The Gospel, the Miracle Cure
From Thomas Disch's Camp Concentration (1968): This is your old friend Louie too (or, popularly, Louis the Likewise) with wonderful new news for all you sufferers from angst and angina, for the conscience-ridden and God-plagued, for the psychosomatic and the simply stigmatic. you can throw away that truss! Because, mon semblable, mon frère, there is nothing but an aching emptiness at the center of things, alleluia! And not even aching any more, no, the void is happy as the day is long. That is the secret that those ancients possessed, that is the truth that will make us free, you and me. Say it three times in the morning and three times at night: There is no God, there never was, and never will be, world without end, amen.
[...]
Ha, I hear, as from a great distance, your mild protest: The fool says in his heart there is no God.
And the wise man says it aloud. (61-2)
[...]
Ha, I hear, as from a great distance, your mild protest: The fool says in his heart there is no God.
And the wise man says it aloud. (61-2)