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Untitled Article
that ari $ & from modes of expression ; although the result might be , that there were not so many miracles wrought by the Jewish Lawgiver as had been imagined ; any more than he must be thought to do an injustice
to the Christian system , who cannot discover a spiritual sense and a Christian meaning in the Song of Solomon . We have long ceased to believe that those infernal spirits , which Mil ton speaks of , so much like a poet , and so little like a believer , were driven
out of the human body into the herd of swine 5 and that , in the temptation in the Garden of Eden , " Satan squat like a toad" at the ear of Eve , infusing bis * wicked wiles , " and indeed we make so free with the opinions of our fathers as to be satisfied that he had
no concern in that wofui temptation by which our first mother fell . We do even more than this , for we deny altogether that this drama of the fall of man , is the relation of a fact . And ,
whether or not we discern in it , as Schiller does , the first necessary operation of free-will , and regard it as a manifestation of man ' s independent state , and the almost unavoidable result of the condition in which he was
placed , and therefore , in a strictly philosophical sense , no evil : by denying a fact which is so plainly declared , we certainly prepare the mind for a liberal interpretation of those relations which afterwards present themselves to our notice in the succeeding pages .
I might as well believe that a serpent talked with Eve , as , that the wind breathed through the ram ' s horns , Knocked down the walls of Jericho , when I can give a more reasonable account of both ; I should have as little
difficulty in admitting , that the Omnipresent Governor walked in the garden and met Adam , as one man may meet another , as , that Moses talked face to face with God , as a man may talk with his friend . But while I see in
both a beautiful allusion to the agency of God , I admit no personal presence . There is a truth , Sir , in all these declarations ; but I shall never believe God to be " altogether such an one as myself / ' and , therefore , interpret literally all those metaphorical expressions which are found in the Bible .
All the powers of nature , and all the skill of man , are instruments in his hands of good and of evil to hig crea-
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tures ; they are represented as-engagfed by him in an especial manner to train up a family for his worship ; and a Jewish historian , when giving * an account of what befel his people , goes back at once to the original cause ,
disregarding the minor instruments . Here has been the misfortune ; because , although his statement is strictly true , and cannot be denied by him who "looks through nature up to nature ' s God - ' > * yet they who confine their
views to the act itself , may in many cases think the practice an absurd one , to ascribe to the Almighty the minutiae of laws , intended for so barbarous and wrong-headed a people as was that which left the Egyptian slavery in seareh of a better fate in some
unknown land . The letter of W . contains an allusion to the pillar of cloud and of fire ; and I suspect the intimation that accompanied it terrified and shook the tender nerves of I . ( if , as I still suspect , he be not as great a freethinker
as myself ) . Now this is one of those historical facts which are as plain as a clear understanding can make them ; and the very circumstance of such a phraseology being employed to describe what a profane author would
give us in a simpler style affords a strong reason for us to carry a similar mode of interpretation into other parts of the Scripture history . For , as it is evident the persons for whom the Gospels were written did not believe that devils were driven out of the
lunatics , but that the expression " possessed of demons , " was the description of a certain disorder , as St . Vitus ' s dance and St . Anthony ' s fire are non * among us , so the Jews in the time of Moses , or that in which the Pentateuch was
written , whenever it might be , were not themselves deceived by the language of their sacred writers—it was left for Christians in the nineteenth century to add to the Mosaic history
miracle upon miracle , and to spiritualize the plainest facts ; until the angles of a box cannot be determined on , nor the trimmings of a curtain , without an express authority from Him who sways the sceptre of the universe ,
and gives laws to ten thousand worlds ; and even the cherubims , the figures of two calves , and the space between them , a foot and a half , become the type of that boundless benevolence
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540 Mosaic Mission .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1825, page 540, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2540/page/26/
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