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must be said if any thing is said at all * that Our remarks yfould probably extend to the length of the Essay itself . Such of out readers as take art interest in one of the most difficult of philosophical questions , and indeed all who have outgrown the vulgar belief that Atheist and Materialist are convertible terms * will do well to study this chapter of the work before us . They will find the question clearly , and , on the whole * impartially stated ,
and that Dr . Crbmbie has a decided opinion upon it , for reasons Vrhich he has given at length . Those who * know that the controversies on this point have sometimes ended in reciprocal conversion , and sometimes in the discovery that the substance which one reasoner called Matter was the same which his opponent meant by Spirit , will not be disappointed if they are long in arriving at conviction , where the question is surrounded with difficulties apparently insuperable . Happily the subject is of no practical
importance , further than that the obscurity or development of truth always has an influence , direct or indirect , on our course of action ; according to the established rule that the clearer are our conceptions ^ the more energetic will be our practice . The immediate connexion between principles and prat > tice is revealed to all ; but no one can say what indirect relations any one truth may bear to morals : and those who are employed in investigations which appear mere matter of curiosity , may be rendering a service of which they and their contemporaries littte dream , to the eternal interests of their
race . The fourth Essay contains an examination of the Theistical arguments for a Future State . The only difference of opinion respecting their value is as to the degree of probability which they establish . Believing , as we do , that the hope of a future life which is universal in the world , originated in a revelation , we find it difficult to judge of the strength of arguments which we hold to be needless , and which , on the whole , appear to us very
unsatisfactory . To those who have been brought up in a Christian country , of whose earliest association ^ the idea of a future life formed a part , to whom the decay and renovation of nature were pointed out as types of a more mournful decay and a brighter renovation , who have been taught to regard every pure thought , every high aspiring , as a foretaste , and the Scriptures themselves as the pledge , of an : immortal existence , it is difficulty if not impossible , to conceive what their imaginations or convictions would have
been in different citfcumstancesy and undetf kn opposite mode of education . We believe , however , that no unassisted reasonings on the tendencies of the soul , on tfee influences of conscience , on the love of life , on the unsatisfying nature of present enjoyments , and oA the abortions of nature—no observation of analogies , no such conceptions of the Divine attributes as could have been formed within u » y would have inspired such fetth as to enable us to leap into the gulf at the call of patriotism , or to inspire disappointment at out
inability tty sacrifice fefe for a friend * The heathen martyrs * to patriotism and friendship were , we think * actuated by atrbflger convictions than could have been established' by the presumptions and probabilities of arguments which could hardly have bfceh suggested by other means than aw apprehension of the truth tfeey were intended t 6 reveal . If the idea of * a fatufe life
were once suggested , it is e&sy to see the use of t « 6 natural aTgwmetofcs' in favour of it iifc vivifying and Oonfiwning the apprehension , till the fulness of time wafe come , when an express promise wtas iiftparted : but thai such an apprehension could originate in the observation of analogies , or the stkrings of a restless spirit , we do not believe . To revelation alone is our race indebted for the hope of immortality , as it appears to us . No such truth could ,
Untitled Article
226 CrombwU Natural Theology .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1830, page 226, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2583/page/10/
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