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OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.








TO THOSE
WHO HAVE BEEN BEREAVED OF THEIR CH!LDREN








CONTENTS.
CIHAPTER I.
PAGE
IS THERE NO LIGHT?..............................................   11
CHAPTER II.
HOW  ARE THEY RAISED?.............................................. 41
CHAPTER III.
WHAT BODIES HAVE THEY?..............................................    64
CHAPTER IV.
WHERE DO THEY GO?.........................8........................................... 98
CHAPTER V.
WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?.......................................   126
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT ARE THEY DOING?...............................................................   154
CHAPTER VII.
CAN WE COMMUNICATE?................................................................   182
7




8                              CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
PAGE
WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?...........................................   219
CHAPTER IX.
WHY DID THIEY DIE?........................................................... 261
CHAPTER X.
WHIAT GOOD CAN COME OF IT?............................................... 302




PREFACE.
The earliest hour of the summer mornings was devoted to the composition of this little book.
The time was one of approaching lights and receding shadows.
It is now the same hour in the moral world: and
my subject is illumined with a touch of that Morning which cometh after the Night.
I publish it:
Hoping to alleviate the sorrows of others by some
thoughts which were suggested by my own:
Hoping also to lead the mind of my reader, by
little things and through quiet paths, to a recognition
of the Highest Truth yet revealed to man.
TEuE AUTHOR.
NEw ORLEANS, LA.
As                 9








OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
CHAPTER I.
IS THERE NO LIGHT?
W E meet with few circumstances in life so painful, so bewildering, so crushing as the death
of a little child. It is painful to the sensibilities;
bewildering to the understanding; crushing to the
heart. The whole man is wounded by the blow.
There is nothing which so seems to violate the
order, the beauty, we may say, the sanctity of nature and the laws of Heaven, as the sickness and
suffering of a little child.
How tenderly the interest of the whole house
centres in the chamber of such a patient! There
are no pattering feet in the hall; no busy little
liands in the corners; no merry voices on the stairm ay; no wild shouts in the garden. The playroom is shut up; the books and the toys are put
11




12        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
away. The parlor is dark and silent: who cares
for social life now?
Every one steps lightly and talks softly. The
neighbors inquire at the door and turn gently away.
No little playmates are admitted, not even the sunbeams; the room is darkened. Unteased, unpetted,
the little dog cowers under the chair; the kitten
dozes on the rug. Even the canary does not sing.
The house is very, very quiet. Foreboding, that
spiritual cloud, impends over all.
The darling of the parent's heart, the centre
now of all thoughts and fears and prayers, turns
uneasily on a bed of anguish. The golden curls
are tangled in the tossings. The sleepless eyes are
bloodshot with fever; the cheek burns; the brow
aches; the little heart struggles like a frightened
bird. All is wrong. The. delicate machinery of
those wonderful organs, bound together in the body
in a sacred brotherhood of uses, is out of order.
The evil spirits of discord and pain are holding
carnival in the seething blood and the tortured
nerves. How piteous, how revolting!
And the victim? Some patient, helpless, little
creature, ignorant of sin, innocent of wrong. A
few days ago blooming and happy, peering forth
with loving eyes and heavenly greetings into the




IS THERE NO LIGHT?            13
great dark world before it. Now, a little Isaac
bound upon the altar of sacrifice; no ram in the
thicket, no rescuing angel in the sky!
At the sight of such cruel violence, such terrible
injustice, we are ready to exclaim with the Roman
Governor, as he turned from the celestial face of
Jesus to the fiercely-accusing and malignant Jews:
"Why, what evil hath he done?"
The machinery of our cosmic Nature is sometimes ajar also. She has her earthquakes, her
storms, her floods, her fires, emblematic of the
grandest and darkest experiences of the human
soul. Has she not also some horrible distortions
in her tinier realm to correspond with the suffering
and death of children?  Is there any exception to
the ubiquity and the tyranny of Evil? Do not
death and sorrow and rapine and wrong ravage
also the infant realms of her shining kingdoms?
Do not her fay souls consume in the sunbeams, and
her fairies perish in the meadows? Are there not
voices of anguish and terror, which we cannot
interpret, in the sounds of her winds and her
waters?
Days and nights of racking disease in the body
of the little patient-days and nights of corroding
anxiety in the hearts of the watchers! Oh, the
2




14        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
struggle betwixt fear and hope! the exultation of
one day, the despair of the next! These are the
experiences of life; these are the watchings, which
give a "sober coloring" to all things afterwards;
which bring "the faith that looks through death,"
and such tenderness of heart, that
c"c —- The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
The house grows more quiet than ever; almost
a desolation. The wearied, loving nurses move
ghost-like to and fro. A little light shines through
the shutters all night long. The doctors come and
go, eagerly expected, long delayed at the door with
anxious questionings. The shadow deepens over
all hearts. The shadow deepens also over the little
stream of life, near which the loving ones are watching.'Tis the shadow of the Great Abyss which it
slowly approaches.
And now the brain is confused; the little mind
wanders; the child is delirious.
Have you ever watched the delirium of a little
child? The most pitiful, painful, harrowing thing
in all the phenomena of disease! What gentle
Tassos talking to angels in their gloomy prisons,
what pure Ophelias weaving their garlands of song




IS THERE NO LIGHT?            15
and madness, ever melted the soul into such agony
as those "sweet bells, jangled and out of tune," the
dying thoughts of little children?
The doctor has ordered a warm bath. The little
fellow's own bath-tub is brought to the bed-side,
in which he has so often splashed with delight,
rosy-faced and laughing-eyed between his shower
of overhanging curls. The eager, heart-aching, and
trembling mother prepares him for the bath, with
gushing, tender, baby words reminding him of his
old delights, and promising him such a happy time.
Alas! it is all changed now. The busy demon of
disease has defaced the texture and marred the
delicate workings of that little brain. The child
listens to nothing; remembers nothing; understands
nothing. All is blurred, distorted, and magnified.
He gazes at the water in bewilderment, screams and
clings in terror to his mother's knees.
"Oh, mamma, mamma! please-please do not
throw me into the big river."
She lifts him back into the bed, kisses his forehead, and sinks weeping at his feet.
The little girl calls wildly and eagerly for her
papa. He rushes to her side, kisses her cheek,
strokes her hair, raises her sweet little hand tc his
lips, addressing her by all the tender names in




16        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
which love's vocabulary is so rich; but all in vain.
She shrinks from him; she does not know him.
" I want my own papa. You are not my papa.
My papa is not an old man with a long gray beard.
No, no, no! I want my own papa."
Then. sinking back, she folds her tiny hands
meekly together, and looking upwards, like the
pictures of the little Samuel praying, she strangely
mingles the sweet words of the Lord's prayer with
disjointed ideas of her playmates, her dolls, and
her little flower-garden.
Ah! don't you see there is no hope? The Angel
of Death stands there invisible, quietly unraveling
the tangled web of life, intending to take all that
is beautiful and spiritual in it away with himself.
Do you remember having ever seen little children
a short while before they sickened and died, playing in a graveyard on a bright, summer day? You
will recall something strange and beautiful in their
conduct, for "coming events cast their shadows before." They seemed in love with the spot, flitting
about like sunbeams from one little grave to another,
joyously but softly and tenderly. They were fascinated with the sculptured angels and the sleeping
infants and the white lambs, and the vases and
wreaths of flowers, and all the charming little me



IS THERE NO LIGHT?            17
mentoes of the "vanished hands" and "the voices
that are still." They were loath to go away, as if
attracted by the sphere of hundreds of invisible
and happy little spirits. They evidently thought
that death and burial were pleasant and lovely
things; and that it would be delightful to lay
their own little bodies under the soft green turf,
and live evermore in that "happy land, far, far
away," of which they were accustomed to sing so
sweetly.
Oh, how sweet, how painful and sweet it is to
stoop and bend, day after day, with weary care
over the common dust-heap of our past experiences,
and humming old tunes to ourselves, and thinking
of our lost hopes and buried loves, to pick out the
little diamonds of memory and put them into our
bosoms!
A strange time is it from midnight to cock-crowing-a dark, sad, silent, fearful time, when evil
spirits and evil men are abroad; when the world
lies cold and dim, and the heavens are afar off;
the time for murders, and thefts, and ghost-walkings, and for strange and secret crimes; and especially the time for pestilence to strike and for death
to seize. The temperature of the earth declines
rapidly, and darkness, that hateful thing, reaches
2 *




18          UR CHILDREN IN Ii AVEN.
its climax. The night-dews come out everywhere
like cold drops upon nature's brow.
Then it is the great cry is made, "the bridegroom
cometh!"
Then it is the human spirit lays its heavy burden
down, and sleeps, to experience "another morn than
ours."
Then it is we hear the wild shrieks of the bereaved Rachels, refusing to be comforted.
After midnight the vital current grows sluggish
and shallow, soon to disappear among the quicksands of death. The eyes become dim; and oh,
fearful change! the soul-light fades from the face.
The nearest watcher suddenly whispers, "dead;"
the father inquires tremulously, "dead?" the kneeling mother shrieks wildly, "dead!" The pent-up
anguish of all hearts now bursts out into loud wails
of grief.  The doors are opened; the house is
awakened; there is anxious running to and fro;
and all is movement and bustle where everything
was lately so fearfully still. In the midst of it all,
a strange, calm, luminous halo seems to settle down
upon the little corpse, as if the invisible God had
waved his hands in blessing over the face of the
dead child.
Yes! there lies the Deserted House. It was




IS THERE NO LIGHT?            19
builded of the earth, and has fallen again to the
ground. Life and Thought have gone away, side
by side. All is dark within. No light in the
window; no murmur at the door. No more of
mirth or merry-making sound. All is naked,
vacant, deserted.  Close the shutters; close the
door. Come away! come away!
Ah, Poet! thou hast done well.
Thou too, Artist! hast sweetly echoed the Poet's
thought. See that long, low couch in the silent
room, bearing the still form, covered with a snowwhite cloth. The little lute with its broken string
has fallen to the floor. There are lovers who kiss
by the wall; but they are statues of cold marble.
A terraced garden is seen through the doorway;
but it has no living presence. Out through the
arched window the angels of Life and Thought
have receded into the far sunlight. How still!
how cold! This is not sleep, but his brother,
Death!
This is beautiful, and it is true; but it is not all.
It is not half the truth. It is little; it is nothing.
In the white presence of this precious little. body,
which will never open its enchanting eyes nor lift
its beautiful hand again, we feel that Art can never
utter the incommunicable sorrows of the soul.




20        OUR CHILDREN IN HEA YEN.
It is the reflection of Vesuvius on the moon-lit
bay of Naples, as Richter has said, in comparison
with that Vesuvius which burned into the heart
in the buried chambers of Pompeii.
Confronted thus with death in its least accountable form, we stand bewildered with the mystery
of Life; and "obstinate questionings" about God
and Spirit and Time and Immortality flow through
our souls, like the night-ripples of forlorn rivers
struggling eastward in the dark.
There is no separation in nature attended with
such a sense of abrupt departure, absence, distance,
utter and eternal abstraction, as that of friend from
friend at the bed of death. All other farewells
have images that fade on the sight, or echoes that
die on the ear. But in this there is no trace, or
token, or footprint, or sound, or shadow, which can
even suggest to us which way our Beloved One has
gone. At one moment we are gazing in at the windows of heaven, which lead through spiritual
realms of affection and thought, all the way up to
the great Source of life: the next, the windows are
closed, and we are confronting dead nature alone;
and the dust' that is left of our friend has no more
genuine connection with him than if it were a
statue or a flower.




IS THERE NO LIGHT!             21
The bank of the mystical Jordan which separates
the wilderness of this life from the Canaan of a
better, is rimmed with total darkness. Our dear
ones approach the dreaded verge and disappear from
our sight. We peer in vain into the terrible abyss.
The sensation is perhaps the same to them that it
is to us. To their reverted eyes we may seem also
to have been swallowed up in sudden night. An
immeasurable wall of blackness divides us. Cries,
calls, prayers, however importunate and heartbreaking from one party to the other, strike back
only in wailing echoes upon themselves.
Why is this?  Was it always so?  Will it always be so? With uplifted hands and eager voices
and aching hearts, we cry to the heavens-Is there
no Light?
From the stand-points of the old Theology all
is darkness. Notwithstanding the visions of poets,
the speculations of philosophers, the achievements
of science and reason, the ecstasies of prophet and
seer, the wisdom of churches, and the light of
Revelation, the life after death is as much a mystery as ever. The Apostolic Church declares that
the Gospel has brought life and immortality to
light; but its dim intimations teach us as little of
the great Hereafter, as the murmurs of the ocean



22        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
shell tell us of the Sea. What can its foremost
and wisest man show us of the-whereabouts of this
little departed spirit? of its present form and nature? of its habitat and surroundings? of its associates and occupations? of its mode of living and
means of development?
The Word of God, so perfect in its moral law, so
wonderful in its letter, so heavenly in its spirit,
makes no specific and detailed revelations of the
state of man after death. Its dealings, so far as it
has yet been made clear to us, are with the relations between God and the human soul. "Eye hath
not seen, ear hath not heard," are the words of the
Prophet repeated by the Apostle, exalting hope
by their vague sublimity, but stifling imagination
at its birth.
Neither those who were sent from the other
world to this, nor those whose spiritual eyes were
opened from this world into the other, have paused
from their high missions to gratify the yearning
curiosity of the human heart, and to answer those
children's questions, springing from our intuitive
thirst for the spiritual knowledge we most need,
and before which the sages of all countries are
silent.
Moses and Elias, conversing with our Lord on




IS THER.S NO LIGHT?            23
the Moount, let fall no secrets of their glorious
dwelling-place into the eager ears of the astonished
disciples. Lazarus, recalled after four days from
the spiritual world, has as little to say as if he had
only been awakened from a deep sleep. Those who
" came out of their graves" during the wonderful
commotions which followed the death and resurrection of Christ, told no tales or left no records of
their supernatural experiences.
The eloquent Paul, descending from the third
heaven, eloquent no longer, declares that the things
heard and seen were incommunicable to man.
And John the Beloved, the Celestial, displaying
his apocalyptic scroll, overwhelms us with his gorgeous visions of the Holy City,.with its golden
streets, and gates of pearl, and rivers of life; but
we cannot see the forms of our little ones in
his great multitudes, "which no man can number;" nor detect their little voices amid the
stupendous sounds of the "many waters" and
the "mighty thunderings," and the never-ending
" Alleluias."
The Delectable Mountains of the cld faith are
too cold and far. From our valley of humiliation
we sometimes catch glimpses of them, shining in
the light of God, with awful, inaccessible, serenity;




24        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
but frequently, very frequently, their forms are distorted by mists of doubt or hidden by clouds of
despair. We need some great spiritual telescope to
bring them near to us in all their beautiful reality.
We yearn to see their green slopes and their golden
valleys; their radiant domes and their happy people. Is it impossible?
This is the great spiritual want of the century,
overshadowing  all others.  A  clear, consistent,
philosophical, authorized revelation of the life after
death. No additions to the Word of God, but an
interior view of its structure, so that the relation
between the letter and the spirit shall be rationally
unfolded. Statements of the facts and phenomena
of the spiritual world, embodying a true psychology,
free from theoretical phantasies, and solving the
vexed question of the connection between mind and
matter. In short, a revelation to explain the Revelation, to open the seal, to render it practical and
perfect-including the grounds and laws of its own
appearance, and the reasons why it was not made
before, and why it is not now made in some other
manner.
The heart of the Christian Church yearns after
these.things, as its ideal of a perfected and crowned
Christianity to reign upon the earth for ever  This




IS TIHERE NO LIGHIT?           25
would indeed rescue it from its gradual disintegration, give it the creative power and glory of
heavenly light, and save the world from practical
infidelity, which is Death, the rider of the Pale
Horse, after whom follows Hell. But the brain
of the Christian Church has not been taught to
expect this great thing, but rather not to expect it;
to expect nothing, indeed, but the dissolution of
the physical universe in elemental fire. Stupendous
mistake! There are errors so vast and all-pervading
in their influence on the human mind, that only individuals can be emancipated from their thraldom.
Thev rule with a rod of iron over nations and
churches and races, and only wither and die down
during the weary length of suffering and darkened
ages.
The bereaved mother kneels by the dead body
of her child, chafing its hands, stroking its hair,
calling it pet names, showering sudden kisses unreturned on its little cold face. In the presence of
such imperious woe, the true friend does not reason:
he weeps.
Now mark the inquiries which her affections put
to her understanding-the yearning, intuitive, importunate cries for light, which a religion calling
itself a revealed religion ought to stand ready to
3                  B




26       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN
answer: Where is my child?  What form has he?
Is he really living? Does he see, feel, hear, think,
and move as before? Who have taken charge of
him?  What are they doing with him?  What is
he doing himself?  Is he satisfied?  Why can
I not see him  and commune with him?  Why
was he taken?
A loving mother, bereft of her innocent offspring
by the terrible agencies of evil and death, has an
inalienable right to ask these questions, and to have
them answered. She has a right also to measure
the truthfulness and credibility of a church by its
capability of answering these questions. Blind
herself, she may wisely refuse to be led by the
blind. God designed that the answers to these
natural and proper questions should be in every
mouth, should shine like sunbeams into every heart.
The world knew them once; the church understood
them. Like innocence and peace and goodness and
all the glories of Eden, these beautiful answers have
been lost-lost and forgotten. They do not even
return in dreams.
Why were they lost? Why are they not restored?
Is any aching heart ever satisfied with the commonplaces of theological condolence?  "The Lord




IS THERE NO LIGHT!           27
gave, and the Lord hath taken away," is not an
infallible quietus to our wounded affections and our
revolted reason. We are not satisfied with blessings which come in the disguise of painful and
fearful calamities. Our minds are confused with
the ascription of all things, both good and evil, to
the same omnipotent Providence. We are overwhelmed with' its mysterious ways and inscrutable
designs and unfathomable perplexities. And when
we fail to derive any light or comfort from the
teachings of the church, after honest and prayerful strivings, we are not willing to believe that the
sole cause of our blindness is the unregenerate state
of our own hearts.
What good does it do us to be told that our beloved child is now a disembodied spirit about the
throne of God, engaged, as the angels are supposed
always to be, in ecstatic contemplation of the Divine
perfections? Or that she sleeps in the cold, cold
ground under the watchful eyes of guardian angels,
until the great trumpet shall wake her from the
dead?
How long are we to be fed on husks? Is there
not bread enough in our Father's house, and to
spare?
Suppose an Angel of Light were suddenly to




28        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEV.
appear, divinely commissioned, at the side of the
grieving mother, illumining her vision with his
radiant presence, and showering upon her the great,
white calm which is the atmosphere of the celestial
country.. Suppose he were to take her by the hand,
and with ineffable tenderness of spirit and beauty
of illustration, to exhibit in the sacred light of
truth itself, the exact state, present and prospective, of the little soul which has just escaped from
its earthly body.
How sweet to follow the little sunbeam away
into heaven, its real home! away from the cloud
it has left behind it so dark and cold! from  the
little cloud which it here illumined with ethereal
beauty!
He explains to her the nature of death, which
is the resurrection. He shows her the beautiful
spiritual body rising out of its natural form, in
which it was imbedded during the short, happy
time it lived with us. HIe tells her that her little
one is still in the glorious human form, the image
of God; and still sees, hears, feels, walks, eats, sleeps,
grows; is clothed and taught, loves and is loved,
all just as before-yesterday and to-morrow being
the same. The life to come is a continuation of
this life, as a flower is a continuation of the stem.




IS THERE NO LIGHT?            29
He shows her what heaven is and where it is;
who the Lord is and where He is; by whom and
how her child is received and cared for. He describes the realities of heaven; not only its prayers
and hymningsi but the palaces, the gardens, the
lawns, the light, the music, the lessons, the teachers, the companions, the amusements, the peace,
the love, the beauty, the everyday life and business of heaven. He speaks thus, not from speculation, but experience: " as one having authority,
and not as the scribes."
His great, calm, sweet words fall upon her heart
like music; like the harp of David on the spirit of
Saul. They shine into her understanding like light
falling into prison glooms unvisited by the sun.
She is born into a new world of thought and feeling. This vast, sustaining, illuminating power of
direct revelation does not crush or change the natural affections. It softens and elevates and purifies and spiritualizes them. The tears she sheds
are as many as before, but not so bitter. The sadness of earthly memories is henceforth lightened by
a sweet, over-brooding sense of the reality and
proximity of a happy spiritual world. Her heart
will still ache, with that aching which knows no
cure but reunion, for she is bereaved of her child;
3..




30       0UR ICHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
but she will no longer murmur or rebel. She will
do like David, when the servants told him his child
was dead:
"And he arose from the earth and washed himself, and changed his apparel, and went into the
house of the Lord and worshiped."
Just what we suppose the Lord to have done in
this case by the special ministry of an angel, He
has now done for the church and the world. The
fulness of time has come, when the mysteries of the
kingdom need no longer be clothed in parables and
shrouded in "dark sayings of old."  The "opening of the heavens" promised by the Lord himself
is upon us. The air of the world is tremulous
with ancestral voices prophesying change. The
heart of humanity is expectant. A new Era of
Science and Development, exclaims the philosopher!
The "New Heavens and the New Earth," whispers
the Christian. Some say, "Lo! here!"-others,
"Lo! there!"
Meanwhile the great event, with which the womb
of time had been pregnant, takes place. It comes
in a manner unexpected by all men, and is not recognized. Some, like HIerod, would stifle the young
child at once. Some mock; most are indifferent; a
few believe. The High Priests and Scribes and all




IS THERE NO LIGHT.            31
the old Oracles move on as before, unconscious that
their systems and philosophies are death-stricken.
The light has come. But the blind will not see it:
for do not all things move in circles, and the old
facts perpetually recur?
" The Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."
A new intercourse between the spiritm, 1 and natural worlds has been established. Th-e heavens
have been opened: the spiritual sense of the Sacred
Scriptures revealed: the foundation of a new and
everlasting Church has been laid. The true nature
of the human soul and of its connection with the
human body and with attendant spirits, that grand
Psychology for which the heart of man has yearned
for so many ages, is now unfolded. The laws and
phenomena of the world of spirits, of heaven and
hell, the veritable facts, and, as it were, the manners
and customs of the life after death, have been clearly
made known. The children's questions are answered. Science and Philosophy are satisfied: the
Bible is vindicated: the Light has come!
When and where and by whom was this stupendous Revelation effected? Not a court in Europe, not a Church in Christendom, not a philosophic Academy, not a scientific body, has acknow



32       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
ledged its claims or recognized its existence. Can
the Eternal God make a revelation of his Will and
his Word to his creatures, and the event not stir a
ripple on the surface of human society? The fact
is strange indeed, but it is not without precedent.
The same God once visited this earth in person,
with divine truth in his mouth and miraculous
power in his hand, at the golden period of blended
Greek and Roman civilization; and He was crucified as an obscure impostor! If they kill the Son
himself, will they not stone his Prophets and insult his Messengers?
How are revelations made from heaven except
by human mediums? Angels never speak to multitudes, but to individuals. God prepares certain
pivotal or representative men for his work. Whether
it be Noah or Abraham or Moses or John or
Paul or another, every Dispensation has its beginning through a human medium; and this medium
is almost invariably discredited by his brethren and
persecuted by the world. Was it indeed ever
otherwise? How strangely forgetful of history are
those who imagine that a modern Prometheus,
bringing new fire and light from heaven to men,
could be received by them in any spirit but that of
scoffing incredulity!




IS THERE NO LIGHT?            33
The Lord has in these latter times prepared a
man, through whom he has revealed the spiritual
sense of the Scriptures and the laws and phenomena of the Spiritual Life: the richest boon yet conferred on the human race. He was organized and
trained from his birth for his wonderful mission.
He co-existed consciously for many years, as we all
do unconsciously, in both the spiritual and natural
worlds. He met and conversed with angels and
spirits as with men, and he recorded in one world
what he saw and heard in the other. He is the
John the Baptist of a New Dispensation, preparing
the way of our Lord at his Second Coming.
Then arises the old doubt and incredulity, the
sense of impossibility that one who lives under the
same physical conditions with ourselves can enjoy
any spiritual insight not common to us all. Is
not this the sonr of the carpenter, and are not his
brothers and sisters still with us? On this old
ground every new truth is for a while rejected.
But it matters not. The laws of Providence are
the geometry of heaven. Nothing fails in its right
time and in the right place. When the Hour comes,
the Man also appears.
But why should this individual be so favored
above his fellows? Simply because it is necessary
B*




34        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
and proper. Homers, Platos, Coesars, Dantes, Shakspeares, Newtons, are not accidents. Their coming
is as fixed and certain as the movement of the tides
or the planets. Prophets, Apostles, and Seers are
created for the spiritual exigencies of the race. One
must do the work for millions. Individual revelations to all men are at present impracticable.
Now, as in the ancient days,. only Moses and Aaron
can go up into the mountain to receive communications from God. The people and the priests
must not come near the mountain to touch it, nor
to "break through unto the Lord to gaze," lest
they perish.
Swedenborg thus avows his extraordinary claim:
" The arcana which are revealed in the following
pages relate to heaven and hell, and to the life of
man after death. The members of the church at
this day know scarcely any thing about heaven and
hell, or about their own life after death,-although
these things are all described in the Word. Many,
though born within the church, even deny their
existence, saying in their hearts, Who hath returned
from them and declared the fact?
"Lest, therefore, such a negative state, which
prevails mostly with those who possess much
worldly wisdom, should also infect and corrupt the




IS THERE NO LIGHT?           35
simple in heart and faith, I have been permitted to
enter the society of. angels, and to converse with
them as one man converses with another, and also
to see the things which exist in heaven and in
hell. I have enjoyed this privilege for a period of
thirteen years; and I am now permitted to describe
the heavens and the hells from the testimony of
my own sight and hearing, in the hope that ignorance may be thus enlightened and incredulity dissipated."
Fourteen years pass away, during which Swedenborg wrote and published a great deal, maintaining
an unquestioned reputation for learning, wisdom,
and virtue.
Subsequent to this he again emphatically defines his position:
" I foresee that many who read the Memorable
Relations in this work will believe them to be
fictions of the imagination; but I protest in truth
that they are not fictions, but were really heard
and seen. Not seen and heard in any state of the
mind in sleep, but in a state of complete wakefulness; for it has pleased the Lord to manifest himself to me, and to send me to teach those things
which belong to his New Church, which is meant
by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation. For this




36        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
purpose He has opened the interiors of my mind or
spirit; by which privilege it has been permitted
me to be with angels in the spiritual world and
with men in the natural world at the same time,
and that now for twenty-seven years."
In the trying and honest hour of death the great
Seer bore unquailing witness to the truth of his
wonderful mission. A worthy Lutheran clergyman was called in to administer the holy communion to the dying man. He observed to him,
"That as many persons thought he had endeavored
only to make himself a name by his New Theological System, he would do well now to publish
the truth to the world, and to recant either
the whole or a part of what he had advanced,
since he had now nothing to expect from the
world, which he was so soon about to leave for
ever."
" On hearing these words, Swedenborg raised himself half-upright in bed, and placing the hand that
was not paralyzed upon his breast, said with great
zeal and emphasis:
"As true as you see me before you, so true is
every thing I have written. I could have said
more had I been permitted. When you come into
eternity, you will see all things as I have stated




IS THERE NO LIGHT?            37
and -described them; and we shall have much to
say concerning them to each other."
This was the closing scene. He retained his
splendid faculties to the last. How inapplicable
is our shocking word, death, to such a departure!
He who had lived with both angels and men, was
simply removed from men to live with angels for
ever.
Swedenborg's System of Religious Philosophy,
based upon a revealed spiritual interpretation of
the Word of God, must stand upon its own merits.
It is seen, like the sun, by its own light, and not
by the light of another. Still, it is pleasant to those
who receive it as the doctrinal basis of a New Dispensation of Divine Truth, to think that the
medium or herald by whom it came, was one so
worthy of his transcendent office; a man of such
varied culture; such multiform wisdom; such practical and industrious utilities; of such abounding
Christian virtues, and of such a tender and reverential spirit.
There are no traces of imposture or fanaticism or
insanity in the life or the writings of this man. All
the elements of credibility meet in his claims with
the most extraordinary power. Not the least of
these is the fact, that he teaches, as no man ever
4




38        OUR CHILDREN IN  EA VEN.
taught before, the Supreme Divinity of Jesus
Christ and the plenary inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures. Whoever builds upon this sure foundation is not likely to build in vain.
This little volume is not designed to explain
or to advocate the doctrines of Swedenborg. Our
task is a far humbler one. We intend to take
all his statements for granted, and to repeat what
he has said about the heavenly country, so far as it
may enable the reader to follow our lost ones into the
spiritual realm. A small, small part indeed of the
treasures of New Church truth do we here present.
We are merely spies bringing specimen grapes from
a land flowing with milk and honey.
" He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
In one of those beautiful symbolic visions by
which Swedenborg was taught interior truths, he
beheld a splendid temple constructed of precious
stones and with doors of solid pearl. Over the
front was an inscription, " Nunc licet" —" It is now
permitted."
He was told by his attendant angel, that thereby
was signified the spiritual light and liberty of the
New Church, which is to be the life and soul of a
New Era. The human mind is henceforth permitted to criticise every theological dogma, and to




IS THERE NO LIGHT?          39
demand a reason for every article of its faith. The
reign of mystery is over. The spiritual despotisms
of the Past are abolished. Science and Reason
govern henceforth for ever under authority of a New
Dispensation. The expanding mind of the race
demands an explanation of the Word of God, an
unfolding of the life to come, a reconciliation between Nature and Revelation. They have been
granted. The Light has come. The glory of the
Lord has shone round about us, and a little band
of shepherds have seen the great Light, and have
heard the heavenly host singing,
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good-will toward men."
The source of this Light is the Lord Jesus Christ.
"I am come a Light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me shall not abide in darkness."
"And the city had no need of the sun, neither
of the mon to shine in it; for the glory of God
did lighten it."
It shines to us through the Holy Word as a medium:
"Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law."
And through angelic ministrations:
" Hereafter ye shall see heaven open."




40        9 URl CGILDREN IN HEA VEN.
This Light shines to us amidst all the surrounding darkness of false creeds and of skepticisms:
"And there was a thick darkness in all the land
of Egypt; but all the children of Israel had light
in their dwellings."
This Light is for the Lord's Last and Everlasting
Church:
"The light of the moon shall be as the light of
the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold."
"Thy sun shall no more go down: neither shall
thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be
thine everlasting Light."
This Light is Spiritual Truth. It must be revealed to man, for he can never discover it. It does
not come from without, but from above and from
within.
The Second Coming of the Lord is a manifestation of Spiritual Truth,-the new Light for a New
Era.




CHAPTER II.
HOW ARE THEY RAISED?
IIE Angel of Death comes and goes; intervening between God and us. His coming casts
such a deep shadow; his going leaves such a strange
light! The world is never the same to us before
and after a great bereavement.
After the first wild exclamations of grief, how
calm every one becomes! The vast burdens of
anxious hope and fear and sympathy are removed.
The nightmare of death is ended. The sufferings
and agonies are all over. "After life's fitful fever,
she sleeps well." We experience a stupefaction of
mind which we mistake for serenity, whilst a
larger, heavier burden is preparing for our hearts;
the burden we only lay down with our own wearied
bodies at the grave-the aching sense of separation.
Oh the unreality of what seems to us most real!
the truth, the substantialty of spiritual things,
which seem to us so shadowy!
With deep sighs the watchers now leave the bed4 *                                41




42        OUR CHILDREN IV HEAVEN.
side. Their task is done: they need watch no
more. The little figure lying there will never raise
its head for a sip of water, nor open its eyes again
to see if the dear familiar faces are around it. Take
away the food and medicines; vain, useless, powerless things!-so lately the elixirs of hope and
life. Prepare the drapery of the tomb. The women move about softly with whispered words or
mere gestures, rendering the last offices of human
kindness to the precious little body; embalming it
with kisses, bathing it with tears.
Now it is ready, and all is quiet again. There
it lies, cold and white, the deserted palace of the
Soul! In the sweet, calm halo that surrounds it,
sit the pensive watchers, scarcely ever exchanging
a word. The night wears slowly away. The clock
strikes the small hours one after another, breaking
rudely with its mechanical voices upon the ethereal
silence of sorrow.
At last the sad Dawn, pinning her gray mantle
with a star, looks softly in at the shutters, starts
back in gentle surprise, and lays her finger on her
lips.
Little Lucy was laid out in the parlor in the
morning. The windows were thrown open, and




HOW ARE THEY RAISEDt            43
the fresh air came in sweetly. Near her head
stood a little table with the Holy Bible and a vase
of fresh flowers upon it; both voices from heaven,
speaking with unequal eloquence their consolations
to the heart.
Sympathizing friends had sent in many offerings
of flowers. What a precious token of kindly feeling is conveyed to a wounded heart by a mere present of flowers! Richer than words, almost equal
to tears, are those beautiful hieroglyphics of the
affections! The whole room was filled with their
delicious perfume. They seemed striving to overshadow the cold fact of death by a spiritual presence, as if the emotions and thoughts of the departed child had passed into their beautiful and
smiling forms.
The little body was almost buried in flowers.
A splendid wreath of them crowned that golden
head, "sunning over with curls." A rare bouquet
had been placed in her tiny hands. She loved
flowers instinctively, as angels and good men love
poetry and music. Had she seen all that floral
wealth and beauty showered on some little dead
girl of her own sweet floral age, how she would
have wept!
Her father, heart-worn with many watchings and




44        OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
sorrows, came softly in and knelt by her side. He
kissed her cold brow and her white cheek. A
strange light shone from the little pale face; but,
alas! it was only the daylight reflected from her
beautiful, ethereal features. The souPs light had
gone-was shining in another world, leaving darkness for him in this. He wept silently.
He sat thinking over the incidents of his little
girl's short, sweet, beautiful life. The kaleidoscope
of memory turned and turned, and many charming
pictures rose up before him. He saw her baby face,
round and rosy, nestling sweetly against her mother's
breast. Then her first tottering expeditions from
chair to chair, watched and applauded by all the
family. She was now romping over the floor with
shaggy little Fido; now rocking her doll, half as
big as herself, with sober mother-face and earnest
caressings. Suddenly she kissed her hand from
the carriage, driving by, sweetly dressed and curled
for the afternoon airing. Now he watches her
serious brow poring over the pictures of the primer;
then he hears her first, wandering, delicate touches
at the piano, or the heavenly sweetness of her voice
saying the Lord's Prayer. He gazes long at her
fairy figure sporting on the green grass under the
old whispering trees, gleaming to and fro like a




HOW ARE THEY RAISED!              45
sunbeam in their great shadows. These and many
other sacred pictures of child-life passed slowly
before him, touching and melting his innermost
heart like the softest wails of cathedral music,
stirring the divine despairs of the soul; and he
wept bitterly.
He then went step by step, with fearful, torturing
minuteness of detail, over all the incidents of her
last terrible illness. Has grief its fascinations also,
that we cannot help touching and teasing and tearing open the wounds of our own bleeding hearts?
He retraced every thing that occurred, from day to
day, from night to night; the fever, the thirst, the
pain, the delirium; the whole onward and downward course of the hated disease; the mistakes, the
failures, the omissions; the fears, the hopes, the
supplications, the despairs; the last sad struggle
and the frantic farewells. What a cup of agony!
often emptied, always refilled. Will the joys of
heaven through golden eternities efface these awful
memories from the soul?
Then came the realization of the fact that the
object of all this idolatry was gone for ever from
the natural world. Gone for ever; invisible, inaccessible, seeming to have been annihilated! It
is fearful to lose a child in the streets of a great




46        OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
city, where pursuit is possible, and where a thousand eager feet join you in the search. But your
child steps out of your sight into the wilderness of
the spiritual world, and none can pursue it but
your own aching, weary, bleeding heart-alone and
in vain, through long, bitter years, seemingly unaided by God or angels or men.
Is my child really still alive in the face of all
this apparent death? Has she the same spiritual
vitality she had a few days ago? or is she asleep,
every faculty being dormant until aresurrection in
some far future?  These and kindred questions
pressed for solution on his heart.
Suddenly his eye fell upon the family Bible,
which little Lucy had often put upon his knees,
begging him to read of little Moses floating among
the rushes, or of little Samuel startled in the night
by the voice of the Lord. She loved the charming
narratives of the Scripture, and her bright blue
eyes would often turn reverently upwards at the
mention of sacred things.
She used to gaze curiously upon the entry made
in that Bible of her birthday, as if innocently
wondering how such a trifle as her birthday could
be recorded in the same volume with so many holy
and beautiful things. Alas! the death-page, then




HOW ARE THEY RAISED?            47
so white, had a line waiting for her little name
also.
The Word of God exists in heaven as well as
upon earth-a fact quite unknown to the present
Christian church. Here it is veiled in simple and
sometimes uncomely forms: but there it is the very
mind and thought of God, the source of all truth.
Of that Bible in-heaven-the soul, to which our
earthly Bible is the homely body —Swedenborg
beautifully says:
" There are many wonderful phenomena resulting from the Word in the spiritual world. The
Word itself, kept in the most sacred recesses of the
temples in that world, shines in the sight of the
angels like a great star, and sometimes like a sun.
It sometimes also seems to be encompassed by beautiful rainbows. This phenomenon is exhibited so
soon as ever the sacred repository of the Word is
opened."
No outward rainbows encircled that old family
Bible to the bereaved father's eye, but a great light
came from it upon his soul, when he opened its
pages on that eventful morning.
Kneeling by the dead body of his beloved
daughter, he took the sacred Volume in his hands,
and prayed the Lord, with a deep, agonizing, living




