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/(N-rrtV'tt /(P'tY-m-**!** ( Cil/4IFH UbUlIUrii* _ *
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joyment of all classes . Nor have I named all the measures which a National Party should promote mong them—notably Public Education : I have but laid before youj as my judge , the general scope of the policy , and those measures which have the most striking and immediate effect . Thornton Hunt .
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There is no learned man but . will confess he hath much profited by reading controversies , his senses awakened , and his judgment sharpened . If , then , it be profitable for him to read , why should it not , at least , be tolerable for his adversary to write . —Milton .
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LETTERS ON UNITARIANISM . Letter IV . October 28 , 1850 . Sir , —I have been rebuked in your pages by Mr . S . Solly , of Bath , for attacking Unitarianism . The main objects of his letter seem to be to ascribe all imaginary excellence to the Unitarian system , and to insinuate a doubt whether I be familiar with the contents of the Bible , or give much heed to them . His first obiect would have been better accomplished
if he had furnished us with some historical or other evidence , or such small shred of argument as would have covered the nakedness of his assumptions . As to my acquaintance with the Bible , I am too obtuse to see what it has to do with the matters in debate , and it is an acquirement I have never been in the humour to boast of , since I first learned that the Devil was regularly in the habit of quoting Scripture whenever it suits his purpose . This is all that I have to say to Mr . S . Solly ; and , presenting him with my politest regards , I proceed on my journey .
The agencies through which a sect can become an imperial primordial fact—a power , a valour , a victor — are Plenitude and Warmth of the Ileligious Life , the Spirit of Mercy , Martyr and Missionary Heroism , Incessant Propagandism , Consummate Organization , and Social Action . It cannot be marvelled at , after what I have said , that the stream of religious life in the Unitarian sect has always been most elegantly slender . Whence were the refreshing fountains to gush , and the fertilizing waters to flow ? The charge which the orthodox continually brings against Unitarianism is fatally true : it is arid as Sahara , frigid as the Polar snows . It shut itself
out from all influx of the religious life into its bosom when it put materialism in the place of spiritualism , there where the spiritual alone has claim and conquering vigour . It is long since the world was told that God is a Spirit , and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth . But God is not a Spirit , neither can he be spiritually worshipped , if there he nothing spiritual in the universe at all . For it would be absurd to pretend that the soul of man is material , and yet that the essence of Deity is not so , since it is only by something kindred to God that we can know and do homage to God . There is no longer majesty , glory , a sublime awfulness in the invisible if it bo but a subtler kind of matter . Even
the poor untutored savage is taught by his natural instincts to invoke as the Great Spirit the Being whose voice he hears in the vast gloom of forests , in the roll of mighty rivers , in the wild tempests , and the warring thunders . I conceive not also what value or beauty Christianity has unless it have furnished a larger amount of spiritual food and impulse to what we have been accustomed to call the spiritual element within us , which yearns for the eternal and dreams of the ideal , than any other religion . It was a curious specimen of blundering , therefore , in Priestley
and his followers , under the guise of a more progressive faith , to set up a metaphysical materialism , which was no otherwise distinguished than by its more learned name from the lowest Fetichism , the idolatry of dead and shapeless masses . I am aware that Channing and others of the declamatory sohool to which he belonged tried to pour a fulness of spiritualism into the Unitarian tenets . But it was a spiritualism of the closet , a spiritualism of the head , a spiritualism as cold and much more pretentious than the materialism which it sought to
discrown ; a spiritualism assuredly not generative of the religious life . And even if it had been of a higher , of a more glowing and genial kind , the evil was already irreparable before that spiritualism came upon the scene . It could not confer fervour and fecundity so abundantly as to remedy a defect so profound and organic . Besides , we all know what P harisaical , artificial , vapoury things religious revivals in these days are . They are simply tricks by which exhausted systems and institutions may wear a ghastly semblance of vitality a few years more . The sentimentalism , then , whioh . has prevailed in the Unitarian body ever since Channing dethroned Belsham , must not deceive us . It is merely the form which , religious revival , that huge imposture , that hollow hypocrite , has taken among the Unitarians . However much it may look like spiritualism , it has no hold on the heart . It can neither beget the religious life in the heart , nor draw forth the fruits of the religious life from the heart . It offers to Unitarian ministers sundry new terms to relieve the hardness , and to enrich the poverty of the old Belshamic phraseology , and that is its sole advantage . It begins and ends in words .
