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Untitled Article
is all in all within their walls , and our very bishops are chosen from Qut of them for their accomplishments in Greek . The partial . pursuit of physical science forms the only exception to this general character ; for , what is the political attainment of our universities , and what their theological enlightenment ? The classics are the one great object in our public schools . Our
periodical press is at work upon politics as well as literature ; but in what way ?—stumbling on amidst a dark accumulation of facts , or finding an uncertain and perilous way by the light of passing events . Political science , as taught by oi ^ r periodical press , is in as crude a state as physical science two centuries and a half ago ; and though the existence of a regenerator among us gives us hope of a rapid and certain advance , the Novum Organon with which
he has furnished us , will not be in full use , till his grey hairs have descended to the grave . Few as yet , in our free and enlightened nation , know any thing of broa 4 political principles and fundamental political truths ; and those few have reached them by so many individual processes of induction . Providepce is , by its own methods of education , teaching us politics ; but we do not yet come to politics to teach us of Providence .
As for theology , — who can pretend that it is a , national stuqy ? Who can look at its present state , and believe that a multitude of intellects have been guided towards it by any steady impulse , or fixed upon it by any prevailing energy ? If it has been pursued as a science , never before was science pursued so unavailingly . It has not been so pursued ; for the primary dogma of its professors has been that theological truth differs essentially from
all ojher truth in not being an object of induction , a subject of reasop , a matter of research . We wonder that in so teaching , they have venture ^ to speak of truth in relation to theology ; for we have no clear conceptions of truth otherwise than as an object ; of reason arrived at by a process of induction . But , it may be said , there has been research—there has been induction .
Witness the vast libraries of theological learning which our institutions pan bosj . st . We reply , if an age of the world should come , when physical science shall be at such a stand , that the philosophers of tHe time shall be wholly occupied with ascertaining the authenticity an 4 credibility of our Philosophical Transactions , will any criticism or controversy on the records alone , merit the name of
research into physical sciepce ? Such labours may be very valuable in their way , ancl infinitely preferable to those of some contemporaries , —\ £ such there should be , —who woul 4 neglect or pervert facts ^ for the salse of building irrational theories on insulated expressions ; but neither set of inquirers wou ^ d do muph fqr tji § advancement of science . They would leaye unsought thp grarjd principles , capable of indefinite developement , of consistent appjicatipn , of unbounded cp-oper ^ tiQp , yrhich are precisely what i § Anting in fte popula r theology qf oqr day .
Untitled Article
74 Theology , Politics , and Literature .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 74, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/2/
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