On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
long period learns to deduce with certainty from the notion of The Infinite ! S . 15 . But though the more excellent among the people made
more or less advances to this notion , it was long before the people could raise itself so high ; and this was the single true cause , why they so often deserted their One God , and so often fancied that they found that one , that is the mightiest , in some . other God of some other people . S * 16 . But of what moral education was a people susceptible , who were yet so rude , so incapable of abstract thinking , and so entirely in their infancy ? They could have none but what resembled the age of childhood : that is , an education by rewards and punishments , which were objects of sense and immediate .
S . 17 . Here too education and revelation unite . God could give his people no other religion , nor any other law than one , by the obedience or disobedience towards which they could hope or fear to he happy or miserable here upon earth ; for their triews did not for the present extend beyond this life ; they knew of no immortality of the soul—they longed for no future life . To have revealed these things to those whose reason was so little advanced , would have resembled the fault of a vain pedagogue , who prefers making precipitate advances with his pupil in order to shew , him off , to the giving him solid instruction .
S . ! 8 . But to what purpose , it may be asked , was this education of so rude a people , with whom God must thus begin at the very beginning ? I answer , in order to be able to employ in the future certain members of this people as more sure preceptors o £ all other people . He educated in them the future preceptors of the human race ; and it was only Jews , only men springing from a nation so brought up , who could become so . S . 19 . For further , after the child was grown up amidst chastisements and caresses , and was arrived at years of understanding , his father sent him on a sudden abroad ; and now he recognised the good he had possessed in the house of his father
without knowing it . S . 20 . Whilst God thus led his people through all the steps of a child like education , the other people of the earth had proceeded along by the light of reason . The greater number remained far below the chosen people . Only a few were gone further ; and it is just so with children who are left to themselves—many remain quite uncultivated , while some few arise to an astonishing height of culture . S . 21 . But as these happy few prove nothing against the utility and necessity of . education , so the few among the hea-
Untitled Article
414 The Education of the Human Race .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1806, page 414, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1727/page/22/
-