Immortality and Inconsistency

Irish Jesuit Province

Immortality and InconsistencyAuthor(s): William A. SuttonSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 27, No. 309 (Mar., 1899), pp. 131-135Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20499405 .

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131

IMMORTALITY AND INCONSISTENCY.

The Spxetator for December 10th, 1898, in an article on "Human Immortality," has the followi3ug:-" Our belief on this

momentous subject will inevitably mould our lives. As Browning has it in 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day,' we shall, if we

believe in the future life, treat this world, not as the palace, but as the vestibule to the palace; we shall not care for the bubble called fame, for what is the fame even of a thousand years compared with the endless ages of ete.rnity? We shall not concern ourselves with the ordinary objects of earthly ambition, any more than a grown man would concern himself with the toys of a child. We shall not even worry ourselves over the evil and the orimes and the failures of the world, for we shall view things in a grand perspective, and shall understand that nothing can really be j udged here. We shall not allow mere secular civilization

to dominate us, as it dominates at the present moment a world

which has lost for the most part its sense of the divine. So that

not only our sublimest hopes, but even the course of our actual

life, hangs largely on what is our view as to the scale on which

our life is built, whether it is an ephemeral affair, a little gleamn

of consciousness between two black abysses, or whether there is

that in us which will surmount the barrier of space and time, and

which will escape corruption. "

Nothing more contrary to experience could well be so well expressed. The unclouded certitude of vast millions in all ages as to another life of endless duration has been, and is, and always

will be amazingly inefficient in producing such results. While having no doubt at all of the soul's immortality and of the awful sanctions of conduct here, men live for the most part, as if this life, so frail and fleeting, were the solid reality and the next not

much more than " such stuff as dreams are made of." It is

wonderful, but so is almost everything when we try to realize it. Mystery every where.

It is not intellectual conviction which moulds us, though that is necessary; it is something else altogether. Our will' is the great factor, free to choose, making us masters of our eternal lot, and yet all but helpless, most capricious and even perverse,



132. The ri8h Monthly

unless we choose to be helped by a power external to ourselves. Reason and faith make it certain that man was created by

God to serve Him here by obeying His law, and consequently that all things else, everything we can use our free-will about, are the means at our disposal for doing our duty, and that in this way alone can we arrive at happiness, that great object of our desires, the necessary result, of serving God. This is the great fundamental truth of all true religion. It is the first tbing a child is taught in the catechism, it is constantly being insisted on in sermons, books, retreats, and missions. Those who hear or read assent to it unhesitatingly, and still we all see, know, feel how muarvellously at variance with it is human conduct.

The longing for happiness is -at the bottom and top of human action and pervades it through and through iD all directions. As Coleridge says :-" We are poor querulous creatures, nothing less than all things will suffice to make us happy, and a little more than nothing is enough to make us miserable." We are not always consciously seeking to be happy, that is, to have all desire satisfied; but, for all that, it is because such is the nature of human

will, longing for perfect peace and satisfaction, that we act at all and always. To get some good, to avoid some evil-such ever are the motives we have when we use our free-wills. As the universal law of gravitation regulates and controls the motions of planets, projectiles, and falling apples, so does happiness, the longing for it, rule and limit our wills in great actions and small.

Men are not free with regard to whether they will wish to be

happy or not. Such a state would be monstrous, contradictory,

impossible. We must desire happiness, we must aim at some

good in whatever we do. But we are free as to what we shall

place our happiness in. St. Augustine says, happiness consists in having all that we desire and desiring nothing wrong. That is

perfect happiness and cannot be had in this life, for we cannot have all that we desire, and we shall even against our wish cr-ave for what iswrong. Happiness is not to be had here,therefore. If we would be happy indeed, we must look elsewhere for it, we can at the best have but some beginning of it here. This life for all is a

mixture of good and evil, the proportions of whith vary without limit.

Most men do not think about the matter atYail. They simply try to get what they want or desire; we are full of desires, very often



Immartality and incoisistenicy. 133

complex and conflicting. Our rational nature seeks its satisfactions, the animal nature does the same. What is good any way and every

way, such we crave-present, future, permanent, fleeting, high and noble, base and degrading. The world around us professes to be able to give us what we want; anyway men think it does, and so set about satisfying themselves.

Faith puts before us the true way to be happy. If we would have eternal life, we must keep God's commandments. The more perfectly we do so, the happier we shall be. This is believed by all Catholics, and moreover that, if we die in unrepented grievous sin, we shall be miserable for ever. But how often and how long

we live as if this were not true at all! Commonly happiness is placed in the things of this world, its wealth, its enjoyments, its esteem and glory. Wishing we had all, we take what we can get and deliberately wish to find happiness where conscience tells us we should not seek it; we turn away from the higher good and fix our hearts on the lower. It seems natural for us to do so, it is certainly extremely hard not to do so, and we shall always do so, except God delivers us.

