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Introduction—Why We Are in this World
Question: Who created you?
ANSWER: God created me.
Q. Out of what did God make you?
A. God made me out of nothing. 2 Mach. vii. 28.
Q. Of what are you composed?
A. Of two parts—a soul and a body.
Q. To whose likeness did God create you?
A. "God created me to his own image and likeness." Gen. 1. 26.
Q. Is this likeness in your body or in your soul?
A. It is principally in my soul.
Q. Is your soul then a spirit like to God?
A. It is.
Q. Is your soul one like God?
A. It is.
Q. Will your soul live forever like God?
A. It will.
Q. In what else is your soul like to God?
A. In its love for God.
Q. How does this love make the soul like to God?
A. Because in loving God it loves what is infinitely good and perfect, and so loving, tries to make itself good and perfect like to God.
Q. Does God then love Himself?
A. Yes; because being all wise, He knows Himself, who is all wisdom; and being in Himself infinite perfection must love Himself always, and all His creatures in proportion as they resemble Him.
Q. In the one God there are three distinct persons. Is there anything in the soul like to this?
A. Yes; in the soul there are three distinct powers.
Q. What are these powers?
A. The understanding, will, and memory.
Q. Of what use are these three powers to man?
A. By means of them he can learn languages, build churches, palaces, great cities, steamboats, and railroads, write and print books, count days, dates, distances, money, and above all, know and love God.
Q. Can animals do this?
A. No.
Q. Why can they not?
A. Because they have not rational souls.
Q. What lesson are we to learn from this?
A. That man is not a mere animal, made simply for this world, but that he has a soul made to know, love, and serve God, its Creator, whose image and likeness it is.
Q. What is the plain answer to be made to men who say they have no soul?
A. If they say they have no soul they must consider themselves simply animals, and since they are pleased to be animals they had better go and live with the class of beings to which they belong.
Q. Why did God make us to His own image and likeness?
A. That He might bestow upon us His own happiness in heaven. "I am thy reward exceeding great." Gen. XV. 1.
Q. On what condition will He bestow upon us His own happiness?
On condition that we always serve Him on earth. "The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve." Matt. iv. 10
Q. How must we serve God?
A. By doing God's will. "Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matt. vii. 21.
Q. Were all men made to be forever happy with God in heaven?
A. Yes, all without exception. "God will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of truth." 1 Tim., ii. 4.
Q. Why are many not saved?
A. Because instead of serving God they seek only the riches and pleasures of this world.
Q. May we not seek and use the goods of this world?
A. We may, so far as they help us to serve God.
Q. How must we regard those goods and pleasures which keep us from serving God?
A. We must neither seek nor use them.
Q. Why?
A. Because God has said: "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul." Matt. xvi. 26
Q. How can the goods and pleasures of this world cause us to lose our souls?
A. By drawing us away from God.
Q. Cannot the riches and pleasures of this world make us happy?
A. No.
Q. Why not?
A. Because the soul was not created for and by them, but by God for Himself. It was not created for time, but for eternity. the riches and pleasures of this world end with this world; and if we set our happiness on them, it must end with them.
Q. But cannot we love those pleasures and God at the same time?
A. We cannot love both, above all things, at the same time. If we make the riches and pleasures of this world the sole object of our lives, we must forget God, our Creator.
Q. Where then are we to seek true happiness?
A. In God alone.
Q. How are we to seek for true happiness only in God?
A. By serving God according to His will.
Q. What do we say of the man who serves God as God wishes to be served?
A. That he is united with God, or that he is a follower of the only true religion.
Q. Who then is a follower of the true religion?
A. He alone who serves God according to God's will.
Q. What will happen to us after death if we have not served God?
A. God will cast us into the everlasting torments of hell. As we have cast Him off, so will He cast us off, and have nothing to do with us.
Q. What then must always be our greatest care?
A. To do the holy will of God.
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