopher, from 
 Sappho to Michelet. 
 
The Spiritual Uses of Marriage. 2 17 
 
 Regeneration is the new birth ; the birth of 
 a new will and of a new understanding. No 
 man and woman in the world can possibly be 
 united in conjugial love, so long as they retain 
 the old or carnal will and understanding. Our 
 natural will is too selfish to blend in married 
 harmony with the wdll of another. Different 
 feelings, different opinions, discords of some 
 kind, are inevitable between man and woman 
 in their unregenerate state, not yet spiritualized 
 by the new birth in the soul. ' 
 
 When a new will or a new selfhood from the 
 Lord is planted in the heart, the old selfish and 
 sensual nature dies and disappears ; and the 
 conjugial union is gradually and progressively 
 effected from a spiritual or divine stand-point, 
 which is the centre of all union, peace, and 
 love. 
 
 That stand-point is attained by both parties 
 only through a life of obedience to the divine 
 commandments. These commandments are 
 not the mere edicts of a king to his subjects. 
 They are the organic laws of the Divine Life ; 
 they are God's own mode of existence and 
 action. Obedience to Him is, therefore, living 
 
24S The Sexes; Here and Heredyter. 
 
 like God in our finite spheres, so that we are in 
 perpetual communication with Him, receive life 
 from Him, and thereby become his images — his 
 children. 
 
 Man and woman, therefore, advance toward 
 the state of conjugial love, and of spiritual mar- 
 riage as it exists in heaven, in exact proportion 
 as they die to their sinful and selfish nature, 
 and rise into angelic states of married charity 
 and faith. And the sphere of conjugial love 
 with its delights, is perpetually flowing from 
 heaven into married partners who strive to per- 
 form all their duties with religious fidelit}" ; and 
 is steadily inspiring their merely sensual and 
 social loves with a higher and purer life. 
 
 Man and woman are not conjugially united, 
 until the husband regards all other women from 
 his wife’s stand-point ; until he has absorbed 
 her womanly nature so thoroughl}^ that he feels 
 toward all other women just as she does ; nor 
 until, on the other hand, the wife is so thorough- 
 ly impregnated with the masculine wisdom of 
 the husband, that she sees all other men and 
 things just as the}^ appear in his eyes. Where 
 such a union exists, infidelity, discoi'd, coldness, 
 
The Spiritual Uses of Marriage. 249 
 
 are impossible. Where such a union exists, 
 Swedenborg’s pictures of married life in heaven 
 do not exceed the bounds of rational belief. 
 
 This wifely struggle after identification with 
 the husband, involving the subjugation of her 
 own emotions and instincts, is finely described 
 by Shakespeare in the words of the chaste and 
 proud Queen Catharine, when defending her 
 character before her sensual and cruel lord : 
 
 “ Heaven witness 
 
 I have been to yon a true and humble wife; 
 
 At all times to your will conformable; 
 
 Ever in fear to kindle your dislike; 
 
 Yea — subject to your countenance; glad or sorry 
 As I saw it inclined. When was the hour 
 I ever contradicted 3'our desire.^ 
 
 Or made it not mine, too.? Which of your friends 
 Have I not strove to love, although I knew 
 He were mine enemy.? W'^hat friend of mine 
 That had to him derived j'our anger, did I 
 Continue in my liking.?” 
 
 All attempts at spiritual union without a new 
 and regenerate will, must prove utter failures. 
 Such unions are the mere surrenders or subju- 
 gations of one will to another ; or compromises 
 of sentiment and opinion, effecting a certain 
 
2^0 The Sexes; Here and He 7 -eaftcr. 
 
 external harmony and peace necessary to the 
 well-being of both parties. The spiritual iden- 
 tification only takes place in the new will, the 
 new creature. When that is perfected, the 
 conjugial wife answers to the description given 
 by a new poet, and which, with a change of 
 gender, is applicable also to the conjugial hus- 
 band : 
 
 “ The wife is a woman married in every organ and in every 
 fibre ; 
 
 Not in body only, but also in soul. 
 
 Her eyes are married eyes, 
 
 And turn full upon one only; 
 
 From all others they are averted. 
 
 Her ears are married ears. 
 
 And hear only one voice. 
 
 Her hand is a married hand. 
 
 And clasps but one other. 
 
 Her breasts are wedded also : 
 
 All her senses are connubial. 
 
 All her life is conjugial interchange; 
 
 And in everything is the conjugial embrace.” 
 
