I learned of a woman, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and children's author. She is a Christian, and in this quote she is answering her critics regarding the Christian's inner life.
"Yet
there is a religious devotion, generous, liberal, and humane, the child of more
exalted feelings than base minds can enter into, which assimilates man to
higher natures, and lifts him "above this visible diurnal sphere."
Its pleasures are ultimate, and, when early cultivated, continue even in that
uncomfortable season of life when some of the passions are extinct, when
imagination is dead, and the heart begins to contract within itself. Those who
lack this taste, lack a sense, a part of their nature, and should not presume
to judge of feelings to which they must ever be strangers. No one pretends to
be a judge in poetry or the fine arts, who has not both a natural and a
cultivated relish for them; and shall the narrow-minded children of earth,
absorbed in low pursuits, dare to treat as visionary, objects which they have
never made themselves acquainted with? Silence on such subjects will better
become them." Anna Laetitia Barbauld. 1700's.
2 comments:
"...that uncomfortable season of life when some of the passions are extinct, when imagination is dead, and the heart begins to contract within itself."
Goodness that sounds frightening.
I thank God that I have only experienced this in some lesser degree, but then, how can one objectively assess those things in oneself? No doubt I have been with some in whom I consider are deep within this season, and I think age can have that effect on some.
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