Tennyson as a Religious Teacher (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH r"PENNYSON had escaped from the oppression of vast- ness by his apprehension of the symbolic nature of our sense-given knowledge. He was therefore able to exhibit the individual boldly confronting and no longer terrified by a Universe to the creation of which he has himself contributed. The knowledge of the senses, he finally concluded, yields us no direct knowledge of the reality behind phenomena. But the recognition of this fact has but little lightened the mystery of the world. The nature of the reality which these changes symbolise; the relation between this ultimate source of being and those persistent groups of sensations which we call inanimate and living things; this pain which is so real to each individual consciousness; the meaning of life to each person and the plan of the life of the whole; all the old questions connected with these inexplicable elements of existence arise again with all their constant importunity. We may have logically established that space and spatial change cannot be regarded as the final solution of the riddle of the Universe; but this is only a negative statement, and advances us but a little way towards the desired explanation. Are we driven by inexorable reasoning to the assertion of the opposite position, the re-echo of the whisper of the ' lying lip ' of Sorrow ? ' The stars, ' she whispers ' blindly run'; A web is wov'n across the sky; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun: ' And all the phantom, Nature stands? With all the music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own, ? A hollow form with empty hands.'1 And is the final word on the problem to be the re-assertion of the conclusion of the eastern philosopher that " human existence is not a dark spot in an ocean of daz...