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 more closely together, and to augment instead of lessening the sweet comfort of love.

Why is it that the hearts of married partners often grow cold and colder towards each other as the years roll by? Why does married life with many, at first so sweet and joyous, after a while prove to be so dull, insipid, almost wearisome? The reason is obvious. They do not understand or do not accept the heavenly doctrine concerning marriage, nor do they know the heavenly nature of conjugial love. They have not entered into the relation from any exalted motive, or with any spiritual view of it, nor sought to fulfill its obligations from any religious principle. Having never looked to the one true Source for the joys they anticipated, having lost or strayed away from the path of duty, and excluded God and heaven and the things of religion from their affections and thoughts, no wonder their hearts have grown cold, and marriage worthless, and life itself wearisome. No wonder they have not found in this sacred relation the heaven they expected; for they looked in the wrong direction for it—to the things which are from beneath, and not to those which come from above. They expected a heaven where the Lord, religion and duty were unheeded or unknown; no wonder, therefore, that they were disappointed.

"Man was created," says Swedenborg, "that he might become more and more internal, and thus be introduced or elevated more and more nearly to the heavenly marriage of good and truth, and so into love truly conjugial, even so far as to perceive the state of its blessedness. The sole medium of such introduction or elevation, is religion.