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tidn of its affairs into the hands of those who are gifted "with the highest intelligence and the purest benevolence , and they will , with the obedience and accordance of the members of a healthful body , follow the impulses of head and heart . Did we all feel that our rulers stood in this comparative position towards us , the fast which they enjoin , were such rulers to enjoin one , would be observed generally and devoutly . And , as is most probable , did they enjoin something else in preference , that would be fulfilled with the alacrity of hearty concurrence and confidence . When a patriarch of old , the priest ; and king of his populous household , commanded fast or sacrifice , his children and his slaves fasted or
sacrificed devoutly . Had Moses commanded an extraordinary fast in the wilderness , the Israelites would not have taken advantage of a leisure day to make pic-nic parties adown the dells or up the pinnacles of Horeb . When the polytheism of Rome was in its palmy state , before the philosophy of Greece had eaten out its heart , leaving only the external shell , and while augur could look augur in the face without laughing , consuls and pontifices
were paramount over the public mind , and at their bidding it would humble itself before the altars of their gods . Nor less might had he of papal . Rome , while yet he sat in God ' s temple , like a god , the living law of Christendom . Even the laird of a Scottish clan had power over the stomachs , knees , and thoughts of his clansmen . All could do that , which the government of the
most popular monarch of the British empire , with all its machinery of ministers of state , of justice , and of religion , cannot do ; and in attempting which it only whistles to the wind . The reason is plain . Those authorities , whatever their imperfections , were in harmony with the communities over which they presided ; they were felt to represent the opinions , desires , interests , of those
communities ; to be qualified for ruling by superior wisdom and goodness , ( as wisdom and goodness were then estimated , ) and so in what they did the community they ruled went with them . So
it must be again . This harmony must return . Not by the return of patriarchal or despotic authority . The world has outgrown them for ever . Not by outward uniformity of religious profession and ceremony \ the time for that has gone by too ; but by institutions which throw up into the government of the state men whom all confide in as the best qualified . America approximates towards this condition . Congress has far more power than par * -
liament ; more power over people ' s minds . It carries opinion with it more surely . Its recommendation , if issued without penal sanction , would meet with more respect . The Reform Bill will help us to approximate towards this condition . In that tendency consists its worth . If well followed up , there will be a subsiding of the wars of factions and classes . We shall advance towards
national unity . We shall begin to contemplate a distinct social aim ia our proceedings , and direct them towards such forms as alt
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The Fast Day and the Cholera . J 47
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 147, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/3/
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