LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The Conquest of Death
Ste,—To read the Spectator is one of the pleasures of life, but I doubt if the consideration of these two articles by the learned doctor would give me much pleasure or consolation if I lay dying in a state of consciousness. Possibly they are written for the intelligentsia and not to give comfort to ordinary unlearned persons like myself.
However, they ignore a possible solution of the problem favoured by many of the best of mankind, the Christian solution. The Easter anthem with it paean of triumph over death—" Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept . . . . For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive "—has given comfort to many simple folk. Possibly Raphael as he gazed in his dying moments on his great picture of the Transfiguration found more inspiration and hope in contemplating the glories of Heaven than he would have derived from the study of these erudite articles on death.
The Christian faith may be a myth; it may be wishful thinking, a naive attempt to by-pass the fear of death; but, as Simmias said to Socrates many centuries ago: " If the attainment of any certainty about such questions be impossible, he would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human notions, and let this be the raft upon which he sails through life—not without risk—if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry him." The advice is good, and I would sooner stake my all on the Christian faith and hope rather than gamble on the apparently resuscitated, modernised version of the transmigration of souls so ably propounded in these articles.—I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,
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