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.
