4797. The changes that take place in the state of their affections are also clearly visible in angels' faces. When they are in their own community the face they present is their own particular one; but when they enter another community the affections for goodness and truth belonging to this other community bring a change to their faces. Yet their own true face is so to speak the basic surface, which is identifiable within all the changes that take place. I have witnessed the consecutive variations taking place in keeping with the affections of the communities with which they were communicating. For every angel is in some province of the Grand Man and so communicates generally and widely with all throughout the same province, even though he is in one part of that province to which he specifically corresponds. I have seen them bringing variations to their faces by changing from one border-line of affection to another; yet I observed that they preserved the same faces in general, so that the ruling affection shone out in every variation of them. Thus their faces displayed the full range of that entire affection.
[2] And what was quite astonishing, the changes which affections undergo from young childhood to adult life were also shown by variations in the face. I was allowed to see how much of young childhood was preserved in adult life, and that it was this that gave adult life its essentially human quality. For innocence - the external form of it - is present in a young child, and innocence constitutes that essentially human quality; indeed innocence is so to speak the basic attribute into which love and charity from the Lord can enter. When a person is being regenerated and becoming wise the innocence of infancy which has been external becomes internal. Consequently true wisdom resides in no other abode than innocence, 2305, 2306, 3183, 3994; also, no one can enter heaven except one who has some degree of innocence, according to the Lord's words,
Unless you become as young children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Matt 18:3; Mark 10:15.
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