On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    the objects to be contemplated : you must clothe your mind with his thoughts and feelings , taking his sympathies and his dislikes , and , generally , his emotions and his eyes . Then will you see what he said ; you will penetrate his meaning ; and , with the superior

    advantages whieh time and experience give you , be able to do what he could not- —transfuse his thoughts into the current language of the day , —separate what is accidental from whaff is essential , —remove the one , and develop and apply the other . To effect what has now been recommended , no study will be found so valuable as that of the Old Testament . That it con *

    tains all that is needful , I do not assert ; but the mind that is fraught with the incidents which it relates , and impregnated with the spirit which it breathes , is not meanly qualified for the interpretation of Paul . The object which we are setting before you may be forwarded by another auxiliary : consult your own breast ; study its actual condition , its capabilities , its wants . Study yourself , the

    relations you bear to God , to man , to time , to eternity . Ask your ^ self what you are ; what your conduct ; what your wishes ; what your destiny . Call on Nature to tell you what she has to declare in reference to your wants and your desires . In the union of these things there is a volume which will serve as a comment on Paul and every other writer ; and that volume is not the worse if it makes pretensions to scarcely a higher authorship than what

    is usually termed ' common sense . ' Take it as a companion with you , as you read the letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles . It will serve admirably to separate what is essential from what is accidental ; to bring down oriental majesty to the dimensions of sober truth ; to develop the clear , expound the obscure , deduce general principles from particular instances , make due allowances for accommodations to existing prejudices , and to bring

    forth truth in the harmonious proportions of a beautiful whole , from the disjointed and fragmentary materials of unconnected letters . You will occasionally meet with passages of which the best exposition of books or tradition will furnish little more than darkness ; and others , in which they will elicit glimmerings that , by their coming and going , will serve for little more than to render * darkness visible . ' In cases such as these , and generally in difficulties of all sorts , it may not be useless to lay aside books

    altogether , and consult the inward monitor , asking if there is anything which is at all correspondent with what appears to be the author ' s meaning , in the principles of your nature , in your relations as an accountable and an immortal being . You may thus get possession of a touchstone by which to detect , and , consequentl y * cast away the absurd and unnatural , and a guide by which you may not only thread the labyrinth ,, but come at last into the full light of day . What we now recommend is nothing more than what all men do in secular pursuits , when at a loss to

    Untitled Article

    O * i the Study of St . Pour * Epistles , 6 * 5

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 675, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/27/