Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/552

456 man went away from the woman, and the woman from the man. But afterwards, as they were both in the idea of what is eternal in respect to marriage, they were united to partners who were in similitude with themselves. From these illustrations it may be clearly seen, that they who are in love that is truly conjugial look to what is eternal; and that if this vanishes from the inmosts of their thought they are disunited as to conjugial love, though not at the same time as to friendship; for this abides in the externals, but that in the internals. It is the same in marriages on earth. The married there, when they love each other tenderly, think of the eternal in respect to the marriage covenant, and not at all of its end by death; or if they think of this they grieve, yet are revived with hope from the thought of its continuing after their decease. (C. L. n. 216.)

As love that is truly conjugial endures to eternity, it follows that the wife becomes more and more a wife, and the husband more and more a husband. The actual reason is that in a marriage of truly conjugial love each becomes a more and more interior man (homo). For this love opens the interiors of their minds; and as these are opened man becomes more and more a man; and to become more a man in the case of the wife is to become more a wife, and with the husband it is to become more a husband. I have heard from the angels that the wife becomes more and more a wife as her husband becomes more and more a husband, and not vice versa; because it rarely if ever occurs that a chaste wife fails to love her husband, but the return of love by the husband fails; and that this fails for the reason that there is no elevation of wisdom, which alone receives the love of the wife. (C. L. n. 200.)

Those who are in love that is truly conjugial, after death when they become angels, return to their youth and early manhood. However worn out with age, husbands become young men; and wives, however worn out with age, become young women. Each consort returns to the flower and into the joys of the age in which conjugial love begins to exalt the life with new delights, and to inspire sportiveness, for the sake of prolification. Into this state,—first outwardly, and afterwards more and more interiorly to eternity,—does the man come who in the world had fled adulteries as sins, and was introduced by the Lord into conjugial love. As they are always growing more interiorly young, it follows that love which is truly conjugial continually increases and enters into its delights and satisfactions,—which were