Whenever a man comes to me and says, “Padre, I do not believe in a future life, to be prepared for by the cultivation of the soul,” I always counter by saying: “Then what, in the name of all that is true, do you believe in? Nobody cares a cracked button about what you do not believe in, about death, life, God, man, or devil. The only thing that matters in the least, or that does not bore your friends, is what you do believe in. Do you, perchance, believe in this life, a life of externalities—that such a life is worth the living? Do you put your trust in the worth of seventy years or so, spent in fruitless search for a happiness to which you know, if you have half an eye on what goes on around you, you will never come, in increasingly agonized appeal for love and lovers which you find never do, after all, effectually pierce through those walls which isolate your lonely soul; years which shall end, when perhaps you have begun to learn a little how to make outer things serve your inner need, only in disease, decay, senility and—that is all? Do you believe in that? Then is your act of faith less a thing of reason, more a sheer miracle, than the faith of any man who believes in a future life. There may be no evidence for his belief, but there is all the evidence against your belief. Or else, it may be, your faith in this life is not a miracle at all, but is due to plain ignorance. It may be that you are still too young to look life in the face.
Let us by all means have more religion, but let it be real religion, theocentric, awed, a thing of beauty, and of deep humility. And let us not seek it for the sake of preserving civilization, that relatively unimportant incident. Let us seek it because we have lost our way, in a maze of sin and pride; because we are lonely, and life is dull, and the world’s gaudy baubles seem like tinsel; because God is our lost treasure; because we would be shriven; because we are children and the Father’s house is home; because we have too long been clever and self-sufficient; because worldliness is drab and stupid; because we would eat again the bread of God and drink once more the purple wine of Heaven.