48        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
faith, to give him one sentence, one word of comfort, of strength, from his written Word; some light,
some knowledge of his darling's whereabouts or
welfare; some strong and sure breathing of peace
upon him from that happy sphere where all is
peace.
He opened the Book at random, and by that kind
of chance which is providence, he put his finger on
the forty-first verse of the fifth chapter of Mark:
"And he took the damsel by the hand, and said
unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted,
Damsel (I say unto thee), arise!"
With the sacred verse there came shining down
into his heart a clear, sweet perception of the fact
that at that very moment the Lord Jesus Christ,
who alone is the Resurrection and the Life, was
raising up out of her cold and lifeless form that
beautiful, spiritual body in which little Lucy will
exist as an angel for ever.
He plucked some white and green leaves from
the flowers which lay in the dead chil's hand, and
placed them on that verse of the sacred Volume.
Years have passed away, and they are there still,
pale and withered; sacred little mementoes of the
consolation which came like a voice from heaven in
his hour of need. When he is haunted by sorrow



HOW ARE THEY RAISED?             49
ful memories and falls into states of desolation and
despair, he opens that Holy Book and kisses those
faded leaves; and his spirit is sometimes elevated
into that mount which the three disciples ascended
spiritually with their Lord, and there, by the permission of the same great Redeemer, who makes
every child of his an image of himself, he sees the
body of his little daughter transfigured in glory.
If the material body rises no more, once inquired
a thoughtless mother, why should we lavish such
attention and care upon the sepulchre? The answer is simple. How tenderly we treasure the
garments, the play-things, the books, the portraits
of our lost children! How much more tenderly
should we care for that little handful of sacred
dust in which their dear spirits once lived and
moved and communed with us!
In a sweet, silent spot of a southern graveyard,
where there is verdure nearly all the year round,
and the shadow of great trees, and the song of birds,
three little mounds are seen. They are colored all
over with petunias and heart's-ease. Their marble
head-pieces shine softly in the gloom. The name
of Lucy, sweet as a little flower, is engraved on one
of them. On her baby-brother's monument appear
the true, true words:
5                  C




50        OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
"HE IS NOT HERE: HE IS RISEN."
Yes! our graves have no human tenants. No
man, woman, or child, since the beginning of the
world was ever really buried. The dust and ashes
which they temporarily inhabited have been properly consigned to the tomb; but the soul, the man,
the living being, has past out of it for ever.
Away with the degrading falsehood that human
beings are sleeping in the grave! The phraseology
is revolting and hateful. The old Greek poet,
without the light of revelation, knew better:
"Prot6, thou art not dead; but hast removed to
a better place, and dwellest in the Islands of the
Blest, among abundant banquets, where thou art
delighted; tripping along the Elysian plains among
soft flowers, free from every ill."
" How shall we bury you?" said Crito to Socrates, before he drank the poison. "Just as you
please," replied the Philosopher, "if you can ever
catch me."
Two very different scenes are enacted around
every dead body on the two sides of the great curtain which separates the natural from the spiritual
world.
On one side we have the dark trappings of woe;
the solemn hearse, the funeral crape, the sad pro



170 W ARE THEY RAISED?          51
cession, the wails of grief, the priestly promise of
some far-off resurrection, the dreadful "earth to
earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
Nothing of this appears on the other side; nothing
of this is possible. Angels and good spirits occupy
an altogether different stand-point. To their perceptions our death is a birth, our departure an
arrival, our burial a resurrection. The grave for
them has no existence; life no break in its continuous current. They look on us merely as travelers coming up from  a lower sphere, and they
welcome us gladly to their glorious habitations.
Not only the fact that we have a spiritual body
conjoined to our natural body during life, and separated from it at death, has been revealed to man,
but also the very process by which the separation
or resurrection takes place.
Swedenborg makes the following wonderful and
solemn affirmation:
"In what manner resuscitation is effected has
not only been related to me, but has also been
shown to me by actual experience. I was myself
made the subject of that experience, in order that
I might fully know how the great change is accomplished.
" I was brought into a state of insensibility as




52       OCUR CHIL DREN IN HEA YEN.
to the bodily senses, and thus nearly into the state
of dying persons.  The interior life, however, remained entire, together with the faculty of thought,
that I might observe and retain in my memory the
particulars of the process I was about to undergo,
which was exactly such as is experienced by those
who are being resuscitated from the dead."
Death is no longer a leap in the dark to those
who accept the Lord's new revelations of the life
to come. We need not gaze on the dead faces of
our friends in blank wonder and despair. We can
follow them in imagination into the spiritual world
almost as surely as we could follow them  into
England or Italy. By the genial light of a New
Dispensation let us strip death of its sting and the
grave of its victory. Let us see what happened to
our precious little ones when their eyelids dropped
for ever upon the scenes of this lower world.
When the heart ceases to beat and the lungs to
breathe, it is a sign that the spiritual body can no
longer abide with its living currents of affection
and thought in its earthly tenement. It can no
more see through the windows of the material eye,
or hear the music of this world through that cunning instrument, the natural ear. It lies in a deep,
dreamless sleep, waiting for some heavenly touch




HOW ARE THEY RAISED  53
to awaken it to its interior and real life. This sleep
is of short duration.
Now a beautiful and wonderful thing occurs.
Two or more glorious angels from the Lord's
celestial kingdom, the kingdom in which Love is
the breath of life, descend from their happy homes
on the sweetest errand of mercy. The life of the
angels is the love of uses. Selfishness and death
are with them synonymous. Their offices, employments, and duties, all for the good of others, are
of infinite variety. Many of them are engaged in
secret and constant services to the human race.
There are angels of birth and death; angels who
comfort in sickness and sorrow; angels who instruct and enlighten; angels who defend from evil
spirits and devils; angels who lead the sweet
thoughts of innocent children; angels who inspire
conjugial love; and a thousand other genera and
species of heavenly ministers.
Those who approach are angels of the resurrection.
They sit near the head and feet of the little
spirit, whose spiritual body, no longer animating
its natural form, now first becomes visible in the
light of the spiritual world. They do not speak,
but gaze into its face, ready to communicate their
5 *




54        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
own peace and love, by processes altogether spirit.
ual, to the resuscitating soul as soon as it becomes
conscious. They do not see the natural body, the
little corpse, ally more than we, who are weeping
over the latter, can see the purer spiritual body
at which they are gazing.  Each side, so real in
its own sphere, is invisible, imperceptible to the
other.
A delightful odor of flowers and aromatic spices
surrounds the spiritual body on the approach of
those radiant inhabitants of heaven. Their holy
sphere keeps at a distance all evil spirits who might
attempt to pry into or to interfere with the wonderful process about to be effected. These angels take
possession of what Swedenborg calls the region of
the heart. Spiritually, this means the whole emotional nature of the man, which they regulate and
control for the time, subduing every thing to a
sacred calm. They await in silence and joy the
great event, the extraction of a spiritual body from
its material envelope, its prison or grave, and its
birth into the spiritual world.
The resurrection is effected by the Lord alone.
That little spiritual body lying there in its dreamless sleep, could never move or see or hear or feel
again, unless the Lord withdrew it from its en



HOW ARE THEY RAISED?             55
tanglement in the meshes of its physical form.
The angels might call and pray and labor in vain.
They could not wake it. The Lord alone is the
Resurrection and the Life.
The resurrection is effected by a powerful attrac.
tion.  It was felt by Swedenborg as a steady and
strong drawing or pulling, a veritable extraction,
as sensibly as if he were drawing his arm out of a
sleeve. The withdrawal of the winged butterfly
out of its first groveling form, which it never more
resumes, was regarded by ancient wisdom as typical
of the ascension into heaven of the spiritual body
or soul after renouncing its material envelope.
But this attraction by the Lord'?
How little we realize in our poor, dark, sensual
earth-state, that there is really no life in the universe but the Lord's! Our heat is only the Lord's
lox e let down from heaven into our vibrating ethers.
Our light is nothing but the Lord's wisdom or
spiritual light, moving about amongst our organic
atoms, and revealing to us somewhat of the mysteries and beauties of his creation. All our physical
forces, so called, are simply spiritual forces, playing
and flowing and working through natural media.
Repulsion and attraction, those secret mother-springs
of all physical, chemical, and physiological phe




O5r6      u;UR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
nomena, come first of all from the Lord, and are
modes or laws of His own divine life.
His outbreathing, or desire to create all things
by emanations from Himself (repulsion), is the centrifugal force of the spiritual spheres. His indrawing, or desire to unite and assimilate all things
created to Himself (attraction), is the centripetal
force of the same realms. When the bonds, weights,
or clogs which confined the soul to the material
sphere are broken or dissolved at death, it ascends
upwards and inwards in obedience to spiritual attraction. If our earth should suddenly fall into
nothingness under our feet, our bodies would be
drawn into the sun, unless attracted and caught in
the sphere of some nearer planet. So our spiritual
forms, ceasing to animate their natural bodies, are
drawn out of them by divine attraction, and are
caught in the magnetic love-sphere of sympathetic
spiritual societies.
Behold the secret of the resurrection! which necessarily takes place immediately after the death of
the material body.
The expectant angels perceive by the movements
of the face that the spirit is beginning to emerge
into consciousness again. With eager pleasure they
impart to it their own sphere of unutterable serenity




HOW ARE THEY RAISED?            57
and peace; for in the other life affections and
thoughts radiate and are reflected or absorbed just
as the rays of light are in this. The painful or
stormy elements of human passion are all quiescent,
and every soul awakes into the inner life, as if
breathing an enchanted atmosphere and listening
to heavenly music. These celestial angels detain
the mind of the new comer as long as possible in
this holy and happy frame; and if he sinks into a
sphere of baser feeling and lower thought, it is by
his own volition.
None but celestial angels, those who are highest
and purest and nearest to the Lord, could so officiate
in this solemn and beautiful event, as to ward off
every evil influence and to surround the helpless,
newly-revived spirit with a protective atmosphere
of peace and love.
These tender cares are shown to every human
being who departs from this world, no matter where,
or when, or how the great exit is made. Whether
they were good or evil, great or humble, bond or
free; whether they died by battle or murder or
shipwreck, at home or abroad, happily or miserably; whether they passed away with prayers or
curses on their lips, with love or hatred in their
hearts; they all sink into the same deep, sweet
c 




58        OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
sleep, and are guarded and welcomed by celestial
angels. From that point they all diverge, and each
seeks the good or evil societies congenial to his interior nature; but all are born or ushered into the
world of spirits in the same manner and under the
same sweet influences.
Our Lord himself, who subjected His divine nature to the limitations of time and space, who suffered in a human form, and was tempted in all
things as we are, who died and was buried, received
in His own resurrection the same kind services
from the celestial angels, according to the universal
law. For Mary, stooping down to look into the
sepulchre, saw "two angels in white sitting, one at
the head and the other at the feet, where the body
of Jesus had lain."
The task of the celestial angels is now done.
These glorious beings are too pure and holy for the
new-comer from our sinful world to have any intimate communion with them  at first. As the interior nature of the novitiate spirit unfolds itself,
the dissimilar spheres repel, and the celestial angels
seem to retire to their own abodes, to start again on
their labor of love. The risen spirit passes under
the tutelage of the spiritual angels, who now ap



HOW A-YE THEY RAISED?              59
pear and take charge of him with every demonstration of affectionate interest.
Hitherto after waking, the resuscitated soul had
only been able to feel and think, but not to see. Why
this brief blindness? Because as a general rule
(to which, indeed, there are exceptions), we can see
only those in the spiritual world whose state of life
is near akin to our own. Only the pure in heart
can see God.  The sphere of the celestial angels is
darkness to those who are not celestial.  We may
safely infer that infants and small children, in whose
minds no external or scientific sphere of thought
has yet been formed, and in whom the celestial degree or plane of life is still open, do not experience
this transitory deprivation of sight.
The spiritual angels live in palaces of precious
stones resplendent with all beautiful colors. They
flow into and govern the thoughts, as the celestial
angels do the affections. They operate on the understanding as the celestials do on the will. They
are literally angels of light. It is their business
and their delight to instruct. The love of truth is
the supreme passion of their souls.
They restore the just-liberated spiritual body to
sight. They seem to roll off a kind of membrane
from the eye, and to draw something very gently




60         OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
off from the face. This, however, is merely an appearance, whereby is represented the change from
natural to spiritual thought. Spiritual light, which
is seven-fold brighter than the light of our noonday sun, now bursts upon the vision of the delighted spirit.  What a world of beauty and wonder!  With what amazement is he filled! What
an escape from the dark caverns and pitfalls and
shadows of our lower realm, into
"An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams!"
The angels now tell the spirit that he is an inhabitant of the spiritual world, and answer his
thousand eager inquiries about every thing around
him. They summon his friends and relatives who
have preceded him across the river of death, and
there are such greetings as are never witnessed in
this world, and can never be described in human
language. He is overwhelmed with kindnesses, hospitalities, and civilities, until he passes gradually,
and almost unconsciously to himself, into that terrible process of judgment which strips him of all
false appearances and deceptive values, exposes his
naked heart to his own view and that of others,
and assigns him to the place he had prepared for
hiniself by his life and conduct in the wvorld.




HO IT ARE THEY RAISED?           61
Whatever may be the final issue, we may rest
assured that the first state of all men after death is
a state of wonder and delight. At the time when
we are saddest, our deceased friends are most joyful.
When we see only death, they see nothing but life.
When we are recounting our loss, they are revolving their gain. When our darkness is deepest,
their light is brightest.  When our despair is wildest, their hope is unbounded.
Spirits from Christian countries are especially bewildered at finding themselves in possession of
what seems to them the same body they had in the
world. They feel, hear, see, just as they did before.
They have the same shape, size, color, hair, hands,
feet; indeed, all the organs of the human body. Every
thing about them seems as solid and real as it ever
was here. It is hard to convince them that they
are dead and in another world, because the change
is so totally unlike what they expected. The most
learned prelates and philosophers are more amazed
than the unthinking multitude unaccustomed to
metaphysical subtleties.
Why is this?
Because in the Christian churches at the present
day there is no knowledge of the real nature of
spirit and the spiritual world. They expect no re6




62        OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
velation on the subject, and indeed for the most
part desire none. They are content to take the
Bible as their moral guide, to interpret it literally
as best they can, and to defer all acquaintance with
the other life until they actually enter upon that.
life. They have no conception of the spirit or soul
as an organized human form composed of spiritual
substance; nor of heaven as a real, substantial
spiritual world. By abstracting goodness, wisdom,
and virtue from their forms or subjects, they imagine that spirits can love and know, feel and think,
without any genuine embodiment whatever.
They are of course astonished at death to find
that man has a spiritual body organized for eternal
life in a spiritual world, to which a natural body
was attached during the first or material stage of his
existence. With a spiritual body dwelling in a suitable and eternal spiritual world, there is of course no
use of the cast-off natural body any more; no general
resurrection from the material grave; no destruction
of the physical universe; no second coming of the
Lord into nature, as misinterpretations of the
letter of the Word have taught the Christian church
to expect.
Is not the world spiritually starving for a new,
rational, thorough, and practical revelation of the




HOW ARE THEY RAISED?                 63
life to come, when we find such an inscription as
this on a tombstone in a Christian city, quoted from
the hymns of a Christian poet?"There are no acts of pardon passed
In the cold grave to which we haste;
But darkness, death, and long despair
Dwell in eternal silence there."
How sweetly, swiftly does the pure heart of
childhood get at the clear truth, when it realizes no
essential difference between the forms, feelings, and
life of the other world and of this!
" Good-bye, dear papa!" said a lovely little boy,
as his dying eyes turned from a golden sunset.' Good-bye, dear papa!  I am  going to mother.
We will all meet in the morning."
Yes, dear friends! it is true.  We will all meet
in'the Morning.




CHAPTER III.
WHAT BODIES UIAVE THEY?
O  BEREAVED mother! thinking of the beau
tiful little form  you have just laid in the
grave, and weeping over the little garments it wore,
as one by one you fold them away-things henceforth of memory and not of use-suppose your
natural senses could be laid asleep, as in the magnetic trance, and your spiritual eyes opened into
heaven, into the very mansion and chamber where
your child is, what would you expect to see?
Some shadowy, vapory space, filled with aerial
music and songs of praise-? peopled by vague abstractions of goodness and virtue, possibly the souls
of men? and your little one, a disembodied spirit,
almost or quite intangible, floating or flying hither
and thither, waiting for its reunion with a fleshly
body?
The Old Dispensations can give us little better
light than this; broken moonlight flickering on
the water. Turn away from these glimmerings, and
64




WHAT BODIES HA VE THE Y!       65
behold the real state of things in the sweet sunshine of spiritual truth.
You would see a chamber furnished with articles
of indescribable beauty, in comparison with which
the wonders of imperial palaces are trifles. You
would see an angel-woman, in whose radiant and
heavenly presence you could scarcely lift up your
eyes, and the tones of whose voice would melt you
into tears. In her arms you would see the very
child you thought you had buried in the dust.
Nothing would be lost, nothing absent. Every
golden curl would be found in its place; every dimple
on its exquisitely-moulded limbs; the old smiles on
its ethereal lips; the same joyous spring in its motions; the same dreamy heaven of love and peace
in its eyes.
You would at first suppose it was a beautiful
dream or a vision. When you became convinced
that the scene was real, and not imaginary, you
would not understand how your child could be
living and dead at the same time. You would not
remember its duplicate body, the natural form laid
in the grave and resolving into dust. You would
think your child had been miraculously spirited
away into that wonderful place. You would be
frantic for its possession. When your spiritual eyes
6*




66        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
were closed again, the old gulf would yawn between
you; and all would be dark for a moment. Then
you would find yourself in your own chamber,
weeping over the fragments of your broken hope;
and you would call your spiritual experience a
dream!
"If they hear not Moses and the Prophets,
neither will they be persuaded though one rose from
the dead."
We can never follow our little ones satisfactorily
into the other life, until we grasp the beautiful idea,
that the spiritual body is a human form organized
of spiritual substance, and inhabiting a spiritual
universe, which may interpenetrate the physical
universe without having. any connection with it
perceptible to our natural senses.
Before considering the wonderful and beautiful
changes which the spiritual body undergoes after
death, we must fix clearly in our minds the fact
that the soul of man has two garments, an inner
and an outer one. The latter, or the natural body,
may be parted and destroyed. The former, or
spiritual body, in which all life, thought, feeling
really abide, like the inner raiment of our Lord, is
without seam and indestructible. The co-existence of these two bodies during our earth-life and




WTHAT BODIES HA VE THE Y?        67
their separation at death, is the central truth about
which as a golden pivot a rational Psychology must
revolve.
"There is a natural body and there is a spiritual
body," is the true formula of Christian faith; and
not its strange perversion, —"there is a natural
body which shall be miraculousliy changed into a
spiritual one."  "Thou sowest not that body that
shall be," says Paul. The exterior body perishes,
falling off like a glove from the hand, whilst the
interior rises and lives for ever.
The co-existence of these bodies is the key to the
relation between mind and matter; the spiritual
and natural worlds. It throws a flood of light
upon many passages of Scripture hitherto involved
in mystery. It explains the true ground of the
credibility of the Prophets and Seers —including
Swedenborg-who profess to have received instruction from the spiritual side of the universe,
by hearing or open vision. "In my spirit in the
midst of my body," is the singular form of expression by which Daniel refers to his troubled
visions.
To be living in the natural world, and to have
the spiritual eyes and ears so opened into heaven
as to see and converse with angels face to face!




68        OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
How the gross and sensual spirit of this age shrinks
with incredulity from the recognition of such a
claim!  The idea of a man's reporting the state
of things in heaven, say they, as a traveler would
report the condition of India! Why not?  As if
heaven were not nearer than India! As if heaven
were not within us, and the road to it through our
own souls! As if the good and beautiful things of
earth would continue for a moment unless the
breath of heaven kept them persistent in form and
shining in use! As if our own affections and thoughts
were not already, according to their character, in
heaven or hell, and we ourselves unconsciously
members of some spiritual society in one world
or the other! As if —oh, shameful naturalism!heaven were some distant locality only to be reached
by actual transference through natural space!
Our own spiritual bodies are the hidden gates
which lead into and out of the spiritual kingdom.
We have eyes within our eyes which can see the
glorious landscapes of Heaven. WVe have ears
within our ears which can hear the ineffable hallelujahs of the Redeemed. We are so constituted
also, that the angels of those inner realms may,
under circumstances of rare occurrence, look through
our eyes as through windows, and see the poor




WHAT BODIES HA VE THE Y?               69
baubles of our earthly architecture, and hear through
our ears the miserable wails of human suffering.
The existence of this wonderful duality of universes; of an invisible and a visible world blended
together by corresponding forms; of a spiritual
body and a natural body co-existing, is recognized
by the poet in his most exalted states, and runs in
slender threads of beauty and truth here and there
through the songs of all nations.
Shelley gives this idea in one of its phases very
charming expression, when the Spirit of the Earth
says to Prometheus:
Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw;
For know, there are two worlds of life and death:
One, that which thou beholdest; the other
Is far beyond the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live.
Terrible, strange, sublime, and beauteous shapes I
There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains: all the gods
Are there; and all the powers of nameless worlds,
Vast sceptred phantoms: heroes, men and beasts."
D)escending from the region of fancy to that of




70        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
fact, between which the truth lies, always touching
on both, we can verify the existence of another
body within our physical bodies by asking any
mutilated soldier, whether he does not feel the
wholeness, the unity of his body and limbs as before. He will tell us that he feels his limb exactly
as if it were not amputated. Our scientific men
try to explain this by saying it is a physiological
law, that sensations really occurring in the nervous
centres are referred to the peripheries or circumference. But here the periphery or circumference
has no physical existence, because it has been amputated. It is to the real but invisible circumference, the arm or leg of the spiritual body, that the
sensation is referred.
A higher Physiology, which is among the better
things coming, will discover that all life, sensation,
thought, and volition occur in the spiritual body,
and are manifested outwardly through the natural
body as a medium or machine, which has no life in
itself, but derives its life, moment by moment, from
the spiritual form within it.
These spiritual bodies of ours, living in our
material forms, are seldom visible to the spirits
who are in nearest attendance upon us, because we.
think and feel so differently from them, so entirely




WHAT BODIES HAVE THEY?            71
in time and space; we are so drawn, so abstracted
from spiritual things by the love, care, and necessity of earthly things, that they cannot see us.
Similarity of thought and affection makes proximity
and presence in the other life. Still we do sometimes become obscurely visible to our spirit friends
in certain states of great mental quiescence or abstraction.  They also have their ghosts or apparitions. Some friend in heaven suddenly sees his
friend living on earth standing or walking apart,
silent and not looking toward him. He gazes a
while, as we would at a spirit, half in fear, half in
wonder. He calls out to him, and the figure vanishes. The earthly friend starts at the same moment
from his reverie, and wonders whether or not he
heard the voice of some one calling him.
The opening of the spiritual senses, the sight,
hearing, touch, &c., of the spiritual body, may be
partial or complete. The ear alone may be opened,
and nothing seen. The little child Samuel hears
the Lord calling him, and receives a message for
Eli; but sees nothing. Sometimes the eye alone
is opened, but nothing heard. The men who were
with Paul when he was struck to the earth saw the
great light, but did not hear the voice of Jesus
speaking to his persecutor.




72         OUR CHILDREN IT HEA VEN.
Sometimes the eye is only opened so far as to see
a light, but not the person or figure of the spiritual
speaker. Moses saw a fire in the bush and heard
the angelic voice, but did not see the angel. Sometimes there is no light, but the figure or person of
a spirit or angel appears. In this case the spirit
seems to be in the natural world with us; but he
is not, and cannot see or feel any thing of our surroundings except through our own minds.
A still further degree of insight (sight from
within) is when the appearing spirit or angel can
exhibit various spiritual objects to the eye for purposes of instruction. Ezekiel and other Prophets,
and St. John in the Isle of Patmos, enjoyed this
intercourse to a wonderful degree. But the highest
state of spiritual communication is when all the
senses of the spiritual body are opened at once into
the spiritual sphere, and not only spirits or angels
are seen, but also the scenery, houses, cities, &c.,
of the heavenly world. This was the case with
Swedenborg for more than a quarter of a century.
Many curious mental phenomena which are mysteries to the present incapable psychology, and are
therefore shelved as traditions, superstitions, or impostures, may be explained as partial openings of
our interior senses. Many wonderful things told




WHAT BODIES HAVE THEY!           73
of apparitions, trances, dreams, witchcraft, magic,
mesmerism, somnambulism, &c., find here their
solution. It frequently happens also that the dying
have partial intromission into the spiritual spheres,
and see their departed friends and hear the music
of heaven; not with their natural eyes and ears, as
the wondering bystanders ignorantly suppose, but
with the opening senses of the spiritual body.
This grand revelation through Swedenborg of
the nature and functions of the spiritual body, is a
key to some of the strangest and most difficult
portions of the Bible. Many things which appear
miraculous, or as violating the fixed laws of nature,
can be shown to be manifestations of spiritual
truths, occurring actually and solely in the spiritual
sphere, but ignorantly referred to our external and
natural plane of life and thought.
To illustrate: Moses, a meek and sorrowful exile,
is quietly feeding his flock in a solitary place upon
Mount Horeb, "the mountain of God;" brooding,
perchance, over the cruel bondage of his brethren
in Egypt. Suddenly a wonderful thing appears to
him, a bright flame of fire bursting out of the midst
of a bush. Wholly unconscious that the real cause
of this phenomenon is a change occurring in his
own spirit, he is filled with amazement. The fire
7                 D




74        OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
continues to burn brightly, but "the bush is not
consumed," for the simple reason that there is no
natural fire in it. Moses, however, thinks it is a
natural fire; and he approaches, as he says, "to see
this great sight, why the bush is not burned."
Suddenly a voice calls to him out of the bush, and
after commanding him to take off his shoes from
his feet, proceeds to charge him with a great and
solemn mission.
Moses describes the scene precisely as it appeared
to his own senses. The real state of the case was
this: The Lord sent an angel filled with his Spirit,
so as to speak in his name. He approaches Moses
from his spiritual side,-for no angel or spirit can
resume any physical embodiment, or be seen by the
natural eye of man. The spiritual sight of Moses
is first partially opened, and he sees the burning
bush. The divine light flowing down into the external or scientific sphere of his own mind, is represented symbolically to him as a fire burning in a
bush which is not consumed. When his spiritual
hearing is opened, he holds the conversation with
the angel of the Lord, detailed in Exodus. If
some wanderer in the desert had approached the
spot, he would have seen no fire and have heard
no voice. If his sight alone had been opened, like




WIA T BODIES HA VE THEY?          75
the attendants of Paul, he would have seen the light,
but would not have heard the words.
After our Lord's resurrection, it is stated that
sundry persons came out of their graves and appeared to many.  Was this a genuine flesh-andblood resurrection before the appointed time? Did
these people go back into their graves, and resume
the long sleep to which the Old Theology consigns
them? The explanation is this: After the crucifixion, the spiritual sight of a great many of the
disciples was partially opened. They saw the angels
about the sepulchre, and indeed the Lord himself,
with their spiritual eyes. They saw his ascension
to heaven in the same manner; for He certainly
never rose into the physical atmosphere! They
saw certain old saints with the same eyes; and
knowing they had been dead and buried (as the
natural man will have it) for a long time, they
inferred that they must have risen from their
graves. Having no correct idea of the spiritual
body or the spiritual world, and being wholly unconscious of the changes occurring in their own
spirits, they regarded as miracles certain events,
which were simply the operation of spiritual laws
with which they were unacquainted.
In our blindc faith and reverence for Moses and




76       OUR C.HILDREN IN HEA VEN.
Ezekiel, John and Paul, we suppose they understood the whole deep philosophy and wonderful
mechanism of the Revelation they were instrumental in making. This is a great error. The
Prophets and Apostles were generally simpleminded, uncultivated men, who interpreted in a
sensuous manner, according to the strict literal
appearance, things which were beyond their interior comprehension. It was their mission to give
the Word of God its external or sensuous basis;
and there is no special reason why, or probability
that they understood it themselves in any other
manner.
We must get rid of prophet-worship and apostleworship, as well as of hero-worship and saint-worship. Those worthies were the passive mediums,
not the authors of Revelation. Our faith, our
reverence, our love, must be felt not for their persons or characters any further than they naturally
deserve, but for the spiritual truths they have communicated,-frequently not knowing their real
value,-and for the Lord, from whom those truths
descended, flowing from sphere to sphere, from
heaven to heaven, from angels and spirits to man
on earth in his lowest and simplest degree of life.
The doctrine of the spiritual body must be made




WHAT B ODIES HA VE THE Y  77
clear to our minds, before the glorious light of
Swedenborg's revelations can fall upon the vital
questions of life which so vex our inmost hearts.
His own mission and seership become possible and
credible to us only when we understand the mechanism as it were of his spiritual insight. The
credibility of his teachings must rest on their inherent truth; but a prior difficulty in every mind,
is the question of the possibility of his supernatural communications. We have so long regarded
the other life as "the bourne whence no traveler
returns," and its phenomena as the incommunicable
secrets of the grave, that we are accustomed to view
with distrust any claim to spiritual experience.
VWe see the biblical narratives of open vision
through the enchanting distances of time and space,
and whatever interpretation we give them, we are
unwilling to admit that any thing similar call happen in our own age and country. This is unphilosophical and unreasonable. The same organic mental constitution-the spiritual body connecting the
soul with both heaven and hell-exists in all men;
in Abraham, in Moses, in Paul, in Swedenborg, in
ourselves. Every human being has a potentiality
of seeing into heaven and hell without any change
of place; without any violation of general laws,
7 *




78        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
spiritual or natural; by merely having some dormant faculties of his being excited into action. Oh
how ignorant we all are of the latent heat, the latent
light, the latent electricities and magnetisms of the
Human Soul!
There are two wonderful narratives, one in the
Old, the other in the New Testament, which beautifully illustrate and are illustrated by this doctrine
of the spiritual body. Their exposition is not only
interesting in itself, making clear what was dark
before, but it will unfold the very process by which
Swedenborg's eyes were opened into the spiritual
world.
Elijah and Elisha, the old Prophet and his disciple, walk along down to the river Jordan, conversing about the wonderful event impending,
the instantaneous translation of Elijah to heaven.
Fifty sons of the prophets come along also, to view
afar off the wonderful scene. Elijah and Elisha
cross the Jordan, the fifty witnesses remaining
behind.
Elijah, aware of his approaching dissolution,
says to Elisha,
" Ask what I shall do for thee, befoie I be taken
away from thee."
Elisha replies:




WHAT BODIES MHAVE THEY?          79
"I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit
be upon me."
The old Prophet, knowing well from long ex.
perience how spiritual vision was effected, responds:
"Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if
thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be
so unto thee: but if not, it shall not be so."
This seems like a very strange answer. There
they stand in the open light of day. Fifty witnesses are looking on beyond the little river. If
chariots and horsemen were coming to take th6
physical body of Elijah into heaven, what was to
hinder Elisha and the fifty witnesses watching across
the river from seeing every thing that occurred?
Elijah knew that his translation could not be
seen with the natural eye. He knew that unless
Elisha's spiritual eyes were opened, he could not
possibly see the spiritual conveyance which was
coming for him. He knew that the Lord alone
could open his spiritual eyes and make his ascent
heavenward visible. That opening of the spiritual
eyes would be a sign that Elisha would inherit the
prophetical office. He would then be t Seer-one
who sees things which others do not and cannot
see.




80        OUR CHILDBEN IN HEA VEN.
The expected event takes place. Elisha sees the
chariots and horsemen of Israel; he sees the spiritual (not the natural body) of Elijah ascend: he
catches the falling mantle; he thinks-for so it appeared from his stand-point-that Elijah ascended
bodily into heaven: for no man has any consciousness of the opening of his spiritual eyes. It seems
to him that he sees objects as before with his natural eyes.
Not so, however, the fifty bystanders across the
little river, whose spiritual eyes were not opened;
but who were straining their natural eyes to see all
that was to be seen. They saw no chariot, no
horsemen, no ascending Elijah. They saw a whirlwind, and no doubt the material body of Elijah,
abandoned by its spiritual form, carried aloft and
away. So fully persuaded were they that the Spirit
of the Lord had cast Elijah's body away off on
some mountain or valley, that they entreated Elisha
to permit them to go in search of it. Viewing the
matter from a different stand-point, he at first refused.  They insisted: he consented: and they
searched three days in vain. Neither party saw the
whole transaction.  The evidence of both is necessary to make it intelligible.
Again: our Lord takes three favorite Disciples




WHAT BODIES HAVE THEY?           81
with him up into a high mountain; and as He
prays, an astounding change takes place in his personal appearance. His garments become "white
and glistering," and "his face did shine as the
sun."
Moses and Elias then become visible and talk
with him about his approaching crucifixion. After
a while the vision disappears, and the amazed -disciples find themselves alone with Jesus in his usual
form.
The disciples narrated the event just as it appeared to their senses. They believed, and the
Apostolic Church believes to this day, that the
natural body and clothing of our Lord underwent
some miraculous transformation; and that Moses
and Elias came down from heaven in some incomnprehensible way, and appeared bodily to the natural
eye on a mountain of Judea. The disciples did
not know, nor do the majority of Christians today suspect, that the real change took place in the
spiritual sight of the witnesses themselves. No
one whose spiritual eyes were not open, would have
seen or heard any thing which there and then happened. Had such a person, rambling about the
mountain, stumbled on the party and watched
them, unseen himself, he would have conscienD *




82        OUR CHILDREN IN.HEA VEN.
tiously pronounced the strange story of the disciples a gross fabrication or a wild hallucination of
the senses.
Before they saw the wonders of the transfiguration, their external senses were laid asleep; for says
the Evangelist: "They were heavy with sfeep; and
when they were awake, they saw his glory and the
two. men that stood with him." Again, it is recorded that as the scene passed away, "a cloud
overshadowed them." This momentary darkness
or sleep at the beginning and end of spiritual
vision, is common. It is described by Swedenborg
as occurring in his own case; and is caused, no
doubt, by the transition, in the first place, from
natural to spiritual sight, and in the second, back
again from spiritual to natural vision.
The disciples saw the glorious Spiritual Body of
our Lord, such as it appears now to the angels in
heaven, when they get into those elevated states of
feeling and thought representated by ascending a
very high mountain. They saw the spiritual bodies
of Moses and Elias, and they heard the conversation between them and Jesus with their spiritual
ears. John saw and heard the wonders  of the
Apocalypse in the same manner. A  bystander
would not have shared the sights or the sounds




WHA T BODIES HAVE THE Y?         83
with him, and would no doubt have pronounced
him insane.
These and many other similar cases recorded in
the Word-unintelligible mysteries when viewed
from the literal stand-point-embody the very laws
and phenomena of the life to come. They contain
the germinal points of the only rational psychology;
but a faithless generation, a degenerate church, an
unbelieving world, class them with visions and
compare them to dreams!
The apostle Paul's naive version of his own case
is strongly confirmatory of Swedenborg's statements,
which throw back on it a reciprocal light, making
it more intelligible.
" I will come to visions and revelations from the
Lord. I knew, a man in Christ above fourteen
years ago (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or
whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth); such an one caught up to the third heaven.
"And I knew such a man (whether in the body
or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth),
"How that he was caught up into paradise, and
heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful
[or, more correctly translated, is not possible] for a
man to utter."
Paul's external senses are made quiescent, and




84         OUR CtIITLDREN IN HEA VEN.
he visits in the spiritual body, just as Swedenborg
did, the angels of the third or highest heaven. He
cannot understand his condition. He knows he is
not dead, for he is still on the earth. He knows
he has been to heaven, for he conversed with angels.
Ile felt himself to be in the same body while in
heaven; and still he could not imagine how that
hr.avy, material form could have been caught up
into paradise, where he heard and saw such wonderful things. His mind was not enlightened as
to the nature or method of his elevation; and he
never knew in this life whether he had been "in
the body or out of the body."
Swedenborg states also that the wisdom or light
ofi the angels in the third heaven is so great, that
it is incommunicable to those from inferior spheres.
When spirits are elevated thither by certain methods,.hey see and hear what Paul did, and understand
it all while in mental rapport with the inhabitants;
but so soon as they return to their own inferior
places, it either escapes their memory entirely, or it
is impossible for them to clothe the ideas in intelligible language. This was the case with Paul.
He heard things when his spiritual ears were opened,
which, in his ordinary natural state, he found it
"impossible to utter."