 Now comes the great and practical ques- 
 tion, — How is the institution of marriage to be 
 made instrumental in the regeneration of the 
 soul, and in the preparation for that purer and 
 eternal marriage in heaven? What special ad- 
 
351 
 
 The Spiritual Uses of Alarriage. 
 
 vantage has a married over an unmarried per- 
 son in this respect? What is the ditference 
 between a married man, striving to obey the 
 commandments of God, and a single man with 
 the same religious spirit and endeavor? The 
 answer will reveal to us the highest spiritual 
 use of marriage. 
 
 Let us revert to, or restate, some of our fun- 
 damental psychological truths. 
 
 Sex, love, and marriage are universal and 
 eternal ; and the ideal universe is a universe 
 perfectly married or equilibrated in its male 
 and female elements. 
 
 The Lord infuses love or spiritual heat 
 through the feminine form, and wisdom or 
 spiritual light through the masculine form. 
 Heat alone, or light alone, is powerless ; com- 
 bined or married, they produce all things. 
 
 Every male form in the universe has a female 
 form, its complement, its eternal and necessary 
 counterpart ; and these forms, having specific 
 affinities, are ever striving for union. 
 
 The Lord has instituted the marriage of one 
 man wfith one woman as a means whereby the 
 love of the sex into which we are born, shall 
 
253 The Sexes; Here ajid Hereafter. 
 
 be changed into the love of one of the sex 
 only, and the marriage of spiritual heat and 
 light or of love and wisdom, be effected in the 
 soul. 
 
 The woman increases in love and communi- 
 cates it to the man, and the man increases in 
 wisdom and communicates it to the woman, 
 exactly in proportion to their obedience to the 
 divine commandments. Obedience to the di- 
 vine law draws down the divine life, or opens 
 the soul to its influx. The divine life is love 
 and wisdom. The woman becomes more and 
 more loving and beautiful ; the man more and 
 more wise and strong. Each transfers his all 
 to the other, and thereby continually increases 
 his own joy and perfection. 
 
 Conjugial love, thus generated in two conge- 
 nial and correspondent souls, causes an intense 
 vivifleation of all delights, from the highest to 
 the lowest, from the inmost shrine of the soul 
 to all the senses of the body. 
 
 Alas ! that these beautiful and holy truths 
 should be so little known in the church and the 
 world ! 
 
 An unmarried man receives influx into his 
 
The Spiritual Uses of Marriage. 253 
 
 love-principle from the whole sphere of the 
 female sex, which generates in him the love of 
 the sex. However sweet, tender, and elevating, 
 in a civilized country instinct with scientific and 
 rational life, this general feminine sphere may 
 be, it cannot have the direct and concentrated 
 power of the love-element of some one woman, 
 absorbing from him his corresponding wisdom- 
 element, and returning it to him through undis- 
 coverable avenues, vivified and utilized for a 
 noble life. 
 
 When the soul fails to discover the congenial 
 love which identifies its enraptured being with 
 that of another, it reaches out for something to 
 grasp, to keep, to give itself to, to blend itself 
 with. Those least elevated above the brute, 
 marry themselves to pleasure and money. One 
 sighs for fame with the madness of a lover ; 
 another sees in art the ethereal bride of his 
 aspirations. The ecstatic soul is wedded to the 
 church, and lays his life down at her altar. 
 The wifeless grenadier of Napoleon espouses 
 la belle France, and dies in the embrace of her 
 colors. 
 
 Marriage is an institution which brings new 
 w 
 
254 The Sexes; Here a7icl Hereafter. 
 
 influences to bear, which causes a direct and 
 reciprocal and powerful spiritual current from 
 one sex to the other, capable of producing 
 incalculable evil or incalculable good. If the 
 parties religiously keep the commandments of 
 God, and discharge their duties toward each 
 other with conscientious fidelity, they enjoy 
 immense advantages over those not married. 
 For there is a constant interchange of proper- 
 ties which tends continually to elevate them 
 and unite them together. They take on each 
 other’s mental states. The woman absorbs the 
 interior will of the man and blends it with her 
 own which she has consecrated to the Lord ; 
 and the man elevates her understanding into 
 that spiritual light into which his own mind has 
 penetrated by loving and reverently obeying 
 the Divine will. They grow more and more 
 alike interiorly, increasing their spiritual power 
 and perception by their union. The man rises 
 into higher states of wisdom, the woman into 
 higher states of love ; and so, by mutual help 
 and inspiration, they approach ever nearer and 
 nearer to the Lord, the fountain of all love and 
 all wisdom. 
 
