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Untitled Article
longer what to adore , has finished * by deifying and adoring herself . These times are passed , my brethren : count one by one these recollections ;—ignorance , fanaticism , demoralization , incredulity / anarchy ;—^ what can happen more and what can happen worse to any people ? Nothing—but all this has happened to us ; and when a society of men has passed through all these states , what can there be before it in future , if it be not a period altogether difc *
ferent ; instruction in the place of ignorance , liberty instead of fanaticrsm , pure manners to supplant a scandalous infamy , faith in the room of infidelity , and order for anarchy ? Yes : when evil times are at an end , better times begin ; and I believe , with an exquisite joy , that we are at this beginning . A nation cannot * without making an immense circuit , transmigrate , so to say , from a false religion , or from no religion at all , to a pure religion . The moral convalescence of a people is long , but it is sure . The
epoch in which we live is the interval , the passage , the transition 3 and this maybe difficult to traverse ; but it is also the proof that a great door is open to us , to us who announce peace to many agitated hearts , self-denial to many discontented ambitions , truth to many sincere minds , salvation to many unquiet consciences , and immortality after many mournings . For , in truth , to look at our long civil wars , and our long foreign wars , it appears , that a new confirmation is given to the terrible proverb of Solomon , that the grave is never satisfied , and that death never says it is enoug h *
Remark too , that these great events have served as a lesson , and have given to the minds of our people a seriousness which is useful to our cause , and which they had not before . Forty years of revolution give to the most trifling time to reflect ; and they , who in their youth had reckoned to pass through life with a smile , have been amazed at the tears they have shed even before their hair has become grey . It is in profiting by such recollections , that our modern Agrippas are made to cry out , Thou almost per *
suadest me to be a Christian * And do you not know how often our worship , so majestic and imposing in its simplicity , has caused this involuntary and silent avowal to burst out from the bottom of an agitated heart ? And , can you doubt that a great door is opened for the gospel , when our worship , the legal existence of which scarcely numbers thirty years , covers already the soil of our country ? Thirty years ago vve had not a temple , and we have now near five hundred . Who , then , has repaired so many ruins
and raised so many sanctuaries in so few days , if it is not God himself ? Ahl the gospel has been kept alive even then , when it seemed to be dead ; and a great door is opened to it , even when incredulity has thought it fast shut . Is not this very temple in which I am speaking a livirtg proof in favour of our religious hopes ? It is the second of which we were put into possession in the capital ; and I fear not to tell you , as the prophet Haggai told his cotemporaries , that the glory of this second house shall be
Untitled Article
Reformed Church in France ; 41 ft
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 419, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/59/
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