Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/206

 which consists in willing truth not for its own sake, but for the sake of self-glory, fame and gain. ..

That within the church at this day faith is so rare that it can scarcely be said to exist at all, was made evident from many of the learned and simple whose spirits were explored after death as to what their faith had been in the world, and it was found that every one of them supposed faith to be mere believing, and persuaded themselves that it was so; and that the more learned of them placed it entirely in believing with trust or confidence that they are saved by the Lord's passion and intercession, and that hardly one among them knew that there is no faith if there is no charity or love; nay, that they did not know what charity to the neighbor is, nor the difference between thinking and willing. For the most part they turned their backs upon charity, saying that charity does nothing, but that faith alone is effective. When it was replied to them, that charity and faith are one, like the will and the intellect, and that charity has its seat in the will and faith in the intellect, and that to separate the one from the other is, as it were, to separate the will from the intellect, they did not understand it. Whence it was made evident to me that scarcely any faith exists at the present day.

This also was shown them to the life. They who were in the persuasion that they had faith, were led to an angelic society where genuine faith existed; and when they were made to communicate with it