The Sph'ittial Uses of Mari-iage. 255 
 
 Swedenborg says that no children are born 
 in the spiritual world ; but that, instead of chil- 
 dren, there are “spiritual prolifications ” or 
 increments in love and wisdom and the de- 
 lights that flow therefrom, in proportion to the 
 faith and love which the married parties exer- 
 cise toward the Lord. The same “ spiritual 
 prolifications,” or advances in the regenerate 
 life, are obtained in this world by marriage, 
 when it is entered upon from religious motives, 
 is inspired with religious activities, and its duties 
 and all the varied duties of life are performed 
 with religious fidelity. 
 
 All the circumstances of married life — its 
 loves, its hopes, its duties, its fears, its toils, its 
 sorrows — tend to the destruction of our self- 
 hood and the consecration of one’s life and 
 labor to others ; to the awakening of gentle and 
 pure affections ; to lessons of patience, forbear- 
 ance, self-denial ; and to the cultivation of all 
 the truly Christian graces. The uses of the 
 married state are far better mediums for the 
 influx of divine life and power, far better fitted 
 to make men spiritual in the angelic sense of 
 the word, than any celibate conditions what- 
 
2^6 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 ever. If angels were visible, they would be 
 seen much oftener in the mechanic’s workshop 
 and the children’s nursery, than in the her- 
 mit’s cell or the nun’s cloister. Heaven is a 
 state of useful, joyful labor, not for self but for 
 others. 
 
 But suppose the parties are uncongenial and 
 unloving, and do not tread with equal step the 
 path of the regenerate life? Where, then, are 
 the spiritual uses of marriage? 
 
 The Lord governs in marriage as in all 
 things else ; and we are led by ways unknown 
 to ourselves into states best adapted to our spir- 
 itual requirements. A good man with a proud, 
 selfish, cold-hearted woman, may gradually im- 
 part to her the grand inspiration of his spiritual 
 wisdom, and stimulate her to a better emotional 
 life. And on the other hand a good woman 
 may gradually infuse a tender, womanly ele- 
 ment into the cold, selfish, and sensual hus- 
 band. And so even uncongenial partners, by 
 striving to perform all their duties religiously, 
 may greatly contribute to the awakening and 
 growth of spiritual life in each other. 
 
 It xnay frequently be necessary that parties 
 
The Spiritual Uses of Marriage. 257 
 
 wholly uncongenial, or even antagonistic, shall 
 be brought together in this world for their own 
 spiritual good. Deep-rooted evils which other- 
 wise might remain unknown, may thereby be 
 brought to light, so as to be acknowledged, re- 
 pented of, and put away. The very contentions 
 and collisions of the married life may be ser-. 
 viceable in the great work of regeneration, by 
 the secret spiritual influences of the sexes on 
 each other. The essential thing on earth is, 
 not conjugial union, — a thing at present ex- 
 tremely rare, — but the preservation of the con- 
 jugial principle in the soul, which may flower 
 after death into the conjugial love, and lead to 
 a true marriage in heaven. 
 
 Every human being, male or female, mated 
 or unmated, who is learning to love by striving 
 to obey the Lord, is developing the conjugial 
 principle In the depths of the soul, which will 
 finally lead through every labyrinth to that 
 glorious mansion in the skies, where the other 
 congenial, beautiful soul awaits its coming. 
 
 A still grander use of marriage, and one run- 
 ning parallel with that of perfecting the indi- 
 vidual character, is its use in the construction 
 
 W SC- 
 
 17 
 
258 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 of a perfect society, a social millennium, the 
 reign of Jesus Christ on earth. 
 
 Heaven is so perfectly organized that its 
 social elements never conflict or jar ; for all 
 in heaven are regenerate, and are capable 
 of, and are introduced into, the heavenly mar- 
 riage. The same social order, peace, and love, 
 will be approximated on earth, in exact pro- 
 portion to the increase of regenerate and re- 
 generating couples here below. 
 
 “ The family,” says Tholuck, “ was God’s 
 first Church.” And his last and eternal Church 
 — the New Jerusalem — will be a vast con- 
 gregation of families, each of which will be, 
 through regeneration and true marriage, a per- 
 fect church, a heaven in miniature. 
 
 It is a psychological law announced by Swe- 
 denborg, that the state of conjtigial love be- 
 tween man and woman, determines all other 
 loves; determines not only the joj’s of the mar- 
 ried life, but the integrity, purity, wisdom of 
 the parental love, the love of the neighbor and 
 one’s country, the love of the Church and the 
 Word ; determines the nature of all the outflow- 
 ing affections of the human spirit ; determines, 
 
The Spiritual Uses of Alarriage. 259 
 
 therefore, the entire civilization and outward 
 condition of a people. 
 
