Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 9.djvu/30

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

or one flesh; and when they become one, they are then, taken together, man in his fullness. But without that conjunction they are two, and each is as a divided or half-man.

Now, because this conjunctive tendency lies inmostly concealed in all the particulars of the male and female, and the faculty and desire of conjunction into one are within all particulars, it follows that the mutual and reciprocal love of the sex remains after death.

We speak distinctively of the love of the sex and of conjugial love, because the love of the sex is something different from conjugial love. The love of the sex is with the natural man, but conjugial love with the spiritual man. The natural man loves and desires only external unions, and from them pleasures of the body; but the spiritual man loves and desires internal union, and from this happiness of the spirit; and this happiness he perceives is given with one wife with whom he may be perpetually more and more united; and the more he is so united, he perceives his happiness ascending in a like degree, and enduring to eternity. But the natural man thinks nothing of this. Hence it is said that conjugial love remains after death with those who go to heaven, who are they that become spiritual on earth.

THE LORD REFERRED TO SPIRITUAL NUPTIALS.

There are two things which the Lord taught by these words: Luke xx. 21-38; Matt. xxii. 18-27; (1st) that