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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.
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spirits from the doubts and fears which brood over them . Let the sun of righteousness shine full upon their minds , and let joy and peace in believing be their portion .
But , Sir , we still may meet , we actually do meet the objection against individual exertions which has been made with a better grace informer times . ** W ^ hat we can do towards promoting the cause of truth is of small importance , and can produce but a small effect . The cause of truth is the cause
Of God , and he will employ effectual and sure methods of propagating it at the period which he shall see best . " That the exertions which individuals can make are of small import will not be admitted as an argument against these exertions being made , if it be considered that the greatest works of
man ' s device , and i will add the greatest works which in the moral dispensation of Providence have ever been effected , have been so effected by the single but repeated endeavours of individuals . By what means has the solid quarry become a habitable and beautiful city , but by the single strokes of a man ' s arm ? How rose the
immense pyramids , which for thousands of years have defied the tooth of time but by the single , but united labour of man ? How have distant provinces , and distant countries been united by canals , and enjoyed all the advantages of navigation and commerce but by
that toil which you rriay trace to the spade ? See but the vast work completed , measure its extent , calculate its value , and trace back the steps by tfhich it has been produced , to the
first stroke of the pickaxe and the fasting hour of him who first removed a stone , your mind is almost overwhelmed with astonishment , and you perceive the immense disproportion between the first cause atid its effect .
Yet we know that those petty operations , trhtch might once have been looked on with contempt , continued Without intermission and with an animated mind have surmounted the greatest difficulties , hate levelled mouttttfins , have filled up seas , have excited the gratitude and the admiration even of those who once shook
their herids in acorn . But nurture herself offers us a yet more striking lesson of steady continued exertion than even the * experience of than : for , from the
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smallest beginnings we behold in her works the most powerful , the most magnificent effects . How is that incalculable force acquired with which the mighty river rolls along , and to which the gigantic resistance of the earth itself offers but an insufficient
restraint > There are in some parts of our earth streams which pour into the ocean a volume of water of more than a hundred miles in breadth . And where do these originate but in the dripling rivulet at which the bird can scarcely quench his thirst ? It steals
unseen through the wood , or amidst the grass , which hides it from the view of man ; but it soon breaks forth to observation . In its progress it joins other streams as feeble as itself , and swelling as it proceeds it unites
with the multiplied waters of the whole country around , till it is swollen to a navigable river , deepening and widening as it goes , and at length ia silent majesty it rolls its mighty waves into the vast abyss .
In the moral world we have seen effects as vast , produced by the united virtue of many minds . The history of the world furnishes various instances of the improvement of the mental powers by the exertions of a few individuals , and of the consequent removal
of what was the disgrace of the human character from amongst them . We need not go out from that truly sentimental and humane nation amongst whom it is our happiness to live , for decisive proofs of the infinite importance of individual exertions . What
has been done by the united endeavours of individuals of all classes of Christians in circulating , not through this country alone , but through the world , the knowledge of the Christian
Scriptures , by the distribution of Bibles i and great is the good we may reasonably hope , will accrue to the world by this most useful step . How immense are the sums which have
been raised by the religious societies ot Great Britain to promote missionary scemes in foreign parts 1 . Numbers would scarcely tell them ! It may indeed be questioned whether those
sums would not have been far better employed in enlightening the minds of out neighbours at home , or in sp reading first the blessings of civilization and of humanity amongst savage nations , before the attempt was made to teach
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f > 7 & On Congregational Unitarian Funds .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1817, page 672, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2470/page/32/
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