From experience I have been enabled to learn that the prayers of little children are much more fully heard in heaven than the prayers of grown-ups, and still more fully than those of people who have closed the way toward deeper things by thoughts of earthly matters and matters of memory-and even more fully than those of people who have become blind and thus have no belief, for in them the way toward heaven is closed. An experience that enabled me to learn this is that sometimes when I was paying less attention to the words of the Lord's prayer, the angels, I was told, understood them more fully, as they also did when I was reading in the Word of the Lord, because the way was opened. Although this seemed strange to me, I nevertheless learned from experience that it was true, and also from the fact that spirits who are far away from me hear and understand better when I would be thinking silently. For my thinking, which is filled with diverse mental images, hindered the subject from being carried over well. 1748, 28 June.