nite operatively familiar to man. Yes, I affirm
that there is no form through which the Infinite reveals itself in a
sense comprehensible by man and adequate to man; that there is no
sublime agency which _compresses_ the human mind from infancy so as to
mingle with the moments of its growth, positively none but has been in
its whole origin--in every part--and exclusively developed out of that
tremendous mystery which lurks under the name of sin.

Yes, I affirm that even in its dreams every Christian child is invested
by an atmosphere of sublimity unknown to the greatest of Pagan
philosophers: that golden rays reach it by two functions of the
Infinite; and that these, in common with those emanations of the
Infinite that do not settle upon the mind until mature years, are all
projections--derivations or counterpositions--from the obscure idea of
sin; could not have existed under any previous condition; and for a
Pagan mind would not have been intelligible.

_Sin._--It is not only that the Infinite arises as part of the entire
system resting on sin, but specifically from sin apart from its
counterforces or reactions, viz., from sin as a thing, and the only
thing originally shadowy and in a terrific sense mysterious.

_Stench._--I believe that under Burke's commentary, this idea would
become a high test of the doctrine of the Infinite. He pronounces it
sublime, or sublime in cases of intensity. Now, first of all, the
intense state of everything or anything is but a mode of power, that
idea or element or moment of greatness under a varied form. Here, then,
is nothing _proper_ or separately peculiar to stench: it is not stench
_as_ stench, but stench as a mode or form of sensation, capable
therefore of intensification. It is but a case under what we may suppose
a general Kantian rule--that every sensation runs through all
gradations, from the lowest or most obscure and nascent to the highest.
Secondly, however, pass over to the contemplation of stench _as_ stench:
then I affirm--that as simply expounding the decay, and altering or
spoiling tendency or state of all things--simply as a register of
imperfection, and of one which does not (as ruins to the eye) ever put
on a pleasing transitional aspect, it is merely disagreeable, but also
at the same time mean. For the imperfection is merely transitional and
fleeting, not absolute. First, midst and last, it is or can be grand
when it reverts or comes round upon its mediatin