Mark Twain once remarked, "I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces." Twain was in many ways tormented much of his adult life, trying to come to grips with his own religious upbringing. In our own day, it is easy for us to become enamored with a sense that this present, temporal world is all that there is.

In many ways, Malcolm Muggeridge, whose conversion to Christianity was later in life, serves as a reliable guide for us.  Muggeridge, educated at Cambridge University, was known internationally as a journalist, broadcaster, and writer for over half a century, He started as an editorial scribe at the Manchester Guardian, before moving to the Soviet Union in 1932, where, as the Guardian's Moscow correspondent, he witnessed in the Ukraine the famine brought about by Stalin: it was the beginning of Malcolm's greatest…