 Give us individual regeneration ; then let 
 male and female regenerate souls be linked in 
 holy wedlock, and we have the levers which 
 will move and change the face of human so- 
 ciety, The new era, the new life, the New 
 Jerusalem, will begin in the closet, the cham- 
 ber, the parlor, the home ; and thence it will 
 radiate like the sun in his glory, until it illu- 
 mines and melts the world. 
 
 The spiritual wealth of one generation will 
 be transmitted to another. Swedenborg says 
 that sons born of parents who live in the conju- 
 gial love, are more receptive of divine truth, 
 while the daughters are more receptive of di- 
 vine love, than others. Herein lies one great 
 hope of the world. Few men or women have 
 the least idea yet, how far the human race may 
 be perfected by the cultivation of maternity and 
 paternity as high and holy arts, divested en- 
 tirely of the sensual element. When natural 
 and divine laws are studied, reverenced, and 
 obeyed in the relations of the sexes, we shall 
 have a strong, pure, healthy, wise, and loving 
 
26 o 'The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 generation of men, of which the highest ex- 
 amples we can now present are types and pro- 
 phecies. 
 
 The enlightenment of the mind and the puri- 
 fication of the heart in both sexes, and the 
 proper organization, protection, and sanctifica- 
 tion of marriage, are the great forces, operating 
 from spiritual stand-points, which are to reor- 
 ganize society. Whatever social, legal, politi- 
 cal, or religious revolutions are necessary to 
 give these forces their legitimate field and 
 power, will inevitably be accomplished. Insti- 
 tutions, governments, churches, will all be 
 modified or perish, if they impede the advance 
 of the great truth that the married love and 
 wisdom of Man and Woman are ultimately to 
 govern the world. 
 
St*?! 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PRACTICAL TENDENCY OF OUR VIEWS. 
 
 LL truth has relation to life. And one 
 of the best tests, whereby to determine 
 the truth of any social, moral, philo- 
 sophical, or religious doctrine, is its obvious 
 practical tendency. The tendency of error is 
 always more or less injurious ; but truth ever 
 tends to refine, exalt, and bless humanity. 
 
 If the strata of the earth are the stone-leaves 
 of a spiritual volume ; if the language of colors 
 is a treasury of wisdom ; if the voice of cataracts 
 is a hymn of praise, and the perfume of flowers 
 is incense to God ; why should not the beauti- 
 ful doctrine of conjugial love come home to our 
 hearts as a guiding light and a continual balm? 
 It must and will if it be, indeed, true. 
 
 Swedenborg’s teachings are all eminently 
 practical. He is called a visionary and an 
 
 ideologist only by those who knov/ little or 
 
 261 
 
262 The Sexes; Here a 7 id Hereafter. 
 
 nothing of him or his writings. His philosophy 
 and theology are thoroughly utilitarian. Use 
 is a term of special importance and frequent 
 occurrence in his system. The divine life flows 
 into angels and men in exact proportion as they 
 delight in uses, or love to be engaged in em- 
 ployments useful to themselves and others. 
 There is no place in his heaven for idlers or 
 busybodies or recluses, or subtle theorizers 
 who do not reduce their theories to practice. 
 The Christian life, as he depicts it, is one of 
 rational, genial, and constant activity. 
 
 A belief in the existence of heaven and hell, 
 and the habit of looking forward and upward 
 to a purely spiritual existence, has of itself an 
 elevating influence on the soul. That power 
 is vastly enhanced when the mind has obtained 
 a rational insight into the laws and phenomena 
 of the spirit-world. When we realize that 
 heaven is near and within us, and when we 
 form a clear conception of its organization, 
 inhabitants, occupations, laws, etc., we have 
 somethin^ fixed and definite wherewith to com- 
 
 O 
 
 pare or contrast similar or dissimilar things on 
 earth. We see and feel the difference between 
 
Practical Tendency of our Views. 263 
 
 the love of self and the world which governs 
 here below, and that supreme love of the Lord 
 and the neighbor which gives such transcend- 
 ent beauty and joy to the better life. We esti- 
 mate earthly things at their true value. The- 
 ology is divested of its gloom and* shorn of its 
 needless mysteries ; while death, seen in its 
 true light, is stripped of its terror and becomes 
 only the resurrection. 
 
