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Untitled Article
grandest objects which the universe contains . The absolute unity , the unrivalled supremacy , the awful majesty , the exhaustless benignity of the God and Father of universal being , —the spotless purity , the unquenchable love , the high and holy zeal , the faith , the patience , the life and the death , the resurrection and the ascension of Him who is the image of the invisible God , —the
bright and glowing vision , and the sure and certain promise of a joy which fadeth not away , laid up in Heaven for the sons of the Most High , —the shining glimpses scattered up and down through the word of God , of the joys and glories of our elder brethren , the angels of His presence , —surely these are matters the oftenrenewed contemplation of which cannot but impress with something of their own deep and lofty strain the mind that makes them its own . We are deeply convinced that the humblest and
weakest of the children of God , who knows any thing of the reality , and feels any thing of the dignity of the title , may , if he will , by the simple , solemn , habitual laying to heart of these things , attain a reach and grasp of mind , a comprehension of view , a height , a length , a depth and a breadth of soul , which a Cicero might have envied , and a Plato admired ;—which , before the day-spring from on high beamed on a darkened and weary world , was granted to some few perhaps of the sons of men , but few indeed and far between .
Once more , Christianity aids and forwards our intellectual progress , by teaching us to take a large and liberal view of the vast entirety of our complex and wondrously made nature . It teaches us , if not by the express letter , certainly by the general spirit , to look on our several powers and affections , divers and seemingly inimical though they be , as equally given us by God , and therefore all to be cultivated and matured in their due and fit proportions .
It sets us above the narrow notion ( seen in its full proportions of absurdity and criminality in the sayings and d 6 ings of monkish religionists ) that the mind of man is a medley of hostile powers and principles , some one or two of which must be made to war with and extirpate the rest—that , for instance , what is gained by the tender , is lost by the lofty ; that the culture of the humorous must be at the expense of the pathetic ; that fancy is at
daggers drawn with common sense ; that logic and poetry , romance and reality , cannot live together ; that to be a wit , a man must also be a fool . All these petty , partial views of our inward being are frowned upon by religion , as at once insulting to the Creator and injurious to the creature . It is the glorious liberty of the sons of God to inform all , to quicken all , to cherish all , to enrich all , under the immediate eye of the great and good Giver of all .
Filially ; Christianity deeply serves our intellectual interests by simplifying the moral rule of life , and placing it on a broad , high , and irremoveable basis . Being a treasury of principles rather than a digest of rules , it relieves us from the yoke of
Untitled Article
632 ' On the Intellectual Influences of Christianity .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1832, page 632, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1820/page/56/
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