Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/539

Rh whom the first church on this earth was constituted,—which was called also by ancient writers the golden age,—there was such a correspondence of the families on earth with the societies of heaven; for the reason that love to the Lord, mutual love, innocence, peace, wisdom, and chastity in marriages reigned. And it was also told me from heaven, that they were then interiorly horrified at adulteries, as at the abominable things of hell. (A. E. n. 988.)

The reason why the love of marriage is so holy and so heavenly is, that it begins from the Lord Himself in the inmosts of man, and descends according to order to the ultimates of the body, and so fills the whole man with heavenly love; and induces upon him a form of the Divine love, which is the form of heaven, and is an image of the Lord. (ib. n. 985.)

Since man lives as a man after death, and man is male and female, and the male is one and the female another, and they are so different that the one cannot be changed into the other, it follows that after death the male lives as a male, and the female lives as a female, each a spiritual man (homo). It is said that the male cannot be changed into female, nor the female into male, and that therefore after death the male is male, and the female is female; but as it is unknown in what the male and in what the female essentially consist, this shall here be briefly stated:—The distinction consists essentially in the fact that in the male the inmost is love, and its vestment is wisdom,—or what is the same, it is love overveiled with wisdom; and that in the female the inmost is that wisdom of the male, and its vestment is the love therefrom. But this love is feminine love, and is given by the Lord to the wife through the wisdom of the husband; and the former love is masculine love, and is the love of being wise, and is given by the Lord to the husband according to his reception of wisdom. It is from this that the male is the wisdom of love; and that the female is the love of that wisdom. There is therefore, from creation, implanted in each a love of conjunction into one. That the feminine is from the masculine, or that the woman was taken out of the man, is certain from these words in Genesis: ''Jehovah God. . . took out one of the ribs of the man and closed up the flesh instead thereof, and He builded the rib which He had taken out of the man into a woman, and now brought her unto the man. And the man said, This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, hence she shall be called Woman (Isha), because she was taken out of the man'' (Ish) (ii.