The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred
writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such
good lessons as they inculcate. Like the ancient writers of the Bible
our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here. "To
perform the duties of this world well, troubling not about another, is
the prime wisdom," says Confucius, great sage and teacher. The next
world and its duties we shall consider when we are placed in it.
I am as a speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this
solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe. I shrink back. One truth I
see. Franklin was right. "The highest worship of God is service to
Man." All this, however, does not prevent everlasting hope of
immortality. It would be no greater miracle to be born to a future
life than to have been born to live in this present life. The one has
been created, why not the other? Therefore there is reason to hope for
immortality. Let us hope.[75]
[Footnote 75: "A.C. is really a tremendous personality--dramatic,
wilful, generous, whimsical, at times almost cruel in pressing his own
conviction upon others, and then again tender, affectionate,
emotional, always imaginative, unusual and wide-visioned in his views.
He is well worth Boswellizing, but I am urging him to be 'his own
Boswell.
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