DeSenectute

In a chat with an interviewer for London's Daily Express, the Very Rev. William Ralph Inge, 93, famed "Gloomy Dean" (1911-1934) of London's St. Paul's Cathedral, ruminated glumly on his own life:

"If I could live my life again, I don't think I should be a clergyman ... I have never been happy about the Church of England. Perhaps it will be said of me that as I grew older I became a better Christian and a worse churchman ... I do not love the human race. I have loved just a few of them. The rest are a pretty mixed lot...

"All my life I have struggled to find the purpose of living. I have tried to answer three problems which always seemed to me to be fundamental: the problem of eternity, the problem of human personality, and the problem of evil. I have failed. I have solved none of them, and I know no more now than when I started. And I believe no one ever will solve them . . .

"I have done my best, and I hope I haven't entirely wasted my life. But I don't think the world is a better place for having had me in it. The world is no better and probably no worse. It is the same as it always has been and, no doubt, always will be. But don't call me the Gloomy Dean. I never deserved that. I have tried only to face reality, to be honest and refuse to be foolishly optimistic.

"I know as much about the after life as you--nothing. I don't even know there is one--in the sense in which the church teaches it. I have no vision of 'heaven' or a 'welcoming God.' I do not know what I shall find. I must wait and see."

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