Essay
Milton’s Satan, for instance, has always come through as the most appealing character in Paradise Lost (even to the extent of garnering our reluctant sympathy for his downfall)
to what we will find. Nice walks? Long conversations with Thomas Aquinas? Theological disquisitions with Augustine? It seems to be the case that we find devils and devilry much more to our taste than we do angels and angelry. We often feel guilty about this of course, but that doesn’t stop us picking Night of the Living Dead off the DVD shelves, rather than Born Free or National Velvet. It’s our way. Who was it said he would prefer to go to Hell because that’s where all the interesting people are? As to the question of its existence, it has to be said that when all is said and done belief in a Next Life is a personal matter. Given the tsunami of literature on the subject and the often trenchant and opposing arguments therein, a person must in the final analysis trust to his/her own instincts. When the chips are down, our convictions must rest on that old fashioned, but very enduring concept: Faith. But what if after a lifetime of disbelief and, perhaps, after years of constantly attacking the faith of true believers, one finally fetches up at the Pearly Gates and is met by a rather disapproving twelve apostles? Given such an embarrassing contingency there would be nothing for it but to do what the sceptical American writer and humourist H. L. Mencken said he would do: extend one’s hand and say: ‘Gentlemen, I was wrong.’ 14 Senior Times l March - April 2018 l www.seniortimes.ie