opportunity to talk was given them they would
say nothing except that "It is not so." I have been taught that
little children are so tempted in order that they may get accustomed
to resisting, and may begin to resist falsity and evil, and also that
they may learn not to think, speak, and act, from another, and in
consequence may learn to permit themselves to be led by no one but
the Lord.

344. From what has been said it can be seen what child education is
in heaven, namely, that it is leading them by means of an
understanding of truth and the wisdom of good into the angelic life,
which is love to the Lord and mutual love, in which is innocence. But
how different in many cases is the education of children on the earth
can be seen from this example. I was in the street of a large city,
and saw little boys fighting with each other; a crowd flocked around
and looked on with much pleasure; and I was told that little boys are
incited to such fights by their own parents. Good spirits and angels
who saw this through my eyes so revolted at it that I felt their
horror; and especially that parents should incite their children to
such things, saying that in this way parents extinguish in the
earliest age all the mutual love and all the innocence that children
have from the Lord, and initiate them into the spirit of hatred and
revenge; consequently by their own endeavors they shut their children
out of heaven, where there is nothing but mutual love. Let parents
therefore who wish well to their children beware of such things.

345. What the difference is between those who die in childhood and
those who die in mature life shall also be told. Those dying in
mature life have a plane acquired from the earthly and material
world, and this they carry with them. This plane is their memory and
its bodily natural affection. This remains fixed and becomes
quiescent, but still serves their thought after death as an outmost
plane, since the thought flows into it. Consequently such as this
plane is, and such as the correspondence is between the things that
are in it and the rational faculty, such is the man after death. But
the children who die in childhood and are educated in heaven have no
such plane, since they derive nothing from the material world and the
earthly body; but they have a spiritual-natural plane. For this
reason they cannot be in such gross affections and consequent
thoughts, since they derive all things from heaven. Mor