Lewis and MacDonald Part IV: The Subtlest of All the Snares

He was silent for a few minutes, and then began again.

'Ye'll understand, there are innumerable forms of this
choice. Sometimes forms that one hardly thought of at all
on Earth. There was a creature that came here not long ago
and went back - Sir Archibald they called him. In his
earthly life he'd been interested in nothing but Survival [i.e., Life After Death].
He'd written a whole shelf-full of books about it. He
began by being philosophical, but in the end he took up
Psychical Research. It grew to be his only occupation -
experimenting, lecturing, running a magazine. And trav-
elling too: digging out queer stories among Tibetan
lamas and being initiated into brotherhoods in Central
Africa. Proofs - and more proofs - and then more proofs
again - were what he wanted. It drove him mad if ever he
saw anyone taking an interest in anything else. He got
into trouble during one of your wars for running up and
down the country telling them not to fight because it
wasted a lot of money that ought to be spent on Research.
Well, in good time, the poor creature died and came here:
and there was no power in the universe would have pre-
vented him staying and going on to the mountains. But do
ye think that did him any good? This country was no use
to him at all. Everyone here had "survived" already.
Nobody took the least interest in the question. There was
nothing more to prove. His occupation was clean gone.
Of course if he would only have admitted that he'd mis-
taken the means for the end and had a good laugh at him-
self he could have begun all over again like a little child
and entered into joy. But he would not do that. He cared
nothing about joy. In the end he went away.'

'How fantastic!' said I.

'Do ye think so?' said the Teacher with a piercing
glance. 'It is nearer to such as you than ye think.
There have been men before now who got so interested in prov-
ing the existence of God that they came to care nothing
for God Himself...as if the good Lord had nothing to do
but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in
spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to
Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never
know a lover of books that with all his first editions and
signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an
organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It
is the subtlest of all the snares.'