150 HEAVEN and HELL §281
f. True marriage love is innocence: 2736. Marriage love is intending what the other intends,
mutually and reciprocally: 2731. People who are in marriage love are living together in the inmost
aspects of life: 2732. There is a union of two minds, so effective that they become one from love:
10168 , 10169. True marriage love derives its origin and essence from the marriage of the good and
the true: 2728 , 2729. About some angelic spirits who could perceive whether a true inclination
toward marriage existed from the image they perceived of the union of the good and the true:
10756. Marriage love works exactly like the union of the good and the true: 1094 [ 1904 ], 2173 ,
2429 [ 2729 ], 2503 [ 2508 ], 3101 , 3102 , 3155 , 3179 , 3180 , 4358 , 5407 [ 5807 ], 5835 , 9206 , 9207 , 9495 ,
9637. So in the Word, “marriage” means the union of the good and the true as it is in heaven and
as it should be in the church: 3132 , 4434 , 4834 [ 4835 ].
g. A lamb in the Word means innocence and the good it does: 3994 , 10132.like their minds, love each other. This is the source of the childlike and
innocent play in marriage love.f282 Since innocence, for heaven’s angels, is the very essence of what is
good, we can see that the divine good emanating from the Lord is inno-
cence itself, inasmuch as it is this good that fl ows into angels, moves their
deepest natures, and aligns and adapts them to accept all the blessings of
heaven. Much the same happens with infants, whose deeper natures are
not only formed by the passage of innocence from the Lord but are also
constantly adapted and aligned to accept the good of heavenly love,
because the good of innocence acts from deep within, being, as already
noted, the very essence of all good. This shows that all innocence is from
the Lord, which is why the Lord is called the Lamb in the Word, since a
lamb means innocence.g
Because innocence is the very heart of all the good of heaven, it also
affects minds so strongly that people who feel it—which happens at the
approach of an angel of the inmost heaven—feel as though they are not
under their own control. They are moved by such a joy, so taken out of
themselves, so to speak, that it seems as though all the pleasure of the
world is nothing by comparison. I speak of this from having experi-
enced it.
283 Anyone who is in the goodness of innocence is moved by innocence,
and is moved by innocence to the extent that she or he is in that good.
However, people who are not in the good of innocence are not moved by
it. Consequently, all the people in hell are absolutely opposed to inno-
cence. They do not know what innocence is. Their nature is such that
the more innocent people are, the more they burn with desire to cause
them harm. This is why they cannot stand to see little children. The
moment they do, they are consumed with a vicious desire to infl ict harm.