Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/200

194 internally conjoined to the Lord, being created anew in the Divine image and likeness. Hence the Lord becomes (and is so represented in Scripture) the Husband of all regenerate souls; and such souls form, in the aggregate, "the bride, the Lamb's wife." In the degree that man receives into his soul truth and love in marriage union, he receives the Lord, and experiences within himself the life and delights of heaven. Hence it is that heaven in the Word is compared to a marriage. (See Matt. xxii. 2, 4; xxv. 1, 10.)

Now as truth and love from their very nature, or because of their divine union in Him from whom they flow, have a perpetual longing or affinity for each other, therefore man and woman are from their creation gifted with a similar desire for union; and their marriage (provided it be a true one—a union of souls as well as of bodies) symbolizes or images the divine and heavenly marriage. The two sexes are the complements of each other, standing related like truth and good, understanding and will, lungs and heart; and each, therefore, being absolutely necessary to the completeness of the other. Although each sex is actually in both man and woman (for each is gifted with understanding and will, and is capable, therefore, of receiving both truth and love), yet man is relatively a form of the intellect or truth, and woman a form of the will or love; for with