A Goodly Heritage

Every religion has a doctrine or belief about the last things, however crude. This is because this is one of man's basic interests. Ironical as it may be, man is more interested in the end of his life here than in anything else about it. This is because he has a deep-seated belief- it may be a conviction, a hope, a dread - that the end of this life is the beginning of another life. Where he got this intuition, this instinct as it were, we cannot say. But he has it. He feels deep down within him that he belongs here and now to two worlds - that part of him belongs to some other sphere, and that when this world ends, he will be wholly in that other world, he will enter upon another form of life. What man is interested in is his destiny: he feels he is a creature of destiny and he wants to know - with a great eagerness - what that destiny is. That matter of destiny obtrudes itself into man's life in the here and now - it casts its shadow or its light upon the daily life of...