Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 29

Avatars of the Third Other 27 Religious expressions of the "absolute Other" stage in American consciousness are so pervasive that they are often found in unlikely places~in the writings of a skeptic like Thontas Paine, for instance, who, while reviling Christian custom, nonetheless pays tribute to the sovereign creator: The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It is as if He had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, "I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts." (qtd. in Baym et al. 606). Paine's contemporary, Phillis Wheatley, an important black writer, would have been shocked by Paine’s anticlerical sentiments, but she shared Paine's sense of an absolute Other governing the cosmos: O'er beings infinite His love extends. His wisdom rules them, and His power defends. When tasks diverse tire from human frame. The spirits faint, and dim the vital flame. Then too that ever active bounty shines. Which not infinity of space confines. (qtd. in Baym et al 674). Finally, in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, bom half a century before Wheatley, the complementary consciousness of Other-in nature and Other-in-God, respectively, come together: God's excellency. His wisdom. His purity and love, seemed to app>ear in everything: in the sun, moon and stars; in the clouds, and blue skies, in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time, and so in the daytime spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky to