Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/76

68 world, to an unskilful cook that burneth the cake that he is baking.

Again the people laughed loudly, and shouted applause; but the Stoic, touched with choler, left reasoning with his adversary and began to revile him, calling him atheist and sacrilegious wretch, and other names; which only made the people laugh the more. But I came forth from the theatre sick at heart and saddened, not more by the arguments of the Epicurean than by the faithlessness of the multitude. Then said I, "How know I that there is a life after death? or who hath returned from the grave to bring back word thereof? For it is written, 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' But wherefore? 'Even because,' saith the Scripture, 'there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.'" Then again I lamented that I had wasted my years in labor, and much study had been to me a weariness in the flesh, and I said, "It would have been wiser to have preferred mirth, for it is written, 'A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat and drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labor the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.'"

From henceforth my days and nights were busied with such questions as these, which crept into my soul against my will, and would not be driven out: After death shall I live no more, and will no one even once think of me, since infinite time burieth all things in forgetfulness? Will it be even as though I had never been born? When was the world created, and what was in the beginning before the world? If the world was from all eternity, then it will always be; but if it had a beginning, then must it likewise have an end. And, after the end of the world, what will be then? What perhaps but the silence of death?