And it is no injustice not to give a man that which he does not know how
to desire, for "ask, and it shall be given you." It may be that to each
will be given that which he desired. And perhaps the sin against the
Holy Ghost--for which, according to the Evangelist, there is no
remission--is none other than that of not desiring God, not longing to
be made eternal.
As is your sort of mind
So is your sort of search; you'll find
What you desire, and that's to be
A Christian,
said Robert Browning in _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_.
In his _Inferno_ Dante condemned the Epicureans, those who did not
believe in another life, to something more terrible than the not having
it, and that is the consciousness of not having it, and this he
expressed in plastic form by picturing them shut up in their tombs for
all eternity, without light, without air, without fire, without
movement, without life (_Inferno_, x., 10-15).
What cruelty is there in denying to a man that which he did not or could
not desire? In the sixth book of his _AEneid_ (426-429) the gentle Virgil
makes us hear the plaintive voices and sobbing of the babes who weep
upon the threshold of Hades,
_Continuo auditae voces, vagitus et ingens,
Infantumque animae flentes in limine primo,_
unhappy in that they had but entered upon life and never known the
sweetness of it, and whom, torn from their mothers' breasts, a dark day
had cut off and drowned in bitter death--
_Quos dulcis vitae exsortes et at ubere raptos
Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo.
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