XXIV.
CONFUGIAL LOVE—ITS NATURE.
BUT marriages in heaven, Swedenborg tells us, are quite different from marriages on earth. They are, like everything else there, more interior and perfect, and consequently more blissful. The love that binds in marriage union two parties in the realms above, is the true conjugial love. And this is not mere sexual love, which in itself is impure, and is felt by natural men and even by the lower animals. It is a pure spiritual affection. Souls in heaven are drawn together and held together by a love of what is really good and true—of what there is of the Lord in souls. A female angel looks and longs for wisdom in the male, for this is what delights her most. And in proportion as any male angel embodies, the particular kind of wisdom with which she is most delighted, she loves him. And she loves him because of the Lord's wisdom which she perceives in him, and with which her soul yearns for conjunction. And the male angel looks and longs for love in the female, pure, innocent, tender, gentle, like the Lord's own love, for this is what delights him most. And he loves her in the degree that she embodies in herself the special kind of love that agrees with his special kind and degree of wisdom. And so it is the Lord's love which he perceives in her, and which is the life and soul of his wisdom, that is to him the peculiar attraction.
Thus consorts in heaven love only what there is of the Lord in each other. And the more there is of the Lord in both—the more the man's understanding is enlightened by his wisdom and the more the woman's heart is warmed by his love, so much the more do they love and delight in each other, and the closer, therefore, is their union.
Moreover, conjugial love as it exists in heaven, is all from the Lord. It has its origin in the divine marriage of love and wisdom in Him; and thence it descends into angelic minds, and into minds of men who are nearest like the angels. This is clearly perceived by consorts in heaven; and they also perceive that the more faithfully they do the will of the Lord, the more are their minds opened to the reception of his love and wisdom, and the more do they experience of their heavenly delights in the love they feel for each other. And it is given them further to perceive that conjugial love corresponds to the marriage of the Lord with his church; for as husband and wife in heaven mutually love each other, so the Lord loves the church, his Bride, and forever wills that it should love and be conjoined with Himself, her Husband.
It thus appears, both from its origin and correspondence, how pure and holy conjugial love is, and what sanctity there is in marriage as it is viewed in heaven. The Lord himself being regarded as the source and centre and very essence of it, this love with the angels is not only free from terrestrial defilements, but is the fountain of all other angelic loves.
From this it may be seen that conjugial love is something quite different from the mere love of the sex. It is pure and heavenly in its nature, and can exist only with rational, regenerate, heavenly-minded persons. The love of the sex has supreme regard to self and self-gratification; but conjugial love has supreme regard to the Lord and the things that are well-pleasing to Him. The love of the sex belongs to our carnal or animal nature; conjugial love belongs to our spiritual and immortal part. The love of the sex is low—"of the earth, earthy"; conjugial love is from the Lord out of heaven, and is supreme above all other loves. The love of the sex exists with natural and even sensual men; conjugial love, only with those who are, in some degree at least, spiritual and regenerate. Swedenborg says:
"The love of the sex is of the external or natural man, and hence is common to every animal. Every man is born corporeal, and becomes more and more interiorly natural; and as he loves intelligence he becomes rational, and afterwards if he loves wisdom he becomes spiritual. . . . If he stand still in the first threshold in the progression to wisdom, the form of his natural mind remains, and this receives the influx of the universal sphere (which is of the marriage of good and truth) no otherwise than do the inferior subjects of the animal kingdom—the beasts and birds—receive it; and as these are merely natural, man becomes like unto them [in the matter we are now speaking of], and so loves the sex in like manner as they do.
"But conjugial love is of the internal or spiritual man, because, as a man becomes more intelligent and wise, he becomes more internal or spiritual; and in the same degree the form of his mind is more perfected, and this form receives conjugial love; for it therein is sensible of a spiritual joy which is inwardly blessed, and from this a natural joy which derives soul, life and essence from that."—C. L. n. 94, 95.But conjugial love may be said to be included in the love of the sex like a gem in its matrix. It is the spiritual internal whereof the love of the sex is the natural external. It is the love of the sex regenerated, spiritualized, cleansed of its defilements, lifted from earth to heaven. The love of the sex, like all other natural loves, is first in time—first in the order of development; but conjugial love, like all spiritual loves and the spiritual man himself, is first in end—first in the order of importance.
