319. That the heathen equally with Christians are saved any one can see who knows what it is that makes heaven in man; for heaven is within man, and those that have heaven within them come into heaven. Heaven with man is acknowledging the Divine and being led by the Divine. The first and chief thing of every religion is to acknowledge the Divine. A religion that does not acknowledge the Divine is no religion. The precepts of every religion look to worship; thus to the way in which the Divine is to be worshiped that the worship may be acceptable to Him; and when this has been settled in one's mind, that is, so far as one wills this or so far as he loves it, he is led by the Lord. Everyone knows that the heathen as well as Christians live a moral life, and many of them a better life than Christians. Moral life may be lived either out of regard to the Divine or out of regard to men in the world; and a moral life that is lived out of regard to the Divine is a spiritual life. In outward form the two appear alike, but in inward form they are wholly different; the one saves man, the other does not. For he who lives a moral life out of regard to the Divine is led by the Divine; while he who leads a moral life out of regard to men in the world is led by himself.

[2] But this may be illustrated by an example. He that refrains from doing evil to his neighbor because it is antagonistic to religion, that is, antagonistic to the Divine, refrains from doing evil from a spiritual motive; but he that refrains from doing evil to another merely from fear of the law, or the loss of reputation, of honor, or gain, that is, from regard to self and the world, refrains from doing evil from a natural motive, and is led by himself. The life of the latter is natural, that of the former is spiritual. A man whose moral life is spiritual has heaven within him; but he whose moral life is merely natural does not have heaven within him; and for the reason that heaven flows in from above and opens man's interiors, and through his interiors flows into his exteriors; while the world flows in from beneath and opens the exteriors but not the interiors. For there can be no flowing in from the natural world into the spiritual, but only from the spiritual world into the natural; therefore if heaven is not also received, the interiors remain closed. All this makes clear who those are that receive heaven within them, and who do not.

[3] And yet heaven is not the same in one as in another. It differs in each one in accordance with his affection for good and its truth. Those that are in an affection for good out of regard to the Divine, love Divine truth, since good and truth love each other and desire to be conjoined. ¹ This explains why the heathen, although they are not in genuine truths in the world, yet because of their love receive truths in the other life.

फुटनोट:

30. It is because the Divine essence itself is love and wisdom that a person has two faculties of life, one of which is the origin of his intellect, and the other the origin of his will. The faculty from which the intellect originates draws all its properties from an influx of wisdom from God, and the faculty from which the will originates draws all its properties from an influx of love from God. A person's failure to become rightly wise and to love rightly does not take away these faculties but only closes them up, and as long as they remain closed, the intellect is indeed called intellect, and the will likewise will, but still they are essentially nonexistent. Consequently if the aforesaid two faculties were to be taken away, everything human would perish, which is to think and from thinking speak, and to will and from willing act.

It is apparent from this that the Divine resides in a person in these two faculties, in the faculty for becoming wise and in the faculty for loving - or rather, that He is able to do so.

That everyone has in him the ability to become wise and the ability to love, even if he is not as wise and loving as he might be, is something that has become well known to me from a good deal of experience, experience which you will see amply presented elsewhere.