WHAT BODIES HAVE THEY?           85
The great Apostle's apparently fruitless visit to
the celestial spheres was a precious legacy to the
Church; embodying the sublime and almost forgotten truth, that it is possible for a man while
living in this world to be caught up into paradise,
to see and hear the wonders of heaven, and to continue a long while afterwards to discharge his duties
upon earth. This first recorded visit, this mere
peep into the highest heaven, was prophetic of the
thorough and prolonged intercourse with the world
of spirits vouchsafed seventeen hundred years after
to another servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Swedenborg's spiritual eyes were opened in the
year 1743, and so continued, with an intermission
of but a few days, until his death in 1772, a period
of twenty-nine years. His pure and peaceful life
had been earnestly devoted to scientific and philosophical pursuits. He had never paid any special
attention to theology; and this new and strange
mission, for which he had been silently prepared
by the Divine Providence, came upon him with a
shock of surprise. He thenceforth led a double
life-preparing and publishing in this world the
stores of spiritual wisdom he had gathered in the
other.
The case of this man is altogether unique in the
F




86         0 OUR CHILDRENV IN HEA VEN.
history of mankind. It presents very few points
of resemblance to the case of any previous Seer,
Reformer, or Spiritualist, in the world. It must
be judged rather by its points of dissimilarity.
The dignity of his demeanor was worthy of the
grandeur of his mission. He made no pretensions,
sought no discussions, attempted no conversions;
but in sublime silence planted the seed of the new
kingdom of God-that seed which is "less than
all the seed that be in the earth; but when it is
sown, it groweth up and becometh greater than all
herbs, and shooteth out great branches, so that the
fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of
it."
As there is no possible avenue into the spiritual
world except through the spiritual body, so there
is no way out of it back to earth except through
the same medium. No spirit or angel can resume
a material body, or appear in the natural world, in
a form which reflects the light of our sun. They
know nothing that transpires in this mundane
sphere, except through the spirits of people in this
world with whom they are consociated. They can
be brought into such rapport with the spiritual
body of a man living on earth, that they can read
his thoughts and direct his motions; and if the




WHAT BODIES HAVE THEY?           87
man's spiritual senses are open at the same time,
they can see through his eyes and hear through his
ears what is transacting in this outer world.
This is the key to the fact, which at first blush
appears so incredible, that Polheim, a celebrated
Swedish minister and intimate friend of Swedenborg, witnessed the ceremonies of his own funeral.
He was surprised, as all new-comers are in the
other life, at finding himself alive and apparently
in the same body; but when he looked through
Swedenborg's eyes into the natural world and saw
his own material body laid out in state, his amazement was extreme. He attended the burial of his
own corpse, conversing on the way with Swedenborg concerning the ignorance and darkness of the
church and the world about the true meaning of
the resurrection from the dead.
One spirit, newly deceased, who was attending
his own funeral, heard (through Swedenborg as a
medium) the minister say, that the body of their
departed friend would rise from his long sleep at
the resurrection-day.  He entreated Swedenborg
to tell the audience that he had already risen from
the dead, and that he was then and there present
in a spiritual body. Had Swedenborg complied
with the solicitation of his invisible companion,




88        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
his announcement of the most beautiful truth
would have been received with unbounded derision.
The good angels, breathing always a living atmosphere of peace and beauty, had little desire to
turn away from it and peer through Swedenborg's
eyes into the darkness of our disorderly world.
They could not help seeing and hearing something
which shocked or pained them. He once noticed
some little boys fighting in the streets, the bystanders encouraging the combat-a disgusting
spectacle common enough in our own age and
country. The angels who witnessed it through
his eyes, and sensed the spiritual sphere of hell
which surrounded the scene, were filled with inexpressible distress and agitation.
The idea of spirits or departed friends gliding
invisibly around us and watching our movements
is a popular delusion. There are no ghosts, but
such as are generated in weak, excited, or diseased
brains, and projected outwardly as hallucinations.
The spiritual and natural worlds do not pass insensibly into each other, like light into shade or
heat into cold. They are utterly different in material. They are connected solely by correspondence; and no person in the spiritual world can see




WHAT BODIES HAVE THEEY            89
into this world, except through the eyes of some
human being still living in it.
Our spiritual bodies may become visible in
heaven. We may thus commune with spirits from
other planets or worlds even beyond our solar sys
tem. If any of those spirits should be in rapport
with some human being still living on those distant orbs, we might see through his eyes into his
physical world also. Swedenborg thus saw spirits
from some of our planets, and from some earths
away off in the sidereal abysses. A chain of communicating mediums might thus be established
from world to world and system to system, and
sensation, thought, and affection transmitted along
the line from one part of the universe to another.
Our traveler by open vision gives us some wonderful accounts, as might be expected, of God's
creatures in those remote regions of space. They
differ sometimes amazingly from  us, so that they
cannot understand or appreciate our peculiar modes
of thought and feeling. One spirit from a very
distant globe was brought into such rapport with
Swedenborg that he looked through his eyes into
the streets of a European city. The scene was so
different from any thing that he had ever witnessed
or imagined, and the sphere of it, in which evil...




90        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
predominated, was so revolting to him, that he fled
away in terror.
Some cavilers have demanded why Swedenborg,
when describing the spirits who came from Mars,
Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, did not go further and
tell us something of the inhabitants of those more
remote planets which astronomers had not discovered in his day. The answer probably is, that
those vast orbs, so distant from the heat and light
of the sun, are still undergoing the immense series
of geological changes necessary to prepare them for
the habitation of human beings, and that, therefore, no spirits have ever come from them.
We have not been too prolix, if we have succeeded in impressing on the reader's mind the importance, truth, and beauty of this doctrine of a
spiritual body. It is the central, pivotal point of
Swedenborg's grand system of Psychology. It h:s
science, reason, and revelation to commend it. The
only charge against it is its strangeness. View it in
all its connections and relations, comparing it carefully with the Written Word:-the strangeness
will disappear. You will discover that it was oi ly
the newness of that glorious Second Advent I -a.
of which our Lord declared:
" Behold! I make all things new."




WHAT BODIES HAVE THEY?           91
Some persons are startled at the statement, that
the spiritual bodies of our little children who have
left us, continue to grow until they attain the full
stature of manhood and womanhood. They expect
to meet the little creatures who died ten or twenty
years ago, and find them the same small, dependent,
imperfect beings. This idea has arisen, no doubt,
from the belief that the soul or spirit will finally
be reunited to the same material body which was
laid in the grave; for we cannot imagine how a
fully-grown and developed spirit can reanimate
the form of a babe. When we cast behind us for
ever that odious dead-weight on Christian progress
-the doctrine of a fleshly resurrection —which
Coleridge condemns as a gross Egyptian superstition, we may advance into clearer and purer
light, and see the necessity and the rationality of
the continued growth of the spiritual body.
Mothers, whose love for their infants is kept alive
in their hearts by the memory of its objective manifestations, wish earnestly to see them again just as
they were. They remember the sweet little face
pressing itself gladly against the maternal bosom;
the kisses which they showered on the pearl-white
forehead; the delicate hands and feet, more beautifully tinted than ocean shells; the thousand grace



92        0 UR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
ful gestures, and the endearing sounds which make
such ravishing music in the mother's heart.
Now all these precious little associations, which
make up the identity of the child in the mind of
the mother, never perish. It is one of the wonders
of the other life, that our mental states are all rolled
up like a vast map, which can be unrolled again,
bringing back in its fullness every thought, affection
and deed of our past existence. A still more wonderful thing follows. Those acts of memory there
are not vague pictures of the imagination, or conceptive faculty, as they are here; but they may be
projected outwardly, taking visible shape and scenic
representation, accurately repeating everything that
transpired.
A man can thus be made to reappear just as he
was when a boy, or even a babe, with every most
minute particular of form and dress. A panorama
of our whole lives can thus be unrolled and presented for inspection, not as painting, but as statuary. These retrospections frequently take place, for
the discovery of truth, for the identification of individuals, for instruction, and for uses connected
with regeneration or judgment. Swedenborg tells
of two brothers who had been alienated in the
world, and whose misun.derstandings were dissi



WHAT BODIES HAVE THEY?           93
pated by both being brought back into their early
states of life, when the old fountains of fraternal
affection burst forth with indescribable sweetness
and purity.
But these are retrospections; the law of the universe is progress. How selfish and cruel it would
be for us to wish that our beautiful child of two
summers should remain always a child of two summers; an imperfect, undeveloped, helpless being,
unconscious of the myriad beauties of nature and
art; untouched by the sweetest and holiest passions
of the soul; unillumined by the splendors of everexpanding thought; and unblessed by the glorious
visions of God and immortality! What would be
a painful, pitiable abortion in this world, would be
still more so in the next. No. Every human being
was created to attain the full measure of a man,
which, as the Revelation assures us, is "that of an
angel."
The spiritual body does not grow and is not nourished by the appropriation of such food as nourishes
the natural body, but by the acquisition of truth
and its corresponding goodness. A continual influx
and efflux of natural substances keeps our material
forms in proper condition. A similar influx and
efflux of spiritual affections and thoughts sustains




94        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
our spiritual bodies. Spirits have the senses of
sight, hearing, smell, and touch, vastly more acute
than man; but the sense of taste is almost nothing,
it is so obscure. The tables of the other world are
shadowy in comparison with ours. Delicate breads,
aromal fruits, nectars, wines, and flowers: symbols
of spiritual things rather than food. Their feasts
are social gatherings, where Wisdom and Charity
preside, and where the ideas and emotions of the
happy guests are reproduced around them in graceful representative forms, as the souls of artists and
poets are projected outwardly in painting and song.
The changes which the spiritual body undergoes
after death are representative of the changes which
are taking place in the soul itself. The child grows
by becoming more rational, intelligent, and truly
spiritual, until it attains the full development of
man or woman; for angels, also, are male and
female. Those who die in infancy always retain a
fresh and youthful appearance; and those who die
advanced in years, if they have lived on earth a
life of charity, return to the freshness and bloom
of early manhood or womanhood. There is a beautiful new infancy and childhood dormant, like a
bird in the shell, in the old, wrinkled, and tottering
forms of all such while in the lesh. Many per



WHA T BODIES MA VE THE Y?        95
sons, who are uninstructed in these matters, will be
amazed to find the dear old grandmothers and
grandfathers, who passed away from them with
gray heads and wrinkled faces, transformed into
beautiful and blooming beings in the prime of life!
Spiritual time measures only the progress towards
perfection, and has no ravages to display.
The spiritual body appears, immediately after its
resurrection, the perfect image and counterpart of
the natural body, from which it was extricated.
Every imperfection in form, feature, speech, or
motion is retained; for nothing ever existed in
the natural body but by correspondence with something in the spiritual. So they are perfectly alike.
The spiritual body is even for a time clad in the
same kind of garments, to all appearance, which
the man wore on earth-a fact which shows to the
denizens of the other world that he is a new-comer
from our own. He is not arrayed in the "fine
linen" of the saints, until his interior life has been
brought into perfect harmony with that of the
saints.
The spiritual body begins changing with the
removal or separation of the evil spheres, hereditary and acquired, which are so closely interwoven
with our moral structures. These evil spheres are




96         OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
the sole causes of the Unbeautiful in man and
nature, and of all the deviations from the perfect
lines of beauty and order in the universe. As the
spirit is gradually disentangled from these spheres
by the wonderful processes of exploration, judgment, and instruction, which take place in the intermediate world of spirits, its progress is pictured
in the improved and beautified state of its spiritual
body.  Every deformity or imperfection gradually
disappesrs. Every line of care and sorrow is removed; every trace of passion or selfishness or
sensuality is obliterated.  The faces of some persons undergo such astonishing changes, that it is
difficullt at first for their nearest friends just coming
into the spiritual world to recognize them. The
faces of the angels become so extremely beautiful,
with infinite variety, as to baffle all efforts at description.
By the same organic law of the spiritual world,
that the exteriors and interiors shall correspond,
those who grow in evil grow in ugliness and deformity. Evil spirits become terribly hideous in
the light of heaven; but as their tastes are as perverted as their forms, they continue to think themselves models of beauty and wisdom.
Man, being a free agent, is capable of thinking




WHAT BODIES HA VE THE Y?        97
one thing and saying another; of feeling in one
way, and pretending to feel in the opposite. This
great sin of deceit has degraded the race for thousands of years, and transmitted its ever-increasing
physical marks from father to son, until very few
persons in the world can be said to have absolutely
their own faces. The great judgment awaiting each
individual directly after death will rectify all this,
and beauty will be given only to those to whom
beauty belongs.
"To grow old in heaven," says Swedenborg, "is
to grow young." There is no permanent childhood there, nor old age, but only glorious manhood and womanhood. There is no autumn or
winter, but only spring and summer. There is no
night there, but only morning and evening. There
is no heat there but the glow of Love; no light but
the brightness of Truth. There is no God there
but the Divine Man, our Lord Jesus Christ.
E




CHAPTER IV.
WHERE DO THEY GO?
IS it not wonderful that any human being, not
actually insane, should have doubted the final
salvation of infants and little children?
Read the beautiful teachings of our Lord himself on this subject:
"' Suffer the little children to come unto me, and
forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of
God."
"And He took a child and set him in the midst
of them; and when He had taken him in his arms,
He said unto them:'Whosoever shall receive one of such children
in my name, receiveth me."''" Take heed that ye despise not one of these little
ones; for I say unto you that in heaven their angels
do always behold the face of my Father which is
in heaven."
"Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall
in no wise enter therein."
98




WHERE DO THEY GO  99
"Even so, it is not the will of your Father which
is in heaven, that one of these little ones should
perish."
In the face of these teachings, the letter and
spirit of which are so heavenly, the logical necessities of a false theology have driven some of its
leaders in former times into the execrable doctrine,
that there were infants and children in hell! The
same logical necessities still exist; but the heart
of humanity has outgrown its creed: no one believes it now.
We can imagine that in an age of great moral
darkness, when persecution and torture for opposing religious opinions were considered acceptable to God, grave and learned divines might
persuade themselves and even others, that there
were myriads of infants in hell "not more than a
span long." What shall we say when the great
poet, the man with "the vision and faculty divine,"
loses his intuitive perception of truth, and describes
the other life as it appears through the dark veil
woven of ecclesiastical cobwebs?
Dante inscribed over the sombre arch of the gate
so hell these awful words:
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here."
On getting into the first circle of the infernal




100       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
realm, he reports the whole air tremulous with the
eternal wails of a vast multitude of infants, lwho
had never been baptized into the church. Oh, the
cruel tyranny of the Religious Idea, when it reflects
the unregenerate human heart and not the will of
God!
From these dreamers, clerical and lay, let us turn
to the testimony of the Seer, who describes so clearly
and truthfully what he has heard and seen. " Heaven and its wonders, and Hell; from things heard
and seen;" is the title of one of his books.
"I have been informed of a certainty that all
infants who die throughout the whole world, are
raised up by the Lord and conveyed into heaven;
and are there educated and instructed by the angels
who have the care of them; and also grow up to
maturity as they advance in intelligence and wisdom. It may be seen, therefore, how immense the
heaven of the Lord would be, if it were composed
of little children only; for they are all instructed
in the truths of faith and in the good things of
mutual love, and become angels."
At what age, then, does moral responsibility begin? Are not many children fully sensible of the
difference between right and wrong at a very early
period? Many a parent's heart has been saddened




WHERE DO THEY GO?            101
by great clouds of fear and doubt on this subject.
Some beautiful and intelligent child of ten or fifteen
years, has been snatched away into the world of
spirits without having made any special confession
of sin, without- repentance, without what is called
"saving faith," without conversion.
Will such a child go to heaven, with all its little
imperfections on its head? Sombre theologians
look grave and are puzzled at the question. The
pietistic books of the churches give no light, but
excite suspicion and foster apprehension. The uncovenanted mercy of God is the forlorn hope.
Thorns pierce the parental heart. Many cypress
leaves are interwoven in the chaplet of roses which
adorns the graves of such little ones.
The point acquires a still more painful interest,
because the doubtful element is increased, when the
victim of death is just verging into a radiant, happy,
and hopeful manhood or womanhood. Overflowing
with natural vivacity, eager for the gayeties, the
pleasures, the business of the world, the young spirit
is summoned away before it has acquired a full conception of the meaning of life or death; before the
religious idea, as taught by the dominant theologies, has made any profound impression on the
mind or heart. Without faith in Christ, withg *




102       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
out conviction, without a sense of justification,
without interest in God or spiritual things, how can
such a person be saved?
It is useless to institute comparisons of opinion
where all alike are based, not upon experimental
knowledge, but on theological subtleties of interpretation.  Passing the authorities of the  Old
Church entirely by, we will consult the heartcheering, soul-illuminating revelations of the New,
thanking God for the light which has come into the
world.
Swedenborg divides the moral states of our life
into three stages. The first is one of innocence and
ignorance, extending from birth to the age of five
years. The second is the stage of instruction, or
formation of the elements of character, reaching
from five years to twenty. The third is the period
of intelligence and rationality, extending from
twenty to sixty, or to death. After sixty the tendency is to revert to the state of childhood again,
with the character acquired or formed during life
on earth as the basis of a new life in the spiritual
world.
From five to twenty we are taught by masters,
and think, not from and of ourselves, but under
authority. The soul grows, as the body grows




WHERE DO THEY GO?              103
We are appropriating and assimilating to ourselves,
during that period, what we derive from others;
from parents, nurses, teachers, companions. books,
nature, society, &c. Not that which goes into a
man defiles him; but that which is generated within
him by his own voluntary powers, and proceeds
from him as his own.
No one, according to what we love to call the
"heavenly Doctrines," is responsible for hereditary
or original sin. That is a terrible burden we all
bear, impelling us continually to violations of the
moral law. We only suffer the penalty, however,
of our own transgressions, and then only of those
committed in states of liberty and rationality.  No
genuine reformation of character takes place in
states of ignorance, insanity, sickness, or coercion,
whether mental or physical. Therefore persons
under twenty, or thereabouts, are not fully responsible, because they are not in states of liberty or
rationality. They are not freed from the necessary
mastership of other wills than their own; nor is
the rational faculty fairly developed. There can be
nc; genuine spiritual life until it is voluntarily
sought after in a state of maturity, physical and
psychological.
We may safely assume, that no one (lying under




104     O0 T  CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
the age of twenty can be finally lost; for, no matter what may have been done in the flesh, it will be
found, on the final adjustment, when all things are
unraveled and made right, that there is yet enough
spiritual ground to be created (not renovated but
created-the soul, like the body, being imperfect),
for heavenly influences still to prove triumphant.
There is authority from the letter of the Bible
for this view of the matter. On account of the
murmurings of the Hebrews against the Lord, the
entire generation which came out of Egypt over
twenty years of age, with the exception of Caleb
and Joshua, were doomed to perish in the wilderness. Those under twenty were spared and permitted to enter the Holy Land, after a period of
trial and temptation.  They were exempted because they were not considered morally responsible
for participating in the sins of their fathers.
WTe are not condemned for evils until we can
discern, analyze, judge, and conclude for ourselves;
and until, exercising our free will in a state of perfect rationality and freedom, we deliberately choose
the evil way; nor does all hope of reformation and
final salvation vanish, until we have obstinately
confirmed ourselves in evil, and have resisted all
the good influences which may be brought to bear




WHERE DO THEY GO?            105
upon us both in this world and in the world of
spirits.
This explains why it is, as Swedenborg assures us,
that so many of the heathen go to heaven. Their
souls remain in an imperfect and childlike condition during this life; and they do not advance
into states of true rationality and liberty until they
enjoy or suffer the experiences of the spiritual
world. The worst of all spirits come from Christendom,-a fact not very flattering to our boasted
civilization; and the very lowest depth is assigned
to those who have used the insignia of piety and
the machinery of the Christian church, to foster
their own ambition and self-love by acquiring
spiritual dominion over the minds of men.
It is conceded, then, that all infants and children
go to heaven.
Heaven! Beautiful, sweet, inspiring word! Is
it imaginary, or is it because the Christian heart is
so frequently and sweetly entranced in contemplation of these sacred themes, that it finds such a
special, tender, musical charm in the words, love,
goodness, innocence, peace, angels, home, heaven,
and the Lord?
Where and what is Heaven?
An old English divine, who was asked whether...




106       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
heaven was a state or a place, wisely answered, "A
state first, and a place afterward." The Christian
church is well acquainted with the meaning of the
heavenly "state" as attained by the process of regeneration. It has made many ingenious speculations about the heavenly "place." Swedenborg
explains to us, by divine authority, the true nature
of both, and gives the key of correspondence which
unfolds the organic connection existing between
them.
What a strange idea of heaven it is, that our
spirits will travel over illimitable spaces, upwards
and outwards, far away beyond our visible universe,
into some vast central Sun, where they will find the
great city and the white throne and the jasper sea!
As if a mere remove on the same plane, however
great, from our present habitat, could deliver us
from the bondage of time and space, and of these
perishing material forms, and bring us face to face
with the verities of the Lord's spiritual kingdom!
There is indeed a central Sun; but no straight or
curved line drawn from our terrestrial bases will
ever reach it. The old Chaldean oracles, fragments
of angelic wisdom, speak of two Suns; and of one
as "more true" than the other. That " more true"
Sun shines throughout the entire spiritual universe,




WHIERE DO THEY GO?            107
andl its heat and light are the Love and Wisdom
of the Divine Man, who is the Centre and Life of
all things.
A spiritual universe surrounds and interpenetrates the entire physical universe. Within and
around each planet there is a spiritual orb composed
of spiritual substance and full of spiritual inhabitants. There are three series of these vast spiritual
kingdoms, one above another; the first, second, and
third heavens. They are all connected together and
sustained by the same inflowing Divine Life. The
physical universe is the basis or pedestal upon
which the spiritual stands. It precedes it in development, and is "established for ever." Here
and there from local causes a planet may be shattered or a star expire; but that vast webwork of
solar systems and constellations of systems and
belts of constellations —this physical universe-is
immovable and imperishable.
Heaven is not in this direction or that; it is
neither upward nor downward. The road to it is
not measured by spaces nor estimated by times.
Heaven is not a place to be discovered by research;
nor a city which can be reached and entered by
every one, although its gates of pearl stand open
night and day. Its glory is invisible, its songs




108       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
inaudible, its heights inaccessible, to all but those
who bear in their bosoms the heavenly " state"
which creates and reveals around them the heavenly
" place."
How plainly does our Lord assure his disciples
that heaven is neither here nor there, but within
themselves. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God. The spiritual body alone can
rise into heaven. To give a philosophical definition: Heaven is the Lord in the human soul; the
Lord's love and wisdom appropriated and reappearing as affection and thought in the heart and
brain, or in the will and understanding, of the regenerate man. When a man feels and thinks as
the Lord would have him feel and think-when the
Lord's will is done in the spirit, so that man is an
image or likeness of God-he has heaven within him.
The heaven without and around the angels, the
external heaven, the place which philosophers call
" the objective," is created instantaneously and from
moment to moment by the Lord, in perfect correspondence with the heaven within, or with the
states of their affections and thoughts derived from
the Lord. The causes are all within; the effects
are all without. The outward and visible substances are plastic to the unseen operations of the




WIERE DO THEY GO?             109
spirit, taking forms and colors according to the
secret changes of the soul
This law of correspondence between the internal
and the external, the subjective and the objective,
is the grand secret of creation; revealed to men
in the golden age, and lost by sin and sensuality;
concealed in all ages and countries in parables and
fables and "dark sayings of old;" half discovered
b)y poets and prophets in their finest frenzy; the
key to the speech of angels and the Word of God;
now restored again to an unbelieving world, by
divine direction, through the agency of "the most
unknown man" of modern times.
The angel's inner life is repeated in his outer
world. According to his reception of the Lord's
love and wisdom, the Sun of the spiritual world
shines for him, near or remote; full blazing or
belted with clouds; flaming with gold or gleaming
with silver. His residence on mountain-tops or in
valleys; in stately forests or by sounding seas; in
silken tents, or wooden houses, or palaces of sparkling gems; his urban or rural home; his city, his
temple, his associates, his raiment, his food, his
amusements, his business,-all are outbirths or correspondences flowing from his own interior spiritual
condition.
10




110       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
In that heavenly country, the flowers blossom
and the birds sing responsive to angelic thoughts.
Morning and evening come and go; spring and
summer pass and return; not in obedience to
a revolving globe, but representing the far more
wonderful revolutions in the spiritual life of
the soul itself. The world without him is a magic
mirror, reproducing, as it were, in painting and
statuary and music, the wonders of the world
within.
WTe cannot here describe the form and quarters
and times and spaces of heaven; the Sun there,
and its heat and light; the mansions, the government, the worship; the temples, the writings, the
marriages; the Word of God there; the speech of
the angels; their power, their innocence, their
peace, their wisdom, their occupations; the state of
the rich and the poor there; of the wise and the
simple; and of babes and little children. These
precious treasures of knowledge are all contained
in Swedenborg's "Heaven and Hell."
They will familiarize you with the world to
come. They will open heaven to your understanding. They will enable you to follow your lost ones
into the other life, and to realize in your delighted
imagination the joy and the peace to which they




WHERE D O THE Y G O?         111
have ascended. They will shed a halo of spiritual
beauty around your life, and make you fearless of
death. But if, in the fullness of your gratitude
and the rapture of your enlightenment, you make
a feast for your neighbors and friends, and call
them to rejoice with you, and show them the great
jewel you have discovered, stand prepared for the
reception which the truth has ever suffered from the
hands of those whom it came to bless! Some will
fly from you like wild beasts when you offer them
bread. Others will turn on you like swine trampling pearls beneath their feet. Some will mock you
as visionary; others will pity you as insane. Some
few will believe. Here and there some unquestioning Peter will leave his nets to follow you; some
forlorn Magdalen will drop her tears at your feet.
It is difficult for those trained in the present
sensuous or naturalistic philosophy to understand
how the Lord's life is the life and soul of heaven.
Our reception of the Lord's life determines the
heaven within us and without us. There is no life
but the Lord's. Men are organic forms, animated
by inflowing forces from the spiritual world. No
affections or thoughts originate in man. The Lord's
life is an infinite current of Love and Wisdom,
breaking, as it falls upon created forms, into multi



112       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
tudinous sprays of affection and thought. Man
is simply the mirror which reflects the Lord's
light, perfectly or imperfectly, according to his
atomic arrangement, his organic constitution. He
is a metal expanding under heat; a needle turning
in the magnetic current; a mill-wheel impelled by
forces independent of self. His self-will determines
the reception of life from above, and the use made
of it; but it creates nothing of its own.
All loves, with their infinite varieties of affections
and delights, are derived from the love of the Lord
to his creatures. The strongest and most beautiful
of these derivatives are the conjugial love and the
parental love. They are the fountain-heads of all
the charities and graces of domestic and social life.
The Lord's love of bestowing Himself in creation
upon others, transplanted into man, becomes conjugial love; and his love of protecting and perpetuating what He has created, becomes our parental
love. All other loves-the love of the neighbor,
of relatives, of friends, of the church, of one's
country; the love of knowledge, of art, of useful
labor; every conceivable form of the passions and
emotions of the human soul,-are simply finite
manifestations of the Lord's one, loving, uncreated
Life.




WHERE DO THEY GO?             113
The analogue or correspondent of this great
spiritual truth has been recently discovered in the
natural sciences. The so-called forces of nature
-mechanical motion, chemical affinity, beat, light,
electricity, and magnetism-are so subject to similar
laws, present such similar phenomena, and are so
readily converted into each other, that philosophers
have ventured on the sublime generalization, that
there is One Fundamental Force, which becomes
heat, light, electricity, motion, or affinity, according
to its modifications in the atomic forms of different
media.
The grand truth being recognized, that the Lord
creates the spiritual world from moment to nloment,
according to the quantity and quality of his love
and wisdom received and appropriated by the spiritual beings inhabiting it, some of the strangest
statements in Swedenborg assume the most rational
form. His details, indeed, are only intelligible
from a knowledge of his largest facts or general
principles.
We can understand now how heaven is separated
from hell, and one part of heaven from another,
how one man is organically in heaven, and another
organically in hell, even while the fleshly veil
hides from both their spiritual whereabouts. Evil
10 *




114       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
spirits cannot see or hear anything in heaven; cannot even breathe its air. Not because the Lord excludes them from it, but because they have no good
and true elements in themselves through which
He can create a heaven around them. Angels of
one heaven cannot pass to another, except through
intermediate spirits; because their different degrees
and qualities of interior life produce different exterior conditions. Every man's heaven or hell is the
product of his own interior love and thought. His
world is beautiful or hideous, according to the good
or evil he has voluntarily woven into his own nature. A man's final state is not determined by any
decree of Justice, but simply by the continued operation of the eternal laws of creation.
We can now understand the plan of salvation,
the scheme of redemption, the road to heaven, the
way to be saved.
And here, what shall we say of that scheme of
redemption which has been taught in the Christian
world since the foundation of the church; the angry
Father, the interceding Son; the punishment of
the innocent for the guilty; acceptance of the terms
proposed, and imputation of righteousness -after an
act of the understanding alone? As no single element of this scheme is supported by the record of




WHERE DO THEY GOt            115
the~ Evangelists, or by even a hint from the Lord
himself, what can we say, except to repeat the
opinion of a great thinker, that the dark metaphysics of Paul has sadly obscured the beautiful
simplicity of the Gospel?
Since heaven is the Lord's life in the human
soul, the road to heaven, the way to be saved, is
simply to receive the Lord's life into the heart.
What is the Lord's life?  It comes to our understandings as the Lord's Will-what He loves and
wills to be done. But if the Lord's life works in
us and through us perpetually, why is not his will
done? Simply because we react against it. Let
us cease to react against it; "cease to do evil,"
because He so commands us; because evil, or reacting against God, is sin; and the whole work is
done, —at least all that we have to do or can do.
This is the reason why the commandments of
the Lord are almost always negative. He does not
command us to fast, to pray, to give alms, to attend
church, to mortify ourselves, to make sacrifices of
all sorts, or to believe any particular doctrine or
creed. He merely commands us to abstain from
idolatry, from image-worship, from murder, from
adultery, from theft, from lying, from covetousness,
from doing our own work on the Sabbath day.




116      (OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
There is a deep organic reason for these negative
commands. We can never do any good thing so
long as we resist or react against the Divine Will;
and so soon as we abstain from evils of all kinds
and permit the. Lord to work in us and through us,
get rid of the dominating influence of self, and
open the door of the heart to divine influences, we
discover that " there is none good but One, that is,
God;" and that we are mediums through whom the
divine goodness works, and not active agents, except
in the mere sense of co-operation.
The old man with. his lusts and the evil heart
of stone are never changed into the new man and
into the heart of flesh. The old man is simply
thrust aside or displaced, and the new man-a
new creature or creation-installed in his place.
This new man is not ourself, but the Lord within
us —the heaven within. The highest, brightest,
and purest angel knows very well, that, independent of the Lord's presence within him, he is no
better than the most utterly irreclaimable devil in
hell. He would rebuke the imputation of goodness as Sir Launcelot did that of greatness:
"In me there dwells
No greatness, save it be a far-off touch
Of greatness, to know well I am not grea.,"




WHERE DO THEY G O?           117
The true plan of salvation consists then in washing in the river Jordan seven times-that simple
process recommended by Elisha to the conceited
and angry leper. It is to remove evil things from
our external man by refraining from doing evil.
The Lord does all the rest. He enters our open
doors and sups with us, as He promised. New
life, new love, new aspirations pour upon us; not
ours, but His. An increased love of the Lord, of
the neighbor, of the Church, of the Word, of our
country, of our friends, of our business, from which
the old foul traces of self-love or selfishness are
eliminated, is the sign and proof of His presence.
Self is the obstruction which keeps the Lord and
heaven out of our hearts. When we surrender all
our evil passions and false opinions-our pride, our
folly, our contempt of others, our ambition, our
prejudices, our restless endeavors to aggrandize ourselves in some manner; we find that there is no
goodness or truth in us, but that we have been reduced to the state of childhood again. That is the
meaning involved in our Lord's words, that unless
we receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child,
we cannot enter therein.
Children are interiorly and organically in heaven.
Of course they all go to heaven, as we term it,




118        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
when the external veil or fleshly body drops from
them. They are in heaven, because they have
formed and confirmed no moral and intellectual
selfhood, but are open and plastic to the influence of heavenly forces. From birth to five years,
they are attended by celestial angels; from five to
twenty, by spiritual angels. These angels do all
they can to break or modify the hereditary tendency to evil, and to prevent the formation of a
selfish character.
This great truth, that we are spiritually born in
heaven and descend from it to earth, losing our
celestial and then our spiritual life as we recede
from  the great Source of all life, is beautifully
stated by one of the purest poets of the world:
"The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy:




WHERE DC THEY GO                 119
The Youth, who da:ly farther from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended:
At length the Man perceives it die'away,
And fade into the light of common day."
Heaven, though so near to us in one sense, is
very far from  us in another.  Our sins have so
separated us from the pure and beautiful- natures
of those who live in heaven, that very few human
beings can pass at once from  this world into the
company of angels. This is true even of children,
except little babes. The spirits of falsehood and
selfishness, of envy, pride, jealousy, and cruelty,
take early possession of our poor, fallen souls.
Scarcely a little one five or ten years of age enters
the bright portals of the Morning Land, without
more or less of these spiritual stains upon its still
undeveloped nature. VWe cannot pass at once from
the dark and dense medium of earthly passion and
thought, into the golden atmospheres of heavenly
affections. These evil and false things which we
imbibe, or which have unfolded from the awful
depths of hereditary depravity, how are they removed?
The idea that some great and miraculous change
takes place at death, by which the spirit is made




120       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
perfectly pure and holy, and fitted instantaneously
for heaven, has no foundation in reason or revelation. We rise from our natural bodies with every
affection and appetite, every thought and opinion,
we had entertained or contracted here. We are
just as infirm and imperfect and impure after the
resurrection as before it. We find ourselves in the
world of spirits, the vast reservoir of all the departed, a state and its corresponding place intermediate betweeen heaven and hell.
This is Hades, the place of departed spirits; the
place into which our Lord descended after his resurrection, and where He preached to the souls that
were in prison. This is the paradise in which He
met the spiritual form of the penitent thief who
was crucified with Him on Calvary. The locality
and uses of that world are most important elements
in the spiritual history of our globe. In that world
the souls of men were gathered at the time of our
Lord's incarnation. A great Judgment took place
there during His earthly life. The good and
evil were separated; the old ceremonial system
passed away, and a New Dispensation was inaugurated. A similar Judgment occurred in that world
in 1757, and the germ of the Lord's Last and
Everlasting  Church, the New  Jerusalem. was




WHERE DO THEY GO?             121
planted upon earth.  No general Judgment will
ever occur again; but each individual now passes
immediately after death to the judgment.
This judgment is no great judicial process similar
to those we have upon earth, by which guilt is detected and punishment decreed. The soul is freed
from all external restraints, all bonds of law, custom, or authority, which bound it here; and is led
into such societies and states, that its genuine, untrammeled, interior nature may come to the surface
and be revealed to itself and to all others. It is
not punished for any thing it has ever done. Its
punishment comes only from itself. It is permitted to choose its own life, its own associates, its
own place; and every one passes into heaven or
hell of his own free choice. He is attracted hither
or thither by profound spiritual affinities, and his
inmost qualities continue to radiate forth into flowers and fruit-beautiful or ghastly, sweet or bitter
-to eternity.
What surprise, and in some cases what horror,
must strike Christians educated under the present
system of thought, when they discover a few days
after death, that they are wholly unfit for the
society of angels; and that a great work of spiritual exploration and judgment awaits them; and
11                F




122       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
that a thorough reconstruction must take place in
their natures before they can reach their happy
homes among the redeemed!
They are permitted, indeed, by the mediation of
good spirits, to enter the gates of the New Jerusalem and to see the glory of the City; to confirm
their faith, inspire their hopes, and satisfy a legitimate curiosity; but they cannot live there at once;
and they are taken back to the world of spirits, to
have all the secret evils of their hearts exposed and
eradicated, and every false idea corrected and uprooted from their understandings. When they can
feel and think in harmony with some angelic society,
that is, in a spirit of perfect love and truth, free
from all traces of self or earthly imperfection, they
are admitted into that higher and holier sphere,
and occupy the mansion which had been secretly
preparing for them all the time by their heavenly
Father.
Men remain a longer or shorter time in the world
of spirits, according to the tenacity with which they
cling to their evil affections and false opinions.  It
is sometimes difficult and painful to get rid of these
foul incrustations of the earthly life. It takes a
few  months in some cases-ten, twenty, or oven
thirty years in others; but the good spirits and




WHERE DO THEY GO  123
angels who labor to enlighten and purify our souls
are blessed with infinite patience and sweetness of
temper. Simple, uneducated persons and heathen,
being more like little children, are taught and led
much more easily than the learned and gifted, who
have less real humility, more pride of opinion and
self-reliance, and who have confirmed themselves
by subtle reasonings in their mental states.
Is it not eminently rational that our spiritual
character should be developed by these gradual
changes? The proud, the covetous, the sensual,
become humble and liberal and spiritual, not by
any immediate grace of God, but by steady organic
changes in the spiritual substance of their own
souls. The evil and false things in us are as real
as our flesh and blood; and they are removed, and
good and true things take their places, just as the
old material of our bodies is slowly eliminated and
quietly replaced by new tissues and organs. A
great deal of this work of regeneration is sometimes effected here, and the rest is completed in
the world of spirits. If it be begun here at allso much as the planting of a grain of mustardseed-it will surely be perfected hereafter.
Children under twenty, and a great many adults
among the heathen, not having had the rational




124       OUR CHILDREN iN HEAV EN.
faculty fully developed, have not confirmed them.
selves irremediably in evils and falsities. On the
separation of evil spheres from them, the angelic
presences within them pour down and outwards
into life and action. The poor, little creatures, who
were born and reared in the hot-beds of vice and
crime in our great cities, are brought under the
sweetest influences of education and culture. They
are trained by good spirits until the filth and dirt
of their natural life are washed away, and the spiritual diamonds concealed within begin to shine
forth to the sight. Truly the sweet labors of philanthropy and charity are not terminated with our
mortal career! What idea of heaven can he have,
who has not already discovered and felt upon earth
that it is heaven to do good to others!
Some children go to lower heavens; some to
higher; some to very external societies; some to
very interior; all according to their innate qualities and capacities. Each is sent to the precise
point where his spiritual cultivation can be best
effected. After they have passed from one sphere
to a higher, if any thing false or evil crops out in
the life, they are remanded back; nor can they advance again, until the evil has been thoroughly explored, confessed, repented of, and thus removed.




