Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 127

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127. (8) Rather, the correspondence rests with conjugial love, insemination, procreation, love for little children, and other things of a similar sort that occur in marriage and result from it. These secrets, however, are too deep for the understanding to be able to take them in with any light, unless it has first gained a concept of correspondence. Without a concept of correspondence unveiled and present in the understanding, the topics that belong under this heading cannot be comprehended, no matter how explained. But what correspondence is - that it is a correspondence of natural things with spiritual things - we have shown many times in The Apocalypse Revealed, and also in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven). We have shown it in particular as well in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture; and specifically in a narrative account on the subject later on.* Until a concept of correspondence has been absorbed, for the understanding still in darkness concerning it we will offer only these few observations: that conjugial love corresponds to an affection for genuine truth and its chasteness, purity and holiness; that insemination corresponds to the power of truth; that procreation corresponds to the propagation of truth; and that love for little children corresponds to the protection of truth and good. Now because truth in a person appears as if it were his, and good is joined to it by the Lord, it is evident that these correspondences are correspondences of the natural or outer self with the spiritual or inner self. But some light will be shed on these points in the narrative accounts that follow. * See perhaps no. 183, or no. 532, or nos. 416-422. Cf. also nos. 76, 342.


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