regeneration. But the Divine heredity is that which first asserts itself in the life of the child. Swedenborg says that the highest and holiest of the Lord's angels have in their keeping these initiaments of mind development as they have place at birth, and on into infancy and childhood. Hence the hard, cruel, natural heredity does not rule in the first budding openings of the child's mental life. But the soft, tender, loving implantations of the Lord, invisibly tended and nursed by his gentlest of angels, breathe around the mental beginnings of one who is destined for immortality. These sweet inseminations and breathings, infused into his first conscious life, remain with him always. They may be covered and concealed by the after developments of his harsher nature, but they remain, nevertheless, as the basis upon which an after life of heavenly character may be built, or as the fountain from whence, when sin has asserted itself, and the clouds of heart-evil hang thick and dark upon the outer surface of the nature, fresh inspirations of heavenly desire, and hope and effort, may be drawn. These remains of infantile states which are so redolent with the perfume of heaven, as we will have occasion, further on, to see, constitute the very elements of our after salvation.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Place the mind upon this as a symbolic
