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part of wisdom to remedy grief by reason , and not to wait for the alleviation which time would otherwise bring with it . This sentiment affords a striking , but not the only proof , that the ancients attributed to reason much more than it can justly claim . It
seems also to shew that they were but little acquainted with the constitution of the human mind . A little just reflection would have taught them that the effect of time in mitigating sorrow is not to be anticipated by any act of the understanding . It is almost needless to remark that time diminishes
grief , by causing new impressions to succeed to old ones , and that , by engaging the mind in interests which arise out of new occurrences , it gradually weakens the recollections by which the painful events of a former period had been succeeded . But by what effort
of reason is this progressive operation of time to be superseded ? Experience , indeed , sufficiently proves that no mental energy can effect , without the aid of time , what time , without the aid of reason , seldom fails to accomplish . But what topics of consolation had reason to offer which could render the
lenient hand of time unnecessary to the mitigation of human sorrow ? That it is wise to bear with patience what it is impossible to avoid ; that whatever sufferings visit the individual ,
he is not the only sufferer ; that if we lose our friends " by death , they escape the evils which might have awaited them in a longer life , and at the worst are only as though they had never been . * Such , and no better than such ,
were the considerations which philosophy could suggest to soothe the anguish of an afflicted heart . How inferior to the assurances of Christianity , that this mortal must put on immortality , and that suffering is a
part of a wise and benevolent discipline which may assist to prepare us for everlasting happiness in the life to come ! Not , indeed , that these assurances will immediately calm the agitated spirit , or produce the effect
* When the ancient philosophers speak ° * a future life in circumstances which Put their faith to the proof , they generall y state the hypothesis of annihilation , toget her with that of a future being , and in such a manner as to render it dubious w > which their minds inclined .
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for which philosophy in vain invoked the aid of reason . Time still supplies the only certain cure for the agony of poignant grief . And if affliction has a beneficial influence on the human heart , it is right that the remedy should not
be instantly at our command . But while the philosophers of old demanded of reason to perform the work of time , they not only demanded what the law of nature forbids , but shewed that * while they felt grief to be an evil , they were strangers to the considerations which are best calculated to soften its
severity , and had no proper conception of the present state as a scene of moral discipline . Whence , indeed , should they have had this conception , when , as Cicero expressly informs us , there was nothing on which both the learned and the unlearned differed so much as on this , whether the cods nav anv on thiswhether the gods pay any
, regard to the concerns of men ? I shall be believed when I say that I am ' not disposed to despise or under * - ; value the ancients ; but truth compels me to confess that their philosophy falls lamentably below the discoveries of revelation ; discoveries which he will value most who endeavours to ascertain what unassisted reason can do by carefully examining what it has done . E . COGAN .
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Tttlotsori * s Opinion of continued Miracles ! 71
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Sir , Feb . 1820 . AS you have given ( p . 11 ) one curious passage from Archbishop Tillotson ' s Sermons , allow me to
furnish another . It relates to the probability of modern missionaries amongst infidels receiving miraculous helps . These passages and others that might be pointed out prove that Tillotson wrote his sermons currente calamo 9
and that he introduced into them whatever occurred to his mind at the time of writing ; and this perhaps constitutes one of many causes of the interest which , after the lapse of more than a century , is still taken in his works .
The opinion to which I refer is hazarded at the conclusion of a sermon " Of the Gift of Tongues , " ( S . cxcvii . Works , 8 vo . X . 307 , ) and is thus expressed : "It is not good for men to be confident where they are not
certain - , but it seems to me not impossible , if the conversion of infidels to Christianity were sincerely and vigorously attempted by men of honest
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1820, page 71, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2485/page/7/
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