The third benefit of belief in the Hereafter, also pertaining individual life: The superiority and high rank man enjoys with respect to other living beings is by virtue of his lofty qualities, comprehensive faculties, numerous modes of wor¬ship and extensive areas of life and activity. Now man can acquire virtues such as aspiration, love, brotherliness and true humanity only in the measure and amount permitted by the brief present, caught between the past and the future, which are both non-existent, dead, and dark.
For example, man loves and wishes to serve the father, brother, wife, people and homeland that he did not know in the past and will not know in the future. It is very rare that he is able to show com¬plete devotion and sincerity, and hence his virtues and accomplishments will correspondingly suffer. It is when man is about to fall from the rank of the highest among the animals to that of the low¬est, when he is about to become the most wretched and inferior of them with respect to intelligence, that belief in the Hereafter comes to his aid. It transforms his present time, narrow like the tomb, into a broad and expansive time that embraces both past and future, and displays to him a sphere of existence as vast as the world, or rather one that extends from pre-eternity to post-eternity. Knowing that his father will still be in a paternal relationship with him, even while in the Abode of Bliss and the Realm of Spirits; knowing that his brother will cherish fraternal feelings for him unto eternity; and knowing that his wife will be his best companion, even while in Paradise— knowing all this, he will love, respect, aid and cherish them. He will not make of the services he performs to strengthen his relations in that great and vast sphere of life, tools for the worthless concerns of this world, or the instruments of petty purposes and profit. Being thus guided to true devotion and proper sincerity, his moral accom¬plishments and virtues will correspondingly in¬crease and his humanity advance (according to the degree at which each man finds himself). The result will be that man, whose pleasures in life are less than those of a sparrow, becomes exalted above all of the animals, and becomes the select and fortunate guest in all of the universe and the most beloved and favoured slave of the universe's Owner. We will curtail here discussion of this consequence of belief in the Hereafter, since it too has been discussed with adequate proofs else¬where in the Risale-i Nur.
The fourth benefit of belief in the Hereafter, one pertaining to the social life of man: the following is a summary of the discussion of this consequence of belief contained in the Ninth Ray of the Rİsale-i Nur. It is only by virtue of belief in the Hereafter that children, who make up one fourth of humanity, can live in a truly human fashion and bear within them the potentialities of humanity. Otherwise, in order to forget and oblit¬erate themselves and the painful anxieties to which they are subject, they will live an idle and childish life with their toys. For the death of chil¬dren like himself all around him will leave such an effect on the sensitive mind of the child, on his poor heart that cherishes such hopes for the future and on his defenceless spirit, that his very life and intelligence will appear to the hapless child as an instrument of torment and torture. It is then that the lesson of belief in the Hereafter will enable him to feel joy and relief instead of the thoughts from which he wished to hide behind his toys, and he will say: "My brother or friend has now died, and become like a bird in Paradise. Thus he has more enjoyment and amusement than us. My mother too has died, but she has gone to God's mercy; she will again embrace me and love me in Paradise, and I will see my kind mother again." Saying this, he wil be able to live in a manner befitting humanity.
The aged, who make up another fourth of humanity can find consolation in the face of the impending extinction of their lives, their burial beneath the soil and the closing to them of their beautiful and well-loved world, only in belief in the Hereafter and in no other source. Were it not for this consolation, those compassionate and ven¬erable fathers, those self-sacrificing and solicitous mothers, would suffer such disturbance of the soul and tumult of the heart that the world would become a desperate prison for them and life, a tortuous pain.