Notable Quote: The Profound Mystery by John Henry Newman

John Henry Newman in his fifth chapter of Apologia Pro Vita Sua brings his apologetics all the way back to justifying God’s existence.  I won’t go into the details of that, but he provides this magnificent sentence, which is set aside as a paragraph.  It is a single sentence and a paragraph.

 

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world,"—all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.

 

To comprehend the sentence, start with the first phrase, “To consider the world in its length and breadth,” and then he provides a litany of historical facts and developments which have led to the present moment under the guiding hand of God, ending with the predicate “all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.”  So put those two halves together and you get: “To consider the world in its length and breadth… upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.”  William Faulkner would appreciate a sentence like that.