HOPE IN SIN

The final tendency of the modern philosophies - hailed in their day as a relase from the burden of sinfulness - has been to bind man hard and fast in the chains of an iron determinism. The influences of heredity and environment, of glandular makeup and the control exercised by the unconscious, of economic necessity and the mechanics of biological development, have all been invoked to assure man that he is not responsible for his misfortunes and therefore not to be held guilty. Evil has been represented as something imposed upon him from without, not made by him from within. The dreadful conclusion follows inevitably, that as he is not responsible for evil, he cannot alter it ... Today, if we could really be persuaded that we are miserable sinners - that the trouble is not outside us but inside us, and that therefore, by the grace of God, we can do something to put it right - we should receive that message as the most hopeful and heartening thing that can be imagined.

DOROTHY SAYERS, "CREED OR CHAOS?"

A TRUE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.

CSEZLAW MILOSZ, THE DISCREET CHARM OF NIHILISM