When 'islands' are contrasted to 'earth' or 'mountains,' they signify the truths of faith, because they are in the sea. They signify doctrinal things which are rituals. 'Islands' signify peoples who are more remote from the worship of God. People who are steeped in the internal sense of the Word, such as angels, do not know what islands are, because they no longer have any concept of such places. Instead they have a perception of more remote worship, like the gentiles outside the church.

'Islands,' in Ezekiel 27:6, signify people in the church in a natural, materially-oriented state but still rational.

(참조: Apocalypse Explained 406; Isaiah 1, Isaiah 49, 49:1)

1033. With regard to the assertion that gentiles too have a conscience for what is right and good conferred on them according to the religion they have, the situation is this: Conscience in general is either true, spurious, or false. True conscience is a conscience formed by the Lord from truths of faith. Once it has been conferred a person is afraid to act contrary to the truths of faith because to do so is to act contrary to conscience. This conscience nobody can receive who does not possess any truths of faith, and this also is why not so many in the Christian world do so, for there everybody advances his own dogma as being the truth of faith. Nevertheless people who are being regenerated receive conscience while receiving charity, for the basic constituent of conscience is charity.

[2] Spurious conscience is a conscience formed with gentiles from the religious worship in which they have been born and brought up. For them acting contrary to that religious worship is acting contrary to conscience. When their conscience is grounded in charity and mercy, and in obedience, they are people such as are able to receive a true conscience in the next life, and do indeed receive it. In fact there is nothing they would rather have than the truth of faith.

[3] False conscience is a conscience formed not from internal things but from external, that is, not from charity but from self-love and love of the world. In fact there are people who seem to themselves to be acting contrary to conscience when they act against their neighbour, and who also at such times seem to themselves to be inwardly smitten. Yet the reason is that they perceive in their thought that their own life, position, reputation, wealth, or financial gain is at stake, and so perceive that they themselves are being hurt. Some inherit this soft-heartedness, others acquire it for themselves. It is however a false conscience.