Part 21 (2/2)

That there is a future most of us agree, because good sense and logic points to that sane and reasonable conclusion.

So be it, with a belief in the future estate, it is reasonable to a.s.sume that our acts and lives in the present estate will have influence on our future estate.

We know positively of today, and the happiness we can get from good deeds done today.

If we will have power in the future to look back to today's acts, well and good, if today's acts are worth while.

The other view that eternity is everything and the present is nothing is the antiquated view, the narrow view; the, I might say, illiterate view.

That view warps the present life; it calls for present self-chastis.e.m.e.nt, present gloom, present sorrow and present misery.

It takes the tangible definite today, calls it nothing, and accepts the intangible unknown eternity as everything.

It trades the definite for the indefinite. It calls life a bubble, a vapor, a shadow. In fact, it makes gloom on today's suns.h.i.+ne and puts its believers into a purgatory; a dismal unhappy punishment antechamber where man exists and waits peeping out of his cell windows for a little imagined view of eternity.

He waits and endures the unpleasant interval, steeled against definite pleasures and evident life of today, and worried into an intoxicated colored belief in the expected happiness of the undefined future.

He refuses to think of definite life of today and spoils the thought of those who do.

He is a blockade to progress, a disagreeable part of life's picture.

He gets no happiness in the today which is in his hands, he loses this opportunity during his definite existence, and lives on future hopes in a future state which no man today knows what it will be.

Both theories as ultimate beliefs are wrong, yet each has some truth in its conclusion.

By taking the words eternity and present and saying both means everything, we avoid extremes and form a truth that is rational, and harmonious to good reason.

The man who says present is all does so because he is an utilitarian. He acts on the definite and refuses to believe in the abstract. Anything that is outside the sphere of his vision and action is of little concern to him.

The man who says eternity is all, wastes opportunity, example and warps himself into a miserable hermit.

Life is irrevocable. Every act in our life is placed, set, and fixed.

Every act goes in the record book of yesterday and it cannot be changed.

Acts that hurt others will rebound and hurt us. Deeds that helped others will rebound and help us. This much is certain.

There is a future, I believe that. There is a G.o.d, I believe that.

Just what the future is, and just what G.o.d is, I do not know in perfect detail.

Reward for good and punishment for bad, is part of G.o.d's plan, and I am conscious of this truth.

I know that justice prevails in this life, and this life is what I am living now.

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