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 Any looking for a classic of spiritual writing needs to strongly consider "Optimism" Mar 12, 2010
By Midwest Book Review
God and everything about him is the basis of much spirituality. "Optimism: -- The Lesson of Ages" is a republication of a 1860 volume from Benjamin Paul Blood discussing man and his complex and diverse relationship with God. Highly philosophical, highly spiritual, any looking for a classic of spiritual writing needs to strongly consider "Optimism".
Lessons That Transcend Temporal Restraints Feb 17, 2010
By Daucus carota
"Queen Anne"
For the modern reader who is unacquainted with 19th century syntax, grammar and vocabulary, Blood's Optimism (first published in 1860) will probably require fortitude and determination. It is beautifully, intelligently written, poetic in many turns of phrase and redolent of an age more learned of ancient wisdom than many books of our own 21st Century can claim. It will put you off, but if you then decide to put it down, you will forego an amazing journey..........for, even though what you do not experience you cannot truly miss, it is as true that, once experienced, life becomes richer and more meaningful. At least, this has been true for me, with this book.
What sets Blood's Optimism apart from other writings on duality, metaphysics and Eastern spirituality is that, while alluding to these topics which are familiar to modern Western students of Eastern teachings, Optimism is firmly grounded in Christianity. This is not fundamentalist, bible-thumping brimstone, nor social justice, class equality foot-washing, yet it is Christian and it is not apologetic.
Blood grapples with the basic teachings of this major religious doctrine - original sin, ascension, omnipotence and omniscience of the One True God, perfection of man, the Garden of Eden, good and evil, the holy trinity, heaven itself, the journey of the soul...I could go on - but he approaches as a man who has experienced something far more profound outside the bricks and mortar, beyond the boundaries of the flesh, above and below the strict dogmas of the Church hierarchies and their lackeys: you know he has meditated deep within his fleshy encumbrance to experience the release of something small to something far grander than any language can name - be it 19th century prose or 21st century babble. And then, as his eyes were opened, he lights the path to opening ours, his readers of persistence.
The years I spent in Seminary, I studied Christian mysticism, spirituality and meditation as well as the liberation theologies of women, blacks and the third world. While the one was truly more navel-gazing and ego-oriented than any Eastern meditation I have experienced, the other was so firmly entrenched in the physical bowels of human existence, that there was a chasm stretched between the two so wide, I could not see the connections. Benjamin Paul Blood sat at his writing table, quills at hand, and scratched it out for me. One hundred and fifty years later, I can finally see a path from one to the other and perhaps now my true journey will begin. I have read through Optimism twice, and will pick it up again. I recommend you do the same: buy the ticket, take the journey.
 Blood's "Optimism" a Telling Moment in American Intellectual History Dec 23, 2009
By Inez Martinez
I began reading Optimism by Benjamin Paul Blood out of curiosity because I knew he had influenced William James. At first I was challenged by his sentence structure, but soon began to enjoy the pleasure of understanding him. I became intrigued by his mind and by his relationship with his times.
His basic purpose, to explain the existence of evil and pain if there exists a single good God, is certainly an inquiry with a long history, but Blood's efforts have a particularly American slant. His values seem to reflect contrary trends in American "optimism."
In some ways, Blood is unorthodox, perhaps most in his insistence that pain and evil are not the result of a punitive God.
In other ways he appears deeply conservative, as in his many arguments that what seems evil, such as the disproportionate suffering of the poor or unhealthy, is actually compensated or mitigated in ways proving God's compassionate love. In other words, his perspective can undergird any status quo, no matter how unjust.
The two situations he does not defend are 1) theologies that, given the creator God's perfection and the creature's inherent imperfection, do not understand the loving necessity of what we think of as evil and experience as painful; and 2) the lack of sufficient manliness in the men of his times. This last is particularly striking since other social conditions are examined "optimistically" and do not call forth such a critique. I can't help but wonder why this gender issue escapes his "optimism," if this contradiction bears witness to an intensity of gender conflicts during the mid-nineteenth century when he presumably was writing his book. Blood even celebrates the warrior hero as a superior specimen of human being. This value serves as a sobering frame for his religious optimism.
Blood's perspectives ring with American tones. He celebrates unending development, a celebration reminiscent of the taking of the continent. He lauds tolerance. In the tradition of Jonathan Edwards, he claims "all God's labor is for beauty and for love of beauty; there is little of man's hope in the world but to see and create beauty" (144). He ends his philosophical ruminations with a poem lauding American freedom.
Particularly because of the puzzles this unusual book presents and the questions it raises, I recommend it to readers interested in the history of religious, specifically American religious ideas, and to readers interested in American intellectual and moral history.
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