We thus see how the love between married pairs in heaven, called conjugial love, differs from the natural man's love of the sex—a love which often leads to unions here on earth which we call marriage, but which are as purely natural and external as is the love that leads to them.
In heaven there exists, we are told, the most delightful freedom—the freedom of perfect love. The love of rule, or of exercising dominion, one over the other, is wholly unknown among angelic consorts. Their souls are so perfectly united—every fibre of their hearts is so intertwined, each with the other's, that they have no separate and independent life; nor do they desire to have any. Each lives in and for the other, and forever desires to live so. What one desires and wills, the other desires and wills also. One thinks no thought which the other does not think; one cherishes no purpose which the other does not cherish; one feels no joy which the other does not feel; one breathes no prayer which the other does not breathe. Their everlasting bond of union is God's holy spirit of truth and love dwelling and operative in their hearts; and "where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," for there is wisdom and there is love; and "what is done from love truly conjugial, is done in freedom on both sides, for all freedom is of love, and each has freedom when one loves what the other thinks and wills" (A. C. 10,173). The least inclination to exercise dominion, or to force the will of the other, is foreign to the nature of conjugial love, and something which does not exist in heaven.
Marriage in the heavens being the conjunction of two minds into one, can exist only between one man and one woman. And so completely are their souls wedded, that their thoughts and affections never wander from each other. The husband never thinks of any female but his own wife with other feelings than those of charity and mutual love. If he should, that moment the blessedness of conjugial love would depart, and darkness would invade the souls of both. The wife would experience a dreadful sinking at the heart, as if the light of her life were about to be extinguished. And a similar result would follow, should the wife think fondly of any other man than her own husband.
"You two are one," said Swedenborg to a married couple in heaven. "And the man answered. We are one. Her life is in me, and mine in her. We are two bodies, but one soul. The union between us is like that between the two tents in the breast, called heart and lungs. She is my heart, and I am her lungs. But since by heart we here understand love, and by lungs wisdom, she is the love of my wisdom and I am the wisdom of her love. Therefore her love from without veils my wisdom, and my wisdom from within is interiorly in her love. Hence there is an appearance of the unity of our souls in our faces. I then asked, If such union exists, can you look at any other woman than your own? He replied, I can; but as my wife is united to my soul, we both look together. . . While I look at the wives of others, I look at them through my own wife whom alone I love."—C. L. n. 75.
"All of us here say that the husband is truth and his wife is good; and that good cannot love any truth but its own, neither can truth in return love any good but its own. If any other were loved, internal marriage which makes the church would perish, and there would be only external marriage to which idolatry and not the church corresponds. Therefore marriage with one wife we call sacredness; but should it have place with more than one among us, we should call it sacrilege."—Ibid. n. 76.As the love of the sex which is external and natural, differs in its nature from conjugial love which is internal and spiritual, so also do their delights differ. The delights of the former are fleeting and transitory like all merely natural delights—becoming less and less delightful, too, the longer they are enjoyed; but those of the latter, like all pure and spiritual delights, are eternal and immortal—becoming more and more delightful the longer they are experienced. And since this love as it exists in heaven, is most innocent, pure and holy—the fountain-head, as it were, of all other angelic loves—so all heavenly satisfactions, joys and delights are gathered into this; for this love above all others opens the interior recesses of the soul, through which gush the streams of life pure from their eternal Fountain.
