To have dominion by religion, is to have dominion over mens souls, thus over their very spiritual life, and to use the Divine things, which are in their religion, as the means. – Emanuel Swedenborg
In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions. – Emanuel Swedenborg
The Divine of the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness. – Emanuel Swedenborg
And as the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is the good of love and the truth of faith, the angels are angels and are heaven in the measure in which they receive good and truth from the Lord. – Emanuel Swedenborg
There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said “Let us pray,” and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. – Desmond M. Tutu, “Religious Human Rights and the Bible”