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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
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Citation
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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/
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