New Church Life Mar/Apr 2015 | Page 13

 • The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. (Psalm 103:8) • The Lord punishes no one, speaks harsh words to no one, still less does He bring anyone into torment. (Arcana Coelestia 696) • Jehovah God, or the Lord, never curses anyone, is never angry with anyone, never leads anyone into temptation, and never punishes anybody. It is the devil’s crew who do such things. Such things cannot possibly come from the fountain of mercy, peace and goodness. (Arcana Coelestia 245) • The Lord never wants to hurt anyone or force anyone down into hell, not even the worst or most hostile of all His enemies. (Arcana Coelestia 1683) It is all too easy for people to give up on God when the only voices they hear speaking for God are actually speaking for anything but God. Stay with Me; do not fear. For he who seeks My life seeks your life, but with Me you shall be safe. (I Samuel 22:23) O U R N E W C H U RC H V O C A B U L A R Y Part of a continuing series developed by the Rev. W. Cairns Henderson, 1961-1966. CONJUGIAL One of the most important terms in our New Church vocabulary, “conjugial” is to be distinguished carefully from “conjugal.” The conjugial is said to be that truth which is capable of being conjoined with good, and that good which is capable of being conjoined with truth; and conjugial love is described as the affection of good in truth and the affection of truth from good, which descends from the marriage of good and truth in heaven. Conjugial love may therefore be defined as the love of wisdom in the mind of a husband for good in the mind of his wife, and the reciprocal love of this good for that wisdom. Thus it is not a love of the proprium of the other from what is proprial in self, but the love of that which is from the Lord in the mind of each for that which is for Him in the other. It is not achieved by the husband and wife looking to each other, but by both looking together to the Lord; for which reason it is said to go hand in hand with religion, with regeneration, and with the interior development of the church in the mind. By the marriage of conjugial love is meant the union of two in thought and will, in good and truth, in mind and life; which union causes them to love to will and think as the other, and to dwell together in all things of life. (See Arcana Coelestia, 3942, 3081, 9961, 10,169) 123