We are under a spell of some sort. Scripture calls it fascindtio nugacitatis, the bewitching of trifling or vanity; that is

worldliness, loving and valuing the good things of this life for their own sake to the exclusion of higher and eternal goods.

This spell has such a hold on many that they care for nothing else save this life's good things; others are not quite so bewitched, and others aoain are comparatively freed Why have this world and its belongings such tremendous power over us? Why have the senses and their objects such a mastery that St. Paul cries out "c Unhappy man that I am, who will deliver me ?" Why is our

spiritual nature so weak, our grasp of spiritual things so feeble ? Why do we break our hearts over trifles and care not a straw for priceless treasures ? Ah ! why ?

It is not only the worldly and the sinful who live and think and feel, often and long, as if this life were everything. One of the strangest phenomena of life is the struggles and inconsistencies of those who are believers and doers of the law of God. In the first place, it is only by constant effort and vigilance they can keep the spell of the world from mastering them so as to blind them to

the true way to happiness and bring them to judge and act as if

happiness could be had in the gratifications and distractions of



134 The Irish Monthly.

earth. In the, second place, though they keep themselves from being fascinated and. led astray generally and utterly, even the best are extraordinarily influenced by merely worldly things and principles. No doubt there is every kind of mixture in this influence, and every proportion of the components of this mixture.

The exaggerated esteem of wealth, of social status, learning, all kinds of distinction and success-one nmay hear the best of people

speak of such things as if they were all important, and the common experience is that all are marvellously impressed by them.

What Burns says of the field mouse, "the present only toucheth thee," is true of all animals, even the rational in a large degree. What is present, what is near, what affects our senses and passions, whatever is in any way part and parcel of this present life, that is what we are so terribly inclined to be fascinated by to the exclusion of what is spiritutal, invisible, future, belonging to a state of things of which we have no true imagination and only

incorporeal ideas. These ideas represent facts, and we are quite

certain of their reality, but because they do not affect us like

things we have real imagination of, hence we are as and what we

are, " the glory, jest, and riddle of the world." What a mystery it- all is! "Man can find no reason of all those works of God that are done under the sun; and the more he shall labour to seek, so much the less shall he find; yea, though the wise man should say that he knoweth it, he shall not be able to find- it." (Eccles. viii. 17).

The fact is that the happiness God created us for is the greatest of all mysteries. It can only be apprehended by divine faith and earned by " faith that worketh by charity." It is so out of

proportion with our natural faculties that we cannot of ourselves tend towards it at all. We must be raised and strengthened by the ilmmediate action of God Himself on our minds and hearts, enlightened and moved by Him, by His divine grace, with which we must on our part freely co-operate. The truths of faith are of infinite value. To be able and willing to believe them is what is called the divine gift of faith. Tbat it is most reasonable to submit our minds to it, that all which it teaches is absolutely real and true, every Catholic is absolutely convinced, and every one else would be, if it were put before him rightly, and if he could and would use his mind and will rightly.

What has been said throws some light on the strange state of



The Wandering Jew. 135

affairs in which we find ourselves. It throws some light on the

facts of experience which are so bitterly opposed to the views of

Browning and of the Spectator writer as to. the effects of the

cartitude of human immortality on human conduct.

WILLIAM A. SuTToN, SJ.

THE WANDERING JEW.

A LEGEND OF THIE PYRENEES.

ITH prick of spear and knotted cord The soldiers follow up the road,

And drive their Saviour and their Lord, As angry peasants oxen goad. In purple robe with crown-d head

He slowly climbs the steep ascent, At every step His blood is shed,

His shoulders 'neath the cross are bent; He twice hath fallen-and now hard-pressed Amid the jeering crowd would fall

But that He gains a moment's rest By leaning 'gainst a cobbler's stall.

A moment's rest !-He asks no more Who gave us life, and earth, and heaven. This last least boon shall Good implore And shall it not by man be given ?

The cobbler sees the mute appeal

Of Jesu's blood and Jesu's slghs; His sordid soul can only feel In Jesu's presence danger lies.

For, if delayed, the angry bands His paltry stall may overthrow In haste, with sacrilegious hands,

He strikes the Christ and bids Him go.

And Jesus goes without a word, But where His feet a moment stayed, There stands an angel of the Lord In all Jehovah's might arrayed



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Immortality and Inconsistency