be in it and experience its delights, who are in Him and He in them. It is well known that husbands and wives feel the warmest love for each other when in the most faithful performance of all their duties; and it is the faithful discharge of our duties, which brings us into spiritual conjunction with the Lord. The voice of duty is the voice of God; and as often as we reverently heed that voice, we are clasped more closely in the Divine embrace. Apart from God and duty, there is not, and never can be, such a thing as true conjugial love on earth or in heaven.
It is evident enough, therefore, that this love is spiritual in its nature, and that only those come into it and experience its delights, who come to the Lord and learn and do the truths of his Word. And it is no less evident—from human experience as well as from the new revealings—that the more faithfully consorts perform all their duties, the more the husband increases in wisdom and the wife in the love of that wisdom, the more closely wedded will their souls become, and the more fully will they experience the delights of conjugial love. From which we may reasonably conclude that marriages must exist in heaven, and become ever more and more delightful as the souls of angelic consorts become more closely wedded to the Lord and to each other.—C. L. n. 216.
Such is the important practical lesson which the new doctrine concerning marriages in heaven inculcates. It teaches consorts on earth to begin their wedded life with the Lord. It reveals to them the necessity (if they would know the supreme delights of marriage), of
