The Future Life & Modern Difficulties

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The publisher of this book utilises modern printing technologies as well as photocopying processes for reprinting and preserving rare works of literature that are out-of-print or on the verge of becoming lost. This book is one such reprint. Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GOD THE FIRST CAUSE 7 which exists. I exist and my surroundings exist, but while I class myself with my surroundings, both being existences, I instinctively divide or classify existence into self and not self. I exist and the things that are not I exist, and I and that which is not I make up together the sum or totality of existence, " myself and all the world." But having found that the universe is thus constituted, I am not satisfied ; I see that it is so, but I want to know why. Now in asking why things exist I am not asking one question but two. I am asking both the cause and the purpose of their existence, and the explanation given is that the cause of things, including myself, is an uncaused self-existent Being, " of infinite power, wisdom and goodness," l and that it is for His pleasure that I myself and all the world are and were created." In the words of the Church Catechism I learn to believe in " God . . . who hath made me and all the world." These three, therefore, God, self and the world, constitute the entire and complete universe. This is the religious explanation of the world. It is an answer to the question, " Why do I find a universe existing which is divided into self and not-self " ? I do not want, for the moment, to consider where this answer came from or whether it is true. I only ask you to notice that wherever it came from and whether it be true or false, it is an answer, and that it is an answer which affects conduct, for it is an answer which gives ground for religious practice. 1 Rev. iv, it. 'Article i. Religion is not belief. The word is a Latin word, religio, and it means an oath in the first place, and from that it easily passes on to mean the obligations which result from the taking of an oath ; and so simply to mean duty, and then special...

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