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with simply spurning the past ; nor , like Condorcet , wrap himself in the dreams of an ideal future : but he studied the past to draw lessons for the future ; and felt the closeness and sanctity of the bond which unites all ages in one progressive plan . To use his own forcible language ; 'the present is pregnant with the future : the destinies of posterity are placed in our hand ; we have inherited the thread of ages ; we spin it onward ; and hand it down to our successors * .
There is nothing , after all , which more strikingly and more favourably distinguishes Herder from the two writers with whom we have been comparing him , than the deep religious feeling which pervades his whole work . He may sometimes express it in language which sounds strangely to English ears ;—but this arose from the fact , that his religion was something more than words—that it was a sincere and real feeling . With the profoundest reverence for Christianity , which he regarded as a consecrated vehicle of divine wisdom , he still looked with tenderness on the sacred traditions of heathen natipns , and was willing to believe that they contained , under their forms and symbols , some latent principles of holiness and trutfi . JBut with him religion was rather a sentiment than a dogma . It consisted in the state of his affections towards man and God ; and was therefore
compatible with the greatest latitude of inquiry , and the most perfect freedom of speculation . It did not fetter his understanding ; it only sanctified his heart . Devotedness and gratitude to the invisible Source of good ; trust in his providence and obedience to his will ; a tender s ympathy with the suffering and the happiness of all that he has made ; and a firm persuasion , that death is but a crisis , and not the extinction , of our being ;—this was the religion
of Herder—this is the spirit breathing through all his works . This too is the spirit which we would call upon every good man to use his utmost efforts to diffuse in this restless , innovating , and sceptical age . With it , no inquiries can be baneful , and no changes perilous . Without it , we can hardly stir a step , but into danger ; and all the triumphs of truth and discoveries of science will only serve to open deeper sources of unhappiness , and unfold a wider prospect of comfortless desolationf . T .
* Bliclce in die Zukunft . Postscenien I . 1 * Should any proof be required of the assertion in the text , we might appeal to a most appalling article in a recent Number of the Revue Encyclopedique , entitled Religion , Auoc Philo 8 oph . es .
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No . 64 . s
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The Philosophy of the History of Mankind . 233
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 233, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/17/
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