se are those
who in the world were connected with the Mohammedan religion, and
lived a moral life and acknowledged one Divine, and the Lord as the
very Prophet. When these withdraw from Mohammed, because he can give
them no help, they approach the Lord and worship Him and acknowledge
His Divinity, and they are then instructed in the Christian religion.
Behind these more to the north are the places of instruction of
various heathen nations who in the world have lived a good life in
conformity with their religion, and have thereby acquired a kind of
conscience, and have done what is just and right not so much from a
regard to the laws of their government, as from a regard to the laws
of religion, which they believed ought to be sacredly observed, and
in no way violated by their doings. When these have been taught they
are all easily led to acknowledge the Lord, because it is impressed
on their hearts that God is not invisible, but is visible under a
human form. These in number exceed all the rest, and the best of them
are from Africa.

515. But all are not taught in the same way, nor by the same
societies of heaven. Those that have been brought up from childhood
in heaven, not having imbibed falsities from the falsities of
religion or defiled their spiritual life with the dregs pertaining to
honors and riches in the world, receive instruction from the angels
of the interior heavens; while those that have died in adult age
receive instruction mainly from angels of the lowest heaven, because
these angels are better suited to them than the angels of the
interior heavens, who are in interior wisdom which is not yet
acceptable to them. But the Mohammedans receive instruction from
angels who had been previously in the same religion and had been
converted to Christianity. The heathen, too, are taught by their
angels.

516. All teaching there is from doctrine drawn from the Word, and not
from the Word apart from doctrine. Christians are taught from
heavenly doctrine, which is in entire agreement with the internal
sense of the Word. All others, as the Mohammedans and heathen, are
taught from doctrines suited to their apprehension, which differ from
heavenly doctrine only in this, that spiritual life is taught by
means of moral life in harmony with the good tenets of their religion
from which they had derived their life in the world.

517. Instruction in the heavens differs from instruction on earth in
that knowledges ar