aid above) in heaven and in every
society there the light decreases from the middle to the outskirts, and
those who above others are in Divine truths are in the middle, while
those who are in few truths are in the outskirts. Those are in few
truths who from religion know only that there is a God, and that the
Lord suffered for them, and that charity and faith are essentials of
the church, not troubling themselves to know what faith is or what
charity is; when yet faith in its essence is truth, and truth is
manifold, and charity is all the work of his calling which man does
from the Lord; he does this from the Lord when he flees from evils as
sins. It is just as was said above, that the end is the all of the cause,
and the effect the all of the end by means of the cause; the end is
charity or good, the cause is faith or truth, and effects are good works
or uses; from which it is plain that from charity no more can be carried
into works than the measure in which charity is conjoined with the truths
which are called truths of faith. By means of these truths charity enters
into works and qualifies them.

254. (4) The character of the natural man in whom the spiritual degree
is entirely closed. The spiritual degree is closed in those who are in
evils as to life, and still more in those who from evils are in falsities.
It is the same as with the fibril of a nerve, which contracts at the
slightest touch of any thing heterogeneous; so every motive fiber of a
muscle, yea, the muscle itself, and even the whole body shrinks from the
touch of whatever is hard or cold. So also the substances or forms of the
spiritual degree in man shrink from evils and their falsities, because
these are heterogeneous. For the spiritual degree, being in the form of
heaven, admits nothing but goods, and truths that are from good; these
are homogeneous to it; but evils, and falsities that are from evil, are
heterogeneous to it. This degree is contracted, and by contraction closed,
especially in those who in the world are in love of ruling from love of
self, because this love is opposed to love to the Lord. It is also closed,
but not so much, in those who from love of the world are in the insane
greed of possessing the goods of others. These loves shut the spiritual
degree, because they are the origins of evils. The contraction or closing
of this degree is like the twisting back of a spiral in the opposite
direction; for which reason, that degree after i