‘Not altogether,’ replied Bradley, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘If the life we live here were all, if, after a season, we vanished like the flowers, we should still need the comfort of Christ’s message—his injunction to “love one another.” The central idea of Christianity is peace and good fellowship; and if our life had raised itself to that ideal of love, it would be an ideal life, and its brevity would be of little consequence.’
Miss Combe smiled. Her keen intelligence went right into the speaker’s mind, and saw the true meaning of that shallow optimism. Bradley noticed the smile, and coloured slightly under the calm, penetrating gaze of the little woman.
‘I have always been taught to believe,’ said Miss Combe, quietly, ‘that the true secret of the success of Christianity was its heavenly promise—its pledge of a future life.’
‘Of course,’ cried Alma.
‘Certainly that promise was given,’ said Bradley, ‘and I have no doubt that, in some way or another, it will be fulfilled.’
‘What do you mean by in some way or another?’ asked Miss Combe.
‘I mean that Christ’s Heaven may not be a heaven of physical consciousness, but of painless and passive perfection; bringing to the weary peace and forgetfulness, to the happy absolute absorption into the eternal and unconscious life of God.’
‘Nirwâna, in short!’ said Miss Combe, dryly. ‘Well, for my own part, I should not care so much for so sleepy a Paradise. I postulate a heaven where I should meet and know my mother, and where the happy cry of living creatures would rise like a fountain into the clear azure for evermore.’
‘Surely,’ said Bradley, gently, ‘we all hope as much!’
‘But do we believe it?’ returned Miss Combe. ‘That is the question. All human experience, all physiology, all true psychology, is against it. The letter of the eternal Universe, written on the open Book of Astronomy, speaks of eternal death and change. Shall we survive while systems perish, while suns go out like sparks, and the void is sown with the wrecks of worn-out worlds?’