dren who have died before them; they are also
presented to and mutually acknowledge each other. Spiritual fathers only
look at them, and inquire as to their present state, and rejoice if it
is well with them, and grieve if it is ill; and after some conversation,
instruction, and admonition respecting moral celestial life, they
separate from them, telling them, that they are no longer to be
remembered as fathers because the Lord is the only Father to all in
heaven, according to his words, Matt. xxiii. 9: and that they do not at
all remember them as children. But natural fathers, when they first
become conscious that they are living after death, and recall to mind
their children who have died before them, and also when, agreeably to
their wishes, they are presented to each other, they instantly embrace,
and become united like bundles of rods; and in this case the father is
continually delighted with beholding and conversing with them. If the
father is told that some of his children are satans, and that they have
done injuries to the good, he nevertheless keeps them in a group around
him, if he himself sees that they are the occasion of hurt and do
mischief, he still pays no attention to it, nor does he separate any of
them from association with himself; in order, therefore, to prevent the
continuance of such a mischievous company, they are of necessity
committed forthwith to hell; and there the father, before the children,
is shut up in confinement, and the children are separated, and each is
removed to the place of his life.

407. To the above I will add this wonderful relation:--in the spiritual
world I have seen fathers who, from hatred, and as it were rage, had
looked at infants presented before their eyes, with a mind so savage,
that, if they could, they would have murdered them; but on its being
hinted to them, though without truth, that they were their own infants,
their rage and savageness instantly subsided, and they loved them to
excess. This love and hatred prevail together with those who in the
world had been inwardly deceitful, and had set their minds in enmity
against the Lord.

408. XVII. WITH THE SPIRITUAL THAT LOVE IS FROM WHAT IS INTERIOR OR
PRIOR, BUT WITH THE NATURAL FROM WHAT IS EXTERIOR OR POSTERIOR. To think
and conclude from what is interior or prior, is to think and conclude
from ends and causes to effects; but to think and conclude from what is
exterior or posterior, is to think and conclude fro