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; for children are not yet angels, but are to become
angels. 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. 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; and this
for the reason that outer and inner are homogeneous with them.
The Lord flows into the ideas of children chiefly from their inmost
soul, for nothing has closed their ideas, as with adults. No false
principles have closed them to the understanding of truth, nor any
evil life to the reception of good, nor to becoming wise.
--_Heaven and Hell, nn._ 416, 330, 331, 836