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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.
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482 Discourse by Mrs . Barlauld .
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there ; they require only kindly warmth and nourishment to spread into the perfect man . Thus he in whom , by the Divine grace , good principles and sincere intentions of doing well are formed , has the root of the matter in him , and needs nothing but the gradual discipline of years and events to bring out and confirm his virtues . Finally , let us all lend our utmost endeavours to procure an interest in that life to which the being born again is to introduce us . There is a beautiful progression in the powers of man . In the womb he lives a vegetative life , after the natural birth an animal life , after the new birth a spiritual life . Unlike to the grass of the field , which when it withers or is cut down springs up again , it is true , but neither stronger nor fresher , nor less corruptible than before ; for , to exist to-day , and to-morrow to be cast into the oven , completes from generation to generation the short and simple annals of the vegetable race;—unlike to these , he receives with every change a new accession of faculties and enjoyments , and , if it is not his own fault , rises
in value after every decay . You , then , who are old , according to the number of years , and have almost spent one life , have you taken care to provide yourselves with another ? While the principle of decay is busy within you , and every year takes something from your strength and agility and vigour , and leaves you but the remnant of yourselves , do you feel another nature within you springing and growing , and pushing towards perfection ? Or have you nothing which belongs to age but its infirmities ? Are you grey with years and green in goodness , withering away in your outward , and scarcely blossoming in your inward man ? Or , at best , are your late-born virtues like the unseasonable shoots of autumn , when the fading year has not vigour enough to bring them to perfection ? Are you almost pushed out of one class of being , and is scarcely the embryo formed in you of a new being belonging to another class ? How , then , indeed , can vou enter into the
kingdom of heaven ? The bars against your entrance are those of the eternal differences of species , and the immutable nature of things ; for you will observe it is not said , He that is not born again shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven , but he cannot enter . That which is produced a vegetable cannot enter into the mineral kingdom , nor that which is formed a mineral into the animal kingdom : thus , also , that which is born of the flesh is flesh , and that which is born of the spirit is spirit , and each class and mode of being must be kept distinct , nor is it possible that the one should enter into the precincts of the other . And this is the case with most of the denunciations in the word of God . They are not arbitrary exclusions from happiness , and punishments contrived and invented ( if I may so speak ) for the purpose of inflicting misery upon the delinquent ; but salutary warnings and kind information respecting the natural and necessary consequences of our actions and dispositions . Nor is the kingdom of heaven separated from the kingdoms of this world , as they are from one another , by barriers of rock and wide-extended seas and jealous gates and fortresses , nor need we go out into the wilderness to find it . It is in the midst of us . It exists silently , to most invisibly , in the very heart and bustle of the world , a kingdom within a kingdom . Its boundaries have nothing in common with those of space or time . They relate to dispositions only . Where these are heavenly , there is the kingdom of heaven ; where these are sensual , there is the kingdom of sense . Into the kingdom of sense , indeed , we have all been born , and while we are in this world we ought to belong to it ; but the things of sense are transitory ; let us , therefore , secure an interest in that spiritual kingdom which never passeth away .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 482, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/10/
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