46. On the plurality of wives among Mohammedans

I spoke with Mohammedans about spiritual marriage, saying that it is a marriage of good and truth; that good loves truth and truth good like a married couple; and that these wish to be joined and bring forth goods and truths like daughters and sons, and as it were to procreate families. They understood this well, as also that conjugial love comes down from that spiritual origin, and that everything spiritual in man undergoes a change, so that it is scarcely recognisable, when it comes down to the natural; it can only be recognised by correspondences. From these facts it is plain that they, having several wives allowed by their religion, cannot have truly conjugial love. It was said that they are allowed several wives, that is, polygamy is permitted, because they live in hot climates and therefore are more heated with lust than those who live in cold climates. ¹ Therefore if they were not permitted polygamy, more of them would rush into adultery than would Europeans, and thus act contrary to their religious tenets; and to act contrary to one's religious tenets is to profane what is sacred. It was shown further that all their love of marriage is lascivious, and so not spiritual; nor can it become spiritual unless they acknowledge the Lord.

Footnotes:

724. Here too 'sevens of each' means that they are holy. But in this case they are holy truths, which are holy because they stem from goods. No truth is in any sense holy unless it does stem from good. A person can utter many truths from the Word, reciting them by heart, but unless they are the product of love or charity holiness is no way attributable to them. If however love and charity are there, in that case he really acknowledges and believes them, doing so from the heart. It is similar with faith, which so many people speak of as that which alone saves; unless faith stems from love or charity it is in no sense faith. It is love and charity that render faith holy. The Lord is present within love and charity, but not within faith that has been separated. Separated faith is a peculiarity of man himself, who has nothing but uncleanness within him. For when faith has been separated from love, he speaks from the intention that is in his heart, that intention being his own renown or his own profit. This anyone may recognize from personal experience, as when he tells somebody that he loves him, likes him more than anybody else, rates him the best of all, and so on, and yet in his heart he thinks something completely different. He is doing this only with his lips while denying it in his heart; and sometimes he is even making fun of that person. The same is true of faith, as I have been made fully aware through many experiences. Some during their lifetime have extolled the Lord and faith in words so fine, and at the same time with all the appearance of being devout, that their hearers have been dumbfounded. But they have not done it from the heart, and in the next life they are among those who utterly hate the Lord and persecute people who have faith.