Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/292

 his will in his works may often aid us to a right understanding of his Word. He is our Creator; and some of his purposes concerning us are written upon the human soul as legibly as they could be written in a book or on tables of stone, and as easy to be misunderstood. And among his purposes thus plainly written, is that in regard to the conjugial relation and its existence in the world beyond. A marriage union of the sexes, not merely in this world but in heaven likewise, is legibly inscribed on the whole nature and constitution of man and woman, by God's own finger.

And now let us see if the passage in Matthew (xxii. 30) really teaches anything contrary to this—as many Christians think it does, and as at first sight, indeed, it appears to teach.

The question which the unbelieving Sadducees had put to our Lord on the occasion referred to, shows that they had no idea of marriage as an internal and spiritual relation—a soul union. Their views of it were of the lowest kind. They thought of it as a relation which might exist between one woman and any number of men; and vice versa. The idea of an eternal adaptation of one man to one woman and only one, seems never to have entered their minds. It was not, therefore, of real marriage that they were thinking when they put to our Lord the question: "Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven?" for, as Swedenborg says, "there are no marriages elsewhere than in heaven; but beneath heaven [that is, among those in low or external states] there