WHERE DO THEY GO?              125
they are sometimes even let down from heaven
into the world of spirits for further purification.
Little babes, having experienced nothing but a
faint auroral trace of earthly existence, are conveyed at once to a certain, highest, inmost, and altogether indescribable and inconceivable infantile
heaven, nearest to the Lord, and most immediately
under his inspection. When they grow up to childhood, they pass down into the particular sphere or
heaven,-celestial, spiritual, or natural, —for which
they are organically fitted. They never have any
conception of earthly things; have no ideas derived
from time and space; think they were born in
heaven; know no other Father but the Lord: and
these are they whose spheres of innocence and
peace are so powerful, that their mere presence can
torment and disperse whole legions of evil spirits.
In the celestial light of these interesting revelations, may we not exclaim with the Apostle:
"0 Death! where is thy sting?
0 Grave! where is thy victory?"
11 -




CHAPTER V.
WHEO TAKES CARE OF THEM?
W   HAT confidence in the definiteness and fidelity of Swedenborg's revelations of the other
life must they have, who seriously undertake to tell
us something about those angels who receive and
take care of our little ones when they die! Most
people have so vague an idea of the other life, so
little conception of its reality and substantiality,
that they are quite surprised when told that the
spiritual body of a little child just raised up into
heaven, requires as much attention as its natural
body did here. It must be fed and clothed; it
must sleep; it must be trained to walk and talk.
The little spirit must be instructed. A world of
knowledge must be presented to it; a world of love
must be lavished upon it. Who will discharge
these tender duties?
Every child after its resurrection is consigned to
the care of a female angel, whose ruling passion is
the love of children; who feels more than the
126




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?    127
affection of any mortal mother for it; and whose
supreme delight will be to make her little charge
both wise and happy. There is no love, the mind
incredulously retorts-there is no love like that of
a mother, sweeter than life, stronger than death.
Those who judge of our loves after death by their
feeble manifestations before it, have formed no adequate conception of the beautiful expansion of heart
and mind which awaits us all hereafter. If we
shall then think with a brightness and rapidity
now inconceivable, shall not our love, the first and
deepest expression of our life, undergo also a proportionate increase?
Some uninstructed minds will revolt, also, at the
idea of male and female angels. As if the grand
distinction of sex could be obliterated by death!a distinction which is universal, beginning with
the Love and  Wisdom  of God, anl running
through heaven and earth, varying it" forms but
never its principles; through men and beasts and
flowers, down to the married poles of every mineral
atom t As if the grace, the beauty, the purity, the
splendor of woman would not constitute the social
charm and glory of heaven, as it does of earth!
As if the passionate longing of youthful loves,
each for the other, was not the golden dawn, the




[28       OUR ChtILDREN IN HEAVEN.
token, the prophecy, of sweet eternities of wedded
bliss!
Swedenborg has satisfied the man of science, who
seeks a key to the essential unity of form and function in the myriad-fold variations of shape and
property in outward things. He satisfies the philosopher, who requires the true relation between
cause and effect; and those great, pivotal, universal truths, around which all lesser truths revolve,
like planets about the sun. He satisfies the theologian, who wishes to know how Jesus Christ is the
Supreme God; and how His love and wisdom are
the heat and light which vibrate through the spiritual ethers of the religious world. Does he satisfy
the aesthetic soul, which longs to unveil the principles of Beauty, and to read the poetry of heaven
in the stars, and in the flowers of earth? Only in
part. Does he satisfy the frantic questionings of
the inconsolable mother, bereaved of her child?
Alas, no!
Had some noble mother, purified of earthly
dross until her heart pulsated in unison with the
golden ethers of some infantile heaven, been permitted to penetrate, as he did, the " far-folded
mists and gleaming halls of morn," and, searching
for her children, to gaze on the wonders and glories




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?         129
of the Celestial Kingdom, she would have told u.i
things which would have filled the aching and
hungry heart of maternity for ever!
Ah! But *is the maternal heart of the present
Christian world ready or worthy to receive such a
revelation as that? If we have been faithless in
our stewardship of a few things, how can we expect
the Good Master to entrust his greatest treasures to
our keeping?
Swedenborg, a wifeless and childless old man,
was busied with the momentous mission of embodying in philosophic forms the spiritual doctrines
of a New Church; not to be erected by himself
among the institutions of men, but to be established by the Lord in the heart of the world.
Teaching universal truths or general principles in
bold, clear outlines of geometric beauty, he is frequently deficient in that minuteness and richness
of detail, which we fancy would have added so
much to the value and force of his revelations.
In the evolution of human literature, the poet
comes first with his songs, preceding the philosopher with his problems, and the naturalist with his
facts. In the opening of the heavens it will be
different. A scientific and philosophic basis will
be firmly laid, leaving little room for fancy or...




130       0 UR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
speculation. In the far futures, the Seers and the
Seeresses of spiritual and celestial generations, may
uplift veil after veil from still more interior heavens, and overwhelm us with their music and song.
Very much, however, that is both beautiful and
consoling may be gleaned from Swedenborg in
answer to the query we have propounded. We
cannot learn the name of the good angel who has
taken charge of our little ones. The new name
written on the white stone, which she received from
the Lord, is incommunicable to man. It involves
her whole spiritual character, and that would be
incomprehensible to us. Still, a little cheering
approximation can be made towards a knowledge
of its outlines. Even that will give us such a
deep, sweet confidence in her supernal goodness
and love!  Preparing the way, we must explain
first the true nature of the sphere of infants and
little children, and the difference between the natural and the spiritual love of them.
The sphere of little children!  What is a
Sphere?
Every mineral, every flower, every animal, every
human being, every spirit, every object, indeed, in
the universe, from the sun to a dew-drop, has a
peculiar atmosphere, composed of infinitesimal par



WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?          131
ticles emanating from itself, embodying its interior
nature and proceeding to a certain distance around
it. We find it in the magnet, by its attraction; in
the rose by its perfume; in man by his radiating
influences of all kinds. By it the faithful dog
tracks his master to incredible distances. By it the
magnetized person detects the character of another
by the glove or the ring he has worn.  Every
social circle, every church, every institution, has its
sphere. The sphere of the sun is the creative
force of nature. The sphere of the Lord is the
Holy Spirit, which comes from  or is "given"
by the glorified and ascended Person of Jesus
Christ.
The secret of our sympathies and antipathies
lies in the nature of the spiritual spheres emanating
from us. They are the antennae of the soul, which
we throw out around us to feel each other. Similar spheres attract; dissimilar spheres repel. Men
and women, according to the goodness and truth in
them, or their opposites, radiate forth upon others
spiritual spheres pregnant with good or evil issues.
The floral breath of vernal meadows and the reeking malaria of sultry swamps, are not more substantial than the spiritual spheres of men and women.
Imagine, then, the spiritual sphere emanating




it32      OURK CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
from an infant! There is a brilliant halo about
every little child. Happy is the man who can see
and feel and love it! The old artists meant to portray it by the golden circle about the head of the
infant Jesus. It comes forth in the serene light
and beauty, the inexpressible repose, the innocent
gladness, and the heavenly sweetness of the infantile
face.  It is discerned in the tender cooings and
prattlings and merry laughter of their little voices;
in their perfect forms, and in the delicacy and
unconscious grace of every gesture and motion.
Could we see and feel the full significance of this
interior and exterior of infantile life, the hidden
soul and its beautiful halo, every little babe leaping in its nurse's arms, or smiling in its cradle,
would be as wonderful to us as an angel standing
in the sun!
The causes of this infantile sphere are the states
of innocence and peace in which thqir spirits exist
-the total unconsciousness of sin or wrong, and
the heavenly calm that flows from a perfect state of
moral order and beauty.  This innocence, and its
consequent peace, is the Lord's inmost life in the
soul. The more innocence and peace, the nearer to
the Lord. Celestial angels-those nearest the Lord
-are always present with infants and young chil



WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?            133
dren. It is the communication of their celestial
sphere which gives to infancy its ineffable beauty
and charm.  The many-colored splendors of our
little dew-drops on the earth are reflected from
heavenly rainbows that are shining beyond and
above them.
In the inmost or central part of every man's
spirit there is a receptacle of the Lord's life. From
that receptacle the life flows down into the organic
structures of the soul, and becomes affection and
thought, and finally action, according to the free
determination of the spirit itself.  Our selfhood
reacts against that inflowing divine life. According to the force of this reaction we receive and exhibit much or little of the Lord's life in us.  We
may so shut it out that our life may be as unspiritual as that of the beasts.  We may receive it so
fully and freely as to be perfect in our finite sphere,
as our Father.in'heaven is perfect.
The little child in whom no evil passions have
been awakened, no false opinions formed, receives
this life of the Lord without obstruction; and it
shines through him, radiating outwards into the
beautiful sphere of infancy. States of goodness
and truth, inconceivable to our natural thoughts,
are stored away in the minds of children. These
12




134       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
are the basis of conscience, and the fountain and
treasury whence all the virtues and graces flow out
into action. They may be sadly wasted by continued perversion; they may be sealed and shut
up, like magic caverns containing fabulous riches,
the secret of whose entrance has been lost to man;
but they can  never be destroyed.  There will
always be a "remnant," the germ of a better
nature, a chord which may be touched, a love
which may be kindled;
"The bond which links us to the angels most,
The Light which may be hidden, but never can be lost."
The sphere of infancy is, then, a veritable Shekinah-an outward manifestation of the invisible
glory of the Lord. The approach to the Lord is a
strange way; not much known or thought of by
the majority of people. It is not the aisles of gorgeous churches, trembling to solemn music and
leading to gilded altars smoking with fragrant
incense and glittering with lights and flowers. It
is not the radiant avenue of the visible heavens,
paved with stars, conducting to the ineffable splendors of a Central Sun. It is no spiritual highway,
traversed by the strong-winged powers of [he intellect, or by the swift-footed affections of the soul.




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?          135
By no such ways can the Heavenly Father be approached. Who, by searching, can find out God?
No: The way to the Lord is nearer and simpler.
Progress is made in it, not by prayers and fastings
and almsgivings and ecstatic contemplations, but
by merely ceasing to do evil; by putting away our
lusts and falsities; by divesting ourselves of our
selfish aims, our pride, our ambition, our self-reliance, our incredulities,-of almost everything which
constitutes our boasted manhood; by getting
emptied of self, and returning back, in some degree, into those states of innocence and peace which
characterize the heart of childhood.
From this stand-point we can see the crystalline
truth and beauty of the Lord's words: " Whosoever
shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me." And again: "Verily I say unto you,
whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as
a little child, he shall not enter therein."
In that Celestial Kingdom, whence infancy derives its precious life, our Lord reigns; not as the
King of Israel, or as the Lion of the tribe of
Judah, but with the far more beautiful and endearing titles of the Lamb and the Prince of
Peace. Qualities in the other life are frequently
sensed as odors. Swedenborg perceived the sphere




136       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
from the heavens of little children, as one might
perceive the overpowering perfume of a grove of
magnolias. He describes this sphere as making
him feel "as if he were unable to contain himself,
being seized and transported with such delight,
that every delight belonging to this world appeared
as nothing in comparison."
Not only is the Lord more intimately present in
this infantile sphere than elsewhere, but this sphere
is more powerful than all others. This is a paradox
to those who expect to find the Lord in the whirlwind and the fire, rather than in the "still, small
voice." Some one has said that a babe is the
weakest and strongest of all things. Few have
realized the fact, that all power, like life and love,
is the Lord's alone. Therefore the sphere of Innocence, in which the Lord is most intimately present, is the sphere and seat of his highest power.
From its serene height He governs all inferior
things. Hence his government is perpetually one
of Love.
No evil spirit can approach the sphere of innocence in which infants live, without suffering terrible tortures. An infant can put millions of devils
to flight; and his continued presence in the infernal
world would break up the foundations of its society




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?           137
and reduce it to a chaos of pain and madness. It
was this sphere of innocence, flowing from the
person of Jesus Christ, which made the devils cry
out: " Art thou come hither to torment us?"  "We
know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God!"
Hence the truth of Swedenborg's strange assertion, that evil spirits bear a special hatred towards
infants and little children. They rave and rage at
sight of them, like wild beasts in iron cages, burning yet impotent to seize and destroy. It is because they sense with frightful keenness the sphere
of the Lord's innocence and peace emanating from
them. The sphere of love, impinging upon the lifesphere of an evil one, produces hatred; the sphere
of peace produces trouble; the sphere of joy produces pain. Thus evil becomes its own punishment.
Well may we shudder when we hear a man or
a woman, and especially a woman, say thoughtlessly, "I hate children!"  The least cultivated
mind instinctively recoils from the thought as at
the presence of something singularly unlovely.
Where such a sentiment is real, which is not often
the case, what is the cause of it? It is either some
direful, perhaps hidden, evil of their own hearts
taking verbal and symbolic expression; or it is
12 *



138       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
some subtle, besieging, possessing devil who is
speaking through them.
One of Swedenborg's clearest cut gems of truth
is this: "The heavens love those who love children."
There is another beautiful statement made by
him about the infantile sphere, which seems incredible at first sight, but is a necessary corollary from
the facts he had already announced. Angels and
good spirits, he says, perceive more intelligence
and wisdom, more spiritual light, in the minds of
very young children, when they read or repeat
passages of the Holy Bible, or when they are saying the Lord's Prayer, than they do in the minds
of adults. The children are themselves wholly unconscious of this great light in their interior minds.
When angels gaze down into the mental operations
of a Newton, a Byron, a Bonaparte, in their moments of profoundest reflection and study, they discover little else but flying clouds and darkness;
but in the simple spirit of a small child, some little
Charley conning his Sunday-school lesson, or some
little Mary caressing her doll, they see the auroral
lights, the glittering rainbows, and the diamond
atmospheres which betoken the proximity of the
Truth itself.




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?          139
Why is this? The adult mind, by busying itself
earnestly with the gross things of nature, by the
cares and troubles of the world, by the indulgence
of selfish and degrading passions and of groveling
or ambitious thoughts, surrounds itself gradually
with a dense sphere of selfhood, which repels the
light of heaven. But in the beautiful Eden of the
little child's heart, where no serpent has yet entered to persuade him that knowledge will make
him equal to God: the innocence and peace of
heaven abide; the glory and light of the eternal
wisdom is shining; and the voice of Jehovah is
heard in the garden.
This divine sphere of the love of children, which
is derived from the Lord's love of protecting and
perpetuating everything He has created, flowing
down into our souls, becomes the spiritual love of
children in our interior nature, and the natural
love of children in our external life. It is vastly
important to understand the connection and the
difference between these two loves; and to understand that the natural love of children, divorced
from its spiritual life and soul, is nothing more than
the affection of animals for their young. Unless
we know this, we can get no true conception of the
inexpressible beauty and goodness of those heavenly




140       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
Shepherdesses, to whose care the Great Shepherd
has assigned the little lambs which were taken
from our folds.
Animals which have no spiritual nature, exhibit
a love for their offspring as strongly as man, so
long as their youth or helplessness demands the
parental care. After that period, their parental
love having no spiritual vitality, utterly perishes.
The more cruel and fierce the animal, the more
powerful and even terrible is its instinct for defending its young. The wolf, the bear, the tigress,
manifest an intensity of maternal devotion which
we do not see in our domestic creatures, because
the will of the latter has been measurably subdued
by their subjugation to man. The love of the
animal for its young is purely selfish and temporary,
and seems automatic rather than voluntary.
This selfish and merely natural love of children,
divested of the spiritual element which enlarges
and sanctifies it, is retained moreover by the devils
in hell. Swedenborg tells of an evil spirit who
was in a frenzy of impotent hate at the sight of a
beautiful infant.  He was told by some malicious
spiriti and made to believe, that it was his own
child. His animosity subsided in a moment, and
he sprang forward to clasp it with an expression




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?           141
of the greatest tenderness. This touching scene
was witnessed by the great Seer, that we might be
duly impressed with the difference between a spiritual or heavenly and'a natural or external love of
children. The latter emotion, with all its apparent sweetness and gentleness, is capable of existing even in hell!
Many, perhaps most, earthly parents have only
the natural love of their children. It is an extension of self-love. They love their own beauty,
intellect, family, wealth, dignity, &c., in their
children. They are proud of them as part of themselves. They are jealous of their growth; jealous
of their love of others; and jealous of their departure from the parental influence and control. They
esteem them for their brilliant accomplishments,
their social fascinations, and their talent for acquiring money, position, and power. Purity of thought,
charity of soul, sweetness of temper, the love of
useful labor-those priceless crown-jewels of the
spiritual life-have not been the burdcn of their
parental prayers and aspirations.
There is a false spiritual love of children which
frequently wears the livery of the true. Thinking
about spiritual things, and thinking in a spiritual
manner, may be two very different states of the




142       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
thinking faculty. Many Christians think in the
most grossly natural and even sensuous manner of
the Trinity, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the
Judgment, Regeneration, and, indeed, of almost all
the great spiritual verities of our holy religion.
So, also, interest in a child's spiritual welfare, a
zealous concern for its manners, its morals, and its
final salvation, may exist without any genuine spiritual love of the child. This seeming paradox can
be made plain.
Not long ago, in the heart of the freest and most
Christian country in the world, a minister of the
Gospel of Christ whipped his own little child, for
disobedient conduct, even to the awful extremity of
death! Imagine a father bending over his own
helpless, innocent little son, beating and beating, in
violent passion, his head, his hands, his body, until
with fright and pain the little mind becomes confused and delirious; he knows not what the father
wants; hears not what he says; but suffers —suffers
under the brutal blows, until nature gives way, and
some weeping angel presses to her consoling bosom
the little victim of the most horrible tragedy of
modern times!
This extreme case, which is almost too hideous to
contemplate, is typical.  It is representative of




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?          143
much of the so-called spirituality of the age. This
father excuses himself on the plea, that his intense
affection for the spiritual welfare of his child led
him unawares to the adoption of such extreme
measures. Children must be taught obedience to
parents-by  kindness, if possible-by -force, if
necessary. Obedience, however, is the great spiritual necessity, and it must be secured at any price
and at all hazards.
This dreadful fallacy pervades the reasonings of
such people on many other subjects. The same
anxiety for the supposed spiritual welfare of the
church, the country, the neighbor, the family, is
the cause of great trouble and sin in the world.
It is frequently a subtle and diabolical form of
selfishness-a lust of spiritual dominion over the
minds of men. One may love himself supremely,
in his opinions, in his patriotism, in his religion, in
his family management, as well as in his business
and his money. When one thinks that what he
believes and does is altogether right, entertaining
contempt for the opinions and conduct of others;
that it his duty to enforce his principles and practice upon them in spite of their will; and that the
end in view justifies the means used to attain it,
let him beware! There is no true spirituality in




144       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
his interior life; no true Christianity in his conduct.
He bears in his heart the secret germs of all hatred,
vindictiveness, cruelty, and murder.
This was once illustrated to Swedenborg by one
of those curious symbolic visions which he found
so pregnant with spiritual truth. He was infested
all night by cruel and wicked spirits. He saw
some parents combing the heads of their children
with terrible saws, and lacerating their backs until
they were covered with blood. The parents appeared simply eager to reform the manners and
morals of the children. That picture represented
the external or visible field of life. Then appeared
a huge serpent coiled around a tree-his size was
such as to inspire intense horror-representing their
intellectual life, or the faith from which such conduct flowed. A third scene-some women carrying blackened pieces of human flesh towards a
kitchen-symbolized the secret animus, the emotional life of such people.
He conjectured at first that these things were designed to represent the interior character of the
cannibal tribes: but he was instructed that the lesson came nearer home to Christendom. It taught
the interior character of those who are strong and
bitter in faith, without the charity or neighborly




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?          145
love which is always the life and soul of a true
faith. Such was the prevailing genius of his own
age, and such predominates, also, in this-a little
touched and softened by the approaching but unacknowledged light of a New Dispensation.
Swedenborg tells us, also, in this connection, that
the least feeling of contempt or ill-will towards the
neighbor contains hidden in its bosom such insensate hatred, as would impel one to feed voraciously
on the blackened flesh of his enemy. This fearful
analysis of the human heart is applicable to us all;
for has not the weeping Prophet told us, that the
human heart is "deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked?" When we would justify
ourselves in conduct which violates the great law
if mutual love, let us not be deceived; let us trace
the real motive power up through the false reasonings of the intellect to the uncontrolled perversions
of our moral nature.
What distrust, what fear, what pain, we should
experience if we thought our little ones, gone from
us, but not lost, were entrusted to the keeping of
spirits or angels trained in our modern schools of
thought! How enchanting the reflection, that their
heavenly guardians have wrought into their own
beautifu' lives the sweet lessons of the great Mas13                G




146       OUR CHILDREN IN _h EA VEN.
ter, who blessed the little children upon earth, and
who draws them into heaven; who taught us to
forgive our enemy-not seven times only, but
seventy times seven; whose thoughts are perfect
peace, and whose laws are perfect love!
How then shall we distinguish the genuine spiritual love from the spurious?
Genuine spiritual love, beautifully described by
the Apostle Paul under the name of charity, is invariably sweet and tender and gentle. It springs
from innocence, meekness, and humility. It gives
birth to patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and pity.
It is the spirit of Christ and the test of Christianity. Whenever any thing austere, impatient,
accusing, violent, or angry enters into our feelings
and conduct, let us not deceive ourselves. We are
the sport of devils. God's inflowing love has been
perverted into hate. Our piety and philanthropy
have the mark of the beast. Let us:lever forget
that abstract truth or justice, separate a Id divorced
in the human mind from the spirit of rharity and
mercy, is shorn of its divine and heavenly beauty,
and becomes the minister of oppression and wrong.
We can now see more clearly what is meant by
the spiritual love of little children. It is the love
of childhood itself; a strong spiritual affinity fox




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?          147
those heavenly states of innocence and peace which
flow into the heart of children from the Lord.
Interiorly it is the love of the Lord Himself as
the supreme Source of all goodness and truth; of
all innocence, all beauty, all peace.
This explains that curious statement of Swedenborg, repeated in several places, that the presence
or sphere of an infant in the spiritual world is a
sure test of the inmost quality of those who come
within range of its power. He tells of a certain
spirit who appeared to be an excellent Christian.
He seemed kind and gentle and generous and
humble. For a long time no evil could be detected in his character. When he was confronted,
however, with a very beautiful infant, his secret
animosity to the infantile sphere of innocence from
the Lord was plainly revealed. On further exploration it was discovered that he entertained
hatred towards many persons, even friends and
benefactors. The veil of pretension was stripped
from the subtle hypocrite, and like Judas he went
to his own place.
Those who are blessed with the spiritual love of
children do not love themselves, their family, their
name, their possessions, their beauty, their intellect, in their children. They love ti e Lord, the




148       0 UR CHILDREN.N HEA YEN.
church, the country, the neighbor, society, in each
little infantile form. They regard them  from  a
spiritual stand-point first, and from a natural standpoint afterwards.  They receive them as precious
little spirits, given by the Lord to add to the
beauty and glory of his creation; to bring more
of the sweet influences and harmonies of heaven
to earth; to contribute to the order, happiness, and
peace of society; to increase the strength, wisdom,
and liberty of the country; to adorn, extend, and
brighten the church upon earth; and to take their
places, star after star, in the ever-increasing galaxies
of angelic societies which constitute the Lord's kingdom in the heavens.
The parent who can fix these glorious destinies
perpetually in his eye and ponder them in his heart,
is capable of receiving the spiritual love of children.
As we strive to realize those destinies by our individual regeneration, we shall approach nearer in
spirit to those Blessed Ones who have charge of
our beloved. We can measure that approach by
changes in our own mental states. We shall entertain a profounder reverence for a beautiful and
chaste conjugial love; and for the sacred responsibilities, sorrows, and duties of maternity. We shall
feel a tenderer interest, a gentler care, a sweeter




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?           149
sympathy for every new breath of God, crystallizing itself into infantile form, even before it has
emerged from  the secret laboratories, where the
Great A'chitect works unseen, laying the foundations of the intellectual earth, and spreading the
curtains of the moral heavens.
It is impossible for us in the midst of all our
earthly darkness, with all our selfishness, impatience, and folly, hereditary and acquired, fully to
conceive of the infinite grace, strength, and beauty
of this spiritual love of children in the heart of
the angels. They have been purified from all mere
worldly thoughts and emotions. Freed from the
limitations of time and space, they have also been
separated from every false and evil influence which
harasses our world from  the neighboring hells.
They live in the clear, sweet, pure light of the
love of God. They experience inexpressible joy
in the sphere of innocence and peace which radiates
from the little child.  It is the first outflowering
or symbolic expression of their love to the Lord.
This is true of all angels. It is true in a peculiar and extraordinary degree of those perfect and
happy ones, to whom our children are given by
the Lord to be reared immediately under his eye.
Angels differ as men do; for angt ls are only men
13 *




150       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
purified for heaven.  Some are rulers, some teachers, some poets, some philosophers, some artists,
and so forth, in endless variety. They are all led,
under the Lord, by their ruling loves, of which
there are innumerable genera and species; each
star differing from another in glory. The ruling
love is the very life, the essential purpose and passion of existence.
How  inconceivably beautiful, pure, and holy,
must they be in whose regenerate hearts the ruling
passion is the love of little children!  No spark
of selfishness enters into this celestial fire.  More
fr less of self is woven into all other emotions of
the heart. Conjugial love is not free from it, for
our eternal mate is a portion of ourself. We may
love even the Lord for the sake of ourselves. But
these beautiful Daughters of Zion, who live in the
golden atmospheres of its highest mountains, love
the little creatures committed to their care for the
sake of the Lord!
These angel-mothers have generally been good
and wise earthly mothers, who have passed through
great tribulation to their final perfection. As their
interior natures were unfolded by the revealing
processes employed in the world of spirits, the love
of infants and little children was discovered to b,




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?          151
their ruling passion. They now live in the eternal
delights of that heavenly emotion. Their thoughts
are not troubled about the best means of training
and education. They look to themselves for nothing. All the knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, necessary for the perfect fulfillment of their
duties flow immediately into their minds from the
Lord himself. Nearest to the Divine Fountain,
they draw the Water of Life in crystal cups, and
the little ones who drink of it thirst no more for
ever!
Children are assigned to these angel-mothers
according to their interior characters with unerring
accuracy. There is no guess-work, no failure, but
perfect law and order, in the working of the social
machinery of heaven. Each child goes to the very
guardian best fitted to develop its good, to suppress
its evil, and to promote its eternal happiness.
These heavenly beings have no partialities, no impatience, no imperfections. They receive and love
all children alike. Whether the little body has
been drawn from imperial purple or a beggar's
rags, makes no difference. No earthly shadows of
rank or form or circumstance obscure their perfect
vision. They stand in the place of Christ himself;
receive his little ones in their arms; bless them in




152       OUR CHILDREN IN HA AVEN.
his name; and continually afterwards carry out his
will in their loving care and instruction.
Compare this picture of the heavenly supervision of children with their state in this world;
their bitter and cruel bondage; their neglect, their
abuse, their sufferings, their sickness, their death;
or, what is far worse, the evil examples, the false
teaching, the early corruption, which so soon stamp
their little faces with the cunning and sensuality of
older natures!
O sorrowing parents! whose hearts still hang
heavily, like drooping flowers turning toward!s the
dust and the grave; who regard these glorious
revelations with an almost total incredulkty; or, at
the best, with a mere flutter of hope that they may
be true: may that same guiding Star which led the
wise men to the spot where the Young Child was,
lead you also at last to the dis~cvery of your lost
ones amidst the opening heavens and the songs of
angels!
After your own resurrection and translation to
the heavenly kingdom; awhen you can endure the
splendors of the celestial sphere, and lift your eyes
to the faces of those angel-mothers; when they
restore to you your children-and such children!
and show you how they have loved them, and what




WHO TAKES CARE OF THEM?         153
they have done for them; in the bursting love and
gratitude of your hearts you will fall at their feet
to worship, as the bewildered Seer of Patmos fell
at the feet of the, angel who had showed him the
wonders of the Apocalypse!
Go




CHAPTER VI.
WHAT ARE THEY DOING?
IN that sweet transition-hour between day and
night, when the tumult of our earth-life subsides and recedes, and the heavenly life, which has
always been present, although not always perceived,
shines upon us again like the stars, the children
come about us, and the soul reaches out eagerly after
them with the old, inexpressible tenderness. We
see them in the little chairs that are vacant; in the
little swing that is idle; in the little books that are
not opened; in the little toys that are not moved.
We see them also in a better light than the feeble
gleam of our natural memory. Peeping through
the gates of pearl, we see them living, moving,
growing, loving, in the Morning Land. We know
they are not.dead. We know it by the intuitions
of our own souls whispering of immortality; by
the promises of the Father; by the revelationls of
the Word; by the aspirations of faith; and by the
songs of imperishable hope!
154




WHAT ARE THEY DOING?             155
The forlorn maiden sits at this pensive hour on
the yellow beach, gazing o'er the vast, blue waters
of the cruel sea which separates her so widely from
her lover. She wonders in what harbor his ship
may lie; what he says and thinks and does; what
scenes he beholds;. what companions he is with; and
she fears that the charms of that far-off Orient may
encroach on the central place in his heart, which
she claims as exclusively her own. So we, bereaved
ones, stand on the shores of time, straining our eyes
across the illimitable expanse, hoping to descry
the purple mountains of the Celestial Country,
asking our hearts the same eager questions, whilst
imagination weaves her aerial tissues into a thousand shapes of beauty and joy.
We thank God that our lot has bleen cast in these
latter times, when, in the fullness of his love and
the order of his providence, He h:.s been pleased to
give us a clearer manifestation of HIimself; to open
for us the mysteries of his Holy Word; to reveal to
us the true nature of the human soul, and the wonderful laws and phenomena of the life to come.
What prophets and apostles desired to see; what
poets and sages, half perceiving, have longed to
verify; what the patient, suffering heart of mankind has yearned after for ages; has at length




156;      OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
been unfolded. Imagination is henceforth needed,
not to picture to us what might be, but to conceive
clearly what is; not to give form to the hidden,
but to understand the revealed.
We have already seen that our little ones have
beautiful and substantial spiritual bodies, which
grow and live in a heavenly world composed of
purer substances than ours, but having the same
general forms and appearances. The Sun shines
there in the same altitude for ever; but it grows
bright or dim to them according to their own
changing spiritual states. There are mountains
and valleys there, and forests and rivers with evervarying forms and colors. The clouds move there
as here, shepherded by the gentle winds; and all
things outward are beautiful symbols of spiritual
wonders flowing down from interior heavens, or
from the Lord himself. There is morning, with its
freshness and power; and evening, with its silence
and stars. There is spring, with its silver and
green; and summer, with its purple and gold.
There are architecture and art and music and
science; not as here, in their first buddings, but
in their full flower and fruitage. And all these
things are as real and solid to their perceptions as
granite and diamond are to us.




WHA T ARE THEY DOING?           157
We must remember this when we ask ourselves
the question, What are our children doing in the
spiritual worl(l?  We must not think of them as
intangible shades, floating hither and thither in
somne inconceivable realm  of similar shadows.
Such absurd phantasies come of supposing that
spirit must be something which possesses none of
the properties of matter; no weight, no extension,
no impenetrability, no color, no shape,-" sans
everything."  The fact is, that matter is totally
inert and dead in itself, and has no properties.
The sensations of weight, forfn, color, &c., are
states of our own spiritual organization, which we
ignorantly, but falsely, refer to our material world.
Little babes are given at once to their angelmothers, who devote themselves earnestly to their
care. They wash them, dress them, ornament
them, amuse them, and by sports and songs and
toys and lessons, and in a thousand ways unkno~wn to us, give form and beauty to the dawning affections and thoughts of the little mind.
Their language is at first composed wholly of
vowel sounds, and, like music, represents only the
emotions. Progress, however, in the evolution of
thought is so rapid there, that in about a month of
our time an infant will speak the angelic or spir14




158       OUR CHILDREN IN I   EA VES.
lttal language, of which the words are ideas, each
containing innumerable things.
There is but one language in the spiritual world.
All men understand that language now, for all men
are spirits; but they have no consciousness of understanding it while in the natural body. When
they leave this body they forget all human words,
and enter at once on the universal speech, by which
more ideas and thoughts can be conveyed in a few
moments than by our earthly languages in a whole
day. Children express themselves at once in this
heavenly tongue according to their mental powers.
We speak vainly of the rapidity of thought, and
compare it to lightning; but we can have no conception in this world of the profundity of idea and
felicity of expression of which even a child is capable in the next. How silly is the pride of our
knowledge, the pomp of our wisdom! Our Lord
Jesus, who saw into the heart of things, recognized
in the hosannas of the little children, which so
displeased the Chief Priests and Scribes, lyrics and
epics of praise which never descended to human
ears.
It may strike some as preposterous that we
should possess the knowledge of a language, and
yet have no consciousness of it in this life. Know




WHAT ARE THEY DOING?           159
ledge which is unknown seems a paradox. He has
formed a poor conception of the human soul who
thinks it has no operations but those which come
to our external consciousness. The human body,
which is the material image of the soul, tells, in
anatomical language, the true story. We are conscious of its mere surface and of its voluntary external motions. The wonderful functions of the
heart and lungs, and of the liver and other viscera;
the incessant changes of the blood; the inconceivable vibrations of the nervous system, more astonishing than those of heat and light; all are going
on within us from moment to moment without our
feeling or knowing anything about them. Just so
there are miracles of affection and thought transacting within our souls,-which are as truly organic
forms as our bodies,-into the perception and knowledge of which we only come after the death and
separation of our natural bodies.
Education, which is the communication of truths
for perpetual application to life, is the chief business of heaven. It is carried to perfection there;
for no evil passions spring out of the heart to obscure the understanding with thick-coming fallacies
of all kinds. It is never finished; for it means the
bringing forth or blossoming out from inexhaust



160       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
ible divine centres, of everything necessary to the
spiritual life of man. We acquire new truths to
eternity, and are made happy by using them as fast
as acquired. The work is never complete, because
the drawing forth or educing process is never
ended. God's wisdom and our wisdom run in
parabolic lines, for ever approaching, yet never to
meet; and therein lies the secret of the happiness
of heaven. The rest of the saints is the rest of
congenial labor-of labor unthwarted and unsaddened by sin.
Every one is assigned his true place in that
Kingdom of supreme order and peace. The interior nature of every child is inspected by the
wisest angels; and he is sent into that quarter and
given the very teachers and surrounded by the very
influences best adapted to develop his peculiar faculties to the highest degree. There are no mistakes
made there; no one is in the wrong place. There
are no incapables, no self-seekers, no hypocrites.
There is no dark and guileful soul there dwelling
in imperial palaces; no beautiful and gentle spirit
cowering in hovels and poverty. Neither kings
nor people have any voice in the laws and government of heaven, except only as servants and stewards. The Lord alone is the Ruler; and the iight




WHAT ARE THEY DOING?           161
of his eternal wisdom is for ever streaming down
in swift judgment and execution, and assigning to
each being, through his flaming ministers, his exact
place and business and portion.
In heaven they educate the intellect by first educating the heart,-the true order, quite neglected
in this world. All thought flows from affection
just as light comes from heat. That Love begets
Wisdom-the Father the Son-is the fundamental
law of psychology. Such as the love or will is,
such will the wisdom or understanding be. Pure
and good affections beget genuine truths; evil passions beget all manner of falsities. Every untruth
among men is the offspring of some evil emotion
or appetite. Men abandon their prejudices and
errors so slowly and with such pain, because they
love them; because they have their roots deep down
in their own affections.
In the spiritual world only the good can become
wise. On this earth the intellect may be cultivated
independently of the emotional nature. It may be
vastly developed, even elevated into the light of
heaven, whilst the will remains unregenerate and
the affections and appetites are evil. But after
death the affections govern supremely. The divine
life flows into them first, and from and through
14 m




162       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
them creates a correspondent intellectual world of
ideas, thoughts, and expression. The understanding is thus the outbirth of the will.
This law of the spiritual world creates wonderful changes in the mental constitution of those who
leave our sphere and undergo its impartial judgment. Many a learned man, many a philosopher,
loaded with academic honors and boasting himself
of his knowledge and memory, is stripped of every
thing he had acquired. He becomes stupid and
silly, and sometimes even insane. On the other
hand many an ignorant and humble person finds
himself suddenly filled with thoughts and ideas,
such as no earthly education at present could furnish. The sole reason of the difference is, that one
has received the divine love (which creates all
things) into his heart, and the other has not. This
great truth, that wisdom or true knowledge has nopermanent existence independent of good affections,
explains the mystical words of our Lord:
"Whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and
whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even
that which he seemeth to have." (Luke viii. 18.)
It is easy to cultivate the affections of little children in heaven. Hell with its infesting spirits and
terrible evils, is removed from them to the utter



WHAT ARE THEY DOING.    163
most bounds of the universe. Its hateful spheres
can never reach them. The earth-life with its
limitations of time and space, its peculiar imperfections, its trials and sorrows, has been dropped
like so much weighty ballast, and the happy spirits
have soared away'into atmospheres of ethereal light
and beauty. They are surrounded by all that is
good and pure and gentle, calculated to evoke the
same qualities from the depths of their own souls.
They never see or hear any thing that is false or
mean, cruel or unpleasant; no quarrels or scoldings; no impatience, no fretfulness; no exhibitions
of pride or vanity; no cunning or hypocrisy; no
selfishness, no doubts or unbelief; no contempt of
others. Oh, the sweet peace, the eternal calm, of
the moral atmosphere of heaven!
Besides these negative advantages, they enjoy the
positive and continuous influx of the heavenly
spheres of innocence, peace, and love. Every angel
about them loves his neighbors and companions
better than himself, and the Lord supremely.
Each finds his true happiness in exercising all his
powers to promote the happiness of others. The
result is a general social state of entire harmony
and felicity. Such is heaven. And as these angelic loves are ever increasing in sweetness and




164       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
powei by daily fresh receptions of life from the
Lord, the heavens are continually becoming more
perfect and blessed.
Surrounded by such influences, our little ones
imbibe the love of the Lord and the neighbor,-the
ruling loves of heaven,-with groat ease. They are
trained so sweetly, so gently, so wisely, that their
earthly faults and imperfections are soon removed;
and after a short period no cloud of temper ever
nullies again the serenity of their sky. They exhibit the tenderest respect and affection for their
guardians, their nurses, and their little companions.
The idea of self almost perishes with them, being
reduced to the very last and lowest place. They
grow daily in love, and in all the wonderful and
beautiful knowledges that flow from love. Use to
others becomes the guiding star of conduct-the
dominating passion of life.
They are very early taught the mysteries of the
Word in its internal senses. The highest angel in
heaven acquires new perceptions of the divine love
and wisdom when he explores the mind of a little
child who is reading the Holy Scriptures. The
genuine Word of God has always interior meanings, one within another, like concentric spheres.
The spiritual key to that sense nearest to our hu



WHAT ARE THEY DOING            165
man comprehension was revealed to Swedenborg.
This key is the unfailing touchstone of Divine
revelation. Whilst it unlocks the grandest spiritual truths from the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and
the Prophets, from the Evangelists and the Apocalypse; it discovers that the Proverbs, and several
minor books received into the Old Testament, and
the Acts of the Apostles, and all the Epistles in
the New, are only surface books, having no divine
significance and no organic connection with angelic
wisdom. They are the pious writings of good
men, very useful to the external church here; but
they are as unknown in heaven as the works of
Calvin or Luther or Wesley.
Children are instructed in heaven by books and
pictures and by oral lessons as upon earth, but
with vastly more beauty, order, rapidity and perfection. They meet in magnificent buildings, glittering with jewels and pearls, corresponding to
spiritual truths; or they walk with their teachers,
engaging in intellectual discussions, through groves
of inconceivable beauty fulll of music and ravishing odors. They are taught all our arts and
sciences, and many totally unknown in this world.
Earth at its best is but the shadow of heaven;
and what we see here dimly, or not at all, will




