Page:Beauty for Ashes.djvu/70

 They flee before it, and hide themselves, as owls, and bats, and all creatures of the night, retreat to their hiding-places as soon as the dawn of a new morning comes.

"We turn now from the absurd, dark and dreadful doctrine concerning the final condition of many who die in infancy, as believed and taught by the first Christian Church, to that more rational, bright and beautiful doctrine on the subject, as set forth in the revelations made for the use of the New Church. And as the traveller in the desert, weary, and worn, and wasted by his journey, scotched by the sun's burning heat, faint from parching thirst, and almost blinded by the drifting sands, hails with rapture the sight of green herbage and the music of babbling brooks, so do we joyfully turn from the Old to the New Christian doctrine upon the subject under consideration;—from the doctrine held to be orthodox by John Calvin, the Synod of Dort, and the Westminster Assembly, to that revealed by the Lord through his own chosen servant, Emanuel Swedenborg.

According to the New doctrine on this subject, then, all who die in infancy go directly to heaven, or pass immediately into some of the angelic societies, and in due time become themselves angels. Nor does this depend at all upon the character of their parents, as whether they be virtuous or vicious, pious or impious, in the church or out of it, Christians or Pagans; nor upon the circumstance of the infants themselves