If you propound a doctrine to a modern philosopher, he will ask: "Can it be tested by experience?" We cannot apply this test to every truth. There is one truth, however, that is borne out by the experience of all generations. Every man, sooner or later, makes the experience of it in his own person. It is that, as the flower of the field, so does man himself bloom, and then wither, and then die.
This is a truth within the reach of all; they know this who know nothing else; it is almost the only truth which has altogether escaped contradiction; and yet this was given to be the matter of the prophet's cry. (Isaiah 10:4, 6)
The cry has been taken up by all preachers sent from God even to this day. And it is a cry that needs to be raised again and again, because the fact it announces, though no one denies it, everyone looks away from and tries to forget, and also because the conviction of this fact is at the bottom of all earnest religious feeling.
If life is passing away swiftly and surely and if I look -- as what man naturally does not look? -- for some better part, which shall not be taken from me (Luke 10:42), then, while life lasts, I must worship God, and seek to please Him, who is "the Father of the world to come". (Isaiah 9:6)
There is no declining this conclusion. There is no doing away with it. It is a firm foundation set, which no efforts of secular education will ever be able to overturn; but the priest will take his stand upon it, and speak to mankind from it, as long as men shall be.
-- Father Rickaby, SJ
