Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric AmielAmiel, Henri Frédéric
Philosophy
Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Amiel, Henri Frédéric
Amiel, Henri Frédéric, 1821-1881 -- Diaries; Authors, Swiss -- 19th century -- Diairies
The only but the sufficient revelation! For this first article of a
reasonable creed is the key to all else--the clue which leads the mind
safely through the labyrinth of doubt into the presence of the Eternal.
Without attempting to define the indefinable, the soul rises from the
belief in the reality of love and duty to the belief in “a holy will at
the root of nature and destiny”--for “if man is capable of conceiving
goodness, the general principle of things, which cannot be inferior to
man, must be good.” And then the religious consciousness seizes on this
intellectual deduction, and clothes it in language of the heart, in
the tender and beautiful language of faith. “There is but one thing
needful--to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and
soul, are so many ways of approaching the Divine, so many modes of
tasting and adoring God. Religion is not a method; it is a life--a
higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its
fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which
radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.” And the
faith of his youth and his maturity bears the shock of suffering, and
supports him through his last hours. He writes a few months before the
end: “The animal expires; man surrenders his soul to the author of the
soul.” ... “We dream alone, we suffer alone, we die alone, we inhabit
the last resting-place alone. But there is nothing to prevent us from
opening our solitude to God. And so what was an austere monologue
becomes dialogue, reluctance becomes docility, renunciation passes into
peace, and the sense of painful defeat is lost in the sense of recovered
liberty”--_“Tout est bien, mon Dieu m’enveloppe.”_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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