with things vile and evil, in which case they would be liable to perish. Therefore it is, frequently, not in health and prosperity, nor in states of wickedness, that they are felt to be most powerful, but in seasons of misfortune, sickness, or anxiety, which tend to the inducement of some holy state. Then remains are suffered to come forth and conjoin themselves to the natural man, that it may be regenerated. But they may be felt, and are felt frequently, when crime and wickedness stare us in the face, and we are meditating a surrender. Thus it is that the scenes of childhood are projected to the vision for guilt to look upon, and to blush in their holy presence.

If, then, we would do any thing effectually, to aid the Divine Providence in regard to children, we must do it by assisting them in the storing up of "remains." Here is a vast work as yet but little understood. It is only by seeing it systematically, that we become fully impressed by it. When it is reflected that the whole process of regeneration in adult life is grounded upon these remains of good and truth received in infancy and childhood, with what latent and concealed good is handed down from past generations, it will be confessed that we have here opened into a subject, the like of which does not often present itself. And yet it will be seen that without these early receptions, it would be all over with man, his evils having accumulated to such an extent that nothing otherwise could be done for him.

"Man at his birth has not the smallest portion of good of or from himself, being [in his natural mind] totally and entirely defiled with hereditary evil; but all the good that he has enters by influx. Without these remains of things celestial, it would not be possible for man to become a man; for his states of lusts, or of evil, without temperature by states of the affection of good, would be fiercer and more savage than those of any other animal. [This is scarcely reflected on, because whatever is imbued in infancy appears born with it.] In the subsequent period of his life he is also gifted with new states; but these are not so much states of good, as of truth." 1906.

A. C.

Thus it is seen what a work, under providence, we have to do for our children. Can it be possible, with such a system of divine economy, that the child is not cared for in the most particular manner, that it is not led, from its earliest days, (so far as it can be, in a wicked world like this,) and brought into such situations and experiences as shall tend most effectively to the storing up of these heavenly remains? And is it not here, if anywhere, that the parent's chief work may be found, and prove most successful? O, eternity, eternity, how much depends!

And now, what we have to say most emphatically is-Begin early. We cannot begin too early. Much as we have heard of forming and impressing the mind, we do not yet realize the substantial philosophy of the subject. The mind itself being an active substance, the speaking of men as "clay in the hands of the potter," is no mere figure of speech. We can be literally formed into vessels of honor or dishonor. And in some of the representations of Swedenborg, we see how true it is that one mind is hard and bony, another soft and flexible, one in beauty and another in deformity. Thus, "with those who in the life of the body have studied only for the memory, and have not cultivated their rational, the brain in the other life appears with a hard callosity, and streaked as with tendons."— With those who have studied for self love and love of the world, it 66 conglutinated and ossified.”– appears "With those who have been deceitful and hypocrites, it appears hard and bony, like ebony, which turns back the rays of spiritual light." H. H. 466.

What a comment is such a representation upon the interior sense of our common proverbs and phrases! "Hard characters, and cases.". "Formation is better than re-formation."

Now, in an infant, or very young child, the substance of the mind is yet unformed except by hereditary evils. And these, we are assured, are distinguished both by forms and colors. (S. D. 1311.) Such minds are so tender and susceptible as

to be "mere receptivities." But this is spoken of the infant mind. Soon, hereditary evils begin to appear and to be appropriated; but here, if anywhere, is the field for diligent culture. How much might be done, only by beginning early! "Train up a child," not let him come up, like a weed. Re-formation is comparatively a hard work. "Go out," said a noble and eloquent champion for early education. "into the forests, and attempt to turn the old and gnarled oaks, which have grown into deformity, and curled as they have grown, by the potent influence of a hundred summers' suns. Alas! if you had taken them as saplings, you could have shaped them into beauty, an acre in a day."

By beginning early. I say, we cannot begin too early. And so far as good is concerned, rather than truth, the very first breathings of a child's life in this warm and pulsating world, may be made the signal for celestial influxes through the heart and prayer of the mother. A child a year old may, from feeling, signs, and intelligent discipline, be made to know very quickly what right and wrong are. Two years old may see a possessor, if not a professor, of the substantial rudiments of moral philosophy. Three years may bring forth fruits meet for repentance. Four years may see hereditary evil strangled in its first life. Five years-alas! if something radical and effectual has not been accomplished yet, power on the part of the parent is very perceptibly lost. Six, seven, ten, twelve,if in mercy they are not already removed to the spiritual world, out of the reach of such parents, to the hands of better instructors, which by a well ordered Providence is frequently done, then what have we but a hard and wilful boy, or a pouty, unsubdued, and contrary girl, with whom all the power of divine grace is not perhaps adequate to bend the stubborn will, while we are continually assured that the Lord will not break

*Horace Mann.

it, and the Word of Truth is ever upon us in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

"Bring them up

Many things must be omitted here concerning the state of infants and children after death, and why they are removed in so great numbers so early from the natural world, both because we have not space, and because, in another chapter, something of this will be alluded to. Infants in heaven perform for man in the world some of the most important uses of regeneration. By their tender and celestial quality, they can approach him in his more infantile states, and do for him what no other spirits can. It is not in divine order for infants to die, but since by a general state of sin and disorder they do depart thus early, they perform a very necessary work for man—indeed, an indispensable work. But it is for us, more practically, to recognize the wonderful Providence in the creation and care of these infant souls; and if we are at all impressed with such an amount of divine, interior truth, to let it have its proper influence in rebuking our indifference, and in leading us to coöperate more faithfully with the Lord of all souls, in bringing many children to heaven.

CHAPTER XXIII.

DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN MARRIAGES.

"They who enter into a state of marriage, cast a die of the greatest contingency, and of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity.”—Jeremy Taylor.

"Those who are in love truly conjugial, in marriage regard what is eternal, because there is eternity in that love.” – Swedenborg.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery."- Exodus, 20: 14.

"What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.' Matt.

19: 6.

WE have now approached a subject to which we have been looking from the commencement of this work. The Marriage of Human Souls! and external relations in correspondence therewith. It is a theme most vitally practical, most fundamental, lying as it does at the very root of all good and evil, all happiness and misery. It regards not only the parties themselves, in their most sacred and intimate relations, but their offspring, and their eternity. Here, it must be confessed, is the germ of the soul first molded into its ultimate form, which, to a certain extent, it never recedes from. Say, if you will, that all deformities and evils may be eventually outgrown or eradicated; still, if there is any truth in eternal causation, what takes place here will never utterly cease, while life or being continues. The inexorable law which from the beginning eternally governs degrees, comes here into operation. Had nobler parties united in marriage, nobler beings would not only have been born into the world, but born into eternity. And hence, though it is not strictly true, as shown in the last chapter, that souls are first formed in the womb of the earthly

32*

377