166       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
there b)e revealed to us in the splendor of heavenly light.
One method of objective teaching exists in that
world which is impossible here; but the possibilities of that wonderful life would quite confound
our feeble imaginations. Our artist toils long to
cast his ideal upon canvas, or to shape it from
marble, making it real; but the atoms of the spiritual atmospheres can be made by angelic volitions
to take instantaneous shape and form expressive of
the ideas in the mind. Historical scenes can thus
be projected into outward form, and made to appear as if transacting before the eye. Swedenborg
saw the resurrection of the Lord represented to
children by this process with inexpressible tenderness and beauty, affecting the interiors of their susceptible minds with holy wonder and delight.
This process of projecting ideas into scenes and
images apparently real, enables the angels to explore a man after death, so that his mind and
memory can be literally turned inside out, that
nothing hidden shall remain undiscovered. The
murderer's crime, with all its horrible details, is
said to be photographed on the optic nerve of the
victim. That physical impression is transient.
Impressions made, however, on our spiritual nerve



WHAT ARE THEY DOING?            167
centres are indestructible, and may be called out
ages afterward for our conviction.  This is true of
every word we have uttered, eve.y deed we have
done. In this manner all private and public history will be revealed and judged, and the truth on
all subjects attained  at last.  Thus will "the
Books" be opened.
Children soon discover that everything external
in that world is produced by and represents something internal.  The life of an angel is wrought
out into his house, his furniture, his grounds, and
into all the scenery about him. These outward
objects are the outflowering of his spiritual nature
into symbolic forms which represent his quality
in every jot and tittle. They are peculiarly his,
as a snail's shell is his, or as a man's body is his.
In the other world, an angel's seat in the temple
where he worships is so peculiarly his, that no
other person can occupy it without producing confusion in the minds of all present.
The same law is illustrated also in every circumstance of their lives. The external reveals the internal. Their clothing, their ornaments, their toys,
their chambers to the minutest particular, their
gardens and every flower in them, are all representative cf their own lives. When they have ( one




1M8       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
or thought something wrong, a stain appears on
their shining dresses, which cannot be concealed or
effaced by artificial means; but when the fault is
explained, confessed, and deplored, the corresponding stain disappears spontaneously as it came. When
they neglect their prayers or reading the Word or
any other duty, some beautiful article of dress
vanishes from their wardrobes, or the flowers grow
faint and dim in their little gardens. On the contrary, when they have excelled in goodness and
duty, some new and exquisite piece of apparel or
jewelry is produced for them, or their flowers bloom,
as if smiling and approving, with heightened color,
fragrance, and beauty.
So of every thing around them: it is symbolic
ind representative. The garlands and wreaths with
which they are adorned, the medals and coins, the
pictures and books with which they are rewarded,
all report, in charming hieroglyphic language, the
story of their moral and mental development. Nor
are sports and games innumerable wanting, nor
merry social gatherings, nor private and public
exhibitions, to promote the general welfare, culture, and  happiness of the swiftly  expanding
spirits.
Swedenbolrg frequently saw little children walk



WRAT ARE THEY DOJ'AG?          169
ing in beautiful gardens with their guardians and
nurses, dressed in the most charming manner; whilst
the atmosphere, the clouds, the foliage, the flowers,
and every thing around them, underwent surprising
changes of form and color, according to the changing
thoughts and affections of the happy promenaders.
So the flowers of Eden "gladlier grew" at the
tendance of the beautiful Eve. Thus was exhibited to the life the groundwork of that hidden
sympathy between man and nature, which runs in
a golden vein through the sweetest songs of all the
poets.
The increase of affection and thought is the business of the other life. Affection and thought are
the meat and drink-the " daily bread" of spirits.
They live from day to day by the fresh appropriation and assimilation of affections and thoughts from
the Lord and from others, just as we do by the
appropriation and assimilation of our material food.
The hunger and thirst of that happy world is for
knowledge and righteousness. No one busies himself there to get money or food or clothing or houses
or lands; no one struggles for honors or office or
position or power. Spirits who cannot be divested
of such earthly passions and fantasies, do not go to
heaven at all, but wander off into evil and selfish
15                H




170       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
spheres, and stumble among the shadows and stone
heaps and pitfalls of the darker world.
Our children are taught by the angels to have no
care or thought for external things; because they
see that internal and spiritual things, goodness and
wisdom with their myriads of genera and species,
are the true cause and source of all objective appearances. Houses and furniture, food and clothing, wealth and power, office and honors, are all
distributed gratis, in exact correspondence with the
states of affection and thought which deserve and
require them.
Has not our Lord said:
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these
things shall be added unto you"?
This instantaneous creation, this appearance and
disappearance of objects which seem solid and real
to the senses, excites the stolid incredulity of our
unilluminated natural mind. We expect to find
these things in the Fairy Tales, and in such fictions
as the Arabian Nights; but our modern self-reliant
spirit, with its habit of scientific analysis and its
sensuous philosophy, scouts all such narratives as
the dreams of poets or visionaries. The true philosopher, the wise man, who distrusts his own
powers entirely, and who despairs of any correct




WHAT ARE THEY DOING?            171
analysis, but follows the star of revelation that
shines for ever in the East, discovers that these
misunderstood fairy tales, mythologies, parables,
Oriental stories, and "dark sayings of old," contain more spiritual truth and beauty than any moral
or scientific disquisitions of our own times. They
are fragments of primeval philosophy and wisdom,
defaced and darkened indeed, yet "trailing clouds
of glory" from the lost Edens of the race. This
is the reason why they reverberate so sweetly in
the souls and songs of poets, and fill the gentle,
appreciative heart of childhood with such wonder
and delight.
These curious laws of the spiritual world have
been sometimes brought down into the natural
world, in the special operations of Providence; and
then, from our unfamiliarity with the causes, we
call the result miraculous. The Israelites were fed
forty years in the wilderness on manna, a species
of sweet bread, which rained from the sky every
day except the Sabbath. The oil and meal of
the widow's house were daily renewed for several
months. Our Lord also on two different occasions
fed thousands of people on a few loaves and fishes.
There is nothing in Fairy Tales or the Arabian
Nights more incomprehensible or incredible than




172       OUR CHtILDREN IN HEAVEN.
these things; and yet no Christian can deny oi
escape them.
It was divine power, they say, specially exerted
for certain purposes; and so it was. God's will,
operating through spirit into matter, condensed or
precipitated and rearranged the chemical atoms of
the atmosphere into different solid matters. These
cases illustrate what happens all the time in the
spiritual world; for every thing there will seem at
first miraculous to us. God's power is the only
power there; and it creates from day to day, through
the angelic minds, the entire universe which appears
around them.
When our children are fully grown, they will
enter on the duties of some office or occupation.
It will be exactly the business for which they are
blest fitted, and in the prosecution of which they
will be most happy. It will be something, the soul
and life of which is to make others wiser and happier. Heaven is organized like the human body.
Every atom works, not for itself, but for all others.
It draws from the general reservoir what it needs
for its sustenance and no more. The angels are
incessantly busy but never tired. They take delight in the performance of uses. Their work,
their amusements, their studies, their social pleas



WHAT ARE THEY DOING?           173
tes, move in eternal circles of beauty and peace, in
w,hich there is no sameness and no satiety.
They are for ever silently progressing in the
regenerate life; for ever waking to a new sense of
imperfection; for ever receiving new power and
consolation from the Lord. No matter how good,
how pure, how wise they become, the relatiofn between the infinite and the finite is still unchanged.
There are new worlds of Wisdom ahead of them;
new Apocalypses of beauty awaiting them; new
revelations of Love in store for them. Our hereditary evil, for which no man is responsible, except
so far as he makes it his own by acting it out in
the field of his own life, is made quiescent and
powerless. It is there however, and it remains
always as the groundwork of the contrast between
good and evil, from which the keenest appreciation
of the good arises.
Swedenborg saw a beautiful young angel in the
third or highest heaven, who had left this earth
when a very small infant. He belonged to one of
the royal families in Europe. He had been reared
in heaven, and was as near our ideal of loveliness
and perfection as can be imagined. His external
spiritual senses were laid asleep, just as our natural
senses are in the mesmeric trance, and his inmost
15:t




174      OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
character from hereditary evil was allowed to come
out to the surface.and display itself in speech and
gestures. It was found to be full of licentiousness
and the spirit of domineering, the special traits of
his ancestral line. When he was brought back to
his conscious state, he knew nothing of what had
been' done, and was the same beautiful and heavenly being as before.
Thus it is with all men and angels; for all
angels have been men, born on some material
globe, and only escaping by death the limitations
of time and space. Evil is the basis, the centre of
our finite being, and. everything good and true is
superadded by the Lord-not acquired of ourselves, but given-and built up around it and concealing it for ever. So the land and the sea, with
all their infinite varieties of beautiful forms, constitute but a thin crust of our globe, beneath which
are fathomless pits of primeval darkness, sulphureous caverns which imprison volcanic forces, and
vast oceans of central fire.
The angels, says the Word, are not pure in His
sight.
So our children grow and live in heaven, inhabiting palaces of indescribable beauty; feeding on
delicate fruits and nectars; clothed in shining rai



WIAT ARE THEY DOITNG.          175
ment; sleeping without fear of any rude awakening, and drawing new life from the Lord in their
sweet slumbers; associated with none but the wise
and good; instructed by the most wonderful methods; enjoying the most delightful games and
amusements; training under the wisest and best
masters for positions of usefulness in the eternal
life; developing mentally and morally beyond our
poor human conception; attaining the full stature,
beauty and perfection of the human form, and approaching continually nearer and nearer to that
grander ideal, the image of God!
How beautiful is all this! how rational! how
consoling! These revelations of Swedenborg are
the sound of a trumpet, waking us up from the
grave of our sensual nature, and inviting us to
meet the Lord and his angels in the spiritual
atmosphere of a New Life. The more closely they
are studied, the brighter will be our vision, the
more touching our consolations. Many things not
explicitly declared can be logically deduced from
the general laws and principles revealed. We thus
acquire a pervading sense of the reality and proximity of the spiritual world. Doubts and fears are
dissipated, difficulties are removed. Our thoughts
are elevated and anchored above.  Heaven be



17436     0 URJ: CHILDREN  IN IIEA YEN
comes a world of substance and not of shadows.
Hope verges into fruition; faith into sight. The
grave becomes a myth. Life is a thing of beauty
and joy for ever.
We cannot yet drop this enchanting theme.
One other great event awaits our children in heaven, to make their characters perfect and their happiness complete. When they have attained the
resurrection-that is, when they have put off
everything selfish, imperfect, and earthly; everything which the inhabitants of that living world
call dead; when they have reached the goal of
angelic development, and are "as the angels "-they
enter, male and female, into that blissful and eternal union, which our Lord could not describe to
the gross and sensual ears around him except by a
negation,-so widely does it differ from the "marr;age and giving in marriage" of this world.
Man was created male and female "in the beginn:ng," which always involves the end. He was
ualo created in the image and likeness of God.
The great elements of the divine nature, Love and
Wisdom, which are mystically united in the Divine
Being, were so separated and distributed in his
finite creatures, that their eternal attraction, each
for the other, should be the source of immeasurable




WHAT ARE THEY DOING?           177
felicity to intelligent and loving beings. Such is
the origin of sex.
Woman is the special form of Love, man of
Wisdom. Not that woman is devoid of wisdom,
or man of love; but the relative arrangement of
these great principles is different in the sexes.
Each is the total outward expression of the other's
interior life. There is the whole secret. Each
was created for the other; is the other's complement. Each yearns, therefore, for the other with
inexpressible longings. Man alone is not the image
of God, nor woman alone; but man and woman so
conjoined in affection and thought, as under two
forms to constitute one being. This is the heavenly marriage, into which enter those only who
have attained the spiritual resurrection, and have
become as the angels of God. This marriage awaits
our children.
These spiritual germs, created apart, are destined for each other and brought together by the
Divine Providence; sometimes in this world,
sometimes in the world of spirits; sometimes not
until both parties have entered the heavenly
sphere. They are prepared for the eternal union
by all the experiences of this life, bitter enough
sometimes, but bearing rich seed in their bosoms.
H *




178       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
The preparation is continued by the unfolding and
purifying processes in the other world.  When all
other loves have fallen into the far back-ground;
when each is beyond doubt the other's final and
perfect ideal; when they have become so thoroughly and interiorly harmonic that they feel and
think simultaneously; when they are as fully one
soul as if only one heart and brain animated the
two bodies; then they are formally united by beautiful ceremonies, which Swedenborg was occasionally permitted to witness. They afterwards live
always in the same house, in the same society.
They appear at a distance as one man, and their
happy spirits run in the same golden grooves of
affection and thought for ever.
No priest officiates, for the church does not unite
them. There is no seeking or giving away as here
on earth. The process is organic and inevitable,
like birth or death. It is like the blossoming of
some beautiful flower after a century of silent preparation. The Lord works unseen. No one arranges or assists or can prevent it. It occurs in the
fullness of its time, and men celebrate the event
with music and dances and feasting. The social
feast, and the formal assent of parties and the
wedded kiss, are signs or signals that the Lor(l's




WHAT ARE THEY DOING             179
work is done; that another angel, two in one has
been born into the conjugial sphere of the Lord's
Kingdom. That kind of work is never undone.
That kind of birth is eternal life.
Swedenborg on one occasion attended in spirit a
charming reception given to their friends by a
newly wedded pair. How faintly we poor sinblinded mortals can imagine the ineffable beauty,
splendor, peace and chastity of those heavenly
gatherings. The angel who stood at the gate of
the floral garden in which this new Adam and Eve
received their visitors, admitted none into that bridal Eden but those who bore on their faces the
holy peace of conjugial love.
Happy are they who have ascended to heaven
before their spirits were tainted l:y the impurities
of earth; who have grown and lived and loved in
those radiant atmospheres of peace and joy; who
have never known any actual sin, and whose hereditary evils have been buried in eternal torpor;
whose affections are represented by the lamb and
the dove, and the naked infant garlanded with
flowers; whose thoughts are reflected in the green
pastures and the still waters that lie in the light
of golden ethers for ever; whose love has experienced no rebuffs, no changes, no storms; who have




180       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
never imagined that anything cold or unfaithful or
discordant could ever cast its shadows on a wedded
soul, and whose torch of conjugial consecration is
renewed morn after morn at that great Sun of the
spiritual world, which is the altar of the Lord!
A faint breath of that conjugial sphere is sometimes wafted downwards and felt perceptibly in the
human heart. It comes in the shape of "love's
young dream." It fires the soul with noble aspirations; it lights up the imagination with beautiful
ideals; it softens the affections into inexpressible
tenderness; it transforms the whole being with its
ravishing sweetness; and shining forth into nature,
it colors the mountains and meadows of earth with
the gold and purple tints of the Celestial Morning.
Music and poetry struggle in vain to give it expression; but it dies away amid the fast-coming
cares and sorrows of life, and is remembered only
as a beautiful dream.
That dream, gentle reader! was a voice from the
spiritual world, prophesying the transcendent realities of conjugial love. It will return to you with
thousand-fold intensification, and it will then be
the life of heaven.
Beloved and beautiful Children who left us in
Beloved and beautiful Children! who left us in




WHAT ARE THEY DOING?          181
such agony and darkness on those terrible nights,
without a word of farewell or a receding kiss from
your little hands, we know it is well with you,
and that you are more beautiful and happy than
ever. And we thank our good Lord for being enabled to follow you with the strong eye of faith into
the world of light and glory. But, oh that the veil
could be lifted for a moment; that you could leave
your shining height and penetrate our world of
shadows; that you could appear in this poor little
room in which you used to play, we thought contentedly, and stand smiling on us by this little
table at which you used to study, and which, with
bowed heads, we have so often moistened with our
tears!
16




CHAPTER VII.
CAN WE COMMUNICATE?
RT.llH Seneca Indians had a touching custom of
taking beautiful little birds to the graves of
their friends, loading them with kisses, caresses,
and messages of love, and letting them fly away
into the blue sky. Such little birds are the winged
aspirations of our hearts, which are daily and hourly
soaring away in quest of our lost ones. Fruitless
errand! Little doves are they from the closed and
drifting Ark of our souls, returning only to nr~rselves!
Alas! that man, the Spirit, the only spir;tual
creature on the globe, should have his eyes.'nd
ears so closed to the Inner World, that in his
darkness and sorrow he can only communicate the
passionate longings of his heart to a bird, or a star,
or the invisible winds!
If there is indeed a spiritual world; if our own
thoughts and affections move and live in it; if our
dear friends are there, loving us as before; if in182




UAN WE COMMUNICATE?            183
deed, spiritual affinities and attractions cause proximity and presence; why do we not receive some
token, some little sign? hear the fall of some footstep on the other side? or see the waving of a remembered hand?
Watchmen of Zion! who study the providences
of heaven: Pastors of Christ! who feed his sheep
and his lambs: give us light; explain these mysteries; satisfy our hearts and minds. Why are these
two worlds so closely woven and yet so widely
separated? so near and yet so far?  How could an
angel call "out of heaven" to Hagar in the wilderness, and yet no angel answers the perishing Hagars
in the darker wilderness of our spiritual life?
WTe ask you for bread: you have given us
stones.
Swedenborg's spiritual experiences, so prolonged,
so thorough; undergone by one so pure, so faithful,
so capable; granted especially by the Lord to illumine what was dark before, and to give a new
doctrinal basis to a New Church,-offer us the best,
the only solution of these difficulties.
Swedenborg declares that sin and evil alone have
closed the avenues between heaven and earth.
Wherever there has been no sin, there is open
communication between the natural and the spir



184       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
itual spheres of life. Our world presents one of
the painful exceptions to this general law and order
of the universe. Even here, in the times before
the flood, the golden age of the poets, angels and
good spirits were in daily communication with the
inhabitants of earth.
Spiritual death, absence from God and angels,
the loss of goodness and truth which alone really
live, is the penalty of sin.  Natural death was
always a necessary event on every physical globe.
All created beings are first born in this lowest or
natural sphere, and ascend from it, by dropping the
material body, into higher and purer regions of life.
It was never designed that man should live on the
terrestrial plane for ever; nor that having once
escaped its bondage, he should ever return to it
again.
How different, however, was death in that golden
age from death in our sorrowful age of mingled iron
and clay!  Then every human being attained the
ripe fullness of earthly life. There was no trace
of disease, no infirmity, no suffering. When every
thing was prepared for the change, a band of angels,
relatives and friends, came for the happy spirit
about to be released. They were visible to all
around. Their presence was announced by hea



CAN WE COMMUNIC tTE?           185
venly music, aromatic odors, and golden lights
The old man passed out of his now useless natural
body as softly as a bird or a butterfly out of the
little shells which had encased them. All witnessed the beautiful translation; and the troop
passed away to their spiritual homes'mid hymnings and blessings and adorations. The newlyraised spirit, growing ever younger and more beautiful, revisited day by day the dear ones he had
left on earth, and cast upon their hearts and homes
the consoling light of heaven.
The secret of the possibility of such communication is to be found in the inmost harmony of
thought and affection which existed between the
inhabitants of both worlds at that period. The
men of that age loved the Lord supremely and
the neighbor as themselves. Each person found
his own true happiness in promoting the happiness
of others. No one cared for riches or power or
honors or the gratification of the senses. An extreme simplicity and purity of life prevailed. Our
base appetites and unruly passions, our pride and
envy and contempt for others, were all unknown.
They took no thought or care for outward things.
They beheld in the external world, as in a wonderful mirror, the spiritual mysteries which all out16 *




186       OUR CHILDREN IlN HEA VEN.
ward objects involve and represent. This glorious
and heavenly state of life has been so utterly lost
to mankind, that we regard its story as a myth, a
tradition, a dream!
Man gradually receded from those primal heights
of goodness and peace. He began to attribute his
riches of affection and thought to himself and not
to the Lord. He soon loved the Lord less and the
world more; the neighbor less and himself more.
An evil state of heart and mind came creeping in,
and was communicated from father to son. Men
began to acquire property, to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others, to seek power over
others, to despise others in comparison with themselves.; and thence came, with accumulating hereditary additions, the awful lusts of the human heart
and the hideous falsities of the human mind, which
the wisdom and mercy of God through his revealed Word, his own Incarnation, and his established churches, have been able only partially to
subdue.
It was impossible for angels or guod spirits to
keep up the sweet communion of the olden times.
Angels can have no conscious presence except with
good affections and true thoughts. When a man's
end in life is the acquisition of riches or power or




CAN WE COMMUNICA TES           187
position for himself and his children; when his
views are low, sordid, and selfish; then his sensual appetites have the mastery of his spiritual nature; the interiors of his spirit are closed. Angels
are strangers to all such motives and sentiments,
and are repelled powerfully from those who entertain them.
It is not only impossible for such a man to see
angels or spirits, but he loses faith in their existence. He doubts whether there is any heaven or
hell. The very being of a God becomes with him
a matter of question. In this dark and pitiable
state of mind, he believes himself superior to others
in knowledge and sagacity. He prides himself
especially on his logical powers and his scientific
attainments.  He looks down with surprise or derision upon those in whom the love of God and
faith in the Invisible still survive.
It was the divine mercy which closed the avenue
between the two worlds. The evil states of men
not only repelled the angels, but they invited the
devils to a more intimate association. Heaven receded, but hell approached. The world of spirits
was full of wicked men, who came from the earth,
leaving nothing behind them but their material
bodies-bringing all their wickedness with them,




188       OUR CHILDREiN IN HEAVEN.
and now doubly capable of inflicting the deepest
spiritual injury on those who were left behind.
The Sacred Word describes the effect on human
society 
"The wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually."
Earth and hell were becoming blended in monstrous union. Evil spirits took possession of the
souls and bodies of men. Then occurred that great
catastrophe, described symbolically as a flood, by
which the spiritual life of man was suffocated, just
as men are drowned in the water. The avenues
between the inner and opter worlds were closed.
A "remnant" was saved; open intercourse ceased;
a new order of life was established; and a written
Word and an external church.became necessary to
connect the spirit of man with the Lord and with
heaven.
Since that period there have been occasional and
partial openings. Prophets and Apostles, Seers
and Saints, in all ages and countries, have had
glimpses of the Holy City, and have communicated
to their peoples spiritual light, varying in degree
and intensity, but enough to keep alive in the heart




CAN WE COMMUNICATE?            189
of the world a sincere faith in angels and devils
and a life after death.
Why cannot the intercourse with the spiritual
world be now restored and resumed?  What is to
hinder us from having our eyes and ears now
opened, so that we may test for ourselves the truth
of what our Prophets and Seers have told us? Are
there not intimations loud and clear throughout
the world, that this glorious event is about to take
place? Need we despair of seeing and conversing,
before we die, with those precious ones who have
gone before us?
To answer these questions rationally, we must
first consider what is going on in that world of
spirits which is nearest to our own, and which we
would first enter, or see into, if permitted.
That world is a shifting scene; a world of judgment, of change, of coming and going. Nothing
there is fixed. Two powerful currents of life run
through that world; one setting strongly towards
heaven, the other towards hell. Those who ale
preparing for heaven are daily receding farther and
farther from our earth; because they are?utting
off their earthly modes or states of thougnt and
feeling, and becoming more and more like the
angels.  They are being instructed in spiritual




390       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
things; they are unlearning or forgetting natural
things. They cannot come back to us any more
than the fruit can return into the form of a bud.
It would be painful, it would be injurious to their
spiritual natures, to take so many backward steps
to be brought into rapport with us. No: we can
go to them by making the same spiritual progress
forwards; we should not wish them to be brought
back to us.
On the other hand, those who compose the
downward current are being divested of what little
truth and good they have ever had, and are preparing for hell. They are becoming more and more
earthly, gross and sensual. They have a powerful
tendency to return into this world. That being
impossible, they gravitate, as it were, into the evil
atmospheres of our spiritual life, and attempt to
take possession of us. They are anxious to communicate with us; to knock on tables and attract
our attention; to write through our hands and
teach us; to compel our belief; to control our
thoughts. They have all our own gross appetites
and passions; more than our own falsities and
errors. Operating, however, from the spiritual
side, they may be inconceivably subtle, cunning,
and dangv rous.




CAN WE COMMUNICA TE?           191
We are not ready i.: this world for the instructions, purifications, and judgments, which are el
fected in the world of spirits. They come to ub
only after death. Nothing could be more disastrous to our spiritual life than to have the light of
that world suddenly poured upon us here. We
have our earth-work to do until we are called to go
up higher-work of infinite importance to our own
hereafter; and we should be unfitted for our uses
in this world if we were living consciously in the
other.
Swedenborg, indeed, lived that double life; but it
was his special mission, and he was prepared for it
and protected in it by the Lord. His Diary is full of
accounts of terrible assaults and infestations of evil
spirits, which certainly would have overwhelmed,
any human being less favorably situated. He has
made for us, in a far more perfect and philosophical
manner than we could, the very researches we so
ardently desire to conduct for ourselves. His
evidence is invaluable; it is sufficient; it is satisfactory.
A hundred years before the modern Spiritual
Manifestations, and long before Mesmerism and its
higher phenomena were discovered, Swedenborg
was familiar, by personal experience, with all the




'92       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
sounds, sight, movements, writings, and revelations
reported by modern "mediums." Nothing escaped
him, from the mere displacement of material articles to the most astounding optical phenomena recorded by Home or Andrew Jackson Davis. He
takes a view of all these things from the interior.
He gives the true solution of the phenomena. He
exposes the tricks, the fantasies, the subtle pretensions. ~f these obsessing spirits. He describes their
character with great fidelity. Most of them, he
intimaies, are great talkers and babblers, pretending to be angels of light, whose communications,
full of wound and a show of knowledge, lead to nothing iseful, true, or good; and their secret ambition is to teach and lead men in their own way, indepenUently of the Lord and the Word.
At every period of remarkable spiritual opening, the evil rushes in from the other world as well
as the good. When our Lord was on earth in a
physical form, the same kind of spirits possessed
the bodics of men in a manner incomprehensible to
out natural thought, and His redeeming love was
sig-ially manifested in casting them out. So now,
when He has come again in great power and glory,
through a manifestation of spiritual truth, these
e- il spirits reappear, and on a new plane and in a




CAN WE COMMUNICATE?           193
different manner attempt to acquire their coveted
supremacy over the human race.
Swedenborg impresses upon us, in the most powerful manner, the danger of open intercourse with
spirits. Not only is there danger of being taught
all kinds of false- doctrines, but of being led into
evils of life, which will endanger the salvation of
the soul. When a man's mind is laid open to
spirits, they enter into the whole of his external
memory. They know his character, his thoughts,
his wishes, better than he does himself. They can
make him  think and believe what they please.
They can confirm him in all his errors of opinion,
and impress upon him the most incredible falsities.
The vast majority of spiritual communications
are utter delusions, the information of the medium
not extending a hair's breadth beyond the natural
range of our spiritual forces.
To illustrate: Some poor mourner visits one of
the mediums to receive a message from a lost
friend. The medium consents. The spirit proceeds
to describe the deceased person with the utmost accuracy. Incidents are recalled which have been
long forgotten by the applicant himself. The medium will write something on paper in the wellknown handwriting of the lost friend. There is
17                I




191       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
no mistaking it. If the questioner shakes hand
with the medium, he will feel exactly the remembered pressure of his friend's hand, distinguishable
from all others. He then delivers some message
about family matters, indicating a most unexpected
acquaintance with the business of other people.
The inquirer is confounded. HIis conviction is
forced. It seems a miracle, or a veritable communication from his deceased friend.
Now to one familiar with the laws and phenomena of the spiritual world, as revealed through
Swedenborg, this evidence is altogether inconclusive. The spirit acting through the medium may
never have seen the deceased person or heard of
him. The latter may be away off in heaver and
know nothing whatever of the trick imposed on his
earthly friend. The spirit who actuates the medium has entered the natural memory of the questioner, and reproduced everything from its recesses.
If he could make himself visible to the natural eye,
he might assume the exact form of the deceased individual, so that escape from his deception would
be impossible.
A more astounding case may be proposed. If
your spiritual eyes were opened, your chamber
might be suddenly illumined with magical lights




CAN WE COMMUNICATE?           195
of gold and purple. In the midst of them a glorious angel might appear, with the face of the
Apostle John, radiant with holy love. He might
speak to you in accents which would melt you to
tears, and waving his wand, might show you the
scenery of heaven;, palaces of precious stones;
groves of inconceivable beauty, and many of your
own deceased friends walking about in shining
robes and beckoning you thither. You would be
enraptured at the sight, ready to believe anything
your professed angel might tell you, or even to fall
at his feet and worship.
Your visitor might all the time be an evil spirit,
preparing to plant the most dangerous fallacies in
your mind, and to lead you secretly on to your
spiritual death. He has produced a fantastic
vision, apparently real, by a magical art well
known in the evil world. Wicked spirits thus infest and torture each other by all kinds of fantastic
creations. These things are exemplified in the
mesmeric sleep, when the mesmerized person sees
whatever the operator chooses to conjure up in his
mind-an immense serpent, a burning house, a
sinking ship, or a scene of murder-the victim betraying plainly, by his strong emotions, that he




196       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
thinks everything is real, and cannot break the
spell which has bound him.
The vast possibility of spiritual injury from open
intercourse may be surmised from these two illustrations. Spirits may personate our nearest and
dearest friends, or those whose words have the
greatest authority over our minds-Calvin or Luther or Wesley or Swedenborg. They may lead us
subtly into pernicious doctrines. They may play
upon our passions and prejudices as they please.
They may inflate us with the idea that we have
been chosen for missions of vast importance. They
may start us on the most foolish enterprises, ending
in ruin. They may poison our minds against our
bosom friends; husband against wife! and wife
against husband. They may wreck the peace of
families, break the silver chords of reason, and impel to murder and suicide. All of this, indeed,
they have repeatedly done.
But will not the swift-descending angels also
come down and protect us from these infestations
of evil spirits?  Why cannot more good than evil
come of these manifestations? Will not Divine
Providence overrule every thing for benignant
ends?  Undoubtedly; but it is necessary to remember that all great organic changes in the spir



CAN WE COMMUNICATE?           197
itual as well as in the natural world, are slow in
progress, and the true meaning of them cannot be
seen at once. A change in the relations between
the two worlds is impending; indeed it is already
begun. It is the hope of the future, and the basis
for the restoration of all things and the return of
the golden age.
Nevertheless the first phenomena will be misunderstood and misinterpreted, unless men are armed
and prepared with true spiritual doctrines to analyze
and give them their right value and significance.
When the doors are partially opened or the veil
removed, the heaviest and lowest portions gravitate
downward; and we have a deluge of vague, trifling,
commonplace communications. Some of these probably come from good and simple spirits really
anxious to communicate with their earthly friends.
The majority of them, however, belong to the classes
described above. Angels and good spirits can only
appear through men who are as angelic and good
as themselves. The heaven above us will only
come down into the heaven within us. The "open
heavens" will be connected interiorly with the
Lord's New and Everlasting Church, the New
Jerusalem.
The Lord meanwhile will hold the evil in check
17 *




198       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAT.EN.
so far as may consist with the free agency of man,
and all the latent good possible will be deduced
from it by the Divine Providence. Already these
spiritual infestations have convinced millions of the
reality and proximity of the spiritual world,-facts
in great danger of being lost to mankind between
the scornful denials of the skeptical element on one
side, and the cold abstractions of the Christian
Church on the other. They will also prepare the
way for the reception of the authorized disclosures
of Swedenborg as nothing else could ever have
done.
These spiritual manifestations will increase in
extent, power, and pretensions. Neither the ridicule of the skeptic nor the unbelief of the Christian will repress them. The true will begin to
appear as well as the false. As the Church descends, as a new life buds up in the heart of the
world, open visions will become more and more
frequent, pregnant with truth and use and beauty.
Swedenborg has given us the key whereby we may
test all the spirits as the Apostle commanded. It
is our duty to use it. We shall thereby warn men
of the dangers which are springing upon them from
the spiritual world; and be ready also to welcome




CAN WE COMMUNICATE!            199
the "glad tidings" which angelic messengers will
certainly bring us from the same source.
The test or touchstone of good or evil spirits is
plain and practical. There are two great central
truths in the spiritual universe. No angel or good
spirit is ignorant of them. Whatever doubts somne
good men may have had respecting them here, they
-are all dissipated by a little instruction in the
world of spirits. These great truths are the following:
The Lord Jesus Christ in his Glorified Humal
Person is the Supreme God of the universe.
The Holy Scriptures are divine truth, having
spiritual and celestial senses, meaning within meaning, adapted to men, spirits, and angels, according
to their degree of life.
Faith in these doctrines, and a life according to
the commandments given by the Lord through his
Word, are the basis of heavenly character. A burning love for these doctrines creates a sphere of
spiritual power in the minds of angels and good
spirits, which protects them for ever from the
assaults of evil ones. It is the same faith and
love, the same sphere of the Lord and the Word,
which works out our deliverance here from  the
bondage of sin, and leads us into the light and




200       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
liberty of the Gospel. Evil spirits and devils hate
these heavenly doctrines —hate the Divinity of
Jesus Christ and the sarictity of the Word, and
deny or ignore them in their communications with
mlen.
When spirits profess to come from the Heavenly
Country to reveal to us its beautiful laws and phenomena; to deliver us from the bondage of earthly
error and darkness; and to lead us into the light
and peace of eternal truth; and know nothing of
the Lord and King of that Happy Land, confounding Hinm in his earth-life with Socrates, Seneca,
and other teachers of morals; and when they seem
ignorant of his Holy Word; of its illumining and.
sanctifying power over men, spirits, and angels;
and of the boundless arcana of wisdom and beauty
which are for ever being revealed in heaven from
its inexhaustible fountains; how can we credit their
utterances, or believe that they are any thing but
Ms icked impostors?
Intercourse with angels being next to impossible
~n account of our hereditary and acquired evils;
communication with spirits being dangerous and
unceitain in the present condition of the race; the
Lord has most mercifully prepared a great and
good human medium, to whom IHe revealed the




CAN WE COMMUNICATE?            201
internal or spiritual sense of his Word, which harmonizes into a new and glorious unity of doctrine
all the discrepancies of the letter, and who was
permitted, under divine protection from assaulting
falsities, to see and hear enough of the wonders
behind the veil to illumine our minds, comfort our
hearts, confirm our faith, and strengthen our love
in a manner never before vouchsafed to mankind.
The Coming Church will listen only to him, and
to those who bring credentials similar to his own,
stamped beyond question with the sign and seal of
the Lord and the Word.
It is hard to give up all hope of a conscious
communication with our departed treasures in the
present life. Never to see their beautiful faces
again; never to hear their sweet voices; never to
press their little hands to our lips!  Never!  For
in the weary length of despairing hours, this earthlife seems a forever to our grief. And yet it is
better thus. We cannot precipitate ourselves into
their states, nor cruelly draw them back into ours.
The kindly influences which will bring us sweetly
together are all at work; unseen but sure; softer
than the dew, purer than the light, stronger than the
electric girdle that binds the earth. Therefore let
our solils "wait patiently on the Lord."
I *




202       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
It is pleasant, however, very pleasant, to know
that this seemingly utter separation is not an arbitrary decree of God-not a necessary condition of
things; but a positive evil brought about by sin,
continued upon our race by its own blindness and
disobedience; an evil against which Providence
continually contends for us, and which He will
finally overcome for us, by means of his opening
Word and ever-increasing angelic ministrations.
In the far future, which inevitably awaits.mankind, when the moral world shall have described
its destined orbit and the golden age returned
again; when the light of the moon shall be as the
light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be
sevenfold; we verily believe that in every. household of the human race will be set up a Jacob's
ladder-not in vision, but in. reality-whereby will
be restored for ever the lost communication between
angels and men.
Our departed friends, however, very frequently
communicate with our spirits in a manner which
does not come within the range of our?onsciousness. We live, move, and think, in total ignorance
or oblivion.of by far the greater part of our own
spiritual activities. We know no more of the
secret operations of our interior life, than we do of




CAN WE COMMUNICA TE?           203
the organic wonders going on in the anatomical
recesses of our own bodies. These things will
come to us after death like old and sweet memories.
We will find many a familiar face about us, of
whom we now know nothing. We will remember
many happy visits, many kind and gentle services
from those we call dead, and of which, in our
earth-life, we had no perception. In that happy
by-and-by, when all that is amiss in this world
shall be readjusted, we shall discover the key to
many a perplexity, the interpretation of many a
dream.
~ It is a doctrine of Swedenborg that life, with all
its affections and thoughts, flows downward from
the Lord through the different heavens, and from
them through the world of spirits into men; one
and the same in its essence, infinitely varied in its
manifestations according to the forms through
which it flows; thus holding all parts of the universe in orderly connection, the entire unity being
visible to the Lord alone. Man originates nothing,
has nothing, is nothing of himself. He could not
breathe or think or feel, unless he were adjoined to
spirits, and through them to angels, who passed
down the golden cup of life from one to another
receiving it from the Lord, and pouring out th(




2041      OUR CHILDREN IN HIEAVEN.
dregs upon the animals, the plants, and the minerals of the earth.
Nothing of this appears from an outside standpoint; and men have built up a vast sensuous philosophy of mind and matter, which discredits the
spiritual theory altogether. When grounded and
confirmed in their self-reliant materialism, which is
based on tire uncorrected evidence of their senses,
it is almost as impossible for them, boasting of
their riches of science and reason, to believe and be
saved by a system of spiritual doctrine, as for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle.
Every man seems to himself to occupy the central point in the universe, and the entire heavens
actually communicate with the interiors of every
human soul. When the outer senses are laid into
a certain sleep, the interior faculties, communicating
as they do with the spiritual world, may be awakened into astonishing activity. A man may see,
hear, feel, and think, far more keenly when he
seems asleep or dead to the natural eye, than he can
when wide awake. He may become clairvoyant in,hat state, and see through all intervening obstacles. He may be filled with ideas and conceptions,
which are evidently not his own. He may discourse fluently and learnedly on the most abstruse




CAN WE COMMUNICA TE?            205
subjects, even in languages with which, when not
asleep, he is totally unacquainted.  He may dictate
philosophical lectures or epic poems at a single sitting, and not be'able to write a similar line of
either when awake. When roused from his brief
trance, he remembers nothing of what he has said
or seen. The curtain falls upon his inner life, and
he seems to live only in nature.
These things, and a thousand others of the same
sort, verified over and over, illustrate some of the
laws of that spiritual life into which we all awaken
from the short and pleasant sleep of death. They
are totally unsolvable by the materialistic philosophy, and are regarded as chimeras or hallucinations by those who cannot explain the facts in
accordance with their favorite theories. They confirm the psychological doctrines of Swedenborg,
and receive from them at the same time their best
explanation.
It is in this world within our world; this spiritual Valley of Rasselas, walled in by great mountains from our common perceptions; this fairy-land
of the soul, invisible to our mortal eyes; it is here
that sDirit meets spirit; it is here that the ministrations of angels and good spirits take place, and
the mystical process of regeneration occurs. No
18




206       OUR CHILDREN IS HEAVEN.
sweet Egeria of that spiritual sphere may become
visible in our dimn  grottoes, and impart to us
that knowledge which is immortal food. The
secret communings of our ethereal friends may be
recognized by us only in the shape of whispers or
dreams, or in the still more subtile forms of a renewed hope, a nourished faith, a happier resignation, or a brighter joy!
It is unquestionable that different orders and
classes of glorious beings accompany us in all our
changes of state or place. Some are the guardians
of our sleep, and some of our labors. Some assist
in our devotions, and others give zest to our innocent pleasures. They partake something also of
our joys and our sorrows. They wait on all alike;
on the savage and the sage; on the child bounding
forth from their celestial sphere, and on the old
man tottering back to their embrace. They sense
our evil thoughts, and withdraw as at the hiss of
serpents. They perceive our humility and our
prayers, and they advance, attracted by a perfume
as of violets and roses.
"Little infants are sometimes sent from heaven,"
says Swedenborg, "to little infants upon earth, who
are affected thereby with ecstatic delight." Whlat
pearl of more exquisite beauty than that thought




CAN WE COMMUNICA TE?           207
ever dropped from the singing lips of poet on
earth! Perhaps our little ones also, when they
look so brightly into the air, and leap with such
strange gladness in our arms, behold little babes
more beautiful than themselves, kissing them recognition through haloes of golden light.
Our spirit-friends frequently come to us with
warning, advising, or encouraging dreams.
Dreams, so vague, so fantastic, so volatile!
what are they but shifting scenes in the kaleidoscope of memory, ignes fatui of thought floating
up from the senseless and sleeping body? Who
knows or believes anything of the symbolic wisdom they may contain? That symbolic wisdom is
so utterly lost to mankind, that the silly dreambooks of the fortune-teller are all that remain of
its glory, like some broken and tarnished marble
from a temple of Persepolis.
Dreams are generally so senseless or incredible,
that the word dreamer is a term of reproach. And
yet all the poets and prophets of the world have
been dreamers. The advanced and pivotal men of
all ages and countries have delivered their utterances in a state of high trance to the uncomprehending multitudes. In this sense Swedenborg.
was the prince of dreamtirs. And although the




208       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VE~,
dreamer of one age is the oracle of the next, the
same thingl  perpetually  occurs.  The sensualminded brethren of every new Joseph, when they
see him afar off, exclaim to each other: "Behold!
this dreamer cometh."
The dream-world is a picture-world, built up according to the same laws of correspondence which
govern the real worlds surrounding men and spirits.
The law of symbolism is universal. The external
always represents some unseen internal. Angels in
one heaven can watch the beautiful clouds in their
sky, ever shifting in form and color, and read in
their changes the variations of thought and affection of the angels in the heaven above them. This
fact, transmitted to posterity and lost or perverted
in its meaning, was.the basis of ancient augury,
which was a means of predicting the future from
the flight of birds, the movements of clouds and
winds, and other external phenomena.
This repetition, under symbolic images in a lower
sphere and by different forms, of what is transacting
in a higher, is as true of our world as of any other.
Every object in nature has something spiritual concealed within it; every flower has some thought of
ethereal beauty as the cause of its existence. This
great truth, patent to all in the spiritual spheres.




