Paradise Regained. TNT

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СКАЧАТЬ When we go higher—or farther along the road—we may move into other quarters. We need not think of that at present. Join our small household. In other words, stay where you are. That shouldn’t be difficult as you have no “goods and chattels”.’

      The boy started to express his gratitude, but we stopped him. There was no need for words; his thoughts were sufficient.

      ‘That’s settled, then,’ said Ruth, ‘and now, Roger, tell us what you think of things.’

      Our friend seated himself in a comfortable chair, and looked considerably puzzled. ‘What I can’t make out,’ he said, at length, ‘is how all this you’ve shown me squares up with religion? I wasn’t taught much, and never knew exactly what to expect. . .’

      ‘You’re not the first to wonder that, Roger. Millions do the same. Ruth and I did so. We were in no better case than yourself. What it comes to is this: when you are on earth, this whole spirit world is regarded as the “life after death”, the next world”, and is treated solely from the religious standpoint, except by a comparatively select few. I call them select because those few possess the truth—not all the truth, naturally, but sufficient for absolute comfort. The religions of the earth have assumed rights over this life to which they are not entitled. The passing from earth to the spirit world is not a religious affair whatever, it’s a purely natural process, and one that cannot be avoided. Living a good life on earth is not a religious matter. Why should it be? Have you seen signs of that sort of thing here, Roger? Yet who will dare to say we are not living good, decent lives here?

      ‘Then take the total number of religions on earth. There are thousands among the Christians alone, and all believing something different from each other.’

      ‘I read somewhere that no one religion possessed all the truth, but that each had a bit of it, so that taken all together they’d have the truth between them. Isn’t that so, Monsignor?’

      ‘That is so. I’ve heard of that theory, but think what it involves. First, how are you going to tell what is the truth among all the rest of the claims of any one particular Church. Is one to be content with that one fragment, if it can be discovered, or try to do the impossible, and join all the religious bodies spread over the earth, and so become possessed of all the truth—though you’d have the deuce of a job in sorting the false sheep from the truthful goats?’

      The boy gave a loud laugh.

      ‘You can laugh, Roger, my boy, but that’s what it comes to in the end.’

      ‘Sitting here in this chair, in this room, actually in the spirit world seems an awful long way from sitting in a church on Sunday, as I used to—sometimes.’

      ‘Only sometimes?’ put in Ruth; ‘that was naughty in one so young!’

      ‘I know what you’re thinking of,’ I said; ‘that Sunday churchgoing, with the clergyman, and the choir singing, and the sermon—and the collection, don’t forget that! Especially the sermons that didn’t seem to have any bearing on what you know now. How could it have, coming from the average minister? How could you expect a person—or a parson—to be able to instruct others on a particular subject, or on any subject, when the instructor knows literally nothing about it? That’s the real trouble. Ignorance, or lack of knowledge. Yet it is his job, the minister’s job, to know. I should have known, but I didn’t. A person in my position on earth should have been able to tell a person in Ruth’s position, or yours, Roger, all that we know at this moment. There are abundant opportunities for finding out.

      ‘What a mournful, miserable business it all is, when you come to think about it. Here is this magnificent world we’re living in, and yet on earth it has been shrouded and obscured. with a multitude of extraordinary beliefs, conditions, limitations, misconceptions, and I don't know what else besides. The one cannot be reconciled with the other. Like oil and water, they do not mix. Unlike those two substances, there is nothing with which to emulsify them, so to speak. They are not to be found.

      Odd, isn't it, how the religions of the earth have assumed authority over us—so they think? They cannot regard us in terms of solid reality, of rational living, of breathing, working, playing, helping one another. They would look upon that bird you have there, Roger, as being too outrageous, too preposterous to bear thinking about, even remotely. Yet that little grey fellow is part of life in these lands, and a beautiful part of it, too. How many folk have their animal friends on earth as part of their very lives? Thousands, but the same thing would be denied to us here, if some people on earth had their way. It's not religious; it's not what one would look for in spiritual realms. It's not the kind of thing that God would allow, because it's too earthy and frivolous. It brings us back to that appalling angel I spoke to you about, Roger, when you had opened your eyes as you lay on the couch.

      'The whole thing can be summed up in this way, Roger, my boy: the earthly religions know nothing about this world at all, about the life we live. They do not seem to be able to conjure up in their minds any sort of vision or image of what it might conceivably be. But they are certain of what it cannot be—upon what authority no one knows—that it cannot be anything like this at all. No man on earth would be prepared to suggest—if he were sane—that the only thing to look forward to is a life of doing nothing for all eternity, in a place or region that was simply vaporous, a void. The very thought of such an existence—and it would be barely that—would fill him with deep horror, and decide him that he would not wish to survive under such ghastly conditions. And no one could blame him.

      'Now, Roger, let's go out and do a little visiting. Bring the bird with you. He could show you the way, without us. Come along.'

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