Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 406

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406. The nature of the love of infants and children with the spiritual, and its nature with the natural, is manifestly perceived from parents [in the spiritual world] after death. When they come there, most fathers call to mind their children who have passed away before them, and the children are presented to them and there is mutual recognition. Spiritual fathers merely look at them and ask as to their state, rejoicing if it is well with them and grieving if it is ill; and, after some conversation, instruction, and admonition respecting heavenly moral life, they separate from them. But before separation, they teach them that they are no longer to be remembered as fathers because the Lord is the one only Father to all in heaven, according to His words (Matt. 23:9); and that they themselves never remember them as their children. But natural fathers, as soon as they realize that they are living after death and recall to their memory the children who had passed away before them and who also are presented to them according to their desire, are at once conjoined with them, and they cling together like a bundle of sticks. The father is then in continual delight at the sight of them and from conversation with them. If it is told him that some of these children of his are satans and have brought injury upon the good, he nevertheless keeps them in a circle around him, or in a group in front of him. If he himself sees that they inflict injury and do evil deeds, he still pays no heed and does not dissociate any of them from himself. Therefore, lest so harmful a company continue, they are of necessity sent together into hell. There, in the presence of his children, the father is put under guard and his children are separated, each being sent away to the place proper to his life.


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