O Let Me Be Awake, My God!

[coleridge] Selected An Instance Of What Was Called The Sublime, In Darwin, Who Imagined The Creation Of The Universe To Have Taken Place In A Moment, By The Explosion Of A Mass Of Matter In The Womb, Or Centre Of Space. In One And The Same Instant Of Time, Suns And Planets Shot Into Systems In Every Direction, And Filled And Spangled The Illimitable Void! He Asserted This To Be An Intolerable Degradation -referring, As It Were, All The Beauty And Harmony Of Nature To Something Like The Bursting Of A Barrel Of Gunpowder! That Spit Its Combustible Materials Into A Pock-freckled Creation!

We Must Not Be Guilty Of Taking The Law Into Our Own Hands, And Converting It From What It Really Is To What We Think It Ought To Be.

A Religion, That Is, A True Religion, Must Consist Of Ideas And Facts Both; Not Of Ideas Alone Without Facts, For Then It Would Be Mere Philosophy; - Nor Of Facts Alone Without Ideas, Of Which Those Facts Are Symbols, Or Out Of Which They Arise, Or Upon Which They Are Grounded: For Then It Would Be Mere History.

Seldom Can Philosophic Genius Be More Usefully Employed Than In Thus Rescuing Admitted Truths From The Neglect Caused By The Very Circumstance Of Their Universal Admission.

To All New Truths, Or Renovation Of Old Truths, It Must Be As In The Ark Between The Destroyed And The About-to-be Renovated World. The Raven Must Be Sent Out Before The Dove, And Ominous Controversy Must Precede Peace And The Olive Wreath.