“I have. I understand now.”
“It follows that there is something of prior importance to the possession of immortality:—what is that something?”
“I suppose that the immortality itself should be worth possessing.”
“Yes; that the life should be such that it were well it should be endless.—And what then if it be not such?”
“The question then would be whether it could not be made such.”
“You are right.—And wherein consists the essential inherent worthiness of a life as life?—The only perfect idea of life is—a unit, self-existent, and creative. That is God, the only one. But to this idea, in its kind, must every life, to be complete as life, correspond; and the human correspondence to self-existence is, that the man should round and complete himself by taking into himself that origin; by going back and in his own will adopting his origin, rooting therein afresh in the exercise of his own freedom and in all the energy of his own self-roused will; in other words—that the man say ‘I will be after the will of the creating I;’ that he see and say with his whole being that to will the will of God in himself and for himself and concerning himself, is the highest possible condition of a man. Then has he completed his cycle by turning back upon his history, laying hold of his cause, and willing his own being in the will of the only I AM. This is the rounding, re-creating, unifying of the man. This is religion, and all that gathers not with this, scatters abroad.”
“And then,” said Drew, with some eagerness, “lawfully comes the question, ‘Shall I, or shall I not live for ever?’”
“Pardon me; I think not,” returned the little prophet. “I think rather we have done with it for ever. The man with life so in himself, will not dream of asking whether he shall live. It is only in the twilight of a half-life, holding in it at once much wherefore it should desire its own continuance, and much that renders it unworthy of continuance, that the doubtful desire of immortality can arise.—Do you remember”—here Polwarth turned to Wingfold—“my mentioning to you once a certain manuscript of strange interest—to me at least and Rachel—which a brother of mine left behind him?”
“I remember it perfectly,” answered the curate.
“It seems so to mingle with all I ever think on this question, that I should much like, if you gentlemen would allow me, to read some extracts from it.”