Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/553

Rh for it from the creation of the world, and which are the delights and satisfactions of the inmost heaven, arising from the love of the Lord towards heaven and the church, and therefore from the love of good and truth for each other; from which loves every joy in the heavens is derived. The reason why man thus grows young in heaven is because he then enters into the marriage of good and truth, and in good there is an inclination continually to love truth, and in truth there is a continual inclination to love good; and then the wife is good in form, and the man is truth in form. From this inclination man puts off all the austerity, dejection, and dryness of age, and puts on the liveliness, gladness, and freshness of youth,—whence the inclination lives and becomes joy. It has been told me from heaven that they have then a life of love which can only be described as a life of joy itself. (A. E. n. 1000.)

I talked with the angels respecting conjugial love, or the love between two consorts who love each other. [They said] that it is the inmost of all loves, and is such that consort sees consort in his or her inner and outer mind (animo et mente ), so that each consort has the other within him or her. That is, that the image, yea, the similitude of the husband is in the mind of the wife, and the image and similitude of the wife is in the mind of the husband; so that the one sees the other in himself or herself, and in their inmosts they thus dwell together. This was represented by angelic conceptions, which cannot be expressed in words. (S. D. n. 4408.)

I have heard it testified by those who have lived for ages with their consorts in heaven, that they feel themselves to be thus united,—the husband that he is united with the wife, and the wife that she is united with the husband; and feel themselves to be each within the other, mutually and reciprocally, as also in 35