Inspired

The story of the Virgin birth naturally did not astonish her, but she was greatly puzzled by the Sacrifice, and still more by the Devil, and the theory of Damnation.
"'Why, you blessed child,' she said, 'you've got the wrong idea altogether. You do not have to think that there ever was such a God - for there wasn't. Or such a happening - for there wasn't. Not even that this hideous false idea was believed by anybody. But only this - that people who are utterly ignorant will believe anything - which you certainly knew before.'"

"What is eternity?" asked Ellador.
What indeed? I tried, for the first time in my life, to get a real hold on the idea.
"It is - never stopping."
"Never stopping?" She looked puzzled.
"Yes, life, going on forever."
"Oh - we see that, of course. Life does go on forever, all about us."
"But eternal life goes on without dying.
"The same person?"
"Yes, the same person, unending, immortal." I was pleased to think that I had something to teach from our religion, which theirs had never promulgated.
"Here?" asked Ellador. "Never to die - here?" I could see her practical mind heaping up the people, and hurriedly reassured her.
"Oh no, indeed, not here - hereafter. We must die here, of course, but then we 'enter into eternal life.' The soul lives forever."
"How do you know?" she inquired.
"I won't attempt to prove it to you," I hastily continued. "Let us assume it to be so. How does this idea strike you?"
Again, she smiled at me, that adorable, dimpling, tender, mischievous, motherly smile of hers. "Shall I be quite, quite honest?"
"You couldn't be anything else," I said.
"It seems to me a singularly foolish idea," she said calmly. "And if true, most disagreeable."
"What do you want it for?" she asked.
"How can you not want it!" I protested. "Do you want to go out like a candle? Don't you want to go on and on - growing and - and - being happy, forever?"
"Why, no," she said. "I don't in the least. I want my child - and my child's child - to go on - and they will. Why should I want to?"
"But it means Heaven!" I insisted. "Peace and Beauty and Comfort and Love - with God." I had never been so eloquent on the subject of religion. She could be horrified at Damnation, and question the justice of Salvation, but Immortality - that was surely a noble faith.
"Why, Van," she said, holding out her hands to me. "Why Van - darling! How splendid of you to feel it so keenly. That's what we all want, of course - Peace and Beauty, and Comfort and Love - with God! And Progress, too, remember; Growth, always and always. That is what our religion teaches us to want and to work for, and we do!"
"But that is here," I said, "only for this life on earth."
"Well? And do not you in your country, with your beautiful religion of love and service have it here, too - for this life - on earth?"

-- Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1915.