Heaven and its Wonders and HellSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Future life -- Christianity -- Early work to 1800; Heaven -- Christianity; Hell -- Christianity
358. It should be said to begin with that a man may acquire riches
and accumulate wealth as far as opportunity is given, if it is not
done by craft or fraud; that he may enjoy the delicacies of food and
drink if he does not place his life therein; that he may have a
palatial dwelling in accord with his condition, have interaction with
others in like condition, frequent places of amusement, talk about
the affairs of the world, and need not go about like a devotee with a
sad and sorrowful countenance and drooping head, but may be joyful
and cheerful; nor need he give his goods to the poor except so far as
affection leads him; in a word, he may live outwardly precisely like
a man of the world; and all this will be no obstacle to his entering
heaven, provided that inwardly in himself he thinks about God as he
ought, and acts sincerely and justly in respect to his neighbor. For
a man is such as his affection and thought are, or such as his love
and faith are, and from these all his outward acts derive their life;
since acting is willing, and speaking is thinking, acting being from
the will, and speaking from the thought. So where it is said in the
Word that man will be judged according to his deeds, and will be
rewarded according to his works, it is meant that he will be judged
and rewarded in accordance with his thought and affection, which are
the source of his deeds, or which are in his deeds; for deeds are
nothing apart from these, and are precisely such as these are.{1} All
this shows that the man's external accomplishes nothing, but only his
internal, which is the source of the external. For example: if a man
acts honestly and refrains from fraud solely because he fears the
laws and the loss of reputation and thereby of honor or gain, and if
that fear did not restrain him would defraud others whenever he
could; although such a man's deeds outwardly appear honest, his
thought and will are fraud; and because he is inwardly dishonest and
fraudulent he has hell in himself. But he who acts honestly and
refrains from fraud because it is against God and against the
neighbor would have no wish to defraud another if he could; his
thought and will are conscience, and he has heaven in himself. The
deeds of these two appear alike in outward form, but inwardly they
are wholly unlike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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