Yes, I affirm that even in its dreams every Christian child is invested by an atmosphere of sublimity unknown to the greatest of Pagan philosophers: that golden rays reach it by two functions of the Infinite; and that these, in common with those emanations of the Infinite that do not settle upon the mind until mature years, are all projections—derivations or counterpositions—from the obscure idea of sin; could not have existed under any previous condition; and for a Pagan mind would not have been intelligible.
Sin.—It is not only that the Infinite arises as part of the entire system resting on sin, but specifically from sin apart from its counterforces or reactions, viz., from sin as a thing, and the only thing originally shadowy and in a terrific sense mysterious.
Stench.—I believe that under Burke's commentary, this idea would become a high test of the doctrine of the Infinite. He pronounces it sublime, or sublime in cases of intensity. Now, first of all, the intense state of everything or anything is but a mode of power, that idea or element or moment of greatness under a varied form. Here, then, is nothing proper or separately peculiar to stench: it is not stench as stench, but stench as a mode or form of sensation, capable therefore of intensification. It is but a case under what we may suppose a general Kantian rule—that every sensation runs through all gradations, from the lowest or most obscure and nascent to the highest. Secondly, however, pass over to the contemplation of stench as stench: then I affirm—that as simply expounding the decay, and altering or spoiling tendency or state of all things—simply as a register of imperfection, and of one which does not (as ruins to the eye) ever put on a pleasing transitional aspect, it is merely disagreeable, but also at the same time mean. For the imperfection is merely transitional and fleeting, not absolute. First, midst and last, it is or can be grand when it reverts or comes round upon its mediating point, or point of reaction.
The arrangement of my Infinite must be thus: After having expounded the idea of holiness which I must show to be now potent, proceed to show that the Pagan Gods did not realize and did not meet this idea; that then came the exposure of the Pagan Gods and the conscious presence of a new force among mankind, which opened up the idea of the Infinite, through the awakening perception of holiness.
I believe that in every mode of existence, which probably is always by an incarnation, the system of flesh is made to yield the organs that express the alliance of man with the Infinite. Thus the idea of mystery, αποροητα, finds its organ of expression in the sensualities of the human race. Again, the crime, whatever it were, and the eternal pollution is expressed in these same organs. Also, the prolongation of the race so as to find another system is secured by the same organs.
Generally, that is, for a million against a unit, the awful mystery by which the fearful powers of death, and sorrow, and pain, and sin are locked into parts of a whole; so as, in fact, to be repetitions, reaffirmations of each other under a different phase—this is nothing, does not exist. Death sinks to a mere collective term—a category—a word of convenience for purposes of arrangement. You depress your hands, and, behold! the system disappears; you raise them, it reappears. This is nothing—a cipher, a shadow. Clap your hands like an Arabian girl, and all comes back. Unstop your ears, and a roar as of St. Lawrence enters: stop your ears, and it is muffled. To and fro; it is and it is not—is not and is. Ah, mighty heaven, that such a mockery should cover the whole vision of life! It is and it is not; and on to the day of your death you will still have to learn what is the truth.
The eternal now through the dreadful loom is the overflowing future poured back into the capacious reservoir of the past. All the active element lies in that infinitesimal now. The future is not except by relation; the past is not at all, and the present but a sign of a nexus between the two.
God's words require periods, so His counsels. He cannot precipitate them any more than a man in a state of happiness can commit suicide. Doubtless it is undeniable that a man may arm his hand with a sword: and that his flesh will be found penetrable to the sword, happy or not. But this apparent physical power has no existence, no value for a creature having a double nature: the moral nature not only indisposes him to use his power, but really creates a far greater antagonist power.
This God—too great to be contemplated steadily by the loftiest of human eyes; too approachable and condescending to be shunned by the meanest in affliction: realizing thus in another form that reconcilement of extremes, which St. Paul observed: far from all created beings, yet also very near.
'A conviction that they needed a Saviour was growing amongst men.' How? In what sense? Saviour from what? You can't be saved from nothing. There must be a danger, an evil threatening, before even in fancy you can think of a deliverer. Now, what evil was there existing to a Pagan? Sin? Monstrous! No such idea ever dawned upon the Pagan intellect. Death? Yes; but that was inalienable from his nature. Pain and disease? Yes; but these were perhaps inalienable also. Mitigated they might be, but it must be by human science, and the progress of knowledge. Grief? Yes; but this was inalienable from life. Mitigated it might be, but by superior philosophy. From what, then, was a Saviour to save? If nothing to save from, how any Saviour? But here arises as the awful of awfuls to me, the deep, deep exposure of the insufficient knowledge and sense of what is peculiar to Christianity. To imagine some sense of impurity, etc., leading to a wish for a Saviour in a Pagan, is to defraud Christianity of all its grandeur. If Paganism could develop the want, it is not at all clear that Paganism did not develop the remedy. Heavens! how deplorable a blindness! But did not a Pagan lady feel the insufficiency of earthly things for happiness? No; because any feeling tending in that direction would be to her, as to all around her, simply a diseased feeling, whether from dyspepsia or hypochondria, and one, whether diseased or not, worthless for practical purposes. It would have to be a Christian lady, if something far beyond, something infinite, were not connected with it, depending on it. But if this were by you ascribed to the Pagan lady, then that is in other words to make her a Christian lady already.