Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/314

 if in their hearts they are really praying the prayer which the Lord taught his disciples?

Their first and controling thought will be of the Lord. As all true conjugial love is from Him, and He is the all-in-all of every true marriage, therefore their souls will first be lifted to Him in prayer. All who accept the heavenly doctrine on this subject, will see that there can be no real marriage except where there is a union of souls; and such, therefore, is the union they will desire and seek. They will see that their highest earthly bliss depends upon it. Any other union may, perchance, embitter their whole lives; or if not this, may deprive them of all the sweetness and delights of marriage. While there is, on the one hand, no heavier or more consuming grief than to be tied to an uncongenial and ill-adapted mate, there is, on the other, no purer earthly bliss than that experienced by consorts whose souls are wedded each to each. It is a bliss closely allied to that of heaven.

And not only are the happiness and spiritual growth of the parties themselves involved in this relation, but the character and happiness of their posterity, through successive generations. For children born of parents who are in love truly conjugial, inherit from them, to a degree above others, an inclination to the things of heavenly life—the truths of wisdom and the goods of love.

"Offspring," says Swedenborg, "born of two who are in love truly conjugial, draw from their parents the conjugial of good and truth;" that is, "they inherit, more than others, an aptness and facility for conjoining good