its physical pains, but they are those of a woman in travail, and
we remember them no more for joy that a child-man is born into the
world naked and not ashamed: beholding ourselves as we are we
shall see also the leaves of the Tree of Life set for the healing
of the nations.

We are slowly, very slowly, abandoning our belief in sudden and
violent transitions for a surer and fuller acceptance of the
doctrine of evolution; but most of us still draw a sharp line of
demarcation between this world and the next, and expect a radical
change in ourselves and our surroundings, a break in the chain of
continuity entirely contrary to the teaching of nature and
experience. In the same way we cling to the specious untruth that
we can begin over and over again in this world, forgetting that
while our sorrow and repentance bring sacramental gifts of grace
and strength, God Himself cannot, by His own limitation, rewrite
the Past. We are in our sorrow that which we have made ourselves
in our sin; our temptations are there as well as the way of escape.
We are in the image of God. We create our world, our undying
selves, our heaven, or our hell. "Qui creavit te sine te non
salvabit te sine te." It is stupendous, magnificent, and most
appalling. A man does not change as he crosses the threshold of
the larger room. His personality remains the same, although the
expression of it may be altered. Here we have material bodies in a
material world--there, perhaps, ether bodies in an ether world.
There is no indecency in reasonable speculation and curiosity about
the life to come. One end of the thread is between our fingers,
but we are haunted for the most part by the snap of Atropos'
shears.