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Untitled Article
thoughts ? If our religious teachers are right in telling our aftizans that their faith should go with them into their workshops , — as well to animate the hand as to control the spirit , —it must also be right for our naturalists to carry theirs into the fields and along the caverned shore ; for our scientific men to infuse theirs into their researches , and to let it preside over their experimental philosophy . The one may perchance find illustrations that he dreamed not of , among the roosting birds , or the recovered
treasures of the deeps ; and the others may be struck by relations they could not anticipate between truths which had appeared unconnected . There may be something in the silent motions of the firmament , or in the unvarying and multitudinous relations of number and quantity , or in the illimitable extent and mighty power of transmutation and affinity , which may suggest new and high thoughts of the administrations of Providence , of the share which man has in them , and of the modes in which the most
marvellous of its wonders , and the most precious of its promises , have been and shall be fulfilled . It is at least certain that there is an everlasting relation between the highest stimulus to exertion , and the modes and results of that exertion , whatever be its nature and direction . If it be a fact that the balance of truth is so unequal as we have represented it , it is high time that something was done to restore it . It is time that the students of moral science were preparing themselves to become masters . It is time that they were gathering disciples about them . It is time that they who would learn should at least be offered a choice as to what they
should learn . If we cannot at once form societies , and send forth libraries , and diffuse through the kingdom a spirit of research , whose object shall be the promotion of moral science , we can , each in our way , show what that science is , its high obligar tion upon the race , its benignant influence upon nations , its attractiveness to individuals . There are few who , like Milton , can recognize and display this truth in all three of its great
manifestations , —who can " reconcile the ways of God to man /'—who can reason on the rights and defend the liberties of his race , and , retiring to " behold the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies , " woo others with the 44 soft and solemn-breathing sound , " which issued from his retreat , to come and join him in his worship . Long will it be before we shall meet with an individual who can do this ; but by a combination of powers , much may be effected to which individuals are unequal . Let it be shown what there is true and beautiful in the study of THEOLOGY ,
which teaches the existence and attributes and providence of Deity , not only by cold abstractions of the reason , but by the living facts which are ever stirring within and around every
Untitled Article
Theology \ Politics , and Literature * 77
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 77, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/5/
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