CAN WE COMMUNICA TE  209
and to the inhabitants of sinless worlds, has been
lost to our common perception, and is discovered
only by the poetic faculty.  The "sermons in
stones" and the "books in the running brooks,"
are not imaginary but real.  The sounding cataract, which haunts the poet "like a passion,"
and the little violet, half concealing its modest
face behind mossy stones, have living, spiritual
voices within them, which have reached the poet's
ear and touched his open heart with wonder and
joy.
The dreams recorded in the Bible illustrate the
symbolic character of dreams generally, being always
representative of interior and spiritual things.
Swedenborg says that the men of the golden age
were visited by the most charming dreams from
heaven, by which they were not only delighted, but
greatly instructed, because they perceived intuitively the meaning involved in the minutest. circumstance of the visions. In later ages they not
only lost the secret key to their dreams, but by the
increasing influx of evil spirits they began to have
false, evil, and fantastic dreams. Finally, when
the interiors were closed, and man became merely
sensual, the dream degenerated into the present
confused and unintelligible thing, a mere cobweb,
18 *




210       OUR CHILDREN IN HBE.VEN.
in which fancy and memory are buzzing like entangled flies.
In the restoration of all things, when the aggregate human mind is reduced to states of perfect
order and beauty, the dream will recover its old
power and significance as a most beautiful and
charming  mode of communication between the
higher and lower spheres of existence. One of the
blessings promised to the crowned and perfected
Church is, that " the old men shall dream dreams,
and the young men shall see visions."
Swedenborg describes clearly and from frequent
experience the manner in which the conversation
of angels or spirits, who are present with a man
in sleep, are turned into dreams of persons, things,
or events, perfectly representative of the subject of
discourse.  Sometimes the simplest, most trivial
dreams are the outward expressions of wonderful
spiritual communications. Our external memory
treasures the mere dream; our internal or spiritual
memory stores away its spiritual significance. Our
best dreams, those productive of the profoundest
ihfluence on our souls, may not come so far forth
into the external memory as to be remembered in
our waking state.
We adduce, as an example of the warning dream,




CAN ~iE COMMUNICATE?          211
one which occurred to a New Churchman, who had
been plunged into a state of dreadful darkness and
despair by the loss of two beautiful children. He
of course understood the correspondences contained
in the vision; and it haunted him like a living
presence until he was delivered by Divine Providence from his temptations. It is given in his
own words:
"I saw in my dream a tall, black, hairy man,
with features like an ape, ascending from a dark
place which seemed very full of rocks. He carried
a great knotted staff in his hand, longer than himself, reaching above his head. This strange figure
looked eagerly around as if searching for some one.
His physiognomy, exceedingly repulsive, was now
somewhat softened by an air of anxious curiosity,
almost of tenderness. He expected to meet his
little children. Death had torn them from him,
and left him bleeding and stumbling in this dark
world of sin. Now he also was a spirit. The
good Lord had permitted these near akin but separated souls,'so near and yet so far,' to greet each
other once more. The poor father will see his dear
little children-his jewels-his idols-again! What
happiness!
"Very soon, descending from a luminous circle




212       OUR CHILDREN 1N HEAVEN.
in the east, came forward along a green slope two
children hand-in-hand, a little boy and a little girl.
Radiant as angels, beautiful as dreams, they floated
rather than walked over the ground. They peered
with bright loving eyes and eager shining faces
into the dusky atmosphere which surrounded the
strange man. Their little hearts palpitated with
joy. They were about to meet their'papa,' whom
they had left weeping over their little dying bodies
-dying in the same week! In their tender imaginations their' dear papa' was so young, so handsome,
such a glorious Apollo! Ah, my God! What
children! What a father!
"The parties, so anxiously anticipating this meeting, approach. They see each other and stop. The
dark, hairy man, an ape in the light of heaven,
letting fall his rough staff, throws his hands up
into the air, exclaiming with wild delight:'My
children! My children!' The little ones survey
him with pale faces and stupefied air. They cling
more closely to each other; they tremble; they cry
out in one breath:'It is not my papa! No-nono! It is not my papa!' They turn away; they
fly with trepidation up the green slope. One sweet
little voice, half weeping, dies awgv in the distance:' Not my papa!'




CAN WE COMMUNICA TE           213
"The wretched father, wildly excited, pursues
them.'Come back, my children! It is I! It is
I, your own papa! Oh, come back, my children!'
The dark rocks on either hand respond in mockery:'My children!' Suddenly the little creatures, very
much afrighted, turn into two beautiful white
Doves. They fly with swift-beating wings towards
the auroral windows of the east. The miserable
father stops astonished. He gazes after them, bent
eagerly forward. What an attitude! what a face!
He watches them intently, until they become two
little silver specks fading into the background of
golden light. Then all darkens around him, and
he raises a great shriek of agony:'They are
Angels; they are Angels: and I am  a Lost
Spirit!'
"The earth yawned, and the strange man fell
into the pit, the dark rocks tumbling after him.
"I awoke, cold, suffocated, trembling, weeping.
"I had reason. The Lost Spirit was myself!"
There are two still more subtile and powerful
means of secret communication with our lost friends,
unknown to men or discredited by them because
they are not recognized by our external consciousness. The first is effected by the Word of God
when it is read simultaneously by the two parties,




214       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
the one on earth understanding it literally it may
be, the other in heaven understanding it in a spiritrlal manner. The second means is a closer unition
of our interior souls by similar progressions in the
great work of regeneration.
The Holy Bible is a wonderful link or bond of
union between human thought and angelic thought,
and so between heaven and earth. It exists in
both worlds, and is far more constantly, reverently,
and fruitfully studied by angels than by men. In
that heavenly Bible there is not one word of Abraham or Isaac or Jacob, of David or John, of Egypt
or Canaan, or of any historical event that has ever
occurred; but in their places the spiritual truths
of the Lord's Kingdom, which those names and
occurrences represented.
When a person uponi earth reads the Bible in a
prayerful and reverential spirit, the angels come
very much nearer to him, because they are drawn
or attracted by the beautiful spiritual truths which
are contained in the letter. This is the secret of
the vast influence of the Bibl-e upon the world and
upon the individual heart of man. When angelic
thought is thus brought into rapport with human
thought, angelic affections excite or arouse into activity the little germs of similar affections existing




CAN WE COMMUNICATE?           215
in man.  Vn all this the Lord works unseen, Himself the Source of all life and'love. Hence the
noble virtues and charming graces of the Christian
character! Hence the faith that survives criticism
and defies extinction! Hence the love which outgrows its earthly bonds, and is liberated at death
for measureless expansion!
Yes, dear Parent! believe it. When you sit in
your quiet chamber, the scene perhaps of so much
suffering and sorrow, and in the soft light of a
Sabbath evening read the sweet stories of Moses
and Joseph and Samuel, or the wonderful history
of the birth and childhood of Jesus; when you
awake the soft minor strains of the Psalmist, or
the solemn organ-tones of the Prophets, or the
mighty voices and thunderings of the Apocalypse;
your Little Ones will come very near to you, like
invisible doves hovering about your shoulders with
olive-branches in their mouths. A subtile power
will pass from them into your own soul; and if
you could see the new life, the new love, the new
faith imparted, as you will one day feel them, you
would exclaim with Jacob awaking from his dream:
" This is none other but the house of God, and this
is the gate of heaven."
The best and surest method of communication,




216       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
for it leads to eternal union, is to grow more and
more like our children. Similarity of character is
the bond of association in the life to come. Your
nearest neighbors there are those most like yourself. All the members of each angelic society
think alike and feel alike, with none but harmonic
differences. They are conjoined together by secret
spiritual affinities on the. principle of use, like the
various organs, tissues, and minutest cells of the
human body.
While living here upon earth, our spirits are
really traveling from society to society in the spiritual world. The man who was avaricious once,
but is generous now; the man who has passed from
intemperate to abstinent habits; the man who has
put the demon of licentiousness under his feet; all
have changed their locations in the spiritual world,
so that the spirits who knew them once, now know
them *no more. WVXe do not see these spiritual
routes we are taking, for the Lord's providence
leads us by ways unknown; but they are as real as
any earthly journeys by land or water.
We are traveling eivery day to or from our beloved ones. Spirits of the same family and blood
are specially dr-wn to each other by secret ties and
attractions, and the good of many generations are




CAN WE COMMUNICAE?             217
frequently collected together in sweet companionship and in the same heavenly society. It is the
Lord's good will that we shall rejoin our dear ones,
and his loving-kindness is ever striving to lead us
together. For this purpose He would keep ever
before our spiritual eyes the little wicket gate,
shining like a star, which leads through the Valley
of Humiliation to the green pastures and placid
waters of the happy country of the Good Shepherd.
Our departed friends are undergoing a continual
process of purification. They are becoming more
and more heavenly, less and less earthly.  They
are casting off for ever the lusts and errors of this
world, the pride and selfishness, even the petulance,
the obstinacy, the conceitedness, the little imperfections of our characters. They are moving toward
the great and beautiful ideals of angelic life. They
are being transfigured in every feature and gesture
by spiritual processes, and their faces are beginning
to shine like that of Moses when he conversed
with God on Sinai.
Bereaved and sorrowing ones! is it so with us?
Are we dropping the old states of our sensual life,
as a tree sheds its leaves? Are we conscious of a
steady spiritual transformation within ourselves?
19                K




218       OUR CXIILDREN IN HEAVEN.
Are we following the track of those over whom we
wept so bitterly? Do we keep them ever in sight?
Or are we living in sensual pleasures, with no high
and holy aspirations, but turning continually to
self and the world? If so, we are becoming more
and more unlike those we loved so tenderly. A
chasm is yawning between us, dark and deep; a
chasm of spiritual repulsions and antipathies, which
will widen and widen until it becomes the Impassable Gulf.
Awful thoughts! That we may become so evil
that we will never see our children again! That
they may become so pure, that no memories of us
shall ever visit their happy spirits, "coming, like
ghosts, to trouble joy!" That the few years of
earth-life, when parent and child were bound heart
to heart-the few years so happy, so loved, so wept,
may sink into eternal oblivion and be lost, like a
pearl fallen to the bottom of the sea 




CHAPTER VIII.
WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?
MANY years ago, when a terrible epidemic
was desolating the city of New Orleans, a
poor fellow who had led a reckless, irreligious life,
was about giving it up to the great destroyer. All
hope was gone: his physician had retired. An
old nurse and a solitary friend, wearied with nightwatching, were dozing at the bed-side, waiting for
the patient to breathe his last. The sick man,
although retaining his senses, lay in that torpid
and indifferent state which sometimes precedes
death.
A kind-hearted clergyman on his morning round
of benevolent visitation, stepped into the room,
startling the sleepers into watchfulness again. He
knew the circumstances and character of the dying
man, and addressed him immediately to the point.
"My dear friend," he said, "you have lived a
wicked and sinful life, and are now about to ap219




220       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VE.
pear, unprepared I am afraid, before the Judge of
the whole earth. I feel warranted, however, in
making to you, in the name of our Saviour, a last
appeal. He who heard the prayer of the penitent
thief, is ready to answer yours also, if you make it
in the proper spirit."
The sick man slowly turned his bronzed face
and bloodshot eyes on the speaker, but said
nothing.
The preacher continued:
"You have but little time left for preparation.
Do not waste it on idle memories of the past or
useless speculations about the future.  Address
yourself earnestly to the throne of grace. The
divine sympathy may yet be aroused in your
behalf. Let me pray for you and with you!"
There was no answer.
" Are you not afraid to meet your God," said the
clergyman, with a little determination in his tone.
"Oh no!" muttered the dying man, very slowly
but with some emphasis, "not at all afraid to meet
my God."
"On what, pray, sir! do you base your hope of
salvation? Your answer, permit me to say, smacks
of irreverent presumption. Remember that you
have been a man without God and without religior




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   221
in this world. What is there to support you in
the hour of death?"
"I have had a religion, and a very good one,"
muttered the other, as if talking to himself.
Then suddenly starting up on his elbow, he exclaimed with surprising energy and intelligence:
"Listen, sir!  I thank you for your kind feelings and your good intentions; but really I need
none of your offices. Many years ago, when I was
a little boy, I attended a Sunday-school in my
native village in the State of New York."
He paused and gazed into vacancy, half-smiling,
as if some sweet memories had suddenly broken in
upon him. The clergyman moved a step nearer to
him, and he continued:' "Behind the leader's desk was a golden sun
painted upon the wall, with these words in its
centre:
"' GOD IS LOVE.'
That picture sank into my boy's heart, and I have
seen it ever since.-I see it now.-That is my
religion.-That is my God."
He sank exhausted on his pillow. The kind
minister forebore to press his gospel invitation, and
looked on in pitying silence
19 *




222       OUR CHILDREN fN f EA VEN.
The dying man bent his head far back, looking
directly upwards, and muttered faintly as if still
answering the clergyman's question:
"Oh no! sir. I may be afraid of man, but I
am not, cannot be, afraid of God."
The speaker was expiring.
The minister lifted his eyes deprecatingly and
turned away. He heard the death-rattle ere he
reached the door. If his spiritual eyes had been
opened at that moment, he would have seen shining
visitors crowding about the dying sinner.
What visitors?
The angels of the resurrection!
This little anecdote is given, not to encourage
any false hopes of a happy future after an evil life,
but as a forcible expression of the great central
truth of religion, that the Lord is a being of infinite and perfect love and mercy. The law of the
Divine Love is the "higher law" of the spiritual
universe-yea, the Highest Law, which overrules
and determines all others. It is the all-pervading
element of a pure faith, and must dominate the
intellect without any qualifying clause.  Every
seeming law or statement which is inconsistent with
a perfect conception of the law of Divine Love, is
either false in itself, or is some truth perverted and




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   223
corrupted in its passage through the disorderly or
incapable mind of man.
A piece of ice seems to our senses utterly destitute of heat. It has other properties and exhibits
the operation of other laws, mechanical, chemical,
optical, and electrical. Still the law of Heat is the
fundamental law of its existence and form. Modify
its relation to Heat, and all its phenomena-as
light, shape, color, cohesion, chemical and electrical powers-are so changed that its identity cannot
be recognized. So the Divine Love is the essential
life of the universe, and its reception by created
forms determines the spiritual and natural qualities
they manifest. There is no object or person or
place or state in which this supreme law, God
is Love, does not reign over all things, in spite of
appearances to the contrary.
NWe will take this little text with us from the
walls of the village Sunday-school, and it shall be
our guiding star through all imaginable darknesses
and perplexities. When men deny God, or accuse
Him falsely, because there is disorder and sickness
in the world, and horrible crimes and sufferings,
and ages of barbarism and slavery; we answer in
the face of all this evil-God is Love. He caused
none of it and is responsible for none of it. He




224       OUR CH[IL DREN IN HEAVEN.
resists it continually; He never, never permits it
when He can prevent it; He educes good from it
always; and He will subdue it eventually.
When we look into the Holy Scriptures and see
that God is said to tempt men to acts of disobedience; to harden their hearts and then destroy
them; to do great works and then repent of having done them; to be wrathful against his enemies;
to command one nation to exterminate another; to
give us blessings and then take them away; to
laugh at our calamities and to mock at our fear;
we see by the sweet light of our golden text, that
these are fallacies, the mere sensuous appearances
of the letter uncorrected by the light of spiritual
interpretation. We know in our inmost hearts
that God never changes, never tempts, is never
angry, never punishes, never gives and then takes
away.
We may penetrate even into hell and see myriads
of evil spirits living in states far lower, more
bestial and painful than our saddest types of
Indian or African or Australian barbarism. We
may discover in that doleful region wickedness and
its attendant suffering, in comparison with which
all our crimes and sorrows are but the seed in proportion to the harvest; and still our motto, God is




WHY DID NOT THE LO2D PREVENT?   225
Love, shines as sweetly and softly in those lurid
atmospheres as in the azure skies of heaven. The
Love of God is there also, not to punish or destroy,
but to maintain order, to protect, to sustain, to
alleviate, to amend, and, so far as may be possible,
to reclaim.
God creates man, not for his glory and a display
of his power, but from his boundless love, yearning
to give Himself away, as it were, in innumerable
forms of life and beauty, to an ever-increasing
multitude which no man can number, of good,
wise, and happy beings capable of receiving and
reciprocating that love. Behold there a motive
worthy of a God! His will isr that all should be
good and wise and happy and perfect in their
spheres. His will is, that blessings and riches and
honors should be showered upon every head; and
that every path should be strewn with flowers
from the cradle to the grave. His will is, that
there should be no pain or sickness, and no removal
from earth until man attains the ripeness and fullness of natural life, that serene old age of this
world which hardly conceals the radiant youthfulness
of the next. His will is, to flood every human
heart with the fullest tides of love, peace, beauty,
and joy!
K 




226      OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on
Earth as it is in Heaven!"
Whenever and wherever these things are not
found, but their opposites appear-evil, falsity,
poverty, pain, crime, and early death; we may rest
perfectly assured that the will of God has not been
done. Some Evil One hath sown tares among the
wheat. Some discord has crept into the music of
the spheres. Who has thwarted the will of the
Omnipotent.  The  questions, how?-when?wherefore? crowd upon us. We are oppressed
with a sense of mystery. Doubts and despairs like
clouds spread over the whole heaven. The Universe becomes a riddle; the Word of God a closed
Book, sealed with seven seals; and like the beloved
Apostle, the bewildered Christian "weeps much,
that no man can break the seals and open the Book
and read therein."
One of the Elders before the throne said to
John:
"Weep not! Behold! the Lion of the Tribe of
Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open
the Book and to loose the seven seals thereof."
What the Apostle saw in vision is now passing
into history. This opening of the Book, celebrated
by the glorifications of angels to the number of




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?  227
"ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands
of thousands," is the same event as the Second
Coming of the Lord, not bodily in the clouds of
heaven, but with spiritual and angelic light and
glory into the dark clouds of the Letter of the
Word. This Revelation of the Spiritual Sense of
the Holy Scripture has been made in these latter
days through an Illuminated Medium; and it contains a new philosophy, a new psychology, a new
theology, for the use of a New Church, the New
Jerusalem; in which heaven and earth —" the new
heaven and the new earth"-shall be once more
and for ever united.
He has come as He predicted, "like a thief in
the night;" and has found but little faith on the
earth.  He walks along the wayside with those
who love Him best and seek Him most, explaining
from Moses and the Prophets what was written of
Himself; but their eyes are holden and they do
not know Him.
The Doctrine of the Lord which the Spiritual
Sense teaches, is the true doctrine, rising above the
appearances of the Letter, and the mist and fallacies of merely natural thought. Philosophy or
Religion without a true knowledge of God, is a
body without a heart, a nation without a head, a




228       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
world without a sun. Our conception of God is
the eye through which we see everything.
"If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole
body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be
evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness."
What, then, is the conception of God, from
which, as from a very high spiritual mountain,
we may look down into the causes of things, see the
origin and uses of evil, and why the Lord does not
prevent it?
The Lord Jesus Christ, in his risen and glorified
Human Form, is the'Supreme Being-the Only
God-one in essence and in person. Out of Him
there is no Father and no Holy Ghost. What
these terms express are mere abstractions apart
from the person of Jesus Christ; they are hindrances not helps to a true knowledge and worship of Him. This Lord, the God-Man, in whom
"dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,"
is the uncreated source of all Life and Goodness.
No life or goodness we may discover in man is ever
self-originated, but always derived from the same
central Fountain. " There is none good but God."
This Divine Goodness flows down and presses in
and pours outward in living streams, causing all
the life, goodness, peace, joy, wisdom, beauty, and




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT? 229
excellence in the world. It strives to communicate
itself to all alike, to the evil and the good; to
create a heaven in every human heart, thereby
predestinating and willing every human being to
have a place in heaven. It possesses also infinite
Wisdom to conceive and plan, and infinite Power
to execute what it so ardently desires. Surely His
will shall finally be done on earth as it is in
heaven!
This original, holy, beatific, super-excellent Ideal
of a creation, full of good and wise beings, preparing on happy worlds for happier heavens, has been
broken and would have been destroyed, at least on
this earth, but for His own Incarnation. His
Divine Mind and Will, however, have not changed.
He still strives to carry out his original plan and to
realize His divine ideal of universal felicity and
salvation. His providence labors incessantly to
bring the world and every individual back to the
state of divine order contemplated from the beginning. No change in His finite creatures can
ever effect any change in Himself. He has no
anger; no impatience; no accusing spirit; no
avenging justice; no finite qualifications to his
infinite and unchangeable love and pity. He gives,
give., gives; and He never takes away anything
20




230       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
good or true or beautiful, without providing something better, truer, and more beautiful. Such is
the Lord as He really is behind the clouds of sensuous perception, which like the Letter of the
nWord conceal for a while His true nature and
glory from us.
The rainbow-colors are as beautiful in the dewdrop as in the vaulted sky. Universal Truths are
seen alike in the greatest things and in the least;
in the extinction of a sun and in the falling of a
sparrow.  This great truth of the Divine Love
must come home to every human heart, and to the
little circumstances of our daily lives.
Ah! poor, bereaved, Christian  mother! who
knelt so humbly at His feet, and wept so bitterly
and prayed so fervently that your precious childyour heart's wealth-might be spared to you; and
all in vain, in vain! You cannot see the Divine
Love in the sun-colors in which our philosophy
has painted it. In your great affliction it seemed
to you that the Lord was far, far away; forgetfiul
and unmindful of your sorrows; delaying to come,
as he did to Lazarus; or when He came, shorn of
His miraculous power.
Perhaps your stricken soul, bewildered by a
terrible theology, imagined even that He, in His




WHY Dli NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   231
austere wisdom-knowing what, though cruel, was
best-summoned from their awful deeps the bloodhounds of darkness, and set them upon the track
of your innocent and helpless one. Your only
comfort is the belief, that in some inscrutable
manner all this misery was necessary and proper
for your final salvation and the child's. In the
sweet but despairing resignation of your faith, you
struggle to exclaim-" Thy will de done!"
Now ascend that Spiritual mountain with Peter
and James and John, on which our Lord can
always be seen in another form and in a holier
light. In your sad bereavement, every cruel incident of which you so vividly remember, the Lord
was present, resisting every step of the process by
which your little one was torn from you. He descended through spiritual atmospheres and through
good spirits and angels into your very chamber.
So far as He could, consistently with universal laws,
and according to the spiritual forms into which He
was obliged to flow, He inspired your physicians
with wisdom, your nurses with watchfulness, your
remedies with healing virtues, and the very elements around you with conspiring influences in
your behalf.  Better question his Omnipotence
than doubt His Love.




232       OUwR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
We seldom realize the intensely personal relation
which God endeavors to establish with our hearts.
To the intellect He is the supreme Intelligence,
creating and sustaining the Universe; to the heart,
He is the sympathizing Friend, Father, Saviour.
We know Him in His great kingdom without; we
can love Him  only in His little kingdom within
us. It is His boundless love for our children,
which we receive in our finite spirits, and feel as
if it were entirely our own. Our anxieties, our
temptations, our hopes, our aspirations are His
also. He enters into and clothes Himself with
our spiritual infirmities as He once did with a
material body. He is near us in our dark hours,
and nearest in the darkest. He contends with the
Powers of Darkness for the life of every little child,
like Michael contending with the devil for the
body of Moses: and Ile stands in tears at every
little grave, as He stood with Mary and Martha
at the grave of Lazarus.
If all this be true, why do our children die?
If God is a Being of infinite Love, Wisdom and
Power, why does He permit evil to invade His
dominion, to thwart His will, to defeat His plans,
to disorganize His world, to torture and destroy
His creatures, and to endanger the peace and even




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   233
the existence of His heavens?  Why did He not
ordain it otherwise?  Why slumbers His justice?
Where is the proof of His Omnipotence?
Before attempting to throw some new light on
these old questions, so full of primeval darkness
and difficulty, it will be necessary to show why the
literal sense of the Bible militates against our view
of the Divine Love and Providence- for the Word
of God is our sole guide in doctrinal matters.
Why is God there described as a jealous God, a
Being of inexorable justice, who is angry with the
sinner every day, and who dooms the unrepentant
to an eternal hell? Why is He said to chasten
those He loves, to afflict them for their goodl, to
give and to take away from them at his unexplained pleasure, and to purify them as by fire?
These ideas are so plainly inculcated in the letter,
and are so thoroughly interwoven into the doctrines and life of the Christian Church, that men
cling to them with intense affection and feel that
to give them up, is to give up the Bible, the
Church, and even the Lord Himself. And yet it
is not so. There is a better way, a purer light.
The Bible has a Soul also which lives in the midst
of its body.
Every jot and tittle of the Holy Scripture exists
20*




234       OUR CHILDREN 1.V HEAVEN.
in heaven; and yet not one word of the letter, as
we read it, can enter there. We leave the literal
sense behind us at death, just as we leave our
natural bodies; and we enter into possession of the
spiritual sense. That spiritual sense has now been
opened for us by the Lord, and we can discover the
jewels of spiritual truth which were concealed in
so plain a casket. This is the origin of the new
light which enables us to correct our view of the
Divine nature.
The Bible was communicated from heaven in a
sense and by a method quite unknown to the
Christian Church. It was not a simple dictation
from the Lord or angels to chosen men, or the inspired word of worthy mediums filled with the
Divine Spirit. It is from that stand-point the
infidel assails it so successfully, subjecting the terrible difficulties of the letter to his pitiless criticism,
and mocking at its divinity. The Word exists in
heaven as a glorious coherent body of spiritual
truth; the direct, thought-giving effluence of the
Divine Mind. In passing through the minds of
the medium-for it descended  by an  internal
way-it took on a human vestment from their
natural thought, limited by time, place, and circumstance; and issued forth a very different thing in




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT? 235
appearance from what it was and still is in its
heavenly interiors.
When an angel speaks to man, he seems to speak
in the man's native tongue, whatever that may be.
The angel does not know nor can he utter a word
of human language.  His spiritual ideas, passing
through the interiors of the man's mind, take on
a clothing or investment from the man's natural
memory of words before they are presented to his
own consciousness.  So the Divine Word has
clothed itself in the ideas and words of the
Jewish mind. It would have had very different
histories, prophecies, poems, all with precisely the
same spiritual sense, if some other nation had been
selected for a representative church.  Passing
through the Greek mind, it would have assumed
probably a far more artistic and philosophical
shape. The Jews were chosen, so that the Word
might descend in accommodating forms to the
lowest and most sensuous phase of human life and
thought. Those who touch " even the hem of His
garment" are saved.
Spiritual truths flowing through a human mind
derive an external shape or form from the peculiarities of the mental structure.  The extreme
degree of deviation or perversion occurs when a




236       OUR CHILDREN  IN HEA VEN.
spiritual tluth is let down into the mind of a demon, one who has been divested of all goodness
and is thoroughly evil. The idea is then turned
into its exact opposite. This experiment was repeated several times for Swedenborg's instruction.
All falsities are thus the perversions of truths
passing through disordered minds.  A  perfect,
symmetrical Revelation can only be made through
angelic minds, whose minutest fibres are in musical
accord with the breath of heaven. No spiritual
truth can be transmitted through human mediums,
without losing something of its clearness, power,
and beauty. This psychological law is one of the
keys to Biblical interpretation.
Our ideas of God depend entirely on the degree
of spiritual light into which we can be elevated.
In one state we see Him as a powerful Being,
jealous of His glory, rewarding His friends, punishing His enemies, and demanding an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth. In another state we
see Him as a divided Being, His justice appearing
to us under one form, His mercy under another,
and His ministering power under a third. In a
still more advanced stage of development, He
appears to us as a Divine Man, governing with infinite wisdom and merny all things alike in heaven,




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PAE VENT?  237
earth, and hell. What seems to be a truth from
one stand-point, becomes a falsity from another.
One man sees God in a little image of wood
or stone-amazing narrowness and darkness of
thought! Even that conception serves to keep alive
in his heart the feeble germs of faith and veneration, and is better than no idea at all. Another,
without approaching a step nearer to Him, sees
Him in the glorious mechanism of the Universe,
which, abstracted from the personal Spirit of God,
is only a large idol or fetich. Many of us know
Him only as a mysterious Power wrestling with
our souls, as the angel is said to have wrestled with
Jacob in the dark. Blind and unhappy is the
man who can look around and within and not see
Him at all!
In the race as in the individual, the first stage of
mental life is sensuous. It is the age of miracles
and not of reason. It is only the preparation of
the ground for future growth. Man then lives in
various fallacies of thought derived from sensuous
appearances, from which he cannot be extricated
but as the chick is extricated from the shell-by a
process of development. For him the sun moves
round the world; ceremonies are the essentials of
the Church; and God punishes His enemies and




238       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
rewaids His friends with the animus of an earthly
monarch.  Such was the Jewish Church; and
such are all those at this day who demand miracles
as evidences of truth.
The race and the church as well as the individual advance next to a rational or metaphysical
stage, retaining a great deal of their sensuous faith,
but endeavoring to explain and justify it by doctrinal
dogmas. The great difficulty with this phase of
thought is, to reconcile the spiritual elements of the
Old Theology with the rational principles of the
New Science continually blossoming into view.
The history of opinion here proves that the unillumined reason is as poor a guide to truth as the
uninstructed  senses.  Such  was the Apostolic
Church, and such are now its thousand fragments.
In the manhood of the race, of the church, and
of the individual, the critical spirit works incessantly to free itself from all errors, all theories, all
masters; and to get at the positive light of truth.
This positive stage of thought has two forms, only
one of which was foreseen by the subtile author of
the Positive Philosophy. One school gets rid of all
our sensuous fallacies, including the religious intuitions, and of' all our transitional metaphysics;
bases itself on pure science; and, as might have




WHY DID _NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   239
been expected, lives in nature only, like a sagacious
beast. The Swedenborgian School extricates itself
entirely from the past, accepts a new Revelation
from  heaven, and makes all things freshly and
eternally positive by viewing man, nature, science,
history, and the Written Word in its spiritual
light. The Positive Scientific School is a mere
servant or vanguard, preparing the way by its
critical and destructive energies for the universal
domination of the Spiritual Philosophy.
Thus we see that it was organically impossible
for the earlier ages and churches to have had correct ideas of the nature of God. There was a
series of false doctrines (called by  Swedenborg
apparent truths, because they appeared true from
the stand-point of the believers, and were accepted
by the Lord as if they were true) permitted to
men, just as polygamy was permitted to the Jews
on account of " the hardness of their hearts."
Every sin, it has been said, is the round of a
ladder, which, if trodden under foot, leads us upward to the skies. So these false conceptions and
erroneous opinions of the Church of God were not
to be lived in, but lived out and left behind. Thus
only can we advance nearer and nearer to the supernal light of genuine or spiritual truth.




240       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
Unless the Jews had been permitted to entertain
the most external and sensuous ideas of God and
his government, they would have had no idea at
all; and a literal Word, bearing its true meaning
concealed in its bosom, could not have been revealed to them. Unless man had been permitted
to believe in a terrible hell and a sensuous heaven,
he could never have been imbued with a spiritual
aspiration.  Unless he had been permitted  to
believe in the resurrection of the material body, he
would have retained no faith in the immortality of
the soul. Unless he had been permitted to see
God in a three-fold form, as Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, no conception of the divinity of Jesus
Christ could have been generated in his mind.
Unless he had been permitted to attribute his sufferings and sorrows in some way to the Divine
ProviJence, his faith would have staggered and
his love perished in his great spiritual struggles.
Itow can the existence and continuance of Evil
be reconciled with this last, loftiest, and purest
conception of the Divine Character?
If human life was a power or force created by
God and infused into an objective universe of
fore s called forth from nothing; if the creation
was an external act of His, as a machine is the




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   241
work of a man-and such is the popular belief;
then indeed we would have great reason -to find
fault with the result, and to impeach the power,
goodness, wisdom, and foreknowledge of the Creator. A universe created by Infinite Intelligence
out of his own materials and on his own plan, has
worked so sadly out of order in so short a time,
that, viewing the subject from that stand-point,
we certainly could not call it a complete success.
We should call it, upon the whole, a failure.
But that view of life and of creation is radically
false.  Life is uncreated.  God alone is Life.
His Life is the only one that ever is, was, or shall
be fluent in any organized form, human, animal, or
vegetable. No other life is possible. He does not
divide it and give one portion to this form and
another portion  to another.  It is indivisible
and always the same. Its myriad-fold manifestations depend only on the atomic arrangement of the
forms into which it flows. It is not communicated
to matter and then transmitted ever after from one
thing to another. No: the whole vitality or life
of the universe to-day flows into it from God today, from moment to moment; and if God could
possibly cease living or breathing for a second, or
if He should for one moment withhold His influ21                L




242       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
ent life from the countless forms He has created,
the entire universe would dissolve into nothing.
The act of creation is perpetual.
How then is Man, the central figure of the creation, "the image and likeness" of God? How is he
different from God?  If he is made of atomic substances proceeding from God, and animated entirely
by life flowing in momentarily from God, is he not
as much an integral part of the Divine Being as a
man's fingers and toes are integral parts of his
body?  What can rescue us from  Pantheism?
How  can man enjoy any sense of individuality,
any feeling of identity, and a consciousness of
himself?
Right here lies the first great secret of creation,
the key to many of its enigmas. Unless man, in
becoming finite, had acquired the power of reacting against God, that is, of receiving and using
His influent life in one manner or another, just as
he pleased, he would truly have had no sense of
his individuality; no consciousness of his own
mental operations; he would have been a mere
automaton; an insensible, unreflective machine;
and the object of the creation would never have
been attained,-that object being not only the reception but the reciprocation of the Divine Love.