The negative attitude , also , which Unitarianism has taken is exceedingly unfavourable to the growth of the religious life . Instead of boldly proclaiming its own principles it has contented itself with a tame and drawling denial of orthodox , dogmas . If it had marched out into the thick of social activities , as a bold and positive energy , with a character and a purpose of its own , it would , from social struggle and from the social heat thence arising , have acquired some position , however small , of that religious earnestness and depth to which its rejection of spiritualism was so opposed . But , allotting itself no
other vocation than that of an antagonist of orthodoxy , it was continually and most childishly on its guard , lest in anything whatever it should bear the slightest resemblance to what was orthodox . In orthodoxy it saw the false , but it saw far more the fanatical and the ridiculous . Its grand ambition thus came to be to avoid the appearance of fanaticism and absurdity . You cannot break your neck in a steeplechase if you never go on horseback ; you cannot be drowned if you never go near the water ; you are not likely to fall in battle if you always stay at home ; your chimney will seldom catch fire if you kindle no fire in your grate ; no one will blame you for indiscreet speeches
if you always hold your tongue ; and you are almost certain not to die of indigestion from cucumbers if you do not eat any . This was Unitarian logic and Unitarian policy . To avoid fever it has sat in an icehouse ; and lest it should be taken for a merry-andrew , it has stood still as a statue muttering with the smallest amount of animation possible , —God is One . Now , all this excess of sobriety , this superstitious caution , while a confession of social incapacity , -was also a formidable hindrance to the development of the religious life . For even the calmest manifestations of that life have a ridiculous and fanatical aspect to the worldly and even to the philosophical eye . Unitarianism , then , by its ridiculous fear of the ridiculous , nnd its
fanatical fear of the fanatical , was fixing a great gulf between itself and the infinite revealings , the divine inspirations , the ineffable raptures which the religious life unfolds . The contempt of Unitarianism for the mysterious and its hatred of the mystical have been ^ as intense and operative as its dire horror of the ridiculous and the fanatical in religion . They have arisen from the same causes and been pregnant with the same effects . The Popish and Protestant Churches had drawn the curtain of mystery so closely around them that it shut out alike the face of humanity and the
sunshine of God's universe , stifled the wholesome breath of truth , and crushed the free impulses of the individual instead of maintaining , as the religious heart and the philosophic mind unite and rejoice in maintaining , that the Divine is always mysterious ; they threatened crucifixion to every one who would not admit , as they did , that tho mysterious is always Divine . They overlooked the fact , likewise , that there can be no traditional , no dogmatic mysteries , though they dignify with the name of mysteries all
the crotchets and crudities with which they cram their theologies . In my march toward the Infinite , I meet with a thousand things I cannot explain , into whose meaning I cannot penetrate . These naturally abound more in religion thttn in aught else , since religion is the yearning of the soul for union and communion with Him who is Himself the Infinite . Such points , where the known and tho unknown meet and mingle , are mysteries . But for each man tho field of the known and the unknown can be
deposes , of priestcraft of what in itself is beautiful and holy , it aimed to cut off from religion whatever was mysterious , solely because it was so . This was limiting still further the already sadly limited sources whence were to flow forth upon it the pith , the opulence , the fertility of the religious life . All being rejected which was mysterious , whatever was deepest and dimmest of course disappeared . The antipathy to the mysterious deprived it , moreover , of the noblest and most nourishing food which the religious sentiment can find , that stored in such rich abundance in the mystical writers , reverence for whom and humble and affectionate perusal of whose works have potently tended to keep alive religious' emotion , religious purity , earnestness , and elevation in the Roman Catholic Church .
