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< x Thou shalt lore tlie Lord thy God with all thy heart , and with all thy soul , and with all thy strength , and with all thy mind . " —Luke x . 27 . There is not a passage in Scripture which the Christian has more need to scrutinize narrowly in all its bearings than this ; it is truly the sum and crown of all practical teaching , comprising every thing that deserves the name of duty . Being , however , so very comprehensive , it is impossible to
dwell upon it at large in the limits of a moderate essay , and at this time we feel an inclination to contemplate it under one of its divisions only—that which respects the intellectual part of our nature—* ' Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy mind" —and would ask the reader to accompany us to the examination in the spirit of sincere desire to know the breadth and depth and height of this commandment of God .
When we mention the word mind , we mean , of course , all the various powers of the mind—perception , attention , memory , judgment , abstraction , imagination : with all these we are to do homage to the Creator of the whole . There is no reservation , no deduction ; all are destined to perform a part in the service of God . But it is lamentable to reflect how often , while we allow in a general way the claims of the Creator to supremacy over his mental creation , we forget the practical application of the Divine law to the different mental powers . We are content to cultivate some and neglect others , to train them often to do a great deal of worldly work , to give them a facility
of acting , much akin to that mechanical dexterity which pur limbs are sometimes taught to acquire ; and having done so much as this , we call in religion to reduce our confusion to order , and think there will be no difficulty in subjecting our powers to her influence . No form of character is more common than one cultivated in all those powers for the world , and supposed
to be complete , with the reservation of a few finishing touches to be made hereafter by the hand of religion . It will not do—there is an error at the foundation . The mental eye that should have surveyed the world as an open book , " written all over with the characters of divine wisdom and goodness , " has acquired the habits of strong but short sight , which enable it every where to discern things chiefly as ministering to its own selfish uses and pleasures . Memory is overwhelmed with its burden of unimproved and ( to such a mind ) unimprovable facts ; imagination is not the pure and lofty gift it was destined to be ; judgment , too , is rather exercised on things which the more they are considered the more frivolous do they appear , than on the high realities of our actual condition in the universe ; and after this training has gone on , year after year , are we not looking for a miracle , when we expect at once that we can " serve the Lord our God with all our mind" }
Few , indeed , are they who , exploring the usual state of their mental powers , —their measure of strength , their proportion , the degree in which they are willing and efficient agents in the service of God—will not see cause to be dismayed at the contemplation . Great as may be original differences arising from different bodily constitution , these are probably of much less account than is commonly supposed . Think of the multitudes of human beings born into this world , seemingly with no mental deficiency—healthy and vigorous in childhood , no way inferior—up to a certain point , to the
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ON LOVE TO GOD .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1830, page 159, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2582/page/15/
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