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set for him with expensive and exquisite delicacies of various kinds, and generous wines.

From this consideration it is obvious that the last as well as the first in heaven, have celestial felicity, each in his degree; consequently that those also enjoy such felicity, who are without the Christian world, provided they shun evils as sins against God, because they are contrary to religion.

There are a few who are in utter ignorance about God. But these, if they have lived a moral life, are instructed after death by angels, and in their moral life receive a spiritual principle. It is the same with those who worship the sun and moon, and think that God is in these. They know no otherwise, and therefore it is not imputed to them as sin; for the Lord says, "If ye were blind," that is, if ye did not know, "ye would have no sin" (John ix. 41).

But there are many who worship idols and images even in the Christian world. And this, indeed, is idolatrous, yet not with all; for there are some to whom images serve as a means of inducing them to think of God. By virtue of influx from heaven, those who acknowledge God wish to see Him; and those who cannot, like those who are interiorly spiritual, elevate the mind above things sensual, awaken in themselves an idea of Him by means of a statue or a graven image. Those who do this, and do not adore the image itself as a god, if they live according to the precepts of the Decalogue from a principle of religion, are saved.