THE MARRIAGE OF THE LORD AND THE CHURCH, AND ITS CORRESPONDENCE

The reason for including at this point a discussion of the marriage of the Lord and the church is that, without a knowledge and understanding of this, hardly anyone can know that conjugial love is in origin holy, spiritual and celestial, and that it comes from the Lord. There are of course those in the church who assert that marriages have some relationship with the Lord's marriage with the church, but without knowing what is the nature of that relationship. In order, therefore, to cast some intellectual light on these matters, it is necessary to deal in detail with that holy marriage experienced by and in those who make up the Lord's church. It is these and no others who have truly conjugial love. But in order to elucidate this secret, the discussion must be split into sections as follows. (i) In the Word the Lord is called bridegroom and husband, and the church is called bride and wife. The linking of the Lord with the church, and the reciprocal linking of the church with the Lord, is called a marriage. (ii) The Lord is also called father and the church mother. (iii) The offspring of the Lord as father and of the church as wife and mother are all spiritual, and in the spiritual sense of the Word these are meant by sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law and other terms of relationship. (iv) The spiritual offspring born of the Lord's marriage with the church are truths, the source of understanding, perception and every thought, and good deeds, the source of love, charity and every affection. (v) From the marriage of good and truth proceeding and flowing in from the Lord a person receives truth, to which the Lord links good. This is how the church with a person is formed by the Lord. (vi) The husband does not represent the Lord and his wife the church, because they both together, husband and wife, make up the church. (vii) Therefore there is no correspondence of the husband with the Lord and of the wife with the church in angelic marriages in the heavens or in those of human beings on earth. (viii) There is, however, a correspondence with conjugial love, the planting of seed and reproduction, the love of children and similar matters which arise in and from marriages. (ix) The Word is a means of linking because it is from the Lord and thus is the Lord. (x) The church is from the Lord, and is present with those who approach Him and live in accordance with His commandments. (xi) Conjugial love depends on the state of the church, because it depends on the state of wisdom a person possesses. (xii) Since the church is from the Lord, so too is conjugial love from Him.

There now follows an explanation of these points.