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   243
That reactive power is the free-will or free-agency
of man.
The free-agency of man is therefore the ground
or basis of his differentiation from God; of his
seemingly independent vitality; of his progressive
life to or from the Divine centre, and of his moral
responsibility.
This fact is as broad, deep, original, and for the
present almost as incomprehensible a necessity as
the altogether inexplicable existence of God Himself. It is impossible for God not to create; it is
simply the law or mode of His own life. It is
equally impossible for Him  to create a thinking,
loving, reciprocating being, separated or discreted
from Himself, except as a Free-Agent capable of
reacting against the divine influx.
God, therefore, always preserves, protects, and
respects the absolute free-agency of man, as the
only ground of his rational and spiritual life. He
governs him, draws him, leads him only by love,
never by force or violence. Every angel in heaven
and every devil in hell has gone to the exact place
he now inhabits of his own free choice; and however miserable the surroundings of the latter may
be, he cannot be persuaded to leave them. This
extreme statement will show that man is permitted




244       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
to do good or evil, to be good or evil, to remain
good or evil, just as his own interior volitions nmay
dictate. Man is, therefore, entirely responsible for all
the violations of the divine law, and the consequent
disorders and miseries which have created a hell
and covered the world with its horrible shadow.
Whilst the potentiality or power to sin is woven
into the structure of all beings in earth or heaven;
the actuality, the fall from a state of order and
purity into evil, has been, according to Swedenborg, of exceedingly limited extent. Myriads of
myriads of beautiful worlds, the light of whose
suns comes to us as that of little stars, or does not
reach us at all, have been full for immeasurable
ages of happy human beings, who have lived in
voluntary obedience to the divine law. They have
experienced none of the awful changes which have
occurred through sin in other solar systems, and
especially on our globe, the only one in the universe
where it has been necessary for the Divine Being
to incarnate himself as a Brother Man, to save
men from the destruction they were bringing on
themselves.
Evil thus originates in the power man has of
turning away the interior forms of his spirit from
God. When a spirit turns away from God and




WHY DI~D NOT THIE LORD PREVENT?   245
the neighbor to self and the world, listening to that
old serpent, our sensual principle, an organic change
takes place in the substance-in what we may call
the atomic arrangement-of his spiritual brain; a
change as real as the pathological changes in our
tissues in cases of disease. The medium is then
bent or distorted, so that the divine life flowing in
from above is perverted in its passage through the
changed form; and is manifested outwardly as
something more or less evil and false instead of
something good and true. The different properties of diamond and charcoal, both forms of carbon,
illustrate finely what changes may be made in the
same substance by a change in its atomic or molecular arrangement. So of the spirit.
God's life is the only life in heaven, earth and
hell. In evil forms his love is turned into hatred,
his truth into falsity, his light into darkness, his
beauty into deformity, his peace into trouble, his
felicity into woe. Thus the healthy-and nutritious
blood of man is changed into morbid secretions
when it passes into some organ of the body which
has been perverted from its normal type. Thus
the heat and light of the sun, which are changed
into the perfume and be uty of the flower, passing
through some vegetable germ deflected from the
21 




246       OUR CHILD RELN.rN HEA YEN.
lines of perfe t order, produce some rank, ugly and
poisonous object.
Evil men and evil spirits have moreover transcribed their interior perversions on the plastic face
of nature; for all forces come from within outward,
and produce their effects in the lowest or natural
sphere of life.  This is the origin of all the evil
things we see around us; the poisons of the vegetable world; the cruel and hideous forms of animal
life; the storms, the floods, the fires; the destructive extremes of heat and cold; the catastrophes
which appall and overwhelm; the horrible diseases
which waste our bodies; and the painful death
that awaits our departure.  All these things are
outward effects, symbolic of the evil and false principles reigning in the hearts of men. God never
causes them nor brings them nor sends them. Man
alone is responsible for them. No such things exist
in heaven, nor on any physical globe whose inhabitants have always kept the Divine commandments.
All these things will disappear by a process the
reverse of that by which they came. The dreams
of the optimist will be fulfilled, because the entire
means of their fulfillment lie in the enlightened
volition of man himself.
When men became so averse to God and bis




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?  247
government that after death, they could not be
inserted into angelic societies and made inhabitants
of heaven, they were permitted to collect together,
so that a different spiritual world could be created
around them, as far from God and angels as possible, where they might live as they pleased; and
that world is called hell. It is a sphere of horrible hatreds, fantasies and sufferings, where all is
evil, false and unreal. The inhabitants are there
permitted to shroud themselves from the rays of
Divine Love and Wisdom by dense atmospheres
of evil and falsity, as the cuttle-fish hides himself
from his enemy by ejecting a black fluid all around
his form. This is of the divine mercy; for the
divine presence is a torment to those miserable
beings. "Art thou come hither to torment us?"
is ever the sorrowful cry of lost spirits to the
approaching Christ.
This idea, that hell is a world where the wicked
continue the evil life they began here, and where
the wail of the infinite divine pity mingles softly
with the lamentations of the self-destroyed; this
beautiful idea is offensive to the Christian mind
which has been cast in the Israelitish mould. Such
a mind believes that hell is a place of fearful punishment, which the divine justice inflicts eternally




248       OURl CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
on the incorrigible. It believes that punishment is
deserved; and that it is incompatible with the
dignity and holiness of the Divine Being to permit
his equitable laws to be violated with impunity.
This idea, full of the appearance of truth, is still
far below the truth. There is darkness in it,brought from the natural, civil and social spheres
of our life,-which obscures the pure spiritual light.
The spiritual idea is, that evil is organically its
own punishment. The awful punishment of doing
evil is that you become evil, so that you have no
disposition to do otherwise. The punishment is in
your own state and in the restraints which, for your
own and others' good, Divine Love sees it to be
necessary to impose upon your evil lusts. God
does not inflict punishment. On the contrary, the
boundless ingenuities of his providence are continually exercised* to avert it, to modify it, to weaken
its violence, and to deliver from it.
It is a terrible idea-but oh how true!-that sin
perverts and corrupts the spiritual form, just as
disease does the natural body. Look at the fearful
ravages which intemperance and licentiousness
make on the human face; tile horrible diseases and
sufferings which result from their domination; and
the utter and pitiable bondage of the poor victims




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   249
to their own sinful and cruel passions; and you
have the whole story of sin and its punishment;
of a hell begun in this world and cofitinued in the
next; of that awful Hall of Eblis, where the
ghastly skeletons in silent frenzy wander about
in their black cloaks, each concealing a burning
heart under his ribs.
This self-inflicted punishment of sin, originating
from interior causes, is very different from the punishments of an exterior nature sometimes inflicted
by men and spirits on each other. An instinct of
self-preservation authorizes us to defend ourselves
against assaults upon what is peculiarly our own.
Society and governments defend themselves also
against assailants of their life or peace. Laws are
made on this principle for the regulation of society,
of the family, of the school, etc. Offenders are
punished according to the nature and extent of the
crime. These punishments are cruel and barbarous
if dictated by hatred and vengeance. They may
be very wise and humane if prevention and reform
are the real ends in view. It is from this purely
finite and external conception of human justice and
self-defence, that man has devised the monstrous
idea that God's infinite justice demands an infinite
punishment.
L *




250       oUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
Truly IHis ways are not as our ways; nor His
thoughts as our thoughts. There are no visitations
of God but those of mercy. War, famine, pestilence, as well as individual suffering and death,
have no traces of the divine vengeance in their
awful steps, but only those of the infernal spheres
engendered by evil spirits and evil men.
These external punishments are sometimes terrible in the hells. Evil spirits hate and love to
torture each other; and are continually experiencing the truth of the spiritual law, that whatever
evil we design to inflict on others, rebounds, perhaps in a different shape, upon our own heads.
Comparative order is maintained in the societies of
hell only by fear and external bonds; for the sweet
internal bonds of conscience, veneration, obedience
to God and respect for others, have there no existence.  The punishments inflicted by devils on
each other are necessarily severe, for the repression
of crime is there vastly more difficult than upon
earth. Angels, indeed, are sometimes sent from
heaven to mitigate their sufferings, and to restrain
the violence of their mutual fury. Thus the Lord's
love and pity abound unchangeably towards angels,
men, and devils.
Well might the poor dying sinner, thinking of




WHY DID NOT THE -.ORD PREVENT?   251
the little golden sun of his village Sunday-school,
and its beautiful motto of spiritual gold, exclaim;
"I am afraid of man; but I am not afraid of
God!"
Why, then, exclaims the oppressed soul-seeing
the inrooted, organic nature of evil, and the inevitability of its self-inflicted punishment; and that
God has no hidden hand or agency or secret purpose in any evil thing under the sun-why does
not God annihilate the hells, stop the course of evil
by violence, rid the world of it, and restore man to
his primeval state, granting him a new beginning
for a better end?
Have we always a clear and rational idea of the
Omnipotence of God?
The power of God works entirely in harmony
with the laws of His divine nature. It is indeed
simply His laws in operation.  His laws never
change: His power is always the same: its manifestations being determined by our voluntary state
towards Him. Live within and under the operation of His divine commandments, which are
simply the laws of His own divine being, and He
ix all-powerful to save and bless you. But turn
awn   from Him-and He does not and cannot
deny you the power to do so-and all is changed




252       OUK CHILDREN IN YHEA VEN.
His blessings become curses, not on account of His
will but of your nature. He cannot force you to
accept His divine love. He cannot deliver you from
the consequences of your sins, except by withdrawing you, with your own concurrence, fromn the sins
themselves, or from the evil dispositions which
lead to sin.
He cannot make a corrupt tree bring forth good
fruit, because He cannot violate the laws of His
own order. He cannot prevent a father from bequeathing hereditary evils to his child. He cannot
even do His mighty works where there is unbelief.
This.inability of God to work contrary to the laws
of His own existence, to be not God, is equally
implied when we say that God cannot lie; He cannot change; He cannot repent; He cannot do evil
or acquiesce in it; no, nor permit it in the sense of
acquiescence.
Is it possible for God to annihilate any thing?
It is the law or mode of His divine nature to
create and bless. For Him to stop creating would
be for Him to cease to be. How can He destroy
an(l curse? If He does one thing at one time and
the opposfte at another, if His power is diverted
into different channels by exigencies imposed upon
Him by the conduct of man, He is not the Un



WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?  253
changeable —" the same yesterday, to-day, and foi
ever." Can you imagine the sun withdrawing his
heat atnd light from a portion of the vegetable
kingdom? God is one and indivisible and omnipresent.  The same withdrawal of life which
annihilated the hells, would annihilate the heavens
and the universe. No. If there is cold and darkness anywhere in His creation, it is because some
false medium, self-perverted, has intercepted the
rays of the Divine Sun, which will shine on as
before; and the cold and darkness must continue,
until the medium, touched by the divine warmth,
shall reopen his heart and receive it as in the
beginning.
Suppose His power to destroy hell conceded;
would it be wise or merciful in Him to do so? It
is commonly supposed that the devils in hell would
be very willing to be annihilated to escape their
sufferings. This is a great mistake. Evil spirits
congregate together by force of the great law of
affinity, just as evil men do here.  They have
chosen their state, nor do they wish to leave it. If
they were elevated into heaven, out of pure mercy,
they would be suffocated like fish taken out of their
own element into the air. Their sufferings come
from their constant violations of the law of
22




*254     OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
brotherly love. They enjoy the pursuit of their
diabolical lusts as keenly and fiercely as the tiger
does his raid on the village flock, or the hyena his
meal in the village graveyard. Such, moreover, is
the magical sphere of fantasy in which they are
immersed, that they think themselves pre-eminently
/beautiful, wise, and great. It is only when the
revealing light of heaven shines in upon them,
that they discover what dreadful monsters they are,
and call upon the rocks and the mountains to fall
on them and hide them from what, in their moral
darkness, they call "the wrath of the Lamb."
If it were possible with God and earnestly desired by the devils themselves, hell could not be
annihilated without destroying the human race;
nor could that be destroyed without involving the
destruction of the heavens and the resolution of all
into primeval chaos. This will sound strangely to
those who are unacquainted with the structure of
the spiritual universe, and the connection of one
part with another, as revealed through Swedenborg.
No portion of the universe stands alone, or isolated
from the rest.  There is no vacuum anywhere.
The entire spiritual universe is based upon the
physical, and flows into it as the soul into its body.
The physical universe was created first, and the




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?  255
spiritual was built up afterwards as men by death
became spirits and angels. The earth is the Lord's
footstool, and our earth-life is the footstool or secret
basis of our angelic life ever after. Such is the
intimate connection between the spiritual and the
natural, that if the latter were destroyed, the former
would also be dissipated. "The earth is established for ever, so that it shall not be moved," says
the Psalmist.
Are not the stars to fall from heaven and the
earth to be destroyed at the Last Day? inquires
the good Christian literalist. Ah, my friend! that
heaven and earth are already passing away; and a
new heaven and a new earth are being formed for
the use of future and happier generations. The
old heaven and the old earth on which Judgment
has been given, and which are silently perishing,
are the internal and the external or the spiritual
and natural forms of the Apostolic Dispensation
of Christianity; like the Jewish, a transitional
state of the Lord's Church, preparing the basis for
another and far grander evolution of Christian
Truth and Life.
Why should the mere annihilation of hell destroy
the human race?  It seems to the aninstructed
mind, that if the influx from hell were only with



'256     COUR CHILDREN IN HEA YVEN.
drawn, man untempted would spontaneously return,
or be easily restored to his original innocence and
goodness. Swedenborg says that man's life, hereditary and acquired, is now so thoroughly perverted,
that if the angelic life alone flowed into his interiors, he would be thrown into horrible torments,
become insane, and finally perish. It was in this
way probably that the whole Assyrian army was
struck with blindness, and another one with frenzy;
so that they turned each man upon the other. The
hells are permitted to flow into us to keep us alive,
and to maintain our mental equilibrium, our rationality, our liberty, our free-agency.
This will appear strange to those who know
nothing of the spiritual side of psychology. Swvedenborg, with all his advantages of spiritual observation, needed ocular demonstration of the fact.
He saw a newly-arrived spirit from our world
undergo the experiment of having his attendant
evil spirits detached from him. The man, instead
of appearing better and wiser and happier as we
should have expected, fell down as if dead; nor
could he think or feel or even breathe, until his
communication with hell was restored. Such is
the case with every one of us at this moment. Our
very existence depends on an influx into us of life




WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   257
from the hells. And if the whole infernal world
were destroyed, we should perish also.
We may make our external or acquired life as
angelic as possible, so that no evil thing is ultimated
through us; and still our hereditary evil, of which
we are unconscious, is so vast that we can never
reobove it, and we are still connected by it through
our attendant spirits with all the hells. We are
only disjoined from hell after death by the wonderful processes of judgment and separation which
occur in the world of spirits.  Men and devils
stand face to face, or side to side, and so communicate. Angels and devils by mutual divergence
have become antipodal, and stand foot to foot.
They do not communicate, but antagonize. In
heaven only, " the wicked cease from troubling, and
the weary are at rest."
The Lord, therefore, is not the cause of evil or
its consequences. He does not permit it in the
sense of acquiescing in or being satisfied with it.
He does not use it as a means of promoting good;
although his divine love never fails to educe
from it the greatest good. He does not punish the
authors and victims of it; but forgives them, pities
them, loves them, and endeavors to deliver them
from its bondage. He cannot prevent evil without
22 -




258      OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
destroying the free-agency <f man and violating
the laws of His own being. He cannot annihilate
it in either devils or men, without destroying the
physical and spiritual universe.
The soul need not shudder nor the heart sink at
this clear, frank statement of the truth.
The Divine Love attracts all men to itself.
"No man cometh unto me, except the Father which
hath sent me draw him"-" And I, if I be lifted
up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."
The Divine Truth "enlighteneth every man that
cometh into the world."  "In Thy light shall we
see light."
The Lord Jesus Christ-this Divine Love and
this Divine Wisdom in one Glorified Person-has
established for us processes of cure and deliverance,
so vast, so powerful, so certain, that not only may
every human being be saved now from the power
of sin, but the coming futures are golden with
blissful promises of a perfect Church, an explained
Word, a restored Eden, a sinless world, and an
open Heaven. And even Hell will be reduced by
self-inflicted sufferings to such a state of order and
obedience, that although its inhabitants may have
nothing but a vegetative existence, and be wrought
into the Universal Temple as the sills and door



WHY DID NOT THE LORD PREVENT?   259
posts and paving stones of its fabric; yet there
will be no pain, or sickness, or death, or sorrow, or
crying, in the infinite, happy, peaceful, united
Kingdom of the Lord.
Let us briefly recapitulate our positions, and see
how sweet and serene a light the philosophy of Swedenborg throws even upon the darkest questions:
The Lord is Infinite Divine Love and Wisdom,
and has none of the imperfect, anthropomorphic, or
merely human qualities necessarily ascribed to Him
in the letter of the Word.
He has no justice according to the popular import of that term,-for His love and justice are
identical; nor does He regard our sins as crimes,
offending his majesty and provoking his anger; but
as terrible, self-inflicted misfortunes, exciting his
infinite pity.
The free-agency of man is as necessary and fundamental as the self-existence of God; and the
self-perverted Will of man is the source of all
evil.
Evil is permitted to continue, because God cannot violate the free-agency of man,-the ground of
his individuality, of his moral responsibility, and
of the possibility of his final salvation.
The Lord alone lives. His Life, received into




260        )UR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
good and orderly forms, produces all the good
things in the universe; passing through evil or
self-perverted forms, it is changed into all the evil
things in the universe. Thus evil is its own punishment and tends always, through suffering and
discipline, to its own abolition.
The Lord's love flows out to all alike, the good
and the evil, the just and the unjust; and no evil
thing we suffer can ever be attributed to Him, directly or indirectly, but always to ourselves or
others, to evil men or evil spirits; for his providence is for ever leading men out of evil and not
into it.
When we proceed to investigate the causes of
suffering and death in the world, even the death of
innocent little children, we shall take these shining
truths along with us, and others drawn from the
sacred storehouse of the Word, to dissipate the
darkness of our natural minds, to correct our errors,
and to still further "vindicate the ways of God to
man." If we are made humble by painful revelations of our Inner Life, and grateful by continued
manifestations of the Divine Goodness, we shall
realize the truth and beauty of the poor Sundayschool scholar's religion,
("GXOD IS LOVE."




CHAPTER IX.
WHY DID THEY DIE?
WHAT heart or mind was ever really satisfied
with the reasons assigned by theologians for
the death of children?
WTho can believe that the Lord takes some infants
away to save them from the evil to come, when He
leaves others to grow up and become wicked men
and finally lost spirits?
Or that He would ever punish any sin in the
parent by tearing his child from him?
Or that the fearful suffering and mortality
amongst our little ones, is in any way necessary to
the welfare of His Church on earth, or to the order
and strength of His heavenly kingdom?
What strange, unnatural, and irrational apologies
does the human mind invent and fondly regard as
reasons, when struggling to fortify itself in its
foregone conclusion that the will of God is the
cause of our bereavements? It seems hard to discriminate between the will of God and the volitions
261




262        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
of evil men and evil spirits, the two great motor
powers in the spiritual realm. What valid reason
is there that the death of infants is any thing but
one of the hideous effects of sin in the world,
occurring in violation of divine order, like wars,
pestilence, famine, disease in all its odious forms,
catastrophes, robberies, assassinations, etc., etc.?
Surely the Lord can have nothing to do in causing
these terrible things.  His divine vigilance must
be for ever exercised to prevent, so far as possible,
and to overrule for the best after the fact.
Cannot the New Church philosophy give us
some strong and original light on this dark and
difficult question, where all are bewildered and
none satisfied? or if satisfied, only soQ by an unintelligent submission of the understanding to a faith
to which the affections refuse to surrender.
Be it distinctly understood, that in this inquiry
as to the causes of the death of children, we mean
the primary, fundamental, or spiritual causes, and
not the natural, physical, or proximate causes.
These last are simply the media or agents through
which the former operate. The natural causes are
depraved constitutions inherited from parents, impure blood, improper food, atmospheric changes,
filth, exposure, neglect, destructive medicines and




WHY DID THEY DIE  263
all the errors of omission or commission which
arise from the ignorance, carelessness, or folly of
mankind, If all these causes were removed or
rendered inoperative, no children would die; but
that is impossible until the spiritual sphere of our
life is restored to perfect order and beauty. Science
can give our query only a superficial answer. For
a true one we must penetrate the laws and phenomena of mind, and the correspondential relation
between man and nature.
Swedenborg's theory of causation is novel, complete, and self-sustaining; based on the Word of
God, and answering the intuitions of the highest
reason. Some of its elements in fragmentary form,
have cropped out here and there in the greatest
thoughts of the greatest thinkers in different ages;
but it comes from  him  as a grand whole, not invented by himself, but discovered to him  in the
light of that Spiritual World into which his mind
had been lifted.
He teaches dogmatically, "from things heard
and seen," as he himself states it; not from subtile
imaginings or speculations.  He does not debate
whether there is a soul or a vital force or a distinct
will and understanding, each with specific proper
ties. He affirms his positions; because he has bet a




264       OUR CHILIDREN IN HEA VEN.
favored with an inside view: he has seen the vital
machinery at work as no living man has ever seen
it. He therefore uses simple narrative, not logic
and rhetoric; except that highest logic and rhetoric
involved in the statement of truth, of which
beauty and symmetry are the essential qualities.
He differentiates his philosophy from all others
by a fundamental axiom.
All causes exist in the spiritual world: their
effects simultaneously or successively in the natural
world; and the two worlds are connected by the
correspondence existing between the spiritual causes
and the natural effects.
Men have hitherto sought for causes on the same
level or plane with the effects; and of course have
discovered nothing but coincident effects, apparent
causes. Heat and light, they say, are the causes
of vegetation; the sun is the cause of heat and
light; but they are silent when asked the cause of
the sun.  Fever is the cause of death, malaria the
cause of fever, decaying matter the cause of malaria,
and so on, until they are driven to the material
limit of observation and to silence again.
What should we think of philosophers who surveyed the terrible ddbris of a battle-field, and in
seeking for the causes of the strange scene, busied




WHY DID THEY DIE?.            265
themselves with mechanical concussions, momenta
of bodies, solutions of continuity, and other physical phenomena, ignoring entirely the mighty whirlwinds of human passion which had made the forms
and forces of nature the mere agents of their will!
When men will obstinately tread the old fruitless circle of natural investigation, living and
thinking always in the sphere of effects; when
they shrink back at the threshold of the spiritual
world, and scout the investigation of spiritual
things; we can understand the assertion of Swedenborg, that the angels looking down into the
minds of men see nothing but thick darkness. If
they have no spiritual light in them, how can they
be seen?
Swedenborg begins with the Divine Being or
First Cause, and traces from Him the secondary
causes in the spiritual sphere, and their corresponding effects or apparent causes in the natural
sphere.
A spiritual Sun, the first Proceeding or Emanation of the divine sphere, representing the Lord in
the spiritual world, is the cause of the natural sun
representing the Lord in nature.
The emanations from the spiritual Sun are Love
and Wisdom, which are the causes of the corre23               M




266       0 UR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
sponding heat and light emanating from the natural
sun, and exhibit corresponding properties.
Spiritual affinities determining spiritual forms
and organizations, are the real causes of chemical
affinities, the supposed natural cause of that atomic
arrangement which determines the properties of
bodies.
The various passions, emotions, perceptions,
thoughts, etc., of the spiritual spheres, are the causes
of all the various animals, plants, and minerals in
the world.
The spiritual Progressions of the Church in
man, are the causes of the Evolutions of Human
History.
These are given merely as general examples of
the laws by which the spiritual and the natural
worlds co-exist and correspond.  Each of them
would require a volume for its elucidation.  These
laws are not to be proven by the accumulation of
evidence as in matters of natural science. Superior
things cannot be seen from inferior things; internal
from external; spiritual from natural; but the reverse. Grasp the idea of spiritual causes and their
relation to each other, and natural phenomena are
lighted up with a new beauty and splendor. The
Invisible and the Visible are seen to run parallel




WHY DID THEY DIE?              267
to each other; one the life, the other the form; one
the soul, the other the body; through the greatest
things and the least, from the all-cheering sun to
the minutest flower-leaf and dew-drop.
The poet calls his beloved one a rose or a lily.
It seems to us a mere comparison; but it may be
far more. It may be symbolical, or an expression
of the true relations of cause and effect between
the inner and the outer worlds. The sweet and
pure ideas blossoming up in virgin souls are the
living causes of all the flowers in the world. The
Lord's love and wisdom flowing into a beautiful
spiritual form, the virgin soul, produces a radiant
sisterhood of graceful and charming thoughts.
That is the spiritual or causative side. The sun's
heat and light representing the divine love and
wisdom, flowing into a rose-bush representing the
virgin mind, causes it to bloom full of fragrant
roses representing the beautiful sisterhood of charming thoughts.  That is the natural side of the
spiritual picture. Thus substance and shadow run
side by side mirroring each other, the invisible
things of the creation being made known by the
things that are visible.
The sum total of the good, beautiful, and useful
things in the outer world is the sum total of the




268       OUR 6HILDREN IN HEAVEN.
good, wise, and useful operations of the aggregate
Human Soul. The sum total of the evil, ugly, and
destructive things in nature, is the sum total of the
disorderly spiritual activities of the same soul.
Each human being, daily and hourly contributes
his share to the aggregate good or evil in human
nature; and through that medium by correspondential influx, to all the good or evil forces and forms
which we see in the physical world. The poorest,
humblest Christian on earth, who cannot contribute
even a mite to the treasury, can make the grass
grow and the flowers bloom for the benefit of others,
by the cultivation of gentle affections and pure
thoughts in his own soul. It is the righteous alone
who save the cities of our earth, day by day, from
the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
This is not poetry but fact, and fact of the
deepest significance.  We cannot point out the
exact uses or beauties in the outer realm, of which
this or that man or woman is the efficient cause. We
cannot say, too, of this or that particle of food, that
it shall make this or that portion of the blood, oi
build up such or such an organ and tissue. Every
thing is received into a general reservoir, taken to
the central heart, and redistributed under universal
laws, according to the necessities and affinities of




WHY DID THEY DIE?            269
em remotest and minutest atom. So it is in the
spiritual realm, for the aggregate Human Soul is
also in the human form. If no sweet and pure
thoughts represented by roses, were to be contributed to the aggregate Human Mind, the roses
would necessarily disappear from the world. The
beautiful and the unbeautiful, the good and the
evil, continually fluctuate in the physical sphere,
corresponding to the fluctuations of the spiritual in
man; and thence arises the hope of the final extinction of all unlovely things.
This relation between the spiritual and the natural
is finely illustrated in one of the most obscure and
remarkable miracles recorded in the Word. Our
Lord is about casting out a legion of devils from a
poor, naked, weeping and self-mutilated lunatic.
The devils beseech Him earnestly to permit them
to enter into a great herd of swine feeding near by.
He consents; and the swine, losing the instinct of
self-preservation, rush violently down a steep place
and are drowned in the sea. The appearance here
is, that the spiritual bodies of devils entered into
the physical bodies of swine and drove them madly
to their destruction. A different but corresponding
scene occurred on the other side of the veil.
The swine represented the selfish and greedy
23 *




270       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
principles in the man's mind, which had invited
the devils to make a lodgment there. AL that age
it is well known that devils had broken from the
hells and were crowding up into the world of
spirits, where every man is as to his spirit, and
were thence taking possession of the souls and
bodies of men. This was one of the causes which
necessitated the Lord's incarnation. The Lord's
work in this seeming miracle -was to deliver the
man from the bondage of those selfish and greedy
lusts, so that he might sit at his feet "clothed and
in his right mind." The devils beg to be permitted
to retire into the hells whence they came, and to
remain in the undisturbed enjoyment of their own
similar lusts. The Lord consents; the greedy and
sensual devils leave the man and rush into their
hells, rejoicing to escape the presence of the Lord.
The spiritual transaction is represented in the phenomenal field of nature by the herd of swine rushing headlong into the sea.
So to-day, if the tiger-element, the wolf-element,
the snake-elemen't, the vulture-element in the
human heart, could be removed entirely and at
once by some miraculous power, all of those obnoxious creatures would immediately disappear
from the face of the earth.




WHY DID THEY DIE?              271
Understand clearly, that no spiritual forces can
act or flow outwardly into nature except through
their corresponding natural forms. The soul can
only act through the brain, the corresponding natural
form of its affections and thoughts. The Lord's
love cannot operate in creation until it has assumed
the natural form of heat. Evil spheres may precipitate themselves upon man, but they cannot
induce bodily disease, until they obtain a corresponding basis or fulcrum in atmospheric changes,
improper food, malaria, or some organic virus. The
fallacy of the sensuous thinker lies in supposing
that the brain, the sun's heat, or the malaria, has
some natural force or power of itself, independent
and separate from the spiritual forces which organized and sustained it.
Before attempting to give spiritual reasons for
the existence of disease and early death by the
light of Correspondence, we will illustrate the
wonderful power of that knowledge, now restored
for the reconstruction of Human Thought, by
tracing to their true spiritual causes the two
greatest evils of the world, incontinence and intemperance; the original fountain-heads of disease
and death; against which reason, science, religion,
and law have warred in vain, because man has




272       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
never detected the secret sources from which they
spring.
The Religious Idea in man makes what is called
the Church. Every maln, says Swedenborg, is a
Church in its least form. Churches are societies of
men having various Religious Ideas-those of the
same society holding similar ideas. The great invisible, universal, catholic Church of God includes
all men who have any Religious Ideas whatever.
They are arranged spiritually into one great whole
by the Lord; those who receive most good and
truth from Him occupying the centre; those who
receive less come next; and so on in exact gradation; until those who receive least or almost none
are placed in the remote circumference.  Those
who have the Word of God and are in the greatest
light, are compared by Swedenborg to the heart
and lungs in the human body, which are the great
centres for the distribution of life, heat, motion,
and power to all the rest.
The Lord's vital influx is first into the Church
and from the Church into the world; first into the
Religious Idea of the individual, and thence into his
more exterior organization. And the secret, interior,
spiritual history of the Church,-which is so multiform externally and is seen as One only by the




WHY DID THEY DZIE?          273
Lord, —is the key to all the evolutions of History
and of the entire life of man, composite or unitary.
Such as the Church in man is, such will the
world be.
The Lord declares that He is the Bridegroom
and the Church is His Bride. This is not a metaphor or a simile, or some vague poetical way of
stating the case. It is the most beautiful and
momentous fact in the universe. Affections and
thoughts always go in married pairs. A man loves
what he thinks and thinks what he loves. The
Divine Truth or Wisdom is the Bridegroom.
Pure and heavenly affections or emotions, received
from the Lord, constitute the heart of the Church
in man. The conjunction of the Divine Wisdom
with these heavenly affections is the Heavenly
Marriage, the mystical union of the Bridegroom
and the Bride, of the Lord and His Church. This
heavenly marriage is the type, origin, and cause of
the holy sacrament called marriage upon earth, in
which by two being made one flesh, a perfect union
of the will and the understanding is contemplated;
the will of each party making one with the understanding of the other.
The Church is married to the Lord when it
fnows Him truly, and delights to love, honor, and
M"




274       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
obey Him; when it thinks His thoughts and does
His will, and ever looks to Him and to Him alone.
What is true of the Church universal is true of
each individual, or of the Church in its smallest
form. A perfect image of this Heavenly Marriage,
this perfect fidelity and chastity, exists in the relation of husband and wife among the angels. It is
the model or pattern for our earthly endeavor; but
we can never attain to it until we know the true
God as angels do, and turn our affections or will
into eternal harmony with His Wisdom, Truth,
Light, and Law.
This conjunction of the affections of man with
the truths of the Lord's wisdom is the spiritual
cause of the conjugial love in the sexes; that pure,
chaste, undying, heavenly passion, possible only
between two; which in its turn is the fountain of
all the domestic and social loves that animate,
unite, enlighten, and beautify human society. The
possibility of this heavenly love in man depends
upon the approximation he makes to a true knowledge of God, and the unition of the affections of
his heart with the truths he has received in his
understanding.
Spiritual adultery is the primal cause of natural
adultery. The alienation of the heart's affections




WHY DID THEY DIE?             2 75
from the true God, and their concentration upon
other and false and unworthy objects of love and
worship, destroys or deteriorates the Church or
Religious Idea in man, perverts the conjugial principle at its very origin, darkens the understanding,
and transfers the domination of our whole nature
to the sensual powers, which were designed to
occupy the last and lowest places,-to be the servants, not the masters of the rest.  When the
affections are turned from the true God, they turn
also from the true wife; when they are fixed upon
spiritual evils and falsities, they are fixed also on
the painted harlots who exteriorly represent them.
Thus it is that spiritual adultery is the cause of
natural adultery, and of all unchastity in the sexual
relations.
Therefore the very first commandment, the first
in place and the first in importance, forbids the
precedence of any Ruling Love before that of the
Lord himself. Whatever a man loves supremely
is his god: the central point of his universe to
which every thing in the circumference refers itself.
If he supremely loves the Lord, the whole man
from centre to circumference is a miniature form
of heaven, and the purest love and the brightest
wisdom flame and sparkle downward into the com



276       O UR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
monest act of his beneficent and happy life. On
the other hand, Self, the World, Riches, Power,
Fame, Pleasure, and other strange idols, are the
reigning divinities in every human heart, from
whose central throne the Lord is excluded. The
nature of their government and the effect of their
worship, are they not written in the tears, the
blood, the lusts, the folly, and the madness of the
world?
Spiritual adultery is the great burden of the
denunciations of the Prophets against the Jewish
Church. The whoredoms of Israel, their love of
other gods than the Lord, was the central cause of
all their sins, miseries, and final destruction. Their
spiritual adultery became so grievous that the union
of the Divine Wisdom with the Jewish Church
could only be represented outwardly, and thereby
maintained in fact and reality, by the Prophet of
the Lord taking to his embrace an adulterous
woman. Hosea affirms:
"Then said the Lord unto me: Go yet, love a
woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress;
according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love
flagons of wine."
"So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of




TVfY DID THEY DIE?             277
silver and for a homer of barley and a half homer
of barley!
"And I said unto her,'Thou shalt abide for me
many days. Thou shalt not play the harlot, and
thou shalt not be for another man: so will I also
be for thee."'
One of the immediate consequences of looking
to other gods is to "love flagons of wine:" and
therein lies the secret of intemperance.  This is
not clear to those who t-hink only from sensuous
grounds, and do not know  the relation of cause
and effect existing between the will and the understanding. The will flows into the understanding
by interior ways; and whatever takes place in its
sphere is repeated in a corresponding intellectual
form in the understanding. Perverted or corrupt
affections in the will produce false ideas or thoughts
in the intellectual plane. This is the real origin
of all the false doctrines in the world. Men see
with the mind what they wish to see with the
heart.  Belief of the truth "with the heart" is
saving faith; and no other is saving.
The confused, disorderly, and false condition of
the whole intellectual sphere, when it draws its life
from evil affections and selfish passions, is spiritual
dr-tlnkenness.  The man sees nothing rightly or in
24




278       OUR CHILDREN IN HIEAVEN.
the right place. His understanding is darkened:
his rational faculties blunted: his senses even report
falsely: and yet his self-love is so active and so
unregulated by reason, that he esteems himself
wisest, greatest, and best, when heavenly light would
reveal him to be in the most shocking and pitiable
mental state.
Swedenborg's definition of a spiritual drunkard is,
" one who believes nothing but what he can understand from things sensual, scientific or philosophical." W'hen we reflect that such is the exact mental
state of so large a part of the thinking world, can
we wonder that natural drunkenness abounds in
all countries? Babylon, making the whole earth
drunken, is interpreted by Swedenborg's spiritual
law to mean that the lust of spiritual dominion,
or the love of ruling over the minds of men, has
so falsified the truths of the Church, that it has
filled the intellectual sphere with errors, fallacies
and insanities. And to show the secret interior
connection between spiritual adultery and spiritual
drunkenness, the Word declares that the wine with
which Babylon made the nations drunk, was "the
wine of the wrath of her fornication."
Whatever is transacted in the soul always repeats
and perpetuates itself in correspondential forms in




WHY DID THEY DIE?              279
the body. The spiritual drunkenness of the race,
a state of errors, fantasies, and hallucinations on
all subjects, is the real cause of the morbid craving
for intoxicating drinks and poisonous drugs which
affects mankind. It is a desire to get away from
the sphere of realities and practical duties, and to
conjure up around them a fantastic, unreal world,
where their selfish loves can have fill play and
power. Evil spirits finally get full possession of
their victims; and the horrors of delirium tremens
are subdued but genuine pictures of the methods
by which the lost souls delight to terrify and torture
each other.
The effect of this spiritual drunkenness in stupefying the soul, until the voices of Prophet and
Seer are disregarded, and the Word of God becomes unintelligible to the Church and the world,
is finely stated by Isaiah:'Stav yourselves and wonder: cry ye out, and
cry: They are drunken, but not with wine: they
stagger, but not with strong drink."
"For the Lord hath poured out upon you the
spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes;
the prophets, and your rulers, the seers hath he
covered."
" And the vision of all is become unto you as




280       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVENY.
the words of a book that is sealed, which men
deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I
pray thee: and he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed:
"And the book is delivered to him that is not
learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he
saith, I am not learned."
What a photographic picture of the present state
of the Christian world, taken by. the son of Amoz,
through the mystic camera of Prophecy, more than
two thousand years ago!
Idolatry then, or the supreme love of any person,
thing, or principle other than the true God, is the
cause of those emotional perversions, which eventuate in polygamy, concubinage, and all the various
forms of licentiousness. These emotional perversions are in turn the causes of the intellectual perversions characterized as falsities. Thus evil affections and false ideas are the fountains whence flow
the sensual appetites, the beastly gluttony and
intemperance in all things,'which have cursed the
world with misery, disease, and painful death.
It may be here objected that many a man is perfectly chaste in his habits, who worships a false god
of some kind with all his heart and soul. Also
that thousands of persons are distinguished for
temperance, whose minds are dark as ocean caves