Even if Unitarianism had not felt the deadly force of all the previous obstacles to the religious life , it would have been debarred from whatever the religious life has of blissful and exalting by the monstrous blunder which it made , and , alas ! makes , regarding the nature of religion . It rejected all assuming to be religion which could not be adapted to the understanding of each individual . This was almost equivalent to the rejection of religion altogether ; for the understanding of the individual has been a blasphemer from the beginning , and will remain so . In religion , the imagination is more influenced than the heart ; the heart more than the conscience ; the conscience more than the conduct ; the conduct more than the understanding . To put that first ,
therefore , which should be last , was to wither religion in the very marrow of its most essential strength and grandeur . Religion must be in harmony with universal reason , otherwise it ceases to satisfy the needs , and to be in proportion to the whole being and general development of humanity . It must be in harmony with the entire nature of the individual , otherwise it is a barren and beggarly tradition , not an internal and intentional growth . But , to try to make it harmonize with the understanding of the individual is to aim at establishing a brotherhood between the extremest faith and the extremest scepticism . We might as well attempt to extract poetry ^ from mathematics , as endeavour to create the religious life , even in its lowest degree , from such incongruous materials . Atticus .
[ Errata in Letter III . —Paragraph third , line thirty-nine , for promise read province . Paragraph fourth , last line , for then read new .
termined only by his own capacity and experience . For each man , therefore , there can exist no mysteries but those which darken over his own path . To call tho wholly Unknown , or the merely imaginary , tho mysterious , is preposterous . Yet this is what the orthodox churches have uniformly done . Unitarianism , therefore , had very just reason for indignation at them for the tricks they played with mysteries , But , instead of denouncing tho misuse , for mean and mischievous pur-
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ASSOCIATED HOUSES OS POOR LADIES . Oct . 29 , 1850 . Sib , —Miss Martineau ' s very interesting letter , on the subject of Associated Houses for Poor Ladies , will doubtless arrest the attention of your readers , by the truthful description and painful nature of the want it would supply , as well as by the sanction of her name . Permit one without a name to suggest an addition to her heart-cheering scheme for the improvement of their condition—an element of new life , of youth , and hope—making the new home a ? ' trap to catch a sunbeam . "
The ladies , it is presumed , would generally be advanced in age—many of them invalids—some disappointed in their early hopes , reduced in fortune , or suffering under some recent affliction . The fortunate and happy have not to seek a home ! How might this languid body bo invigorated by the infusion of young and ardent minds in the persons of students , pupils of Queen ' s College , and others , to whom minute economy , combined with refined habits , is essential at the very time that their mental labours deprive them of leisure for their practice !
In these new institutions , called Ladies * Colleges , a want is felt of a home for pupils from the country ; and , accordingly , ladies residing in the vicinity offer good guardianship and assistance in instructions to such . But this occupation of a cultivated and elegant woman , and the requisite accommodation , demands a liberal payment , and is quite beyond the means of a young girl aspiring to the honourable career of governess-ship ; or of one who , partly occupied in teaching , may gladly serve a few hours in a day , or even in a week , for such instruction as never could have been within her reach before . Could we
unite Miss Martineau ' s Poor Ladies with an equal number of female collegians , to be received on proportionate terms , we should offer , on the one hand , protection , care , and kindness , with security of good manners and conduct ; and , on the other hand , the bright companionship of youth ; the interchange of care and aid , of sympathy and gratitude ; the daily news from the class-room and the library ; the justfinished drawing or model , " much better than the last , " would soon healthily supersede the melancholy
retrospect , the family confidences , and reading of old letters that too often sadden the hours of declining life , and youth would be renewed , as it were , by the power of sympathy . This idea of the union of youth and age has not escaped Miss Martineau's notice ? on the contrary , she has touched on it with her wonted force and beauty . I would bring more into view its double power of usefulness , and , moreover , connect it with the colleges . Sometimes a govornese , nftcr living 6 vo or six
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( Ufcjmt Cmrartl .
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Nov . 2 , 1850 . ] ® fft % ta \ Stt . ^ 59
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[ IN THIS DEPARTMENT , AS ALL OPINIONS , HOWEVER EXTREME , ARE ALLOWED AN EXPRESSION , THE EDITOR NECESSARILY HOLDS HIMSELF RESPONSIBLE FOR NONE . ]
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 2, 1850, page 759, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1857/page/15/
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