Quare Dei omnipotentia actu ab
aeterno fuit et in aeternum in eadem actualitate manebit.
Johnson is religious through and through, but there are passages in
the Rambler and Idler dark as starless, moonless midnight. 'None
would have recourse to an invisible power, but that all other
subjects have eluded their hopes . . . That misery does not make
all virtuous, experience too certainly informs us; but it is no less
certain that of what virtue there is, misery produces far the
greatest part.'
There is seldom in life any occasion for great virtues, and we must
not be disappointed if it passes without great passion. We must
expect to be related to one another by nothing more than ordinary
bonds and satisfied if human beings give us pleasure without
excitement.
I have good reason to believe that I am passing on life's journey
through what almost all wayfarers therein have had to pass through,
but nobody has told me of it.
How wonderful is the withdrawal of heat! It silently departs, the
iron grows cold, but the heat spreads and lives!
'Who knows, though he sees the snow-cold blossom shed,
If haply the heart that burned within the rose,
The spirit in sense, the life of life be dead?
If haply the wind that slays with storming snows
Be one with the wind that quickens?'
SWINBURNE, A Reminiscence.
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