{"product_id":"2940012019981","title":"CONFESSIONS OF AN INQUIRING SPIRIT AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS","description":"Introduction\u003cbr\u003eConfessions of an Inquiring Spirit\u003cbr\u003eLetters on the Inspiration of the Scriptures.\u003cbr\u003eAn Essay on Faith\u003cbr\u003eNotes on the Book of Common Prayer\u003cbr\u003eA Nightly Prayer\u003cbr\u003eA Sailor's Fortune\u003cbr\u003e    Essay I\u003cbr\u003e    Essay II\u003cbr\u003e    Essay III\u003cbr\u003e    Essay IV\u003cbr\u003e    Essay V\u003cbr\u003e    Essay VI\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy dear friend,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI employed the compelled and most unwelcome leisure of severe\u003cbr\u003eindisposition in reading The Confessions of a Fair Saint in Mr.\u003cbr\u003eCarlyle's recent translation of the Wilhelm Meister, which might, I\u003cbr\u003ethink, have been better rendered literally The Confessions of a\u003cbr\u003eBeautiful Soul.  This, acting in conjunction with the concluding\u003cbr\u003esentences of your letter, threw my thoughts inward on my own\u003cbr\u003ereligious experience, and gave immediate occasion to the following\u003cbr\u003eConfessions of one who is neither fair nor saintly, but who, groaning\u003cbr\u003eunder a deep sense of infirmity and manifold imperfection, feels the\u003cbr\u003ewant, the necessity, of religious support; who cannot afford to lose\u003cbr\u003eany the smallest buttress, but who not only loves Truth even for\u003cbr\u003eitself, and when it reveals itself aloof from all interest, but who\u003cbr\u003eloves it with an indescribable awe, which too often withdraws the\u003cbr\u003egenial sap of his activity from the columnar trunk, the sheltering\u003cbr\u003eleaves, the bright and fragrant flower, and the foodful or medicinal\u003cbr\u003efruitage, to the deep root, ramifying in obscurity and labyrinthine\u003cbr\u003eway-winning -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn darkness there to house unknown,\u003cbr\u003eFar underground,\u003cbr\u003ePierced by no sound\u003cbr\u003eSave such as live in Fancy's ear alone,\u003cbr\u003eThat listens for the uptorn mandrake's parting groan!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI should, perhaps, be a happier--at all events a more useful--man if\u003cbr\u003emy mind were otherwise constituted.  But so it is, and even with\u003cbr\u003eregard to Christianity itself, like certain plants, I creep towards\u003cbr\u003ethe light, even though it draw me away from the more nourishing\u003cbr\u003ewarmth.  Yea, I should do so, even if the light had made its way\u003cbr\u003ethrough a rent in the wall of the Temple.  Glad, indeed, and grateful\u003cbr\u003eam I, that not in the Temple itself, but only in one or two of the\u003cbr\u003eside chapels, not essential to the edifice, and probably not coeval\u003cbr\u003ewith it, have I found the light absent, and that the rent in the wall\u003cbr\u003ehas but admitted the free light of the Temple itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI shall best communicate the state of my faith by taking the creed,\u003cbr\u003eor system of credenda, common to all the Fathers of the Reformation--\u003cbr\u003eoverlooking, as non-essential, the differences between the several\u003cbr\u003eReformed Churches, according to the five main classes or sections\u003cbr\u003einto which the aggregate distributes itself to my apprehension.  I\u003cbr\u003ehave then only to state the effect produced on my mind by each of\u003cbr\u003ethese, or the quantum of recipiency and coincidence in myself\u003cbr\u003erelatively thereto, in order to complete my Confession of Faith.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47068348612848,"sku":"2940012019981","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012019981_p0.jpg?v=1763551903","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012019981","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}