"I am not getting on very well," he thought. "I have looked for three
things, and two I am sure I have not found. I have found nowhere any
explanation of the Universe, of the First Cause; I have found nowhere
any true rule of life. Yet these are two of the three 'truths' that the
faiths offer to me as inducements to believe. 'We will give you,' they
say, 'a theory of this world and of its origin which is true, which will
help you in this life because it will show you what you are and the
world is, and whence you came. We will give you through this troublous
life a guide that will never fail you, a staff that will never break.
And finally, if you believe, you shall attain after death the happiness
that is without end.'"
So they promise, and of their promises I have tried two. Have I found
that they give what they declare? Is there anywhere any belief of the
First Cause that is true, that is the whole truth? There is none. And is
there any guide to life that can be followed in sincerity and truth?
There is none. There remains only heaven. There remains only the bribe,
the promise of happiness, if we will believe as they declare, if we will
do as they say.
It may be that here is the secret, that I shall come now to the answer;
it may be that this is the key to all. If there is in the heaven they
promise us such a fulfilment of glory, such an appeal to our hearts that
they cannot but answer, what matter the rest? Happiness is our end in
life. For what do we strive all our days but for happiness, for truth,
for joy, for the beauty of life? What matter that in the theory of the
First Cause we can see no truth, that in the rule of life I can find
only a contradiction of beauty, if in the end in heaven these are
attained? The end, if the end be perfect, will reveal the truth and the
beauty in the ways that are now hid. What is this heaven?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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