The Posthumous Works of Thomas de Quincey (Volume 1); Suspiria de Profundis, with Other Essays, Critical, Historical, Biographical, Philosophical, Imaginative and Humorous (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891. Excerpt: ... i.--Theological And Eeligious. Eeligion under any of its aspects, revealing or consoling--religion in connection with any of its affinities, ethics or metaphysics, when se//-evoked by a person of earnest nature, not imposed from without by the necessities of monastic life, not caught as a contagion from the example of friends that surround you, argues some 'vast volcanic agency' moving at subterraneous depths below the ordinary working mind of daily life, and entitled by its own intrinsic grandeur to ennoble the curiosity (else a petty passion) which may put questions as to iis origin. In any case of religion arising, as a spontaneous birth, in the midst of alien forces, it is inevitable to ask for its why and its whence. Eeligion considered as a sentiment of devotion, as a yearning after some dedication to an immeasurable principle of that noblest temple among all temples--' the upright heart and pure, ' or religion, again, as the apprehension of some mighty synthesis amongst truths dimly perceived heretofore amidst separating clouds, but now brought into strict indissoluble connection, proclaims a revolution so great that it is otherwise not to be accounted for than as the breaking out of a germ of the supernatural in man as a seed from a hitherto barren soil. Sin is that secret word, that dark aporriton of the human race, undiscoverable except by express revelation, which having once been laid in the great things of God as a germinal principle, has since blossomed into a vast growth of sublime ideas known only to those nations who have lived under the moulding of Scriptural truth--and comprehending all functions of the Infinite operatively familiar to man. Yes, I affirm that there is no form through which the Infinite reveals itself in a sense comprehen..