A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.: 2nd ed.Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
General
A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.: 2nd ed.
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Art and literature; Commonplace books; Ethics; Quotations
I return to Dr. Arnold. He laments the neglect of our cathedrals and the
absurd confusion in so many men’s minds “between what is really Popery,
and what is but wisdom and beauty adopted by the Roman Catholics and
neglected by us.”
21.
He says, “Then, only, can opportunities of evil be taken from us, when
we lose also all opportunity of doing or becoming good.” An obvious,
even common place thought, well and tersely expressed. The inextricable
co-relation and apparent antagonism of good and evil were never more
strongly put.
22.
The defeat of Varus by the Germans, and the defeat of the moors by
Charles Martel, he ranked as the two most important battles in the
history of the world. I see why. The first, because it decided whether
the north of Europe was to be completely Latinised; the second, because
it decided whether all Europe was to be completely Mahomedanised.
23.
“How can he who labours hard for his daily bread—hardly and with
doubtful success—be made wise and good, and therefore how can he be made
happy? This question undoubtedly the Church was meant to solve; for
Christ’s kingdom was to undo the evil of Adam’s sin; but the Church has
not solved it nor attempted to do so, and no one else has gone about it
rightly. How shall the poor man find time to be educated?”
This question, which “the Church has not yet solved,” men have now set
their wits to solve for themselves.
24.
When in Italy he writes:—“It is almost awful to look at the beauty which
surrounds me and then think of moral evil. It seems as if heaven and
hell, instead of being separated by a great gulf from us and from each
other, were close at hand and on each other’s confines.”
“Might but the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as is my delight
in external beauty!”
A prayer I echo, Amen! if by the _sense_ he mean the abhorrence of it;
otherwise, to be perpetually haunted with the perception of moral evil
were dreadful; yet, on the other hand, I am half ashamed sometimes of a
conscious shrinking within myself from the sense of moral evil, merely
as I should shrink from external filth and deformity, as hateful to
perception and recollection, rather than as hateful to God and
subversive of goodness.
25.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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