ce 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.

{Footnote 1} Between good and truth there is a kind of marriage
(n. 1904, 2173, 2508). Good and truth are in a perpetual
endeavor to be conjoined, and good longs for truth and for
conjunction with it (n. 9206, 9207, 9495). How the conjunction
of good and truth takes place, and in whom (n. 3834, 3843,
4096, 4097, 4301, 4345, 4353, 4364, 4368, 5365, 7623-7627,
9258).

320. A certain spirit from among the heathen who had lived in the
world in good of charity in accordance with his religion, hearing
Christian spirits reasoning about what must be believed, (for spirits
reason with each other far more thoroughly and acutely than men,
especially about what is good and true,) wondered at such
contentions, and said that he did not care to listen to them, for
they reasoned from appearances and fallacies; and he gave them this
instruction: "If I am good I can know from the good itself what is
true; and what I do not know I can receive."

321. I have been taught in many ways that the heathen who have led a
moral life and have lived in obedience and subordination and mutual
charity in accordance with their religion, and have thus received
something of conscience, are accepted in the other life, and are
there instructed with solicitous care by the angels in the goods and
truths of faith; and that when they are being taught they behave
themselves modestly, intelligently, and wisely, and readily accept
truths and adopt them. They have not worked out for themselves any
principles of falsity antagonistic to the truths of faith that will
need to be shaken off, still less cavils against the Lord, as many
Christians have who cherish no other idea of Him than that He is an
ordinary man. The heathen on the contrary when they hear that God has
become a Man, and has thus manifested Himself in the world,
immediately acknowledge it and worship the Lord, saying that because
God is the God of heaven and of earth, and because the human race is
His, He has fully disclosed Himself to men.{1} It is a Divine truth
that apart from the Lord there is no salvation; but this is to be
understood