The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained/Chapter27
XXVII.—Marriage and the Sexes.
The institution of marriage has ever been held in honor by Christians generally; yet there are few subjects on which even educated people in nearly all the churches of to-day, are more profoundly ignorant, or on which instruction is more needed, than the nature of true marriage; and none on which the teachings of Swedenborg have been more strangely misapprehended, or their meaning more grossly perverted.
A right understanding and thorough appreciation of the divine institution of marriage, will be found to be intimately connected with the best Christian nurture, and the fullest development of the Christian life and character. For the starting-point in the noblest human growth, and the chief centre of influence in the most advanced civilization, is unquestionably the family institution. And this institution can never become what God intended it should be—the birthplace and nursery of angels—save in the degree that it receives the enlightening and warming beams of the spiritual Sun; and the measure in which these beams are received, will depend on the degree in which husbands and wives understand and acknowledge the source and nature of true marriage, and on their mutual fidelity in the discharge of its sacred obligations.
It cannot be denied that an important change in the popular estimate of woman, has taken place throughout Christendom during the last hundred years. She has come to be thought of and treated more as the equal of man—more as the inspirer of his best thoughts and noblest deeds, and the equal partner in, and sharer of, his burdens, trials, duties and responsibilities. To fit her for this higher sphere, the opportunities for broader culture and higher education are everywhere beginning to be offered her. The doors of our best colleges and highest schools of learning, are being thrown open to her, and she is beginning to be admitted to their privileges on equal terms with her brothers. If this change has not been wrought directly by the writings of Swedenborg or their students, it cannot be denied that it is directly in the line of their teachings, and may be fairly claimed, therefore, as one of the normal results of the last Judgment and new Dispensation.
According to the teaching of the New Church, sex belongs to the soul not less than to the body; and it is therefore eternal in its duration as the soul itself. And since the death of the body works no change in the soul, it leaves the sexes, with all their essential longings and characteristics, the same in the spiritual as they are in the natural world. And as it is the Lord's will that all orderly and innocent loves should be gratified, therefore there are marriages in heaven.
Marriage is regarded by the New Church as a most sacred institution, having its origin in the divine and eternal union of Love and Wisdom in the Lord, and being itself a faint image of that union. The spiritual or heavenly marriage is the conjunction of good and truth, or of love and wisdom, in the individual soul; and this takes place in the degree that a man, through religious obedience to the truth received into his understanding, unites or marries that truth to love in the will; and in so far as this takes place, he is internally conjoined to the Lord, being created anew in the Divine image and likeness. Hence the Lord becomes (and is so represented in Scripture) the Husband of all regenerate souls; and such souls form, in the aggregate, "the bride, the Lamb's wife." In the degree that man receives into his soul truth and love in marriage union, he receives the Lord, and experiences within himself the life and delights of heaven. Hence it is that heaven in the Word is compared to a marriage. (See Matt. xxii. 2, 4; xxv. 1, 10.)
Now as truth and love from their very nature, or because of their divine union in Him from whom they flow, have a perpetual longing or affinity for each other, therefore man and woman are from their creation gifted with a similar desire for union; and their marriage (provided it be a true one—a union of souls as well as of bodies) symbolizes or images the divine and heavenly marriage. The two sexes are the complements of each other, standing related like truth and good, understanding and will, lungs and heart; and each, therefore, being absolutely necessary to the completeness of the other. Although each sex is actually in both man and woman (for each is gifted with understanding and will, and is capable, therefore, of receiving both truth and love), yet man is relatively a form of the intellect or truth, and woman a form of the will or love; for with the former, truth or the masculine element is exterior and predominant, and with the latter, love or the feminine element. And when a married couple on earth are fully regenerated—if they are from creation the complements of, and thus perfectly adapted to, each other—they are no longer two but one; each living in and for the other, thinking, perceiving, feeling and enjoying as one mind. They are then "one flesh," inseparably joined by God in their very constitution and mutual adaptation to each other, "like the angels in heaven;" and their delights in the hereafter are ineffable and inconceivable.
But the natural love of the sex as felt by the merely natural man, is a low animal passion, more or less defiled with impurity like all his other loves. But it is the germ or early blossom of something transcendently more beautiful and precious. The natural love of the sex is, by regeneration, purified, exalted, ennobled, and so changed into what Swedenborg calls "love truly conjugial," which is a spiritual and heavenly love, the sweetness and felicities of which transcend immeasurably the delights of the love immediately succeeding the earthly nuptials.
Owing to the present disorderly and unspiritual state even of the Christian world, it is not to be supposed that there are at this time many true marriages, or unions that are "truly conjugial." Nor will there be, until marriage is looked upon as the most solemn and momentous event of one's earthly life, and sincere, devout and earnest prayer goes up from the hearts of young men and maidens, that in this most important step, involving perchance the peace and prosperity of multitudes yet unborn, they may be led and governed wholly by the Lord.
We add a few brief extracts from Swedenborg in further elucidation of the subject.[1]
"The angels regard marriages on earth as most holy, because they are the seminaries of the human race and also of the angels of heaven, for heaven is from the human race; also because they are from a spiritual origin, namely, from the marriage of good and truth; and because the Divine of the Lord flows primarily into conjugial love." (H. H. 384.)
"I once heard an angel describing love truly conjugial and its heavenly delights, in this manner: That it is the Divine of the Lord in the heavens,—which is the divine good and divine truth,—united in two beings, yet in such a manner that they are not two, but as one. He said that two conjugial partners in heaven are that love,—because every one is his own good and his own truth, as to mind as well as to body; for the body is the effigy of the mind, because formed in its likeness. Hence he concluded that the Divine is effigied in two, who are in love truly conjugial; and because the Divine is effigied in them, so also is heaven." (H. H, 374.)
"The essential of marriage is the union of minds. . . . And the union of minds is altogether such as are the truths and goods from which the minds are formed. Consequently the union is most perfect between minds that are formed of genuine truths and goods. It is to be observed that no two things mutually love each other more than truth and good. Therefore love truly conjugial descends from that love." (Ibid. 375.)
"Love truly conjugial cannot exist between one husband and more wives than one; for this destroys its spiritual origin, which is the formation of one mind out of two. Consequently it destroys interior conjunction, which is that of good and truth, from which is the very essence of conjugial love." (Ibid. 379.)
"It has been shown me how the delights of conjugial love progress toward heaven, and the delights of adultery toward hell. The progression of the delights of conjugial love toward heaven, was into blessednesses and felicities continually increasing in number, until they became innumerable and ineffable; and the more interiorly they progressed, the more innumerable and ineffable they became, until they reached the very blessedness and happiness of the inmost heaven which is the heaven of innocence, and this with the most perfect freedom. For all freedom is from love; and therefore the most perfect freedom is from conjugial love which is heavenly love itself. But the progression of adultery was toward hell, and by degrees to the lowest where there is nothing but what is direful and horrible. Such is the lot which awaits adulterers after their life in the world." (Ibid. 386.)
- ↑ For a full and exhaustive treatment of this subject, the reader is referred to Vol. IX., Swedenborg Library, which treats of "Marriage and the Sexes in both Worlds."