118. [119.] I was taken again to Africans by a way leading first to the north and then to the west. I saw there what appeared to be a palace with some people about it, and afterward traveled on beyond, where I stopped; and I heard that a great number of emissaries were being sent from the Christian heaven to the people there, who were Africans, and who in that place were ones who in the world had lived according to their religious faith and acknowledged one God in human form. These Africans were told that a person who lives intent on good in accordance with religion possesses as well an affection for truth, because goodness of life desires nothing more than truth, inasmuch as it desires to know how one is to live well. Persons of that character consequently rejoice on being instructed. Moreover, all such persons receive truths from the Lord, they were told, and are enlightened according to the nature and extent of the goodness of their life. The Africans acknowledged this and were delighted by it. The African people are more capable of enlightenment than all other peoples on this earth, because they are of such a character as to think interiorly and thus to accept truths and acknowledge them. Others, such as Europeans, think only externally, receiving truths in their memory, but not seeing them interiorly in any light of the understanding-a light which they also do not acknowledge in matters of faith. I told them that few Christians live in accordance with religion, but in accordance with civil laws, and morally and well for the sake of reputation, honors and opportunities for material gain, and that they rarely think to live in accordance with doctrinal precepts, even believing themselves to be saved by faith in their doctrine, and not by an accompanying life. Consequently they also do not have doctrinal precepts governing life. The Africans were very astonished at this, not wishing to believe it to be so, believing rather that there is no one who does not live in accordance with his religion, and that if he does not, he must inevitably become stupid and evil, because he then does not receive anything from heaven.