1. Every Religion Is a Way of Life, and Its Life Is the Doing of Good

Everyone with any religion knows and acknowledges that someone who lives right is saved, and that someone who does not live right is damned. For he knows and acknowledges that someone who lives right, thinks right, not only about God, but also about the neighbor; but not so someone who does not live right.

A person’s life is his love, and what a person loves he not only freely does, but also freely thinks. We say therefore that his life is the doing of good, because doing right accompanies his thinking right. If these two do not go together, they do not constitute a person’s life.

But this we will show in the following pages.

67. Insofar as Someone Refrains from Every Form of Murder as a Sin, So Far He Has Love for the Neighbor

By every form of murder we mean also every instance of enmity, hatred and vengeance with a longing to kill, for murder lies concealed within these, like fire in wood under the ashes. Nor is the fire of hell anything else. It is owing to this that we speak of someone’s seething with hatred or burning for revenge. These forms of murder are murder in the natural sense.

By murder in the spiritual sense, then, we mean all the ways of killing or destroying people’s souls, which are various and many. And by murder in the highest sense we mean hatred of the Lord.

These three kinds of murder go together and are inseparable. For someone who wishes the death of a person’s body in the world, after death wishes the death of his soul. He also wishes the death of the Lord, for he burns with anger at Him and wishes to blot out His name.