816. I enquired where the people of Hamburg are to be found in the spiritual world. I was told that they are nowhere to be found gathered into one community, much less into one state, but scattered around and mixed with Germans in various regions. When I asked the reason, I was told it was because their minds are continually, looking around and as it were travelling outside their own city, and taking little note of things within it. For the state of a person's mind in the natural world determines its state in the spiritual world. A person's mind is his spirit, or the surviving personality which lives, on after leaving the material body.
816A* A proposition put forward by a certain Duke, an Elector of Germany, who also held the highest rank in the church.
Once I saw in the spiritual world a certain Duke who was an Elector of Germany, and who also held the highest rank in the church. He had two bishops beside him, and also two ministers. I could hear, though some way off, what they were discussing. The Duke Elector asked the four in attendance whether they knew what constitutes the chief point of religion in Christendom. 'The chief point of religion in Christendom,' said the bishops, 'is faith alone justifying and saving.' He asked again, 'Do you know what lies hidden within that faith? Open it up, look inside, and tell me.' They replied that what lay hidden within it was nothing other than the merit and righteousness of the Lord the Saviour. To this the Duke Elector said, 'Then does not the Lord the Saviour lie hidden in it in His Human, in which He is called Jesus Christ, because in His Human He alone was righteousness?' To this they said, 'Yes, this follows certainly and inevitably.'
The Duke Elector pressed them, saying, 'Open up that faith and take another look inside; search carefully to see whether there is not something else inside.' The ministers said, 'There is also hidden in it the grace of God the Father.' To this the Duke Elector said, 'Form a correct idea and perception, and you will see that it is the grace of the Son with the Father, for it is the Son who begs and intercedes. Therefore I tell you, since you confess, reverence and kiss that faith alone of yours, to be sure to confess, reverence and kiss the Lord alone as Saviour in His Human. For, as I said before, He in His Human was and is righteousness. I have seen in Holy Scripture that He in His Human is also Jehovah and God, as in these passages:
Behold, the days will come, when I shall raise up a righteous shoot for David, who will reign as king and prosper. And this is the name by which they will call him, Jehovah our righteousness. Jer. 23:5, 6; 33:15, 16.
In Paul:
In Jesus Christ all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily. Col. 2:9.
And in John:
Jesus Christ is the true God, and everlasting life. 1 John 5:20.
That too is why He is called 'the God of faith' (Phil. 3:9).
* This section, which has no number in the first edition, was added apparently as an afterthought at the end of the Index of Experiences which follows 851; it is placed here where it seems best to belong. See preface, p. vii.
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