312. (16) If conjugial love is hastened prematurely without an orderly development and its proper steps, it burns out the marrows and dies. So I am told by some angels in heaven; and by marrows they mean the inner elements of the mind and body. These are burned out, which is to say, destroyed, if conjugial love is hastened prematurely, because that love then commences from a fire that consumes and destroys those inmost recesses in which, as in the places it begins, conjugial love must have its seat and from which it must originate. This is what happens if a man and woman rush a marriage prematurely without an orderly development, not looking to the Lord, not taking the counsel of reason, spurning betrothal, and hearkening only to the flesh. If the heat of that is the ardor from which love commences, it becomes an external love and not an internal one, thus not conjugial love; and this may be termed the shell of love without its kernel, or a fleshly one that is wasted and dry, because it is devoid of its genuine essence. (For more on this subject see no. 305 above.)