The Everlasting Yea and No

The Everlasting Yea and No

The Everlasting Yea is Carlyle's name for the spirit of faith in God in an express attitude of clear, resolute, steady, and uncompromising antagonism to the Everlasting No, and the principle that there is no such thing as faith in God except in such antagonism against the spirit opposed to God.^[11]

Carlyle in 1848.

The Everlasting No is Carlyle's name for the spirit of unbelief in God, especially as it manifested itself in his own, or rather Teufelsdröckh's, warfare against it; the spirit, which, as embodied in the Mephistopheles of Goethe, is for ever denying – der stets verneint – the reality of the divine in the thoughts, the character, and the life of humanity, and has a malicious pleasure in scoffing at everything high and noble as hollow and void.

In Sartor Resartus, the narrator moves from the "Everlasting No" to the "Everlasting Yea," but only through "The Center of Indifference," which is a position not merely ofagnosticism, but also of detachment. Only after reducing desires and certainty and aiming at a Buddha-like "indifference" can the narrator move toward an affirmation. In some ways, this is similar to the contemporary philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" in Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Carlyle#Heroes_and_Hero_Worship

The Merciful Obtain Mercy

"The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans said that those who pass judgment on others are 'inexcusable.' The moment we judge someone else, he explained, we condemn ourselves, for none is without sin. Refusing to forgive is a grievous sin—one the Savior warned against. Jesus’s own disciples had 'sought occasion against [each other] and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened.'"

—President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "The Merciful Obtain Mercy", General Conference, Apr. 2012
Topics: Forgiveness