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Untitled Article
each one Onwards to his own interest , —I think I can se 0 slovyly rising up , the only adversary that shall triumph over self-inter © s $ —Religion . I think I can see opening wider and wider a great door to Christianity . Let us first listen here to the voice of history . It teaches us that no people has gone back twice to the same follies and the
same iniquity : moral revolutions , like political revolutions , go on * whatever may be done , to their natural term . They resemble a fire , which is not extinguished until it has consumed , all that feeds it ; cover it up , it will burn beneath the ashes . But these changes of manners and opinions , as soon as they are accom * plished , are accomplished for ever ; and you will sooner see th ^ sun himself turn back , than you will cause a people to retrograde .
that has once moved onward . In awprd , what a people has been , it will not be again ; and our people have been already all that a people can be . Consult our annals : we have had our ages of ignorance ; our fertile soil has been left fallow , like the rest of Europe . There is a period in our history , in which the first raea of the country scarcely knew how to read their titles of nobility * or sign their family names , and the pommel of their sword served
for the seal and the signature , as if to prove that force alone was right . These times are passed ; and instruction will necessarily go on increasing . Why so ? but because the hand of man is too feeble to extinguish the light which God has caused to break forth and which his providence maintains . And we have had our age of fanaticism , —the inevitable result of a long day of ignorance . Intolerance dictated its absurd and cruel laws ; man was forbid- ?
den to think , at least to think aloud ; and who is better acquainted with this than we , all whose temples have been blackened by the smoke of funeral piles , and who cannot come into our houses of prayer without disturbing at our entrance the ashes of martyrs ? These times are past . And when the worn-out spring of fanaticism was let down , we had our epoch of impurity : to console ourselves for so much intolerance , we took refuge in
shame ; from blood we passed to corruption , and history has not found terms to relate all it has had to say 3 these times are passed . Incredulity has since appeared , as if it would aerve as an excuse for depravity . A thick phalanx of men of talent , led on by two men of genius , came to attack the gospel boldly ; a » though a
thing so small as the genius of man could overthrow one so vast aa the spirit of God . There remain but feeble relict * of these mighty exertions . The seat of the scoffers is empty ; and if all are not reading the gospel , I shall in vain seek for those who despise or laugh at it . These times are passed : but they have left behind them their fruits , and we have had also our time of in *
tellectual and religious anarchy ; and the wisdom of the wise has been destroyed , and the prudence of the understanding has been brought to nought to such , an extent , that reason , knowing no
Untitled Article
418 State and Prospects of the .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 418, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/58/
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