Part 8 (1/2)
--_Heaven and h.e.l.l, nn._ 402, 403, 404, 405
OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN
Every little child, wheresoever born, whether within the Church or out of it, whether of pious parents or of impious, is received by the Lord at death; is educated in heaven; is taught and imbued with affections of good and by these with knowledges of truth; and then, as he is perfected in intelligence and wisdom, is introduced into heaven and becomes an angel.
When children die, they are still children in the other life. They have the same infantile mind, the same innocence in ignorance, and the same tenderness in all things. They have only the rudimentary capacity of becoming angels; for children are not yet angels, but are to become angels. The state of children in the other life far surpa.s.ses that of children in the world; for they are not clothed with an earthly body, but with a body like that of the angels. The earthly body is in itself heavy, and does not receive its first sensations and impulses from the interior or spiritual world, but from the exterior or natural world.
In this world, therefore, infants must learn to walk, to control the body's motions, and to talk. Even their senses, like sight and hearing, must be developed by use. It is quite otherwise with children in the other life. Being spirits, they act at once in expression of their inner being, walking without practice, and also talking, but at first from general affections not yet distinguished into ideas of thought. They are quickly initiated into these, too, however; and this for the reason that outer and inner are h.o.m.ogeneous with them.
The Lord flows into the ideas of children chiefly from their inmost soul, for nothing has closed their ideas, as with adults. No false principles have closed them to the understanding of truth, nor any evil life to the reception of good, nor to becoming wise.
--_Heaven and h.e.l.l, nn._ 416, 330, 331, 836
TOWARD THE MORNING OF LIFE
The Lord is present with every human being, urgent and instant to be received; and when a man receives Him, as he does when he acknowledges Him as his G.o.d, Creator, Redeemer and Saviour, then is His first Coming, which is called the dawn. From this time the man begins to be enlightened, as to understanding in things spiritual, and to advance into a more and more interior wisdom. As he receives this wisdom from the Lord, so he advances through morning into day, and this day lasts with him into old age, even to death; and after death he pa.s.ses into heaven to the Lord Himself, and there, though he died an old man, he is restored to the morning of his life, and to eternity he develops the beginnings of the wisdom that was implanted in the natural world.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 766
The people of heaven are continually advancing towards the spring-time of life; and the more thousands of years they live, the more delightful and happy is the spring to which they attain. Women who have died old and worn out with age, and have lived in faith in the Lord and in charity to the neighbor, come, with the succession of years, more and more into the flower of youth and early womanhood, and into a beauty exceeding every idea of beauty ever formed through the sight. In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young.
--_Heaven and h.e.l.l, n._ 414
h.e.l.l
”If I make my bed in h.e.l.l; behold, Thou art there.”
--_Psalm_, Cx.x.xIX, 8
EVIL IS h.e.l.l
Evil with man is h.e.l.l with him; for it is the same thing whether we say evil or h.e.l.l. And as a man is the cause of his own evil, therefore he, and not the Lord, also leads himself into h.e.l.l. So far is the Lord from leading man into h.e.l.l, that He delivers him from it as far as a man does not will and love to be in his own evil.
All a man's will and love remains with him after death. He who wills and loves evil in the world, wills and loves the same evil in the other life; and then he no longer suffers himself to be withdrawn from it. This is the reason that a man who is in evil is bound fast to h.e.l.l and is actually there, too, in spirit, and after death he desires nothing more than to be where his evil is. After death, therefore, a man casts himself into h.e.l.l, and not the Lord.
--_Heaven and h.e.l.l, n._ 547
EVIL AND PUNISHMENT
All evil bears its punishment with it. Evil spirits are punished because the fear of punishment is the one means of subduing evils in this state. Exhortation no longer avails, nor instruction, nor fear of the law nor fear for one's reputation; for now the spirit acts from a nature which cannot be coerced or broken except by punishment.
--_Heaven and h.e.l.l, n._ 509