 Especially useful in the daily conduct of life 
 and battle with the world, will be the beautiful 
 doctrine of the New Church concerning the 
 eternity of sex, love, and marriage. Marriage 
 as a principle and an institution is as inevitable 
 as birth or death. What kind of association or 
 intercourse we shall have with the other sex 
 after death, will depend upon the marriage 
 union of the good and the true, or of the evil 
 and the false, in our own souls. Our life here 
 determines not only whether we go to heaven or 
 hell, but what scenery we shall find around us 
 there, what house we shall live in, what com- 
 panions we shall have, and the whole tone, 
 color, and character, subjective and objective, 
 of our being hereafter. 
 
264 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 The doctrine that a man and woman united 
 by conjugial love and made husband and wife, 
 constitute spiritually one being, so that each 
 is complementary of the other, leads to the 
 great truth that monogamy, or the marriage of 
 one husband with one wife, is a fundamental 
 principle or law of the universe. All ((epart- 
 ures from it are deviations from the divine type. 
 Each man, each woman, has but one comple- 
 mentary or necessary and co-ordinate other 
 half. Fornication and prostitution are, there- 
 fore, deadly evils, suffocating the spiritual life 
 and closing heaven to the soul. Celibacy is a 
 wasted being, an unfulfilled destiny. Divorces 
 and iterated marriages are proofs and measures 
 of “ the hardness of our hearts,” and the pre- 
 dominance of the external over the internal 
 life. 
 
 The doctrine that men and women joined in 
 wedlock exercise special transforming or modi- 
 fying influences upon each other, is of incalcu- 
 lable importance. Marry whom you will, 5'ou 
 will never be the same that you were before. 
 You will unconsciously absorb another life into 
 your own, and the two currents will blend in 
 
Practical Tendency of oiir Viexvs. 265 
 
 your character and conduct. The woman ap- 
 propriates and assimilates the spiritual princi- 
 ple of the man ; and whether she reproduces 
 it in the form of children or not, it impresses 
 and transforms her own interior spiritual nature. 
 How clearly Tennyson understands it ! — 
 
 “Thou shalt lower to his level daj by day, 
 
 What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize 
 with clay. 
 
 “ As the husband is, the wife is : thou art mated with a 
 clown. 
 
 And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag 
 thee down.” 
 
 So it is also with the man. The will of the 
 woman attaches itself to his interior will, and 
 endeavors, with inconceivable subtlety and 
 power, to make it absolutely one with itself. 
 Hence the purifying, spiritualizing, influence 
 of a good and noble woman. Hence also the 
 fearfully demoralizing, darkening, and deaden- 
 ing power of an evil woman over man. 
 “ There is no wickedness,” said the Son of 
 Sirach, “ like the wickedness of a woman. 
 This great psychological law is finely taught in 
 
 the tragedy of Macbeth, where the fierce will 
 X 
 
266 The Sexes ; Here and Hereayter. 
 
 of the ambitious wife seizes upon the soul of the 
 vacillating husband, transforms it to her own 
 type, and imbues it with her own bloody pur- 
 pose. 
 
 The cause of all the woes in married and 
 social life, is that men and women, being them- 
 selves external and sensual, are attracted to 
 each other by external and sensual motives. 
 Physical beauty is esteemed above spiritual 
 beauty. External possessions are desired more 
 than internal and heavenly treasures. Self 
 governs all — the love of self and the world. 
 When sensuality, selfishness, vanity, ambition, 
 are the evil genii which bring the sexes to- 
 gether, and which haunt in various disguises 
 the altar, the nuptial couch, the domestic circle, 
 what can we expect but discord and misery ; 
 diseases of mind and body ; broken vows ; 
 broken hearts ; the infernal marriage of the 
 evil and the false in the individual soul; and 
 the awful shadows of hell projected upon earth? 
 
 Let men and women learn that marriage is 
 the most solemn event of life, determining our 
 spiritual growth here and our spiritual condition 
 hereafter more than anything else. Let a pure 
 
Practical Tendency of oicr Views. 367 
 
 and holy ideal of marriage be planted in the 
 youthful mind. Let it be super-sensuous, ra- 
 tional, spiritual. Let the question of the heart 
 be, not what it is to gain, but what it is to give. 
 Let marriage be regarded as the chief means 
 of regeneration, — as the partner and co-worker 
 with the Church and the Word in the salvation 
 of the soul. Let it be the occasion of self- 
 examinations, watchings, and prayers. Then 
 only will it become the little wicket-gate which 
 the Pilgrim saw, and which led to the Celestial 
 Country. 
 
 It is the part of the man to seek and woo, 
 because it is the business of the understanding 
 which he represents, to search, examine, dis- 
 cover, and organize. It is the part of the wo- 
 man to determine, to refuse or accept, because 
 it is the business of the will, which she repre- 
 sents, to act from a finer perception of the fit- 
 ness of things than the grosser understanding 
 possesses. 
 
