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For a considerable time , the diffusion of various kinds of knowledge has been attempted by means of lectures . Perhaps our own age and country employ this method of instruction vviih unprecedented frequency and zeal . That it is used indiscriminately , nor sufficiently understood , either in theory or in practice , we cannot , for a moment , doubt . It possesses , we admit ,
characteristic advantages : as certainly , however , it has appropriate inconveniences , even if we must not call them evils . In its facility of addressing numerous assemblages , it is an instrument of vast magnitude and effect : in the limits which unavoidably circumscribe its power of communicating fall and accurate information , it labours under an essential deficiency , and , in some views , may be dangerous and hurtful . The external accomplishments of the lecturer , will often conceal from the majority of his auditors his
superficial or incorrect learning ; while the captivated hearer may too easily regard as his own acquisition the intelligence which he receives merely through the channel of the person to whom he listens . In many instances , the custom of delivering a lecture within a given circle , literary , commercial , manufacturing , ecclesiastical , bespeaks and promotes an empirical spirit , and may be ranked among the many ways in which candidates for the patronage of the public aim at obtruding themselves on its notice , and winning , if they can , its approbation .
If , indeed , lectures are multiplied at a time when books have become abundant , and if the demand for both is equal , or nearly equal , such a circumstance will be an auspicious token of the increase of a thirst for useful knowledge ; especially among the manufacturing classes . We fear , nevertheless , that the coincidence is not quite so exact : we suspect that , in almost every department of society , a great proportion of the attendants within a lecture-room content themselves with the opus operatum , nor
engage in that regular course of reading which harmonizes with such an occupation of , it may be , a single hour in the week , and is requisite to the due cultivation and improvement of the mental powers . Any degree of knowledge entitled to the name , is , we grant , better than ignorance : and we are not hostile to the habit of lecturing , while we intimate its defects , and suggest the necessity of its being exercised and encouraged with certain modifications , aids , and cautions . Censure , like praise , may be immoderate , and
fail of its proper end . We can allow that the celebrated Samuel Johnson was hurried into an exaggerated reprehension , and a caricature description , when he said , Lectures were once useful ; but now , when all can read , and books are so numerous , lectures are unnecessary . If your attention fails , and you miss a part of a lecture , it is lost ; you cannot go back , as you
do upon a book . People have now-a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures . Now , I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken . I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures , excepting where experiments are to be shewn . You may teach chemistry by lectures—you might teach making of shoes by lectures . "*] -
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BISHOP MARSH ' S TWO LECTURES , &C *
* Two Lectures ou the History of Biblical Interpretation . With an Appendix . By Herbert Marsh , D . D ., &c , &c . London : Rivingtons . 1828 . 8 vt > . pp . 63 . t BoswelPs Life of Johnson , [ 3 d ed ., ] Vol . II . 6 ; IV . 95 ; and Memoirs of the Life of G . Wakefield , I . 341 , &c .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1829, page 245, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2571/page/21/
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