Author: Harriet Martineau

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-07-05

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 9781330738016

Excerpt from Miscellanies, Vol. 1 of 2 The Religious Sentiment, in its early periods, may be weak or strong, steady or wavering but its operation is, in each case, imperfect. N ot having gone through the process of tribulation, experience, and hope, it cannot have so much of love in it as to make it, what it may afterwards become, the perpetual feast of the spirit. It has so much of fear as to induce it to bind itself strictly to forms and it alternates with other sentiments, instead of intermingling with them all. God is then the object of intermitting regards. Religion is then a yoke; easy and light in comparison with slavery to Chance and Passion; but still a yoke. This is the state of the child who hides his face in his pillow while relating to his mother the transgressions and self-conquests of the day. This is the state of the youth whose heart leaps up at the golden sunrise, but who lets the gorgeous moments pass away because he dares not indulge himself with them till he has gone through his form of prayer; on rising from which, he finds the glow departed alike from his spirit and from the sky. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.