 Marriage having been agreed upon, it is 
 proper that there be a solemn betrothal, and 
 that pledges of affection be exchanged. Swe- 
 denborg says that some weeks or months ought 
 
268 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 then to elapse before its consummation ; because 
 by betrothal the mind of one is united to that 
 of the other, so as to effect a marriage of the 
 spirit previous to the marriage of the bod}". 
 This period of betrothal, when the two loving 
 souls are secretly weaving the boughs of their 
 tree of life together, and the marriage of the 
 spirit is being effected, is a period of most ten- 
 der and romantic interest. Then it is, that the 
 magnetic fire of love, struggling to descend into 
 the physical sphere, can impregnate a ring, a 
 book, a flower, a kiss, with its divine life, and 
 vibrate exquisitely to the heart, 
 
 “ Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darklj- bound.” 
 
 Marriage, according to Swedenborg, should 
 be consecrated by a priest or minister of reli- 
 gion. This is because sex belongs to the soul 
 as well as to the body, and marriage is a divine 
 institution. A pure and chaste love of one and 
 one only, is near akin to the religious sentiment 
 in man, and yearns instinctively for the recog- 
 nition and blessing of a religious teacher. To 
 withdraw the institution of marriage from the 
 supervision and benediction of the church, and 
 
Practical Pendency of our Views. 
 
 to put it on a merely civil basis, is to inflict a 
 wound upon the spiritual interests of mankind. 
 It is the spirit of Faust when he meditated the 
 seduction of Margaret. 
 
 The vows are taken ! — which the poet-priest 
 of England calls “the holy vows! as sacred 
 as the threads of life, secret as the privacies 
 of the sanctuary, and holy as the society of 
 angels.” 
 
 Oh, that every bridal pair in the first freshness 
 and charm of their wedded bliss, when they 
 are all the world to each other, and life is tinted 
 with auroral hues, could know the wonderful 
 and momentous secret of keeping their hearts 
 in a perpetual spring ; of retaining for ever the 
 exquisite bloom and ecstasy of their early 
 love ; of binding their souls together in eternal 
 fidelity, purity, and peace; and of making 
 their home such a heaven, that heaven must 
 inevitably be their home I 
 
 This secret is not a matter of curious specu- 
 lation or of religious sentiment, but one of 
 scientific precision. It is as fixed and certain 
 as the theorems of geometry or the laws of 
 
 optics. The love which unites, purifies, and 
 X* 
 
2^0 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 spiritualizes, and in which, there is innocence 
 and peace, comes only from God ; and woman 
 in the act of obeying the divine commandments, 
 is the medium of its reception. The wisdom 
 which illumines, strengthens, and guides, comes 
 only from God ; and man in the act of obeying 
 the divine commandments, is the medium of its 
 I'eception. This love and wisdom, or spiritual 
 heat and light, are communicated from each 
 sex to the other, and are married in the hearts 
 of congenial souls obedient to the Lord, so that 
 their winter is turned into spring and their 
 earth into heaven ; for heaven is opened to 
 their inmost souls, and its glorious light and 
 peace and joy descend, producing all the graces 
 and virtues of life, the happy mind and the 
 contented heart. 
 
 When husband and wife profess and enjoy 
 the same religion, and are equally impressed 
 with a sense of their obligations to the Lord 
 and to each other ; when they make the Word 
 of God their rule of life, and read it and pray 
 over it together ; when the spiritual welfare of 
 their children is the first and united aspiration 
 of their hearts ; we have a home of heavenly 
 
Practical Tendency of our Views. 
 
 order, purity, and peace, a true centre of divine 
 life, the ideal of Christian civilization, and the 
 hope of the world. 
 
 But when no altar to God is erected in the 
 house or in the heart, there is no direct channel 
 for the descent of the Divine love and wisdom. 
 The motives are external and worldly, the love 
 sensuous, the life animal, or at most rational, 
 but not spiritual. The old, unregenerate, sel- 
 fish, and sensual will rules in both parties. 
 There is no true and lasting bond of union. 
 There is no genuine Christian love of children 
 or of each other. Everything is at the mercy 
 of time and accident and fortune. 
 
 Such marriages, however, are not entirely 
 without their spiritual use ; for the uses of mar- 
 riage are so holy and heavenly, that something 
 of its great power and glory will flow down 
 into its merely external foi'm. The experiences 
 of married life, the mutual cares, labors, re- 
 sponsibilities, and trials, even its collisions and 
 temptations, are means of bringing to light the 
 hitherto concealed evils of the parties, convict- 
 ing of sin, awakening sympathy, and kindling 
 the sparks of their better and purer nature. 
 
