The Inside of the Cup — Volume 05Churchill, Winston
Science
The Inside of the Cup — Volume 05
Churchill, Winston
Attitude change -- Fiction; Christian ethics -- Fiction; Christian life -- Fiction; Conscience -- Religious aspects -- Fiction
He taxed his heart and intellect to answer her sensible and helpfully,
and thus found himself avoiding the logic, the Greek philosophy, the
outworn and meaningless phrases of speculation; found himself employing
(with extraordinary effect upon them both) the simple words from which
many of these theories had been derived. "He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father." What she saw in Horace Bentley, he explained, was God. God
wished us to know how to live, in order that we might find happiness, and
therefore Christ taught us that the way to find happiness was to teach
others how to live,--once we found out. Such was the meaning of Christ's
Incarnation, to teach us how to live in order that we might find God and
happiness. And Hodder translated for her the word Incarnation.
Now, he asked, how were we to recognize God, how might we know how he
wished us to live, unless we saw him in human beings, in the souls into
which he had entered? In Mr. Bentley's soul? Was this too deep?
She pondered, with flushed face.
"I never had it put to me like that," she said, presently. "I never
could have known what you meant if I hadn't seen Mr. Bentley."
Here was a return flash, for him. Thus, teaching he taught. From this
germ he was to evolve for himself the sublime truth that the world grown
better, not through automatic, soul-saving machinery, but by Personality.
On another occasion she inquired about "original sin;"--a phrase which
had stuck in her memory since the stormings of the Madison preacher.
Here was a demand to try his mettle.
"It means," he replied after a moment, "that we are all apt to follow the
selfish, animal instincts of our matures, to get all we can for ourselves
without thinking of others, to seek animal pleasures. And we always
suffer for it."
"Sure," she agreed. "That's what happened to me."
"And unless we see and know some one like Mr. Bentley," he went on,
choosing his words, "or discover for ourselves what Christ was, and what
he tried to tell us, we go on 'suffering, because we don't see any way
out. We suffer because we feel that we are useless, that other persons
are doing our work."
"That's what hell is!" She was very keen. "Hell's here," she repeated.
"Hell may begin here, and so may heaven," he answered.
"Why, he's in heaven now!" she exclaimed, "it's funny I never thought of
it before." Of course she referred to Mr. Bentley.
Thus; by no accountable process of reasoning, he stumbled into the path
which was to lead him to one of the widest and brightest of his vistas,
the secret of eternity hidden in the Parable of the Talents! But it will
not do to anticipate this matter . . . .
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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