by Emanuel Swedenborg, compiled by Julian Kennedy Smyth and William Frederic Wunsch

“ EVERY little child, wheresoever born, whether within the Church or out of it, whether of pious parents or of impious, is received by the Lord at death; is educated in heaven; is taught and imbued with affections of good and by these with knowledges of truth; and then, as he is perfected in intelligence and wisdom, is introduced into heaven and becomes an angel.
When children die, they are still children in the other life. They have the same infantile mind, the same innocence in ignorance, and the same tenderness in all things. They have only the rudimentary capacity of becoming angels ”

“ Every angel receives the heaven which is around him according to the heaven which is within him. Unless heaven is within a man, none of the heaven around him flows in and is received.
Love to the Lord is the love regnant in the heavens; for there the Lord is loved above all things. Thus the Lord is All in all there. He flows into all the angels, and into each of them. He disposes them; He induces a likeness of Himself on them, and causes Heaven to be where He is. Hence an angel is heaven in the least form; a society is heaven in a greater form ”

“ From this time the man begins to be enlightened, as to understanding in things spiritual, and to advance into a more and more interior wisdom. As he receives this wisdom from the Lord, so he advances through morning into day, and this day lasts with him into old age, even to death; and after death he passes into heaven to the Lord Himself, and there, though he died an old man, he is restored to the morning of his life, and to eternity he develops the beginnings of the wisdom that was implanted in the natural world. ”

“ THE Lord is present with every human being, urgent and instant to be received; and when a man receives Him, as he does when he acknowledges Him as his God, Creator, Redeemer and Saviour, then is His first Coming, which is called the dawn. ”

“ The state of children in the other life far surpasses that of children in the world; for they are not clothed with an earthly body, but with a body like that of the angels. The earthly body is in itself heavy, and does not receive its first sensations and impulses from the interior or spiritual world, but from the exterior or natural world. In this world, therefore, infants must learn to walk, to control the body's motions, and to talk. Even their senses, like sight and hearing, must be developed by use. It is quite otherwise with children in the other life. ”

“ There is the highest freedom in this because it proceeds from interior affection, and is conjoined with ineffable delight. Uses exist in the heavens in all variety and diversity. Never is the use of one angel quite the same as that of another ”

“ Being spirits, they act at once in expression of their inner being, walking without practice, and also talking, but at first from general affections not yet distinguished into ideas of thought. They are quickly initiated into these, too, however ”