340. Many people think that children remain children in heaven and are like children among the angels. People who do not know what an angel is can corroborate this opinion because of the images here and there in churches, where angels are represented as children. However, things are actually very different. Intelligence and wisdom make an angel, qualities that they do not have as long as they are children. Children are with the angels, but they themselves are not angels yet. Once they are intelligent and wise they are angels for the first time. In fact - something that has surprised me - then they no longer look like children but like adults, because they no longer have a childlike nature but a more grown-up angelic nature. This goes with intelligence and wisdom.

The reason children look more grown-up as they are perfected in intelligence and wisdom - that is, like adolescents and young adults - is that intelligence and wisdom are the essential spiritual food. ¹ So the things that nourish their minds also nourish their bodies, which is a result of correspondence, since the form of the body is nothing but an outward form of their inner natures.

It does need to be known that children in heaven do not grow up beyond the prime of youth, but remain at that age forever. To assure me of this, I have been allowed to talk with some who had been raised as children in heaven and had grown up there, with some while they were still children, and then later with the same ones when they had become youths; and I have heard from them about the course of their life from one age level to another.

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276. That 'eating bread with sweat on the brow' means strong dislike of what is celestial becomes clear from the meaning of 'bread'. Bread is used to mean everything spiritual and celestial, which is the food of angels, and if they were deprived of it they would cease to live, as a person deprived of bread or food ceases to do. That which is celestial and spiritual in heaven also corresponds to bread on earth, and is also represented by bread, as is clear from many places [in the Word]. That the Lord is Bread, because He is the source of everything celestial and spiritual, He Himself teaches in John,

This is the Bread which came down from heaven; anyone who eats this Bread will live forever John 6:58.

This also is why bread and wine are the symbols used in the Holy Supper. This same celestial [or spiritual) was also represented by the manna. That what is celestial and spiritual is the food of angels is clear also from the Lord's own words,

Man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Matthew 4:4, that is, from the life of the Lord, who is the source of everything celestial and spiritual.

[2] The final generation of the Most Ancient Church which came immediately before the Flood and which is the subject here was so perverse and immersed in sensory and bodily interests that they did not wish to hear what the truth of faith was, nor what the Lord's coming to save them would be. And if these matters were ever mentioned they did not like it at all. This strong dislike is described as 'eating bread with sweat on the brow'. It was similar with the Jews; being people who did not acknowledge heavenly things, and who wished for a purely earthly Messiah, they inevitably found the manna distasteful, since it was a ration of the Lord; and they called it worthless bread. This was why serpents were sent among them, Numbers 21:5-6. Furthermore the heavenly things, which they obtained in adversity, in affliction, and with tears, were called by them the bread of adversity, the bread of affliction, and the bread of tears. ¹ Those things which men obtained but strongly disliked are described in the present verse as 'the bread of the sweat on his brow'.

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