272 The Sexes; Here ajid Hereafter. 
 
 The proud man who would kill his neighbor for 
 telling him his faults, will bear the reproaches 
 of his wife. The selfish woman whom noth- 
 ing softened before, will find her heart melting 
 down in the sweet light of her children’s eyes. 
 And many an*- irreligious couple who began 
 their married life far apart in spirit, descend^to 
 the river of death, weary and woim, wmunded 
 and broken in the battle of life, but with new 
 and enlarged sympathies, with new humility in 
 their souls, looking upward to God. 
 
 A wise and thoughtful man yearning for the 
 spiritual life — what shall he do when he finds 
 himself mated with a vain, silly, selfish, and 
 heartless woman? His wisdom seems like the 
 light of winter, cold and fruitless ; but it may 
 accomplish much for the spiritual welfare of his 
 household by faithfully living out, in word and 
 deed, the duties of man to woman, of the un- 
 derstanding to the will, so well described b}* 
 Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 “ The dominion of a man,” sa3’s he, “ over 
 his wife, is no other than as the soul rules the 
 body ; for which it takes a mighty care, and 
 uses it with a delicate tenderness; and cares 
 
Practical Tendency of our Views. 273 
 
 for it in all contingencies, and watches, to keep 
 it from all evils ; and studies to make for it fair 
 provisions, and very often is led by its inclina- 
 tions and desires ; and does never contradict its 
 appetites but when they are evil, and then else 
 not without some trouble and sorrow ; and its 
 government comes only to this, that it furnishes 
 the body with light and understanding. The 
 soul governs because the body cannot else be 
 happy ; but the government is no other than 
 provision.” 
 
 The pure, spiritually-minded woman, who is 
 wedded, or rather yoked, to an unworthy hus- 
 band who by a false and evil life is gradually 
 effacing the stamp of humanity from his soul — 
 what shall she do? As man works by wisdom 
 or light, so woman works by love or heat. She 
 ffghts, conquers, lives, by love. The love of a 
 true Christian wife is like the charity described 
 by Paul, and which, he says, is greater than 
 faith or hope ; which suffers long and is kind ; 
 which doth not behave itself unseemly ; seeketh 
 not her own ; is not easily provoked ; thinketh 
 no evil ; which beareth all things, believeth all 
 
 things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 
 
 18 
 
^74 The Sexes; Here and Hereafter. 
 
 This charity, in the heart of a good wife, is 
 more powerful than “ the tongues of men and 
 angels.” 
 
 A v/oman attaches her husband to her by 
 attaching herself to her husband. Let her 
 ever reveal to him the beautiful, whose soul is 
 the good and the true. Let her learn the deep 
 significance of a rose in her hair ; a flower on 
 the mantel ; a smiling face at the door ; the 
 snatch of an old, sweet song at her work. Let 
 her see her husband in all things ; and so thor- 
 oughly identify herself with him, that he shall 
 find the angel of his better nature in every 
 lineament of her face and in every gentle tone 
 of her voice. 
 
 The regenerating influences of husband upon 
 wife and of wife upon husband are so great, so 
 subtile, so lasting, that parties are brought to- 
 gether by the Divine Providence for the sake 
 of these secret ministries of marriage. Only 
 the revealing light of another world can show 
 how much spiritual good has been accomplished 
 to both parties, even where their external union 
 seemed singularly uncongenial and unhappy. 
 The only condition for the reception of every 
 
Practical Pendency of our Views. 275 
 
 blessing which the Heavenly Father can give 
 us consistently with our eternal good, is the 
 faithful and religious performance of each one’s 
 duty. 
 
 Therefore the bonds of marriage are not to 
 be lightly broken, and the soul permitted to go 
 ranging after new affinities. The true spiritual 
 wife is surely found only in the spiritual world. 
 The essential thing in this world is, not to find 
 the conjugial j)artner, but to acquire and -pre- 
 serve the conjugial principle in the heart. 
 This may frequently be best accomplished by 
 living with an uncongenial person, faithfully 
 and religiously performing all the duties re- 
 quired by the spirit and letter of the bond, just 
 as if he or she were “ the one beautiful soul” 
 of our celestial future. 
 
