processes, and the reasonableness of the former is as clearly discernible as that of the latter. The spiritual organism being perfectly plastic to the influent life, as that life becomes sweeter and richer, and its influx more copious, the inevitable result must be a growing perfection of the human form, and a steady increase of human beauty.
Another question closely allied to the one we have just considered, is: Do those who die in infancy or childhood continue to grow in the other world, as they would have done had they remained longer in this? Or do they continue forever the same in stature as when they departed this life? Does Swedenborg answer this question? If so, how?
How would enlightened reason answer it? we again ask. Is it reasonable to suppose that an infant dying before it is able to walk, will remain to all eternity of the same infantile form, and be forever carried in some sweet mother's arms and dandled on some maternal knee? Is it probable—nay, is it conceivable that the all-wise and loving Father would permit an immortal soul to be thus prematurely arrested in its growth, and by an incident over which that soul had no control, and was therefore powerless to prevent? For we cannot conceive of the spirit of a little child developing into the grand, capacious, wise and loving soul of a full-grown angel, without a corresponding change or development of that spiritual organism which constitutes its body in the spiritual realm. The idea is repugnant to all our conceptions as well as our knowledge of the laws of divine order. As easily can we conceive of the luscious qualities of
