Sacred Mysteries Bookstore

01/09/2026

Today Common Sense is 250 years old 🥳

On January 9, 1776, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) quipped that it was time to part.

His pamphlet, more than eighty pages long, is regarded as the collection of arguments on why America should dissolve her political union with Great Britain. This first edition in our collection was published in Philadelphia, printed and sold, by R. Bell in Third-Street.

Philadelphia physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush introduced Paine to a fearless liberal printer named Robert Bell (ca. 1732-1784), who was willing to take the risk of publishing his piece. Paine’s clear portrayal of the reasons for independence spread like wildfire throughout the colonies and the pamphlet become the most widely read and reprinted political pamphlet of the Revolutionary period. As a direct result of its publication, the Declaration of Independence was signed seven months later.

01/05/2026

01/03/2026

“The East reveres Buddha, the West reveres Christ. Both taught love as the secret of wisdom. The earthly life of Christ was contemporary with that of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who spent his life in cruelty and disgusting debauchery and perversion. Tiberius had pomp and power; in his day millions trembled at his nod. But he is forgotten.

Those who live nobly, even if in their day they live obscurely, need not fear that they will have lived in vain. Something radiates from their lives, some light that shows the way to their friends, their neighbours perhaps to long future ages. I find many people nowadays oppressed with a sense of impotence, with the feeling that in the vastness of modern societies there is nothing of importance that the individual can do. This is a mistake.

The individual, if he is filled with love of mankind, with breadth of vision, with courage and with endurance, can do a great deal. Every one of us can enlarge our mind, release our imagination, and spread wide our affection and benevolence. And it is those who do this whom ultimately humankind reveres.”

─ Bertrand Russell, The New York Times (3 September 1950). Image: Bertrand Russell, 1954. National Portrait Gallery.

01/02/2026

Thought for the day, from Swedenborg’s “Divine Providence” section 83