 If sex were purely physical, if marriage were 
 only a civil alliance, if our material life were 
 all, then our philosophy and theology would be 
 vain. But if our souls are male and female ; 
 if marriage is spiritual and eternal ; if this life 
 is the seed-field in which the germ of a better 
 life is planted ; if wedlock is a divinely ap- 
 pointed means of bringing the spiritual influ- 
 
2^6 The Sexes J Uei-e and Ilereaftei'. 
 
 ence of the sexes on each other into orderl}^ 
 and beneficent activity ; if the character of the 
 husband and wife determines that of the father 
 and mother, the neighbor and the citizen ; if a 
 life of obedience to God in the state of matri- 
 mony is peculiarly rich in spiritual blessings ; 
 then are the teachings of Swedenborg on these 
 lofty themes of immense practical importance 
 in the regeneration of the individual and the 
 reorganization of human society. 
 
 The beginning of evil as wonderfully de- 
 scribed in the spiritual sense of the third chap- 
 ter of Genesis, was the loss of married har- 
 mony between the will and the understanding. 
 That perversion of the good and the true in the 
 individual soul, was the cause of all the corre- 
 sponding perversions in the sphere of our sexual 
 life. The way back to that blissful state repre- 
 sented by the Garden of Eden, is through in- 
 dividual regeneration, and through marriage 
 made pure and holy, by a life according to the 
 Divine commandments. Swedenborg has given 
 us some interesting accounts of marriage in 
 heaven — accounts so beautiful, so heavenly, 
 that our poor earth-stained souls regard them 
 
Practical Pendency of our Views. 277 
 
 as fancies or dreams — as a grand ideal for our 
 own aspirations, our hopes, our prayers. 
 
 When the lost harmony between the will and 
 understanding is restored, moral and physical 
 disorders will cease. The evil, the false, the 
 unbeautiful, will disappear from man and na- 
 ture. History will then be the harmonic de- 
 velopment of a loving brotherhood under the 
 smile of the Divine Father. The New Jerusa- 
 lem will descend from God out of heaven, 
 “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” 
 And thenceforth the marriages of men on earth 
 
 will be similar to those of the angels in heaven. 
 
 Y 
 
VALUABLE RELIGIOUS WORKS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY J. B. LIPPiNCOTT & CO., PHILADELPHIA, 
 
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 SWEDEN BORG’S WORKS. 
 
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 Love and Divine Wisdom, and Correspondence. From the 
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 “This is a very neat edition of some of the best writings of Sweden- 
 borg, perhaps fitted to give a better impression of the author than any 
 other selection of equal extent from his abundant writings.” — National 
 Baptist. 
 
 Heaven and its Wonders, and Hell. 
 
 From Things Heard and Seen. By Emancbl Swedenborg. From 
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 rienced.” — Phila. Press. 
 
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 ings we have seen. It has a copious index of subjects, and another to 
 all the passages of Scripture illustrated.” — Public Ledger. 
 
 Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and 
 Wisdom. 
 
 By Emanuel Swedenborg. From the original Latin as 
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 One vol. demi 8vo. E.xtra cloth. Price $2.00. 
 
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 vince the thoughtful reader that it is the most remarkable combination 
 of philosophy, illumination, and seership which either ancient or modern 
 experience has produced.” — Phila. Press. 
 
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 book on ethics, this work may be commended as eminently superior.” — 
 Pittsburg Eo. Chronicle. 
 
VALUABLE RELIGIOUS WORKS 
 PUBLISHED BY J. B LIPPINCOTT &. CO., PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 WILL BE SENT BY MAIL, POST-PAID, ON RECEIPT OF PRICE. 
 
 SWEDENBORG’S WORKS. 
 
 Atujeliv Wisdom Concerning the Divine Providence, 
 
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 with the utmost beauty of ‘ Lippincott’s Press’ upon a handsome quality 
 of cream-laid, tinted paper.” — Phila, Evening Bulletin. 
 
 “ . . . This work has a standing among the productions of Swe- 
 
 denborg second to none that ho wrote, and is recognized by his admirers 
 as one of the most valuable among his many contributions to religious 
 science and philosophy.” — St. Louie Republican. 
 
 True Christian Religion. 
 
 Containing the entire Theology of the Kew Church, foretold 
 by the Lord in Dan. vii. 13, 14, and Rev. xxi. 1, 2. By 
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 LIPE OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG, WITH A SYNOPSIS OF HIS 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 By W. W HITE. With an Introduction by Ret. B. F. Bar- 
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 LIFE : ITS NATURE, VARIETIES, AND PHENOMENA. 
 
 By Leo H. Grindon, Lecturer on Botany at the Royal School 
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 rative Language,” etc. First American Edition. 12mo. 
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 once fascinating and of value.” — Phila. Press. 
 
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