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comprehension of mind to discern remote , invisible , or intangible consequences of present actions , they were made subject to sensible and immediate rewards and punishments . These rewards and punishments were invariably administered as promised or threatened ; but they were usually national and not individual . This was a wise provision . Their efficiency , as a mode of discipline , was secured by their regularity , while the minds of the people were enlarged by the extension of their hopes and fears to national objects . —Besides , if reward and punishment bad been accurately measured to every individual , no way would , have been left open for the conception of a future state . Though it was not
the Divine purpose to reveal this truth under the first dispensation * it was manifestly unfit that the system should contain any provision which must retard its subjects in their discovery of any truth at which they must at length arrive . No notice of a future life is to be found under the Mosaic dispensation ; but neither does it contain any thing inconsistent with the doctrine , nor interpose any obstacle to its recognition by reason .
The administration of reward and punishment was not the less invariable because averted by relapse or repentance . In such cases , the repentance and relapse became new occasions for the exercise of the sanctions of the law . The infliction of punishment was , indeed , often delayed ; and this delay proved one of the most powerful means of exciting the hopes and fears , and therefore the love and awe , of the people . It was especially necessary to their spiritual cultivation that they should experience the
longsuffering and mercy of Jehovah , as well as his justice ; that love should be united with fear , and even overbalance it . As they were led to the recognition of his supremacy and afterwards of his unity , by displays of power ; as no refuge from his presence existed , and as entire national obedience to the law was impossible , the people would have regarded him with unmixed terror , if it had not been for a counterbalancing conviction of his tenderness and benignity ; and terror , in this instance , as under all despotisms , would have nullified the purposes of a moral government , and carried back human
reason , instead of accelerating its advancement . As it was , the motives of hope and fear were so proportioned , the reciprocal influences of reason and revelation so adjusted , as to enable the Jewish people , in an early period of their discipline , J : o recognize Jehovah as one , and themselves as the subjects of a divine moral government ; and thus to plant them firmly on one eminence in the road to spiritual knowledge and happiness . The following selection from the Hundred Thoughts of Lessing will afford a sufficient recapitulation of the points touched upon in this essay .
" Revelation is to the whole race of mankind what education is to the individual person . " " Kducation is a revelation made to a single man ; and revelation is the education of the whole race of mankind . " " Education gives nothing to man which he could not also have derived from himself , though with more difficulty and more slowly . It gives ,
therefore , nothing to mankind which human reason , left to itself , would not have acquired ; but it gave and still gives to man the most important of these things more easily and earlier . " " As God neither could nor would make distinct revelations to ( all nations or to ) every individual , he selected a single people , that he might give them an education apart ; and that he might begin from the very beginning , he selected a people , too , the most uncultivated and rude . "
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Education of the Human Race . 305
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VOL . IV . Z
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1830, page 305, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2584/page/17/
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