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It has pleased Providence to make mankind subject to various ills as well as blessings , and to render their happiness dependent
on the right application of the means adapted to temper joy and sorrow . Men have ever been liable to pains of body and weaknesses of mind , and irksome pressure from external circumstances , and also to intemperate enjoyment of sensible pleasures , and of undue excitement of certain faculties of the mind . A
counteracting power , has , at the same time , been furnished in the influences of religion ; a power adequate to lighten all burdens , to sooth all pains , to temper all pleasures , to stimulate to action , and to restrain excess , to equalize the lot , and ennoble the character . This auxiliary of all good , and antidote of all evil , is evidently designed to be made use of by each individual according to his
needs . The time will come when every man that is born into the world will recognize and lay hold of , and apply his religion for himself ; when no one will be needed to stand between God and himself , and no human teaching will be made the medium of divine . But that time has never yet been , nor will be , till Christian nations have learned enough of Christianity to give to their
brethren , without distinction , not only their inheritance of bread , but of the word of God . All God's children have an equal right , not only to the means of bodily , but those of spiritual life ; and till such an equalization shall have been effected as shall bestow on every breathing man leisure for the exercise and cultivation of his immortal faculties , no community may boast itself of its Christianity . That the dispensing of its benefits has hitherto
been committed to a separate class , is a sure sign that its influences are yet mutable , as the sealing up of the granaries of Egypt was an intimation of probable dearth . If our faith were what it ought to be , the livelong summer of the spirit , there would be no more occasion to garner up its privileges in a priesthood , than there would have been for Joseph to withdraw a portion of the plentiful harvests , while he knew that every season would produce its own abundance for ever . Hitherto we have distrusted the
promise that seed-time and harvest shall not cease ; we have not even tried what the sunshine and dews of heaven can do towards ripening the moral harvest . We have kept the people out of the field , which is theirs as much as ours , and placed them at the mercy of stewards who hold their office by arbitrary appointment . And how have the priesthoods of the earth discharged their functions ? We admit the credentials of one such class , which ,
* Lectures on Witchcraft , comprising a History of the Delusion in Salem , in 1692 . By Charles W . Upham , jun ., Pastor of the first Church in Salqm . Boston . U . S . 183 L '
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545
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ON WITCHCRAFT * .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 545, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/41/
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