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
which the study of them has ; involved , we cannot hesitatelooking at the subject merely with the eye of human philosophy —to admit their very great and very beneficial influence on the course of social improvement .
On the other hand , the perversion of the Jewish Scriptures has been productive of great mischiefs ; and the more so , because it has given to these mischiefs the apparent sanction of divinej authority . 4
How many absurd systems of cosmogony have been spun out of the sublime simplicity of the Mosaic narrative of the creation ! How many harsh doctrines and wild hypotheses have been founded on the story of the apple and the serpent ! For centuries , inquirers into nature conceived themselves bound to reconcile all the phenomena of the earth ' s formation with the forty days of the flood ; and historians chained the destinies of whole nations
to the fortunes of the single people of God , and to the misconceived interpretation of the prophet ' s vision of the four monarchies . ' * Even in morals and politics , the misapplication of the Hebrew writings , has put fetters on the human mind , and impeded the free development of the national spirit . Without any regard to th ~ e difference of times , and of the state of
civilization ^ the intolerance of the Jewish religion has been supposed to furnish a precedent for the conduct of Christians ; and passages have been quoted from the Old Testament to justify the monstrous project of trammelling the free and practical spirit of Christianity with the forms of a Jewish state religion . In like manner , it is undeniable , that the usages of the temple , and the ecclesiastical language of the Hebrews , have had a marked influence on public worship and pulpit eloquence , and on the hymns and litanies of
all Christian nations , and have often impressed on the language of devotion all the peculiarities of an Oriental idiom . The laws of Moses have been considered as binding in all climates , and under circumstances very different from those for which they were originally calculated ; and , from this cause , not one Christian people has framed its legislation and policy on principles strictly its own . Thus the choicest good is drawn by perversion into various evils , as the most salutary elements of nature are sometimes converted into the means of destruction , and the most
powerful medicines become a subtile poison * . * On the subject of the final restoration of the Jewish people to their native land , Herder expresses an opinion directly opposite to that which Dr . Priestley is known to have entertained , and
which he espoused in some of his latter publications , with an ardour quite at variance with the , ordinary sobriety of his philosophical judgment . By some , Herder will be deenied too dog-r paatical on the other side of the question * * Let no one , from the * Book XII ., ch . iii ., pp . 85 ^ -87 .
Untitled Article
172 The Philosophy of the History of Mankind ,
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 172, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/28/
-