"
Never repent, unless by repentance you mean drawing lessons from past
experience. Beating against the bars of fate you will only wound
yourself, and mar what yet remains to you. Grief for the past is useful
so far as it can be transmuted into renewed force for the future. The
love of those we have lost may enable us to love better those who
remain, and those who are to come. So used, it is an infinitely precious
possession, and to be cherished with all our hearts. As it leads to
vain regrets, it is at best an enervating enjoyment, and a needless
pain. The figments of theology are a consecration of our delusive
dreams; the teaching of the new faith should be the utilization of every
emotion to the bettering of the world of the future.
The ennobling element of the belief in a future life is beyond the
attack, or rather is strengthened by the aid, of science. Science, like
theology, bids us look beyond our petty personal interests, and
cultivate faculties other than the digestive. Theology aims at
stimulating the same instincts, but provides them with an object in some
shifting cloud-land of the imagination instead of the definite _terra
firma_ of this tangible earth.
Pages:
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299