Page:Gide - Strait is the Gate.pdf/206

STRAIT IS THE GATE 204

inferior to those of other countries — but the slight difficulty that lies in the pursuit of their meaning and feeling, the unconscious pride of overcoming this difficulty, and of overcoming it more and more successfully, adds to my intellectual pleasure a certain spiritual contentment, which it seems to me I cannot do without.

However blessed it might be, I cannot desire a state without progress. I imagine Heavenly joy, not as a confounding of the spirit with God, but as an infinite, a perpetual drawing near to Him ... and if I were not afraid of playing upon words I should say that I did not care for any joy that was not progressive. . This morning we were sitting on the bench in the avenue; we were not talking, and did not feel any need to talk. ... Suddenly he asked me if I believed in a future life. "Oh! Jerome!” I cried at once, “it is more than hope I have; it is certainty." And it seemed to me, on a sudden, that my whole faith ha , as it were, been poured into that exclamation. "I should like to know," he added. He stopped a few moments; then: "Would you act differently without your faith?”