"As conjugial love," says Swedenborg, "is the fundamental love of all good loves, and as it is inscribed on the most minute particulars of man, it follows that its pleasures exceed those of all other loves, and also that it makes other loves pleasant according to its presence and its conjunction with them; for it expands the inmosts of the mind and at the same time of the body, as the delightful current of its fountain flows through and opens them. All pleasures from first to last are gathered into this love, because of the superior excellence of its use above all others, which is the propagation of the human race and thence of the angelic heaven; and because this use was the end of ends in creation, it follows that all the blessedness, happiness, gladness, gratifications and pleasures, which could possibly be conferred on man by the Lord the Creator, are gathered into this love."—C. L. n. 68.
"Conjugial love in its origin is from the marriage of good and truth, and this marriage is from the Lord. And because love is such that it wills to make another whom it loves from the heart, a partaker of, yea, to confer upon him, joys, and from thence itself to take its own; infinitely more, therefore, does the Divine Love which is in the Lord, will thus toward man whom He created a receptacle both of love and wisdom proceeding from Himself. And because He created him into the reception of these, the man into the reception of wisdom and the woman into the reception of the love of the wisdom of the man, therefore from inmosts He infused into men (homines) conjugial love, into which He might bring together all things blessed, satisfactory, agreeable and delicious, which proceed together with life solely from his divine love through his divine wisdom, and flow in; consequently into those who are in love truly conjugial, because these alone are recipients. Innocence, peace, tranquillity, inmost friendship, full confidence and mutual desire, of mind and heart, of doing every good to the other, are named, inasmuch as innocence and peace are of the soul, tranquillity is of the mind, inmost friendship is of the bosom, full confidence is of the heart, and the mutual desire of mind and heart of doing every good to the other, is of the body from them."—C. L. n. 180.The truth of all this must appear sufficiently obvious to one who contemplates the effects of the love mutually felt by a young man and maiden in the warmth and glow of its first summer; for in their innocent young love there is something which allies it to the loves of the angels. And when their love is reciprocated, what a new world seems suddenly opened before them! What fountains of new feeling are straightway unlocked! What new and strange delights are kindled in their bosoms! What floods of joy hitherto unknown, are opened! What exhilarating and fragrant aroma diffuses itself through all the chambers of their souls! And this new love which is felt as something unspeakably delightful, at the same time quickens and exalts all their other loves, and imparts to them a fresh delight. They are more kind and tender and affectionate toward everybody. They clasp the whole human family to their hearts. They feel a new and unwonted affection for even the fields and flowers and the brute creation, and seem to love things and persons that they never loved before.
If such be the effects of youthful love here on earth in its first warmth and freshness, it is easy to believe that conjugial love in heaven, which is so much purer, deeper and stronger, is the parent and source of all other heavenly loves; and that into this love, as Swedenborg assures us, are gathered "all joys and all delights from first to last."
Then, to think of this love with angelic consorts as not only continuing forever, but growing stronger and purer and more delightful with every fresh accession of wisdom, and this through endless ages! And this, too, we can easily believe when we consider the origin and correspondence and spiritual nature of this love. And with equal readiness does the rational mind accept as true the following relation which Swedenborg says he received from a married couple who had been for ages in heaven, and from whom "there breathed forth a vernal warmth with a sweet-smelling odor as from the earliest flowers in gardens and fields."
Such is a faint and imperfect outline of the new doctrine of marriage as it exists in heaven. Such the origin, correspondence, spiritual nature, ends and uses of love truly conjugial; and such its unutterable and everlasting delights. Can we conceive of anything in the nature of marriage more beautiful, more perfect, more desirable, or which carries more plainly on its face the very impress of heaven—the stamp of pure and eternal truth? It is such a view of the subject as satisfies the deepest want, the devoutest longing, and the highest reason of every regenerate soul; and we have seen how perfectly it agrees, too, with Holy Scripture.
And how do the views here presented exalt and dignify the institution of marriage! What beauty and sanctity do they throw over it, and how do they lift it up from earth to heaven! Who is there, whose eye is as not dimmed by error or blinded by prejudice, that cannot in this heavenly doctrine something of the wisdom and love and glory of the Lord? Who cannot here see Him coming to the long beclouded minds of men on this grand subject, with new and precious and convincing truth—yea, "with power and great glory"?