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[ The following article is translated from No . IV . of the New Series of the Revue Protestante . It will furnish our readers with a specimen of the style and spirit of that valuable work ; with an illustration of the present state of religious opinion and feeling in France ; bud , mutatis mutandis , there are perhaps some in our own country who may profit by its perusal . ]
It is one of the characteristic features of the age in which we live , that every man professes a political opinion . The camp of the neutrals has been forced , and they have all been compelled to choose their colours , and to abide by them . Public attention is fixed on the public welfare ; and mind is now engaged with the concerns of a nation , as it was formerly with those of a city : the same lever is employed in raising weightier burdens ; and the famous law of Solon , ( condemned by Plutarch , ) that law which ordained
that every citizen should declare for one side or the other , would be in our days a needless enactment . The shock which was given to the old countries of Europe by the French Revolution , the voice of the national tribunals , the daily perusal of the thousands of newspapers , whose echoes are heard undiminished by distance , all have concurred in furnishing every one with the power of forming his own opinion . Formerly every hamlet , like Goldsmith ' s I ) eserted Village , had its newsmonger ; now every hamlet has its politician :
long tales have yielded to the discussion of principles ; and the poor man , feeling himself a proprietor , no where abandons himself to total ignorance of the laws which protect his humble property . In the higher classes we may even say that this ignorance is becoming from day to day more impossible . The spring which has been recently given to mind is every where at work , in one place with more ardour , in another with less ; but it is every where perceptible ; and wherever it is favoured and directed by a national
representation , it must inevitably spread from one to another , as in an electric chain , and throw out its sparks to the most isolated hut . Where there is as yet no representation of the people , opinion may be silent , or it may express itself with caution , and in a low tone , seldom heard beyond its own frontiers . It is forming nevertheless—it is strengthening , and sooner or later its voice will be heard : in due time that voice will be manly . It is to be observed , that with us poor creatures who have only lately assumed the liberty of having ( much less of declaring ) an opinion , it is not , for the time ,
essential that our new birth of ideas should be perfectly correct and free from exaggeration and error . The ancien regime produced but one Montesquieu , and has no right to require at our hands more than one Royer Collard : it would be expecting too much from the rising generation of the age , hardly yet invested with the toga virilis , and admitted to the assemblies of the people . What is really essential is , that these new ideas should engage the attention , occupy and please . Let them be permitted to spread , and they wiJl be their own correctors . Let them not be feared ,
for they are pacific in their nature , and nobody now desires to clear the rust from the pikes and hatchets of the Revolution . This progress of mind , this thirst for knowledge , ( notwithstanding the temerity of judgment which may sometimes accompany it , ) and the lively interest which every individual now takes in the good of the whole , are all prognostications of a new eera of p eace , freedom , and glory for Europe , and it is in our opinion a decided advantage that every man has his political oj ) i ~ juon : it is time that every man should also have his religious opinions .
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ON THE DUTY OF AVOWING OUR RELIGIOUS OPINIONS .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1830, page 396, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2585/page/36/
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