This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world. - Emmanuel Swedenborg

By this faith instilled from childhood and afterward confirmed by preachings, it has come to pass that no one shuns evils from religion, but only from civil and moral law; thus not because they are sins but because they are damaging.

Historical faith causes the Lord to be present, because it is an intuition of the Lord from the quality of His Divinity. That faith does not save, until man lives the life of faith, which is charity, for he then wills and does the things which he believes, and to will and to do is of the love, and love conjoins him whom faith causes to be present.

In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions