SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - ( PT. 52 }

 { PT.  52 } - Take as an example managers of the goods of others, higher or lower. If these secretly be arts or under some pretext by fraud deprive their kings, their country, or their masters of their goods, they have no religion and thus no conscience, for they hold the Divine law respecting theft in contempt and make it of no account. And although they frequent churches, devoutly listen to preachings, observe the sacrament of the Supper, pray morning and evening, and talk piously from the Word, yet nothing from heaven flows in and is present in their worship, piety, or discourse, since their interiors are full of theft, plundering, robbery, and injustice; and so long as these are within, the way into them from heaven is closed; consequently all the works they do are evil works. But the managers of property who shun unlawful gains and fraudulent profits because they are contrary to the Divine law respecting theft, have religion, and thus also conscience; and all the works they do are good, for they act from justice for the sake of justice, and furthermore are content with their own, and are cheerful in mind and glad in heart whenever it happens that they have refrained from fraud; and after death they are welcomed by the angles and receive by them as brothers, and are presented with good things even to abundance. But the opposite is true of evil managers; these after death are cast out of societies, and afterward seek wages and finally are sent into the caverns of robbers to labor there ( A.E., n. 977 ).