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 of such marriages the work of regeneration advances and the heavenly state is gradually perfected. But it is only the truths which we religiously obey while here on earth, that become married to goods in the will, and so remain with us permanently. Truths that are known and not obeyed, acquire no permanent abode in the soul. They may seem to be ours, but they are not until they become of the life—until they are brought down and obeyed, and thus become rooted, as it were, in the natural degree of the mind. We have no real interior affection for them, and when we come fully into the state of our interiors, as we shall in the other world, they will be taken from us, for we shall then deny and reject them. Accordingly it is written: "Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have." (Luke viii. 18.) Truths that have been disregarded and disobeyed by us in the life on earth, cannot be married to their appropriate goods in the world beyond; nor can the good and delightful things of heaven which are born of such marriage, be then and there given us. And this is the meaning of these words of the Lord, understood in their spiritual sense: "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage."

We thus see that this Scripture, rightly understood, is by no means opposed to the new doctrine concerning marriages in heaven. Even its literal sense, rightly interpreted, teaches nothing to the contrary. For there are no such nuptial connections in heaven as the Sadducees thought of as marriage, and about which, as the Lord perceived, they inquired of Him.

Then there are other passages of Scripture, which,