WHY DID THEY DIE.             28]1
with all sorts of false doctrine. This proves nothing; for the sphere of good and evil are so mixed
in this world, that the interiors and exteriors do
not correspond.  Many a beautiful soul is here
resident in a deformed body, and many a cruel,
guileful spirit in a perfect one; but this will be
reversed by and by.
Men are governed also by external restraints;
restraints of law, manners and customs or the
usages of society, by the ceremonial restraints of
religion, by the authority of others, by fear of the
loss of health, money, or reputation, and other
external motives, which withhold them from the
indulgence or ultimation of evil passions which
really lie concealed in their hearts. Moreover a
man may have all the elements of unchastity and
drunkenness in his spiritual nature, and still his
ruling love of power or riches or position may so
dominate  his character, that nothing licentious
or intemperate may ever appear in his external
conduct.
Nevertheless all men who worship false gods and
cherish as truths the mere falsifications of truth, are
spiritually adulterous and intemperate; and will be
found to be so, when they put off their exteriors at
death, and come into their interior and real life.
24 *




282       0 OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
They will have no genuine regard for the marriage
relation, and no belief in its pre-eminent bearing
upon the order, beauty, and peace of the spiritual
universe. All, however, who have restrained their
appetites from religious principle will receive new
life, new affection, new thought from the Lord,
and with them a genuine, voluntary, eternal spirit
of chastity and temperance, such as the angels
enjoy.
All endeavors to exterminate these terrible evils
will be vain, unless the blow be struck at their
roots. Those roots are not in the natural and
sensual appetites of man, which ought to be
amended and purified by the enlightened restraints
of law, reason, and religion. Such is the erroneous
doctrine of philanthropists, who lop away at the
leaves and branches, whilst the tree of iniquity
draws its secret life and vigor from an undiscovered
fountain. The root is in the heart and brain of
the Christian Church.  With all its love, its
patience, its zeal, its consecration, it will labor in
vain through the night of ages, until it discovers
its error, and at the command of the Lord casts its
net "upon the right side of the ship,"
When the Lord Jesus Christ is worshiped as.he Supreme God, and the old idea of Him  as a




WHY DID THEY DYE.            283
subordinate and interceding Son is lost in the blaze
of His recognition as our Heavenly Father; when
the Word of God is no longer a sealed book to
both clergy and laity, but an open Oracle uttering
its priceless treasures of angelic wisdom to all men;
a Fountain in which ever-present Angels never
cease to stir the Living Waters; the heart and
brain of the Church on earth will become so united
to the heart and brain of the Church in heaven,
that the Conjugial Life will become as possible to
men as to angels; and the fire of the divine love
and the light of the divine wisdom will pass down
through the purified senses of a regenerate Church
to deliver and redeem the world!
Then shall the ears of all men hear in reality
what the beloved Apostle heard in vision:
"As it were the voice of a great multitude, and
as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of
mighty thunderings, saying —'Alleluia, for the
Lord God omnipotent reigneth."'
Here it may be well to note, before coming
nearer to the question we are to answer, how we
are saved from the sins of the will and the errors
of the understanding by Prayer and Faith. Prayer
is emotional; faith is intellectual. Prayer turns
the affections toward God, thus bringing our wills




284       OUR CHILDREN IN HIEA VEN.
into harmony with His Divine Will. Faith turns
the intellect to Him, and submits the understanding
to the operation of Divine Truth. Prayer is the
heart, faith the light, of the garden of the soul.
No matter how good the seed or how rich the soil,
there will be neither blossom nor fruit, unless
prayer and faith, like descending angels, bring
down to us the heat and light of the Divine Sun.
Why do we clamor at the gate of heaven like
unruly beggars, supplicating for this or that earthly
blessing? Think you we shall be heard for our
"'much speaking?" Does not our Heavenly Father know what we have need of before we ask
Him?  Can we illumine His mind or refresh His
memory or change His intentions? Alas! when
these "long prayers," these "vain repetitions," full
of self and selfishness, are not answered, we are
ready to accuse the Lord of deafness and blindness, and to fall into fearful doubts and despairs.
But genuine prayer?Genuine prayer is humility, even to the total
abnegation of self, and the turning of the affections
toward the Lord alone. The change effected by it
is altogether in ourselves. It is a condition of the
spiritual organism. When the Lord's love is permitted to flow into us and through us, it brings




WHY DID THEY DIE?.            285
with it all the blessings we can receive or bear.
Prayer, then, is no frenzied wrestling with Jehovah
to compel His ear or induce His favor. It is
merely opening the door of the heart. How
sweet! how simple!":Behold! I stand at the door and knock."
In exploring the spiritual causes of incontinence
and intemperance, the typical fountains of all disease, we have not receded from our subject, but are
approaching it. We have rather discovered the
mouths of the mephitic caverns, whose horrible
exhalations have poisoned the atmosphere of the
world. All diseases, like every object and motion
in the natural world, are representative of spiritual
things; and if we could read their symbolism as
we do a book, we would get at the whole story of
moral and intellectual perversions, of evil and its
ravages on the spirit of man.
If no sin had appeared in the world there would
have been no disease or painful death; because no
moral law having been violated, there would have
been no corresponding natural causes of disease.
Swedenborg -saw in the evil portion of the spiritual
world all the terrible elements of our diseases,
although not a single natural object, law, or cause
existed there for their generation; and he saw




286       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
them communicated in many instances to the
human body. Our Lord moreover recognized the
infernal world as the true source of our diseases,
when He. cured all manner of morbid affectionsthe whole pathological catalogue —by simply casting out the evil spirits who had induced and fixed
them on the sufferers.
The Christian philosophy nominally attributes
all natural evils, including sickness and death, to
sin. But it has lost the connecting link between
the moral disorders and the physical disorders
which afflict us. It fails to show how sin produces
its objective miseries. It ignores spiritual causes,
and explains every thing by natural causes almost
as persistently as the materialist does. It cannot
understand how the worship of strange gods causes
adultery; how the falsification of truth produces a
passion for strong drink; how burning lusts produce burning fevers; how loss of spiritual nervelife in the church produces paralysis among men;
how every sin has its exact outburst and symbol in
the sufferings and sorrows of humanity; and how
there are cancers and plagues and hydrophobias of
the soul, the secret causes of those horrible diseases
in the body. Nothing but the knowledge of correspondences (an make all these things plain.




WHY DID TrEY DIE?             287
The materialist thinks he has accounted for diseases by saying that they are the effects of the violation of natural laws. But what are natural laws?
They are physical embodiments or expressions of
moral or divine laws, just as heat is the physical
form of the Divine Love, and a rose the physical
expression of a delicate thought.  The spiritual
and the natural are inseparable. No matter how
good or wise a man may interiorly be, if he violates
knowingly or unknowingly what we call a natural
law, he immediately subjects himself to the influx
of those evil spirits who delight in the violation of
its corresponding spiritual law, and disease may be
induced upon him.
The spiritual side to the philosophy of medicine
is a subject for the wiser future. A positive scientific basis must be first laid for it by observation
and experiment; just as the earth had to be constructed before its destined inhabitant, man, could
take form upon it. We know little with certainty
at present, except the general law, that evil spheres
or exhalations from the hells and from the spiritual
forms of men, co-operating with correspondential
disorderly movements or perverted objects in nature,
produce various morbid effects on the human body,
even to the degree of destroying its texture, so that




288       OTTrr CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
tt is no longer capable of containing the corresponding soul.
It is the business of the physician to study both
the spiritual and natural sides of these strange
phenomena: the spiritual side at least may well
engage the attention of the theologian and the
Christian. He will discover that an atmosphere
-of spiritual malaria, more or less dense and dark,
encompasses and emanates from every community,
society, church, government and institution among
men. Every human being by each act of licentiousness, intemperance, falsehood, injustice, cruelty
or any other crime, contributes his share to these
vast volumes of evil and falsity, which descend
upon every human habitation, and combining with
the putrid exhalations of nature become the seeds
and souls of pestilence and death.
Let us not be deceived, nor invest this dark subject with more mystery than it possesses. Let us
not attribute to the mysterious designs and inscrutable workings of Divine Providence, causes which
are so easily traceable to our own doors. Every
unchaste thought we have nurtured, every resentful feeling, every contemptuous expression, every
base and unworthy passion, has projected from us a
spiritual exhalation, which became a part of the




WHY DID THEY DIE?             289
direful causes that blighted the harvests and flooded
the rivers; lit the torch of conflagration and overwhelmed the traveler on his way; planted the seed
of pestilence in the earth, and loosened the bloodhounds of war; brought the worm to the rose of
beauty, and robbed the mother of her child.
We violate all the commandments of God; we
live in utter forgetfulness of his presence or indifference to his will; we permit our lower natures to
dominate the higher; our souls, perverted by evils
both hereditary and acquired, are miniatures of
hell; we are connected interiorly with myriads of
subtle spirits more wicked than ourselves; and our
combined spheres radiate forth the most terrible
spiritual poisons which render active the similar
forms of nature: and still we stand aghast at the
plagues which ravage our cities, the social evils
which corrupt society, and the angels of death that
desolate our hearthstones. In our moral blindness
we even persuade ourselves that these curses are
blessings in disguise-the visitations or providences or messengers of God!
Death! What a complex phenomenon!  Who
can unravel its mysteries?  What curious processes
are going on invisible to the natural eye!  The
body is undergoing organic changes which will soon
25                N




290       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
unfit it for the residence of the soul. The soul
herself withdraws her banners from the outer walls
and retires to a citadel unseen. Two angels who
had followed it from birth, are withdrawing into
heaven, and kiss their sweet farewells from the
opening gates of pearl. Two evil spirits who had
beset it during life, are being driven back into their
hells, and a whirlwind of suffering and anguish
issues from the yawning pit.
Another tableau; and the angels are gone; the
soul is asleep; the devils are sinking into the
abyss, reflecting their own horrible struggles and
gaspings upon the dying body; and then! some
poor human bereaved ones are weeping over a
corpse!
Nor is that all. The glorious angels ii a day or
two gladly welcome their earth-friend to his heavenly home, and show him the wonderful panorama
of his own regenerate life. The human mourners
in the desolate house treasure up the garments, the
pictures, the memory; the faded garlands of the
feast, after the lights have gone and the guests
departed. The devils enter into the worms and
deface the sacred temple of the body, scowling at
humanity to the last through the skull and crossbones of the grave.




WHY DID THEY DIE?           291
How can these evil spiritual spheres affect infants
and little children, in whom no actual evils of life
have ever been developed?  Do not spheres of
innocence and peace shine through them from the
Lord? Are they not protected from devils by
these spheres, which torture the evil ones who approach?
Yes-as to the spirit. No evil spirit approaches
the little one to excite the least evil or falsity. The
child has no moral or intellectual life of its own.
It is not good, however; for the choice of good or
evil has not yet arisen in the will, or the power of
analysis in the understanding. No evil thing can
find any basis for its influx into any emotions or
thoughts or actions of the little, feeble, slowlydeveloping creature.
And still there is a basis in that child for the
influx of evil spheres-so broad, so vast, so dreadful, that half of the human race perish in early
infancy.
Our Lord descended upon earth; was born of
woman; suffered as we do; was tempted of devils;
was overwhelmed with sorrows, until He sweat as
it were "great drops of blood;" was crucified and
gave up the ghost in darkness and agony. He was
perfect innocence, perfect goodness, perfect wisdom.




292       OUR  CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
How could the hells approach Him? How could
any evil spirits assault Him? How could He
suffer and die as we do?  The answer to these
questions will show us why little children perish,
whilst their sweet little faces are shining with the
spheres of innocence and peace.
We all have adjoined to us an hereditary nature
which is wholly evil. This is the accumulated
evil and falsity of our whole ancestry. We are
born into this evil form: it connects us with the
hells: it instigates us to evil as soon as we can
think and feel in any determinate manner. We
are not responsible for it, except as we make some
of it our own by leading the evil lives of some of
our ancestors. It is in this way that grandfathers
return in their grandchildren. It is in this way
that the children's teeth are set on edge, because
the fathers have eaten sour grapes. This hereditary
evil is transcribed and symbolized in the structure
of the infant body. Not a fibre, not a muscle, not
a globule of blood, not a lineament, not a hair, but
bears the infinitesimal physical traces of deviation
from divine order, and becomes the means or basis
of the influx of spiritual malaria into the organism
on the least exciting cause.
The soul comes from the father, the hody from




WHY DID THEY DIE?            293
the mother; and the latter bears, transcribed into it
from both parents, the entire hereditary principle.
The soul of Jesus Christ was Jehovah God-the
Supreme Being, the Father. In accepting a human
body from woman, He took on Himself our hereditary nature, invested Himself as it were with the
evil and false principles of the whole race. This
is represented by His genealogy given in Scripture,
every name standing for whole genera and species
of hereditary evils. This brought Him into contact with all the hells. This permitted them to
flow into Him and incite Him intensely to every
evil of which man has ever been guilty. He was
without sin. No evil desire or thought was ever
permitted to triumph. He cast them all out. He
purified His sensuous nature from all dross. He
subdued the hereditary nature, so as to acquire a
Divine Humanity, in which He ascended to heaven,
and in which He ever stands ready to deliver us
from any conceivable evil, hereditary or acquired,
into which we may be plunged. Thus He is "the
Way"-" the Resurrection " —and "the Life."
This hereditary evil sphere is "the Canaanite in
the land," which we are commanded to exterminate,
and against which we wage a continued but ineffectual warfare. We advance in regeneration by
25'




294       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA YEN.
putting away our evil states of life. It is a painful
combat, because we love our evils and cling to
them, straining our understandings to the utmost
to excuse and defend them. When at last we feel
ourselves getting rid of them, we enter to our dismay into states of pious exaltation and spiritual
pride, and we find the new evils worse than the
old. The combat is endless. We can never become good-never. We may cut off the tree of
evil at the ground, but the roots are indestructible,
springing up for ever from the abyss of hell.
How shall we be saved from this terrible nightmare of spiritual death? The New Church does
not credit, nor does the Word of God authorize,
those theological mysticisms-the angry Father, the
atoning Son, the imputation of righteousness by an
act of faith. All that is incomprehensible to those
who acknowledge only one God-the Lord Jesus
Christ-shining for ever in his Glorified Human
Body. When we feel ourselves sinking into hell,
we stretch out our hands to the Divine Man who
walks upon the sea, and cry with Peter, "Help,
Lord, or we perish!" His Divine Human nature,
purified, glorified in every hereditary principle,
imparts unto us its own power, and we are saved,
not from the penalty of sin, but from the bondage




WHY DID THEY DIE?              295
of sin itself.  We lose our hereditary selfish life,
and receive a new and higher life from the Lord
Infants perish, then, by the influx of evil spiritual
spheres into the sphere of hereditary evil, which
has its basis in the physical structure of the infantile body.  But what is it that excites these
spheres into such fatal activity? Here again, as in
the case of licentiousness and intemperance, we
trace the real cause to the heart of the Church, or
the state of the Religious Idea in the universal and
the individual man. Here also we can only see the
cause by the light of correspondence. It is the
early and rapid destruction of the states of innocence and peace, which the Lord is continually
infusing into His Church as the vital means of its
regeneration. The Lord is daily being born into
our hearts as the infant Jesus, coming to take on
himsdlf our hereditary evils and save us from
them. But the Herod of our perverted natures,
refusing  His reign, indignantly commands the
slaughter of the innocents; and our Bethlehems
are filled with mourning.
When will these things cease? When will
infants and little children escape these terrible trials and sufferings, and live to vigorous and joyous
manhood and womanhood?  Whenever there is a




296        OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
Church in the world and in the heart of man,
which retains its own innocent and beautiful childhood to old age; when there are no adult faces
marked with pride and hatred and sensuality; when
the lion and the lamb feed together; when the
service of God is no longer the gorgeous ceremonials of Chief Priests and Scribes, but the sweet
hosannas of little children strewing green branches
in His way!
If the divine life flowing through the universal
mind of man produces all the phenomena of the
outward world, historical, social, and physical; if
the good and beautiful and useful things correspond
to the divine life flowing through good hearts; and
the evils around us correspond to the same life
flowing through evil and wicked souls; why is it
that each does not always get his own exact correspondential surroundings? Why is it that the
wicked ever prosper and are in power, or that the
righteous are ever cast down and forsaken? Why
is it that vice ever flaunts in purple, or virtue ever
cowers in rags? Why are the garments of the
Angel of Death ever red with the blood of the
Innocents?
No one can doubt that all this is the result of
spiritual disorder. It is one of the manifestations




WHY DID THEY DIE?             297
of hell on earth. In heaven the angel desires to
give all he has to others; to break every yoke; to
lift every burden; to share every sorrow.  He
never wishes to impose his will or his opinions
upon others. He leaves every one in perfect freedom, and is himself the servant of all. But spirits
in hell and unregenerate men on earth are full of
self-love, and of jealousy, hatred, contempt or indifference toward others. They delight to absorb and
not to give. They impose, so far as they can, their
will, their opinions, their sorrows, their burdens
upon others. They attempt to absorb others' individuality; to appropriate their services, giving them
nothing in return; and to tyrannize over them in
every way possible.  The tendency of the evil
sphere is to fasten itself like a leech or a vampire
upon others; and whilst drawing their life out of
them, to cast upon them its own foul exhalations
and its own horrible shadow.
Hence the questions of life and providence become so obscure and complex. If each soul were
isolated from others, or if the life and laws of
heaven prevailed amongst men, the surroundings,
fate, and fortune of each individual would be seen
to be the perfect counterpart of his interior being.
Unregenerate men are all slaves; they do not love
N




298       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
nor try to serve others. The bondage we endure
from the domination of others, evil men and evil
spirits, would be appalling and intolerable if we
were made all at once conscious of our chains.
Hence the painful confusion of the effects or outbirths which fall upon the good and the evil, the
innocent and the guilty. Hence we can trace no
man's secret thread of life, and say why he suffers
this or enjoys that, any more than we can follow a
single drop of the ocean water in its course round
the world. God alone knows all, and overrules all
for the best consistently with his own eternal laws
of wisdom and order.
The sweetest word in the language, next to Love,
is Liberty. God and his angels alone respect the
perfect freedom of man. It is the continual effort
of the Lord to deliver us from ourselves, our
enemies and our friends; and to bring us into a
simple, frank and voluntary relation to Himself
alone.  This is the glorious liberty wherewith
Christ maketh free. To shake off the yoke of
spirits and devils; to put our own evil passions and
falsities under foot; to receive from others and to
give to them nothing but the reflected love and
wisdom of the Lord; to identify cordially our own
wills and lives with His will and life and with no




WHY DID THEY DIE?            299
others; this is to know and love the true God
"whose service is perfect freedom."
Swedenborg affirms that the Lord predestinates
all men to heaven; yet all are not saved. He predestinates all men to be crowned with blessings
from the cradle to the grave; yet few or none attain
such felicity. He predestinates all men to live to
the rounded maturity of human life; yet a large
majority of them do not number half their allotted
days. If man had not sinned, says Swedenborg,
he would have lived without disease, and expired
in a serene old age without a particle of suffering.
The Lord's will, then, has not been done in the
earth. The deaths of children are not providences,
but they result from the violations of divine law.
The Lord does not provide for the death of little
children. He simply permits it, as he does a thousand other calamities which He cannot prevent
without infringing upon the free-agency of man.
To suppose that He wills the suffering and death
of children, would be something near akin to
that article in the faith of the past Dispensation,
thus expressed by one of its advocates: "That God
did, de facto, inflict the highest torments on an
innocent, pure, spotless creature, even the human
nature of his own Son." The New ChurL hman,




.300      OUR c!HILDREN IN HEAVEN.
however, may discover that the sufferings of Christ
and the sufferings of little children can be clearly
traced to identical causes, and that God had no
active share in either. Yet as He permitted the
former, because He could not, consistently with the
freedom with which He had endowed man, prevent
them, so does He permit the latter-seeking, however, continually to avert them; and when this
cannot be done, to overrule them for good.
Nor are we robbed of any genuine consolation
by tracing our sorrows and bereavements to their
true source, the evil spheres of evil spirits and
men, including especially our own. We are greatly
comforted by the thought that God is not the author of our woes. We are delighted to learn that our
calamities all result from violations of His willthat they are not sent of God. We have clearer,
sweeter, heavenlier views of the Lord as our eversympathizing Friend and Father.  We know that,
before and after affliction alike, He gives us all
the good we can receive, never changing His plan
nor forgetting  our weakness.  And we know
that if we shun evils as sins against Him, He
will finally deliver us from the power of evil,
and will safely unite us to those we love in IHis
heavenly kingdom,




WHY DID THEY DIE?             30.1
How much more closely are we drawn to our
fIheavenly Father, how much more sweetly are we
consoled, when we take a true view of the providence of the Divine Love! When we note in our
calamities and sorrows the trail of the serpent!
When we start from their ghastly presences, hating
evil as never before, and smiting our own breasts
as " miserable sinners 1"  When we turn for light
and peace and consolation to the Lord, with the
eager, loving, trusting spirit of Martha, when she
rushed into the presence of her Great Friend,
exclaiming:
"Lord! if thou hadst been here, my brother had
not died."
Yes. In His presence are life and health and
strength and "fullness of joy." He does not take
away the jewels that He gave. If we lose them,
it is through our own folly or ignorance or disobedience, or the malign influence that radiates froni
the hearts of other sinful men and evil spirits. Nor
are they really lost, but only removed from the
sensuous sphere and from our outward view. And
if we are willing to forsake all and follow our
Divine Lord and Master, He will in due time
restore to us every one of our blessings, exalted
and increased a hundred-fold.
26




CHAPTER X.
WHAT GOOD CAN COME OF IT?
T1iIE  Lord's Providence is in all things, the
greatest and the least. He notes the fall of a
sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads. He
leads us by ways unknown to ourselves. Gently
He draws us from evil to good. He showers blessings upon us at every step of life, both before and
after every one of its afflictions and trials. So
great and visible is the spiritual good frequently
derived from  the direst calamities, that we are
almost led to believe that they were merely links
in a vast chain of beneficent designs. The heart
clings fondly to the thought that the will of God
has been done in all the events of life, and that
everything is ordered for the best.
Nothing happens, however, for the best, but that
which occurs in perfect harmony with the divine
commandments. There are two elements or forcesc
engaged in the production of human affairs —the
rvill of God and the volitson of' man. AVhen these
302




WHAT GOOD CAN COME OF IT?         303
torces co-operate, we have an image of heaven.
When the volition of man reacts against the will
of God, we have an image of hell. When man
resists or thwarts the Divine Will, nothing happens
for the best, but everything for the worse or the
worst. The quality of a result is to be determined
by the predominance of the will of man or the will
of God in its production.
The Lord always designs to give us the best.
He would load us with blessings from the cradle to
the grave; with health and joy and riches and
felicity and long life. This is His will toward
every human being. If it fails of consummation,
it is because man, in the exercise of a free-agency
inalienable and fundamental as the self-existence
of God, has hindered it.  Still God does not
change His plan nor withdraw His love. After
the commission of evil, as before it, the Lord's love
flows in as warmly as at the first. But now the
formn is changed, and the result is changed also.
We do not get the best good, but only the good
possible under the circumstances; not the birthright blessing which was bestowed on Jacob, but
only the second blessing which was given to Esau.
A man is bereft of his children by the malignant
powers of bell, or by the spheres of infernal dis



304       0 UR CHILDREN IN IHEA VEN.
order and of evil. He is stricken to the earth by
sorrow, as Paul was by the great light which
arrested him on his journey. A gradual change
comes over his spirit. He is weaned from  the
world, its follies and illusions and insane ambitions.  His heart is humbled, and his nature
softened and mellowed. He fixes his affections
on spiritual things. His affliction is now regarded
as a blessing in disguise; and God is supposed to
have been the immediate cause of a calamity which
was followed by so great a good. This, however,
is a fallacy drawn from appearances.
God designed and willed a far greater blessing
for that man than the one he attained. The pleasures, the duties, the responsibilities of paternity,
enjoyed and exercised in perfect obedience to the
commandments of God, would have developed in
his soul a far richer and purer and brighter spirituality than that obtained by the ministration of
sorrow. God's first and highest blessing, His will
towards him, was prevented by evils hereditary or
acquired; and shorn of much of its beauty and
power, it fell upon the heart in a modified and
inferior form.
The principle involved in this illustration is involved in all the events of life. After the self-in



WHAT GOOD CAN COME OF IT!           305
flicted wrong to our moral natures, called sin, and
the inevitable calamities and trials it produces according to immutable laws, we are never the same
beings we were before; we are not capable of receiving God's first, best, and highest gift which He had
prepared for us, bult only some secondary and inferior
blessing. Even this blessing, however, is sometimes
so great and glorious, that we feel that we have
not suffered too much in its attainment. WVe are
satisfied with what we call the chastenings of
Providence.
The Lord's love never ceases to draw us from
evil to good, and to bring or strive to bring spiritual
treasures out of the darkest trials and keenest sufferings. There is some use or blessing in every
thing, in heaven, earth and hell. Nothing exists
or is done in the universe but by virtue of God's
influent life, perverted as it may be when passing
through evil forms.  There is nothing so low, so
base, so far from God, but has an element of use in
it which connects it with the Centre of life and preserves it from annihilation.
The Lord governs the earth by influx through
the hells as well as through the heavens. He turns
the intense selfishness of mail derived from hell
into those vast schemes of labor, which build up a
26 *




306       OUR CHILDREN IN HEA VEN.
complicated civilization, with all its riches and
splendors, its uses and pleasures, from a merely
barbaric base. Self-love and love of the world,
those master-springs of all our woes, are also the
prime moving forces in every improvement in the
arts and sciences, in manners, institutions, and
governments. But who would say that the Lord
made men selfish and grasping in order to bring
about these great things?
The wildest storm will purify the atmosphere.
The vilest offal will enrich the soil. From  the
direst poisons we extract the subtile essence which
brings ease and health to the tortured frame.
Idolatry preserved alive in the darkened soul some
grateful idea of a God. Slavery had its uses and
war its benefits.  And while these things have
been permitted in the providence of the Lord, who
will affirm that He caused the tempest, the poisons,
idolatry, slavery, and war, for the good which He
foresaw would result from them?
The Lord gives us children for our sakes as well
as theirs; for the world, for the church, for His
heavenly kingdom; for a vast chain of beautiful
and beneficent uses. He does not provide means
for taking them from us, but all possible means to
prevent them from being taken from us. He fore



WIIAT GOOD CAN COME OF [T?        307
sees that they will be taken away by the evil forces
which disturb the peace and order of the moral
world; and He provides new and wonderful blessings and uses in the place of those which He was
ready at first to shower upon us, but which, through
our own or others' sinfulness, He was prevented
from doing.
With these qualifications as to the origin of sufferings, trials, and early death, we gratefully accept
all the true and beautiful things which many
charming writers have given us on the ministry of
sorrow. The loss of children is especially calculated to subdue the heart to a heavenly tenderness,
to enlarge and sweeten our sympathies with our
fellow-men, to elevate and purify the affections, to
wean the thoughts from the vain schemes of our
earth-life, and to fix our attention, our hopes and
our hearts on the spiritual world. We are likely
to be better men and better citizens when some
society of angels in heaven holds our children as
hostages for our good behavior on earth.
It is needless to go over ground which has been
so thoroughly canvassed by earnest and spiritual
thinkers. It is our business rather to call attention
to some of the peculiar blessings and manifest uses
which may be, and so often are, derived from the




308       OUR CHILDREN INV HEAVEN.
death of children as viewed from the stand-point
of a new Revelation.
The general advantages of an early demise to
the children themselves can hardly be questioned.
The terrible trials and sufferings and uncertainties
of this life are all escaped.  The final issue in
eternal felicity is secured without the painful
struggles which our adult spirits are compelled to
undergo. It is no small comfort to the parental
heart that the little one is safe from the world's
storms, folded in the arms of the Good Shepherd;
safe friom the infestations of wicked spirits; safe
from all evil things, present or future. The most
unfortunate ones of earth no doubt enjoy a secret
satisfaction in the thought, that their precious children have been led in flowery paths away from the
dark road which has caused their own feet to bleed
and their strength to faint.
The addition of a vast infantile population te
the angelic world immeasurably increases the peace,
beauty, joy, and power of heaven.  Every soul
added to an angelic society increases the general
strength of affection and thought, the love, the
wisdom, and the happiness of all the members.
HIow glorious and beautiful must be those infantile
heavens, created for children, in which the whole




WHA T GOOD CAN COME 01 IT?        309
atmosphere sparkles with infinitesimal flowers and
images of sporting infants! How wise and happy
must they be who have theml in charge! How
sweet and holy must be the sphere which emanates
from those infantile heavens to the entire spiritual
kingdom of God!
This transcendent addition to the life and glory
of heaven was not a part of the original design of
God; but is an after-blessing, accruing from His
divine mercy on the removal of children by evil
spheres friom the earthly life.  No children are
born in heaven. They are not needed there as
essential parts of its organization.  Malan was designed to live to old age, and the work of our
wicked Herods peoples the kingdom of Christ in a
manner unforeseen by themselves.
Swedenborg describes with minuteness the very
process by which sin brings about these calamities,
which the Divine Providence immediately turns to
such unexpected profit:
"As death [by disease] comes from  no othei
source but sin, and sin includes every thing contrary to the divine order; it is therefore evil which
closes the smallest and altogethler invisible vessels
[of the humanl body], of which the next greater
vessels, also invisible, are composed; for the small



ofO       OUR- CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
est and altogether invisible vessels are continued to
a man's interiors. Hence comes the first and inmost
obstruction, and hence the inmost vitiation of the
blood.  This vitiation, when it increases, causes
disease, and at length death. But if man had
lived the life of good, his interiors would be open
to heaven and through heaven to the Lord. Thus
the smallest and invisible vessels would be open
also, and man would live without disease, and
would only decrease to ultimate old age, until he
became altogether an infant, but a wise one. When
in such case the body could no longer minister to
its internal man or spirit, he would pass without
disease out of his terrestrial body into a body such
as the angels have."
The sphere of infant life, sweet and powerful as
it is on earth, becomes far sweeter and more powerful in heaven.  It must flow down into our spirits
with silent but incalculable might.  If infants in
hleaven are sometimes sent to infants on earth, why
may not our children be sent also to our bewildered
and weary hearts on errands of comfort and mercy?
Why may they not become ministering spirits to us?
Fhe influence of our children in heaven upon our
(ives on earth, cannot be estimated or accurately
described; but it is a powter in our hearts, soft,




WHAT GOOD CAN COME OF IT?          311
swift, and certain, like the "sweet influellces" of
Orion and the Pleiades.
The infantile heavens are of immense benefit in
antagonizing and subduing the deepest and most
terrible hells.  Whilst living with us, infants are
often the victims of diabolical spheres, against
which they cannot defend themselves; for the
order of influx is from the spiritual to the natural,
from superior to inferior things, and not the contrary.  When elevated, however, to the celestial
heavens nearest the Lord, their sphere of innocence
and peace flows downward into all the kingdoms
beneath, and the Lord governs everything in
heaven, earth, and hell by its power. The sphere
of the celestial angels is similar, indeed the same,
and fulfills the same uses; but the addition of the
living and growing infantile sphere adds vastly to
its power.
There are hells so terrible, so hideous, that they
are shut up entirely by the Lord, like the mouths
of the lions in the den with Daniel. They do not
communicate with man, for their moral poison
would as instantly corrupt the soul as the poison
of the cobra destroys the body.  These fearful
monsters are probably held in control by the sphere
of the infantile heaven, which being nearest the




212      OUR CIIILDREN IN I-EA VEN.
Lord must antagonize that evil sphere which is
farthest from Him.
Well may we be amazed at the offices and uses
~which our little ones may fill in the great economy
af God. We are almost ready to think that these
things were foreordained of the Lord, and to stand
with abashed faces and silent lips in the presence
of such beneficent designs. But our imaginations
and our hearts do injustice to the love, wisdom,
and power of the Divine Being, if we cannot conceive that far greater blessings and holier states
would have been in store for us, had man not
violated the moral order of the universe, brought
sin into the world with all its woe, and created hell
with all its horrors. Are we so overpowered by
tile three Sybilline Books we have obtained, that
we forget the six others we might have possessed,
but which we lost by our folly?
The chief good to be derived from evil is, that
it slows us our own evil nature. Sin cannot be
put away or renounced until it is discovered, and
its nature and  quality thoroughly understood.
Self-knowledge is the great desideratum in morals;
in the Christian it is synonymous with conviction
of sin.'The greatest crimes may even become
blessings to the criminals, if they bring them to a




WHA T GOOD CAN COME OF IT?         313
clear perception of the unfathomable hells in their
own hearts. The penitent thief, the self-abjuring
murderer, is in a more salvable state than the complacent worldling or the self-righteous professor of
religion who thinks himself better than other men.
The moral lesson involved in the death of infants
and little children is of vast importance. It is a
fearful index, a solemn reminder, not of what evil
things we have done, but of what evil creatures we
are. The moral story of intemperance is written
in the life and death of the drunkard. Licentiousness stamps its terrible seal on the soul and body
of its victim.  This we can understand, for we see
the connection here between cause and effect. But
it takes the sufferings and death of little children to
show us the hideous depravity of our hereditary
nature; what evil forms we are, and how closely
connected with hell, independently of any actual
sin we may have ever committed.
It is not surprising that little children were so
near and dear to the heart of Christ, when He saw
them bearing, like Himself, the iniquities (f others
in their own bodies, yet without sin!
This fundamental perversion of our Tpiritual
forms-this original sin, as it has been called,
making it impossible for us to become good or wise
27                 0




314       OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
of ourselves-is a cardinal doctrine of the Church,
without a clear recognition of which, the Word of
God and the mission of Christ will remain mysteries
for ever. When we see the fearful workings of
this hereditary nature, which connects us with all
the hells, so painfully revealed in the sufferings
and death of our beautiful and innocent children;
and when we reflect that the same inexhaustible
fountain of evil exists in our own souls, and that
the most perfect self-culture can do nothing to suppress or destroy the plague; we will feel the want
of that Great Saviour, who took upon himself our
own hereditary nature and made it divine.
In contemplating the death of children, we should
be led in an especial manner to hate, fear, and
avoid sin; to humble ourselves with a sense of our
organic, in-rooted, and terrible moral depravity;
and to look to the Lord whose Divine Humanity
is the life-bearing and power-giving medium between the Infinite and the finite.
Then there is great consolation in the thought
that no calamity or sorrow, however grievous, is
permitted to befall a single human being, which the
Lord cannot and does not overrule for the highest
ultimate good of that individual or of others.
Evil spirits are not permitted to do any sort of evil,




WHAT GOOD CAN COME OF IT?          315
which cinnot be so overruled. This reflection may,
in some measure, assuage our bitterest griefs, and
lighten our heaviest sorrows. Swedenborg says:
"The things which evil spirits are permitted to
do, are only those which conduce to the emendation of man, of souls, and of spirits (other things
are not permitted); all of which, even to the
miDnitest particulars, the Lord so rules and governs,
that there is not the slightest thing which they
thus do as it were permissively, which does not conduce to the good of nany, thus to the good of the
universe, and consequently of all."
"Infernal spirits strive with all their power to
withdraw the good from heaven and plunge them
into hell, since it is the very delight of their life to
destroy any one as to his soul, thus to eternity;
but not the smallest permission is given them by
the Lord, except for the end that good may result
therefrom.... In the whole spiritual world
the end which proceeds from the Lord bears absolute sway; and this end is, that nothing whatever,
not even the smallest circumstance, shall occur, but
that good may come of it. Hence the Lord's
kingdom is called a kingdom of ends and uses."
In accordance with this, the same enlightened
author tells us why misfortunes are permitted to




316       OUR CHILDREN IN fEA VE2J'
befall the righteous, and how, under the Divine
Providence, they are rendered subservient to their
spiritual welfare. Thus he says:
"I have conversed with angelic spirits concerning the misfortunes or distresses which befall the
faithful, who, it is known, suffer in some cases as
much as and even more than the wicked. The
reason why some of them are thus let into temptations, was stated to be this: that they might not
attribute goodness to themselves; for if they were
exempted, they would attribute such exemption to
their own goodness, and thus claim merit and
righteousness to themselves. And that this may
be prevented, misfortunes and distresses are permitted to come over them, that they may perish as
to that life, and as to the inordinate love of wealth
and possessions. But if they were not of such a
character as to attribute goodness to themselves,
they would be more frequently exempted from
common misfortunes and distresses."
"They who put their trust in the Lord, continually receive good from Him; for whatsoever
befalls them, whether it appear as prosperous or
unprosperous, is still good, for it conduces as a
means to their eternal felicity."
But the good to be derived from the death of




WHAT GOOD CAN COME OF IT?          317
children, and indeed from all other calamities, will
be greatly enhanced by tracing those evils boldly
to their real and only source-the evil spheres
of men and spirits.  The Divine desire for their
death being eliminated, the whole responsibility is
thrown upon the Church in its greatest and least
forms-the Church in the aggregate and in the
individual. So long as we think that God has
some sort of a causative share in all the events of
life, the evil as well as the good, a strange apathy
overcomes us, and we sink down in unthinking
resignation to what we are taught to regard as His
will. If God were, in our minds, freed from all
complicity, direct or indirect, with evils or calalnities, our awakened moral sense would seek to discover, by rigid self-examination, what share our
own hearts and lives are daily contributing to the
wars, slavery, pestilence, famine, catastrophes, intemperance, and social evils, which desolate the
world.
The blessings sent us after afflictions will be
more clearly seen and gratefully appreciated, when
we realize fully the seven-fold light of the New
Dispensation; when we can interpret the Word of
God in a sense above that of the letter, judging
not from the appearance, but judging righteous
27 *




318       CUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN.
judgment; when we understand the laws and
phenomena of the spiritual life; and when we see
the Lord Jesus Christ in his Glorified Human
Form as our Heavenly Father.
Infants on earth, angels in heaven, connecting
one with the other,-our little ones have not lived
or died in vain. They complete the golden circle
of our spiritual life, leading from our weary and
wounded hearts up through their shining and
happy heavens to the great White Throne, and
back again from the Lord himself through the
diamond auras of their celestial sphere, down to
the faith, the hope, the peace, the victory of the
soul!
Glory and Dominion be unto the Lord Jesus Christ,
For ever and ever:
Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come:
The Almighty. Amen.
TUHa END.




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